Dove winked. “That’s what ‘secret’ means. Trust me.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then stay behind. I might well be going to my death, and would rather not have someone at my shoulder who believes not in what we must do now.”
“And what’s that?”
“Die cheerfully, fighting hard, so our world may survive,” Dove replied. “I know bards talk like that all the time, but I don’t. I mean every word. And I’m not waiting. So stay, or come.” And she turned and strode back through the archway.
Moonstars looked at each other doubtfully. Then one of them rose, drew his sword, and hurried after Dove.
Then another.
And another.
Then two in unison, swiftly followed by another pair, and then by the rest, in a sudden rush.
Leaving just one Moonstar, who gazed around the room surveying the corpses and the wounded monks, sighed, and announced to the empty air, “I’ll miss this place.”
He walked through the archway, following his fellow Moonstars. “Will the bards sing songs about us, I wonder?” he asked himself.
A few slow, faltering paces later, he stopped long enough to ask, “And if I’m dead, how will I ever get to hear them?”
Another pair of grand and firmly closed crypt doors, and another baelnorn standing in grim guardianship before them, bared longsword in hand. The long, slender blade was studded with clear-cut gems that winked as the baelnorn lifted the war steel, facing the three Netherese as they strolled up to it.
“I am Prince Mattick, and this is my brother, Prince Vattick. We are Tanthuls of Thultanthar,” Mattick announced almost jovially. “You won’t have heard of us, but that matters not. Surrender or be destroyed.”
He didn’t bother to mention the lone surviving arcanist with them, but neither that Shadovar nor the baelnorn seemed to mind.
“I am the guardian of House Hualarydnym,” it announced calmly. “I shall not surrender.”
“You surprise me not,” Vattick drawled, and lifted a finger, unleashing a roaring spell that howled around the doors of the Hualarydnym crypt like two talon-headed emerald serpents, then plunged through the seams around them-and exploded with a last ear-clawing bellow.
The doors shattered and burst outward, huge stony shards stabbing right through the baelnorn from behind. The other shards, large and small, hurtled past the guardian for a moment or two, then curved around in the air, every one of them, to race back at the baelnorn, impaling it from all sides.
Vattick’s catlike smirk widened into a broad smile of delight as they watched the sharp stone fragments speed right through the glowing guardian, but leave their glows behind.
The baelnorn gasped and reeled, the magical auras the stone shards had borne now protruding from it in an ungainly, bristling array. It looked like a fitfully glowing, stumbling parody of a porcupine.
The guardian took several shuddering steps toward them, hissing in pain … and then darkened, gasping out puffs of glowing unlife as it sank into crouching, trembling agony.
And died, falling into a collapse of fading nothingness.
“Down after the first blow,” Mattick remarked approvingly. “Nicely done.”
“It’s all this tomb magic we’ve been drinking,” Vattick replied, beaming. “They crafted magic well; I’ll give them that, these ancient elves.”
He looked down at the stretch of scorched but empty smooth stone where the baelnorn had been, shook his head, and strode through the ravaged entrance of the crypt.
House Hualarydnym had not been a fertile family. Either that, or most of its fallen had been interred elsewhere. There was magic, right enough, but not much of it.
Mattick scowled. “Hardly worth the spell you spent on the door guard,” he said to Vattick.
Who shrugged, still smiling, and replied, “That was one baelnorn-reaping I enjoyed.”
“Hunh,” was Mattick’s eloquent reply to that, as he led the way back out into the passage. Vattick chuckled, but the lone arcanist left carefully said nothing at all, even when Mattick turned and glowered at him.
The passage wound its way around massive tree roots that protruded from the ceiling and descended into the floor like the sloping, half-buried bodies of gigantic snakes. Then the tunnel-like way started to ascend, until Mattick could see leaf-dappled daylight and hear the distant din of battle. Its walls held no more doors.
“Damned longears,” the prince growled. “They can’t have built a city this big with just the families we’ve found so far; there have to be more crypts-but the passages that lead to them could be anywhere. And if we follow this one to the light, we’ll soon be up to our necks in squalling elves trying to lash us with spells we’ve never learned any counters to! While we blunder about in the heart of a battle searching for ways back down again! Shar spit!”
“She does, I’ll grant,” Vattick agreed, “and a trifle too often for my pleasure, but as it happens, we don’t face the doom you fear. Father didn’t want us to run out of crypts so soon.”
Mattick swung around sharply. “What?”
The silent arcanist deftly stepped to one side, eyes downcast.
Vattick watched the Shadovar’s maneuver with obvious amusement before he met Mattick’s gaze again, and said gravely, “The Most High impressed a map of sorts into my mind. I know where other nearby crypts can be found.”
Mattick stared at his brother in still silence, a deepening frown spreading across his face. Both the last arcanist and Prince Vattick knew, as clearly as if he’d shouted the words, that he was thinking “Why Vattick and not me?”
Mattick said nothing, however, until he abruptly turned away and flung back over his shoulder curtly, “Tell me, Brother: Did the Most High share anything else with you that you’ve neglected to mention until now? Orders, perhaps?”
Vattick’s laugh was brief and harsh. “No, Brother. On that, you can trust me.”
Those words fell like stones into a bottomless well of deepening silence as Mattick strode to the nearest tree root and bounced a clenched fist off it, making no reply.
When he turned around again, Vattick was strolling back down the passage the way they’d come, the arcanist walking uncertainly in his wake.
Mattick swallowed a growl and hastened to catch up.
Rocks and trees unrolled swiftly below. The breeze was stiff, and the clouds scudded like ships driven by a gale; Thultanthar was flying at speed.
“It won’t be long now,” Aglarel commented, leaning out between two merlons to peer ahead, though he knew they were still too far away to see any sign of Myth Drannor in the great sweep of Faerûn spread out below and ahead.
His father didn’t bother to reply.
Or rather, as Aglarel saw a moment later, the Most High’s attention was fixed on something in the air above them.
A black line where there should be none, in the hitherto-empty sky.
A line swiftly broadening into a dark rift-that became a black star, low overhead and seemingly of about the same size as the many-spired city flying beneath it, a star that for just a moment seemed to be one dark, coldly knowing, somehow feminine eye.
It was an orb Aglarel felt would freeze his heart if it happened to turn and gaze upon him, and he knew the deity it belonged to was aware of him-knowledge that made his heart sink into deeper despair, in that instant, than he’d ever felt in his life before.
Shar was manifesting in midair to his father. This must be urgent.
“How can you be so patient?” Amarune burst out. “The world may be shattered before nightfall, and you’re sitting there calmly reading recipes!”
“Not calmly,” Arclath whispered, looking up from the heap of old books he’d fetched down off dusty shelves onto Storm’s kitchen table, and she saw that his hands were shaking. “Just feigning calm. Something nobles are taught young. Pretend to be calm, keep your true emotions off your face, and cultivate patience.”