"I am ready to go!" he called to Ilsevele.
"One moment!" she said. "I have to set Swiftwind loose. He can find his way back to my father's house."
She hurried past him out into the night, then returned, still lacing up her mithral shirt as she gathered her things. She slipped her feet into stout calf-high boots, threw the green cloak of the Guard around her shoulders, and uncased her bow. It was a powerful weapon of deep red yew, crafted from a rare and magical tree found only in Evermeet. She strung it with a single efficient movement.
"By the way," Ilsevele said, "I hope you're skilled with your teleporting spell. I don't want to find myself a few miles out in the ocean if you miss."
"Don't be concerned." Araevin paused to consider where he needed to go. Kileontheal's call was no more than ten minutes old, but who knew what might have happened in that time? "I'll take us directly to my workshop. It's somewhat out of the way, so I should hope we wouldn't appear in the middle of a battle. And I've a few things there that might prove useful, if matters are as desperate as the high mage indicated."
He extinguished the soft lanterns all around the house with a gesture, then took Ilsevele by the arm and spoke the complex words of a spell.
Magic surged through him like a jolt of living fire, powerful, intoxicating, and frightening all at once. There was an instant of icy darkness, a sensation like falling but subtly different, and Araevin and Ilsevele stood in a large, cluttered chamber. Parchment notes lay scattered haphazardly across the workbenches, and a row of narrow theurglass windows looked out over the seaward walls of the Tower on one side of the room. Ilsevele winced and set out a hand to steady herself against the wall.
"Well, you missed the ocean, so we must be in your workshop," she whispered. "Nothing seems out of the order here. Where now?"
"The great hall," Araevin said. "But first…"
He crossed the room quickly to a theurglass-faced cabinet built into one wall. He whispered an arcane word, and the glass door of the cabinet vanished. Theurglass was strong as steel at need, but those who knew how could dismiss it into nothingness or call it back again with a word. Inside the cabinet lay the laspar-wood wand he'd been working on, as well as four more wands and a shirt of gleaming mithral mail. Araevin quickly donned the mail shirt, which was so light it scarcely interfered with even the most difficult spellcasting. He took a wand made of dark zalantar wood, ignoring the others. That one he had ensorcelled with a powerful spell of disruption, meaning to have it at his hip the next time he traveled in Faerun.
Feeling somewhat better prepared for whatever he might find, he moved to the workshop door and carefully pulled it open, peeking out into the corridor outside. It was dimly lit by enchanted lamps at wide intervals, and showed no signs of enemies or friends. In the distance, some destructive spell rumbled menacingly, shaking the Tower, and Araevin caught the ring of steel on steel from far away.
Araevin set off at a trot, gliding swiftly and softly along the hallway. His workshop was high in a little-used tower. He quickly checked the rest of the floor, and descended a winding staircase to the level below. On the landing he found the first of the fallen-one of the Tower guards, savagely clawed or bitten around the face and throat. Araevin could do nothing for her, and so he and Ilsevele continued, following a long hallway to one of the Tower's libraries. The door stood ajar, with another guardsman lying unconscious at its foot. From the room beyond, Araevin caught the hiss and croak of sinister voices. He glanced at Ilsevele and gave her a steady nod. She set an arrow to her string, and nodded back.
Araevin kicked open the door and stormed inside. Two hulking hellspawned monsters, demons or devils or some such creature, crouched inside, pawing through the books and scrolls. They had chitinous bodies of deep red, and beaklike maws beneath green, multifaceted eyes. Their long arms ended in horrible talons that dangled below their knees. A third creature, almost human or elf in appearance except for his red, fine-scaled skin and sweeping batlike wings, stood across the chamber, examining tomes laid out on a great table beneath the windows.
A demon-elf? Araevin hesitated, certain his eyes had deceived him. The features were elf enough-narrow skull, subtly pointed ears, eyes gently inclined down at the inner corners-but hellish malice glowed in those green eyes, and the bared teeth were small, sharp fangs. His stomach twisted in horror as the monsters wheeled to face him, jaws clacking, while the winged one started to bark out the words to a spell.
From over Araevin's shoulder, a pair of silver arrows streaked out and took the first of the insect fiends in the jaw, vanishing up to the feathers in its foul mouth. It went to all fours, black blood gushing from the wound. Araevin leveled his wand at the others and snapped out the wand's activating word. A shrill, deafening sound split the air as a coruscating blue bolt sprang out from the wand. It blasted past the second insect creature, who ducked away from the blast and snatched up an iron trident, but it caught the winged demon-elf in the midst of his spell and hammered him into the other wall. Bookshelves splintered and heavy tomes cascaded down on the creature.
"Taksha! Erthog! Slay them!" the winged one cried out.
The insect fiend took two steps and hurled its heavy iron trident at Araevin, who yelped despite himself and twisted to one side. He stumbled out of the doorway as the weapon thudded into the door with enough force to bring all three of its points clear through the thick oak. Araevin scrambled to his feet to cast a spell, sending five streaking missiles into the hellborn monster attacking him. The creature came on undeterred, its great talons raking inch-deep furrows in the wall behind him.
"Araevin! What are these things?" Ilsevele called.
She darted into the room herself, circling behind a table and loosing more arrows at the hellspawn. One arrow shattered on the thick plates of the creature's shoulder, but another sank into the eye of the monster who already had two in its throat, and a third punched a hole through the membranous wing of the red-scaled sorcerer, just then picking himself up from the ground after Araevin's disrupting bolt.
"Mezzoloths!" Araevin answered.
He'd never encountered the things himself, but he had read of them in his researches-mercenaries of the lower planes, powerful fiends who served any master who could meet their price. The monster Ilsevele had shot crumpled to the ground and abruptly discorporated into black, stinking mist, returning back to whatever foul plane it had been summoned from.
Araevin danced back from his own adversary to gain himself room to use another spell. Having observed the damage wreaked in the library by his first disrupting bolt, he didn't want to use the wand again unless he had to. He started on a spell of dismissal, but the winged demon-elf beat him to the punch, hurling a brilliant white orb into the fray. The spinning white disk exploded into a blast of unearthly cold and razor-sharp splinters of ice, peppering both Araevin and Ilsevele, as well as the pursuing mezzoloth. Araevin grunted in pain, but he kept his feet.
Enough of this, he thought. No sense saving my spells if I let these creatures claw Ilsevele or me to death.
He allowed himself to slide away from the mezzoloth raking at him while carefully focusing his attention on a deadly spell. The insectile monster surged forward, seeking to overwhelm him before he could finish, but Araevin snapped out the last word just as the fiend's beak descended toward him. From his outstretched finger a brilliant emerald ray sprang, taking the mezzoloth full in the chest. The creature seemed to glow bright green, screeching in agony, and it discorporated into sparkling dust and streaming, foul smoke.
Araevin shifted his attention to the bat-winged sorcerer across the room. The demonspawn, hobbled by arrows in its hip and thigh, snarled out a vicious curse that wove a wall of darkness behind it as it ducked through the opposite door.
"Araevin! I can't see it!" Ilsevele cried. "It fled," Araevin said.
He quickly dispelled the darkness, and glanced at his betrothed. Ilsevele had an arrow on her string. Patches of frostburn gleamed along one arm and the sid
e of her face, but her eyes were bright and hard.
"Are you hurt?" he asked her.
"It's nothing, just a touch of that ice spell the one with the wings threw," she replied. "You?"
"The same," Araevin said, then nodded at the other end of the library. "Come on, we'd better see if more of these things are still roaming around."
They hurried out of the library, but their adversary was nowhere in sight. This corridor was a grand hall, wide and tall, leading to the great hall itself, where Araevin had met with the high mages a tenday-and-a-half before. A furious battle had been fought in the corridor. The walls were scorched by fiery blasts and broken by lightning bolts, and a dozen more elf guards lay dead alongside three of the sinister winged sorcerers.
Araevin halted and stared at the scene in horror. He had known many of the dead guards for decades.
"By the Seldarine," he whispered. "What happened here?"
Violet light flared at the end of the hall, and an ear-splitting thunderbolt shook the Tower.
"Whatever it is, it is not over yet," Ilsevele said.
She and Araevin picked their way through the shattered corridor to the great doors at the end, splintered and hanging crookedly from their hinges. The great hall of Reilloch Domayr lay on the other side of the doorway. The two elves glided up to the smoking oaken doors and peered inside.
In the center of the room, a fierce band of mezzoloths and other hellborn monsters stood around a large iron hoop or ring lying on the marble floor. Elf mages and warriors sheltered behind the tall columns ringing the room, surrounding the creatures. The Tower's defenders hurled spell and arrow at the invaders, even as the yugoloths and their winged sorcerers blasted back at the elves with their own infernal magic, filling the great hall with scathing rays of fire and glowing magical darts. Dead and wounded elves littered the chamber. The iron ring glowed with a ruddy light, and half a dozen of the attackers who had been standing within its confines-including, Araevin noted, the wounded sorcerer who had escaped him in the library, as well as another mezzoloth bearing a large iron coffer-ghosted into nothingness.
"They're teleporting away!" cried several of the elf defenders.
The last of the infernal attackers stepped back into the hoop. Araevin broke from his cover and hurled a blazing sphere of lightning into their midst, while Ilsevele followed, her bow thrumming like a deadly harp as she sent arrow after arrow into the band. Two skeletal demons with swords of blazing bone crumpled under her deadly rain, but one of the winged sorcerers smothered Araevin's lightning orb with a quick countering spell of its own. The demon had a shirt of fine golden scale mail, and wore its long black hair in thick braids laced with gold wire. A jeweled eye patch covered one eye. The creature fixed its good eye on Araevin and grinned maliciously.
"You'll have to do better than that," it rasped.
"As you wish!" Araevin growled. He gestured and snapped out the words of the deadliest spell he could manage, hurling a scything blast of rainbow-colored doom at the invaders. Each glittering ray carried its own deadly energy, and the great hall crackled with the power of Araevin's attack. But the demons within the iron ring were already fading into nothingness, vanishing away from the great hall. Araevin's prismatic blast scoured the space where they had stood only a moment before.
Araevin swore and started forward to see if he could decipher the workings of the teleporting ring, but at that instant an enormous blast of green fire exploded out from the device. Agonizing heat seared Araevin as he hurled himself to the ground, and all around him he heard the screams and cries of those other elves who were too close.
The chamber fell silent, save for the low crackle of guttering fires and the pelting of the rain, falling through a gap blasted in the great hall's dome. The emerald blast had seemingly contained a spell that carried away the bodies of the winged sorcerers that had fallen, since none of the creatures remained in the great hall. The iron hoop on the floor was nothing but a twisted band of scorched metal, its magic gone. Araevin slowly picked himself up, wincing with pain.
I should have prepared a spell against fire, he thought. But then, how could I have known that I would become embroiled in a spell battle such as this?
He turned and looked for Ilsevele, and found her slowly standing up from behind a heavy column that had shielded her from the worst of the blast.
"Ilsevele-?"
"I'm fine," she said. She stared at the hall, her face grim. "Sehanine, have mercy. So many have fallen here. Nothing to do now but see if we can do anything for the wounded."
Araevin nodded, but first he paced over the remains of the iron circle. He picked up a single twisted piece of metal in his fist.
Where are the high mages? he wondered silently. Have they fallen as well?
Then, with a sigh, he let the debris clatter to the floor, and turned to help with the injured.
CHAPTER 2
15 Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms
As the dim sunrise glimmered in the tower's window slits, Araevin gathered with the surviving mages of Reilloch Domayr in the conservatory. The great hall was in no condition to host a meeting of the circle. He left Ilsevele to lead the Tower guards in scouring the grounds for any enemies who might have been left behind by their comrades' escape.
The conservatory was a large, high-ceilinged hall that occupied the entire upper floor of the gatehouse. It was floored with gleaming old oak, and its paneled walls were finished with dark cherry carved in sylvan scenes. The place was used as a recital hall by the bards and music students who drifted through Tower Reilloch. Araevin had attended many recitals there, but had little gift for music himself. He found five mages waiting for him there.
"Welcome, Araevin," said the Loremaster Quastarte. He was a sun elf of great age, his eyes dark with wisdom in his young-old face, his hair so thin and white it seemed like a nimbus flowing down his shoulders. "We are all here, then."
"We are all that remains?" Araevin asked, astonished.
He glanced around the room, unable to keep himself from looking to see if he had perhaps missed one of his colleagues. Beside Araevin, there had been eight others who held the rank of mage. But only five of Araevin's colleagues were there: Quastarte, the wood elf sorcerer known as Eaglewind, the diviner Yesvellde Shaerim, the half-elf battle-mage Jorildyn, and the young abjurer Faelindel.
"I know that Earelde fell," Araevin continued, "but where are Olleile and Starsong?"
"Both slain in their Reverie. The invaders broke into their chambers before the alarm was raised," Quastarte said.
"Aillesel seldaritf, Araevin said softly. "The Seldarine preserve us. There is no end to the sorrow of this day." He bowed his head, hesitating before asking his next question. "The high mages?"
"We have not found Philaerin yet," said Quastarte, "but the fact that he was not seen in the battle and has not appeared since leads me to fear the worst. He was not in his chambers."
The others nodded in agreement. If Philaerin lived, he would have defended the Tower.
"Kileontheal lives, but she is grievously wounded," Yesvelde said. Yesvelde was a moon elf, with long dark hair and a distant, ethereal manner to her. She carried a sleek cat in her arms, her familiar Versei. Araevin felt thea quick gray shadow of Whyllwyst flicker across his heart, but made himself focus on Yesvelde's words. "She was struck senseless by a spell of insanity during the fight outside the great hall, a few minutes after issuing her call to the circle. She fled the battle, hurling spells at imaginary foes in the tower halls until she exhausted her power." The illusionist sighed. "I had no means to undo the enchantment afflicting her, so I directed the guards to confine her in her quarters and keep her under constant care until we can find a healer for her."
"Aeramma Durothil is dead," said Eaglewind. He was a grave and quiet fellow for a wood elf, more at home in the solitude of the forest than in the company of his peers. Araevin sometimes suspected that he was a sylvan creature of some sort who simply wore the shape of a woo
d elf for the convenience of the others, but he had never pressed the question. "I found him in the astrolabe an hour after the raiders fled. It looked like he destroyed a number of those who came against him. I found shadows shaped like demons blasted into the walls there."
"So one high mage is dead, one missing, and one incapacitated," Araevin sighed. "And three of us are dead, as well. What of the initiates and the other folk of the Tower?"
The initiates were the lesser wizards and sorcerers, those who were still new in their studies and not yet accounted members of the Circle. There had been fourteen of them.
Jorildyn, a seasoned battle-mage, stepped forward. He had human blood-something that was quite unusual on Evermeet, and regarded with great suspicion in some quarters-and was thickly built compared to the others, with a gray-streaked beard and a gruff manner.
"Four initiates are dead," the half-elf reported. "We also lost nine of the Tower Guards and several more of the Tower folk. About twenty are wounded, but all should recover with care." His face was grim. "We must see to our defenses at once, and make sure this cannot happen again."
"We will need a high mage for that, and none are available," Araevin observed. "We must suffice, then. Quastarte, you are the eldest among us. I will be content to follow your orders."
"You are a more skillful wizard than I, Araevin. I would not presume to command you. Or any of you, for that matter. I can only suggest what seems wise to me."
"Then let us hear what seems wise to you, Loremas-ter," Jorildyn said, "and we will take your suggestions as commands."
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