Forsaken House (21 page)

“Lord Seiveril, I don’t know if I can spare that many good officers,” Knight-Commander Gaerth said.

“Lord Gaerth, you and Muirreste have the largest, most well organized contingents here. If anyone can spare seasoned commanders, it’s the Silver Guard and the Knights of the Golden Star.” Seiveril offered a stern smile and added, “I don’t want to leave anyone behind who wants to go, and I can’t have them organize their own companies. You will have to help them.”

“We will do our best,” the sun elf knight capitulated with a grimace.

“My thanks,” Seiveril replied. He glanced at each of his principal officers again, and offered a rueful smile “I know it is difficult, but time is pressing. Since we were not permitted to bring Evermeet’s army to aid our kinsfolk in Faerun, we must build the best force we can in the shortest time. I want to send at least some of our strength through the elfgates to Evereska in two days’ time. Now, do we have any other pressing business?”

“I fear so,” said the mage Jorildyn. “Tell me, Lord Seiveril, have you decided which elfgates you wish to use to move the army to Faerun”

“There’s a gate to Evereska about ten miles from here,” Seiveril replied. “I understand it can be held open for several hours at a time, long enough for quite a few troops to march through.”

“I think we should put it under a strong guard.”

Seiveril looked sharply at the mage and asked, “Why?”

“It occurs to me that your crusade could be easily defeated or delayed if it proved impossible to move to Faerun when you would like. If you were forced to use a gate that led to some place hundreds of miles from the fight, you might conclude that you could never get there in time. There are powerful families on the council who feel that you flouted their will by arranging your voluntary crusade. They might be willing to return the favor by denying you the means to leave the isle where and when you wish.”

“You think matters are that serious?” Seiveril asked with a frown.

The heavy-shouldered mage replied, “Are you confident they are not, Lord Seiveril?”

The nobleman studied his chief mage, conscious of the eyes of the other captains on him.

“Lord Gaerth,’ he said, “have your troops provide a guard over the elfgates we intend to use. Mage Jorildyn,

assign a few of your spellcasters to assist him. We may have no cause for such measures, but perhaps it would be better to deter any trouble of this sort than to find out we were wrong.”

16 Ches, the Year of Lightning Storms

The floors above the iron golem’s chamber were in dismal condition, damaged by long exposure to rain and rot. The beams supporting the wooden floors sagged noticeably, and the staircase that had once ascended the tower in a circle following the outer wall was unsafe at best, and simply missing in other places. Araevin finally resorted to casting a flying-spell on Grayth so that the heavily armored human would not have to chance a general collapse of the stairs or the floor. Grayth then helped the others ascend to the floors above, simply carrying them up through the gaping holes where the stairs had formerly climbed.

The second floor above the golem’s chamber seemed to have been the personal chamber of the tower’s builder. The mildewed remnants of an old

canopy bed and several large chests of drawers still stood in the room.

“That’s a human bed,” Ilsevele observed. “Elves don’t use anything like that for Reverie. Are you sure the telkiira is here?”

“Yes,” said Araevin. He rummaged through one of the old chests, finding nothing but a couple of mildewed blankets. “Who was this fellow, I wonder? And how did an elven loregem come to be in his hands?”

“He might have stolen it,” Maresa said. She was searching slowly and carefully along the walls for any sign of a hidden door or compartment. “Or maybe he bought it from someone who stole it from its true owner. For that matter, he might have just bought it from an elf or traded for it, with no duplicity or theft at all—though what’s the fun of that? It’s not much of a mystery, and it’s one we can’t solve anyway, so why bother with it?”

“She has a point,” said Grayth.

Araevin shrugged. It probably didn’t matter, but it might have shed some light on how Philaerin had come into possession of the first stone.

They climbed carefully to the next level, and found it divided into two rooms: a small library full of sodden, illegible books, and a conjury with an old silver circle for the summoning of extraplanar beings inlaid in the floor. Again, wind and weather had worked slow destruction on the room’s contents. The ceiling above was mostly gone, showing the interior of the pointed roof, with large holes gaping in the shakes and rafters. Broad windows allowed slanting shafts of light into the room, showing green forest outside. Whatever shutters the windows might once have had were long gone. Ilsevele leaned out and looked down.

“Brant and the horses are still there,” she said. “He looks bored.”

“He should have fought the golem, then,” Maresa grumbled.

They fell to searching the two rooms thoroughly, looking for any sign of persistent magic or treasure caches.

Araevin pored through the remains of the bookshelves, finding book after book decayed beyond any possible perusal. A few had borne the years better, and those he flipped through with greater care, hoping that a spellbook or enchanted tome of some kind might have been left behind. He found nothing of that sort, but he did find a faded mage rune printed carefully on the frontispiece of one of the more intact tomes. It was the mark of a wizard who called himself Gerardin. Araevin pulled out his journal and recorded the shape of the rune and the name, in case he ever got a chance to compare it later with some other scholar or research it himself.

“Aha! I think I found something,” Maresa announced. The genasi knelt by one wall, peering closely at it. “There’s a secret compartment here.”

“Be careful,” Araevin said. “We know this fellow placed at least one trap in his home. There may be more.”

Maresa lightly ran her fingers over the stonework surrounding the suspicious spot, then rocked back on her heels and pulled her leather folio from her doublet. She rummaged through the small case, and produced another packet of paper, rolled and crimped at the ends. She unfolded the packet, revealing bright blue dust, and blew the dust over the area.

“What’s that?” Ilsevele asked.

“Chalk dust, dyed blue. It sometimes helps to show details that you might otherwise miss. Such as this.” Maresa pointed at the wall. “See, here is the catch for the compartment, or so it seems. You’ll see that there is a faint scoring across it. That would be a spring-loaded needle scraping across the surface of the catch. If you pushed it in with your finger or thumb, you’d get jabbed, probably with some nasty sort of poison. But up here there’s a small, more well hidden catch, too. To use the main catch safely, you depress and hold in that second one, which probably prevents the needle from striking. Let’s see if I’m right.”

She carefully pushed and held down the second catch with her left hand and used the pommel of her dagger to push the compartment catch. There was a small click, and

a section of wall about a foot square popped open. Inside the hidden compartment were several small cloth sacks, some mildewed scrolls, a small wooden case, and a rusty wand of iron.

“Well, well,” Maresa said softly.

Two of the sacks held coinage-gold in one, platinum in the other. Another held gemstones, not magical but valuable nonetheless. The scrolls and the wand had long since decayed into uselessness, but the wooden case was scribed with delicate arcane runes. Maresa examined it carefully, and offered it to Araevin.

“Any of those sigils look dangerous to you?” the genasi asked.

Araevin examined the box and said, “No, they’re only for preservation.”

He opened it, and inside lay a black-green glittering telkiira, identical to the one he carried in the pouch at his belt. Gingerly he picked it out of its case and held it up to his eye, studying it.

“All this trouble for a single small gemstone,” Grayth muttered. “Is that it?”

“Yes. It seems to be guarded like the other one, but I don’t recognize the rune it holds. I’ll have to use a spell of identifying or opening to get at it. Give me an hour or two to pre—”

The terrified whinny of a horse from outside cut him off, and an instant later, Brant shouted out a warning, unintelligible through the distance and the stamping and whinnying of the animals he guarded. Grayth happened to be closest to the tower’s slitlike window. He dashed over and looked out.

“Demons!” he snarled.

Without waiting, the Lathanderite dived through the open stairwell, racing down through the tower. Maresa and Ilsevele followed him. Araevin paused long enough to secure the telkiira and its carven box in his own belt pouch, then hurried over to look out the window for himself.

In the forest clearing surrounding the tower, Brant

battled furiously against three hulking vrocks, demons in the shape of vulturelike gargoyles, with gray shabby wings and long, filthy claws and talons. The monsters wheeled and screeched above the young swordsman, mocking him as they fluttered just out of reach before dashing in to claw or snap at him. A dozen more fiends of the stinking hells flapped or leaped toward the tower, from hulking insectile mezzoloths to blind, houndlike canoloths with long, barbed tongues and huge snapping jaws. Araevin stared in shocked amazement.

“Wesel Seldarie,” he murmured. “Where did these come from?”

A gleam of gold caught his eye, and his breath hissed in his teeth. Several of the demon-elves, including the fellow with the eye patch whom he had seen before, drove the vile warband onward. Their swords were bared, and their golden armor gleamed in the morning light.

Araevin considered attacking the daemonfey at once, but Brant needed immediate help. His sword flashed bravely against the demons tormenting him, but each of the monsters was as tall and strong as an ogre, and they were far, far quicker. They toyed with the strapping swordsman like great cats batting at their prey.

I’ll give them something else to think about, Araevin swore silently.

He found a lodestone and a pinch of dust in his bandolier, and rasped the words of a powerful spell. From his fingertip a brilliant green ray shot forth, catching one of the three vrocks between its shoulder blades. The demon arched in agony, its beak gaping as it shrieked terribly.

die green glow washed over its foul body and erased the creature from existence, leaving nothing but dancing dust motes in the sunlight.

“Up here, hellspawn!” Araevin cried.

“Take that one alive!” cried the daemonfey lord, pointing up at Araevin’s window. “Slay the rest!”

He hurled a spell back up at Araevin—apparently an enchantment designed to bind the mage in dolorous paralysis—but Araevin muttered the words of a

countercharm and fought off the creeping lethargy that momentarily settled over his limbs.

Araevin started another spell, but two of the demon-elves below were waiting on him. As he chanted out the words, they struck with simple spell missiles that streaked unerringly up through the narrow window and blasted into him. Impacts like hammer blows staggered him and caused him to lose the spell he was casting, as he stumbled over invocations that had to be spoken with care. Then one of the vrocks broke away from Brant and flapped up toward him, scouring the whole tower-top with a burning magical foulness that almost gagged the mage.

Deciding he’d done well enough in attracting the demons’ attention, Araevin stumbled back from the window and followed the others down the tower steps. The sounds of fighting drifted up from below, the sharp thrumming of Ilsevele’s bowstring and the harsh clatter of steel meeting steel. Araevin descended one floor and quickly dashed over to the window in the wizard’s bedchamber, risking another look.

Demons, yugoloths, and the demon-elves swarmed around the tower. Several jostled and shoved toward the door, evidently waiting for their chance to get inside. Others scrambled over the rotten rooftop, searching for a gap large enough to drop into. The vrock and two of the daemonfey circled above him, watching the upper window for any additional sign of his presence. Meanwhile, Brant still battled on against the remaining vrock and a pair of canoloths closing in on him.

Araevin leveled his lightning wand at the monsters surrounding the embattled swordsman and blasted them with a powerful thunderbolt, slapping the vrock out of the air and leaving one canoloth as a smoking corpse on the ground. Brant staggered back, looking for a place to make a stand—and the other canoloth had him. It shot its arm-thick tongue at Brant and wrapped the slimy member around the young knight’s sword arm. Then it clenched its powerful claws in the thick loam of the clearing and pulled

Brant off his feet, dragging him by his arm toward its clacking maw. Brant’s arm vanished in its mouth up to his shoulder, and the terrible jaws closed. The knight screamed and struggled as blood sprayed and bone crunched, but the canoloth’s jaws ground and dug deeper, sawing at him like some awful machine.

“Brant!” Araevin cried. He hurled a volley of his own magic missiles, digging fist-sized pocks in the canoloth’s flanks, but then one of the demon-sorcerers hurled a tiny bead of glowing orange light through his window-slit, and an instant later the entire chamber erupted in a terrible blast of crimson flame. Araevin was flung to the ground and barely managed to cover his face in his enchanted cape, but still he was burned, and burned badly. Worse yet, the detonation wrecked the rotten floor, precipitating a collapse of rubble into the golem’s room below. Araevin slid down the floor and toppled into the debris.

He landed awkwardly, wrenching his knee and slamming facefirst into the stone floor. Darkness filled his sight. We can’t win this, Araevin thought hazily through the pain. There are too many of them. He heard the scuffle and roar of his companions fighting nearby, and with a tremendous effort of will, fought his way back to wakefulness.

“Come on, elf,” said a voice nearby. A pale white hand seized his arm and dragged him to his feet. Maresa held a blooded rapier in her other hand, and her red leather armor was gouged with three deep furrows across the ribs. “This is not the time for a little rest.”