The Summoning (24 page)

The phaerimm used their own fireballs and lightning bolts to disorient the humans, and a small band of beholders and bugbears turned to face Khelben’s advance. He felt almost insulted. He had destroyed the phaerimm’s rear guard and arrived behind their line uncontested, and still the creatures believed they could destroy his company with a handful of spells.

The beholders floated forward behind a screen of bugbears, using the hairy giants like shields until they closed to two hundred and forty paces—close enough to use their magic-disrupting beams on Khelben’s spell guards. He brought his company to a halt, then planted his staff at his side and pulled a piece of amber from his pocket. After rubbing this against his beard, he began to stroke a handful of silver pins over the amber one by one.

By the time he finished, the leading bugbears had closed to within a hundred and seventy paces, well outside the phaerimm spell guards. He tossed the pins into the air and uttered a mystic syllable, then groaned as a bolt of lightning exploded from his chest and arced to the closest bugbear. The huge creature exploded into red haze and scorched fur, as did the beholder behind him and the next two bugbears, then the bolt continued down the line in a blinding flash that seemed to last forever. A second beholder and two more bugbears burst into flames, then another half dozen creatures spawned smoking holes in the centers of their bodies.

Had any other wizard cast the spell, the bolt’s rampage would have fizzled there, but Khelben was no ordinary mage-He was Chosen of the goddess of magic herself, imbued with the power of the Weave and—at over nine hundred years old—nearly immortal himself, capable of withstanding energies that would incinerate any common man. The lightning continued, blasting through another dozen victims before the first dozen hit the ground. With each strike, the smoking holes shrank from the size of melons to fists to acorns. Finally, there were no more holes. One bugbear and two beholders died of nothing but shock. The last bugbear escaped altogether, stumbling three steps back and grabbing for his chest.

After the spell sputtered out, all that remained to carry on were half a dozen bugbears and two wide-eyed beholders. The bugbears turned to flee and perished instantly in a curtain of fire—phaerimm did not tolerate cowardice in their thralls. The two beholders focused their big central eyes on one another, encasing each other in a purple cone of magic-dispelling radiance.

“Arrows at the beholders!” Khelben commanded.

A flight of shafts leaped toward the beholders. The creatures had no choice but to deactivate their magic-dispelling rays and bring their other eyestalks around to defend themselves. Khelben’s battle mages unleashed a veritable shower of magic, and the eye tyrants vanished into a roiling storm of fire.

“Forward walk!” Khelben called.

As the company started forward, the phaerimm assailed Khelben’s spell shield with a tempest of fire and magic. Though the accompanying dazzle made it impossible to see what was happening ahead, Khelben was glad to have his foes finally showing him some respect. A little caution would do much to ease the attacks against the elves.

Had he wished, Khelben could probably have frightened the pair into a full withdrawal. As one of Mystra’s Chosen, he

carried within him a small part of the goddess’s power—a power which manifested itself as Silver Fire. He could call upon silver fire to protect himself from most sorts of harm— hence his nine hundred years—and to assail his enemies with a blast of white, pure Weave magic. Even the mightiest magic-users quavered at its sight, for they usually recognized its true nature and knew what it meant for their survival, but Khelben was not ready to reveal all his secrets. The two phaerimm would teleport away the instant the battle turned against them, and he did not want them telling their friends back at Evereska what they were facing.

Khelben and his battle mages returned the phaerimm assault in kind, filling the area between them with a blinding wall of starburst radiance. Eventually, they would draw close enough to assail each other’s spell guards with dispelling magic, and the killing would begin.

Khelben flicked his thumb over his signet ring, activating its sending magic. He pictured Shantar’s face in his mind, then spoke to the scout with thoughts. Can’t see. What’s happening?

Elves regrouping slowly. Shantar’s reply came to Khelben in his mind’s voice. A hundred and fifty paces to hand-to-hand. Half their company is turning to face you.

Khelben sighed in relief, then boomed an order, “Ready arrows—and it will be to the swords.”

A hundred warriors nocked a hundred shafts and continued to advance. A black fog appeared over their spell shield. Khelben blew it aside with a magical wind.

“Mages halt—let the warriors screen you!”

The mages stopped in their tracks, adjusting their wands to arc fireballs and ice storms over the heads of their advancing comrades. Khelben himself slipped in behind a pair of archers and continued forward. He judged he would be close enough to dispel the enemy spell shields in thirty steps.

“Steady now,” he called.

Half a dozen beholders zipped out of the enemy ranks,

forsaking the safety of the phaerimm spell shields for a field of lightning and fire. Amidst all the flashing and streaking, they looked like mere cloud shadows, but that did not prevent Khelben’s followers from peppering them with fiery bolts and hissing shafts. Three creatures erupted into flames the instant they left their spell guards, and two more fell to arrows.

The sixth eye tyrant dodged and weaved its way forward by flashing its magic-dispelling gaze on and off so its other eyestalks could spray the sky ahead with their various magics. It destroyed several arrows with its disintegration beam and deflected a whole cloud with its telekinesis rays, but even that was not enough. It sprouted a dozen shafts and plummeted to the ground, then rolled forward three paces and came up facing Khelben.

A cone of blue light shot from the creature’s huge central eye and touched the front wall of Khelben’s spell guards, creating an oval of shimmering radiance. The circle flickered, then swept over the rest of the shield in a flash of magic-dispelling brilliance. The enemy spells changed from dissipating starbursts to crackling bolts and sulfur-stinking ribbons. Men began to scream, flesh to sizzle, the frozen ground to rumble. Suddenly, the moor stank of charred flesh and opened entrails, sling stones hailed from the sky, and warriors fell by the dozen.

“Charge.1” Khelben boomed, using a cantrip to make himself heard. “Charge or die!”

Khelben had barely given the order before the air turned silver and fresh-smelling around him. The man beside him erupted into a spray of boiling blood, then a lightning bolt blasted through the archmage and struck the next man in line. Khelben was hit in the head by a disembodied shoulder and knocked to the ground. By the time he could raise his head, the lightning bolt was already sputtering to a stop ten men away.

Before rolling to his feet, Khelben screened himself

behind his charging warriors. He was protected from lightning strikes and magic bolts by Mystra’s silver fire, but every second the phaerimm delayed him cost a dozen human lives. He scrambled forward on hands and feet, then laid his staff aside and stood. Though the phaerimm spell guards still blazed with the dazzling starbursts of dissipating magic, a dark line of bugbear silhouettes stood just inside the barrier, axes raised and ready to meet the charge. The last few beholders—Khelben counted four—hovered along the line at even intervals, their eyestalks whipping this way and that as they sprayed the charging line with death rays of a dozen varieties. Only the mind flayers were nowhere to be seen. Khelben raised his hands toward the enemy spell guard and spoke three mystic syllables.

The barrier flickered once, then faded. Khelben’s battle mages rushed forward, using their war wands to assail the bugbears and beholders with lightning bolts and fireballs. The two phaerimm responded with a horrifying array of flame geysers and needle showers, black fogs and acid clouds, steaming pits and strangling tentacles. Half a dozen wizards fell in as many steps.

Khelben wrapped a pinch of coal in a swatch of gingham and flicked it in the general direction of the phaerimm. When the nugget landed, he raised a hand to point and began his incantation. As he rattled off the mystic syllables, he was careful to keep his finger aimed at the ground instead of at the creatures themselves. Centuries earlier, Khelben had learned that phaerimm were beings of magic and naturally resistant to its power. Any spell striking their bodies had a good chance of ricocheting back at the caster or being used to heal their wounds, so he was careful to use magic that affected the area around the phaerimm instead of the creatures themselves. He finished his spell, and a sphere of black gauze billowed up around the pair, encasing them in a cocoon of inky fibers. Though their spell flurry continued unabated, it was to far less effect

The swiftest of Khelben’s swordsmen were within fifty paces of their foes, where the bugbears seemed content to wait in rank. It was a mistake they would regret. Khelben retrieved his staff.

“Mages, redcloud!”

The battle mages exchanged their war wands for red candlewicks and began their incantations. As they spoke, they used simple cantrips to ignite the wicks, then held the burning strands at arm’s length.

Determined to keep the phaerimm from interfering with the redcloud, Khelben rolled a parchment spell scroll into a cone and held it to his mouth. When he began to boom out the syllables of another spell, his voice sounded much closer to, and on the other side of, the black cocoon.

The phaerimm did not respond, even when the spell he had uttered turned the cocoon into a block of solid stone-Either they were not fooled, or they had decided it was time to flee. Khelben hoped it was the latter.

The first of the battle mages’ candlewicks burned out. Above the heads of the bugbears appeared a single wisp of red haze, crackling so softly that only a handful of the creatures looked up. As more wicks burned themselves out, the red wisp became a ropy bank of crimson fog, and the crackling grew louder. Whole bands of bugbears glanced upward, and the eyestalks of the few remaining beholders swiveled overhead. By then, the last candlewicks were expiring, and the fog had coalesced into a roaring cloud of flame.

“Now!” Khelben boomed.

The battle mages crumpled the candlewicks’ sooty remains, and a curtain of flame rolled down from the red cloud.

A single beholder managed to whirl itself backward and bring its magic-dispelling eye to bear, opening a small gap in the long wall of fire. Khelben leveled his staff at the creature’s exposed underside and blasted it with a fireball. The resulting eruption engulfed not only the eye tyrant itself, but the handful of bugbears whose lives it had spared.

With nothing ahead but a swirling curtain of flame, the charging swordsmen drew up short. There were far too many gaps in their line to please Khelben, for the phaerimm had taken a terrible toll. Fully a third of his warriors had fallen, and perhaps a quarter of his battle mages. Another “victory” like that one, and he would not have enough men left to defend the gate—even if Ryence had managed to keep his high mages alive to establish it.

Khelben raised his arms to dispel the fire curtain so he could take the survivors of his company and save Ryence’s elves—then he saw a bushy-bearded warrior kneeling behind a frozen tussock. The man cried out and lifted the corpse of a dead comrade to his armored breast. When the archmage saw that nothing remained of the body beneath the shoulders, he lowered his arms and reached into his cloak for a feather instead. His men had done enough for the elves that day

Khelben! Come quick! This time, Shantar’s message came in the form of a soft whisper. The scout could use the sending magic in his ring only once per day, but, as one of Mystra’s Chosen, Khelben could hear the next sentence or so when someone spoke his name anywhere on Toril. They’re after the high mages!

Khelben did not ask who “they” were. Unlike a sending spell, his eavesdropping gift did not allow a reply. Besides, he had a sinking feeling he knew who the scout meant He brushed the feather over his arms and legs, then spoke an incantation and launched himself into the air.

After flying over the wall of fire, he found himself above a slope of peat that fell sharply away to the sheer banks at the confluence of the Serpent’s Tail and Winding Water. Judging by the number of pointy-eared corpses strewn along the lower half of the pitch, Ryence had tried to screen his crossing by sending part of his force to attack uphill. That the final line of bodies lay near the top of the slope spoke well of the elves’ courage— if not of their commander’s wisdom.

An enemy charge had caught the main body of the company preparing to cross the stream. The elves had felled most of the mind flayers and easily half of the bugbears on the way down, leaving the lower half of the slope strewn with almost as many foes as elves. The survivors had slammed into the rest of the company atop the gravelly bank of the Serpent’s Tail, where a terrific melee continued to rage, with the bugbears trying to shield their last two mind flayers from an onslaught of gleaming elven steel. Nearly two dozen of Evermeet’s swordmages lay writhing on the ground, their palms pressed to their ears in a futile attempt to shut out illithid mind blasts, but Khelben did not pause to hurl any spells into that quarter of combat. Even as he swooped down toward the battle, a pair of bugbears fell with elven steel through their hearts, and a trio of golden bolts shot through the resulting gap to blast the nearest mind flayer.

The scene in the middle of the Serpent’s Tail was far less encouraging. Ryence sat astride his horse, tumbling ever so slowly to the water. Just ahead of him, Bladuid and two other Gold elves—presumably the rest of Ryence’s high mages— were also slipping from their horses, one bent almost in two by the torpidly-rising water column of a spell blast. They were followed by several dozen slow-motion bodyguards, all caught in mid twist as they turned in their saddles to fling bolts and blasts at two phaerimm hovering behind them.