Final Gate lm-3

by Richard Baker

  “We will speak later,” she answered, just as softly. “I am glad to see that you have returned safely, though.” Then she moved past him to embrace Maresa, and warmly greeted Donnor, Jorin, and Nesterin. Araevin stared after her, then made himself turn and offer his hand to Starbrow, who stood nearby.

  “Welcome back, Araevin.” The moon elf gave him an oddly strained smile. “Did you find what you were after?”

  “I did,” Araevin replied. “I have much to tell you-all of you. But first, I’d like to know how you ended up here. When I set out the Crusade was defending Semberholme. Now you are besieging Myth Drannor. I have only been away for a month.”

  “Understandable,” Seiveril said. He indicated several lightly built divans that were arranged around a small table to one side of the room. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. We will trade tales.”

  They passed some time exchanging news. First Seiveril and Ilsevele told the story of the defense of Semberholme, the embassy to Miklos Selkirk in Tegal’s Mark, the daemonfey plot to turn the Crusade against the Sembians, and the eventual alliance. Seiveril went on to describe the Battle of the Vale, and the victory over the fey’ri and their demonic allies.

  “It was not without cost, I fear. We lost many warriors, and the Dalesfolk and Sembians lost even more. I am afraid that Ferryl Nimersyl and most of the Moon Knights perished, along with your colleague Jorildyn.”

  “Jorildyn is dead?” Araevin sighed. They’d studied together at Tower Reilloch for twenty years or more. He would miss the taciturn half-elf. “How did it happen?”

  “He was killed by the archdevil Malkizid.”

  “Malkizid?” Maresa interrupted. “He was here?”

  Seiveril and Starbrow nodded. “Yes, he took the field against us in the Battle of the Vale. But he suddenly abandoned the daemonfey army.”

  “I think that was Araevin’s doing,” Nesterin said. The star elf shook his head. “We wondered where the master of the house was. Now we know.”

  “You were in Malkizid’s domain?” Seiveril asked. His brows rose in surprise. “What in the world were you doing there?”

  “I suppose that now we should share our story,” Araevin answered. He took a deep breath, and went on to describe their own travels-the expedition to the Nameless Dungeon, the passage to the Waymeet, the long dark quest in the blackness of Lorosfyr, and finally the perilous journey across the Barrens of Doom and Despair. When he finished, he produced the Gatekeeper’s Crystal, complete with all three shards joined to make a three-pointed star. “The daemonfey know that I have at least one shard of this device now. They must suspect that I might have all three… though Sarya and Malkizid may not know how much the Gatekeeper aided us.”

  “Please excuse my ignorance, Araevin,” Theremen Ulath said, “but now that you have recovered this device, what is it for?”

  “I believe I can dismiss the mythal wards barring you from Myth Drannor.”

  Seiveril drew in his breath. “You can breach the daemonfey spells? How long will it take you?”

  “Give me a short time to prepare, and I could attempt it this evening,” Araevin said.

  “The sooner, the better,” Seiveril answered. “We should-”

  “I don’t agree, Seiveril.” Starbrow held up his hand, interrupting the elflord. “We should assault the city the moment the mythal’s defenses fall. Why allow the daemonfey any time at all to improvise other defenses or organize a retreat? Better to wait until we are ready to exploit Araevin’s magic by storming Myth Drannor the instant Sarya’s defenses fall.”

  Seiveril frowned with impatience, but he nodded. “I concede the point. The heavier our strike, the fewer will escape. At first light, then?” He looked over to Araevin. “Does that suit you?”

  Araevin grimaced. “The longer we wait, the more that can go wrong. But I’ll wait until you are ready.”

  “Very well. I must advise Lord Selkirk of our plans. Please excuse me. Araevin, I’m sure that Felael or Vessen can have your horses looked after and find you and your companions a place to rest somewhere nearby.” The elflord stood and took his leave. Vesilde Gaerth and Theremen Ulath departed with him. They would have a long night’s work ahead of them.

  Starbrow lingered for a moment, but he left too after Ilsevele looked up at him and gave him a nod. Now what was that about? Araevin wondered.

  “Mage Teshurr?” The sun elf Vessen appeared in the hall shortly after Seiveril left. “We’ve looked after your horses. I can show you to a place to rest, if you like.”

  Araevin faced his companions. “Go on ahead. I’ll find you shortly.”

  “I can’t promise that we’ll save you any supper,” Maresa jibed. She poked him once in the ribs then she, Donnor, Jorin, and Nesterin followed Vessen through a different doorway in the old ruin. Araevin watched them leave then turned back to Ilsevele. She still sat on one of the divans, looking down at her hands in her lap. Her hair, a dark copper-red in the shadows of the hall, was gathered in a long braid over her shoulder.

  They remained there in silence for some time. Araevin stood gazing on her, and she did not look up at him. Finally he decided that he could not stand it any longer. “Ilsevele,” he murmured. “Why-?” And he stopped, unable to ask the questions that were in his heart. Instead he said, “I did not realize you were so angry with me. I am sorry if I have hurt you.”

  She sighed and met his eyes when he spoke. “I am not angry with you, Araevin. I am sad, but I’m not angry.”

  A sudden cold certainty descended over him. “You are breaking our betrothal.”

  “I am.”

  “I know we have walked different roads in the last few years, Ilsevele, but I still hope to mend that.” He waved his hand at the ruined manor and the darkening woods outside. “This will pass. We will have the rest of our lives to make things right.”

  “I do not think so. There is something more I must tell you, Araevin. You are not the only one in my heart.” Ilsevele did not allow herself to look away from him. “I did not mean for it to happen. It has only become clear to me in the last few tendays. But I know that I cannot remain betrothed to you while my thoughts dwell on another.”

  “I–I do not understand.” Araevin took two numb steps to the divan and sat down stiffly beside her. “How could your heart turn from me in a single season, Ilsevele? Did you feel this way when we walked together into Sildeyuir? When we passed the days of spring together in Silverymoon?”

  “My heart did not turn from you, Araevin, yours turned from me.” She looked away from him, and a tear ran down her cheek. “The passion that moves you now leaves no room for mortal love. You are no longer Tel’Quessir, but something more. When you remade yourself for high magic in the shadows of Sildeyuir, you left behind the communion of the People. I cannot sense your feelings, I cannot speak to you without words. If I close my eyes, I feel your presence as a blazing fire… but your heart is closed to me. And you cannot even see this for yourself.”

  “Ilsevele…” he said.

  He started to tell her that it was not true, that he simply had not been paying attention, but he realized that she was right. He hadn’t spent much time around many other elves since coming back from Sildeyuir, so he had not noticed the distance he truly felt. The communion elves shared with each other, the bond that tethered the hearts of the People together, was almost entirely lost to him. He felt as if he were hundreds of miles from Ilsevele, sensing her presence only as a dimly glowing ember, when he should have felt her sorrow and her fear for him as strongly as anything in his own heart.

  You will count this a great gift for now, yet you will also know regret. This was the price of the eladrin’s kiss.

  Ilsevele looked up to his eyes again. “I felt this moment approaching for a long time, Araevin. It is not simply your… transformation into a high mage. I believe that we have been following different paths for a long time now.”

  He gazed at her in silence for a while. Finally he said, “We have been pro
mised to each other for almost twenty years.”

  “The custom of our people,” she said, with a wistful smile. “But I think if we were ever going to marry, it should have been long before now. We lost the passion, the wonder, of our first years together. It vanished into… familiarity. I served the queen in Leuthilspar, and you returned to your studies in Tower Reilloch, and our thoughts, our hearts, turned to the things that kept us apart.” She reached out and took his hand. His golden skin was faintly luminous in the gathering dusk. “When I first began to harbor doubts, I regarded our long betrothal as a mistake. I thought that if we had married sooner, we would not have had so long to grow apart. But now I see the wisdom of the custom. Better to find out whether a marriage can stand the centuries we are given before the vows are spoken.”

  He frowned, considering her words. That first summer in the woods and glades of Elion… nothing had mattered to either of them except the moments they could spend alone. In the years since, they had found glimmers of that memory, but nothing that ever equaled it. Had he asked for her hand in marriage because he sensed that distance growing and hoped to overcome it? Or was it simply a matter of doing what was expected of him?

  Still caught up in that thought, he asked, “Who is he, Ilsevele?”

  Now she looked away. “Starbrow,” she said. “I know it is sudden. I do not know what to make of it myself.”

  Araevin closed his eyes. At least it was not anything she had tried to conceal from him. After all, she had only met the moon elf a few months ago. He was reasonably sure that even in their first travels with Starbrow, when they had explored the daemonfey portals beneath Myth Glaurach, nothing more than friendship had passed between them.

  “At least I am in good company,” he muttered to himself. “I hope you find happiness with him, Ilsevele. You deserve it.”

  “I think you mean that, Araevin. And I thank you for it.”

  He sat in silence for a while, his hand in hers. It was not just the change brought upon him by the telmiirkara neshyrr. She was right. They had started to grow apart years ago. There was a moment only a few months ago when he brought Ilsevele to Faerun for her first time, and the wonder of the wide lands in her eyes rekindled something of their old passion. But it seemed that had been little more than a glimpse of a memory.

  “I should not have stayed in Reilloch all those years,” he murmured.

  “I do not believe that,” she said. “You have done what you were intended to do, Araevin. You have become a high mage. And who can say what might have happened this year if you had not?”

  He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. She was beautiful in the moonlight, and his heart ached with a deep, hot hurt. But he could not say that she was wrong.

  “You will always be dear to me,” he said.

  “And you to me,” she answered. She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his. “I hope you can forgive me, Araevin.”

  He essayed a sad smile of his own. “I hope I can forgive myself,” he managed.

  Then they both stood, and found their way out into the warm night.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  22 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

  Shortly before dawn, Araevin and his companions joined Seiveril by the forest manor. The Knights of the Golden Star surrounded them, along with the surviving Moon Knights and a chosen guard of bladesingers, spellarchers, and mages. Araevin felt keenly awake and alert despite the restlessness of his night. In Reverie his memory had insisted on wandering in places that he had shared with Ilsevele. Sometimes he envied the oblivion of human sleep. He knew that humans dreamed too, but they did not long remember their travels, did they?

  With a few whispered commands, Seiveril and his captains led the gathered warriors into the dark of the morning. The great company moved through the forest in silence, broken only by the small rasp of steel and leather or the occasional footfall on the forest floor. From time to time Araevin glimpsed jagged shadows against the dark sky-the broken towers of Myth Drannor rising above the trees.

  They came to a clearing in the forest, on the outskirts of the city itself. Araevin studied the spot, searching for the intangible presence of the mythal. After a moment, he nodded. “This will do,” he said.

  Seiveril held up his hand. The rustling around Araevin grew still as the elves and Dalesfolk who accompanied his small band stopped moving and melted into the shadows beneath the trees.

  “Good luck, Araevin,” he whispered.

  Araevin narrowed his eyes, willing the unseen currents of magic to become visible to him. Slowly the majestic weaving of the city’s mythal ghosted into view-a great edifice of tangible magic, golden and alive, crackling with unimaginable power. Sildeyuir and the Waymeet itself were the only things Araevin had seen that even began to compare. The mythal’s field descended in a great curve from the sky over the center of the city and plunged into the ground not far from Araevin’s feet like a vertical wall of swirling golden light… golden light that was shot through with venomous strands of reddish copper, interwoven through the living magic.

  “Be ready to protect me,” Araevin told his friends. “Sarya will sense me as soon as I begin, and I cannot believe that she will allow me to go about this without some opposition.”

  “Do what you must,” Nesterin told Araevin. “We will guard you.”

  Araevin drew out the Gatekeeper’s Crystal, and balanced the heavy stone in one hand, cupping his fingers around its points. The device glowed a brilliant violet-white, strengthened by the proximity of the mythal. He attuned his thoughts to the crystal in his hand, and he stepped into the shimmering light.

  Sarya’s defenses woke at once, lashing about him like whipcords of furious magic. But Araevin was ready for that. He shielded himself with the crystal, deflecting the daemonfey’s spell traps. Then he carefully invoked the crystal’s power. From his outstretched hand a shrieking column of violet-white energy shot into the mythal field, brushing aside the locks and wards that kept him from the mythal itself.

  The city groaned in reply. A wild wind sprang up in the forest, roaring through the treetops, and the ground trembled under his feet. Araevin felt the strength of the crystal mounting higher, doubling and redoubling on itself, as the device sought to master Myth Drannor’s ancient mythal. Tiny fissures of purple light began to appear in the conjoined crystal, and the shards vibrated in his hand.

  “Araevin! The crystal!” Maresa shouted. “It’ll shatter!”

  “Not if I can help it!” he answered.

  He threw his willpower at the crystal, reining it in, arresting the wild power of the device as it surged toward release. For a moment the contest hung in the balance, and Araevin feared that he had allowed the crystal to channel too much power into the mythal-but then he managed to mute it, smothering the device in his iron determination.

  “Donnor, guard this!” he said, and handed the crystal quickly to the cleric. Donnor wrapped the incandescent crystal in a common blanket, and backed away.

  Sarya’s defenses lay shredded before him. Without her wards to keep him from excising her from the mythal, he was free to do as he wished. Araevin drew a deep breath and shouted out the words of the mythaalniir darach, the rite of mythal-shaping. Distantly, he realized that a sudden skirmish had erupted around him-devils and fey’ri attacked Seiveril’s standard from all sides, emerging from the ruins to give battle. But he paid no attention to the furious fight growing around him, and plunged his percipience into the golden strands of the mythal.

  One by one, he severed the sullen red strands that were twisted around the mythal’s original work. As he had done in Myth Glaurach, he imposed a new set of governances to lock out Sarya. And he detected a subtle weaving of tarnished silver-black, an older grafting on the mythal.

  The devils of Myth Drannor, he realized. This is the spell that holds them here.

  With another sharp incision of willpower, he severed that one as well. The mythal itself was old and frail, but he cou
ld not do much about that. It might recover in time, or it might founder and fail. But at least no one else would be able to pervert it from its original intent, not without defeating Araevin’s own locks first.

  Suddenly exhausted, he slumped to his knees and let the mythal fade away from his sight. He realized that Donnor and Seiveril were close beside him, thumping his back in congratulations. “Sarya’s spells are defeated!” the elflord shouted. “We can take the city!”

  “Dozens of fiends just vanished, Araevin!” Donnor said. “Was that your doing?”

  “I’ve sealed the mythal against Sarya,” he said weakly. “Anything she summoned with its power has been dismissed. But be careful. I think there are a number of demons and devils in her service that aren’t anchored to the mythal. You’ll have to deal with them.”

  “We have learned a thing or two about that in the last couple of months,” Seiveril answered him. He looked over to his guards and shouted, “Sound the attack! This day we retake Myth Drannor and destroy the daemonfey!”

  Silver horns greeted the morning, and hundreds of elf voices shouted in reply. From somewhere in the woods to the east, harsher human trumpets echoed through the forest too, as the Sembians charged into the streets from the other side of the city. Seiveril squeezed Araevin’s shoulder with his gauntleted hand, and led his warriors into the ruins of the city.

  Araevin found his feet again as the Crusade swept past him, storming Myth Drannor. He took a deep breath, feeling his strength beginning to come back to him.

  “Now we need to find a portal,” he said to his friends. “We have to deal with the Waymeet.”

  Fflar ran into Myth Drannor, Keryvian aflame in his hand. In one small part of his mind he wondered at the irony that had brought him to this moment. Other than skulking about the outskirts of the city with Araevin and Ilsevele a little more than a month ago, the last time he had set foot within the familiar streets had been almost seven hundred years ago. Then he had been fighting to defend it against a horde of savage humanoids. But now he led an attack to retake the city from the demonspawned villains who had made it their stronghold.