Then he saw it-no, her. A tiny flying figure, impossibly blue hair streaming out behind her in a streaming tail, wheeling in the air at the end of the great channel of death she’d just sliced through an army, and now plunging right back into the armored ranks, just behind the foremost mercenaries, cleaving through them and leaving a chaos of dying and maimed men behind.
He saw an arcanist blast at her with a spell, down the trail of the dead in her wake. His magic rebounded on him, hurling him broken limbed and limp into the nearest tree, while his flying target hacked and hewed her way on.
Prince Mattick of Thultanthar swallowed, shook his head-and just turned and ran.
The courtyard was eerily quiet. Only the fast-scudding clouds betrayed the fact that Thultanthar was flying through the air in a killing plummet beneath all their feet.
The vast and usually open space was crowded, seemingly filled with robed and cowled pillars standing almost shoulder to shoulder: the assembled arcanists of the city. Each of them held still, in the precise spot chosen for him or her by the Most High, and every face was set with the strain of intense concentration.
Telamont’s great draining magic was underway, and the fear and awe the younger arcanists felt at being part of such a meld, working in concert with so many other minds of power, was starting to subside as the dark and driving force of the Most High’s will really took hold.
Overhead and all around, in the hitherto empty air, an impossibly complex and glowing tangle slowly faded into view, lines of racing white fire tinged with gold, ever changing but growing steadily brighter.
The Weave had become a visible thing.
From high windows all over the city, lesser Thultanthans exclaimed in startled wonder as the shining network spread. Filling the sky above the city and stretching into vast distances through the clouds and everywhere below-including the white spires ahead, poking through the great green carpet of trees that marked the heart of embattled Myth Drannor.
And along those strands of racing force, leaping up from those spires, rose a thin, soft, high-pitched, ethereal song. Singing that swelled, mournful and defiant.
As the baelnorn who’d guarded elf crypts for so long fought the hiresword army converging on the last few spires of the city still in elf hands, the elf dead in their now unguarded tombs beneath Myth Drannor were singing.
The City of Shadow was coming to the City of Song.
“Well,” Elminster growled, as they reeled away from the sighing collapse of a half-magical pillar, breaking the human triangle they’d formed around it, “at least they’re hurting less, with each one we destroy.”
Laeral gave him a smile. “Stop looking so worried, El. This either works-or it doesn’t. If we fail, we’ve done the best we could. And at least we haven’t done nothing.”
“Which is how so much evil crawls unchecked in this world for so long,” Alustriel put in. “Good folk tending to their own lives and concerns, and doing nothing for their neighbors, their villages, their realms. Leaving the hard and distasteful work for someone else.”
“Aye,” El grunted. “Us.”
“How many anchors is that now? I’ve lost count,” Alustriel asked.
Laeral grinned. “Is now a good time to admit I’ve never been able to keep track of coins, or numbers of any sort, above about seven at once?”
El grinned at her. “A serious failing in a ruler, I’d say. And one that I share.”
Laeral turned to her sister. “Well, High Lady of Silverymoon? And whatever-they-called-you, of Luruar?”
Alustriel gave her a wry look. “I generally lose count somewhere around forty-odd. And we passed that many anchors destroyed, long ago. Speaking of which, the next one is over that way, about-” She broke off, her face changing, and asked, “What’s that?”
They could all feel it. A tugging in the air, an invisible pull rising in its silently tremulous force. It clawed at them, seeming to want to drag them up into the air, angling up into the sky, northward.
Up to the floating stone city of Thultanthar, now hanging tall and dark in the sky, still drifting closer.
“They want the mythal, those arcanists,” Elminster said, peering up at the city, then down at its spreading shadow over the trees. “Perhaps we should give it to them.”
“Not freely, I take it,” Laeral said dryly.
“Oh, freely indeed-but all at once, in a rush, like a great fist of force. Mayhap we could shatter it.”
“Quite a rain of destruction that would be,” Alustriel commented, peering up at the dark stone city. “You think we can manage it?”
El sighed. “No. No, I don’t, though I wish I could answer thee otherwise.”
“Take too long?” Laeral asked softly. “Might go awry?”
“Both of those,” the Sage of Shadowdale said shortly. “Take too much crucial time, I’m almost certain … so this draining magic may well succeed.”
“Ignore it, El,” Alustriel counseled grimly. “Let’s just go on destroying anchors. You can’t be everywhere, do everything, and save everyone-and you should have stopped trying centuries ago.”
“And how much less fun would that have been?” Laeral countered. “For old weirdbeard here and all the rest of Faerûn?”
“Ah,” her sister granted, nodding her head and letting her long silver tresses writhe and swirl freely about her shoulders. “You have a point there. That many have felt the sharp end of these last twelve centuries or so.”
“Or so?”
Alustriel grinned and shrugged. “As I said, I lose count.”
“I wish I could,” Elminster whispered fervently, and stalked off in the direction of the next anchor.
The two sisters exchanged worried glances and followed.
With their every step, the tugging grew stronger.
Storm Silverhand trudged past perhaps her sixteen thousandth tree of the day, reeling on her feet with weariness. She was alone and blood drenched and trailing her sword, glad of the wrist thong that tethered it to her numbed sword hand.
Was there no end to these Shadovar-hired mercenaries? She’d slain hundreds herself, today, and clambered over thousands slain by others-and they were still as thick as the swarming blowflies, coming through the trees by their dozens and scores and even hundreds.
As if her thoughts had alerted a lot of someones that their battlefield cue was upon them, she saw sunlight glinting off bright armor in the trees.
She sighed and started looking around for a good place to make a stand. Against the broad trunk of yon duskwood would have to do …
By the time she reached it, her foes were out in the open, walking steadily toward her in a wedge of gleaming shields, helms, and armor. No spears or glaives, but plenty of long swords and battle-axes. Fresh troops, hundreds of them.
And at their head strode two warriors who must have been seven feet tall and three feet across at their shoulders-half-orcs or half-giants or some such; it was hard to see their features through their menacing beak-faced war helms. Between them walked a young Shadovar arcanist in his robes, his face as haughty as any Zhentarim or Red Wizard Storm had ever met.
“Well met, elf-lover,” he greeted her. “If you beg for your life, I might spare you for a time. Long enough to serve as a reward for those under my command here who fight outstandingly today. But I warn you, you must choose your fate right now. We’re in a hurry; if we tarry, there might not be any elves left.”
Leaning on her sword with the duskwood at her back, Storm gave him a wintry smile. “An interesting bargain, Thultanthan, but I offer you a different one. There’s been enough killing this day. Surrender or depart, and I’ll spare you.”