Final Gate lm-3

by Richard Baker

  “Araevin, there is something more.” The small sun elf folded her hands into her sleeves. “High Mage Isilfarrel has warned us that great danger attends you. She is a seer of no small skill, as you know. She doubts you because you have featured prominently in her visions of late. The specter of some awful disaster hangs over you, and she fears that you will bring it down on all of us.”

  Araevin stood silent for a moment, digesting her warning. “I can’t say that I am pleased to hear that, but I am not surprised,” he finally said. “That is why I asked to speak with you in the first place. I have discovered a terrible peril that threatens all of us, not just Cormanthor or the Crusade. Isilfarrel must have seen this, too.”

  “It seems that these days are full of terrible perils,” Olithir said wearily. “Speak, then.”

  “Have you heard of the Fhoeldin durr?” Araevin asked.

  Olithir and Anfalen frowned, shaking their heads, but Kileontheal nodded and said, “The Waymeet? It is a place where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of doorways meet. Magical portals, leading to many different places in Faerun, the farther lands of Toril, and even other planes. Some human sages call it the Nexus.”

  “That is almost correct,” said Araevin. “The Waymeet is not the place where the doorways meet; it is the cause of the doorways. Many of the old elven portals that crisscross Faerun are emanations or earthly manifestations of the Waymeet. It is the Last Mythal of Aryvandaar.”

  Kileontheal looked up at Araevin. “I did not know that it was a work of Aryvandaar,” she said.

  “The high mages of Aryvandaar broke kingdoms and erased armies with the war-mythals they created,” Araevin said. “The Fhoeldin durr was their final work, perhaps their greatest work.”

  “But how does the Waymeet present an imminent peril?” Anfalen asked. “If you are correct, it has existed for ten thousand years, perhaps more, and its purpose is benign. Magical portals have linked elven kingdoms together for ages.”

  “It is not simply a device for creating portals,” Araevin replied. “The Vyshaanti lords who ruled over Aryvandaar secretly made it into a weapon as well. Not only would the Waymeet allow Aryvandaaran armies to invade any land at any time, but any place one of the Waymeet portals touched could be attacked directly with destructive magic of awesome power. I believe the Vyshaanti created the Waymeet as a weapon of last resort. They would have laid waste to the world rather than admit defeat in the last Crown War.”

  The high mages frowned, thinking on his words. Araevin continued, “Some of the myriad portals surrounding Myth Drannor, and likely other old elven ruins as well, are constructs of the Aryvandaaran mythal. Sarya Dlardrageth has already mastered Myth Drannor’s corrupted mythal. She is on the verge of gaining control of the Waymeet as well. If she does, she will be able to employ all of the device’s powers, anywhere she wishes to. She could open doors between Evermeet and the Nine Hells, erase Evereska as if it had never existed, or shatter the wards and bonds of every vault and prison where we have entombed evil things since the world began. That is what we face, High Mages.”

  Kileontheal paled. Anfalen looked away to the moonlit waters, glinting beneath the trees, and Olithir stood still, his face graven from stone, before he raised his staff and took a half-step closer to Araevin. “Are you certain of this?” the grand mage demanded.

  “The selukiira that was the Nightstar preserves lore inscribed by the Vyshaanti mages of ancient Aryvandaar. I know what Saelethil Dlardrageth knew about the Waymeet and its uses.” Araevin hesitated, then added, “What I do not know is exactly how close Sarya is to gaining mastery over the device, or even how she is doing it. I had thought that the Nightstar was the only place where that lore was still preserved, but clearly she knows more than she did even a few tendays ago.”

  “What do you propose, then?” Kileontheal asked.

  “I need more high mages to study the selukiira. Some of you will have to master what is in the Nightstar. I believe that we may be able to undo Sarya’s manipulations if we combine the strength of Evermeet’s cooperative high magic with the lore of ancient Aryvandaar.”

  Olithir frowned. “I am hesitant to do that without a very thorough study of the rite you performed and the risks involved.”

  “With all due respect, Grand Mage, I doubt that we have the time to deliberate on the issue. You have wasted days in debate over the question of whether to even hear me out. How much more time do you need?”

  “Works of high magic are not to be rushed into, Araevin,” Kileontheal said. “You have always lacked patience with us, but the damage that can be done with a moment’s carelessness is unspeakable. We cannot trust your judgment alone in this matter.”

  Araevin took a deep breath and reminded himself to remain calm. “I understand that you have reason to doubt my judgment,” he said. “But if a fool warns a village of a forest fire, it doesn’t mean that the warning can be disregarded simply because he’s a fool. I hope you don’t think I am a fool, but even if you do, you must examine this for yourself. The Waymeet has the potential to cause terrible harm.”

  “We hear you, Araevin,” Olithir said. The grand mage turned back to the stone archway through which the three high mages had come, and woke it again with a gesture and a whispered word. “We will do as you ask, and study this threat. I promise you that no other question has greater priority.”

  “Very well.” Araevin stilled his protests, recognizing that it would not help to be any more insistent than he had been. “I would be eager to present the evidence in the selukiira to any who wish to see it.”

  “Haldreithen would warn us against any contact at all with that loregem,” Olithir remarked.

  “I am sure that he would, but I think I trust Araevin,” Kileontheal said. She turned and inclined her head to Araevin. “Sweet water and light laughter until we meet again, High Mage.”

  Araevin smiled. “And to you, Kileontheal.” He watched the three Evermeetian wizards step back through the silver door, standing in the moonshadows beneath the sycamore trees. Then he found his way back down to the shore where the boat waited.

  At sunrise, Seiveril Miritar found Adresin’s body.

  The captain of the elflord’s guard had died fighting alone, trapped in the wreckage of an old watchtower at Semberholme’s eastern border. Seiveril couldn’t begin to guess when Adresin had become separated from the banner, or how he had found his way to this silent ruin. But the manner of his death was all too clear. Cruelly thorned vines of purple-black had burst through his body, piercing him from the inside out. Nearby the foul winged bodies of two vrock demons lay hacked to pieces, attesting to the fury of Adresin’s last fight.

  “Vrock spores,” murmured Starbrow. He shook his head and turned away, leaving unvoiced the thought that ached under Seiveril’s heart like a dull knife: Gods, what an awful way to die. In the last few tendays Seiveril had seen far too many elves fall to the foul malevolence of demons and their ilk, each seemingly gifted with its own particular poison or black sorcery to end the lives of mortals. But spores that took root in living flesh and bored their way slowly through muscles, bones, and organs… it was hideous beyond belief.

  “Burn the body where it lies,” Seiveril said wearily to the survivors of his guard. “Be careful of the vines, or you may share his fate.”

  He followed Starbrow out of the old tower and into the clean woodland outside. When things were ready, he would go back in to speak the funeral prayers himself, but until then he needed to feel sunlight on his face and think of anything other than what the young warrior’s last moments must have been like.

  He found Starbrow leaning against a fallen menhir, absently oiling the long white blade of Keryvian. The sword had served its purpose a hundred times over since the Crusade had come to Cormanthor. Starbrow was strong for an elf, taller than most humans but almost as sturdy in his build. He also had the quickness of a cat and the best instincts for battle that Seiveril had ever seen in his own four hundred years. In the moon el
f’s hands, the ancient baneblade was a weapon without peer.

  Starbrow looked up as Seiveril limped to his side. He brushed his russet hair from his eyes and said, “We fought well last night, Seiveril. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Apparently not well enough for Adresin.” Seiveril drew off his armored gauntlets and reached up to loosen his pauldrons. He looked down at the greaves of his left leg, where a set of deep furrows had creased the elven steel-the mark of a canoloth’s jaws. He’d been lucky not to have had his leg torn off.

  For the better part of a month, ever since leading the Crusade into the forest of Cormanthor, Seiveril’s host had endured battle after battle-skirmishes against the daemonfey, clashes with the mercenaries of the Sembians, a smashing blow struck against the Zhentarim, and endless running fights against the demons, devils, yugoloths, and other infernal monsters conjured up out of the pits of the nether planes and set loose by Sarya Dlardrageth. The past night’s battle had been a desperate struggle to repel a warband of fiendish creatures from the refuge of Semberholme, and Seiveril’s elves and their Dalesfolk allies had driven off the raid. But he did not doubt that another one would follow in a day or two.

  “Is there any end to this, my friend?”

  Starbrow looked up sharply. “If you give in to despair, Seiveril, there will be exactly one end to this. I didn’t come back to see another Weeping War.”

  “I do not mean to despair, Starbrow. But something has to change.” He ran a hand through his silver-red hair, and grimaced. “Sooner or later, you’d think that even the Hells must be emptied.”

  The clatter of horses’ hooves caught Seiveril’s attention, and he looked up as a pair of riders cantered into the clearing by the tower. His daughter Ilsevele, dressed in the colors of a captain of the queen’s spellarchers, reined in her mount.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you, Father,” she said.

  “Ilsevele,” Seiveril said warmly. He pushed himself upright and embraced his daughter after she dismounted. “I am glad that you are not hurt. And you too, Lord Theremen.”

  “Lord Miritar,” the ruler of Deepingdale replied. “You should have sent to us. We could have spared a few swords for you.” Theremen Ulath was a handsome man whose pale skin and fine features clearly showed more than a little elf blood. The folk of Deepingdale had welcomed the Crusade’s arrival in the great forest with few reservations. For his own part, Seiveril had been somewhat surprised to find a strong, secure, and friendly Dale at his back when the Crusade marched into Semberholme. Deepingdale’s archers and riders were a welcome addition to the Crusade’s strength. Lord Theremen swung himself down from his warhorse and clasped Seiveril’s arm.

  Ilsevele frowned at Seiveril’s awkward stance, and her eyes fell on the bloody creases in his greaves. “Father, you’re hurt!”

  “It is nothing.” Seiveril settled himself back on the fallen menhir. “I am afraid that there were many who needed my healing spells more than I did last night. I take it things were quiet on the eastern marches?”

  “For us, yes,” Theremen answered. “But my scouts reported that the Sembians entrenched in Battledale had a furious time of it. The daemonfey aren’t shy about sharing their fury with everyone around them, it seems.”

  “Sarya hates us more, but the Sembians are an easier target,” Starbrow remarked. “If there’s a strategy to her attacks, I can’t see it. If I were her, I’d choose one enemy at a time.”

  In the ruins of the watchtower, a pillar of gray smoke started up. Ilsevele glanced over, and her face tightened. “Who fell?” she asked.

  “Adresin,” Seiveril answered quietly. “We were separated in the fighting last night. We found him only a short time ago.”

  Ilsevele looked down at the ground. “I am sorry, Father. He was a courageous warrior, faithful and good. I know you will miss him.”

  “He will not be the last, I fear,” Seiveril said. He sighed and looked away from the smoke twisting into the sky. “Well, we have gone to ground in Semberholme, and Sarya seems unable or unwilling to push us any farther. So what do we do now? How do we bring some sort of hope out of this horror?”

  “Seek aid from Cormyr?” said Ilsevele. “I would think that Alusair might be disposed to help us.”

  “You forget, we are currently at odds with Sembia as well as the daemonfey,” Theremen said. “Alusair can’t afford to be drawn into a war against Sembia by helping us in the Dales. Cormyr is still recovering from the troubles attending Azoun’s death.”

  “Find Archendale’s price and buy their help?” said Starbrow.

  “You face the same problem,” Theremen said. “The swords of Archendale don’t want to stand opposite Sembia unless Sembia itself threatens them.”

  Seiveril looked up into the smoke-streaked sunrise. “We can’t deal with the Shadovar, not after the way they treated Evereska. Is there some friendly great power nearby that I am forgetting about, Lord Ulath? Otherwise I am out of ideas.”

  A distant birdsong filled the silence as the elves and the Dalelord examined their own thoughts. Then, slowly, Ilsevele said, “We have to make common cause with Sembia. It’s the only course of action that makes sense.”

  “Not while they’re holding three Dales under their fist,” Theremen countered. “I will not countenance any deal that concedes Battledale, Featherdale, or Tasseldale. We dare not feed that beast, not even once. They’d be swallowed whole in a generation, and we’d be feeding Mistledale or Deepingdale to Sembia next.”

  “Better the Sembians than the daemonfey,” Starbrow pointed out.

  “Some of my neighbors would say that it’s better to die sword in hand than to live on as chattel in their own homes,” Theremen snapped.

  Seiveril raised his hand for calm. “It’s an academic question anyway, isn’t it? Sembia and Hillsfar have determined to carve up the Dales between them. We simply can’t go along with that.”

  “But that was before the daemonfey fell out with Hillsfar,” said Ilsevele. “We don’t know if that accord still stands, do we? And even if it does, well, I’m willing to lay aside my differences with the Sembians long enough to end the daemonfey threat. How do we know that the Sembians wouldn’t feel the same? After all, Sarya’s triumph would be a disaster that none of us could stand for.”

  The lord of Deepingdale shook his head. “The Sembians hold more Dales than the daemonfey at the moment.”

  “But we don’t know that the Sembians would insist on keeping those lands,” Ilsevele answered. “As far as we know, they might be asking themselves what price we will insist on before we consent to aid them.”

  Starbrow studied Ilsevele for a long moment, deep in thought. “You know, Seiveril, we would find it harder to fight a war with the Sembians once we’ve fought alongside them. If Ilsevele is right, they’d find it hard too.”

  “But we would have to, if they tried to absorb the Dales their soldiers hold,” Theremen warned. “What if it proved easier to lay down our swords and let them have what they’ve taken, instead of making them give it back?”

  “I hear you,” Starbrow said. “But we don’t have the strength to beat the daemonfey and the Sembians both, so there’s damned little we can say about Sembians in Featherdale right now anyway. As long as things stay the way they are, we aren’t about to throw the Sembians out.”

  Seiveril leaned forward to rest his head in his hands, thinking. He hadn’t picked the fight with the Sembians, and it made him sick to his stomach to even begin a conversation with humans who’d seen fit to throw an army between him and Myth Drannor. But for all the maneuvering, marching, and sharp skirmishes of the past two months, he had yet to try the Crusade against the Sembian army. And the real challenge thrown in his face had come from Hillsfar, not Sembia.

  Corellon, guide me, he prayed silently. The Sembians have feared and envied us for a thousand years. How can we hope to set that aside now? He straightened and looked up at the sunrise again, watching the smoke of the burning tower-Adres
in’s funeral pyre, he reminded himself-glowing in the early light.

  “Seiveril?” Starbrow asked quietly. “What do you think?”

  “I agree with Ilsevele,” Seiveril said. “We will send an embassy to the Sembians, and see if we can set aside our quarrel long enough to defeat the daemonfey. I will leave tomorrow.”

  “No, not you, Father,” Ilsevele said. “The Crusade would be lost without you. I will go and speak for you.”

  “Absolutely not!” Seiveril stood up so fast that his injured leg almost buckled under him. He grunted in pain and sat back down again almost as fast as he had stood up. “The Sembians may prove treacherous, Ilsevele! The Hillsfarians certainly are. I can’t let anyone else shoulder the risk.”

  “No, she’s right, Seiveril,” Starbrow sighed. “You can’t go, and if you can’t, there is no one better than Ilsevele. Besides, it was her idea.”

  “If the Sembians used her as a hostage against me, there is nothing I would not do.”

  “I know,” said Starbrow. “I will go with her and make sure that does not happen. I promise you, my friend, I will keep her safe.”

  Ilsevele crossed her arms. “I don’t think-”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Starbrow said firmly. “I’m going for your father’s sake. Now, when do you want to leave?”

  Sunlight and warm pine scent filled the forest glade when Araevin appeared. He ghosted into solidity, his hand resting on the battered old stone marker that stood in the center of the clearing. He felt the mossy stone cool and damp under his fingertips and allowed himself a small smile.

  “I suppose they haven’t barred me yet,” he murmured.

  It was late afternoon in Evermeet, a perfect summer day with just the faintest whisper of the ever-present sea somewhere far off beyond the forest. The glade stood high in the rugged hills overlooking the isle’s northern shore, not far from the House of Cedars, where Araevin had grown up. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, momentarily lost in the memories of childhood years spent wandering in these hills.