Final Gate

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

22 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

Shortly before dawn, Araevin and his companions joined Seiveril by the forest manor. The Knights of the Golden Star surrounded them, along with the surviving Moon Knights and a chosen guard of bladesingers, spellarchers, and mages. Araevin felt keenly awake and alert despite the restlessness of his night. In Reverie his memory had insisted on wandering in places that he had shared with Ilsevele. Sometimes he envied the oblivion of human sleep. He knew that humans dreamed too, but they did not long remember their travels, did they?

With a few whispered commands, Seiveril and his captains led the gathered warriors into the dark of the morning. The great company moved through the forest in silence, broken only by the small rasp of steel and leather or the occasional footfall on the forest floor. From time to time Araevin glimpsed jagged shadows against the dark sky-the broken towers of Myth Drannor rising above the trees.

They came to a clearing in the forest, on the outskirts of the city itself. Araevin studied the spot, searching for the intangible presence of the mythal. After a moment, he nodded. “This will do,” he said.

Seiveril held up his hand. The rustling around Araevin grew still as the elves and Dalesfolk who accompanied his small band stopped moving and melted into the shadows beneath the trees.

“Good luck, Araevin,” he whispered.

Araevin narrowed his eyes, willing the unseen currents of magic to become visible to him. Slowly the majestic weaving of the city’s mythal ghosted into view-a great edifice of tangible magic, golden and alive, crackling with unimaginable power. Sildeyuir and the Waymeet itself were the only things Araevin had seen that even began to compare. The mythal’s field descended in a great curve from the sky over the center of the city and plunged into the ground not far from Araevin’s feet like a vertical wall of swirling golden light… golden light that was shot through with venomous strands of reddish copper, interwoven through the living magic.

“Be ready to protect me,” Araevin told his friends. “Sarya will sense me as soon as I begin, and I cannot believe that she will allow me to go about this without some opposition.”

“Do what you must,” Nesterin told Araevin. “We will guard you.”

Araevin drew out the Gatekeeper’s Crystal, and balanced the heavy stone in one hand, cupping his fingers around its points. The device glowed a brilliant violet-white, strengthened by the proximity of the mythal. He attuned his thoughts to the crystal in his hand, and he stepped into the shimmering light.

Sarya’s defenses woke at once, lashing about him like whipcords of furious magic. But Araevin was ready for that. He shielded himself with the crystal, deflecting the daemonfey’s spell traps. Then he carefully invoked the crystal’s power. From his outstretched hand a shrieking column of violet-white energy shot into the mythal field, brushing aside the locks and wards that kept him from the mythal itself.

The city groaned in reply. A wild wind sprang up in the forest, roaring through the treetops, and the ground trembled under his feet. Araevin felt the strength of the crystal mounting higher, doubling and redoubling on itself, as the device sought to master Myth Drannor’s ancient mythal. Tiny fissures of purple light began to appear in the conjoined crystal, and the shards vibrated in his hand.

“Araevin! The crystal!” Maresa shouted. “It’ll shatter!”

“Not if I can help it!” he answered.

He threw his willpower at the crystal, reining it in, arresting the wild power of the device as it surged toward release. For a moment the contest hung in the balance, and Araevin feared that he had allowed the crystal to channel too much power into the mythal-but then he managed to mute it, smothering the device in his iron determination.

“Donnor, guard this!” he said, and handed the crystal quickly to the cleric. Donnor wrapped the incandescent crystal in a common blanket, and backed away.

Sarya’s defenses lay shredded before him. Without her wards to keep him from excising her from the mythal, he was free to do as he wished. Araevin drew a deep breath and shouted out the words of the mythaalniir darach, the rite of mythal-shaping. Distantly, he realized that a sudden skirmish had erupted around him-devils and fey’ri attacked Seiveril’s standard from all sides, emerging from the ruins to give battle. But he paid no attention to the furious fight growing around him, and plunged his percipience into the golden strands of the mythal.

One by one, he severed the sullen red strands that were twisted around the mythal’s original work. As he had done in Myth Glaurach, he imposed a new set of governances to lock out Sarya. And he detected a subtle weaving of tarnished silver-black, an older grafting on the mythal.

The devils of Myth Drannor, he realized. This is the spell that holds them here.

With another sharp incision of willpower, he severed that one as well. The mythal itself was old and frail, but he could not do much about that. It might recover in time, or it might founder and fail. But at least no one else would be able to pervert it from its original intent, not without defeating Araevin’s own locks first.

Suddenly exhausted, he slumped to his knees and let the mythal fade away from his sight. He realized that Donnor and Seiveril were close beside him, thumping his back in congratulations. “Sarya’s spells are defeated!” the elflord shouted. “We can take the city!”

“Dozens of fiends just vanished, Araevin!” Donnor said. “Was that your doing?”

“I’ve sealed the mythal against Sarya,” he said weakly. “Anything she summoned with its power has been dismissed. But be careful. I think there are a number of demons and devils in her service that aren’t anchored to the mythal. You’ll have to deal with them.”

“We have learned a thing or two about that in the last couple of months,” Seiveril answered him. He looked over to his guards and shouted, “Sound the attack! This day we retake Myth Drannor and destroy the daemonfey!”

Silver horns greeted the morning, and hundreds of elf voices shouted in reply. From somewhere in the woods to the east, harsher human trumpets echoed through the forest too, as the Sembians charged into the streets from the other side of the city. Seiveril squeezed Araevin’s shoulder with his gauntleted hand, and led his warriors into the ruins of the city.

Araevin found his feet again as the Crusade swept past him, storming Myth Drannor. He took a deep breath, feeling his strength beginning to come back to him.

“Now we need to find a portal,” he said to his friends. “We have to deal with the Waymeet.”

Fflar ran into Myth Drannor, Keryvian aflame in his hand. In one small part of his mind he wondered at the irony that had brought him to this moment. Other than skulking about the outskirts of the city with Araevin and Ilsevele a little more than a month ago, the last time he had set foot within the familiar streets had been almost seven hundred years ago. Then he had been fighting to defend it against a horde of savage humanoids. But now he led an attack to retake the city from the demonspawned villains who had made it their stronghold.

The Crusade swept into the city ruins, rushing past the empty stone skeletons of elven palaces and towers. Seiveril led the warriors of Evermeet deeper into the city, striking for the old towers of Castle Cormanthor.

“To victory!” the elflord cried, and he dashed across the rubble-strewn courts.

“What does he think he’s doing?” Fflar muttered to himself, and he ran after Seiveril.

A company of fey’ri appeared before them, snarling defiance. The daemonfey warriors unleashed a barrage of deadly spells and fuming fire, hurling every sorcery at their command against the elves. Sinister voices snarled out the words of dark spells, fire roared and hissed in lethal waves across the street, and the very cobblestones charred and splintered with earsplitting reports.

It seems Araevin didn’t unbind all of Sarya’s demons, Fflar observed grimly. Some at least she must have summoned without the mythal’s aid.

He threw himself flat on the hard ground, ducking under a sizzling bolt of green acid that tore through the ranks around him. When he scrambled back to his feet, he found a vrock demon stooping on him, croaking in its harsh voice. Fflar blocked its filthy talons with a quick parry, passed its claws above his head as he spun beneath the monster, and finished by opening it from groin to breastbone with a leaping slash. The creature collapsed in a spray of foul black blood and gray feathers.

“Seiveril!” he called. “Where are you?”

He turned, looking for a new opponent. Elf knights, archers, and mages battled daemonfey swordsmen and sorcerers in a furious melee that stretched across the square… but the army of Evermeet was gaining the upper hand, and quickly. He spied Seiveril dueling a tall fey’ri general with curling black horns, plying mace and spell against the daemonfey’s skilled swordplay. The swordsman fought with cold fury, stabbing again and again at the elflord, but Seiveril parried each stroke with his mace until he found a chance to step back and speak a spell. A blinding white flash seared the battlefield, leaving the swordsman reeling-and Seiveril stepped forward and broke his neck with one swift swing of his silver mace.

“Well struck,” Fflar cried. He hurried to Seiveril’s side. “Now stop fighting and start leading! You are in command here!”

Seiveril flashed an easy smile at Fflar. “I think we have them!” he shouted back. “On to Castle Cormanthor! That is where Sarya will be hiding!”

Fflar took his bearings with a quick glance and pointed toward the right. “Down that avenue, then. It’s only a couple of hundred yards away.”

“Warriors of Evermeet, follow me!” Seiveril shouted.

He shifted his grip on his mace and led the Knights of the Golden Star and his guards along the street. All around them, elves skirmished with fey’ri and monsters. Storms of arrows brought down anything that tried to take to the skies, and spells flashed and thundered on every side. They came to the broad plaza in front of the castle, where more of the fey’ri waited, and another furious skirmish erupted.

Fflar found himself beset by a fey’ri bladesinger who leaped down into the fray from the battlements overhead. Keryvian gleamed like white fire in the morning light, leaping to deflect the spells and sword-thrusts the bladesinger threw at him. She was quick and graceful, her ruby face set in a small smile of concentration as she flowed through the bladesinger’s trance. Fflar finally managed a two-handed stroke in response. His opponent threw up her own blade to block the strike-but he was stronger than she was, and he beat through her guard and broke her sword against her upper arm, gashing her deeply. She drew in a sharp hiss of pain and staggered back, only to be lost as the battle swept her away.

The roar of angry voices and shrill ringing of steel on steel filled the air. He took a moment to smother the smoking acid-drops still clinging to his armor with his leather gauntlet, and looked around to find Seiveril.

The elflord fought on the steps of the castle’s front gate. He raised his hand above his head and loosed a towering ring of holy white fire against the demons and fey’ri nearby, scattering half a dozen foes like ninepins. Then a hulking daemonfey, the four-armed monster Xhalph, appeared behind Seiveril in a burst of fuming yellow smoke.

“Seiveril! Behind you!” Fflar shouted.

Seiveril started to turn-but a hezrou demon a short distance in front of him caught his eye, and he began a spell of dismissal against it. Xhalph took one step forward and plunged three of his swords into Seiveril’s back, grinning with bloodlust. Seiveril let out a cry and fell to his knees. The daemonfey prince wrenched his swords out of Seiveril’s back with a great spray of bright red blood, and flung the broken elflord headlong down the steps of the castle.

“Seiveril! ” Fflar cried. With no thought for the enemies around him, he hurled himself toward the castle.

Xhalph leaped down beside Seiveril with an easy bound. He raised his swords to butcher the elflord, but Fflar roared out a wordless challenge. Keryvian flashed in white wrath, sensing the blinding fury in his heart.

Xhalph looked up and grinned, his mouth full of small fangs. “You wish to be next, hero?” he hissed. “I have not forgotten our duel of a month ago. We have unfinished business, you and I.”

“You will not live out the day, murderer!” Fflar cried.

Xhalph readied his swords, preparing to receive Fflar’s attack. Then a blazing white arrow streaked into the daemonfey’s breastplate, taking him high on his left chest. The blow spun him half-around, but his armor took the worst of the impact. Xhalph roared once and reached up to snap off the shaft. Another arrow hissed toward him, and he threw up one of his swords in its path and batted it aside.

Fflar glanced to his side. Ilsevele knelt by her father, drawing her bow again.

“Xhalph, come!” Sarya Dlardrageth appeared in the empty doorway of the castle, dressed in her armor of black and gold. Ilsevele shifted her aim and loosed an arrow at her, but the daemonfey queen deflected it with a word and a gesture.

“Another time,” Xhalph growled. The wounded daemonfey spared one fang-filled snarl for Fflar, and leaped back up the stairs and disappeared into the castle proper.

Fflar started after them, but Ilsevele’s voice stopped him. “Starbrow!” she wailed. She cradled Seiveril in her arms, his blood streaming down the marble steps.

With one more glance after the fleeing daemonfey, Fflar turned back to Seiveril and hurried to his side. He stumbled to his knees beside the elflord. “Seiveril,” he murmured.

Seiveril’s face was pale, and blood flecked his lips. He breathed in shallow gasps. “Starbrow… my friend… I had hoped to walk with you in Cormanthor… when all this was at an end.”

“You will, Father. You will,” Ilsevele promised through her tears. “We will summon a healer. Stay with us just a little longer!”

“I am afraid… that it is too late for that, Ilsevele. It is time

… to walk in Arvandor instead…”

Fflar’s eyes blurred with tears. He had seen too many warriors fall on too many battlefields to argue with Seiveril. “Ilyyela is waiting for you there, my friend.” He reached down and found Seiveril’s hand, and gripped it tightly. “There is nothing to fear. I know it.”

The dying elf found a smile. “I saw Myth Drannor before I died… I am content. Ilsevele… you must finish what I have started here. Starbrow… live the life you have been called back to. You have surpassed any failures… you carry in your heart.” He reached out and set Ilsevele’s hand in Fflar’s, and breathed one last time. “… Love…” he whispered, and his eyes closed forever.

“Father,” Ilsevele murmured. She lowered him to the palace steps and sobbed over his chest. “Father!”

Fflar simply bowed his head. No words came to him. He clasped Ilsevele’s hand in his and knelt in silence by Seiveril’s torn body. He knew he was soon to leave this world, Fflar thought. He knew, and he set out to right the wrongs he could before he was called home.

“Rest, my friend,” he finally whispered.

Ilsevele looked up at him, ignoring the tears that streaked her face. “Starbrow, the daemonfey,” she said. “They fled into the palace. Sarya must have another portal inside.”

“It would not surprise me,” Fflar grated. He picked up Keryvian and climbed to his feet. The broken gates of the castle waited for him. “We cannot let them escape again, Ilsevele.”

“Go, Starbrow!” she said. “I will finish the fight here.” She stood, bow in hand, and raised it above her head. “To me, warriors of Evermeet! To me!”

Sehanine, watch over her, Fflar silently prayed. He looked around and saw Jerreda Starcloak and two of her wood elves, who stood gazing at Seiveril with horror.

“Jerreda, follow me!” he said, and he turned and leaped up the stairs.

The wood elves tore their eyes away from the fallen leader of the Crusade and bounded after him. Together they dashed into Castle Cormanthor, blades bared.

Fflar could hear the sounds of battle echoing throughout the castle. He followed the first hallway he came to for thirty paces or so, and it opened out into a small chapel or shrine. The old symbols of the Seldarine had been removed, but a blank alcove behind the altar still shimmered with a thin gray mist.

“As I thought,” he said. “It’s a portal.”

Jerreda recognized it too. “What do we do?” the wood elf princess said. “The daemonfey might have gone anywhere.”

Fflar hesitated only a moment before deciding. “After them,” he growled. Then he ran up and hurled himself through the gray mists.

It did not take Araevin long at all to find a portal in Myth Drannor. The city was riddled with them. A brief search and a quick spell of portal mastery allowed him to locate a suitable gate and shift its destination to the Fhoeldin durr.

They emerged in a blind alley of the Waymeet, surrounded by a thin, acrid yellow fog. Riveted iron plate inscribed with red-glowing runes covered the walls and pillars around them. Lurid firelight reflecting from the low-hanging clouds that roofed the Waymeet illuminated the place, striking angry gleams from the scorched glass spars and columns that still survived.

“By Tymora, they’ve ruined the place,” Jorin said. “Malkizid’s devils have made it into some kind of infernal machine.”

“Araevin, what is the purpose of all this? What is Malkizid trying to do here?” Nesterin asked.

“I am not sure,” Araevin breathed.

He frowned at the sharp smell of hot metal in his nostrils and made himself study the evil runes driven into the ancient glass walls. Hellish sorcery pooled and churned slowly through the metal conduits, pinning the ancient elven mythal spells open in the same way that a vivisectioned animal might be opened for inspection. What more could the archdevil want with the device? Didn’t he possess sufficient knowledge of mythalcraft to do what he wanted with the Fhoeldin durr?

Unless… Araevin peered closer, studying the mythal weave before him, and it came to him. The ancient weave of the Fhoeldin durr was spun by the Vyshaanti of Aryvandaar… and they had woven their mythal in such a way that it could not be changed from its purpose except by another scion of House Vyshaan. Malkizid, for all his lore and skill, was not a sun elf of House Vyshaan, and so he could not exert his mastery over the Last Mythal of Aryvandaar without first devising a means of overpowering those ancient restrictions. The iron runes were Malkizid’s own mythal, a mythal the archdevil was building for the purpose of destroying the ancient concordance governing the Fhoeldin durr and replacing it with rules more to his own liking.

“It’s a battering ram to break down the Waymeet’s defenses,” he told Jorin. “Malkizid is building a mythal of his own that will take over the governing of the Waymeet.”

“How much time do we have?” Donnor asked.

“None,” Araevin said grimly. “Malkizid’s spell is complete. I can’t excise his influence with the Gatekeeper’s Crystal.”

“So all this was for nothing?” Maresa shook her head and muttered a savage oath as she turned her back on the rest of the company and kicked at the iron bands on the wall. “What was the point?” she demanded.

Araevin looked again at the corrupted mythal around him. Then he withdrew the Gatekeeper’s Crystal from under his cloak and looked at the three-pointed star. Its substance had taken on a sullen reddish hue, but power still coursed through it. The crystal still draws on the Waymeet for its power, he thought. Maybe… “The crystal no longer commands the Waymeet, but it still channels the power of this place,” he said to Maresa. “We must use the crystal to destroy the Fhoeldin durr.”

“Like the way the Dlardrageths destroyed the wards over the Nameless Dungeon?”

“Yes. I think it’s the only way.”

The genasi gave him a skeptical look. Then she shook her long silver-white hair out of her face with a toss of her head. “I saw what the crystal did to that hillside in the High Forest,” she said. “Is that what you’re going to do here?”

“First we must find the center of the Waymeet,” Araevin said.

Maresa and Nesterin led the way as they set out along a curving corridor that spiraled in toward the middle of the place. The foul smoke hanging in the air of the place burned the eyes and seared the nose, and it limited visibility to a few dozen feet. Araevin quickly realized that the smoke kept them from navigating toward the Waymeet’s center, but at least it also served to help conceal them from any of Malkizid’s servants unless they actually blundered into their enemies.

They came to an intersection, and Araevin studied their surroundings for a moment before pointing to the right. The genasi and the star elf started down the new passageway, stealing forward as quietly as they could.

Harsh voices croaked in the mist behind the company. Araevin whirled just in time to see three mezzoloths emerge from the acidic fog just behind them, following the intersecting avenue. The bulky insectile creatures did not hesitate for an instant; the moment they caught sight of Araevin and his friends, they threw themselves at the travelers, clacking and chattering to each other.

Jorin shot one in the center of its chitin-covered torso, but the monster shrugged off the arrow and kept coming. The ranger stepped back, continuing to shoot as fast as he could bring arrows to the string. Green-feathered shafts peppered the fiends, but then the ranger had to drop his bow with a sharp curse and sweep out his swords, for the mezzoloths were on him. Araevin drew a wand from his belt and looked for a chance to strike back at the monsters, but Donnor threw out an arm.

“Go on!” Donnor growled. “Perform the rite! Jorin and I will hold them!”

The mage started to argue, but he could hear more fiends hurrying to the fray. If he allowed himself to be drawn into a skirmish, he might not get a chance to strike the blow that truly counted.

“Follow us as soon as you can,” he said to Donnor, and he hurried back to Maresa and Nesterin. “Come on, we must do what we came to do.”

Behind him, the Lathanderite turned to face the oncoming mezzoloths, with the Yuir ranger at his shoulder. He shouted a holy prayer to his deity and banished one of the monsters back to its own plane, sending it shrieking back to the hells in a shroud of golden fire. Then Araevin pulled himself away and ran on into the Waymeet, Maresa and Nesterin a step behind him. Angry roars and hisses filled the mist behind them.

The foundations of the walls and columns grew thicker as the three of them came into the center of the Waymeet. Here the fence of titanic crystal spears that formed the heart of the mythal reached hundreds of feet overhead, and not even the elves of ancient Aryvandaar could build such things without a sturdy footing. The bitter yellow mists cleared a little, affording them a good view of the cathedral-like space in the heart of the Waymeet. Bold spurs of glass crossed and crossed again overhead, creating a ceiling of sorts far above. Smaller ribs of crystal linked the great columns; the place was a spiderweb of glass.

Beneath a spiraling dome in the center of the structure stood another speaking stone, a column easily thirty feet tall, but like the lesser speaking stone Araevin had seen on the outskirts of the Waymeet, the master stone was also encircled by iron runes. Thick bands of black metal pressed Malkizid’s hellforged spells deep into the crystalline flesh of the living mythal.

“This must anchor the mythal,” Nesterin breathed. “What a magnificent work this Waymeet must have been!”

“Admire it later,” Maresa said. She looked to Araevin. “So how do we do this?”

“Here, take this.” Araevin brought out the Gatekeeper’s Crystal and quickly disjoined it, separating it into its original three shards. He handed one piece to Maresa, and another to Nesterin. “We need to spread out and create three points of a triangle with the shards-the wider, the better. At the very least, we should surround the master stone there. When you are in position I will invoke the crystal’s power and unbind the magic in this place.”

“What happens to us when you do that?” Maresa asked.

“If the Seldarine smile on us, the damage will be contained within the shards’ borders. You must be careful to stand outside the triangle, not inside.”

The genasi nodded once. “I’m off, then,” she said, and she sprinted across the open plaza, running past the chained speaking stone. Nesterin observed her course for a moment, then hurried off at a right angle, seeking to separate himself as widely as possible from both Maresa and Araevin.

A winged shape dropped down out of the tangle of poisoned crystal overhead, diving down toward the star elf. “Nesterin, above you!” Araevin cried.

Nesterin looked up, and threw himself to one side as the monster above him slammed into the ground where he had been standing. Stone split with piercing reports, reverberating through the Waymeet’s chancel. The monster, a powerful green-scaled nycaloth, cast its baleful red eyes on Araevin.

“You spoiled my pounce, elf,” it hissed. “You will pay for that when I finish with your friend.”

It turned to spring after Nesterin, who rolled away and came to his feet with his sword in hand. Araevin blasted at it with a bolt of lightning, charring a broad black scorch across its shoulders. The monster roared and kept after the star elf. Nesterin lunged forward and stabbed it twice in its thickly muscled torso, but the nycaloth shrugged off the blows. It beat its wings once and leaped up to fix the talons of its feet in Nesterin’s shoulders, and dragged him up off the ground.

“Let go of me!” Nesterin snarled. His sword dropped to the ground and bounced with a shrill ringing sound, and he struggled in the monster’s grasp.

“Nesterin!” Araevin started another spell, but halted in mid-word. Any magic he hurled might strike his friend as well as the nycaloth. He settled for a simple magical attack that hammered small darts of arcane power into the nycaloth’s chest, eliciting another roar from the beast. It rose higher, trying to get out of his range. Then Nesterin threw back his head and sang out a potent warding spell against evil. The nycaloth hissed and recoiled, driven away by the abjuration-and Nesterin fell twenty feet or more to the hard stone floor of the Waymeet’s chancel. He landed badly and sprawled to the ground, grimacing in agony.

Araevin started toward him, but Nesterin waved him back. Blood seeped from his wounded shoulders, and his left leg turned at a bad angle.

“I can hold the shard right here,” the star elf said. “Speak the rite, Araevin!”

Maresa appeared on the far side of the chancel, holding her shard of the crystal. “Is this good?” she called.

He glanced at the genasi, and back to Nesterin, and quickly backed ten steps, trying to position himself correctly. He raised his shard, and looked into it, seeking the combination of willpower and knowledge to trigger its power.

Icy needles scythed into him from behind, piercing his flesh like hateful icicles. Cold so intense that his nerves shrieked as if on fire stabbed into him at shoulder, neck, arm, and back. Araevin screamed once and staggered away, dropping the Gatekeeper’s Crystal from hands suddenly too numb to hold it.

“You feckless fool! You would destroy a work twelve thousand years old? You are little more than a vandal!” Malkizid strode into the Waymeet’s heart, emerging from the mist-wreathed pillars behind Araevin. His taloned hands clenched in anger, and the glass walls of the place shivered at the anger in his melodious voice. “I have worked for this day too long to allow you to ruin it, ungrateful whelp!”

Araevin groveled in agony, plucking at the icicles that transfixed him. Across the chancel, Nesterin pushed himself to his feet and pointed his own shard at Malkizid-but the archdevil made one sharp gesture of his hand and sent the star elf hurling into the glass walls behind him. Nesterin hit heavily and slumped to the ground, stunned. Across the chamber, Maresa took one look at Malkizid and leaped for cover, disappearing into the ribbed columns on the far side of the room. Malkizid snorted in amusement as she ducked out of sight.

“Where does the half-breed think she can hide from me?” he rumbled aloud. “I control all the doors in this place now.”

Get up! Araevin exhorted himself. I have to do something!

Cold wracked his body, pinning him to the ground. He reached behind his back and drew the icicle out of his shoulder with a hiss of pain. Its tip was stained red. Then he felt for the one in the back of his neck. Warm blood ran down his collar, but only a trickle. The frozen dart had found muscle, not the great arteries or the windpipe. The searing numbness in his throat diminished, and he found he could speak again.

“Not yet,” he rasped.

He stretched out his hand toward Malkizid and spat out the words of his iridescent ray spell. Blazing beams of emerald green and sickly violet washed past Malkizid, and the fiery orange beam grazed one wing. The archdevil’s feathered wing smoked as the amber-red flames seared him.

Malkizid twisted away from the brilliant stabbing rays, sheltering behind his wings until the flames died away. He straightened up and bared his teeth at Araevin. “You have ceased to amuse me, Araevin Teshurr,” he snarled. Araevin tried to strike again with another spell, but Malkizid proved faster. The archdevil intoned terrible words, and with one taloned hand inscribed an intricate set of arcane passes in the very air.

A shell of golden force surrounded Araevin before he could roll away. In the blink of an eye it began to tighten around him, folding him into an awkward ball and constricting. He lost the spell he was trying to speak, and fought for breath. He threw out his arms and pushed back, trying to keep from being crushed, but the relentless orb compressed tighter with his struggles.

“That is better,” Malkizid said in his beautiful voice. “I shall enjoy watching you die, mage.” Then something struck him just under the collarbone. The Branded King roared and stepped back, and Araevin glimpsed a crossbow quarrel quivering in the archdevil’s flesh. Malkizid yanked it out-only the very tip of the bolt had managed to pierce his flesh-and threw it aside. He glared into the maze of iron-bound glass columns. “You shall die slowly for that, impudent whelp!” he called into the maze of the Waymeet.

For once, Maresa had the sense to keep her mouth shut. She did not answer, prudently remaining hidden. But behind the archdevil, Nesterin stirred slowly. Still trying to resist the crushing weight of the sphere around him, Araevin’s eye fell on the shard next to the star elf. The ghost of an idea flickered through his mind.

Fighting to clear his mind of pain, he muttered the words of a simple message spell and whispered to the Sildeyuiren lord. “Nesterin! Take up your shard, and summon the Gatekeeper. The crystal may still commune with the mythal.”

Nesterin looked up at Araevin, caught in the floating sphere, and nodded. He fumbled for his shard, and concentrated on the great master stone in the heart of the Waymeet. The shard began to glow in his hands, and a few stray gleams of light leaked out from beneath the iron bands encircling the great speaking stone.

Malkizid whirled to glare at Nesterin, and strode angrily toward the wounded elf. His second step stuck abruptly, throwing him off balance. From the stone floor of the Waymeet, a spear of crystal had suddenly condensed around his foot, arresting his movement.

“What is this?” the archdevil snarled. He looked down at the luminescent crystal encasing his ankles, and pure black fury twisted his face.

Flaring his powerful wings wide, he tried to wrench himself out of the solidifying crystal. The glassy stuff cracked and split, but more filaments condensed around him, clinging to his form like gossamer webs.

“Stop this, Gatekeeper!” he demanded. “I command you!”

“You are not my maker, Malkizid.” The Gatekeeper’s voice was a weak whisper that echoed among the columns of soaring glass. “I still have some small power to resist your demands.”

“I will teach you obedience, then!” Giving up on efforts to wrench himself clear of the mythal’s snowy threads, Malkizid abruptly vanished, teleporting away… but blue lightning flickered across the highest spires of the Waymeet, and the archdevil instantly reappeared in the same place. The Branded King roared in anger, and drew his black sword to slash at the filaments settling around him.

The ruined speaking stone quivered once, and the Gatekeeper whispered to Araevin, “I cannot hold him for long, Araevin Teshurr. I beg you to release me from this durance.”

Araevin struggled for each breath as the golden sphere crushed ever tighter. Malkizid finally wrenched himself clear of the Gatekeeper’s crystal webs. He slashed his black sword in a fierce arc, gouging the glass pillars around him. “Insolent device!” he growled.

The force-sphere spun slowly and tightened more. Dark spots gathered in Araevin’s sight, and needles of icy agony transfixed him. There was no more time. He had to chance everything on one desperate throw.

He stopped fighting the sphere and let it pin his arms to his torso.

The sphere squeezed in, eagerly pressing closer, but he’d bought himself an instant for a single spell. Awash in pain, desperately short of breath, still he found the concentration to wheeze the words for a minor teleportation. In the blink of an eye he huddled ten yards away, free of the crushing sphere. The shard he had dropped lay on the ground before him, and he snatched it up. From his new vantage he glimpsed Maresa crouched in an interstice of the soaring spars a hundred feet away, laying another quarrel into her crossbow. Scarlet blood streaked the side of her head, but the genasi still had her shard. She looked at him and bared her teeth in defiance.

The archdevil realized that Araevin had moved, and he wheeled in a quick circle, searching for the mage. But Malkizid, along with the master stone, stood between Nesterin, Maresa, and Araevin.

“Now,” Araevin said.

He staggered to his feet and raised the shard of the crystal above his head, and in one swift instant of will and decision he triggered the ancient weapon’s most fearsome power. Beams of brilliant violet fire shot out from the crystal in his hands, seeking the other two shards. A lopsided triangle of unbearable brightness burned between the points anchored by Araevin and his friends.

“No!” shouted Malkizid, and he leaped into the air, climbing toward safety-too late.

Everything inside the triangle defined by the shards of the crystal vanished in a furious blast of incandescent light. The Waymeet shrieked in protest, and shattered glass scoured the place like a rain of razors. Dozens of tiny slivers drove into Araevin’s flesh before the concussion picked him up and threw him headlong into the wall behind him.

In the heart of the brilliance, the speaking stone burst apart in a fountain of blue-white power, uncapped and wild. The infernal iron bands restraining it charred into black ash and vanished. Malkizid himself staggered in the air, and wrapped his wings around his body to protect himself. Shredded by flying glass and seared by the supernal light, still the archdevil was not destroyed. He raised his head and looked on Araevin with pure hate, blood pouring from his brand.

“I will flense your soul for that!” he shrieked.

Then the terrible brilliance filling the triangle guttered out and vanished, drawn back into the uncapped speaking stone in the center. A wind of dust and glass howled into the glowing triangle as the unimaginable power of the Fhoeldin durr collapsed in on itself and drained out into nothingness. Malkizid was picked up and dragged into the vanishing stream of blue fire, then expelled screaming into the void.

One more bone-shaking detonation rocked the Waymeet, and the raving brilliance and thunder died away. A great three-sided patch of the ancient glass cathedral was dull, gray, and lifeless, absolutely devoid of power. Araevin groaned and let his head drop to his chest.

The Gatekeeper had been extinguished. It was only a matter of time until the Last Mythal of Aryvandaar died.