Final Gate (19 page)

Make it something they’re not expecting, he decided. With one swift motion he drew Keryvian. He counted to four, and he threw open the door and leaped back into the hall.

He found himself face-to-face with two drow archers, hurrying up to the door with bows in hand. The dark elves halted in astonishment, fumbling to draw and shoot. Fflar threw himself at the first archer and cut him down with a great overhand swing of Keryvian that struck sparks from the marble floor after laying the assassin open from collarbone to groin.

The second drow backed up two steps and shot. Fflar tried to spin out of the way, but the arrow caught him high in the left arm. The range was so close that the archer drove the shaft completely through mail, flesh, and mail again, transfixing Fflar’s arm. Fflar cursed and stumbled, but he finished his spin within sword reach of his foe and skewered him through the middle with a single deadly thrust. The dark elf groaned and slumped to the ground.

Drow? What in the world are drow doing here? Fflar leaned over the dying archer at his feet. “Who sent you?” he demanded. “Who are you working for?”

Stealthy footsteps rushed up behind him. Fflar whirled and raised Keryvian just in time to block a murderous thrust from a third drow, who snarled in frustration and launched a furious attack. The fellow was armed with a slender rapier, and his swordplay was blindingly quick. Keryvian was really too heavy to fence with, especially with a wounded arm, and Fflar narrowly avoided at least three deadly thrusts in the space of as many heartbeats.

“Die, lightwalker!” the drow hissed. He launched another vicious thrust at the center of Fflar’s belt buckle, but Fflar turned aside and let the rapier’s point glide past him, slicing a neat furrow in his tunic. He was far too close to make use of Keryvian’s point or edge, so he simply smashed the baneblade’s pommel into the drow’s face. Teeth shattered and bone crunched. The swordsman staggered in his tracks, until Fflar took his head off with a backhand swing.

Panting in the shadows of the manor, Fflar looked around for any more assailants, but none appeared. Before he could think about it, he set down his blade and snapped off the arrow shaft in his arm. Then he yanked it clear and threw it to the ground, stifling a ragged cry of pain. He hoped it wasn’t poisoned. Drow knew more about poisons than anybody had a right to.

“Another kind of assignation, indeed,” he muttered. If he ever got his hands on Terian, he’d wring her pretty neck.

Three dead drow in an empty manor-a manor he was lured to, specifically at this very time. Why in the world would drow want him dead? Of course, they had to be working for Terian, that was a given. Or she was working for them. But for what purpose? He stood silent for a moment, trying to puzzle it out, and it came to him.

“Damn it all to the Abyss,” he snarled. “Ilsevele!”

Without another thought he rammed Keryvian back into its sheath, then turned and dashed out into the evening. In the lane outside, he reached into his vest pocket again and found another potion bottle. Ilsevele had insisted that he should be prepared for almost anything before setting out for his mysterious appointment, and so she had given him several of the more useful potions she and the others had brought from Semberholme. Fflar took a moment to make sure he had the right one and drank down its contents. Then he leaped up into the air.

The magic of the potion carried him up into the sky. Whooping in surprise and sudden panic, Fflar spun wildly in midair and nearly landed even quicker than he had taken off, but then he got the hang of it. In a matter of moments he was arrowing over the rooftops of Tegal’s Mark, streaking toward the Sharburg.

Treetops and streetlamps streaked by under him. Fflar saw a handful of people in the streets below look up in amazement, pointing and shouting as he sped past. The roaring of the wind in his ears drowned out their words. It might have been wiser to try to circle the town or perhaps fly a higher, slower arc, but he was beyond such concerns. If the Sembians didn’t like him flying over the town, they could damn well take it up with him after he was certain that Ilsevele was safe. His arm burned and tingled, blood flowing freely from the arrow wound, and Fflar found his vision beginning to swim drunkenly.

It’s just the potion, he told himself. Flying is too much for the senses, especially after you lose a little blood. But his arm ached and burned with a strange cold sensation that he didn’t like at all.

“Fight it off a little longer,” he snarled at himself. “A little longer.”

The towers of the Sharburg loomed before him, and he saw the high windows of the banquet hall where Selkirk had received them before. He angled down and swooped in at the castle, flashing across the battlements so swiftly that the sentries walking there could only stare dumbfounded. Then he threw his arms up over his face and barreled through the nearest of the windows in a shower of breaking glass. He glimpsed dozens of Sembians, Ilsevele and her guards, even a quartet of musicians, all frozen in amazement. Then he overshot them all and slammed into a vintner’s table, sending bottles and fine glass flying everywhere.

“What in the world—?” Miklos Selkirk snarled. He surged to his feet, his hand leaping for his sword hilt.

“Starbrow!” cried Ilsevele. She stood too, and started toward him.

Fflar’s vision reeled from side to side, and he hurt all over. But somehow he found his way to his feet. “Ilsevele,” he groaned. “It’s a trap! A trap!”

Ilsevele whirled around, seeking a threat. Around her, Sembians and elves scrambled to their feet, all looking wildly from side to side. She turned to Selkirk to demand an explanation—and behind her, the quartet of musicians calmly set down their lutes and bitterns, and raised deadly wands instead.

Fflar threw himself into motion, racing crookedly across the floor. The musicians were simply too far, but he launched himself headlong toward Ilsevele just as the assassins barked their commands and unleashed a storm of fire and lightning in the crowded hall. He managed to fling her to the floor as a brilliant blue-white bolt burned through the air where she had been standing, charring his back instead. Hot white agony seemed to pick him up and throw him down again, leaving him contorted on the hard stone floor. Screams of panic and mortal agony filled the air, amid the angry roar of searing magical flame and the deafening crack! of lightning bolts exploding in the elegant hall.

Ilsevele picked herself up and drew a wand of her own from the sleeve of her beautiful gown, now torn and blackened. She aimed it at the nearest of the assassins and cried out, “Elladyr!”

A coruscating bolt of white energy shot out and caught the fellow in the center of his chest, flinging him head over heels through the smoking wreckage of the bandstand. The others responded with another barrage of spells that wreaked even more carnage in the hall.

“Defend Lady Miritar!” Fflar croaked.

He rolled to all fours and shook his head to clear it of the ringing and the dizziness. It didn’t work, but he planted one foot on the ground and levered himself upright, drawing Keryvian. The banquet hall was nothing less than screaming, smoke-wreathed pandemonium, the equal of any battlefield he had ever set foot on. Several of the Sembian lords, led by Selkirk himself, rushed the bandstand and struck up a furious melee with the surviving assassins.

Ilsevele whirled and fired her wand again, this time at a crossbow-wielding sniper who appeared on one of the upper balconies overlooking the hall. The thundering lance of white energy smashed the balcony to pieces, dropping the fellow to the floor below in a cascade of rubble.

Fflar turned, looking for any other threat, just in time to see an assassin dressed in the livery of a wine steward stealing up behind Ilsevele, a wavy-bladed dagger in his hand. But the young captain Seirye, so badly burned and charred that he couldn’t even hold a blade in his gnarled hands, simply lurched into the knife wielder and held him up for a crucial moment. The blade flashed once, then twice, and Seirye sank to the floor, still clawing at the killer’s tunic. But the young elf’s valor was not in vain. Before the knifeman could pull himself free, Fflar staggered over and took his arm off at the shoulder with one wild, off-balance swing.

“Drow! They’re drow!” cried one of the Sembians.

Fflar glanced down at the man he’d just downed, and saw the magical guise slip away with the assassin’s death. In place of a round-faced, unremarkable human, an ebonskinned drow with red eyes lay staring sightlessly up at him.

“I could have told you that,” he muttered to no one in particular.

Keryvian rang shrilly on the stone floor. He looked down, surprised that he had dropped the blade. He leaned over to pick up the sword, but lost his balance entirely and crumpled to the ground beside his blade. Fight it! Fight it! he raged, trying to find the strength to push himself upright again. But all he managed to do was roll weakly onto his back. He found himself looking up at the proud banners that hung in the upper part of the hall, now burning merrily from the fireballs and lightning bolts that had been loosed in the attack.

The hall seemed to fall silent. The ringing of steel on steel faded, and no more thunderbolts or roaring blasts of flame split the smoke-filled hall. The battle was over, and a dozen drow warriors lay scattered here and there on the floor, still dressed in the tatters of their disguises.

“Starbrow! Starbrow!” Ilsevele rushed up to him and fell to her knees at his side, grasping his hand in hers. Tears streaked her face. “What happened? Are you hurt? What’s wrong?”

“Arrow in the arm,” he managed. “I think … I’ve been poisoned.”

“You saved me,” she murmured. “Just like the time you faced the ghost in the vault. You saved me again, Starbrow.”

“I couldn’t let you get hurt, Ilsevele,” he said. He was so tired … all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep. “I couldn’t bear it.”

“I know.” Ilsevele smiled through her tears, and she leaned over him, her hair of fiery red cowling her face and his, and kissed him deeply, passionately, her hands cupping his face and lifting him up to her. “Stay with me, Starbrow,” she whispered between her kisses. “Don’t die, not now! Stay with me.”

Somehow he found the strength to reach one hand up to her face, to caress her perfect face and brush away her tears. Then he laced his fingers in her hair and gently pulled her down to kiss her again, to feel her breath mingling with his, her lips warm and soft.

“I won’t die,” he whispered to her. “I’ve found what I came back for.”

Then he fell away into darkness, still lost in her emerald eyes.

*****

Araevin and his companions passed the night, such as it was, in a princely suite. Ornate lanterns of gold ringed the room, but the dim lanterns did little to push back the encroaching darkness outside, and nothing at all to alleviate the bitter cold. They eventually had to make use of the sleeping-furs waiting atop the great round beds, even though Araevin’s skin crawled at the dusty age of the covers. He couldn’t avoid the impression that he was wrapping himself in the cerements of the grave.

After what seemed like an age in the dimly lit apartments, two of Selydra’s pallid warriors came for them. Araevin and his friends followed the Lorosfyrans through the long, echoing corridors of the palace for quite a distance. Shadows gathered in each doorway they passed, fleeing their light slowly and reluctantly. They came to a winding staircase and climbed up a floor, and their grim guides led them out into a courtyard of sorts. A tall white tree grew in a knurled knot of clawlike branches and leaping roots. Not a single leaf graced its sharp branches, but here and there dark red fruit like drops of blood gleamed in the darkness.

Araevin surveyed the rest of the court carefully, and found a blank trapezoidal archway a short distance to his left. A portal like the one above, he realized. That might be useful later.

“The Pale Sybil comes,” whispered the dead warrior.

From another passageway leading into the courtyard, a ghostly pale light grew. Selydra drifted into the courtyard, still dressed in the raiment of silver and white in which she had first greeted her guests. Two of the hunched giants followed behind her, stooping to fit in the hallway. She paused, studying Araevin and his friends, her face set in a look of smooth, cool bemusement.

“Welcome, travelers,” she said. “I trust your sleep was restful?”

“Nothing tried to kill us,” Maresa said. The genasi made a show of gazing around the courtyard, admiring the stonework and the barren white tree. “What a strange tree that is! We don’t have any like that back in Waterdeep.”

“It is a sussur tree,” Selydra answered her. She seemed amused by Maresa’s insincerity. “It is rare indeed, growing only in those places where Faerzress exists in sufficient strength to nourish it. The tree subsists on the magical emanations of the Underdark.”

“Interesting,” Araevin murmured, feigning a calm he did not feel. “I have never seen anything quite like it.”

“I have found that Lorosfyr is full of unsuspected wonders,” Selydra said. She approached the company, and the sussur tree whispered softly as she came near. “So, Araevin, you have said that you have an urgent need for the gemstone in my possession. What is so pressing that you would leave the surface world and come here to find my shard?”

“I must sunder a very old and powerful mythal,” Araevin said. “Demonspawned sorcerers have seized the ruins of Myth Drannor for their stronghold and are protected by its ancient spells. Thousands of people will die or fall into slavery if I fail to stop them. No place in—or below— Faerun will be safe.”

“I am not unmoved by your plea, Araevin,” Selydra said. She descended into the court by the tree and sat on a stone bench, brushing her midnight hair away from her face. “But the artifact that has found its way into Lorosfyr could be gainfully employed here. You have no doubt noticed the swordwights who attend me here. There is an entity in this lightless place that consumes life and magic. These poor wretches were devoured by the hungry power in this old city. I think that the device you describe may hold enough magical power to finally slake the slayer of this city.”