“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because I am no traitor to my people,” Galaeron said. “I would never aid allies to the phaerimm.”
An indignant drone filled the chamber, but the expression that came to Alusair’s face was less anger than surrender.
“Leave us,” she said.
The envoys fell silent and began to look to one another, waiting for someone else to take the lead and either object or start the withdrawal.
“Now!” Alusair said. “We will discuss the phaerimm tomorrow, when we have all had a chance to see whether we can strike such a bargain and still sleep at night.”
The envoys rose in a bustle of scraping chair legs and sharp remarks and departed, leaving only Caladnei, Ruha, and a dozen Purple Dragons in the room with Galaeron and Alusair. The princess motioned them all toward the door.
“You, too,” she said, standing and starting down the table toward Galaeron. “I am in no danger here.”
Though their faces clearly showed their displeasure, the others knew better than to question Alusair’s ability to take care of herself. They followed the envoys into the anteroom.
When they were gone, Alusair sat down at Galaeron’s side and clamped a well-callused hand on his slender knee. Though she was not squeezing, he could feel strength enough in her grasp that, had she wished, she could have broken his bones.
“Elf, what am I to do with you?” she asked. “You are your own worst enemy … and yet, I can’t say things would have turned out any differently if you were not.”
Galaeron’s heart fell.
“Then you are going to betray Evereska?”
“No, not Cormyr. That I promise,” Alusair said. “But I’m afraid we won’t be helping, either.”
“You’re leaving us on our own?”
Alusair looked across the chamber and said, “I didn’t really think it would be possible to negotiate Evereska’s safety, but …” She let the sentence trail off, then shook her head and turned to look at Galaeron again. “Diplomacy is the art of the possible, Galaeron—and there’s nothing we can do. You must know that.”
A surge of dark anger started to rise in Galaeron, but it was not difficult to fight down. He did know. Alusair was telling him the truth, and that was what friends did in circumstances like these. He took her hands.
“I know. Thank you.” He glanced toward the door, then added, “It was Alduvar Snowbrand.”
Alusair frowned in confusion. “Alduvar?”
“Who dispelled Caladnei’s wards,” Galaeron said. “The Dalesmen were already mind-slaves when they arrived, and the phaerimm knew they were the last ones you’d expect treachery from. He came in first and dispelled the wards, and the phaerimm came in between the other two.”
Alusair raised her brow.
Galaeron nodded, but did not bother to explain further. When it came to the phaerimm, he just … knew. It was a little gift from a Shadovar he had known once.
“Well, thanks,” Alusair said with a smile, then leaned over and kissed him—hard, and on the lips. “You watch yourself. I’m going to miss you.”
CHAPTER TWO
10 Flamerule, the Year of Wild Magic
Beyond the shadowshell, Takari Moonsnow saw only dark forms—nebulous disks and hazy pillars that could be monster or mineral, that could be beholders and bugbears or boulders and broken blocks of stone.
They never appeared to move, which favored the inanimate, but whenever she glanced away for a moment and looked back the shapes were in different places. That favored the animate—the sinister, even, and the dangerous. Providing, of course, that the change was not just her imagination playing tricks on her. Reconnoitering through the shadowshell was like peering through an obsidian window. She could tell that something lay on the other side, but what it might be was anyone’s guess.
Takari cursed and started back toward camp, her flesh warming in the hot Anauroch sun as she moved away from the shell’s icy darkness behind. According to the latest news from within the Shaeradim, a trio of phaerimm had been seen several days before herding an army of mind-slaves in Takari’s direction. Unfortunately, that was all anyone knew. Spying on the phaerimm was invariably lethal, so every report from inside came at a steep price.
Nor could the high mages sent by Evermeet scry the information. While the phaerimm’s deadwall had long since fallen victim to the Shadovar shadowshell, the shadowshell itself remained strong enough to turn any spell on itself. Fortunately, the Chosen’s ability to hear their names spoken anywhere on Faerûn had returned with the fall of the deadwall—apparently because the Shadovar had not thought to weave their shell against the god-gifted abilities of the Chosen. Khelben Arunsun and Laeral Silverhand, who remained trapped with Evereska’s besieged defenders, were able to relay messages out through Storm Silverhand or another of the Chosen.
Takari reached the field where her reconnaissance company was camped and found it in a bustle, with wood elves strapping on armor, stringing bows, and rushing to assemble at the gathering circle. Her second-in-command, a sloe-eyed male with a sinewy build and a shad-mouthed grin, rushed up to her with their helms and battle cloaks in hand.
“What is it, Wagg?” Takari asked, taking her cloak from him and swinging it around her shoulders. “Shadovar?”
Wagg—actually Wizzle Bendriver, but everyone called him Wagg because he shook his head whenever he smiled, frowned, or spoke—shook his head.
“Lord Ramealaerub has issued the call.” He waved a helm over her shoulder, toward the shadowshell, and said, “He thinks it’s coming down.”
Takari closed the throat clasp of her cloak and turned to find that the black shadowshell had faded to gray-blue. Even from a hundred paces away, the barrier was unbelievably immense, a dark wall stretching beyond the horizon in both directions, the curve of its dome imperceptible as it climbed higher into the air than she could see. Before her eyes, the gray-blue shell faded to just gray. She began to see the terraced crests of the hills of the Desert Border South and looming beyond, the unmistakable crags of the High Shaeradim.
Just inside the fading shell, a broad ridge rose gently away from the desert, snaking its way deep into the foothills before ascending to a high mesa that would serve as the elven army’s first staging ground inside the Shaeradim. Takari was relieved to see that the foot of the ridge lay directly in front of her company’s campsite. When suggesting campsites to Lord Ramealaerub, she had been forced to recall the terrain inside the shadowshell from memory and guess at good staging points for each arm of the elven advance. That her own company was in proper position meant the others would be, too.
Takari took her war helm from Wagg and with a sigh put the thing on her head. It was one of those gaudy—some would say ornate—pieces of armor made by Gold elves. Gilded in silver and trimmed in gold, it was as heavy as a rock and about as comfortable. A circle of Evermeet’s high mages had bestowed on it several useful enchantments, including their most powerful mind-guarding magic and the ability to stay in constant contact with her commander.
Wagg snickered. “You look like a bandit bird—only louder and uglier.”
“That’s not all bad. Maybe now you’ll stop begging me to play night games.”
“You’re going to wear that awful thing at night?”
“And so are you.” Takari pointed at Wagg’s helm, then at his head. “The phaerimm don’t care when they take their mind-slaves.”
Wagg frowned. Shaking his head, he sneered at the adornments hammered into the metal.
“Ships,” he grumbled. “It’s always ships and sails with that bunch. What’s wrong with a few trees?”
“Who knows?” Takari was as genuinely puzzled as her deputy. “Maybe they don’t have trees on Evermeet.”
“You think?”
Wagg’s eyes widened at this frightening thought, and Takari shrugged.
The shadowshell had faded from gray to a transparent damson, and it had become more of a struggle to see the flickering ba
rrier than the terrain behind it. Takari saw nothing but boulders, and scattered across the hillside, leafless smokethorn trees and the withered silhouettes of a few spiny soapleafs. The soapleafs she would have to watch. In the two decades she had spent patrolling the Desert Border South with Galaeron Nihmedu and his Tomb Guards, she had never seen one this close to Anauroch.
When Takari didn’t see anything else of interest, she turned her thoughts inward and activated her helm’s sending magic by picturing Lord Ramealaerub’s stern face.
“Lord High Commander,” she said.
The image in her mind grew more substantial, assuming the scowling visage of a sharp-featured Gold elf with a dagger-thin nose and eyebrows arched as sharply as ship keels.
Moonsnow, the Gold elf said, his words echoing in her mind. I was beginning to think something had happened to you.
“I was at the shadowshell, milord.” Takari glanced at Wagg and rolled her eyes. Ramealaerub was a typical Gold, full of himself and the way things ought to be. “Looking for those mind-slaves Khelben warned us about.”
Ramealaerub’s expression grew impatient.
And?
“I couldn’t see a thing, Milord.” Annoyed by his attitude, Takari was not going to make anything easy on him. “That was before the shadowshell fell. Everything was too dark.”
The shell is not dark now, Ramealaerub said.
“But now I’m back with my company.” Takari’s tone was innocent. “Didn’t you call us to arms?”
A storm cloud came over Ramealaerub’s face. Irritated, he said something to someone beside him then composed himself and turned back to Takari.
Moonsnow, the Lady of the Wood and I agreed that the wood elves would serve as the army’s reconnaissance company. Though Ramealaerub’s eyes looked as though they were about to pop free of their sockets, he spoke in a deliberately patient tone that suggested he did not realize how Takari was playing with him. Would you be kind enough to take your elves and see if there is any sign of the enemy?
“Of course—all you had to do was ask.” Takari was beginning to worry that Ramealaerub truly did not understand that she was playing a game with him. If so, that did not bode well for the elven army. “But I can tell you already they know we’re here.”
You can see them?
He was worried.
“Not exactly,” Takari said. “It’s the trees.”
The trees?
“A few shouldn’t be here, this close to the sand,” Takari explained.
At least Ramealaerub was enough of an elf to understand what that meant.
He grew thoughtful, then asked, Which ones?
“The soapleafs,” Takari said. “They’re the—”
I know what a soapleaf is, Moonsnow.
He looked away and spoke to someone else, then returned to her.
We have a few here, but not enough to slow us down. They’re probably just sentries.
“Probably,” Takari said, “but with the phaerimm, you can never—”
That’s why you need to secure our flank, he said. We’ll be going in fast and hard, but once the shadowshell comes down there’s no telling how long it will take the phaerimm to regain their strength. You must stay ahead of us—and let me know when you run into problems.
“Oh, is that what a reconnaissance company does?”
I mean it, Moonsnow, Ramealaerub said. Toy with me if you like, but not with your mission. You know better than any of us how quickly this can turn into a disaster.
Maybe this Lord High Commander did have more sense than Evermeet’s previous generals.
Takari gave him a coquettish smile and said, “Lord Ramealaerub, I can’t imagine why you think I’ve been toying with you.”
She glanced toward the shadowshell and, seeing that it had faded to transparent shimmer, she said, “We’ll cross over as soon as we can. If you don’t hear from me every quarter hour … consider that an alarm.”
Very sensible, Ramealaerub answered. And Moonsnow, do try to avoid getting yourself killed. You’re the only scout who really knows this part of the Shaeradim.
Ramealaerub’s image vanished from her mind, and Takari turned to find her company waiting at the gathering circle. Though all of the rangers had fastened their battle cloaks and strung their bows, not one had donned the gaudy war helms sent by Evermeet. Most of the helms lay tossed on the ground, and some were being used as footrests or stools.
Takari tapped her own helm and said, “Put ’em on.”
“But they’re ugly,” complained Jysela Whitebark.
“And heavy,” added Grimble Oakorn.
Takari shrugged and said, “Suit yourselves, but tell me now what you want done when the phaerimm make mind-slaves of you. Would you rather be killed or let them stick you with an egg?”
There was a scramble for the helms. Takari waited for them to go on, then explained their mission and led the way along a well-beaten trail to what had been the shadowshell. No sign of the barrier remained. The path just ended, and few paces later the rocky slope of their ridge emerged from the sand and began to rise in a jumble of boulders and barren ground toward the distant peaks of the High Shaeradim.
Takari dug into the sand until she found a pebble. Half-expecting it to vanish in a flare of darkness as had the hundreds of others she had tossed through the shadowshell, she threw it as hard as she could.
The stone clattered to the ground thirty paces up the ridge.
She studied the pebble for a moment, not quite able to believe that it had actually landed in the Shaeradim, then turned to her company. They were standing together looking nervous and a little frightened.
“After all this waiting, I guess expected something more somehow.”
“I’m just happy it didn’t melt or something,” Wagg said.
As Wagg spoke, Takari began to speak in fingertalk, her hands issuing silent instructions that were being studied much more attentively than her deputy’s ramblings.
“From what you’ve said about these Shadovar,” Wagg continued, “I didn’t think it would just disappear. I was sure it was going to explode or something and kill us all.”
“Then I thank Rillifane Rallathil you were wrong,” Takari said. Her fingers continued to weave commands, warning her warriors to be wary of other things aside from soapleafs. “This job is harder than I bargained for as it is.”
Now! she signaled.
Nocking arrows as they moved, the company scattered and loosed. The shafts flew over Takari’s head with a low droning whistle, and the slope behind her erupted into pained squeals and strange gurgling howls. She turned.
Where the soapleafs had been a moment earlier, she found half a dozen illithids collapsing to the ground, their bodies peppered with arrows and their mouth tentacles writhing in anguish.
The rest of the slope remained as still as before.
Nocking an arrow in her own bow, Takari dropped into a crouch and rushed forward. Taking cover behind the first boulder she came to, she scratched the surface with the tip of her arrow to make certain it really was a boulder, then looked left and right down the foot of the ridge. Camouflaged as they were by the magic of their battle cloaks, it took a few moments to find the nearest members of her company hiding behind boulders similar to hers. She did not attempt a head count. With the company spread across the width of the entire ridge, she would have been hard-pressed to find them all even had they been standing on tiptoe and waving their arms.
She envisioned her company waiting in the gathering circle a few moments earlier, then whispered, “Reconnaissance company, anything to report?”
When no reply came, she breathed a sigh of relief, then reported their progress to Lord Ramealaerub. He congratulated her on her success, informing her that the moon elves protecting the other flank were advancing as well, then reminded her that the main body of the army would start its advance in five minutes and urged her to keep moving. Takari bit back a sour reply and gave the order to ascend the ridge in two wa
ves, each covering the other as it advanced.
Grimble Oakorn—her partner in this tactic—emerged from behind a boulder thirty paces to her right and raced another thirty paces ahead before ducking back into cover. Takari quickly left her own hiding pace, and weaving erratically to make herself a difficult target, ran sixty paces before finally kneeling behind the big trunk of a dead smokethorn. It was hard work, especially with the hot Anauroch sun beating down on the heavy helm she wore. Sweat began to trickle over her brow.
There was a three-second pause before Grimble and the others in the first wave emerged from new hiding places. Only fools left cover in the same place they entered it, and wood elf scouts were not fools. They raced sixty paces uphill and dropped back into cover. Takari and the second wave crawled to new starting points and rushed up the slope.
The depredations of the strange war had reduced this desert wonderland to a dismal ghost of its former self, leaving hundreds of smokethorns strewn across the hillside, their trunks snapped off at the base or their root-fan ripped whole from the rocky ground. The trees that remained standing were naked and bare, their dagger-shaped leaves scattered around their bases like withered gray skirts. Even the tough thorn-brambles, which seemed to flourish best in ground that was more rock than dirt and blossomed only in the worst of droughts, were withered and drooping, their tiny leaves brittle and brown.
The sight filled Takari with a cold anger, and not only because it pained her to see the Shaeradim defiled by war. The two decades she had spent patrolling the area with Galaeron Nihmedu had been the happiest of her life—even if he had spent the entire time refusing to acknowledge their spirit-bond—and the sight of the land withering away reminded her that her memories were also fading, that eventually she would be left only with the dry fact of the matter: that she had been a Tomb Guard on the Desert Border South and she had been in love with her princep. But the love itself—the simple joy of being always near him, the flutter that had stirred in her heart with his every smile—that would be gone, carried off by war and as lost to her as Galaeron himself.
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