A cacophony of crackling magic and anguished screaming filled the basin for a single instant then came echoing back off Untrivvin’s stony face and faded to an low murmur. It was a sound Arr loved well, the sound of astonished survivors struggling to gather their wits and reorganize.
She glanced back to find her companions standing behind their spell-guards hurling magic at half a dozen retreating princes. The bars of a half-completed shadow cage lay at their feet, slowly melting into the slushy water as its unbound energies dispersed.
The sound of sharp commands drew Arr’s attention forward again, where the Shadovar survivors had already regrouped. Half a dozen were gathered around their burning prince, attempting to smother Arr’s silver flames with their own bodies. The rest, perhaps two dozen in all, were following a tall warrior forward, their swords drawn and their gem-colored eyes glowing with rage.
This time remembering to cast the spell as a human would, Arr called up a wall of flame.
By the time she finished the necessary gesturing and chanting, the Shadovar were almost even with Beze’s writhing form. Arr would not normally have hesitated to engulf one of her own in the conflagration, but Beze’s defenses had obviously been overpowered by the enemy attack. If the flames killed her, she would revert to true form and reveal the truth about who the Shadovar were fighting.
Arr raised the wall behind the charging warriors, then reached behind her and grabbed Tuuh by the collar.
“Come along, Khelben,” she said.
She clambered across the rolled shadow blanket, Tuuh half-stumbling and half-floating over it as she pulled him along. When he turned and saw two dozen angry Shadovar only ten paces away, he forget himself and raised a barrier of thrashing blades without remembering to gesture.
“Allak thur doog!” Arr called, improvising.
The incantation was lost to the wet thud of the barrier’s blades chopping through Shadovar armor.
Pulling Tuuh after her, Arr started around the far end, shouting, “Remember yourself, Khelben.”
“A split second of warning might help next time,” Tuuh answered. “Where are we going.”
“To help Bez—er, Laeral.”
“To help her?” Tuuh stopped. “What for?”
“Because she’s supposed to be your mate!” Arr hissed. “And because my plan will be ruined if she dies and they see her revert.”
They reached the end of the barrier. Arr peered around the corner to find that Beze had fallen unconscious and now lay floating in the air, her arms stretched over her head and her legs twined together in a distinctly tail-like braid. The eight Shadovar—all that had escaped Tuuh’s spell—remained trapped between the blade barrier and Arr’s wall of fire.
The tall Shadovar saw her looking and raised his hand to cast a spell. Arr pulled back in time to avoid the dark bolt that came streaking past the end of the barrier, then dropped to a knee and sent a fork of lightning crackling back in her attacker’s direction. It caught him in the chest and knocked him off his feet, then dissipated harmlessly against his spell-guard. The warrior pointed at Beze and sent his followers rushing in her direction.
A stream of silver-white flame streaked over Arr’s head, blasting through the Shadovar’s spell-guard and engulfing him in flame. The sight made Arr wince inside. The spell was one of her finest, and though she had willingly shared it for the sake of her plan, it still pained her to see another phaerimm using it.
Arr glanced up and behind her at Tuuh’s bearded face and said, “I hope that’s the first time you’ve used my spell here.” Because the Chosen could unleash the real silver fire just once every hour, she had instructed her companions to use her spell only one time. “My plan won’t work if they realize—”
“It is the first time these Shadovar have seen me use it,” Tuuh said. “That is all that counts.”
He raised a hand and uttering a single syllable, wagged his fingers. Beze rose above the heads of the Shadovar and started to float in their direction. Several warriors cocked their arms to hurl their swords. Throwing up her hands and crying out something that might have sounded vaguely spell-like, Arr brought a swarm of fiery stars crashing into existence and sent it sweeping across the shadow blanket.
It roared into the Shadovar before they could turn their heads to see what was making the sound. Those who had no spell-guards simply vanished in an eruption of smoke and flame. The others were hurled across the shadow blanket, back through the wall of fire Arr had raised earlier. Judging by the screams and the greasy smoke rising from the other side, it seemed unlikely their protection magic had withstood the trip.
“A little quick for a human, don’t you think?” Tuuh brought Beze to their side. “But you saved Beze.”
“Well, send her somewhere,” Arr ordered, “before she dies and ruins my plan.”
Behind them Ryry, speaking in Winds, said, The fate of your plan has already been decided. The Shadovar are gone.
Arr turned to find Ryry and Yao standing behind the rolled blanket, staring out across the empty melt basin. In the frigid cold of the High Ice, the cloud of rising steam had already turned to ice and dropped back to the ground, and the slushy water through which they had been wading just a few minutes earlier had frozen into a jagged blue plain. The only sign of the Shadovar princes who had attempted to surprise them from the rear where the soot-smeared craters where they had been hurled into the basin walls by phaerimm spells.
“I am a genius,” Arr said. “When we work together, none can challenge us!”
“That will be a great comfort to Beze’s ghost,” Tuuh said.
Arr looked back and found Beze reverted to true form. She was sinking to the ground, her tail and four arms hanging limp, her mouth open and pouring blood.
“Tuuh, did I not tell you to send her somewhere?” Arr asked. “There still may be spies.”
Tuuh touched Beze, and a small tear opened in the air and sucked the corpse out of sight. Judging by the drone of insects and the stench of offal that lingered behind, Arr guessed that he had sent the body to the second or third of the Nine Hells.
Once the portal closed, Arr dismissed the magic walls she had created and was pleased to see the shadow blanket littered with dead Shadovar. There was no sign of Escanor, or of those who had used their own bodies to put out the flames engulfing him.
“I see no wounded,” Ryry sounded disappointed. “Where are the wounded?”
“In Shade, by now,” Arr said. “The Shadovar took them, I’m sure.”
“Truly?” Ryry looked at Arr as though she had hidden the wounded and was keeping them all for herself. “Why?”
Tuuh shrugged and said, “What does it matter? Many two-legs do it, when they can.”
Ryry studied him doubtfully, then finally seemed to accept what she was seeing.
“If you say so.” She turned back to Arr and asked, “What now?”
“Finish the job,” Arr said as she returned to the blanket roll and clambered over it. “That is what the Chosen would do.”
CHAPTER FOUR
15 Flamerule, the Year of Wild Magic
Galaeron and the others had been waiting all morning when the muted crackle of a translocational spell finally sounded out in the heart of the courtyard, and their guest appeared in swirl of silver hair, a faint stench of gore and brimstone trailing after her. She was tall even for a human—and especially for a human woman—with a slender build and striking figure. Though her face was a bit rough-featured by elven standards, she was nevertheless a stunning beauty, with twinkling eyes, high cheeks, and a full-lipped mouth.
Ruha poured a goblet of Cormyrean wine—the finest available, though that was not saying much after the ravages of the Goblin War—and went out to meet her. Unsure of the greeting he would receive, Galaeron trailed a pace behind. Aris remained hidden in his sleeping arcade, lest he startle her before she recovered from her teleport afterdaze.
Ruha stopped at the woman’s side and said, “Welcome to Arabel, Storm
.” She pressed the goblet into the woman’s hands. “Thank you for coming.”
The sound of a familiar voice seemed to bring Storm out of her daze. She quaffed the wine in one long gulp, then made a sour face.
“That’s the sourest swill I’ve had in years.” She pressed the goblet back into Ruha’s hands. “But I’ll have another. I’ve been trading spells with thornbacks and eyeheads all morning, and the thirst I have could drain the Moonsea.”
“Perhaps you’d care to sit?” Galaeron suggested, waving at the table they’d set in the shade of the house—a house they’d bought with the proceeds of the sale of one of Aris’s statues. “We can bring out some food, if you’re hungry.”
Storm eyed him warily, but followed him toward the table. “Sitting is good, but I won’t have any food. The battle’s not done, and fighting on a full stomach doesn’t agree with me.”
As they took their seats, Aris emerged from beneath his arcade and came to join them. His grim face looked even more somber than usual. When he sat down beside them, he let his body drop so heavily that the mugs rattled on the table.
Storm craned her neck and looked up into the giant’s plate-sized eyes.
“It’s good to see you, Aris. You’re looking better than the last time we met.”
Aris forced a smile and said, “I’ve been waiting for a chance to thank you properly for saving my life, lady.”
The giant reached inside his tabard and brought out a three-foot sculpture of Storm kneeling on the ground. The likeness was perfect, of course, with an expression that was at once angelic and fiercely protective. It struck Galaeron that she looked very much like a human version of Angharradh, the elf goddess of birth, protection, and wisdom.
“Please accept this as a small sign of my gratitude.”
Storm took the piece with a gasp.
“It’s … it’s … Aris, it’s beautiful!” She set it on the table, then rose and studied it from all angles. “Too beautiful to be me … or any mortal woman.”
“Not at all. That is the face seen by those you help.” Aris glanced in Ruha’s direction, then added, “Ruha helped me track down some of them, so I know.”
Storm tore her eyes—glistening with unshed tears—from the statue and went over to him. Even sitting on the ground, the giant towered over her, and she ended up embracing the side of his arm.
“I’ll treasure it always, Aris.” She tipped her head back and blew him a kiss, which floated visibly up to his face and planted itself on his cheek like a silver tattoo. “Thank you.”
Galaeron was glad to see that Storm treasured Aris’s gift so highly—he had expected nothing else, really, for the giant’s art never failed to move those who viewed it—but her reaction also dampened his own spirits. The giant did not approve of what Galaeron was about to suggest, and—given that Storm held him responsible for much of Faerûn’s trouble—his idea was going to be hard enough to sell without adding any extra weight to Aris’s opposition.
Leaving Aris with a foolish smile, Storm returned to her seat and turned to Ruha.
“Suppose we come to the point.” Though her manner was brisk, her mood had been much improved by Aris’s gift, and the concern behind her words seemed more a matter of time than displeasure. “I doubt you summoned me from the war in the Shaeradim so Aris could present his gift.”
Galaeron winced. One did not “summon” a Chosen of Mystra anywhere, and the fact that she had used that word to describe their request for an audience was not a good sign.
If Ruha noticed the word choice, her eyes did not show it.
“Galaeron has an idea. I think it could work.” Ruha’s gaze rose toward Aris’s gray face and she added, “Aris does not.”
“And you asked me here to break the tie?”
Noting the sarcasm in Storm’s voice, Galaeron said, “I want to bring down Shade.”
Storm cocked a brow. “Bring it down?”
“Like the old cities of Netheril,” Galaeron explained. “Crash it into the desert.”
“If you’re asking permission, feel free.”
“Actually, I can’t do it alone.” So far, so good—at least she liked the idea. “To tell the truth, I need you and the other Chosen to do it for me.”
Storm rolled her eyes as though she had been expecting something of this sort.
“At the moment, we’re rather busy trying to save the Shaeradim. I thought you might have heard.”
“And I am telling you how!” Galaeron snapped.
He caught the flash of concern in Aris’s eyes, then paused a moment to calm his rising ire.
Finally, he asked, “Are you winning?”
Storm’s eyes slid away. “No. Lord Ramealaerub’s advance has stalled at the Vyshaen Barrows.”
“The Vyshaen Barrows?” Galaeron gasped. “What’s he doing there?”
“It’s not a good base?”
Galaeron shook his head. “It looks like it from below, but he can’t reach Evereska from there,” he said. “If the phaerimm come up the Copper Canyon, he’ll be trapped against the High Shaeradim.”
Storm raised her brow and said, “I’ll pass that along. Unfortunately, he’s advancing blind.”
She let the statement hang, leaving it to Galaeron to ask if he wanted to hear the details. He didn’t, but he had to know.
“Blind?” he echoed. “I thought Takari Moonsnow was with him.”
“Lost the day the shadowshell fell.” Storm’s manner grew soft, and for the first time since Galaeron had known her he saw some of the softness portrayed in Aris’s sculpture. “She eliminated a phaerimm that was delaying Lord Ramealaerub’s advance.”
Galaeron fell back in his chair, his heart aching as though someone had punched him in it. He had not seen Takari since shortly after their journey into Karse, when he had returned her, battered and bloody, to Rheitheillaethor and left her there to recover. They had never been lovers, but he had finally come to accept—too late, after leaving her behind—that they were spirit-deep mates, linked on a level more profound than love. The choice to leave with Vala—another woman whom circumstances had forced him to abandon to a cruel fate—had been his own, but one made infinitely less complicated by Takari’s harshness as she told him she hoped never to see him again. The thought that those words should be the last he ever heard from her filled him with a raw anguish—and with a bitter fury he knew to be not entirely his own that whispered to him that Storm was lying and demanded that he strike out at her.
Instead, Galaeron lowered his chin and whispered a prayer, asking Takari to forgive his folly and begging the Leaflord to watch over her spirit.
Storm laid a hand on Galaeron’s arm—then took it away when his shadow recoiled from her touch and made him flinch.
“You know, Galaeron, you could be very useful to Lord Ramealaerub,” she said. “I doubt anyone in the elven army would be foolish enough to turn away your help.”
But there was always the question, Galaeron—or perhaps it was his shadow—thought. He was the one who had breached the Sharn Wall in the first place, then invited the Shadovar into the world to undo the damage. He was the cause of all this trouble, and even if they were wise enough not to say it to his face, he knew what his fellow elves would be whispering every time he turned his back.
“Now that is a plan that makes sense,” Aris said. “Why not return to the Shaeradim, where we can do some good fighting phaerimm?”
Galaeron raised his chin and said, “Because we can’t win the war by fighting phaerimm. Nor can we save Evereska that way.”
“This is the part that makes no sense,” Aris said. “The phaerimm want the Shadovar killed, and the Shadovar want the phaerimm killed. Destroying Shade—even if you could—does not help Evereska.”
“But it does, Aris,” Storm said. “The elves have little hope—I would say none—of defeating the phaerimm alone. The rest of Faerûn has been too weakened by the Melting to send help, and the few troops they do have must stay home to defend aga
inst the Shadovar. The Shadovar are in the same situation—they dare not engage the phaerimm for fear that the rest of the world will attack them and stop the Melting.”
It was a great relief to Galaeron that Storm was the one explaining this. Perhaps one of the Chosen could change the stubborn giant’s mind.
Aris burst that dream with a firm shake of his head.
“It won’t work.”
“Perhaps not at once,” Ruha said, “but as the realms recover, they will be able to send troops to join the elves. Not even the phaerimm can stand against the combined might of all Faerûn.”
Aris crossed his arms in front of his chest.
To Galaeron’s surprise, Storm ignored the giant and turned to face him and Ruha.
“Your plan works only if Shade’s destruction is a swift one,” she said.
“Without its mythallar, the city will fall,” Galaeron said. “The destruction will be instantaneous.”
Storm nodded.
“That’s what I thought you had planned for us. But how are we to enter the city? Shade’s magic is proof against even us.”
Galaeron smiled and told her his plan.
When he finished, Storm poured herself more wine, sat back, and thought it over. It took only a few moments before she drank the contents of the goblet and nodded.
“It could work.”
“Wonderful!” Galaeron filled goblets for himself and Ruha. “We can be ready—”
“I said could.” Storm raised her hand to stop him, then looked to Aris and said, “Before deciding, I want to hear Aris’s argument.”
The giant cast a guilty look in Galaeron’s direction, then said, “Because Galaeron can’t do it.”
Storm furrowed her brow.
“What is there to do? All he need do is appear headstrong and careless.” She glanced over at him, then added, “That is not out of character for him.”
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