Farthest Reach (16 page)

“Araevin, the portal!” Ilsevele cried.

“A moment,” he said, watching Starbrow and his foe.

The moon elf danced back three steps to the side as the swordsman launched a furious assault, and Araevin saw his opportunity. He quickly chanted a spell, even as he felt enemy magic lashing against his spellshield, and raised up from the ground a great arching dome of white frost. In the blink of an eye the frost thickened and spread, making an impenetrable barrier of pure white ice that shut their enemies outside.

“We have only a moment,” he told his companions. “It won’t take them long to dispel or destroy the ice. Follow me through the portal as quickly as you can!”

Then he turned and barked the words of the ancient Elvish pass phrase, waking the portal from blank gray stone to a glowing silver door in the side of the hill. Without another word he leaped through, trusting to his own example to encourage his comrades to hurry after him.

He stumbled into the barrel-vaulted mausoleum chamber, his ears ringing from the sounds of the battle he had just left behind. Automatically he moved away from the portal, making sure that he was not in the way for the next to follow. The portal flashed silver, and Ilsevele and Filsaelene tumbled through together, followed by Maresa, and finally Starbrow. The moon elf picked up Filsaelene by one arm, and waved Keryvian toward the far end of the room.

“Stand back!” he cried. “The ice wall gave out, and they are on our heels!”

“Not if I can do something about it,” Araevin muttered.

The portal was intermittent and unreliable, but there was always the chance that the daemonfey might get lucky, and succeed in activating the portal again. Fortunately, he knew a spell to shut down a portal, at least for a time. He retrieved a pinch of spidersilk and mortar dust from his bandolier of spell reagents, and quickly spoke the words of a sealing spell.

It might have been because he hurried the spell, or simply because the magic of the portal was so old, but whatever the cause, Araevin shattered the ancient spell of the portal. The blank stone face of the doorway cracked like a thick pane of glass struck by a hammer, creating a jagged spiderweb of fractures. He staggered back, hands and arms burning with the shock of the broken spell, and bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood.

“Damn!” he gasped.

“That,” said Starbrow, “seems to be a very well-sealed door. I don’t think they’ll follow us through that.”

“I ruined it,” Araevin groaned. “The portal’s gone.”

“Right now, I don’t count that a loss,” Filsaelene said. “They’re on that side, and we’re on this side. I don’t know if we could have held them off for much longer.”

“You don’t understand,” Araevin said. “I stopped them from following us, yes, but when we want to use this doorway again, we won’t be able to.” He sighed, furious with his own clumsiness. All questions of practicality aside, he hated to be the mage responsible for wrecking a work of magic that might have been a thousand years old. It made him feel like a vandal.

“I don’t know if that is a loss worth regretting, Araevin,” Ilsevele said. She stood up and gingerly looked down at the scorch marks on her armor. “After that fight, the daemonfey are certain to guard that portal exit heavily. We probably couldn’t have used it again, even if we wanted to.”

“So, what now?” Maresa asked.

“Back to the mountain fortress, and Myth Glaurach,” Starbrow said at once. “We have to tell Seiveril and the others where the daemonfey are hiding.”

“Agreed,” Araevin said. “And Sarya has found herself another mythal to twist to her own purposes. We have to stop her before she gathers a new army here.”

Ilsevele looked over at Starbrow, and offered him a small smile. “For what it’s worth, Starbrow, that was some of the finest swordplay I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe you’re still in one piece after standing in front of that four-armed monster.”

The moon elf winced, looking down at the slashes he hadn’t turned aside. “It’s not the first time I’ve fought such as him,” he remarked. “Now, let’s get going before they think to gather some teleporting demons and come here looking for us.”

*****

The Citadel of the Raven stood on a high, windswept hilltop many miles to the north of Zhentil Keep itself. Legend had it that the forbidding walls and deep-delved halls beneath the ground had been made by giants, and Scyllua had never managed to think of a better explanation for stairs better than two feet tall and doorways sixteen feet in height. She climbed through the glowering black ramparts, taking the wooden risers that had been fitted between the fortress’s cyclopean stairways. It was bitterly cold, despite the weak spring sunshine. The citadel was dozens of miles north of even the northern shores of the Moonsea, and the high elevation and lack of cover seemed to invite cold, shrieking winds from the vast wilderness beyond.

She paid little attention to her own discomfort. She rarely did, after all. Her mind was fixed on other things, and she had long ago discovered that clarity and determination could overcome any bodily weakness, such as fatigue or hunger or pain. Purpose was all one needed, and that was something that Scyllua Darkhope had in abundance.

She reached the gates to the Stone Court, the inmost bailey of the great keep, and swept past a dozen mailed guards who wore the black-and-yellow surcoats of Zhentil Keep, not even noticing their nervous salutes. Within the high court stood several large, strong towers, armories and barracks and banquet rooms fit for a royal seat, but Scyllua walked past these to a squat round bulwark at the far end of the keep. This sturdy tower housed the Temple of the Black Lord, the citadel’s shrine to Bane, the fearsome patron of the Zhentarim and Scyllua’s absolute lord and master.

Temple guards in black and green stared straight ahead as she climbed the steps, refusing to acknowledge her presence—as was only right and proper. As warriors of Bane entrusted with their sacred post, they bowed to no one. Scyllua passed into the fane beyond, where a towering idol of black stone carved in the shape of a mighty armored lord stood. Without hesitation, she threw herself down on the cold stone floor and abased herself.

“Great lord,” she murmured, “Favor your worthy servant, and destroy any who displease you. At your word the heavens tremble and the earth groans. I am a sword in your hand. Let me be the instrument with which you smite your enemies.”

“You stand high in the Black Lord’s favor, Scyllua,” came a voice from above her. “Some mouth the words of that prayer and secretly hope that our dread master never takes them up on the offer. You, however, possess true zeal. The Black Lord has plans to do just as you ask, I am sure of it. Now, what brings you to the Citadel of the Raven? The last I heard, you were busy fortifying the vale of the Tesh.”

Her prayer finished, Scyllua easily climbed to her feet despite the heavy armor she wore, and turned to face the speaker. He was a tall, powerfully built man, with thick arms and a broad, square jaw. A mane of deep red hair framed a pale face dominated by a long, drooping mustache.

“I crave an audience with the Anointed Hand of the Black Lord, Lord Fzoul,” she said, bowing deeply.

Fzoul Chembryl smiled coldly, an expression that failed to warm the measuring malice in his hooded eyes.

“Such formality is hardly necessary between us, Scyllua.

You are no mere novice or underpriest, after all.”

“We are all novices before the Great Lord Bane, Lord Fzoul.”

“Yes, of course. But you must take care, Scyllua, to avoid the sin of humility. The Great Lord demands abasement in the face of one’s betters, true, but he also requires us to govern absolutely those who stand below us in the grand hierarchy Bane has prescribed for mankind. To suggest that any novice or initiate is your equal in the eyes of the

Mighty King of All is to deny Bane’s will.”

Fzoul inclined his head to the idol that towered over the shrine, and descended to the chapel floor.

“Yes, Lord Fzoul. I submit myself for correction.”

“I deem no more necessary—this time. Now, I doubt that you came here to seek my instruction on minor matters of the Black Lord’s tenets. I am going to take some air on the walls. Consider your audience granted, and join me on my walk.”

Fzoul strolled out of the temple into the citadel’s courtyard, pausing in the doorway to hold his arms outright while a pair of attendants quickly draped a heavy mantle over his garments to keep him warm. He paid them no mind, nor did Scyllua. “There is something very odd going on in Myth Drannor,” she began.

“There is always something odd going on in that dreadful elven wreck. It’s the nature of the place.”

Fzoul climbed slowly up a nearby stairway to the top of the wall, ignoring the fiercely cold wind. In the distance, long, knifelike peaks still held flanks full of snow. The High Priest of Bane paused to survey the view.

“I would not report a routine occurrence to you,” Scyllua said. “A few days ago, the wizard Perestrom of the Black Network came to me in Wash. He told me that the ruins of the city are now occupied by an army of demonspawned sun elves. He guessed that better than a thousand of these creatures occupy the ruins, and he also said that a great number were competent sorcerers as well as swordsmen.”

“Demonspawned sun elves?” Fzoul asked. He pulled his gaze from the distant peaks.

“I rode to Myth Drannor to see for myself, leading a small company of trusted soldiers.” Scyllua possessed an unusual steed, a nightmare of ghostly white. The demonhorse could gallop through other planes at need, and gave her the ability to ride fast and far by strange roads indeed. “Perestrom’s observations were accurate. There is an army of these fellows gathering in Myth Drannor. I took the liberty of instructing the clerics and mages in my command to scry and divine what they could of this, and they gave me a name: the daemonfey.”

“Now that is interesting,” Fzoul said. He pulled on one side of his mustache, thinking. “You may not have heard, yet, but I have just learned that the elves fought some kind of fiere campaign in the Delimbiyr Vale over the last couple of months. Soldiers of Silverymoon were sent into the High Forest to confront orcs led by demonic sorcerers, and an army of demons appeared near the ruins of Hellgate Keep and marched south into the trackless mountains where the elven city of Evereska is reputed to lie. A great battle was fought on the Lonely Moor only a few tendays ago.”

Scyllua nodded. The Delimbiyr Vale was more than five hundred miles distant, but Zhentarim spies and merchants were firmly established in the towns of Llorkh and Loudwater, which were not too far away. And Zhent agents had a way of gathering rumors from the savage races of the North, the orcs and goblins and such. If elf armies were marching around in the wilds of the Graypeaks, the orcs would have noticed.

“Were these daemonfey involved with that, my lord?”

“Our sources passed on stories of demon-elves and such, but I had frankly discounted them. But now … hearing of demonspawned elves twice in the course of only a few days, I am much less inclined to treat this as groundless rumor.” Fzoul resumed his pacing, his hands clasped before his chest. “So you say they are in Myth Drannor. What is the significance of an army in Myth Drannor?”

“It menaces any of the northern or central Dales,” Scyllua replied. “It serves as a check on any designs that Sembia or Hillsfar might have in the region. And it certainly might constitute a threat to our own holdings on the south shore of the Moonsea.”

“They are enemies of the elves. That suggests they are no friends of the Dalesfolk.”

“There is something more. Perestrom also claimed that these daemonfey had the allegiance of the devils of Myth Drannor.”

Fzoul frowned deeply, and continued his walk along the ramparts, passing guards posted along the imposing walls. No enemy was likely to approach the citadel unseen, so the sentries were little more than ornamentation, but Scyllua approved. Discipline and regimentation were the foundations of an army’s strength, and soldiers inured to onerous duties in times of peace would not balk at them in times of war.

“How many devils are there in Myth Drannor?” he wondered aloud. “One hundred? Two hundred?”

“There could be many more than that, if they have been keeping their true strength a secret. And baatezu are certainly clever and patient enough to conceal their numbers if it suits their purposes.”

The lord of Zhentil Keep halted suddenly, looking sharply at his high captain. “I had not considered that possibility.” He glanced off toward the south, as if he might catch a glimpse of the distant elven towers, forest-mantled. “Could this herald the beginning of a fiendish invasion of the Dales? Infernal hordes have brought down more than one kingdom in Faerun.”

“Myth Drannor itself was destroyed by such an invasion six hundred years ago,” Scyllua observed. “At least, powerful fiends captained that army. If they appeared in Cormanthor once, it could happen again.”

Fzoul grinned fiercely and struck one gauntleted fist into the other. “North of Myth Drannor lies Hillsfar. South, east, and west lie sparsely settled Dales. Any way a fiendish army in Myth Drannor turns, one of our enemies stands in the way. If we stood by and did nothing, we could hardly help but to profit from our enemies’ discomfort. How much more could we gain if we actively sought to turn events to our advantage?”

“You have a plan, my lord?” Scyllua asked.

“I will soon,” Fzoul promised. “I want you to march an army to Wash, and be prepared to strike east toward Hillsfar or south toward the Dales, as events demand. In the meantime, I must seek Bane’s will in this matter. Opportunities such as this do not come along every day, and I want to be certain of the mark I’m shooting at before I loose my bolt.”

*****

Araevin protected the portal in the mountain fortress with a powerful spell of sealing, just to make sure that the daemonfey would find it difficult to make use of the portal nexus even if they managed to somehow repair or restore the damaged gate at Myth Drannor. Then they gathered up for burial the body of the dead human mage whose ghost had attacked them, and returned to Myth Glaurach, four days after they had set out to chart Sarya’s portal network.