Keya’s shoulder exploded into limp agony, and only the fingers clasped behind her neck prevented it from flopping away and leaving her head exposed. Her thigh went sore and useless as a stone struck it. Another glanced off her back and sent bolts of throbbing fire shooting into her temples and down to her feet. She tried—unsuccessfully—not to scream and told herself that the pain was a good thing, that as long as she could feel she could still walk—or run, given where they were.
Keya took two more strikes—one on her rump and another in the ribs—before the stones finally stopped raining down. Her father had managed to drill enough tactical sense into her that she knew the phaerimm would not have launched a shock attack if they did not intend to follow it up with a rapid advance, so Keya allowed herself only one attempt to draw the wind back into her chest—it was as unsuccessful as her effort to leap the wave—before she rolled to her hands and knees and spun toward her attackers.
She found them halfway across the terrace, their barbed tails dripping poison and their jagged teeth showing in the smiles atop their slug-shaped bodies. Dexon’s darksword was nowhere in sight, but Takari lay a dozen paces farther down the terrace, twisting about in a pained daze, one shin canted at a wrong angle and the bones of her shoulder showing through the hole the first phaerimm attack had burned in her armor.
To Keya’s astonishment, the battered wood elf somehow managed to draw her sword and swing herself into a kneeling position. The phaerimm paid Takari no attention whatsoever, but the sight inspired Keya to extend a hand and call to the darksword as Dexon had taught her, by imagining the feel of the hilt in her hand.
A moment later, the darksword came tumbling into Keya’s hand from somewhere behind her. Only six paces beyond Takari, the phaerimm stopped and began to whistle to each other in their strange language of winds.
“Takari, I’m right behind you,” Keya called. She did not advance toward the wood elf for fear of prodding the phaerimm into action. “If you can drag yourself back to me.”
“Yes … I can do that.”
Takari’s voice had assumed a strange distance, and Keya cursed silently, knowing that one of the thornbacks had taken control of the Green elf’s mind. Where were the Vaasans? They were supposed to be protecting the rear … and what were Kiinyon and the battle mage doing?
The last question, at least, was answered by a string of mystic syllables and the deep knelling that always accompanied the summoning of a large amount of iron. Keya turned and saw what looked like a rusty square cloud fluttering down on the terrace above. She did not even notice the charging illithids until they saw the shadow and looked up and began to screech in panic. The wall slammed down an instant later, so close that Keya felt a rush of displaced air and heard the crackle of bursting illithid skulls.
A handful of the fastest illithids escaped being crushed and spun on the battle mage, their tentacles flailing in his direction as they attempted to stun him with their mental blasts. The attacks were no more effective against his helmet’s magic mind guard than would have been a phaerimm’s attempt to make a mind-slave of him. As the battle mage leveled his hands in their direction, Keya glanced back at Takari and found her half a dozen paces away, sword in hand and still dragging herself up the terrace. Behind her, the phaerimm continued to float, content to let the wood elf do their work for them.
Disturbed by their calm, Keya hazarded a glance in Kiinyon’s direction and found him surrounded by lemure corpses, no doubt summoned by the phaerimm to prevent him from casting his escape magic. Another trio of the little devils appeared as she watched. With the darksword now stored securely in its scabbard, Kiinyon felled two with a kick and a dagger slash, but the third escaped and circled around to attack from behind.
Keya had little doubt that the renowned spellblade would be able to drop that one as quickly as the others, but the phaerimm strategy was working. Translocational magic was too complicated—even for someone of his skill—to cast while fighting hand-to-hand, and the thornbacks had more beholders and illithids rushing in from all sides. They had to do something, and fast.
Keya started forward, stretching a hand out as though to help Takari to her feet. The wood elf’s gaze was still blank as she reached out to accept Keya’s hand, but her sword remained down by her thigh, ready to strike.
Takari’s grasp felt cold and clammy as it closed on Keya’s. Something like alarm flashed in the depths of her brown eyes, then her hand clamped down hard. With surprising strength for one so battered, Takari jerked Keya down. The wood elf’s blade came up in a smooth arc that, had it not met Dexon’s darksword on the way, would have come down on Keya’s neck.
As it was, the darksword sliced through Takari’s blade as smoothly as it did phaerimm scales. The blade tumbled away harmlessly, flashing like a trout in a forest stream. Keya planted a foot in Takari’s chest and pushed her to the ground, then stepped forward and sent her darksword spinning toward the nearest thornback.
A trio of screeching lemures appeared in front of the phaerimm. They were instantly sliced in half by the tumbling blade, but served their purpose by absorbing enough energy to send the darksword spinning to the ground. Both phaerimm turned to rush for the sword—and Burlen and Kuhl appeared behind them, rising from behind the far terrace like thieves stepping from an alley.
They hurled their swords as one, taking the astonished phaerimm so completely by surprise that Keya doubted the creatures ever knew what had killed them. The thornbacks simply sank to the ground half a dozen yards shy of Keya’s sword and lay there with the Vaasans’ weapons in their back.
“It’s about time,” Keya said. “What took so long?”
“An argument,” Burlen answered. “Kuhl doesn’t think we ought to be using you for bait.”
He summoned his darksword back to his hand, and Kiinyon finally yelled for them to come running. Keya turned to see the black rectangle of a dimensional gate flickering in the air beside him. She summoned Dexon’s darksword to hand, then cautiously removed her foot from Takari’s chest and looked down to find the elf studying her with a look of utter astonishment.
“Are you all right?” Keya asked. “Ready to go home?”
Takari nodded, but seemed unable to take her eyes off of Dexon’s darksword.
“You’ve got to tell me how you can do that!”
CHAPTER NINE
17 Flamerule, the Year of Wild Magic
Even for dragons, the flight to Shade was a long one. Galaeron hung in Malygris’s grasp through the night and all the next day. At dusk he finally saw the city, a distant diamond of umbral murk floating low over the purple mirror of Shadow Lake. As always, it was swaddled in wisps of black fog, giving it the appearance of a lone storm cloud or a mirage. The swirling specks of a hundred or so vultures wheeled beneath it, in constant pursuit of the garbage that fell like rain from its refuse chutes. There were also larger specks, shaped like tiny crosses and circling the city in the tight formations of veserab patrols.
Malygris raised his head, and Galaeron’s skin suddenly began to prickle and his hair stood on end. A deep crackling erupted a few yards above his back, and the air began to dance with silvery flashes. He craned his neck around and saw an enormous ball of blue lightning blazing inside the dracolich’s empty cage of ribs. Malygris opened his jaws, and the lightning shot up his throat in a blinding white fork of energy that left Galaeron struggling to blink the glow from his eyes.
As Malygris announced his triumphant return to Shade, a terrible sense of fear and loneliness settled over Galaeron. His plan was a sound one, or the Chosen would never have agreed to the attempt, but it was also one that demanded more strength than he was sure he possessed and sacrifices that were not his alone to make. The last time he had glimpsed Aris, the giant had been hanging by his shoulders, chin resting on his chest and his captor’s talons sunk deep into his flesh. Given Anauroch’s heat and the dragons’ refusal to stop for water, there was every reason to believe that Aris would be suffering from
sun stroke in addition to whatever injuries he had endured during his capture.
Not for the first time, Galaeron cursed himself for listening to Storm. He was beginning to question just how much Aris’s absence would really have raised the Shadovar’s suspicions. Having seen how callously the Chosen spent mortal lives, it was easy to believe they were risking his friend’s life for only modest benefit. If Aris were to die on behalf of the plan, Galaeron’s resolve would be so weakened by guilt he would succumb to his shadow self.
In fact, he was starting to think that this was exactly what they wanted, that they had some other secret plan to save Faerûn that did not involve saving Evereska. Wouldn’t that be just like the Chosen? Maybe they had quietly struck a bargain with the phaerimm to subvert the city defenses from the inside, so the thornbacks could attack from the outside and destroy their mutual enemy. It was just as well, then, that Galaeron had remained silent about the message from Malik. The little man might prove useful yet.
As they crossed Shadow Lake, Shade swelled from a tiny diamond of murk into a more nebulous form that might have been a solitary thunderhead on the verge of bursting, or a plume of ash drifting across the sky from some nearby volcano. A patrol of veserab riders came out and took flanking positions to either side, their jittery mounts hissing and spewing black fumes as they felt the fear aura that surrounded all dragons. Paying the escort no attention at all, Malygris continued onward until the black haze filled the entire sky ahead, then he dived to the bottom of the cloud and entered the dark murk there.
Once inside the cloud, the enclave itself grew visible, a huge capsized mountaintop honeycombed with utility passages and ventilation shafts. Malygris began to circle the crags of the overturned peak in an ever-growing spiral, his fear aura keeping the ever-growing colonies of bats and birds at a cautious distance. Even the jewel-eyed sentries who stood constant watch from their hidden crannies shrank back out of sight as the dragon passed.
Though the city could be departed in any number of the usual mundane ways—flying, translocational magic, even jumping—circling up from the bottom was the only way to enter. Even then, those seeking entrance had to come only at dusk, when the hidden city grew briefly visible. Any other approach would lead the unfortunate traveler through the plane of shadow to any one of a thousand planes it touched. It was, Galaeron knew, a defense the Shadovar considered unbreachable by any army on Faerûn and one that made them feel invulnerable enough to treat the rest of the world as no self-respecting lord would his dogs.
At last, they neared the top of the mountain, where the great Cave Gate already hung open, its huge mouth an ebony hollowness opening into an even darker wall of black stone. Malygris seemed to take great delight in extending his wings and clacking both sides of the portal with the yellowed bone tips. A properly awed murmur rustled through the depths of the cavern as he swooped to a stop at the rear of the vast Marshaling Plaza and banged down with Galaeron pinned to the floor beneath his huge talons.
A pair of similar crashes from nearer the mouth of the cave confirmed that the dracolich’s companions had landed behind them.
Holding Galaeron down so tightly that his face scraped along the floor, Malygris pushed him forward.
“I bring gifts fitting to my splendor,” Malygris said. His tone was surprisingly deferential, at least for a dracolich. “Here are the warmbloods you have been seeking.”
“So I see.” The voice was sibilant and pervasive, like a whisper rolling into the cavern from some distant passage. “It should not surprise me that dragonkind has succeeded where my own princes have failed. You are to be complimented, Malygris. This is most excellent.”
The speaker was Telamont Tanthul, Most High of Shade and father of the Thirteen Princes. But even had the shadow lord not spoken, Galaeron would have sensed his presence in the chill stillness of the air—and in the cold fear that held the cavern in its grasp. Even Malygris, who as the Blue Sovereign of Anauroch need not bow to any other, lowered his skull in respect.
Without being audibly prompted, the dracolich spoke again. “Matters went as I knew they would, of course. The two-legs cowered in my shadow, and the ones we sought fled into the forest.” The dracolich pricked Galaeron with the tip of his talon and added, “Though these mammals thought to hide their giant with their pitiful wizardry, they were fools. Their magic is nothing to mine, and the mere attempt revealed to us who we were seeking.”
Galaeron’s stomach suddenly went cold and queasy, and it had less to do with the Chosen being carried inside it than with simple fear. If Telamont’s willpower could master even that of a dracolich, what chance did Galaeron have of hiding his betrayal? When the Most High’s attention turned to him, the truth would become a breath held too long, and the harder he tried to keep it inside, the more desperate he’d grow to release it. His only chance was to confess all and claim the plan had been Storm’s idea, that the Chosen had forced him to—
No.
That was his shadow speaking. The idea had slipped up on him so smoothly, felt so natural that he had almost accepted it as his own. But if he betrayed the Chosen, he would also be betraying his loyal friend Aris, and that one thought served as a lifeline back to his true self.
The Most High remained silent, and more words spilled out of the dracolich’s mouth.
“My worshipers have spies in every city of Faerûn,” Malygris continued. “When they informed my priests that the giant was selling all of his stone whittling, I knew the ones you desired would soon leave the city.”
“As did we,” Telamont replied. His voice was cold and calm. “Yet you acted while my sons planned and fretted. Shade is in your debt.”
“Indeed,” said a silken voice Galaeron recognized as that of Yder Tanthul, the Sixth Prince of Shade, “but one wonders at how easily this ‘secret’ was discovered. Our agents were watching as they left Arabel. Starting a beggar’s riot does not seem a very secretive way to leave a city.”
“You challenge me, shade?”
There was an alarming crackle in Malygris’s voice, and Galaeron was almost crushed as the dracolich shifted his weight forward.
“As a courtesy to your lord,” the dracolich continued, “I will suffer your insult this once. But your stink offends me. Be gone.”
“Be gone?” Yder fumed.
Galaeron wished he could reach the little pill Alustriel had given him. Even a dracolich did not speak to a prince of Shade in such a manner, and he thought the coming clash might provide just the diversion he needed to disgorge the Chosen and escape into the city.
But Yder said no more, and after a moment of staring across the floor through Malygris’s talons, Galaeron realized that the prince had indeed gone.
“Yder means no offense, Mighty One,” Telamont said in a tone that was soft, and almost hypnotically soothing. “He is only a few centuries old and not yet capable of appreciating the full depth of a dragon’s cunning. He stands in awe of your magnificence.”
“Then it pleases me to let him live,” Malygris replied. “Consider it a gift.”
“You honor me too much, my friend. Is there a gift you desire in return?”
The air grew as cold and as still as ice. The hem of Telamont’s dark robe—all Galaeron could see of the shadow lord—drifted forward.
“There is nothing,” Malygris said. “The honor of your friendship is all I seek.”
“That you have.”
An expectant silence descended between the pair, then Malygris finally said, “But Techora is making demands on me.”
“And Techora is?”
“The new one sent by the Cult of the Dragon,” Malygris explained. “I mention this only because her petitions often interfere with our friendship.”
“This is the seventh in as many tendays,” the shade replied. It was a statement of fact. “One might think you are simply trying to escape the bargain you struck with the Cult of the Dragon.”
“It is hardly my fault that the priests they send are a
ll rude and foolish,” Malygris rumbled. His talons tightened until Galaeron let out an involuntary groan. “Should I tolerate ineptitude among my servants?”
“No more than I.” Telamont’s tone was almost resigned. “Yder will see to her. That shall be his atonement gift to you. What defenses does this one bear?”
“Only the usual protection amulets,” Malygris said as he raised his claw, freeing Galaeron, “and the mammal is not even as powerful as the others. The cult is beginning to run out of priests.”
“That would be good,” Telamont said. “Not that I have ever been displeased with the splendor of your gifts, Malygris.”
The dracolich spun around in a great clatter of bones, nearly crushing Galaeron with a carelessly placed rear foot and upending a dozen of Telamont’s bodyguards with his long tail.
“How could you? They came from a dragon.”
Malygris sprang into the air and departed the Marshaling Plaza over the heads of his two assistants. Telamont motioned for Prince Clariburnus to keep watch over Galaeron, then exchanged gifts with the other two dragons, promising to undermine the walls of an annoying castle for the one that had captured Aris and to reroute a caravan trail closer to the lair of the other.
As the agreements were made, Galaeron had a chance to see that while Aris had suffered no wounds worse than the talon punctures in his shoulders, the heat and thirst had taken its toll. The giant lay on the floor half conscious, with glassy eyes, a flushed face, and limbs as white as chalk. His hands were trembling and his breath was coming in fast, shallow pants.
“Aris needs water,” Galaeron said. He was surprised to find his own throat swollen and raw from thirst. “We haven’t had any since last night, and the desert—”
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