Final Gate lm-3

by Richard Baker

  The horned devil glanced once at the ice sealing the stairwell then fixed its hateful eyes on Araevin. “You are the mage who tampered with the speaking stone,” it hissed. It began to gather a ball of green fire in one fist, but Donnor Kerth surged forward and laid into its black-scaled flesh with his broadsword.

  “For Lathander!” the human knight shouted.

  He turned and hewed at the devil’s knee, cutting its leg out from under it. The devil threw out its wings for balance-knocking Maresa off her feet again, just as she disentangled herself from the end of the chain-and hopped awkwardly, trying to stay aloft. It hammered Donnor to the ground with one spiked elbow, and flicked its chain out at Araevin in an easy motion that would have shattered his skull if he hadn’t ducked at the last instant. Instead, the chain whistled over his head and pulverized a divot of red marble out of the wall behind him.

  The devil drew back for another strike, but a red-feathered quarrel sprouted behind its ear as Maresa’s crossbow thrummed. From the floor she had quietly cocked her weapon and waited for the perfect shot. The towering fiend crumpled to all fours, fumbling to pull out the bolt with one taloned hand, but that brought its head within reach of Donnor’s sword. The cleric surged up and clove the devil’s skull in two with one huge overhand swing. Black blood sizzled and smoked on the dusty ground as the creature folded.

  “Well struck, Donnor,” Jorin said.

  He stooped and retrieved his bow while Maresa reclaimed her rapier from the devil’s corpse. Nesterin struggled to his feet, having improvised a bandage for his wounded leg by ripping the sleeve off his shirt and binding it tightly over the cut.

  “How long will your ice wall hold?” the star elf asked Araevin.

  “Only a few minutes. We must move quickly now.” Araevin took a moment to cover the archway leading out to the balcony with a mass of gluey webbing, just in case the canoloths had a way to double back and climb the outside of the tower. Then he hurried to the stairs leading up. “Come on, my friends! The third shard is close.”

  Bruised and battered, Araevin and his companions rushed up the curve of the stairs to the next chamber. Two clicking mezzoloths appeared on the stairway above them, iron tridents clutched in their thick talons. “Fight through them!” Araevin called. The mezzoloths raced down the steps to meet them. One hurled its trident at Donnor, who ducked under the weapon and kept going. Jorin and Nesterin shot together, their arrows transfixing that monster long enough for Donnor to bound close and cut it down. Araevin handled the other one, blasting it into flakes of smoking ash with an emerald ray of disintegration. He did not even break stride as he leaped past the wreckage of the two infernal warriors.

  They came to the top of the stair, and Araevin halted in amazement. The chamber filled the entire top of the spire. Despite the black ruin that had come to the tower, it was still majestic, soaring half a hundred feet above his head. In the center of the room hovered the third shard of the Gatekeeper’s Crystal, suspended twenty feet above the floor by magic. A great shield of elemental fury enclosed the artifact-dancing bands of ruby fire, crawling arcs of blue-green lightning, spinning boulders covered in foot-long spikes of stone. The sound was indescribable as the flames roared, the lightning snapped and thundered, and the heavy stone spheres howled through their orbits.

  “Selune’s starry eyes,” Maresa said. She had to shout to make herself heard over the roaring that filled the room. “There it is, all right, but how do we get it?”

  “Is that some sort of shielding spell, Araevin?” asked Jorin.

  “Yes. A very powerful one, too,” the mage replied.

  Malkizid clearly commanded rare and potent magic indeed. Araevin studied the elemental sphere, picking out the complex weavings of arcane energy it was made of. No ordinary spell would suppress Malkizid’s defenses… but high magic might. The difficulty was that the spell he had in mind could not help but draw a great deal of attention.

  Speed, not stealth, he reminded himself. Malkizid’s servants already know we are in the spire. It’s only a matter of time before the master of the house returns.

  “Stand back and guard the stairs,” he warned his friends.

  Then he raised his hands and began to declaim the opening verses of the kileaarna reithirgir, the spell of unbinding.

  Power flooded into him, and he felt the room around him growing gray and unreal, insubstantial. Only he was real and solid, he and the fiery font of magic he coaxed from his heart and hands. The stone blocks of the chamber floor under his feet cracked and dissipated in granite dust, while the air around his body kindled into pure white flame.

  Honing his will into pure purpose, Araevin threw his might against Malkizid’s defenses.

  Malkizid and his infernal champions tore into the warriors surrounding Seiveril’s banner like a hurricane of black fire. Shrieking, grinning barbed devils hurled themselves against the Evereskan guards and the Knights of the Golden Star and literally ripped seasoned elf warriors limb from limb. Mezzoloths clicked and buzzed in their hideously insectlike speech, dragging down Sembian riders and working awful slaughter with their red-hot iron tridents. In return, elf champions and Silver Ravens hurled themselves into the fray, trying to stem the onslaught. Everywhere gouts of fire and crackling blue rays of disruption hurled back and forth between Malkizid’s fiends and their foes, leaving Seiveril’s ears ringing with thunderclap after thunderclap and the insane roar of hellspawned rage.

  The Branded King himself stalked through the elven ranks with avid glee dancing in his black eyes, slaying with spell and blade all who stood against him. Elves and humans who looked him full in the face reeled away, hands covering their eyes and mad shrieks rising from their throats.

  “Seiveril Miritar!” the fiend shouted, and his voice shook the vale. “Face me!”

  Seiveril’s horse stumbled and foundered, dragged down by a mezzoloth that caught it by its hindquarters and broke its back. The elflord managed to free his feet from the stirrups and leap away as the animal screamed and fell. He banished the insectile daemon back to its hellish home with a spell of dismissal, and found Malkizid striding toward him, only twenty paces distant.

  “Your doom is at hand, Lord of Elion!” snarled the archdevil.

  “For Tower Reilloch!” Jorildyn appeared beside Seiveril and lashed out with ray of emerald destruction.

  The battle-mage’s spell caught Malkizid in his right side and blasted deep into his stony white flesh. Malkizid hissed in pain and twisted away, his ebon armor smoking. Seiveril immediately began to chant a spell of his own, hoping to overwhelm the mighty devil with a barrage of magic.

  “Insolent mortal!” Malkizid roared.

  He threw out one taloned hand and clenched it into a fist, speaking a word so evil that spikes of hot pain stabbed into Seiveril’s ears. An unseen force crushed Jorildyn’s ribcage like matchsticks. Blood burst from the half-elf’s mouth, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed in a nerveless heap. The archdevil returned his attention to Seiveril-and Seiveril finished chanting his spell. A column of brilliant white fire stabbed down from above, pure and holy, engulfing the Branded King.

  Malkizid roared in pain and ducked aside. He retaliated by turning his talons on Seiveril, reaching out to crush him in a fist of malice as he had just destroyed Jorildyn. Seiveril felt the horrible pressure of Malkizid’s grip settling over his chest, tightening, buckling the elven steel of his plate armor. Dark spots danced before his eyes, and the elflord gasped for breath.

  “Now, Seiveril Miritar, I send you from this world,” the archdevil gloated.

  “Not while I can help it!” Leaping over the body of a dead mezzoloth, Starbrow hurled himself against the Branded King. Keryvian sang with clean holy light as the moon elf launched a furious assault against Malkizid. The baneblade darted past Malkizid’s guard to gash him once across the upper arm and a second time at the knee, but Malkizid parried blow after blow that might have done real harm.

  “Is that the exte
nt of your swordsmanship?” the archdevil laughed.

  Quickly recovering from the surprise of Starbrow’s attack, he suddenly leaped forward and returned a dizzying fusillade of stroke and counterstroke with his great black sword. Starbrow left his guard just a little low for an instant, and the archdevil very nearly took his head off. The black sword whistled up in a deadly arc that the moon elf somehow ducked under-almost. Instead of decapitating him, Malkizid smashed Starbrow’s helm, sending it spinning through the air, and stretched him out senseless, blood pouring from a bad cut across his forehead.

  “Now, to finish this,” the archdevil said.

  He turned back to Seiveril, who was wrestling for breath on all fours. But then Malkizid hesitated, and tilted his head to one side as if listening for some faint, far-off sound. His feral grin faded, replaced by a scowl of anger so hot and fierce that Seiveril had to look away.

  “What? Impossible!” the archdevil hissed. Then he vanished, teleporting away without another word. In the space of an instant, the concentrated malice and violence at the heart of the fiendish attack vanished as well.

  Seiveril pushed himself to his feet, reeling with astonishment. The archdevil simply left? he thought. What in the world is more important to him than what is happening on this battlefield?

  He was jarred from his confusion by a scream over his head. He looked up, and leaped aside as a mortally wounded fey’ri warrior plummeted into the ground almost exactly where he had been standing. The red-scaled daemonfey groaned once and fell still. Seiveril turned to search the skies for some clue as to where the fey’ri had fallen from or what might be happening above the battlefield.

  The fey’ri were fleeing the fight. Speeding toward the north, they wheeled away from the Vale of Lost Voices and beat their leathery wings with all their might. The shining spirits of the vale guardians ran after them across the sky, swift and tireless, but it seemed that some of the fey’ri at least would escape to fight another day. Seiveril raised a shout of exultation and held his mace in the air. “The fey’ri flee! Strike now, my friends! We have them!”

  Warriors all around him added their voices to his. From somewhere off to his right, scything rays of brilliant purple fire-some mage’s work, Seiveril guessed-lanced into the sky and burned two more fey’ri out of the air. A little farther beyond them he saw a tight cordon of daemonfey withdrawing in good order, recklessly hurling powerful spells left and right to keep the vale’s spirits at bay and discourage any mages below from interfering. It was too far to be certain, but Seiveril thought he glimpsed a slender feminine form amid the retreating band. So the queen of the daemonfey was retreating to her stolen throne, was she?

  “Enjoy Myth Drannor while you can, Sarya!” he called after her. “I am coming to end your reign!”

  Starbrow staggered to his feet, bleeding freely from the cut across his forehead. “Where did Malkizid go?” he managed.

  “He left,” Seiveril answered. He hurried over to help his friend, already speaking the words of a healing prayer as he reached out to steady him on his feet. “The fey’ri are withdrawing.”

  The moon elf’s eyes cleared as the healing spell took hold. He looked after the retreating shadows in the sky, and surveyed the battlefield with one quick glance. “Some of the demons and devils are fighting on.”

  “If they can’t fly or teleport,” said Seiveril, “we’ll surround them and deal with them one at a time.”

  A warm light flooded over the battlefield, and Seiveril looked to the east. The sun was climbing above the horizon, slipping into a narrow strip of open sky below the overcast. As the sunlight touched the field, the brilliant spirits of the guardians of the vale grew dim and translucent. The spirits slowed their pursuit and hovered for a moment in the sky. Then, silently, they turned toward the sunrise and vanished in motes of golden light, striding back into the radiant forests of Arvandor. The last of the warriors looked down on Seiveril and touched the hilt of his sword to his lips in salute before he vanished, too.

  “Thank you, Father,” Seiveril murmured to the sky. He shook himself, finding new strength in his tired body with the bright golden light of dawn. “Felael! Sound the pursuit! We have more work ahead of us this morning!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  18 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

  High magic blazed around Araevin like a mantle of white fire. Like heat rising from a blacksmith’s forge, the incandescent power enfolding him left the chamber around him shimmering and dancing. The spire itself seemed to tremble with each word of the kileaarna reithirgir.

  “Araevin! We are running out of time!” Donnor had to shout to make himself heard over the roar of the mighty magic in the room.

  “You must hold them off a little longer!” he managed to shout back at Donnor, trying not to let his friend’s warning distract him.

  His companions fought a desperate skirmish to keep Malkizid’s servants out of the room, but Araevin could spare them none of his power. Attacking Malkizid’s elemental shield took all of his strength, and he feared that if he stopped to aid his comrades he would not be able to begin again.

  Wielding lances of argent fire with his mind, he hammered at the defenses of the third shard. He struck at the orbiting boulders first, hurling them aside. The great spiked stones crushed masonry and shattered the tiles of the floor when they landed. Araevin risked a quick glance over his shoulder and saw that a pair of winged devils harried Nesterin and Maresa near the top of the stairwell. The next stone sphere that he tore out of Malkizid’s warding spell he sent hurtling at the flapping monsters, crushing one against the wall.

  The spinning bands of fire he dealt with next, using the shield’s own waters to quench them. One by one he guided each arc of flame into collisions with the half-globe of shimmering water that revolved slowly around the center. Steam hissed and poured away from the elemental shield, giving Araevin a glimpse of the last defense-the vortex of wind. The furious cyclone sucked in the plumes of steam, growing cloudy as it did so. Lightning danced and crackled within.

  “We could use your help, Araevin!” Maresa called.

  The genasi fought with rapier in one hand and wand in the other, lunging forward to stab and slash, darting back to pummel her opponents with bright darts of magic. She was no mage, but she had skill enough to put a wand to good use. Unfortunately, more of Malkizid’s servants were pouring into the room.

  “I almost have it!” he shouted back to her. “Donnor, can you block the stair?”

  The Lathanderite had been fighting a few steps down out of Araevin’s sight, but he retreated back up into the chamber at the top of the spire. Black furrows raked his armor in at least two places, and his sword burned with furious white radiance. Seizing the golden sunburst of Lathander that hung around his neck, he raised it high and called out, “Lord of the Dawn, ward us from our foes!”

  Hundreds of golden sparkles danced around the cleric, slowly beginning to grow larger and revolve around him. In the space of a moment, they flew and whirled too fast for the eye to follow, each one a spinning razor of golden light. With shrieks of anger, the infernal monsters trying to fight their way into the chamber recoiled, not before some had been slashed to ribbons by Donnor’s spell.

  “Finish your work, Araevin!” the cleric shouted.

  Araevin turned his attention back to the shield of winds, the last barrier in Malkizid’s elemental ward. Carefully he began to unbind the spell. The last shard hung in plain sight now, glowing softly with the proximity of its sister shards. He had only-

  A font of ebon flame sprang up from the flagstones, almost directly beneath the floating shard. It blazed and danced in a shout of black power, and it took the shape of a tall, pale seraph as cold as marble. A seeping wound marked his forehead, dripping black blood.

  “You believe you can defy me in my own citadel?” the pale lord snarled. “Your punishment will last a thousand years, fool!”

  Araevin recoiled a step before the dark king’s
vehemence. “Malkizid,” he murmured.

  It seemed that the master of the tower had indeed returned. With a grimace of frustration, he allowed the kileaarna reithirgir to gutter out, not yet completed. He would need every ounce of his strength for the struggle to come.

  The archdevil studied his face for a moment. “You must be Araevin Teshurr,” he observed. His voice was eerily beautiful, even in the depths of his anger. “I see that the telmiirkara neshyrr has left its mark on you. A shame, since I might have made something of you otherwise.” He bared his teeth in a feral grin, and the terrible wound across his brow began to gleam darkly.

  “Strike, my friends!” Araevin cried.

  He heard the sharp thrumming of bowstrings, and arrows flashed at Malkizid. The archdevil parried one with a quick motion of his black sword, and simply stopped the others with his outstretched hand. Araevin wove his hands together and intoned the words of a powerful spell, conjuring a spellchain of green energy around Malkizid. The links settled closer to the archdevil, but Malkizid countered and shifted the spellchain away. In the blink of an eye it appeared around Jorin Kell Harthan, who was approaching the archdevil with his swords in his hands. The Aglarondan cried out in dismay and stumbled to the floor as Araevin’s spellchain ensnared him instead.

  “You are a fool if you think you can defeat me with your spells,” Malkizid gloated. “Who do you think taught Saelethil Dlardrageth his lore? I tutored the Vyshaanti archmages when the world was young! You are not their equal.”

  Araevin ignored Malkizid’s boasting and started on another spell, seeking something that the archdevil could not deflect. But Malkizid simply stared at Araevin. The brand above the archdevil’s brow burst into black flame. It demanded Araevin’s attention, and when the sun elf’s eye fell on the brand Malkizid’s towering malevolence and will struck him like a physical blow. Lines of fire seemed to burn themselves into Araevin’s face as he stood transfixed by the archdevil’s terrible visage. He felt his friends behind him fighting their own silent struggles against Malkizid’s black stare.