“Use that only if a phaerimm comes for us,” he said. “Let me borrow the darksword.”
Takari unhooked her scabbard, but did not hand it over.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To surprise our pursuers,” he said, drawing the darksword from the scabbard. “This shouldn’t be difficult, but you know what to do if I don’t come back.”
Though the hilt began to chill his hand, the cold no longer caused him any discomfort. Like Melegaunt, Telamont, and Hadrhune, he was part of the shadow.
“Yeah,” Takari said. “Die.”
“I meant check the leader,” Galaeron said. “Be certain it’s dead.”
Takari shook her head in mock despair and said, “I know what you meant, Galaeron.” She started to turn away, then changed her mind and grabbed Galaeron behind the neck. “First, you prove you weren’t lying. First you prove you love me.”
She pulled his head close to hers and kissed him long and hard, a kiss born of two decades of longing, a kiss that would no longer be denied. Though he knew their pursuers would be coming up fast, Galaeron let himself melt into it, let his spirit and his lips and his tongue touch Takari’s as he never had before. They joined as only elves can join, and Galaeron felt what she had always known, that they were spirit mates, that they belonged together no matter what the heartache and loneliness and sorrow brought down on them by their destiny. Nothing remained to keep them apart—nothing except their human lovers.
Takari sensed this as soon as Galaeron did, of course, and she was the first to pull away.
Galaeron would not make her ask.
“I still love her,” he said.
He was not admitting anything Takari did not already know, but he had to say it aloud. He owed her that much—and himself, too.
“I’d have to be blind to miss that,” Takari said. She smiled—a little sadly—and glanced down at her belly. “I have a few entanglements of my own.”
Galaeron kissed her again—briefly—and slipped back into the shadows. Once he was alone, he had no fear whatsoever of the unseen creatures who haunted the Deep. He was as much a part of the darkness as they were, and anything powerful enough to find and stalk him would also be intelligent enough to sense the power he bore. This wisdom was also born of the gift Melegaunt had passed to him, as was his knowledge of the phaerimm, and the ways of the Shadow Deep, and the lore of shadow spells, and who knew how many other dark Shadovar secrets. As far as Galaeron could tell, the only part of Melegaunt’s experience that the old archwizard had failed to pass along was what to do with so much power and how to wield it wisely. Melegaunt likely had never known or—if he had—cared.
Twenty steps later, the Fringe lay well out of sight. Galaeron stopped to wait. There was no need to hide, nor anyplace to do so had he wished. In the Deep, there was only shadow, and in the hands of those who knew the art, shadow could be shaped into whatever was needed or desired.
Soon, Galaeron sensed a fiery presence approaching along the path he and Takari had taken. Though it was impossible for an elf—or any creature enclosed within a skin—to perceive shape, he felt by the intensity of the thing’s heat and its apparent size that it was a phaerimm. He waited long enough to be certain only one creature remained, then he raised a wall of shadow in front of himself and waited.
While far from lost, the phaerimm was obviously frightened. In the vain hope of keeping shadow monsters at bay, it was talking softly to itself, using its powers to stir the shadows into a constant whirl. The thornback also had half a dozen spells prepped and ready to cast—Galaeron could feel the scorching nodules of Weave magic hanging from its body. He allowed it to pass, then dismissed his shadow wall and stepped out behind it.
The nervous phaerimm reacted quickly, encasing itself in a cocoon of fire and launching a volley of magic darts. The blow caught Galaeron in the shoulder and sent him tumbling back head over heels—not a safe way to travel in the Shadow Deep, even for him. A pair of jaws opened beneath him and tore into his calf, trying to drag him down into some hidden lair. He brought his darksword down alongside his leg. It felt like cutting air, but the mouth opened and he pulled free.
The phaerimm was faring worse than he. Galaeron could feel it a dozen paces ahead and off to one side, stirring the silent shadows into a froth as a pack of shadow creatures—some flying and some slithering—manifested all around and pulled in six directions at once. The thornback was defending itself as well as it was able, but its teleport spells would not work and its other spells were ineffective. No matter how many creatures it destroyed, more formed to take their places. No matter what kind of armor it covered itself in, their shadow fangs and dark claws tore through. An arm came off, then the tail, and finally a long strip of thorny hide.
Galaeron would have left the creature to its fate, save that Melegaunt’s wisdom had taught him better than to count a phaerimm dead until it lay disemboweled and burning on the ground. Moving back toward the tree where he had left Takari to avoid attracting a pack of his own attackers, he prepared a volley of shadow arrows and sent them hurling into his entrapped foe.
The impact caught both victim and tormentors by surprise. The phaerimm literally came apart, pieces flying in the dozen different directions that it was being pulled. The angry shadow creatures—those that had not been pinned in place by a dark arrow—melted back into the darkness and came undulating in Galaeron’s direction.
Galaeron opened a shadow door and stepped through, emerging into the relatively safe world of the Fringe. For a moment, he was lost to the afterdaze and did not know where he was. Then, as the flash and flicker of war magic began to filter up through the trees from the slope below, he recalled that he was in the middle of a battle and that it was his job and Takari’s to make certain the statue of Hanali Celanil was free of phaerimm when Khelben and the Chosen arrived with the High Mages, and that Takari should have been waiting for him right there in the Fringe.
“Takari?”
Galaeron glanced around the Fringe, finding nothing, and limped out onto the hillside. He was dizzy and sore, his arm so weak he could barely lift it.
“Takari!”
The only answer came in the form of a series of excited peeps from the tree above his head. Galaeron raised his chin and found the familiar white face of Manynests peering down at him.
“She did what?” Galaeron gasped. Takari was not the type to leave her post, not even when she was shadow touched. “That can’t be right.”
Manynests answered with a sharp chirp, then pointed his beak down the hill.
“What about the leader?”
Manynests chirped a question.
“The phaerimm leader,” Galaeron said. “The one you dropped the barb on.”
The finch peeped angrily.
“All right, the one you attacked,” Galaeron said. “What did she do about that phaerimm?”
The bird’s answer caused Galaeron to limp around the tree as fast as he could move. There were no phaerimm in the courtyard surrounding the statue—at least at first glance—and there was nothing where the leader should have been, save for a puddle of steaming black blood.
“She let it go!” Galaeron cried. “Takari left her post!”
Manynests dropped out of the tree. He landed on one of the darts still protruding from Galaeron’s shoulder. He twilled a long question, then cocked his head and looked down the hill toward the battle.
“No,” Galaeron growled. “I really don’t think Kuhl needed her help.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
2 Eleasias, the Year of Wild Magic
Whether the caustic taste in her mouth was ash or fear, Keya Nihmedu could not say. She knew only that her tongue had gone as dry as a flame, that it had become impossible to tell the shuddering of the ground from her own trembling, and that the child in her belly would be lucky to see the world with its own eyes. Burning bluetops were crashing all around her, horse-sized boulders were tumbling down the slope in a ceaseless c
ascade, and the air was hot enough to bake acorns. The Cold Hand’s objective had sounded simple enough when Galaeron explained it back under the Floating Gardens, but she was hoping he had a backup plan.
Crawling on her belly, Keya crept along beneath the upper slope of the trail cut to where Vala was taking shelter with Kuhl and Burlen. Unlike her elves, who were either lying flat on their bellies keeping a watch up the slope for tumbling boulders or blindly arcing arrows up in the general direction of the enemy, the Vaasans were sitting with their backs to the battle. They were sharing sticks of jerked thkaerth meat and laughing and shoving each other in the shoulder, though they had made concession enough to the fighting to remove their swords from their scabbards and leave them lying at their sides within easy reach.
As Keya approached, Vala removed a stick of dried meat from their rations bag and offered it to her.
“No, thank you,” Keya shouted to make herself heard over the battle roar. “I don’t have much stomach for thkaerth lately.”
Though she hoped the Vaasans would think this was because of her pregnancy, the truth was she simply could no longer stand the sight of cooked meat; it reminded her too much of the burned bodies that lay scattered and unburied throughout all of Evereska. Trying to look as unconcerned as the Vaasans, she drew herself up beside Vala and removed her sword from its scabbard.
“What do you think?” Keya asked. “Concentrate our spell-casters and try to mount a breakthrough?”
Vala replied, “That would only make them easy pickings for the phaerimm.”
“What phaerimm?” Takari asked. “Manynests didn’t say anything about phaerimm.”
“Manynests is a bird. What he can’t see doesn’t exist for him. But they have one.” Vala jerked her thumb over her shoulder and said, “Up there.”
Burlen leaned in front of Vala, looking Keya over with a concerned expression, and held out a piece of jerked thkaerth.
“You sure you don’t want one?” he said. “You need to keep your strength up.”
Keya waved him off and continued to address Vala. “How do you know where the phaerimm is?”
Vala cast a pointed gaze in the direction of a line of charred bodies and said, “The best thing we can do right now is wait.”
A sonorous rumble sounded from above and quickly began to grow louder. Keya started to roll to her stomach so she could crawl up the bank to see what was coming. Vala extended an arm and stopped her, pushing her flat against the slope before lying back herself. The rumble built to rhythmic crashing, then suddenly went silent. A rothé-sized boulder tumbled off the rim of the slope and sailed over their heads, bouncing off the far side of the trail and vanishing into the woods below.
“Mind-slaves aren’t very bright,” Vala said. “Sooner or later, the bugbears will run out of boulders, and the beholders will knock down the last bluetop. Then we attack.”
“We don’t have that long,” Keya objected. “According to Galaeron’s plan, we should be taking out the perimeter defense now, before Khelben and the others arrive with the high mages. Otherwise, the mind-slaves will turn and counterattack—”
“Then that’s when we’ll take them,” Vala interjected. “Or maybe when Aris gets here. If he can hurl a few boulders back up the hill, we might be able to break their line.”
“What we can’t do is attack into the teeth of their defense,” Burlen said. “We’ll just get the Cold Hand wiped out, and who will there be to stop the counterattack?”
Keya glanced past Vala and Burlen to Kuhl, and asked him, “What do you think?”
Kuhl’s expression merely darkened, and he looked away.
“He agrees with us,” Burlen said. “Pay no mind to his manners. He’s letting his sword do his thinking.”
Burlen reached out and slapped his companion in the back of the helmet. Kuhl’s scowl deepened, but he looked away and continued to remain silent.
“Plans are good,” Vala said, drawing Keya’s attention back to the matter at hand. “Once the spell-flinging starts, they aren’t worth the breath it took to speak them. We have to wait for our opportunity—”
She was interrupted by a gusty howl they all recognized as the screech of a wounded phaerimm.
“There’s your thornback!” Keya called. She rolled to her stomach and began to shimmy up the bank. “While we sit here talking, someone is killing it.”
She stuck her head above the rim just far enough to look up the shattered hillside. Fallen bluetops crisscrossed the slope, blast craters pocked the ground, and curtains of fire poured gray fume into the air. Fifty yards above, a long rank of mind-slaves peered down from behind a meandering breastwork, hurling boulders and magic, anything they could down upon the company of the Cold Hand. There were dozens of bugbears and maybe ten beholders, reinforced by a trio of illithids and a handful of vacant-eyed elves, but the wounded phaerimm was nowhere to be seen. The instant it suffered a serious wound, it had no doubt teleported to safety.
The dark dash of an elven death arrow flashed out of a bluetop behind the enemy breastwork and disappeared into the trenches. A beholder rose briefly into view, its sharp-toothed mouth twisted into a grimace of pain. Keya had just enough time to identify the Tomb Guard’s distinctive black-feather fletching on the butt of the arrow before the Cold Hand’s battle mages blazed the creature into a red spray.
A thick human hand grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her back down the slope.
“Get down!” Vala snarled. “Dexon will have my head if I let some beholder burn that pointy-eared head off your shoulders!”
Keya was about to protest when a purple ray droned past above, cutting a deep furrow in the rim of the slope, coming within a finger’s width of disintegrating her skull. Her heart hammered in her chest so hard that she thought it would break a rib, but she managed to retain enough control of her wits to point her darksword up the slope.
“T-T-Takari!”
“Takari?” It was Kuhl who growled, “Where?”
“In a tree,” Keya gasped. “Behind the enemy. I saw her arrow—”
“Which tree?”
Kuhl crawled to the rim and peered through the furrow that had nearly cost Keya her life.
“I don’t see her,” he said.
“Kuhl, she isn’t after your darksword,” Keya told him. The last thing they needed was to renew the fight over his ancestral weapon. “Takari’s trying to help us break through.”
“She’s coming for my sword!” Kuhl insisted. He glanced away from the furrow long enough to scowl in Keya’s direction. “And you—you’re a thieving vixen just like her. The phaerimm took Dexon’s leg, but you’re the one who’s stolen his sword—and his manhood.”
There was a time when the raw rage in Kuhl’s voice would have sent Keya fleeing, but now it only filled her with cold anger.
“Kuhl, I will overlook the affront to me because it is easy to see how your sword might be more powerful than your mind,” she said, “but insult my husband’s manhood again, and you will die choking on yours.”
Keya glared at the Vaasan until she saw enough of the anger fade from his eyes that she felt certain there would be no need to make good on her threat. She glanced over at Vala, who only shrugged and spread her hands. Keya frowned and nodded toward Kuhl. Vala looked away, thinking, then a veil of sadness seemed to fall over her face. She nodded and crawled up the slope next to Kuhl.
With the burly Vaasan safely under control, Keya turned her thoughts back to the battle. She hazarded a glance over the rim and saw that whatever Takari was doing up there, her attacks were having an effect. A patrol of a dozen bugbears that had been dispatched up the hill to hunt her down lay scattered across the slope, some lying motionless with smoking holes through their torsos, others flailing about trying to pull long elven arrows from their backs. Several beholders were sweeping the forest canopy with their disintegration rays, reducing the number of attacks coming down the hill above Keya as well as raining boughs and limbs on the slope.
> Keya slid to the bottom of the embankment and used fingertalk to order the Company of the Cold Hand to assemble behind her, leaving only the archers and every third battle mage to hold their current lines. Within moments, a long stream of warriors began to crawl along the base of the embankment. Keya issued her orders to the first arrivals, along with instructions to pass them along, then she crawled back up to join Vala and the Vaasans.
Vala had her arm across Kuhl’s shoulders and was whispering something into his ear that Keya could not hear.
“Another arrow!” Kuhl growled, pointing. “There she is.”
Kuhl started to rise and charge up the hill, but Vala caught him by the belt.
“Not yet, Kuhl,” she said, pulling him back down. “That’s what she wants, isn’t it?”
Kuhl considered a moment then nodded.
“Vala!” Keya gasped. “What are you doing?”
Vala whirled on her with an expression that could only be described as demonic.
“You want to use this or not?” she demanded. “Because Kuhl’s the only chance we have to get there anytime soon.”
As Vala spoke, Burlen continued to speak to Kuhl from the other side.
“She wants you to charge out there alone, doesn’t she?” Burlen asked. “She wants you to get yourself killed.”
“I won’t,” Kuhl replied. “She doesn’t know. She’ll never get my sword.”
There was a darkness in his eyes that Keya had never seen there before, something cold, monstrous, and terrifying risen to mask the laugh-lined face she had come to consider that of one of her human brothers.
“What doesn’t she know?” Keya asked.
“You’ll see,” Vala said. “It’s Kuhl or Takari now. There’s nothing we can do about that, except decide whether we’re ready to use it. Are you?”
Keya glanced along the embankment in both directions and saw a long line of warriors in position to charge up the hill. To an elf, their faces were pale and their knuckles white from squeezing their sword hilts, but their jaws were set and their eyes fixed on Keya, awaiting the command to charge.
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