Farthest Reach

by Richard Baker

  “Damn.” Storm turned away to stare out over the lake. “We’ve allowed Myth Drannor to fester for decades, and now it seems we’ll have to pay the price for it.”

  Haresk Malorn looked to Storm and asked, “Can the Sage of Shadowdale do something about a demon queen tinkering with Myth Drannor’s old magic? Or the Knights of Myth Drannor? They would not stand aside and let this happen, would they?”

  The Bard of Shadowdale frowned, and her face grew dark. “Elminster took the Knights off through a magical gate months ago on some perilous errand. I haven’t seen them since. My sister—the Simbul—grew so sick with worry that she appointed a regent in Aglarond and went seeking them. She said something to me about the Srinshee before she left, but now I haven’t heard from her since. I would like to know where they are, too.”

  “I know that Elminster and the Knights have proven their friendship to the Dales many times over,” Malorn said. “But still … what in the world is more important than what’s going on right here?”

  “The world is full of troubles, my friend, and we who are Chosen can only deal with a very few of them.” Storm looked up at the twilight skies overhead. “For my own part, I have always hated choosing which things to do and which to leave undone.”

  The high councilor frowned and looked down at his feet, perhaps regretting his words. The gathering fell silent for a long moment, as the other Dalesfolk chewed over Storm Silverhand’s tidings.

  Then Ilmeth of Battledale stirred and looked over to Seiveril. “So you’re just going to march your army up to Myth Drannor, kick out the daemonfey, and ride off back to Evermeet?”

  “As directly as we can, though the mythal wards may prevent us from an outright assault. We may have to invest the city and batter down its defenses, or work powerful magic of our own to contain the daemonfey.” Seiveril hesitated, then added, “After that, many of us will likely return to Evermeet. But I intend to remain here and keep some strength in this forest. We have been surprised by threats originating in Faerûn too many times. I cannot speak for all who march under my banner, but I at least have Returned.”

  The Dalelords did not attempt to conceal their surprise. Councilor Malorn exchanged looks with Ilmeth of Battledale, and both surreptitiously glanced to Storm Silverhand to see how the Bard of Shadowdale responded. Storm, for her part, was still staring out over the lake. After a long moment, she spoke over her shoulder.

  “Turning back the march of years is rarely a good idea, Seiveril Miritar,” she said. “It took the lords of the Elven Court nearly five centuries to decide on Retreat. Are you telling me that in a few short months they’ve suddenly decided otherwise?”

  “The decision was not without debate.”

  Storm snorted softly in the twilight. “Sun elves make an art of understatement. Do you have any idea of the trouble that will come from this?”

  “Whatever trouble comes, it must surely be less than that which will come to this land if we leave Sarya Dlardrageth in Myth Drannor,” Seiveril answered.

  “Lord Miritar, not all of the Dales hold to the old Dales Compact anymore,” High Councilor Malorn said. “The four Dales represented here still abide by the promises made fourteen centuries ago by our forefathers to yours, but the Compact is not remembered with much fondness in Archendale, Tasseldale, or Scardale. Even Harrowdale is questionable.”

  “And there are powers encroaching on the borders of Cormanthor that never agreed to any Compact with the elves,” Lord Theremen pointed out. “Realms such as Zhentil Keep and Hillsfar—or Sembia, for that matter—are not at all unhappy with the elves’ Retreat. They might resist your Return to Cormanthor.”

  “I have no designs on their lands,” Seiveril protested.

  “No, Seiveril Miritar, but they certainly have designs on yours—and ours,” Storm Silverhand said. The silver-haired bard turned back from Lake Sember and fixed her eyes on Seiveril. “Cormanthyr long shielded the Dales and the forest lands from the ambitions of kingdoms nearby. But since the final Retreat of the Elven Court thirty years ago, the realms surrounding the Dalelands and Cormanthor have been growing ever bolder. In the absence of the elves’ strength and determination, the forest has become a great borderland, a frontier that all are eager to claim.

  “Fortunately—” Storm smiled humorlessly as she spoke—“we live in interesting times. The Zhents would have overrun the northern Dales long ago, but they have murdered each other in at least two great bloody purges. They have now recovered from those feuds, stronger than ever. The Sembians might have bought Tasseldale and Featherdale and who knows what else lock, stock, and barrel—but Cormyr under King Azoun would have none of that. Well, Azoun is dead now. Hillsfar was a city friendly to the Fair Folk, respectful of the old Compact. Now it is ruled by the tyrant Maalthiir, a man known to hate elves.

  “For a decade now, the only thing keeping the aspirations of these ambitious powers in check is the fear that should one of them move too quickly, the others would certainly join forces to drag down the leader from behind.” Storm frowned at Seiveril, her eyes narrow and thoughtful. “Now you tell me that there’s an army of demonspawn in Myth Drannor, who no doubt plan to seize a realm to rule for themselves.”

  “That, at least, I mean to prevent,” Seiveril replied. “As for the other realms, I recognize that the years have passed since the Standing Stone was raised, and that a new Compact may be necessary. But I see no human cities standing here on the shores of Lake Sember, or rising in the silver groves of the Elven Court. I will not be told that elves cannot raise a realm under Cormanthor’s branches.”

  Storm sighed and looked over at the glimmering lanterns and campfires of the elven army, which were beginning to flicker into life as the twilight deepened.

  “Before the Retreat, no one would have dreamed of challenging an elven army in Cormanthor,” she said. “I do not think you can trade on that old fear and respect any longer. Whether you meant to or not, Lord Miritar, you have brought war to Cormanthor, and I cannot yet see who will take up arms against whom.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  4 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms

  Saerloon was one of the busiest ports on the Sea of Fallen Stars. Two days after Araevin and his companions arrived in the city, they boarded Windsinger, bound for the city of Velprintalar on Aglarond’s northern coast. Windsinger was a graceful three-masted caravel under the command of a captain named Ilthor, a wiry, sun-darkened Aglarondan. She had carried great tuns of wine, cords of fine hardwood, and small coffers full of rich amber from the Yuirwood to Saerloon, and was taking on Sembian pewter, ironwork, copperwork, and tooled leather to carry back home again.

  The day was warm and the skies streaked with rain as two longboats pulled Windsinger from Saerloon’s wharves. Once in open water the caravel let down her sails, and set her course south-southwest for the whole day in order to clear the great southern cape of Sembia. Then, with a northwest wind at their back, they turned due east and made for the Isle of Prespur, sighting its town-dotted shores early on the third day of sailing. After that Ilthor turned Windbringer sharply to the northeast, striking across the mouth of the Dragon Reach for the city of Procampur, on the northern shore of the Inner Sea. It would have been far swifter to simply continue due east for Aglarond, crossing the center of the Sea of Fallen Stars, but the Pirate Isles and the dangerous shoals south of Altumbel lay astride that course, and Ilthor had no intention of trying his luck with either.

  Araevin found the sea voyage an easy way to travel. There was little room to spare for passengers, and the deck was cluttered with cargo and stores, but the voyage offered ample opportunity to find a cargo hatch or coil of line to sit on, watch the sea or the distant shorelines, make entries in his journals, talk with his friends, or simply sit and reflect. Windsinger was too small to boast cabins exclusively for the use of passengers, so Ilsevele and Maresa shared the pilot’s cabin in the sterncastle, while the pilot bunked in the forecastle with the other crewmen. Araevin and Donn
or were given the best sleeping places on the open deck. Covered from the weather by the quarterdeck overhead, the after deck was actually quite pleasant in warm weather, if not particularly private.

  By night Ilthor found various small anchorages along the coastlines, dropping anchor each night in a different cove or bay. Only once did he run at night, when he crossed from Prespur to Procampur.

  “The sea is too cluttered with islands and shoals to sail in the dark,” he explained. “Out on the Sword Coast or the Shining Sea, they’ll keep their course by day and night. But here I drop anchor when it gets dark, unless I’m certain I’ve got an open pitch of water all around me or the moon is bright enough to sail by.”

  For the next few days they sailed eastward along the shores of Impiltur, passing cities such as Tsurlagol, Lyrabar, and Hlammach. Then Ilthor turned southeast, striking across the mouth of the Eastern Reach for Cape Dragonfang.

  On the seventh day of their voyage, Araevin found himself sitting with Ilsevele at the stern. He studied his spellbooks in the bright sun, puzzling over the notations and concepts of a spell he had recorded months before but had not yet mastered, while she gazed back at the green shores of Impiltur, slowly sinking into the sea behind them. Her ivory skin had acquired a golden bronze hue in the past few days, as sun elves often did in warm climes. Even the fairest tanned quickly and easily, unlike moon elves, who could never gain more than the faintest hint of color to their skin. After a time Araevin realized that Ilsevele had been staring out over the sea for a long while, her brow faintly furrowed, her eyes distant.

  He set down his spellbook and reached to place a hand over hers.

  “What is it, Ilsevele? You’ve been staring at the sea all morning. Where are your thoughts?”

  She didn’t reply for a long time, long enough that someone who didn’t know her as well as Araevin might have wondered whether she had heard him. But finally she took her eyes from the bright horizon, and looked down at the slender white wake streaming from behind Windsinger’s rudderpost.

  “Where will we marry?” she asked. “Where?” Araevin blinked, considering the question. In truth, he hadn’t given a single thought to any sort of wedding preparations—and especially not since the night the daemonfey had raided Tower Reilloch. “Your father’s palace at Seamist, I suppose. Everyone in Elion will want to come.” He managed an awkward shrug. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “Do you think we will return to Evermeet in time for our wedding day? It is less than two years from now—Greengrass in the Year of the Bent Blade. That is the promise we made in the Year of the Prince.”

  “I remember,” Araevin said. “Why wouldn’t we return for our wedding day?”

  “What if my father’s army is laying siege to Myth Drannor? Or the daemonfey escape again, and we pursue them to some even more distant land? What if your search for high magic takes you to some realm on the other side of the sunrise, a road whose end you won’t reach for years and years?”

  “Even if all those things happen as you say, Ilsevele, I don’t see why we could not stand in the arbor at Seamist and speak our promises before the Seldarine,” Araevin said.

  “So we would abandon our battles and our journeys for a day, in order to honor our betrothal?”

  “If that is the way we must do it, then yes.”

  Ilsevele sighed. “And back to your studies, my father’s battles, whatever desperate journeys and adventures we must face. That is not much of a marriage, Araevin, and not much of a life together.”

  Frustration hardened his words more than he intended, but Araevin spoke anyway. “If it is all we are to be permitted now, it will have to do. In time there will be years for us, Ilsevele. We won’t always be called away.”

  “It isn’t enough.” Ilsevele glanced up at the cloudless sky overhead, her eyes as bright as emeralds in the sunshine. “When we met, Araevin, there was such passion in our hearts! There is nothing we would not abandon for an hour in each other’s company, stealing away for a walk in the glades of the forest, an evening’s dance in the wine rooms of Elion, a morning together in the woods by the sea … but when was the last time we did something like that?”

  “You came to find me at the House of Cedars only a few months ago,” he protested. “For a few days, at least, I certainly did not think of anything other than you.”

  “So you say. Yet even then you were aching to set out for Faerûn again. I would catch you staring off to the east at sunset, looking out over the darkening sea toward Faerûn, wishing with all your heart to tread those roads and wander those lands again, even though your mind did not want to hear your heart’s whispering.”

  “If you had asked me, Ilsevele, I would have stayed. You know that.”

  “If you had stayed, you would have wished I had not asked you.”

  Araevin looked away, gazing at the empty sea as the breeze played with his hair, listening to the soft sound of water slipping past the hull, the ruffling of the sails in the breeze, the rhythmic creaking of lines and tackle as Windsinger rode the waves.

  “But you came with me,” he said. “You have seen only a thimbleful of these lands, Ilsevele. We could roam the world for a hundred years, and still you would not have seen it all.”

  She smiled and said, “I am not a roamer, Araevin. I have enjoyed our travels—the parts that weren’t difficult or deadly, anyway—and I am not done with them. But my heart turns to home, to familiar places, to the people I love. You, on the other hand … when you are at home, wherever that is, your heart turns to the things you have not seen. Tell me the truth: Can you close your eyes and imagine our life together? Can you picture fifty years in the House of Cedars, an end to your journeys, a life of being instead of a life of doing?”

  He started to tell her yes, but Ilsevele held up her hand. “Try it before you answer.”

  “All right, then.”

  He closed his eyes, and did as she asked, imagining days of springtime sunshine in the House of Cedars, the sea storms of fall and the dark clouds of winter, the sound of the surf in his ears, nothing to do but pass his days a perfect and complete hour at a time. He might spend a hundred years there, two hundred perhaps, with Ilsevele and the children that might come. Yet he could not seem to envision Ilsevele in that house, or himself for that matter. He frowned and tried again. He was a high mage, and he wandered the halls of Tower Reilloch or the courts of Leuthilspar, while Ilsevele stood at her father’s right hand or perhaps even sat at the council table in the fullness of years. But that left the House of Cedars empty again, and he could not fill it with all his imagination.

  “You can’t do it, can you?” Ilsevele said. “I can read it on your face.”

  Araevin opened his eyes and looked at his betrothed. There was strength and unflinching wisdom behind her eyes, so bright and perfect. She had changed in the years of their betrothal. Wisdom and confidence, poise and determination, had gathered around her since he had first met her. She was not the timid young woman who had once been content to lose herself in his love, swept away by his stories of far-off places and the restlessness he had learned from a century among humankind.

  There, on the sun-bleached deck of Windsinger, it occurred to Araevin for the first time that Ilsevele perhaps held a destiny and a passion that might eclipse his own, even if she had not yet found it.

  “Give me a year,” he pleaded. “Let me walk a few more miles down the road I have to walk. When I know that the daemonfey have been dealt with, when I know that your father has done what he has set out to do, things will be different.”

  “How do you know?” Ilsevele said. She looked away from him, her red-gold hair gleaming in the sunshine.

  “Because you are waiting for me, and I would have to be a fool to let you slip through my fingers.” He pulled his hand away from hers, standing up slowly. “I have only a little farther to roam, Ilsevele. Then I will be coming back with you.”

  Ilsevele pulled herself to her feet, and searched his
face for a long moment.

  “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  She leaned on the rail, gazing at the sea astern of them. Araevin followed her eyes. Nothing but empty ocean and sweeping sky surrounded them, and they remained there, looking at nothing for a long time.

  “I can’t see the land anymore,” Ilsevele finally said.

  Araevin nodded. He had long since lost sight of Impiltur’s capes.

  “We’re well in the Easting Reach now,” he said. “We should sight the shores of Aglarond tomorrow.”

  The street lanterns of Hillsfar glowed orange in a light evening smog of smoke from thousands of homes, the banked furnaces and forges that had burned all day long, and the cold sea mist from the dark Moonsea, less than two miles from the city walls. Sarya Dlardrageth contemplated the cluttered streets and ramshackle buildings as her hired coach clattered over the gleaming, wet cobblestones.

  “What a stinking sty of a city,” her son observed. The hulking swordsman wore the aspect of a tall, broad-shouldered human, but the daemonfey lord had little liking for hiding his true nature in a lesser guise. “Do all human cities reek so?”

  “Mind your manners in the First Lord’s Tower, Xhalph,” Sarya said. “Maalthiir is a cold and arrogant man, quick to take offense. I want him as an ally, not an enemy.”

  Xhalph scowled, but nodded. Sarya glanced out the coach’s window. The driver pulled up before the First Lord’s Tower, set the brake, and hopped down to open the door for Sarya and Xhalph—two foreign nobles, as far as he knew. Sarya descended, Xhalph at her side, and they climbed the steps to the tower.