The orcs dove to the ground, but the missiles corrected their course and hit three of the creatures. One orc, struck in the head, died instantly. The other two suffered chest wounds but managed to climb back to their feet, axes in hand. With a cry of retribution, all four remaining orcs now rushed Ghleanna.
Kestrel rolled out of their path, yanked a dagger from her boot and threw it. The weapon caught one of the orcs in the neck. Her victim sank to its knees, but with a series of inhuman grunts, it struggled to its feet. Tightly gripping its short sword, the beast staggered toward Kestrel. Its eyes held the expression of a mad animal.
Kestrel bent to reach her second dagger. A second hit would finish off the humanoid. Before she withdrew the blade, however, the orc collapsed.
She glanced around to see whether any of the remaining orcs approached. Corran, who’d landed several yards away when he tumbled out of the gate, had engaged two of the beasts. The skill with which he deflected the orcs’ blows bespoke the superior training of a nobleman. He fought with controlled, precise strokes that countered his opponents’ brute swings.
A thunderclap boomed so loud that it shook the street. Kestrel spun to discover the sound came from the gate, which now wavered violently and glowed flaming red. The rope attached to her grappling hook still trailed inside. What would happen to her tool if the portal shut with the rope still inside? The gods only knew when they might need it next.
A quick glance toward Ghleanna, who was releasing another volley of sorcerous missiles, indicated that the mage held her own for the moment. Kestrel grasped the rope and tugged.
It was stuck.
She pulled harder. The rope remained taut, but she could feel vibrations along it coming from within the gate. What was going on inside?
A moment later, a familiar figure tumbled through and landed at her feet. Kestrel yanked the rope out of the portal. Within seconds, the gate shuddered and imploded, disappearing from sight. At the same time, the sounds of combat ceased.
She offered Durwyn a hand. “I thought you weren’t going to leave your post?”
He grasped her arm and rose. “I got lonely.”
She looked toward Ghleanna and Corran, who had dispatched the last of the orcs. “I can think of many places I’d rather seek company than here,” Kestrel said, turning back to Durwyn. “We’re lucky we even made it.”
He nodded toward her grappling hook. “I saw you and Corran ahead of me and grabbed the rope as soon as I could. That was quick thinking on your part. I never would have made it out in time.”
“None of us would have.” She harbored a bellyful of resentment toward Corran. How dare he force her into that malfunctioning magical gate, nearly killing them both? She shuddered to think of her fate had she been trapped inside during the final implosion.
Durwyn joined Corran and Ghleanna, who were checking the fallen adventurers for signs of life. Kestrel hung back. As she coiled her rope, she thought about how much she wanted to wrap it around Corran’s neck. Instead she stowed it and the grappling hook in her pack. She retrieved her dagger, noting her surroundings as she cleaned it.
They’d arrived on a street lined with buildings in various states of destruction. Even in its ruined condition Kestrel could see that Myth Drannor had once been a city of incredible beauty. The wood, stone, and glass buildings of the former elven capital had been constructed as extensions of the very trees that sheltered them, wondrous feats of architecture that enhanced nature even as they altered it. Spires soared toward the sky, prompting Kestrel to raise her eyes. In doing so, she discovered a network of bridges that spanned the trees.
Now many of the bridges were destroyed, and the buildings below looked like an earthquake had violently shaken them. Broken spires lay in fragments on the ground, their jagged stumps rising no higher toward the stars than did human constructions. Collapsed walls exposed the rooms they had been meant to protect, inviting creatures mundane and malicious to make their homes within. Statues of exquisite elven maidens lacked limbs or heads and stood watch over dry fountains choked with moss and debris. Weeds and thorns overtook the gardens. Rubble littered the streets.
A feeling of sadness, unfamiliar but genuine, washed over Kestrel. Something more than a city had been lost here.
At last she approached the others.
“You certainly took your time coming over,” Corran said. He gestured toward the adventurers. “They’re all dead—if you care.”
“Good thing we almost killed ourselves getting here, then,” she responded. “You had no right to force me into that portal.”
“You would stand idly by while others suffered?”
“This isn’t my problem.”
“You did volunteer,” Durwyn piped up.
Was he ganging up on her too, now? She fixed him with a withering gaze that caused the burly man to step back a pace. “My commitment began and ended in Phlan,” she said.
Corran shook his head in disgust. “Don’t you have the least concern for anyone besides yourself?”
“I saved your arse in that damn gate, didn’t I?”
“Enough!” Ghleanna, her expression strained, stepped between them. “Corran, she’s right—you shouldn’t have forced her to come. Kestrel, now that we are here, can we at least search for clues to what happened?”
“Sure,” Kestrel responded, her gaze remaining locked on Corran. She’d settle this later.
The adventurers appeared to have been dead for hours. Ghleanna hypothesized that time had become distorted in the malfunctioning gate, suspending the travelers in limbo much longer than the few seconds usually required to journey through one. The party also looked to have suffered wounds the orcs could not have inflicted.
“I believe their opponents wielded magic,” Ghleanna said. “Look at those deep burns on Allyril, the party’s sorceress. Ordinary fire doesn’t burn skin quite that way—I suspect lightning bolts. The cleric over there seems to have had the life drained right out of him, as does Loren. Athan is missing. I—I fear he was disintegrated altogether.” She cleared her throat and looked away.
Corran uttered the opening words of a prayer for the ill-fated band’s souls. Kestrel, never one to take much interest in religious observances, rolled her eyes but remained silent during the invocation. As she waited, paying little attention to the words, she noticed a smooth rectangular bulge under the cloak of the man Ghleanna had called Loren. When the paladin finished his prayer, she bent over the body to investigate.
“Have you no respect?” Corran hissed.
“What? I thought you were done.”
“You would steal from the corpses of fallen comrades?”
She clenched her jaw, fresh ire rising within her. If Ghleanna or Durwyn had reached for that object, he wouldn’t have said a word. “I thought we were investigating what happened here.” Pointedly turning her back on him, she unclasped Loren’s cloak, slipped her hand into its inside pocket, and withdrew a slim book. She opened its leaves, quickly skimming the pages. “It’s a journal.”
Corran reached for it. “Let me see.”
Kestrel snatched the volume out of his grasp. “I can read.” She flipped to the end, hoping the last few entries would prove the most informative.
Elminster was right, the last page read. A new Pool of Radiance exists somewhere in Myth Drannor. The pool’s creators know our mission and already send agents to stop us, even though we have not yet learned who’s behind the plan. Fortunately, we still have the Gauntlets of Moander, and once we find the pool we shall use them to destroy it. Mystra—and Fate—willing.
Kestrel read the passage aloud. When she finished, Ghleanna turned to Corran.
“I saw no gauntlets when we examined the adventurers,” the mage said, a note of panic in her voice. “Did you?”