Teleporting from the barricade had been a simple matter. He found himself at the outskirts of the dale and quickly cast a spell of invisibility upon himself, then used the power of the soul energies to take to the air.
A small band of Zhentilar had been deployed to travel the north road into Shadowdale and engage the soldiers at the crossroads of the town, where Bane had assumed the defenders would make their last stand. There were no more than five hundred men in this detail, and many would be stopped by the defenses Mourngrym's men had certainly placed in their way along the road and in the farms to the north.
As he flew toward the crossroads, Bane was delighted to find that at least a few hundred of his men from the north had made it through, yet it seemed they had been expected. Bane descended to the center of the fighting while maintaining his invisibility. In the distance he could see the Celestial Stairway, its changing aspects a beacon in the sky that drove him onward, and would eventually take him home. Beside the stairway he could see the brightly lit Temple of Lathander. One combatant had been notoriously absent throughout the battle and Bane suddenly realized the logical place for his adversary to hide.
"Elminster," Bane said and laughed. "I would have given you more credit."
A human approached, wielding a sword.
Mourngrym.
How delightful it would be to carry the head of the lord of Shadowdale upon his belt as he opened his arms in greeting to the hated sage. Bane dropped his invisibility and laughed as Mourngrym stopped just before the Black Lord, startled by Bane's sudden appearance. Bane crushed Mourngrym's sword in his taloned hand as Mourngrym swung at him, then reached down to claim his prize.
Suddenly another man appeared and pulled Mourngrym from the Black Lord's grasp. Bane ripped open the second man's chest.
"Hawksguard!" Mourngrym shouted as the older man fell to the ground.
Bane was about to kill the stunned dalelord when he caught sight of the Celestial Stairway.
It was burning, set ablaze by blue-white eldritch fires.
The humans all but forgotten, Bane used the power of the dead to take to the cold night air. Bane drew close to the Temple of Lathander. The temple, molded in the form of a phoenix, was releasing a flow of bluish white fires that assaulted the stairway like a dragon spewing forth its fiery breath. The stairway crackled with the eldritch flames, and Bane watched with horror as the changing aspects became a heated blur that the eyes of his avatar could no longer bear to look upon.
The flesh of the Black Lord was engulfed in an amber haze as the continuous flow of souls ripped through his form, strengthening the god until his power reached levels he had only tasted for fleeting instants in the dungeons of Castle Kilgrave. Knowledge of countless spells and the power to cast them at will, without the physical components usually necessary, coursed through the Black Lord. He was almost a god again.
I can destroy this place, Bane thought. I can raze it to its foundations and slay all who dare stand against me.
He looked back to the Celestial Stairway and flew as close as he dared, then hovered in midair and watched as his way back to the Planes melted away. There was nothing he could do to stop the destruction of the stairway; his plans to retake the Planes had been thwarted. Elminster had dared to stand against the Black Lord and now the old sage would pay.
Bane descended to the temple and studied it for a moment. He did not dare to enter through the passages that released the mystical fires. That would certainly destroy his avatar. And when he checked the doors and windows, Bane found they had been fortified by a spell of some sort. To break the magical ward would certainly alert Elminster to his presence.
Then Bane saw a window that had been left unguarded, and he rose to it tentatively, expecting Elminster's gaze to meet his when he looked into it. But no one was there. Bane passed through the bright stream of light that flowed from the window without harm, and he found himself standing in the bedroom of a high priest of Lathander. At his feet, Bane noticed a book with the words "Diary of Faith" embroidered on its cover. The Black Lord crouched and picked up the leather-bound journal.
When Bane read the words on the final page, he could not stop laughing. Only when he heard the sound of voices directly below did he drop the book and stop laughing. Casting a glassee spell, Bane looked at the floor, then through the wood planks and supports that separated him from the sage.
He saw Elminster casting a spell. The mage looked exhausted, as if he had been working on this spell for the entire night. Swirling mist whirled in all directions. The magic-user and the cleric who had interfered with Bane's plans in Castle Kilgrave were here; the failure of his assassins to report had steeled him for this knowledge, and somehow he was made quite happy by this turn of events. To the Black Lord, there was nothing sweeter than taking the lives of his enemies with his own hands.
The cleric was busy rifling through ancient tomes, locating spells for the dark-haired magic-user to study. Occasionally Elminster would address the magic-user, and she would recite one of the spells she had learned.
And when the woman mage repeated the spells, they worked, even without components! Bane stared at the woman, then saw the star pendant, the symbol of Mystra, around her neck. Each time she cast a spell, tiny strands of energy played across the pendant and disappeared when the spell was finished.
She must have some of Mystra's power in that trinket, Bane thought. I must have it for my assault on Helm and Ao.
Bane considered how best to take the old sage by surprise, but there was no spell he could think of to accomplish his goal. Refusing to be daunted, Bane lay face-down upon the floor and used his stolen power to make his form insubstantial. Then he slowly drifted into the floor until his face protruded from the other side very slightly, and followed the ceiling until it met with the wall nearest Elminster. The Black Lord then drifted down the wall, keeping his prey in view at all times. Finally, when he stood no more than six paces behind Elminster, Bane pushed away from the cover of the wall and advanced on the sage, talons extended.
By the time the dark-haired magic-user noticed Bane's presence, the Black Lord's talons were only inches away from Elminster's throat.
The sage of Shadowdale was lost in the private world of the spells he was casting. He felt the great powers he was releasing flow from the magical weave around Faerun, and when he opened his eyes, he saw that a section of the temple's floor had vanished as planned. A rift had been opened by his conjurings — a rift that was lined by a swirling mist that flashed with a power he had summoned only once before, and then when he was much younger. In those days, when he was only one hundred and forty, he believed himself to be immortal. Now, as Elminster looked down into the rift, he was frightened just a bit by the forces that he had brought into the Realms to combat the Black Lord.
The old sage was shocked from his conjuring by Midnight's cry. He looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of the fiery eyes of the God of Strife as his talons descended toward him. Elminster spoke a word of power, and Bane was thrown back by an incredible force. The Black Lord struck the wall he had emerged from.
A horrible screech came from the rift in the floor, and Elminster turned to see that his spell of summoning had gone awry when Bane attacked. The thing that had come to him instead of the eye of eternity was unknown to the old sage, and that frightened him very much.
"Midnight!" Elminster cried. "You must try a spell of containment!" There was no time to wait for a reply, as Bane moved forward against the aged sage again. Elminster released a blinding flash of blue-white lightning that ensnared the dark god in a nearly endless series of traps. The Black Lord screamed in rage and used his power to cut away at the eldritch bonds.