“Keep going!” shouted Danifae. “We’re almost at the top!”
The beholder mage must have reached the same conclusion. A moment later, a barrier of solid ice appeared, walling off the top of the shaft and trapping the drow beneath it.
“Damn!” swore Ryld.
Danifae glowered at the barrier and said, “Maybe we can—”
At that moment, Jezz the Lame appeared on the floor of the chamber. He wheeled and hurled a spell back through the doorway, then slammed the door shut.
“Whatever it is you’re doing, finish it,” the Jaelre called. “The devils have returned in force!”
Ryld looked up at the sheet of ice covering the top of the shaft, then down again at the rubble-strewn floor. Quenthel lay half-buried in the shattered masonry, unmoving. Spells rumbled above the ice, sure signs that Pharaun and Jeggred had found their foe, but the creature’s barrier had effectively cut the company in half. Abandoning the effort to get at the beholder mage might give the monster the chance to destroy the company in detail, but Quenthel was dead or injured below.
“Up,” Ryld decided. “Going back is no good. Valas, Jezz, aid Quenthel!”
He came up beneath the gleaming white ceiling and struck at the icy wall with Splitter, using the sword’s ability to rend enchantments. Razor-sharp shards of ice flew from the spot he struck, but the sword failed to undo the beholder’s magic. Ryld cursed and tried again, with no more success.
Below them, the door to the tower boomed with a heavy blow. Valas quickly shouldered his bow and scuttled over the heaps of masonry and rubble filling the bottom of the shaft, heading toward the spot where Quenthel had fallen.
Jezz the Lame growled something and worked a spell, clogging the tower’s foyer with a mass of sticky webbing. He mouthed the words of another spell and arrowed up into the air, leaving Valas and Quenthel on the floor of the shaft.
“Forget the priestess,” he called to Valas. “Come, if you want to live!”
The scout grimaced in frustration.
“I can’t climb and carry her!” he snapped as a second blow at the door splintered wood and bent iron.
The ancient door would not withstand another blow. Valas glanced up the shaft and down at Quenthel, and reached down and unfastened her House Baenre brooch from her shoulder. Her snake-headed whip stirred in agitation, and Yngoth actually struck at the scout, but Valas scrambled back and fixed the brooch to his tunic.
“I’m trying to save your mistress,” he barked at the whip.
The scout moved close and grasped Quenthel under the arms, using the power of her own brooch to levitate away from the floor.
Meanwhile, Ryld measured the icy barrier in front of him.
“All right, then,” he muttered.
He backed up, set his feet as best he could against the shaft’s wall, and drew Splitter back for the mightiest blow he could muster. With a cry of rage, he struck the wall a tremendous blow, Splitter’s blade shearing through the magical ice even as waves of excruciating cold washed over him. He ignored the pain and swung again, and again—and the sheet of ice cracked into a dozen pieces and fell away to the floor below. Without waiting for the others, Ryld hurled himself up into the beholder’s lair.
16
Within a day of Seyll’s murder, Halisstra began to wonder if she might have been better off going with the Eilistraee priestess and feigning conversion. It might have been a strategy unlikely to reunite her with her comrades, but it would have meant that she would have enjoyed shelter, food, and the opportunity to perhaps regain her equipment, instead of an interminable march through the freezing woods. As dawn approached, she could find no better shelter than a small, damp hollow surrounded by drow-high boulders and bare trees. Shivering, she shrugged off her stolen backpack and searched it thoroughly, hoping against hope that she had somehow overlooked some key implement or a scrap of food. Seyll and her followers had not anticipated a wilderness sojourn of more than a few hours. They carried no more gear than Halisstra would have, had she decided to venture out to a well-known cavern a mile or two from Ched Nasad. They certainly hadn’t equipped themselves for the convenience of their captive’s escape.
With the crossbow she’d taken from Xarra and the bae’qeshel songs at her command, she had a fair chance of dropping any game she came across, but in her hours and hours of wandering she’d not seen anything larger than a bird. Even if she did succeed in killing something for her dinner, she had no means to cook it, and Halisstra was beginning to suspect that the forest itself conspired against her.
She was reasonably sure that she’d managed to keep heading west after her escape from the heretic. If Seyll hadn’t been lying when she said they were near the spot where Halisstra had been captured, the Melarn priestess was no more than one or two nights’ march from the small river Pharaun had described in his vision. Since the river ran south to north somewhere in front of her, it seemed a difficult target to miss as long as she kept moving west.
Halisstra tried to keep the sunset and moonset ahead of her, and a little to her left, since they’d be somewhat south of her at this time of year—or so she’d gathered from watching Valas navigate the woods over the past few days. Of course, she had no way of knowing whether to turn upstream or downstream when she did reach Pharaun’s river, since she couldn’t be sure that she’d struck the stream at the spot the wizard anticipated. For that matter, she was unlikely to know for certain whether she’d found the right stream at all. She’d already crossed a dozen small brooks in a day and a half, and while she didn’t think any of them could properly be called a river, she simply didn’t have enough experience of the surface world to be sure.
“Of course, that all presumes that I haven’t been wandering in circles for hours,” Halisstra muttered.
It could be that the most sensible thing to do would be to abandon the notion of searching for the Jaelre, and pick the straightest course out of the forest she could find. Sooner or later, she might find civilization again, and beg, borrow, or steal food and other supplies—or charm a guide who could lead her to the Jaelre.
She closed her eyes, trying to build a mental picture of Cormanthor and the lands around it. She was in the eastern part of the forest, she knew—so was her best course east, toward the rising sun? There was little on that side of the forest except for the human settlement of Harrowdale. if she recalled her geography. Or was she better off turning south? Several more dales lay in that direction, so her odds of reaching civilization seemed better that way, even if that meant she would have a longer trek to reach the eaves of the forest. North she ruled out at once, since she was fairly certain that Elventree lay in that direction. Any way she went, she would be turning her back on the Jaelre and her sacred mission, at least for a time.
“This would be easier if the goddess would consent to answer my prayers,” she grumbled.
When she realized what she’d said, she couldn’t help but glance around and put a hand to her mouth. Lolth did not look kindly on complainers.
She passed a cold, wet, and miserable day hunched down among the rocks of her small hiding place, drifting in and out of Reverie. More than once she wished she’d had the presence of mind to order Feliane to guide her to the Jaelre, or at least give up her cloak and pack before dashing off in a panic. Lord Dessaer’s rangers were most likely on her trail, of course, and they would not show her much mercy if she fell into their hands again. Even so, Halisstra was beginning to feel that a quick execution by the surface elves might be preferable to a long and lonely death by starvation in the endless forest. At nightfall she rose, gathered her belongings, and scrambled out of her hiding place. She stood on the forest floor, looking toward the direction she reckoned west, then south, and west again. South might offer a better chance of finding a human or surface elf settlement, but she couldn’t bring herself to abandon the hope of rejoining her comrades. Better to try one more march west, and if she still hadn’t found Pharaun’s river by dawn, she’d think about giving up the effort.