The Summoning (27 page)

They traveled in single file, stepping only in Takari’s tracks to avoid snapping an unseen stick or rustling a jumble of twigs. Aris’s footfalls were as silent as Galaeron’s, but Malik and his mount were by far the quietest in the group, Kelda placing her hooves more like those of a unicorn than a horse. There was more to Malik than being a simple Cyric worshiper, Galaeron felt certain—but he did not dwell on his suspicions, lest he invite a badly-timed attack from his shadow self.

The morning shadows were just growing darker when Takari began to move more rapidly, leading them just fast enough so that it became difficult to travel without making noise. Melegaunt sent a shiver up their spines by stepping on a stick and filling the air with a low crunch. Vala slipped on a slope and fell to her knees with a soft thud and muffled curse. As they crossed a broad creek, Aris broke through the ice, and a loud splash purled through the trees. Galaeron did not need to look to know their foes were following somewhere behind. Takari had increased the pace to attract their attention, and now she was leading them closer to the Dire Wood.

The sun finally made a full appearance, an orange disk hanging low in the trees, shining down into the forest and striping the snow with trunk-shadows as long as some roads. Takari began to vary the pace, slowing for a time and

wandering an erratic course, then plowing ahead in a sudden, steady surge. Galaeron knew without looking that their enemies were preparing to attack, trying to slip unseen along their flanks to cut the party off. Takari was using the same trick that a band of Darkhold Zhentarim had once used against Galaeron’s patrol, feigning fatigue and poor discipline so the pursuers would hold their attack in hopes of catching the quarry at rest. Galaeron tried to help by acting the part, gulping down handfuls of snow and quietly instructing the others to do likewise. Once or twice, he even lagged behind, trying to convince the beholders that with enough patience, they might pick off a straggler and make their job that much easier.

At last, the forest seemed to thin ahead, the barren trunks of the sugar maples and shadowtops giving way to a broad, blurry expanse of white. At first, Galaeron thought they might be coming to a meadow or snow-covered lake, but as they drew closer, the pale blur resolved itself into a wall of albino oak trees. Amazingly, they were still in full leaf, and they were completely white, from the bases of their alabaster trunks to the height of their blonde crowns. Galaeron could even see a few ivory acorns hanging from their white stalks.

Takari gave a series of sharp siskin shicks, and Galaeron realized he was looking at the Dire Wood. He had expected it to be darker, more ominous—twisted, somehow, and tangibly evil. Instead, it looked like something out of an elven myth, beautiful and illusory and ancient beyond the ages. Galaeron answered with his cardinal’s wit wit wit, and Takari stopped, nocking an arrow and spinning to fire in the same quick motion.

“Run for the white trees!” Galaeron shoved Vala forward. “Melegaunt can use his magic there.”

Takari’s arrow hissed past Galaeron’s head and thudded into something soft. He pulled his bow from his back and dived over a log, then came up with his own arrow nocked and pointed in the same direction.

A shrieking beholder hovered seventy paces distant, its eyestalks spraying colored rays in every direction, the fletching of Takari’s arrow protruding from its big central eye. Galaeron leveled his shaft at the same target—then, twenty paces ahead of the creature, glimpsed a plume of snow rising from the ground as some invisible foe raced for the Dire Wood. In a breath, Galaeron adjusted his aim and loosed the arrow.

The shaft flashed across the plume at about rib height, then drew a startled cry before it ricocheted away and sank into the snow. Galaeron uttered a curse on all phaerimm, then leaped up on the log behind which he was hiding and pointed in the direction he had fired.

“Watch over there!” he yelled. “The phaerimm’s invisible, with an arrow shield!”

He was rewarded for his bravery by a black flash from one of the beholder’s eyes, but he was already diving for cover behind a snowy boulder. The log he had been standing on shriveled into a mass of rotten pulp, then the eye tyrant screeched again as another of Takari’s arrows sank into its body. Galaeron nocked another arrow and hurled himself from his hiding place, aiming as he rolled. A cone of golden light flashed from one of the beholder’s eyestalks, and the boulder dissolved into dust. Galaeron loosed his arrow at the creature’s big eye and saw it sink out of sight.

This time, the beholder did not cry out. It simply dropped into the snow, its eyestalks drooping over its body like so many withered vines. Galaeron and Takari each planted a guarantee arrow into the lifeless orb and darted to new hiding places, and only then did they raise their heads to take stock-Malik and his horse were nowhere to be seen, of course. Aris was charging in the direction Galaeron had pointed, swinging a ten-foot deadfall log back and forth in a noble, if somewhat misguided, effort to smash their invisible foe through sheer chance. Vala and Melegaunt were running in

the wrong direction, charging through the snow toward Galaeron and Takari.

He waved them back, only to have them stop and gesture him in their direction. He tried again, this time more urgently. Once Melegaunt reached the Dire Wood, he would be free to use his shadow magic—and if they stood any chance at all of escaping the phaerimm and its minions, it was the archwizard’s magic.

Vala ignored him, instead pointing her darksword at the fallen beholder. “It was only the scout,” she yelled. “Now, will you two stop clowning around and get your pointy ears over here?”

When no rays of any color leaped out to silence her, Galaeron dared to look behind him. Much to his relief, the rest of the beholders were a hundred paces distant, coming up fast, but still fist-sized spheres weaving through the trees. Behind them hovered the tornado-shaped figure of a phaerimm, no larger than Galaeron’s thumb, yet terrifying enough even at that distance.

A dull thump echoed through the wood as Aris connected with their invisible foe. To Galaeron’s amazement, the stone giant did not instantly erupt into a pillar of flame or drop dead with a gaping hole through his torso. Instead, he gave a deep groan of satisfaction and started forward again, shaking the snow from the trees around him as he beat the ground with his makeshift club.

“Aris!” thundered Melegaunt. “Stop that at once!”

A series of colored flashes filled the air in front of Galaeron as the approaching beholders began to test the range of their eye rays. They were not close enough to strike yet, but it would not be long before the beams began to hit. Seeing that the foolish humans were determined to enter the Dire Wood together or not at all, he whistled to Takari and turned toward them. Even at their best pace, he doubted they would be fast enough to outrun the beholders’ eye rays, but with a little dodging and weaving, they stood a reasonable—well,

acceptable—chance of reaching the wood alive.

As Galaeron and Takari approached, Vala grabbed their hands and pulled them behind a tree. The beholder rays were starting to blast through the forest around them now, boring holes through massive shadowtop trunks and withering whole maples. Turlang would not be happy about the damage done to his forest, but as long as Melegaunt did not use his shadow magic within the wood, the treant would not hold them—or Lady Morgwais—responsible.

As Aris approached, a golden ray caught him square in the leg. The beam would have taken the torso off a normal man, but it merely drilled a melon-sized hole through the stone giant’s thigh. He let out a great bellow and collapsed, shaking the ground beneath their feet as he crashed down behind Melegaunt.

“That will do!” yelled Melegaunt, directing himself to Vala.

Vala grabbed Galaeron’s hand and pressed it into Takari’s, then looped her own arm through his and grabbed hold of Melegaunt’s with the other. The archwizard locked her hand in the crook of his elbow, then pressed his other palm to the giant’s biceps and began the incantation to a shadow spell.

Galaeron jerked free of Vala’s grasp. “What are you doing? If he breaks his word to Turlang—”

“Look to the shadow, elf!” Vala grabbed hold of Galaeron again, then used her chin to gesture along the length of the trunk-shadow in which they all stood. “He’s drawing his magic through the Dire Wood.”

Galaeron looked in the direction she indicated and saw that the tree’s shadow extended clear through the ring of white oaks. Though he wasn’t sure Melegaunt was living up to the letter of his pledge to Turlang, there was no time to debate the matter. A half dozen beholders appeared to either side of them, lacing the air with gleaming beams of destruction.

The rays shot past without touching anyone in the party, and only then did Galaeron notice how dim and hazy the eye tyrants appeared. Several of the creatures passed by within an

arm’s reach of the party and did not seem to notice them.

“Don’t lose touch with me,” warned Melegaunt. “At the moment, we are only shadows to them … and that is all that protects us.”

“Then let’s get out of here,” said Takari. “The Dire Wood is not a hundred paces away.”

“And may as well be a hundred miles,” said Aris. “Look ahead.”

An ankle-high curtain of black fire had arisen at the edge of the white forest. Though Galaeron guessed the flames would be invisible to anyone outside the Fringe, he saw no reason it could not be dispersed by a wizard of Melegaunt’s power.

“We cannot hide in the shadows forever,” he said. “Dispel it and let us be on our way.”

“Gladly—were that not what Elminster expects,” said Melegaunt.

“Elminster?” demanded Aris. “But he was sleeping—”

“Mystra’s Chosen do not sleep,” interrupted Melegaunt. He pointed in the general direction of the giant’s feet and ran his fingers through the motions of a detection spell. “And they most certainly do not snore.”

A ghostly figure in a floppy hat appeared twenty paces beyond Aris’s feet. He was slowly creeping toward the Dire Wood, peering over his shoulder at the main body of beholders, then farther back at the hovering phaerimm, and finally at the eye tyrant scouts still passing back and forth through the shadow where Galaeron and his companions stood hiding in Melegaunt’s spell.

A knowing twinkle came to Elminster’s eye, and he started toward their hiding place. Melegaunt finished his spell, directing a finger in the archmage’s direction. Almost at once, the beholders swung their eyestalks toward Elminster and began to assail him with rays both black and golden. Without exception, the attacks exploded into harmless starbursts against the archmage’s spell shields, but the flurry was

enough to stop the old man in his tracks. He lowered his bushy eyebrows, and Melegaunt uttered another spell. Instead of stopping a foot short, as had all the other attacks, the next beam—a golden one—struck the ancient wizard broadside and sent him cartwheeling across the snow.

“What are you doing?” Galaeron came near to releasing Takari to grab Melegaunt’s arm. “You’ll get him killed!”

“Hardly.”

Elminster tumbled to a stop and came up glaring in Melegaunt’s direction. He raised a shaming finger—and the phaerimm came floating up, waving all four arms in his direction.

Elminster vanished in cloud of crimson flame, and Melegaunt immediately uttered the reverse of a teleport spell.

In the next instant, Elminster’s ancient figure appeared fifty yards to the east, cloaked in fire and shaking a long finger of flame. Though the gesture was directed roughly in Melegaunt’s direction, it was easily ten degrees to the left, leaving no doubt in Galaeron’s mind, at least, that the greatest mage in all Faerűn could not see through the simplest of the shadow wizard’s spells.

The phaerimm streaked off toward the archmage, whistling something angry in its breezy language that drew the beholders after it. Elminster turned and fled, covering his retreat with a wall of scintillating colors. The phaerimm and beholders paused long enough to dispel the wall, then flew after the archwizard.

Melegaunt smiled. “Now we are ready for the Dire Wood.”

29 Nightal, the Year of the Unstrung Harp

The Dire Wood was much darker and ominous than it appeared outside. Within a dozen paces, the pristine snow turned to soggy peat, and the albino oaks gave way to the shadowy depths of a petrified forest The trees were as black as coal, with ebony limbs that ended in jagged stumps and twisted trunks propped against each other at every odd angle. The ground beneath the trees was as red as blood, full of scum and rot and the smell of decay Galaeron could not imagine how they would ever wade through such a morass—much less find and reach Karse.

He looked to Takari and asked, “Which way?” She shrugged. “I’ve never been beyond the Pale Ring, but no need to worry. Jhingleshod will find us.”

“Jhingleshod?”

Takari gave him an enigmatic smile. “Wulgreth’s servant.”

“His servant?” exclaimed Malik. Once the phaerimm and beholders had gone off chasing Elminster, the little man had appeared alongside their hiding place, whispering after them until Takari jerked him into the shadow. He still had not forgiven her for the indignity his fright caused him to visit upon his pants. “It might be easier to attract Wulgreth’s attention by finding some trumpets to blow.”

“Not every servant loves his master,” replied Takari.

“While that is certainly true, it does not mean he will love us.”

“We’ll worry about Jhingleshod later,” said Galaeron, looking back toward Turlang’s forest. “But we can’t wait here. Sooner or later, either Elminster or the phaerimm will be back—maybe both. We’ll leave as soon as Aris is ready.”

Kelda eyed the bog and snorted, prompting Malik to pat her neck. “There is nothing to worry about, girl. Aris will be happy to carry you.”

Galaeron was not so sure the giant would be able to carry himself, much less Malik’s horse. Aris was seated along the inner edge of the Pale Ring, madly chipping at a small rock into a granite cylinder just small enough to fill the hole the beholder’s disintegration ray had left through his thigh. He blew the dust off, held the stone over the wound for a moment, tapped a couple of flakes off one side, then passed it down to Vala, who carefully lowered the rock into the wound.