Forsaken House (8 page)

in a gale.

Her fangs bared in a ferocious grin, Sarya invoked the crystal’s most terrible power. In the space of a heartbeat, every spell, every ward, every shred of magic that existed within the bounds of the burning triangle ceased to exist. Ancient enchantments laid thousands of years before, strong enough to bind and hold for uncounted ages, were sundered in the blink of an eye. All the mighty magical power that had been laid into Nar Kerymhoarth’s building and its defenses came unshackled in a single calamitous detonation. The force of the blast hurled Sarya and her followers to the ground. Vast portions of the hillside were thrown into the air, and came crashing down in the forest below. Thunder pealed throughout the ancient woods, rumbling like the roar of some massive dragon.

The broken crystal in Sarya’s hand shimmered once and vanished. The blazing white lines flickered and guttered out as boulders and splintered trees pelted down from the sky. Sarya growled in frustration, snatching futilely at the vanishing crystal. She rolled over on her hands and knees and looked up the hillside, to where the two assisting fey’ri had stood. Nothing was left there but complete devastation. Their pieces of the crystal were gone as well, along with any trace of the two hapless sorcerers she had pressed into service.

It was not unexpected, she told herself. The crystal disperses when its full power is invoked—that is the curse—and those who assist in the invocation of its might often pay with their lives.

It was exactly what had happened when the Harpers destroyed Ascalhorn. The two fey’ri she would not miss,

but she had hoped that perhaps one portion of the crystal might remain within her grasp after she had finished with it.

“It is done,” she hissed at her followers. “You can get up.”

Though smaller pieces of rock and splintered wood continued to patter onto the ground around them, Xhalph, Nurthel, and the other fey’ri picked themselves up off the ground. More than a few had suffered injury from the explosion, but Sarya didn’t even spare them a glance. Instead she looked on the empty vaults and naked halls of Nar Kerymhoarth, which were bared to the sky.

“I did it,” she said, then laughed and sprang to her feet. “I did it!”

She took to the air and flew down into the dungeon, alighting before a great brazen seal set above a huge well in the floor. With a quick invocation, she gestured and hurled the seal aside, laying open the well below.

“Warriors of Reithel!” she called. “Ilviiri! Ursequarra! Come forth!”

From the dark well below her came a flutter of movement. Slowly, laboriously, a single fey’ri climbed into the air, gazing at the ruin around him with malice dripping from his eyes.

“I am free,” he hissed.

Other fey’ri followed, struggling to fight their way free of the well, male and female both.

Sarya watched the demonspawned elves emerge, dark delight in her face. She and her two sons had been imprisoned beneath Ascalhorn with dozens more of her followers elsewhere in the old fortresses of fallen Eaerlann. But the great bulk of her army—nearly two thousand of her fey’ri, each a deadly swordsman as well as a skilled sorcerer— had been entombed in Nar Kerymhoarth. That was the army with which she could finally build her empire, after her enemies had cheated her of victory so long ago.

“You!” she called to the first fey’ri. “Do you know who I am?”

The fey’ri turned at the sound of her voice. He was a tall

fellow with long black hair, clad only in a short kilt. Small horns jutted from his forehead. He took one menacing step toward Sarya, then recognition flared in his eyes.

“Lady Sarya!” he said. “You have come to free us! Give me a sword, and for you I will blood it with the warriors of Sharrven!”

“Sharrven is no more,” Sarya said. “Nor Eaerlann, nor even Siluvanede. You have been imprisoned a long, long time, my fey’ri.”

“How long has it been, my lady?”

“Fifty centuries, warrior. Five thousand years you and your comrades have been imprisoned here.”

The fey’ri warrior wailed in anguish, “It was only to be one thousand years! They lied to us!”

“Yes,” said Sarya. “The cursed paleblooded elves of Eaerlann and Sharrven lied to you. They bound you and your fellows in Nar Kerymhoarth for a thousand years. And they died, or forgot their promises, or chose not to honor them. You will not have your vengeance upon those who jailed you, warrior. They have gone down into the dust of history, while their watch failed and their cities crumbled. The world has changed beyond recognition, while we dreamed away the centuries in our magical slumber.

“But know this, my fey’ri: All our ancient foes are gone. Now no one remains to oppose us.”

*****

“Araevin, what is it?” Ilsevele set a hand on the mage’s arm, a frown on her face.

They stood in a small, wooded glade high on a hillside, a few miles inland from Seamist and the city of Elion. Sunset painted the sky with brilliant rose and pale gold.

“I am not sure,” he said. “There was something …” He peered toward the east, toward distant Faerun, thinking. Finally he turned away, shaking his head. “I thought that I felt a tremor in the Weave. Almost as if someone had plucked the string of a great harp a long distance away.”

“I thought I felt something too,” Ilsevele said. “It came from the east.”

“I’ve felt that before,” Araevin said. “The last was two years past when the city of Shade was called back from the Plane of Shadow. Someone has worked mighty magic indeed. I would not be surprised if half the mages in Faerun just started from their beds.”

“The Gatekeeper’s Crystal?”

Araevin looked sharply at Ilsevele. She had named his fear before he had himself.

“It could be,” he said. “My Circle noticed a similar disturbance about five years ago. That would have been in the Year of the Gauntlet, around the time when the crystal was used to shatter Hellgate Keep. Corellon grant that we’re wrong about this.”

Ilsevele shrugged and said, “We’ll know soon enough.”

She picked up her pack and slung it across her back, carefully arranging it so that the rucksack did not interfere with the bow and quiver she wore across her shoulders. Beneath her cloak she wore the arms of a captain of the spellarchers, an embroidered doublet of leather sewn with fine steel rings, strongly enchanted to ward its wearer from harm. A pair of fine elven short swords graced her hips.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Araevin nodded and picked up his own pack. He was also dressed for travel in dangerous lands, wearing his shirt of mithral mail beneath a dove-gray tunic, and his scarlet cloak with its magic of warding and protection over all. His bandolier of spell reagents crossed his chest from left hip to right shoulder, and three wands were holstered at his side—the disruption wand he’d used in the fight at Tower Reilloch, plus a pair of additional wands he thought he might find a use for. At his hip he wore the blade of House Teshurr, an enchanted long sword named Moonrill. Spell and wand were his chosen weapons, but he knew how to wield a sword, and long ago an ancestor of his had imbued Moonrill with magic that a mage might find useful at times.

He joined Ilsevele in front of a simple stone marker in the center of the glade. Faded old runes, half-filled with moss, were graven into its surface. Most of Evermeet’s old elfgates had been dismantled in the past few decades, as the elves of the isle had come to see the magical portals as weaknesses in their defenses, places from which resourceful enemies could attack the island. But a few had been left standing, secured by powerful defensive spells. Only those who knew the secret of their activation could make use of the elfgates, and with every year the folk of Evermeet grew more careful of that knowledge.

“Where in Faerun will this gate take us?” Ilsevele asked.

“The Ardeep Forest, not far from the House of Long Silences. Many old portals meet there, and it’s close to Waterdeep, where many less magical roads meet.”

Araevin hummed an arcane incantation beneath his breath, and passed his hand over the top of the stone marker.

At first nothing happened, but then the stone began to glow with a soft, golden light. Slowly it brightened enough to fill the glade with its pale glow, dancing motes of magic drifting in the air.

“Say farewell to Evermeet,” Araevin told Ilsevele. “We’ll be in Faerun in just a moment.”

Ilsevele glanced around at the wooded clearing, the sunset sky above, the deep green forest all around. A tear trickled down her cheek. No elf could leave Evermeet easily, especially not for the first time. She whispered a farewell, and they were gone.

19 Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms

Gaerradh trotted swiftly through the endless tree-gloom of the High Forest, little more than a shadow herself. She wore her long russet hair tied behind her in a single braid, and carried her longbow easily in one hand. Even though she wore a jerkin of studded leather and carried a pair of axes thrust through her belt, she ran easily. She was a seasoned warrior, well trained in the ways of the forest, and she had long ago learned that the ability to move fast and far was one of an elf scout’s best weapons.

Behind her the snow-covered forest floor rustled, and a large, powerful wolf with a silvery coat appeared in the gloom. Long and lean, the predator sprinted after her, bounding over the ground like a white streak, only to fall in alongside the ranger and slow its pace to match hers. Gaerradh glanced down to her side without breaking stride.

“I was wondering where you’d gotten to,” she said to the wolf. “Chasing rabbits, I suppose.”

Sheeril simply looked up at her with dark eyes and an expression of disdain. Gaerradh was fairly certain that the wolf understood almost everything she said. Gaerradh was comfortable with her own company—one could not serve as a far-ranging scout in the northern marches of the endless woods if one minded being alone for tendays at a time—but Sheeril was as close a friend to her as any elf. Together Gaerradh and Sheeril kept watch over the northern marches of the High Forest, spying out the comings and goings of orc warbands, gangs of trolls, avaricious companies of human freebooters, and the darker and more dangerous creatures of the woodland. The High Forest was the largest and wildest in all Faerűn,, and it was far from a safe place. Gaerradh and Sheeril dealt with intruders who were few in number, and summoned help from other elf scouts and rangers when faced with foes too numerous or powerful to deal with on their own.

Gaerradh told her elf friends that she best served the People by searching out dangers before they could threaten the elven settlements of the High Forest, but in truth, Gaerradh simply loved the wide lands of the wilderness. She found solace in the wilds, and when she spent too much time among the People of Rheitheillaethor or the other settlements of the forest, she found herself growing restless and longing for the silence of the woods again. She was on her way back to Rheitheillaethor at the moment to provision herself and trade news, but she hoped to stay no more than two or three days before heading back out into the winter forest again.

Sheeril abruptly peeled away from her side, and halted to gaze intently into the woods downhill. Gaerradh needed no other signal. She halted in mid-stride, crouching knee-deep in the snow and holding herself immobile.

“What is it, girl?” she whispered to the animal.

The wolf glanced back at her and whined softly. Then she slid into a thick stand of fir trees lower on the hillside. Gaerradh followed, an arrow on the string of her bow. She was puzzled more than anything else. They were in a region of the forest that was usually safe and quiet. The elves maintained a guard over the old ruins nearby in order to keep careless bands of adventurers from disturbing them. The watch also served to chase marauding orcs and hungry monsters out of the area as well.

She followed Sheeril down into the thicket, and she caught the scent that had attracted the wolfs attention. The smell of death lingered in the cold air beneath the evergreens. It was faint, thanks to the blanket of snow and the cold weather, but it was there nonetheless.

Then Gaerradh found the first of the bodies.

Half-buried in the drifting snow lay a wood elf warrior, frozen gore clotted around his wounds. He’d been hacked to death by sword cuts, but he still wore the simple diamond-shaped brooch of those who stood guard over Nar Kerymhoarth, the Nameless Dungeon. Gaerradh bowed her head in grief, then rose and followed Sheeril deeper into the copse.

There, in ones and twos, she found the remains of eleven more wood and moon elves. Some had died by sword, others by spells, their bodies burned or blasted by deadly magic. Eight of them she knew, and two she counted among her few close friends.

“All twelve,” she murmured. “The guardians of Nar Kerymhoarth, overcome all at once. What evil is this?”

Snow had fallen since the fight, covering any tracks Gaerradh might have studied. It had last snowed two days before and scavengers—ravens, mostly—had been at the exposed flesh. They died not long before the snowfall, she decided after a quick examination of the scene. Less than a day, certainly. Possibly no more than an hour or two. The warriors on watch had been killed between two and three days before.

Sheeril padded up to her side and looked up at her face.

“I know,” said Gaerradh. “We must go to Nar Kerymhoarth and see who did this.”

She stood and composed herself, dropping her pack in a clump of brush nearby. Then she carefully backtracked out of the clearing, hiding her trail as best she could, and set her eyes on the nearby stony spire of the ancient citadel’s barren tor, rising above the trees half a mile away.

It took Gaerradh well over an hour, since she didn’t want to be seen, but she half-circled the barren hilltop and approached the deep ravine sheltering the fortress’s entrance by climbing high over the shoulder of the hill and descending on it from above. Finally she got herself into position and wormed her way over the ridgeline, moving slowly to avoid the creaking of compressed snow or, worse yet, the sudden crunch of a broken ice crust. Sheeril crept along a pace behind her, trained to crawl on her belly and move only on Gaerradh’s cue. Her face and throat stinging from the wet, cold snow, Gaerradh gently parted a notch to spy on the dungeon’s door.