Final Gate (22 page)

“What? What is it?” Donnor asked. The Lathanderite spoke over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the swordwights.

“One moment,” Araevin answered. He took a deep breath and examined the place, searching for any hint of secret enchantments or hidden wards. He could feel the whispers of old power in the place. Before him the mosaic glowed with the familiar hues of portal magic … strange and overly intricate to Araevin’s experience of such things, but a dormant portal nonetheless. He wove a spell of revealing, examining the magical doorway built into the tiled floor of the court. “I thought so.”

His friends waited. Behind them, Selydra’s swordwights watched impassively. “There is a portal network within this city,” Araevin said. He nodded at the mosaic, and lowered his voice. “We can return to the palace any time we like. For that matter, we can go anywhere the portals reach.”

“Can you tell where all of the portals are?” Jorin asked.

“Yes, though I couldn’t begin to guess what might be waiting for us on the other side of each door. I think I’ve already seen several of the portals, though.”

“So what do you propose?” Nesterin asked.

Araevin shot a look at the swordwights surrounding the company. “I think it is clear that anyone who employs servants such as these cannot be trusted. Our hostess intends to ensnare me if she can. Instead of waiting for her to spring her trap, I think we should try for the shard.”

“We won’t be welcome in Lorosfyr for very long,” Donnor observed.

“Good,” said Maresa. “It’s cold and it’s dark and I hate this place. I’m with Araevin.”

Jorin, Nesterin, and Donnor exchanged looks, and nodded. “We agree,” the Lathanderite said quietly. “How do we begin?”

“Stand on the mosaic,” Araevin said.

He led his friends to the center of the courtyard and paused on the delicate tile. The swordwights followed, but only two of the creatures actually stopped on the mosaic itself. Araevin took a deep breath, and began to work a portal-waking spell.

Selydra’s minions fixed their dead gazes on him but did not intervene. Evidently, the Pale Sybil had not instructed the creatures to stop Araevin from casting spells that did not obviously violate their instructions. That will change in a moment, he decided. Beneath his outstretched hands the blue, green, and purple chips that made up the old mosaic awoke to luminescence. Confidently Araevin grasped the metaphysical presence of the gate and reshaped its governing rules to suit his needs.

“Be ready,” he warned his friends.

The mosaic glowed brighter, and suddenly seemed to vanish beneath their feet. There was an instant of motion, and Araevin and his friends were standing in the courtyard of the sussur tree, in front of the portal he had seen before. The two swordwights who had been standing on the mosaic when Araevin cast his spell stood alongside them. Despite their lifeless silence, the creatures were quick to realize that the travelers were no longer where they were supposed to be. The two Lorosfyrans raised their halberds and rushed at Araevin, but Jorin and Donnor intervened. In the space of ten heartbeats Araevin’s friends cut down the undead creatures.

The sun elf quickly swept the courtyard with his eyes, thinking. He settled on a hallway leading into darkness on the far side of the plaza.

“This way,” he said, and he loped across the flagstones under the white tree and took the steps at the far end two at a time, descending into a long passage that ran deeper into the palace. Whatever else happened, he did not want to linger too close to the sussur tree and its null-magic aura.

The small band hurried through the dimly lit corridors, past huge empty chambers and echoing halls. Araevin paused every few yards to stretch out with his senses, seeking some hint as to the direction of the second shard. It was close, he could feel it, yet it was not clear which passages might lead him closer to his goal. They broke out into another courtyard, this one a narrow cloister surrounded by high walls, and headed for the hallway that continued on the far side.

They were halfway across when dozens of the swordwights poured into the court ahead of them. Araevin halted, and started to retreat the way they had come—only to meet more of the creatures following them, with one of the pallid giants shambling up behind.

“Well, I did not think that Selydra would be truly surprised if we tried for the shard,” Araevin said.

“Damn the luck,” Donnor grated. The Lathanderite took a deep breath and dropped the visor of his helm. “Forward or back, Araevin?”

“Forward,” Araevin answered.

He turned back to seal off their pursuers with a spell, but a strange white radiance abruptly glimmered in the ranks ahead of them. Streamers of pale mist collected in mid-air and coalesced into the form of the Pale Sybil. Cold fury blazed in Selydra’s eyes as she glared at the travelers caught in the center of the courtyard.

“I had thought better of you, Araevin,” Selydra hissed. “While you took your rest in my hall and dined at my table, you plotted treachery of the basest sort! Why, you are nothing more than a common thief.” She drew her scepter of black platinum from the folds of her dress and motioned at the bronze-armored swordwights accompanying her. “Slay all but the mage,” she commanded. With dull rasps the creatures drew their weapons and rushed at Araevin and his friends.

“Donnor, keep her minions at bay!” Araevin barked. “Leave Selydra to me.”

She faced Araevin, her dark eyes narrowed. Araevin did not strike at once, instead waiting to counter whatever spell the Pale Sybil attempted. Selydra hesitated as well, doubtless intending a similar strategy. For a moment neither mage began casting, and they watched each other warily as Araevin’s comrades leaped forward to meet the silent rush of the Pale Sybil’s minions. Steel rang against bronze as battle was joined.

“It seems that one of us does not have the measure of his or her foe,” Selydra said softly. “Let us find out whom.” With a small scowl, she began to speak an enchantment designed to ensnare Araevin’s mind and bend his will to hers.

Araevin hastily incanted a negating spell. For a moment Selydra’s voice seemed to whisper enticingly in his ears, but then the enchantment unraveled and dissipated. He waved his hand to brush away the fading embers of her spell and gather himself for the next enchantment, expecting another attack on the heels of the first.

“I see you are not so easily taken, Araevin,” Selydra called. “I knew you would prove a worthy adversary!”

“I have no wish to be your slave,” Araevin answered.

He began a spell of his own, summoning out of the darkness a whirling chain of emerald-glowing links. The chain crackled and hissed with an oddly grating sound, growing louder and stronger as it emerged from the shadows over Selydra’s head. With a confident turn of his hands he shaped the emerging spell and moved to catch the Pale Sybil in a tightening globe of magical energy.

Selydra frowned and attempted a counterspell. But she failed to excise the spinning green chain that settled around her. Araevin sensed victory—the spell chain would make her own spellcasting nearly impossible if she allowed it to bind her. But at the last moment the enchantress abandoned her attempt to cancel the spell with her own Art, and instead flicked her platinum scepter out to parry the tightening chain. In the space of an instant Araevin’s spell chain vanished, its energy absorbed by Selydra’s scepter.

“A potent spell,” the Pale Sybil murmured.

A dark look flickered across her cold and perfect face. She wove her hands sinuously together and muttered powerful, perilous words. The very stone around Araevin’s feet seemed to groan in reply, and from her outstretched fingertips a sickly purple ray lanced out.

Araevin recoiled in alarm and barked, “lorwel”

In the space of an instant he slid out of the path of the lambent ray, conjuring himself a dozen feet from where he stood. The Sybil’s spell arrowed past him to strike one of her own warriors dueling Jorin on the opposite side of the courtyard.

The luckless swordwight crumbled into dust and bits of pitted bronze.

Jorin spared a quick look over his shoulder and grimaced. “Bane’s black fist,” he muttered. “That was too close.” The ranger twisted out of Selydra’s line of fire and engaged a new foe.

Ignoring the destruction behind him, Araevin responded by fanning his fingers out before him and invoking the brilliant, many-colored rays of his prismatic blast. Rays of blazing red fire and crackling yellow lightning shot past the Sybil, and the beam of emerald poison she parried with a graceful flick of her glossy black scepter.

That’s the second time she’s saved herself with the scepter, he thought. Clearly it was enchanted to absorb magic. He would have to figure out how to get it away from her.

Thinking furiously of the spells he had ready that might serve, he prepared himself for her next attack.

But Selydra did not strike immediately. She studied him avidly for a moment, perhaps considering her own tactics.

“Enough,” she said. “I think you are perhaps a little too dangerous to toy with any longer, and I am growing hungry.”

Araevin started to speak a defensive spell, but Selydra fixed her eyes on his and opened her mouth wide, looking for all the world like she was giving voice to a silent scream, and inhaled deeply. Shadows dark and potent seemed to rush into her open mouth, and Araevin felt something in him tear free from his body and fly to her. The Weave tore away from his grasp, and spells held in his mind faded and vanished as the Pale Sybil literally drank them from his soul.

Appalled, he took several steps back and staggered to a knee. He could see it as a visible phenomenon: a nimbus of ethereal silver light ringed his body, but over his heart it streamed out toward Selydra like a plume of white sand driven by a wild wind. It should have been intensely violent—the wind should have roared in his ears, his hair and clothes should have whipped and flapped in the force of that ethereal blast—but Selydra’s hunger was something that was not at all physical. Even as tatters of his soul seemed to tear loose and fray in the awful storm, Araevin suffered in silence, the blackness of Lorosfyr’s night still and cold around him.

“What are you?” he gasped.

“You are strong, Araevin,” Selydra said. Her voice was a deadly moan. “I have rarely encountered your equal. You will sustain me for many long years, I think.”

“Araevin!” shouted Maresa. “Fight it off! Do something!” She snapped a shot at the Pale Sybil with her crossbow, but the quarrel struck an invisible shield around Selydra and shattered.

She is a vampire of some kind, Araevin thought. She drinks souls and magic, not blood. Any spell he had that might guard him from such an insidious attack was gone already, consumed by the Pale Sybil in her hunger. More were being ripped from him with every moment, and he could feel himself literally fraying away. In the space of moments she would tear his soul free from him, and that would be his destruction.

“Magnificent,” Selydra crooned. Her eyes blazed with a sinister purple light, and there was a feral cast to her face that had not been there before. “Not since I consumed the archmage Talthonn have I tasted such as you!” She stalked closer, reaching out one white hand as if to hold him in place through sheer force of will.

Fight it, he told himself. Saelethil Dlardrageth taught me something about battles within the soul, if nothing else.

With great cry of anguish, Araevin threw all of his heart, his will, into battling Selydra’s consuming hunger. For a moment he stemmed the awful tide, and in the space of that instant he lashed out with a blinding bolt of lightning. It was a deadly enough spell in its own right, but all he really wanted to do was to drive her back and gain a moment to gather himself.

Selydra drank the spell the instant it left his fingertips, and laughed in evil delight. “Surely you can do better than that, Araevin! Have you no more powerful spells than that left to you?”

Araevin’s other knee gave out, and he found himself kneeling on the cold tiles. Think! he raged. She will simply consume any spell you hurl at her. How else to strike back, to break her deadly grasp?

A sudden intuition sprang to his mind. Desperately clutching at the remnants of his magical power, Araevin conjured up a wreath of deadly green flame around his fist. It was a spell meant to smite an enemy, but deliberately he brought his smoldering hand up and set it against his own breast. Searing emerald pain exploded against his chest—but then it vanished at once, drawn away by Selydra’s black hunger.

A tiny green flame sprang into life above the Pale Sybil’s heart. She frowned and looked down in puzzlement—and the small spark burst into a roaring sheath of emerald fire. She shrieked in pain and staggered back … and with that her connection to Araevin was broken, and the black consuming void ceased with the suddenness of a slamming door.

Araevin toppled forward as his soul seemed to snap back into his body with startling force. He heaved a great sobbing breath and clutched a hand to his burned chest, momentarily defenseless. But Selydra was engulfed in green fire, wailing like a banshee. Somehow she managed to gain enough control to rasp out the words of a countering spell and extinguish the flames.

Wreathed in acrid emerald smoke, almost doubled in on herself, Selydra glared at him. Her face twisted in a murderous fury. “I will have you yet,” she hissed. She barked out the words of a teleport spell, and vanished.

Araevin pushed himself to his feet, looking around for any sign of the enchantress. The Pale Sybil’s warriors pressed Donnor, Maresa, Nesterin, and Jorin from all sides. Several of the hunched giants lumbered up after the dead warriors, huge mauls gripped in their massive fists.

“There are too many of them, Araevin!” Nesterin cried. He wheeled and gave voice to a piercing shriek that blew several of the undead warriors into shards of bone and crumpled bronze plate. Jorin and Donnor fought furiously side-by-side, giving ground as they backed out into the courtyard.

“Leave that to me!” Araevin took a deep breath, trying to find his strength again, and took a quick look around. Selydra’s servants crowded both the doorway through which he and his friends had entered, as well as the passage she had emerged from—there was no easy escape in either direction.