Elminster gave it a disapproving look, and it slowed abruptly. A ripple ran down his jawline, and the shield stopped.
And started back to where the two sisters stood side by side, glaring at him. They gave the shield a mental shove, and it shuddered, slowing abruptly. Elminster shoved back.
Alustriel’s eyes glowed, flaring like two lamps, and the shield shook in the air. Elminster thrust at it with all he could call up from the wards.
And all light flickered and then failed, the cavern around them and under their feet shuddering as the Weave convulsed, shockwaves rippling.
El felt a drift of dust and fine sand falling on his face as Candlekeep groaned above him, a yawning slow and loud and deep, that fell into the rumbling of an earthquake.
He took six swift crouching steps to his right in the utter darkness-and that proved to be wise, because as the rumbling died and the magical radiances faded back into being, the shield was racing right at where he’d been standing.
And it was coming edge on, this time.
It swerved around in a slicing arc as Laeral and Alustriel saw where he now stood, and came at him again.
Elminster lifted his lip in a mirthless smile and strode to meet it.
The spell that would serve him best right then was already taking hold; a magic that would cleave the shield and anything else solid sent at him, leaving a path of emptiness before him wreathed in shimmering magical fire.
It did just that, smoothly slicing the shield asunder, and El left it seeking new things to devour as he used the Weave to call on the wards of the keep again, trying to bring down the cavern wall behind Alustriel and Laeral, so rubble would rain onto their heads-just as they’d sought to serve him.
His call became ineffectual tugging. They were using the Weave, two to his one, and their control over the wards remained firm.
The cavern wall didn’t even tremble.
Not that they’d been idle. He raised his cleaving fire and tried to twist it to intercept magic, but it was still transforming when the spells they’d just cast tore through it and struck him-a roaring burst of flames enveloping his head and hands, as ice seared and rimed him below the waist.
El had to fight for breath enough to scream.
He writhed in agony, trying to cry out and blinded by scalding steam billowing up from the roiling, clawing meeting of fire and ice right across his chest. He was vaguely aware of falling backward, legs frozen and rigid, the silver fire within him leaping out of half a dozen raw wounds and licking up and down his limbs.
He landed hard and bounced, only his silver fire keeping his lower body from being shattered. He could not even squirm. Shudder, yes, but that was his ravaged body’s doing, not something he could control. He lay there shaking and helpless, in whimpering agony.
“Sorry, old friend and mentor,” he heard Alustriel say sadly, from somewhere close above him. “We didn’t want to do this. We never wanted to have to do anything like this to you.”
“Yet do it we must,” Laeral wept. “Finish it, Luse. Finish him now, before we weaken and change our minds. Still alive, he’s a peril forever. Do it!”
“I think not,” someone else said then.
It was a cold and calm voice that Elminster had heard before.
“Oh? And who are you?” Alustriel asked sharply-and there followed an ear-shattering explosion.
“Is that the best you can do?” the newcomer asked contemptuously. “Truly, Chosen have become lesser beings than they were in my day.”
“And when was that, bone lord?” Laeral snapped, and through swimming tears El was aware of a blindingly bright flash of emerald light.
The cold voice laughed. “You seem used to destroying far feebler liches. I am Larloch, the First Chosen of Mystryl, and her herald. Some call me the Shadow King. You may call me-Oblivion.”
You grew used to the gentle singing of the City of Song after a time, Amarune had discovered. It was as beautiful and softly ethereal as ever, but it faded in your awareness to an ever-present background. Until something louder and more strident drowned it out.
War horns blared, deep and menacingly mournful, through the trees. Mercenaries’ horns. They were coming now, a widespread crashing of leaves and dead twigs underfoot amid the thunder of many rushing warriors’ boots, pouring through the forest in an all-out charge. The armies of Shade, striking in unison at last.
Converging not just on Storm, Amarune, and Arclath, nor the elves who stood with them, but closing in from all directions on the core of Myth Drannor that the elves still held, the war horns dying away in mournful echoes as a cacophony of shouts, war cries, and bellowed orders arose.
“Steady,” Arclath commanded no one in particular, as he stood beside his beloved. Storm was on Amarune’s other side, sword ready and the long silver tresses of her hair stirring around her shoulders like so many restless snakes. On either side of them stood a line of elves-a line only one defender deep, a pitiful handful to stand against so many onrushing mercenaries.
“Strike to disable,” Arclath added quietly, “and let their fallen become a barrier we can defend.”
Storm nodded. “Wise words, but-”
Then there was no more time for nervous talk. The charging mercenaries had reached them, roaring.
In half a breath the world became a confusing, bloody chaos of hacking swords. The shriek and clang of steel was deafening, birds fleeing from branches overhead squalling but utterly unheard.
Rune and Arclath stabbed and parried and sidestepped, but the footing soon became treacherous and they fell into the same attacks as their attackers-hacking wildly and frantically, like unskilled wanderers trying to cut their way out of a forest thicket. There wasn’t room to do anything else; the few spears thrust high and tangled in branches overhead, their wielders reeling back, too wounded to keep hold of them. Blood sprayed blindingly in all directions as sword hands were lopped off and throats laid open, men reeled and fell, and … suddenly it was over, and the mercenaries were falling back.
Leaving mounds of heaped dead and moaning, writhing wounded behind them. Ruthlessly the blood-drenched elf defenders advanced to stab the stricken into silence.
Everyone was panting hard, covered in sticky blood-and Storm was working hard alongside the elves, tendrils of her hair plucking daggers from mercenary sheaths and swords from under bodies or out of failing hands, tossing the gleaned weapons back among the elf lines.
The besiegers hadn’t gone far. They were within easy bowshot, through the trees, though no shafts were flying.
The surviving high mages had boosted the city’s mythal to quench flames and slow arrows, spears, and other missiles in midair, but it had been done in haste, and they lacked skill and might enough for the augmentation to be permanent. The new abilities rode the age-old mythal uneasily, flickering and fitful.
A proof of this came hurtling: a spear arcing through the air from among the milling mercenaries. It deflected off a tree to crash to the forest floor, rattling and sliding … but didn’t stop until it found heaped bodies.
“Our mages must be getting tired,” a bladesinger panted, leaning back against a tree trunk beside Storm. “When they falter, so do the new mythal powers.”
“At least the mythal work keeps them from getting underfoot when swords are swinging,” Storm replied.
That brought a wry and weary grin to the bladesinger’s face, but Storm didn’t echo it. Rather, she turned and beckoned Arclath and Amarune, looking thoughtful.
“Come,” was all she said as they left the lines. Arclath looked back warily at the mercenaries as someone among them started to beat a drum, but Rune laid a hand on his arm to gently tug him along.
Storm set a brisk pace through the trees, but they hadn’t come far when two elves stepped from behind trees, blades in hand-long whipswords, barb-ended blades whose slender lengths flexed and sang-and faces unfriendly.