The Herald

CHAPTER 17

In the third of storm’s kitchen cupboards he rooted through, Arclath made a discovery. He drew the square, human-head-sized wooden box out into the light, set it on the kitchen table, and used his dagger to warily undo the latches and flip the lid, then peered in.

Rune watched him tensely from across the room, where she was washing radishes in one of the sinks.

Arclath relaxed with a pleased little crow of satisfaction.

“Well?” Rune asked, daring to relax a little.

Triumphantly, Lord Delcastle lifted something large and round out of the box, drew aside the soft black cloth swaddling it, and held it up. A crystal ball.

“We shouldn’t,” Rune told him, though she knew she was looking at it longingly.

“You need to know what’s happening,” her man replied. “It’s eating you, not knowing. I can see that. Hells, anyone could see that.”

“Put it back in the box,” Rune told him firmly. “For now. But leave the box out.”

“While I scour all the rest of the cupboards?”

“Lord Delcastle,” Amarune replied, assuming the manner of a mildly peeved noble Cormyrean matron, “do you really think it prudent to plunder the secrets, if nothing more, of so gracious-and powerful-a host? I hardly do.”

Arclath shrugged. “Prudence, my good lady, has never been one of my strengths. If the Dragon Throne values me at all, it is this well-known lack of prudence that they cherish. So …” He advanced on the next bank of cupboards, but couldn’t resist glancing over his shoulder to see Rune’s reaction.

In doing so, his gaze fell upon the pantry door. Or rather, upon its frame. Where his thoughts seemed to linger.

“I wonder …,” he said thoughtfully.

“What?” Rune asked, finishing with the radishes and reaching for a hand cloth to dry her hands.

His only reply was to open the pantry door, stand back, and peer at the revealed lintel, threshold, and standing frame. Then he reached out warily, wrapped his fingertips around the lines of the molding, and tugged gently.

And with the softest of sighs, the door frame swung open on hidden hinges, to reveal a hidden cupboard behind. The narrowest of cupboards, within the thickness of the stone wall, its door only a finger’s width or two wider than the palm of his hand. It was full of bone tubes with carved end caps.

Cautiously, he drew one out. There was a word graven on the nearest end cap, and repeated on the side.

“Teleport,” Rune read aloud, over his shoulder, thankful she could move with swift silence when she wanted to. She snaked her arm under his and deftly snatched the tube out of Arclath’s fingers. “We’ll be needing this.”

Arclath grinned, but also crooked an eyebrow. “Can you pull off a spell like that?”

Amarune gave him her best cold glare. Under its weight, he added hastily and falteringly, “I mean-so powerful, need practice, wizards of much experience, usually …”

“I am Elminster’s heir. His new Chosen One,” Rune reminded him icily. “I can do anything.”

Her man decided it was his turn to tender a withering look.

Rune smiled wryly, but didn’t blush. “Magically, that is,” she admitted, “and in all this spell chaos, perhaps as well as any caster can.”

She lifted her chin in determination. “If I have to, I have to. There is no ‘fail,’ or we all fail.”

Arclath shook his head, smiling at her in obvious admiration.

“Stop mooning over me and hand me that crystal ball,” Rune snapped. “And don’t drop it.”

Arclath put it into her hands with exaggerated care. “You’ve used one before, of course?” he asked, as gently as any deferential servant.

“You know I haven’t,” she flared. “Stop trying to be helpful and-and eat some radishes!”

And she set the sphere-gods, but it was heavy, far heavier than she’d expected-on the table on its swaddling cloth that she tugged into a ring around it.

That did nothing at all to stop the crystal rolling. The hand-carved and well-worn tabletop was a little less than level. She put out a hand to pin the sphere in place, but sighed. She couldn’t use it while holding it, could she?

Without a word, Arclath reached into the box, brought out a thick slab of wood with a bowl-shaped depression sculpted into it, and set the sphere into this rest that had obviously been made for it.

Amarune thanked him with a grimace, flung her arms wide to clear her head, and leaned forward to peer into the empty, colorless depths of the crystal.

Not empty, no, there was something there after all … stirring …

She had to focus on people-well, Storm, of course-or places. That is, memorable fixtures that sat in one spot unmoving, like trees. The problem with people, she half remembered something Elminster had mentioned in passing, was that they moved, and had thoughts of their own, and so were hard to “settle on.”

So it was with Storm. To call to her to mind was to see Rune’s own memories, of Storm turning to smile, Storm speaking sharply, Storm looking impish as her hair reared up like a snake about to strike, Storm … Rune sighed. She could call Storm to mind vividly enough, but her parade of memories did nothing at all to the crystal.

So, then, places, or rather, things in places. That distinctive rotten stump, the one the size of a large oval dining table that Arclath had scrambled over to …

She could remember it, all right, and something stirred in the crystal, its heart going milk white, but then her sharpening concentration veered, as if she was on a racing horse that decided on its own to turn sharply to the right.

Well, then, that sapling she’d put her hand on, to catch her breath, after … no, the same thing was happening. Veering to the left this time, mind, but …

Something was blocking her.

Oh.

The mythal.

Of course.

So, focus on something outside the mythal. Downdragon Tor.

And the milky hue in the depths of the crystal spun, winked, flashed, and Rune was seeing the same view she and Arclath had enjoyed upon their arrival there. Just like that.

Not by night and moonlit, this time, but the same vast carpet of green treetops, spread out before her and stretching into the misty distance.

A bird flew past, startling her. This was no still picture; she was seeing Downdragon as it was right now.

Nice, but she needed something nearer the siege. If the mythal was weakening as badly as she’d feared it was, she might be able to use trees and ridges she’d glimpsed while they were fighting in the forest. Wait, that dead, leafless duskwood, silhouetted against the bit of sky that had gone orange from the Shadovar spell … yes …

Yes! There it was, in the crystal! With drifting smoke from some campfires beyond it, the scene in the crystal moving and alive … which should mean she could look at something-those two dark, entwined trees-at the far left of what she was seeing, make them the center of her view, then look left again, and so face Myth Drannor.

Or what was left of it.

She’d half expected to see a milky shroud blocking any clear view of the city, but there was nothing like that. Just scorched towers and splintered and smoldering trees and a few still-beautiful, leaping bridges arcing between them, cascading gardens of flowing water and lush, spreading plants-and corpses. Everywhere the dead, heaped and strewn and being trodden underfoot by hurrying still-alive elves in blood-besmirched armor, and inexorably tramping mercenaries. Some bridges were broken, abrupt jagged ends thrusting out into empty air, and others trailed what had seemed at first glance to be creeping vines, but that Rune now saw were dangling bodies.

The besieging Shadovar forces were tightening their grip, the exhausted elf defenders ceding more and more of their city-which was being hurled down by the spells of arcanists, tower by tower and bridge by bridge crashing to the forest floor.

And just there, Rune saw, was the lashing tail of an angry dragon that was crawling around, seemingly unable to fly and obviously seething with rage!

“We have to be there,” she told Arclath. “Every last sword and spell is needed. If I could somehow snatch up all the Purple Dragons on duty in Cormyr right now and set them down in the heart of that siege, I’d do it.” She turned to give her beloved a hard look. “But I can’t, so you’ll have to be all of them.”

“Lady,” her lord replied, eyes bright with unshed tears, “command me.”

“We go back to Myth Drannor. Now.”

Arclath nodded, and then spoke like an imperious noble. “Use the jakes first,” he ordered briskly. “Both of us. Then finish this soup. We don’t know when we’ll next-”

“Now I know how the endlessly annoying nobles of Cormyr continue to lord it over the Forest Kingdom,” Amarune snapped, smiling despite herself. “They always finish their soup.”

Arclath bowed low, indicating the garderobe door with a courtly flourish. Then he held it open for her.

She lifted her chin, for all the world as if she’d been born noble, and in one of the haughtiest houses at that, and went in, reading the teleport scroll to herself.

He closed the door behind her, regarded its dark and polished wood, and murmured, “All gods bear witness, I love you, Rune. Was ever a man so fortunate as I?”

“Yes,” a ghostly voice answered him, from somewhere behind him in the room.

Arclath spun around, sword half out, staring everywhere, shocked into silence.

The voice-gentle and low, coming out of nowhere, a woman’s tones-added, “Yet lovers are so easily lost. Treasure every moment you have left together.”

“Who-who are you?” he asked, sword out as he peered around, trying to see where the voice was coming from.

“Once, I was Syluné. Eldest of the Seven. They called me the Witch of Shadowdale. Now I am but an echo in the Weave. Your Amarune is doing the right thing, young lord of Cormyr. May victory be yours.” The voice faded steadily as it spoke, and by that last victory wish, Arclath could hear it no more.

The garderobe door swung open. Amarune peered out, frowning. “Who were you talking to?”

“A-a ghost,” Arclath replied, as he rushed to embrace her.

Their kiss was fierce and deep, but brief-as Rune broke free and whirled away from him, to point at the door and command, “Hurry!”

It was dimly blue wherever they looked, and everywhere they beheld blue leaves and green glowing softly against the dark brown of old dead leaves and the brown-black of forest soil. On all sides the great dark pillars of duskwoods and blueleaf trees soared up to an almost unbroken blue-green canopy. In every direction, over gentle hills cloaked in endless trees, the vista looked much the same.

“Where by Shar’s howling holy darkness are we?” Mattick snapped. “These tluining trees!”

He slashed at the nearest leaves in his temper, sending them spiraling down to the moss-girt fallen trunks underfoot.

“Still in the forest,” Vattick offered, mock-helpfully.

They’d been fleeing wildly through the seemingly endless deep woods around Myth Drannor for some time now, just the two of them. Both were scorched, breathless, and bedraggled.

They’d escaped death by the proverbial hair-slicing thickness of a sharp sword blade’s edge, by both desperately working the same last-moment spell to forcibly swap places with Shadovar arcanists elsewhere in the siege.

So two bewildered unfortunates had almost certainly died in the spells hurled by the coronal and her four high mages, while Mattick and Vattick, wounded and more frightened than they’d been in battle for a long time, had found themselves out in the forest surrounded by startled mercenaries.

Whom they’d departed from the company of immediately, for they were interested now only in getting away. To Shar’s never-seen rump with their father’s grand plans, and with butchering their ways through this old and overgrown elf city they’d never seen before and didn’t care one whit if they ever saw again! It was time to get gone, far and fast, and-and seek their own lives, for as long as they could.

Oh, the Most High would find them soon enough, and that meeting would be less than pleasant, but in the meantime they were still alive, and-

“I,” Mattick vowed, crashing through some dead branches and seeking a little open ground to stride through, “am going to get me some folk I can lord it over, for once. I’m done with all of this conquer worlds upon worlds for the greater glory of Shar!”

“And the greater satisfaction of Telamont Tanthul,” Vattick agreed, before he came to a frowning stop.

“Brother,” he added, “I thought we were leaving Myth Drannor behind, but look.”

He pointed with his sword through the trees ahead.

Mattick peered and swore.

“Elves! More bloody elves! Everywhere we go, it’s rutting, fluting-voiced, tree-swinging elves!”

The twin princes strengthened their wards and strode to meet these new foes, who likewise stalked through the trees to meet them.

As they got closer, both princes could see bodies, both human and elf, strewn here and there, and some shattered walls and towers that were now mostly heaps of rubble.

“We must have got turned around, somehow,” Vattick mused. “That, or Myth Drannor spreads through the forest farther than I’d thought, with far-flung clusters of buildings and wild forest between them.”

“I,” declared Mattick, “am beyond caring about elf architecture or settlement patterns. I just want to hew me some longears! Yeeeeeearrrgh!”

And with that sudden bellow, he launched himself into a wildly swinging charge. Vattick planted his sword in the soft forest mold beside him and worked magic instead-and as the elf warriors closed in, limp bodies and blocks of rubble rose into the air behind them, to whirl forward in silent haste and dash the elves to the ground.

Preparing to hack his way into half a dozen foes, Mattick found them all writhing helplessly at his feet, so it was ease itself to ruthlessly stab through the backs of their necks, one by one.

Only one determined elf reached him upright, and that was after four elf corpses had slammed into that elf from behind. Off-balance and winded, the elf could only parry desperately as Mattick slashed at his face. Which left him vulnerable to the prince’s hearty crotch kick.

As the elf was propelled into the air, mewing in shocked pain, Mattick moved to where he could hack the falling body viciously-and did so. The elf’s neck broke at his second blow, and its owner slammed heavily into the ground, loose limbed and dead or dying.

Mattick regarded his work with some satisfaction, but Vattick slapped his arm on the way past and hissed, “Come on. There’ll be plenty more showing up if we tarry!”

Mattick sighed, nodded, and followed his brother over a heavily wooded ridge, and down into a little dell ringed by the smooth-curved walls of elf buildings that looked more like gigantic garden plantings than dwellings. Fearful-faced elf children and wrinkled elders emerged from the arched doorways of some of the buildings, all heading off to the princes’ left.

A lot of children, but only a few withered elders-and no other sort of elves at all.

The two princes looked at each other, then nodded in unison, hefted their swords, and started forward.

“It’s always a good day to butcher elves,” Vattick hissed, as they began their charge.

Storm was fighting hard in the teeth of the fray.

She was drenched with blood not her own, and despite subsuming the spark of silver fire she’d swallowed in her kitchen-the spark that had once belonged to her fallen sister Syluné-she was more than tired. She kept her matted silver tresses plucking up fallen daggers whenever she saw them and hurling them at the hireswords she couldn’t reach, the ones crowding to get at her from behind the men she was busy killing at the moment.

And those men seemed endless. The Myth Drannor still in elf hands was down to just a few buildings, the battered and weary defenders dwindling to mere hand counts-and still the Shadovar hirelings came pouring out of the trees, a forest of moving helmed heads that outnumbered the trees within sight.

There could be only one end to this, and it might well come very soon.

Slashing open a warrior’s throat and kicking his body down off the high stump he’d joined her atop won her a few moments to draw breath and twirl for a proper scan all around.

That whirlwind of dying mercenaries was Fflar and three or four elf knights fighting with him, and-

There. That was the coronal. Fighting hard, too, with none too many knights and not a single high mage left to stand with her in battle.

“Sorry, saers-must run!” Storm called merrily to the besiegers warily approaching her stump, and she sprang down to hit the ground sprinting. She might as well get as close to the coronal as she could before she had to stop and hack and hew the rest of the way.

Storm could still run like the wind when she had to, and got surprisingly far, but her reward for that was to have a score of silver-plate-armored armsmen converge on her. Obviously all stalwarts hailing from the same elite mercenary company.

All that gleaming armor gave her an idea, but she would have to time things just right. When the foremost trio of the shiny helms reached her, Storm backed away hastily, looking scared.

And as she’d hoped, one of them fell for her ruse, sneering at her and swaggering forward, drawing back a great war axe for a cleaving blow.

Storm sprang at him like a panther, reversing her sword and dagger so two hard pommels slammed into the axeman’s nearest elbow, driving his swing farther back than he’d intended. He overbalanced with a profanely startled yell-and crashed back into the knees of his fellow full-plate mercenaries, driving them back in turn. One crashed back into the hurrying man behind him, and the other fell unopposed to the ground but bounced and flailed, tripping another mercenary who was at a full run, charging to get at Storm.

Which meant all these stalwarts were in clanging contact, so it was time.

Storm spent a tiny spurt of silver fire-as chain lightning.

And saw it leap and crack from man to man, back along the colliding stream of them.

Grunts became screams, but she hadn’t time to watch the fun; she needed all the time their disablement and brief careers as spasming, helplessly convulsing armored barriers would buy her to get to the coronal.

As it happened, Ilsevele Miritar was no fool in battle, and between foes, she constantly snatched moments to glance around her. So she saw Storm while the blood-drenched Chosen was still far off, but sprinting her way, and turned to slash her own route to meet Storm.

She hewed her way through five besiegers-then six-the last one a tall hulk of a man in bright armor that didn’t fit him, sobbing his way down into death. Falling to reveal another dying, sagging mercenary beyond him, dying in the arms of … Storm Silverhand.

“Well met!” Ilsevele greeted her, and they traded wry smiles. Both knew things were far from well for the defenders, and would rapidly get very worse.

“You must get all the Tel’Quess out you can, now!” Storm panted. “The city is lost!”

“I know,” the coronal agreed grimly. “We’re doing that already. The youngest ones first, with the weakest of our elders-to guide and teach them, should the rest of us fall. You know Iymurr’s Gate?”

Storm nodded.

“Find the door in its tallest tower adorned with a diagonal line of four star gems. Pluck them out, reverse each one and put it back in, and a portal will form, right there-if the mythal is too weak to prevent it.” And with a sigh, the coronal added, “And I’ve been feeling the mythal weakening more and more, as the day draws on.”

Storm nodded again, but said not a word. This must be heartbreaking for Ilsevele; she wasn’t going to say anything to make it worse.

“That way leads to Semberholme,” the coronal went on. “But if the portal won’t open, then any who gather to take it will be trapped there and doomed if these Shadovar-serving slaycoins take that end of the city. There’ll be no other way out.”

Storm shrugged and hefted her sword. “With this I’ll make one, if I have to. May we all live to see another dawn.”

They embraced, kissed, then whirled and rushed their separate ways, back into the hard-fought slaughter.

Some of the arcanists were reluctant to leave their towers. Thultanthar was now close enough to Myth Drannor that nine or more rising pillars of smoke, where some of the mercenaries had set fires, could clearly be seen from high windows and balconies of their city-and they wanted to miss nothing.

“Accursed spectators,” Gwelt muttered darkly. “They’d sit and watch the world get devoured, and never lift a hand to defend it, for fear of spoiling the spectacle.”

Aglarel gave Gwelt a grim half smile as he nodded, but he said not a word. His attention was on the arcanists hastening to obey the summons of the Most High and assemble in the great courtyard below. There would be few better moments for treachery than this one, with the High Prince of Thultanthar walking among most of the city’s arcanists, arranging them to stand in the best places for the spell-linkage.

So the great mythal-draining magic could begin.

It would take the services of most of the arcanists of the city, and they were streaming into the courtyard, converging on the Most High. Telamont was warded and mantled, of course, but such defenses do little against a spellcaster standing so close as to be within all wards and mantles. Wherefore Prince Aglarel was worried and intent on seeing every person, at every last moment.

“I’ll happily attend you later, Gwelt,” he muttered almost absently, moving to a better vantage point. “When I have rather fewer duties to perform all at once.”

“Of course,” Gwelt agreed quickly, backing away.

He took great care to step behind several hurrying arcanists, so Aglarel-and the prince’s father too, for that matter-wouldn’t see him slip away from the swiftly growing assembly.

Not that he need have bothered. Aglarel had already spotted something that alarmed him-the patiently inexorable way another arcanist was stalking toward the Most High-and was hurrying to deal with it.

The commander of the Most High’s personal bodyguard was fast, and imposing enough with his height and manner and well-known obsidian armor that arcanists hastily got out of his way, yet even so he was almost too late.

The suspicious arcanist threw up both hands and sent a shrapnel-star spell rushing across the heads of his fellows. A magic that would have sent jagged blades of steel thrusting in all directions among the assembled Thultanthans.

Even before Aglarel’s hasty counterspell sent the shrapnel star veering away, its creator had started to bellow.

“Fellow citizens of Thultanthar! I call on you to refrain from what is contemplated here, to not assist in this draining of great magic! For this is madness, madness I tell you, and imperils our city! If we do this, our own Thultanthar will in turn be destroyed! I-eyyyurkkh!”

Aglarel’s sword met the shouting man’s skull hard but cleanly.

It was like cleaving a large and wet melon, but Aglarel cared not how much he got splattered, or how many fellow Thultanthans got covered in blood. He went right on brutally beheading the man from behind.

The body reeled, spurting blood in all directions, and Aglarel sprang atop it and bore it bloodily to the flagstones, holding it down as its writhing became sluggish … and then stopped altogether.

He looked up, drenched in blood, and beheld his father, regarding him down a long open path that had almost magically opened in the jostling ranks of the arcanists.

Telamont looked calm, but impatient, as if expecting an explanation.

“Order,” Aglarel told him, “has been restored.”

His father nodded gravely, something that might have been thanks and might merely have been satisfaction in his eyes, and worked the swift and simple spell that would take his words to every ear.

Then he lifted his chin, looked at the arcanists all around him, and raised both arms.

“This,” the Most High of Thultanthar announced calmly, “is how we shall begin …”

There were only six Moonstars still standing beside Dove, and they were as bloody, weary, and wounded as she was.

And they’d retreated, step by hard-fought step, until they could retreat no more. The central buildings of Myth Drannor stood on all sides, and not far behind their backs were the backs of the thin line of elf defenders facing the other way-who were somehow holding back besiegers still numerous enough to stretch back through the trees as far as the eye could see.

Dove suspected that “somehow” had a name, and it was Fflar. He’d been everywhere, smiting swiftly and moving on, blunting every mercenary charge.

She couldn’t hope to match him. Her handful knew they were doomed, and were grimly leaning on their grounded blades and gasping for breath as they watched a fresh wave of mercenaries coming for them out of the forest.

Scores of them, hundreds … their slayers, and soon now. They had no hope at all of withstanding so many. The Shadovar coffers had been deep, and-

Something hissed horribly, off to the left, much nearer than the oncoming mercenaries.

Then it came into view around a many-towered elven mansion, writhing and struggling, and Dove gaped at it along with all the surviving Moonstars.

It was a black dragon of great size, an elder wyrm. It had been so badly-and recently-hacked at that it had no wings left, and limped heavily, one foot missing and the stump weeping blood, and the other legs crisscrossed by deep cuts. It moved more like a serpent, on its belly, than a great cat, whose gaits most of the dragons Dove had met resembled.

Its attention was bent on the mercenaries, and it struggled to meet them, hissing again in agonized rage.

Spears and glaives and shouts were all raised-and then it was among them, snarling a challenge, biting with its great jaws, and rolling to crush men by the score.

And after it, through the air, came a creature that made more than one Moonstar moan in dismay.

A floating sphere the size of a small wagon, from which projected a moving, serpentine forest of eyestalks. It was emitting horrible, hissing laughter.

“Free!” it exulted, fairly dancing in the air. “Free again at last! Blast me with all the spells you want, elves, if that’s the result! Hahahahaha!”

“A beholder?” one Moonstar gasped. “Ye gods, what next?”

The eye tyrant glided to where it could hang above the lunging, rolling, biting dragon, and from that vantage point above the fray sent its eyebeams lancing down into the mercenaries. Who started to shriek in terror, and tried to flee-right through the gathered ranks of their fellows.

Turmoil spread.

Dove allowed herself one mirthless smile at that, before she turned to look in other directions. She half expected another menace to come creeping up while she and the Moonstars watched these two monsters who shouldn’t be anywhere near here maraud through the foe.

The elf knights defending in the other direction were still holding, a fresh fire billowed up from somewhere beyond buildings to her right, and just a little way to the left of them she could see … the heads of running elves! The rest of the fleeing Tel’Quess were hidden from her, down in a dell.

Dove trotted to the nearest tree and scaled it until she was high enough to see who was running, and why.

She beheld ancient, wizened elves, elders, shooing and shepherding elf children in some haste from her right to her left. Beyond them, farther off but getting closer fast, were two shades with drawn swords in their hands. They were rushing at the elves, with clearly fell intent.

Dove flung herself from the tree and landed sprinting, heading for the dell as fast as she could. If anything could be salvaged from this dark day, it must be those children, the future of the Tel’Quess of this part of Faerûn …

“To me!” she shouted to the Moonstars, but didn’t slow for a moment to see if they’d heeded or were following.

Down the long years, her way had not been that of the spell. Daughter of Mystra or not, the sword and a skilled tongue and the making and keeping of friendships had always served her better. Yet she’d studied her share of dusty tomes, even in the dim chambers of Candlekeep a time or two, and remembered some things.

Badly, for the most part, and never really thinking she’d need them. But now, as she sprinted over tree roots and through wet leaves and over slippery moss, Dove Falconhand gasped out what snatches she could remember of an ancient spell she’d read in one of Candlekeep’s inner rooms, more than a few centuries ago.

It was a last resort magic of the elves, to be used when doom was imminent.

A spell that would summon baelnorn.

Lord and Lady Delcastle faced each other across the pleasant farmhouse kitchen of Storm Silverhand, their faces grim.

“Lady mine,” Arclath said gravely, “please misunderstand me not. I don’t wish to dissuade you in what you attempt, nor mar what we have between us or your needed concentration. Yet I must ask: Are you ready for this? Do you know what you are doing?”

Amarune sighed gustily, neither in anger nor resignation, but to steady and calm herself, and told her beloved, “Yes. Yes, I think I do.”

She gave him a little grin, then pointed at a particular flagstone in front of her and added sharply, “Now go and stand just there and belt up while I read the scroll through once more, and then read it aloud. We have to be touching, but mind, Lord Delcastle, this is no time for tickling me or otherwise amusing yourself.”

“I understand that,” Arclath told her dryly, moving to the indicated spot. “Yet I do have another question: How are you going to keep the scroll from rolling itself up?”

“I-” Rune ran out of answers, and stared at him helplessly.

“And we’re going to rescue besieged Myth Drannor,” Arclath told the ceiling. Then met her eyes, grinned, and suggested, “Why not have me stand on two corners of the scroll, unroll it, then you stand on the other two corners? Then you can look down between us, and read.”

His lady nodded slowly. “That’ll work,” she said-and just managed not to sound surprised.

And so it was that Arclath Delcastle was grinning fondly at his ladylove when Storm’s kitchen went away in sudden blue mists, and they fell out of that eerie sapphire place into … a forest where the dead and the flies were everywhere, and an army was tightening in a ring around the tall spires of a few buildings, and monsters of nightmare and legend were harrying that army …

And a spired stone city floated in the sky, vast and dark and blotting out the sunlight as it came scudding menacingly overhead.