The Realms of the Elves

TEARS SO WHITE

Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

Firelight played a gentle dance across the old, faded map of Faerun painted on Storm Silverhand's kitchen ceiling. Rathan Thentraver lowered his gaze from idle study of familiar coastlines and forests to growl happily, "Ahhh, that was wonderful! The sauce…"

The burp that erupted through Rathan's rhapsodizing just then was as violently sudden as it was unintended. Wherefore it left him momentarily speechless.

His best friend Torm sat at his elbow-and Torm, by far the most sly of the Knights of Myth Drannor, was a man who'd never needed more than half a moment to launch anything in all his life.

"Certainly had a certain something to it, Storm," he grinned, finishing the sputtering priest's sentence. "Care to share just this one cauldron-secret?"

Their hostess gave him a smile over her shoulder, not turning from the sink. "Boiled serpents' eyes-two heaping handfuls, and they must be fresh. Vipers only, mind."

All around the gleaming table, full-bellied Knights, lounging contentedly over mugs of hot greenleaf tea, chuckled good-naturedly. All except Dove and Merith, who arched eloquent eyebrows at each other, knowing the Bard of Shadowdale told the plain truth.

Torm was also a man who missed little. He saw their traded glances, and his grin faded a little. "You're not jesting, are you?"

Storm turned around, long silver tresses playing about her shoulders like so many restless snakes, and said, "No."

Florin winced, Rathan gaped in open-mouthed astonishment, and Jhessail sighed and regarded the ceiling.

Rathan's next belch, arriving in the moment of silence that followed, was rather less contented.

"And fair even to ye, Master Thentraver," an old and gruff voice made reply to it, adding a hearty belch- almost before its owner faded into visibility. The Knights around the table blinked, but no one swore or snatched for weapons. The speaker was all too familiar.

The wizard Elminster, as beak-nosed and bright-eyed as ever, stood just inside the west door of Storm's kitchen-a stout old oval of crossbraces, eye-windows, and entwined berry-vines that had been closed all evening against the icy Alturiak chill, and even then remained quiet and closed behind him.

The Old Mage of Shadowdale wore his preferred garb: robes, breeches, and boots of worn, soft leather, as weather-torn as those of any vagabond. He was clad like a lack-coin wayfarer-but dominated the room like a king.

The six Knights who'd feasted under Silverhand's roof all stared at him. Not one of them-Florin, Dove, Jhes-sail, Merith, Torm, nor Rathan-had ever seen the Old Mage look quite so grim before. Moreover, one of his eyes glimmered as if it held liquid fire, or a twinkling star restless to spill forth. Grim, indeed.

So were his next words: "I need ye. Now. With whate'er weapons ye've ready. Spells matter not."

Torm sighed and set down his empty tallglass. "Care to tell us what particular corner of Faerun we're rushing off to save this time, Oldbeard, or are you playing Mage Most Mysterious, as usual?"

Elminster raised a hand. Two of its long, bony fingers pointed at Torm and Rathan.

"Not ye two. Thy sort of mischief is best worked here- keeping Fzoul at bay, trouncing any daemonfey foolish enough to come skulking hereabouts; that sort of thing. Ye know."

Then the great archmage strode forward, tiny stars winking out of the empty air around him as he went. Everyone watched them drift into the shapes of two long sword blades in his hands.

Elminster rounded the table, followed by curious stares, to nod at Storm and add gruffly, "Bide ye safe here, lass. Someone has to protect the dale against yon prize pair of fools." He inclined his head in the direction of Torm and Rathan, walked right up to the great trunk of the shadowtop tree that grew in the heart of Storm's kitchen, and stepped into it as if it was made of mere shadow.

Dove was on her feet in an instant, murmuring, "Hurry. 'Ere yon way closes again. Just pluck up and carry your boots."

The Knights hastened, plunging into the dark nothingness of the tree after Elminster in a few swift moments, leaving Torm and Rathan staring rather crossly at each other.

"Now what was all that about?"

"Aye, tell us nothing, as usual. We happy dancing fools never need to know anything important."

With one accord, they turned to Storm Silverhand- and fell silent, jaws dropping open in unison.

Storm Silverhand stared in dismay at the tree five friends had just vanished through, and her face was as white as the fresh-fallen snow outside her kitchen windows.

The world was white. Not the cold, wet heavy white of Shadowdale snow, but drifting mists amid an endless web of smooth strands, some large, some small, all curving… and all thrumming with tireless force that made teeth ache and skin itch. All white, and nothing else-no sky, no horizon, no keeps nor trees, nor anything else to make for.

"Is it permitted," Florin asked quietly beside Elminster's ear, as the Knights hauled their boots on, "to ask where we are?"

The ranger was startled by his lady Dove taking his head in both her hands and kissing him deeply. Through the faint lace of the firewine she'd been drinking in Storm's kitchen, her mouth seemed hot, her tongue like fire against his own.

Before Florin had time to feel real surprise, she drew back to look longingly into his eyes, their noses almost touching, and murmur, "Remember me always."

And she was gone, stepping back from him to stand with her back pressed against the nearest large strand- one of countless thousands within his view that rose like leafless trees in the misty, endless web. Spreading her arms and legs wide into a great X, Dove slapped them against the thrumming whiteness, her eyes steady on his.

Florin made a small sound of bewilderment and stepped forward, raising a hand toward her-even as she gasped, shivered, arched her back, and… went white all over, her curves thrumming like the strand she had become part of. The ranger watched his wife's face… and the rest of her

… melt into smooth featurelessness, in utter silence and within mere moments becoming no more than a suggestive prow on the strand.

And as quietly and easily as that, a Chosen of Mystra was gone.

Florin turned to Elminster, shaken. "My lady spoke as if she did not expect to see me again. So one or both of us will likely die here?"

"We all die, lad," the Old Mage said, peering into the distance with his two swords of twinkling stars raised and ready. "More than that, I cannot say."

Jhessail's sigh of exasperation was sharper than usual. "Where are we?"

"The Tshaddarna. What some call the 'Worlds of the Weave.'"

"Oh, well" Merith said, "that explains everything." The raven-haired moon elf drew his slender sword. Its silvery blade went sapphire-blue and started to thrum.

He gave it a look of disgust and set his jaw, marched up to Elminster, and stepped right in front of him, drawing himself erect to try to block the Old Mage's view with his own slender, leather-clad bulk. "Now just what, by Mystra's whispered secrets, is or are the Tshaddarna, and what does our being here mean? Straight answers for once, wizard."

"So the gentle and charming Strongbow has fangs, after all," Elminster observed, something that might have been a twinkle shining in his normal eye. The other one rippled like restless silver flame. "Lore useful to know."

"Something you have in plenty, Old Mage, and the rest of us lack," Merith snapped. "I'm tired and beyond tired of following you hither and yon, to places only the gods know or have forgotten, to do sweat-work while you smile and nod and tell us nothing. So speak, Elminster. What is this place, and why are we here?"

"The 'why' seldom changes, young Merith. Faerun needs saving so often these days."

The elf waited, but Elminster merely stepped back, saying no more.

Merith strode forward, after him and demanded, "Saving from what or whom this time? Plain truth, Elminster!"

"Trust not in magic," the wizard replied. "You've finally become wise folk, you Knights. You will know who to trust, and what to do."

He threw up his hands, his sparkling swords touching a great strand rising behind him and melting into it. In utter silence, sudden whiteness fell over Elminster like a curtain.

A moment later, the wizard was no more than a craggy bulge in the strand. Florin, Jhessail, and Merith stared at him-or what he'd become-and frowned at each other. Around them, everything seemed a brighter white, and the thrumming rose swifter and stronger.

With Elminster's dominance hidden, Florin's ruggedly handsome frame and kingly manner shone once more. The tall ranger drew his sword. "I hope," he said to Merith, "you weren't really expecting any answers."

"I never do," the dark-clad elf replied, with a grin as mirthless as that of any fox. "Not this last century, at least."

His wife rolled her eyes, but held her tongue.

The three Knights looked in all directions. The same drifting mist and endless forest of strands met their eyes everywhere.

After they tired of the view, the man and the elf turned to the woman between them. Their silent looks were requests for advice.

Merith's wife stared back at them both with her usually merry face twisted in thought, hands on hips and slender fingers stroking the pommel of her belt-dagger. Despite her elfin beauty and small stature, she'd become something of a stern mother to her fellow Knights over the years. Her large, gray-green eyes looked from one sword-companion to the other, and back again. They knew her well enough to let her think in silence.

She kicked one boot-heel against the smooth, flat white ground; an action that made no sound at all. Florin turned to survey the mists, so Merith watched his wife, enjoy the view. Above knee-high boots, her shapely legs were sheathed in tight, well-worn leather breeches. A broad leather belt gathered her tunic at her slender waist so its flying-free lower end flared like a short skirt around her thighs. Above the belt, a leather vest hid her chest behind a wall of mage-pouches, leather loops for hanging tools, and pockets. Jhess had gathered her long, unbound flame-brown hair into a mare's tail with a leather sleeve, and had left her staff behind in Storm's kitchen.

She reached a decision with an imperious flourish of her hand. "I'm reluctant to leave them," she told her fellow Knights, waving at the misshapen strands that held-or had been-Dove and Elminster. "If we leave this spot, we might never find it again… and what-ever's happened to them, are they not our most likely road home?"

Florin nodded and said, "One spot, in all this, seems no better than any other. I'm glad we'll know what to do- because as of right now, I haven't the flying faintest."

He went to one knee to put a cautious hand on the perfectly smooth, flat whiteness that served as the ground beneath their feet-so flat that his mind insisted it must be a "floor"-and waited for any change in its cool hardness.

None came. After a time Florin shrugged and sat down, setting his sword across his lap. "So we wait. Am I turning white?"

Merith shook his head. "Not even a little. But then, you're not a Chosen."

"Look!" Jhessail hissed, pointing.

The two male Knights snapped their heads around in time to see it: a tall, dark figure of a woman, standing motionless in the distance with her back to them. She looked both human and-by her hair and the shape of her hips and shoulders-female, but there was something odd about her. Something… gaunt.

And she was gone, and there was nothing where she'd been standing but humming white strands and lazily-rolling mists.

"You didn't see her walk to that spot, did you?" Florin asked, hefting his sword.

"No," Jhessail told him. "I did happen to be looking thereabouts, and I tell you plain and true: She was not there-then she was there. As you saw her, standing still. Facing away from us. No walking, and as far as I saw, she never looked this way."

"Is this some sort of magical place," Merith mused, "that spellhurlers wink through when teleporting? Or casting some other sort of spell?"

"Your guess is as grand as any," Florin replied. "We'd best keep alert for more… visitors."

As if his words had been a cue, a large, dark figure towered over him, come out of nowhere. No gaunt woman, but half a man, its upper half floated in the air with nothing at all below its belt.

The helm that regarded Florin hung dark and empty, above great black-armored shoulders that shifted in menacing silence as long, mighty-thewed arms swung a black greatsword back-then down at the ranger.

Florin sprang aside into a roll that brought him to his feet, brushing through strands that wavered aside like breeze-plucked leaves, and whirled, blade rising In time to see Merith Strongbow's blade bite into the apparition's right vambrace with a curiously dull, muffled clang. No blood flew, but armor plate shattered and tumbled, and hacked flesh could be seen beneath. Gray skin over flesh, neither withered nor shriveled but dry, with no hint of blood.

The sinister thing whirled to face its new foe, snake-swift and showing no signs of pain. Merith raised long sword and dagger, wearing the gentle smile battle always brought onto his face-and Jhessail sprang at it from behind with her dagger raised.

"No!" Merith snapped, measuring his wife's meager leather vest against the fell length of that black great-sword, even as the floating thing spun around again to hew her down.

Florin, leaping high, put all of his weight behind a two-handed slash aimed at its gauntlets, but angled so he could hook his blade up its arms and into that empty helm where the face and throat should be.

His steel bit into what felt like leather with flesh and bone beneath, every whit as solid and heavy as the last living man-a Zhentilar spy-he'd carved. An armored finger flew, tumbling, the greatsword rang and shivered and spun after it, and his own blade sliced Empty air. There was nothing solid in that dark, staring helm, and nothing corporeal between it and the armored shoulders beneath. Nothing but Merith's long sword, striking a spark off Florin's blade as it came darting up through the empty armor from below.

So the thing was hollow, save for its arms. Merith's blade sliced viciously sideways inside the dark armor- and in uncanny silence one of those burly arms fell off the floating thing, plunging to the smooth whiteness underfoot. It bounced once, Jhessail dodging aside, and… faded away-presumably to the same place the severed finger and the greatsword had gone.

Florin had no time to do more than glance around at his footing and see not a trace of them-the sinister thing's remaining arm came at him like a flying lance. Dark and terrible, its black-gauntleted fingers reached as if to grab.

As it loomed and he fought to bring his blade up before him and back in time to hew it aside, Florin saw tiny mouths open in the tips of its fingers, maws ringed with little fangs like those of blood-bats, opening to snap at his eyes.

Jhessail hissed in disgust and worked a spell. Whatever she tried to hurl turned into rippling silver flames in the air just beyond her fingertips, fire that snarled vainly toward the armored thing, but dwindled and faded before Florin could even draw breath.

Merith's blade bit into the silent thing's helm, but seemed not to bother it in the slightest. Old steel, it must be, and soft. Very old steel.

Old steel that still reached for Florin with chill patience, swooping around to his other flank, that chorus of tiny fangs gnashing and clattering. Merith pursued it, whipping his blade around sidearm like a flail, hacking until fingertips flew. Florin Falconhand leaned into the heart of that singing steel and slid his own stout sword home, deep between the fingers and up the arm behind, armor plates rippling.

Still no blood, but unseen force shoved against him until his hilt fetched up against spasming fingers. Merith grinned as he pruned fingers-and winced back from the sudden flood of sparks that marked Jhessail's dagger-thrust through the open front of the helm into the baleful nothingness there.

The dark armor tumbled away, falling and fading at once. With a faint clank and rattle it was gone, leaving three panting Knights facing each other across unmarked, smooth whiteness, ringed by apparently curious mists.

"What was it?" Jhessail asked, a little wild-eyed. She worked her fingers as if she could still feel something, around the hilt of a dagger that was clouded as if with frost.

Merith shrugged. "Now, do I look like Elminster?" he teased.

Florin, who was darting glances in all directions, took time enough to eye the white semi-statue he knew to be the Old Mage, and frowned. "You will know who to trust, and what to do," he murmured. "I think not."

Suddenly he was staring into the glittering eyes of a skull-faced man in robes who'd just winked into visibility among the strands off to his right.

" 'Ware!" he snapped, hefting his sword, but before the word had quite left his lips the lich-if that's what it had truly been-was gone.

Jhessail tossed her head, nodding to tell Florin she'd seen it too, and backed her hips toward his even before the ranger commanded, "Back to back! That thing could reappear any-"

"Naeth," Merith cursed, as quite a different undead man-one wearing a crown askew on its yellowed skull, and an armored tabard of arcane design-blinked into existence not ten paces away. It gave them a cold stare 'ere it vanished again, just as suddenly.

"Knights!" Jhessail cried, and in response two swords whistled past her shoulders to bite where her dagger couldn't reach.

The lich that had just appeared-a female with blackened teeth dropping like shed pearls from sagging jaws as she reared back from clawing at Jhessail to avoid the two points of thrumming steel-tried to smile, her head twisted to one side and wobbling sickeningly, before she winked out of existence again.

"D'you think our presence here is drawing them?" Merith asked, swinging back to his former position, to peer again into mists all around, his blade up and ready.

"I wouldn't doubt it," Florin replied. "Things seem… whiter, somehow, just here."

"And spreading out from here," Merith added.

"Spreading from Dove and Elminster," Jhessail murmured. "I'd like to know why they did-whatever they did, bonding with these strands."

"I think they're… powering this place, somehow, or augmenting its forces… or something," Merith muttered.

"Thank you, sage most learned," Florin chuckled. "Yet I find I must agree. That musing feels right, somehow. That thing we fought, and the liches, are probably drawn to El and my lady-love, not we three."

"But why?" Jhessail hissed, almost weary. "What is this place?"

Something arose out of a drift of mists at her feet and soared steadily upright. She almost stabbed at it 'ere she saw sapphire-blue hair, elfin features, and a smile that she could only term "tender."

"This is a place only the Weave can reach, now," a musical voice replied. "Well met, Knights of Myth Dran-nor. Be welcome. You are needed. You see, there are liches-and there are liches."

This apparition was certainly easier on the eyes than the others. The three Knights beheld an elf of dainty stature, curvaceous and yet so slender as to be wasp-waisted, with a glorious fall of rich sapphire-blue hair, eyes like beaten gold, and that gentle smile. She wore a tur-quoise-and-moonstone girdle around her hips, leggings of turquoise shimmerweave, and a matching breastplate trimmed with golden teardrops. Her skin was a pale tan, and her tiny hands were empty and… fading, going swiftly translucent and… she was gone again, leaving only mists behind.

Jhessail sighed. "So 'there are liches-and there are liches.' As my life unfolds, I increasingly find that I hate cryptic utterances and mysterious puzzles. Would it not be easier and more efficient for all if folk simply spoke plainly?"

She turned to her mate, only to find Merith staring past her at Florin, his eyes wide with wonder. "Was that-?"

Florin nodded once. "You think so, too?"

Whatever else any of the Knights might have gone on to say then was dashed into forgetfulness forever by another looming apparition, appearing out of a sudden swirl of mists between Florin and Jhessail.

They found themselves close enough to smell its whiff of herbs and faint decay, and brought their blades up.

It was an elf taller than Florin, retreating swiftly even before their warsteel menaced it, gliding back from between the ranger and the mage as it cast glances of silent alarm at all three Knights, out of eyes that were two glowing white motes in deep, hollow sockets.

It looked… dead, its skin faint blue and shriveled. In clawlike hands it clutched a fell scepter, nigh as long as one of its legs, that whispered of stored magic. It wore an ornate tabard of archaic design over robes of white silk that age had darkened to black in every crease and curl. The Knights of Myth Drannor had met baelnorn before, and knew it for what it was.

Merith bowed and spoke to it in the tongue of elves, adding the lilts and nourishes he'd heard the eldest of his kin use: "Revered Guardian, we are well met, for there is no quarrel between us. We stray and are lost, and would fain know: What is this place, and what guard you here?"

Any elf who has a right eye of blue and a left one of green, as Merith did, was used to sharp and appraising glances from other elves, but he was sure it was his speech that earned him the hard stare, and the muttered reply, "I guard the Weaving of Raulauve, and you should not be here, thaes. Yet I begin to think I should not be here, for I feel the Weaving but faintly. What is this place?"

"In truth, we know not," Merith replied.

The glowing eyes nickered at that, and blazed with sudden fire. "So you intrude, and must be slain!"

The scepter flashed up, Jhessail hissed in exasperation and ducked aside-and Florin's long sword stabbed low and swift over her shapely back and through a bony blue wrist before that scepter could be aimed precisely.

The baelnorn struggled to move its hand as it desired, to bring the scepter down, but Florin's transfixing steel and strength prevented it-and Merith's blade struck its other hand aside.

There was a flash from somewhere behind the undead elf, in the curling mists, and Jhessail and Merith shot glances that way in time to see a second baelnorn, some thing its wielder had not expected.

The baelnorn facing the Knights chose that moment to voice its own frustration with a hiss very like that Jhessail had made. Still wrestling against Florin's brawn, it triggered its own scepter.

There was a flash, a flood of drifting sparks, and… nothing but empty air, the mist shrinking back as if afraid or revolted. The baelnorn gaped at the widening drift of fading, winking-out sparks in shocked dismay, its face a mask of bewilderment. It vanished-scepter, astonishment, and all-half a breath before the distant baelnorn winked out of existence too.

Their disappearance left Florin wincing and shaking his numbed hand, the sword it held frosted over and thrumming no longer.

Jhessail was already looking around, rather wildly, in all directions-at nothing but mist, mist, and more curling mist. "I'd give a lot to know why Elminster brought us here, where and what 'here' is, and just what we're supposed to do. If we're going to be facing one foe after another, translocating in under our noses out of nowhere, it's only a matter of time before-"

" 'Ware!" Florin snapped, whirling around.

It was another lich, shorter and more withered and gaunt than the previous ones. Florin's blade sliced into the hand it was raising, and bit through a staring eye that had just opened in its withered palm. The lich vanished in a burst of blue flame and acrid smoke, taking the tip of Florin's sword with it.

The ranger studied the clean, squared-off end of his shortened blade just long enough to be sure the metal wasn't melting away further or trying to turn into something else.

Then he turned to Merith, who looked ashen, and asked, "What befalls?"

The elf Knight sighed. "Did you see the sigil in that lichnee's palm? Around the eye that was trying to get a look at us?"

"Not well enough to draw it properly, no, but I'd probably recognize it again," Florin replied. "What of it?"

"It's one of the signs of Larloch," Merith said grimly. "That lich was his, and he was probably looking through that eye."

Jhessail winced. "Did we blind him? Or just cut off his view through that lich?"

"Just cut off his view, most likely."

Merith delivered that judgement as if it comforted him not at all. Reaching a long arm around Jhessail's shoulders, he drew her close, hugged her tight, and kissed her fiercely and swiftly-'ere whirling away, sword up, to glare all around, as if expecting an onrushing foe in the next breath.

He didn't have to say a word to tell her: I want to do this, because for one or both of us, this kiss may be our last.

His lady sighed. "So there are liches, and then there are liches. Baelnorns don't seem pleased to find us here, but don't know where 'here' is, and their magic fails them in this place. And then there are Larloch's liches. Marvellous. That brings us not a stride closer to knowing what's going on, or what we're supposed to be doing."

"Ride easy, Jhess," Florin said as they returned to standing back to back, looking outward with weapons ready. "There are worse fates than not knowing what's going on. After all, that's the life most folk in Faerun live, almost all their days."

"Your words are both clever and utter failures as reassurance," Jhessail told him, but her voice was more amused than angry. "At least that baelnorn stood in the same boots as we do: not knowing what was going on."

"Yet it should not have attacked so swiftly," Merith mused. "And its eyes seemed to change then."

"Aye, I saw that too," Florin agreed. "Could something- or someone-be controlling it?" He peered into the mists for a few moments then added, "I understood its speech well, old stylings, flutings and all, save for one word. What means 'thaes'?"

Merith's head turned far enough that the ranger could see one end of his frown. "An exact translation is difficult, but… 'young stranger-elf?' "lis a neutral word, but wary, combining 'I know you not' with something of'there is no hostility between us-yet.' However, the Revered said something far more interesting than one old, little-used word. It spoke of its duty to guard the Weaving of Raulauve. Now, Raulauve is the name of an elf, not a place-but by 'Weaving', I tell you true, he meant a mythal."

"So the baelnorn was a mythal-guard," Jhessail murmured. "And surprised to find itself away from its mythal. Wherefore it did or experienced nothing unusual to bring itself here." She stared into the endless mists. "I wonder if someone else fetched it here, and tried to turn it against us?"

"Larloch, you're thinking," Florin said.

Jhessail spread her hands. "Does it not seem more than merely possible? Yet its master could be a thousand-thousand other beings, or a chain of old spells, or other causes entirely, I grant. To be certain, we'll have to see if all the liches bear some mark of Larloch, or proclaim allegiance to him. If other baelnorns-or anyone or anything else-appear, we must try to learn by sign or speech if anyone is compelling them."

Merith nodded. "Baelnorns do not usually behave thus; that much is certain."

Florin gave him a sudden sidelong grin. "Oh? You've met many?"

The darkly handsome moon elf did not smile back. "Ask me not. Please."

"I'd give a lot to know why my spells turn to harmless flames," Jhessail muttered, "but all manner of creatures seem able to translocate here freely-and at least one creature is able to farscry through a lich, and at least one creature can magically or mentally control a baelnorn." She looked from Merith to Florin and back, and added, "And spare me the clever comments about every mortal desiring to know the whys and wherefores of their life, but only the gods being cursed to understand such things."

Obligingly, the other two Knights gave her silence-in which they shared a wink.

Jhessail rolled her eyes at that, and observed, "As I started to say earlier, it's going to be but a matter of time before one of these sudden arrivals manages to slay or wound one of us-and if we all stand wary with weapons ready, we'll eventually grow too tired to defend ourselves, and-"

"My, you're in a dark mood this even, my love," Merith said, stroking her cheek in the manner he knew she liked. "Stand easy, whilst Florin and I think awhile. Our wits move more slowly than yours, mi-"

A drift of mist not far from them turned golden, a warm glimmering that became firelight. The Knights found themselves peering, as if through a window in thickly-swirling mists that seemed for a moment like the falling snows of Shadowdale in deep winter, into a firelit study. There an elf with skin like silver metal, wearing a strange upswept tabard, sat upon a floating-on-air couch, intently studying a tome bound in dragonhide.

Jhessail leaned forward in quickening interest, angling her head to try to catch a glimpse of what was written on those pages. The elf seemed to sense he was being watched, and lifted his head to glare at her-or past her, not quite seeing her-with rose-red eyes that were sharp with anger.

He waved a long-fingered hand in an intricate spell-weaving none of the Knights recognized. They hastily scattered, out of long habit, only to watch whatever it was flare up golden… and turn to rippling silver flames that faded away in an instant, a mere handspan away from the hand that had birthed them.

The elf sprang from his crouch, anger turning to real alarm at what his spell had become, and flung his spellbook away. It grew fins or spines that looked swordblade-sharp, and flew away, swooping in a tight arc like a swallow, to vanish from view beyond the edges of the window in the mist.

The elf mage snatched up a staff that crackled with power. The staff grew blades, glittering with moon-runes, from both ends. He brandished it, silently shouting something at the adventurers he could not see.

The window drifted closed again, leaving the Knights blinking at white mist, and at each other.

"Hey-hah," Jhessail muttered. "Wondrous strange. Was this scene sent to us as some sort of message, or are we just standing in a place that touches many other places, often, and-" She shrugged in bewilderment.

"Your guess," said Florin, "is as grand as mine own. That elf mage was familiar to none of us, right?"

Merith and Jhessail both started to shake their heads- and the light changed behind Merith. He whirled around to face the flare, and flung up a hand in warning.

In the distance, roiling mists flickered ruby-red, and shone green for a moment longer. In that moment, two silent, dark-robed figures strode out of the emerald rift. The next moment the mists were white again, but the two newcomers were still there, striding toward the Knights.

"More liches," Merith said with disgust, seeing noseless faces that were half withered flesh and half yellowed bone. The two tall once-men loomed up and long, gaunt arms reached for him.

The elf hacked aside one arm with his thrumming long sword, and struck aside the clawlike reaching fingers of the other with his dagger. As the second lich leaned in to rake at his face, Florin's humming blade thrust over Merith's shoulder. Jhessail ducked down and out from between them, to shear off fingers and send their owner reeling away.

"They're not even trying to work spells," Jhess murmured, hefting her dagger and peering into the mists all around for signs of other attackers.

The two liches reached for Merith again with the dogged mindlessness the Knights usually saw in shuffling tomb-zombies. Baleful eyes glared out of their palms.

Jhessail drew a long stabbing-bodkin from its sheath down the back seam of one of her boots and put it through one of those eyes as Florin tangled the fingers of that lich's hand in his blade.

The eye of the other spat something at her that turned into flickering, short-lived silver flames.

She gave those wriggling tongues a brittle smile and said, "Well, at least it's not just me."

"Useful lore," Florin agreed, as his blade slashed one way and Merith's sliced another-and the head of a lich toppled and rolled through scudding mists.

The decapitated undead bent to retrieve its lost part- and Merith sprang into the air and kicked its bent-over shoulders with all his might, hurling it back into the other lich. They fell in a softly-thudding tangle together, and he and Florin pounced on them, hacking like butchers in a frantic hurry. Glancing only fleetingly at their viciousness, Jhessail stayed between the thickened strands that were Dove and Elminster, casting glances into the mist.

Almost immediately there came another bright red flash in the mists right behind Florin. Jhessail cried a warning, and the ranger whirled and drove his long sword into another lich, just as it stepped out of an emerald rent in the drifting mists.

It clawed the air, flung up a hand in which an eye was opening, and Florin's backswing cut that hand into ruin. Shards of dry flesh, dust, and tumbling fingers sprayed back into the lich's silently-snarling face.

Merith whirled from his completed butchery to chop Florin's lich down, muttering, "No spells, and not a word do they speak! This seems… unsubtle for Larloch. Too stumble-headed."

Florin nodded. They dismembered their silent foe, turned its remains over with their swordpoints to peer in vain for items of interest, and hastened back to Jhessail.

"Far more fumbling than Larloch's reputation suggests," Florin agreed, as they turned back-to-back once more. "And why offer themselves to our steel so? Without their spells, we can destroy them readily enough. Why attack us? If they're compelled, whoever commands them must be slow-witted indeed!"

There was another red flash to Jhessail's left, and another to her right-and two more liches strode forward. The more distant one winked out of sight again, even as another two appeared, not far from Merith.

"Huh," the elf grunted, "this is more what I'd been expecting. Perhaps he's just been testing us."

"Costly way to test a foe," Florin commented, lunging out from the cluster of Knights to hack at a startled lich's arm, and drawing smoothly back before it could even start to reel.

Jhessail frowned. "Perhaps that's just it. Impress our livers out of us, as we gasp at how many liches the foe sending them can afford to lose."

"That's minstrels' thinking," Merith said, holding off a glaring lich with his sword and kicking it hard in the belly-if it still had a belly-to send it stumbling away. "Taunt and gloat time. Why impress someone you're going to slay?"

More liches stepped out of rifts all around the Knights-a dozen or more-and they were joined by a baelnorn, tall, gaunt, and bewildered. It stared all around in seeming anger, and stumbled toward the Knights, shuffling reluctantly. As it came, it grimaced, convulsed, and trembled, murmuring something inaudible and visibly struggling.

"At war with itself," Jhessail murmured.

"Fighting Larloch or whoever's bidding it, you mean," Florin murmured. He raised his thrumming-anew blade and took a step to one side so he and Merith-who stayed right where he was-could flank the guardian.

The baelnorn halted and gazed at them sadly, well aware of the peril prepared for it. Then, with a sigh, it reached over its shoulder and from an unseen baldric reluctantly drew forth some sort of long, very slender, black-bladed sword that bent readily-and nickered, but did not start to hum. Runes flashed up and down the sable length of that strange sword as the guardian swung the supple steel around itself at shoulder-height, as if limbering up for a fray.

As it stepped forward, blade still whirling, four liches were flanking it, bearing long knives in their hands.

Florin thrust his sword up high to parry that black blade-and ducked his body low, hurling himself into a forward roll even as sparks showered him. His arm went numb, and his sword shrieked in protest overhead.

A moment later he was slamming into the baelnorn's shins, and it was toppling, black blade whipping wildly- into the nearest lich. Florin rode it to the ground, twisting himself to bring what was left of his own sword around in a slash at the closest lich that had stood on the baelnorn's other flank.

He caught a momentary glimpse of a malevolent eye glaring out of one of its palms. Then he bounced atop two struggling bodies and the twisted stub of his sword could no longer reach the lich he'd swung at-and it bent forward.

Jhessail hurled herself through the air like a thrusting sword, feet first. The lich folded up around her with a startled crunch, and fell, leaving the lich beyond them both to stare down in what would have been bewilderment if there'd been enough flesh left on its skull to express any emotion.

Jhessail bounced to her feet out of the writhing limbs of the lich she'd felled, slashed the throat of the staring undead with speed and savagery enough to send its skull whipping around on its shoulders in an unsteady, bobbing wobble, and hissed at it, "Shall we dance? If'tis my death you seek, care to try again?"

It glared at her and brought its hands up, its fingers lengthening like talons, so she sliced each of them off, wondering how soon her blade would grow dull-or one of them would loom out of the mists and serve her the same way.

Behind her, Merith finished dismembering the lich she'd first taken down, and murmured, "Ladylove mine, would the flames your spells become burn lich-flesh, d'you think?"

Florin hacked at liches' shoulders, thighs, and necks, ignoring the baelnorn. He was aware of Merith doing the same, off to his left, and… the last lich left standing faded away. The baelnorn sank into nothingness with its black blade writhing like a lashing-tailed snake, and there was another gods-blasting disturbance in the white mist. A rift of dark, raging red laced about with flickering green radiance spilled down for all Faerun as if it was a glowing green waterfall.

In its wake was a bright green gulf-out of which strode yet another pair of liches. These stalked purposefully, menacing, their hands up to cradle glimmering eyes that glared out of their palms as they came.

The moment Florin met the gaze of one of those palm-eyes, he felt a sudden deep iciness stab through him as if driven like a thrusting sword blade.

He staggered, and found himself shuddering-an uncontrollable shiver that wrenched at him more and more slowly, his spasms becoming slow driftings, his limbs heavy, his…

They strode toward him, dark and terrible, and beside him Jhessail sobbed with effort, struggling against the same fell cold.

Florin heard Merith curse, close by on the side his head was turned away from. He could not hope to turn his head to see before the liches reached him, their hands raised like claws to rend and tear.

Sister?

The mind-voice snapped into Storm Silverhand's mind with such savage force that she gasped and almost spilled the herb-brew she was dipping her fingertips into, to gentle into a sick child's mouth.

The little lad's mother drew back in alarm, whirling her ailing son behind her. All Shadowdale knew that when the Bard did something sudden or unexpected, magic was apt to come roaring forth from her-and people died.

"Yes?" Storm answered, speaking aloud to try to reassure the farmwife. "What troubles the Queen of Aglarond this fair night?"

Ethena Astorma, HAVE DONE! Where is my Elminster, and why can I not reach him, or feel his presence anywhere?

Storm drew in a deep breath, beckoning to the farm-wife to put the sick infant into her arms, and thought back: Alassra, back in Alturiak, El led Dove and three of the Knights So frightened and furious was the Simbul that she broke all courtesy and sent her mind racing along the link between them, flooding unbidden into Storm's own consciousness in her impatience to see all the Bard of Shadowdale knew.

Memories and mind-pictures flashed and crashed, washing over the farmwife and the child alike. Storm barely heard their startled cries in the swirling tumult that ended abruptly. She was left trembling and drenched with sweat in the lamplit room, alone in her own head again, all contact with the Simbul gone.

The farmwife stared at her in terror, too frightened to do more than mew softly. Her baby, however, blinked, and said the first coherent words he'd ever uttered-in the fierce, feminine tones of the Witch-Queen of Aglarond:

"And when I find them-!"

The two women stared at him, but his face was once more full of wonder, as he stared back at them, and his next word was: "Glaaooo?"

Steel flashed into Florin's view: Merith's daggers, spinning smoothly end-over-end, heading for the eyes glaring out of liches' palms-forlorn strikes, doomed to miss those swiftly-moving targets.

The liches thrust their arms forward to keep the eyes glaring at Florin and Jhessail as they twisted around to head away from Merith's hurled daggers.

Something else flashed past Florin's shoulder-two somethings that sang and shimmered, whisker-thin and silvery-white. Bright beams of force stabbed out to strike the tumbling daggers in a spinning, whirling cage of silver-white stabbings, and turn them-yes, turn them- guiding them toward the liches.

Florin overbalanced, trapped in a shudder that held his body captive. Jhessail fell too, toppling over him.

She'd come down on his arm, the war-leader of the Knights thought calmly, as his spasms spun his turned-to-the-side head helplessly around to regard the place where they'd all been standing before the baelnorn came.

As he came down softly into unbroken whiteness where the baelnorn should have been lying-but seemed to have entirely faded away-Florin saw that those singing lines of force stabbed out from the thickenings in two strands that marked where Elminster and Dove had melded into the whiteness.

He didn't actually have to see those beams aim the daggers, curving their flights into arcs that bit into glaring eyes in lich-palms, he knew they'd done so. The chill that clawed him was gone, he could move again, and Jhessail thudded into him, trailing startled curses.

Florin cradled her and hurled her back upright, watching his oldest friend sway, seeking her balance in a swirl of flame-hued hair. He fought his own way back to his feet in time to see the liches grimace, their palms pierced with Merith's daggers-daggers that blazed like little torches, burning away to nothing but inky wisps of smoke. Beyond them, the mist flickered red and green in a dozen places or more, and liches stalked forth in scores, a walking wall of silent undeath.

Jhessail shook her head. "Sweet Mystra," she murmured, "if they could work their spells…"

Her husband chuckled, shrugged, and replied almost merrily, "If magic served us here, I'd be able to keep us alive-I think. As it is…"

Merith shrugged again, and hefted his humming sword in one hand, and the long knife he so rarely drew in the other. Catching Florin's look, he murmured, "Wanted to use it one last time, if we're going to-"

And the menacing ranks of liches were swept aside as if by a giant hand, as the white mists erupted into blue-white fire.

Out of the heart of those blue-white rifts strode upright warriors of metal, stiffly stalking things that moved in a series of jerks and swiveling movements, all gleaming battle-limbs and keening, whirling blades. They had no faces, but moved as if they could see. No two of them were the same. Some had arms ending in great axes, and others sported heads that looked like gigantic kettles with spouts that stuck out straight rather than angling upward. Gears and cogs whirred and clattered in chorus within their shining hides.

All three Knights stared in disbelief, and just a little wearily lifted their weapons and prepared to die by sharp, slicing steel rather than chilling lich-claws.

"Delight me," Jhessail whispered bitterly. "Show me new and exciting sights, take me far from the boringly familiar-and there slay me!"

"Steady, love," Merith murmured, beside her. "We'll be together."

The clockwork automatons whirred and clanked right up to the Knights-and turned aside, to stab and stalk liches.

Dark robes and cloaks swirled as undead limbs drew back in alarm, long-fingered hands became talons, and A kettle-head gouted fire that made a lich blaze up like a torch, and before Merith could begin to chuckle, half a dozen of the gaunt undead collapsed in the flashing flurry of a dozen dicing clockwork blades.

The three adventurers watched, open-mouthed, and became aware that the blue-white fire was fading, revealing in its darkening remnants the beautiful elf they'd seen earlier, standing smiling at them. Her sapphire-blue hair gently quested through the air around her, as if possessing a restless, curious life of its own.

"Well met again, Knights. Valiantly fought-too valiant to fall, if this or any world knew fairness. Fight on!" A tiny tan hand waved at them-and faded again, along with the last of the blue-white fire.

Crimson and bright green flashes flared in a score or more places in the mist, rolling across the whiteness as if angered or goaded by the blue-white rift. Baelnorns winked into being here, there, and everywhere to stare in bewilderment then-one after another-turn their heads to glare at the Knights, and thrust out withered blue arms straight, pointing.

They pointed not at the Knights, but at the largest red-and-green rift yet, which split the mists vertically like a giant, reluctant clam parting its shell. The high, eerie keening that the Knights knew to be mythal-song trilled forth along those arms, ringing through the air in almost visible echoes as it met and roiled along the edges of the widening rift.

"Ah, yes," Merith murmured. "This would be the traditional time for me to announce that I have a bad feeling about this, would it not?"

Florin grinned. "It would."

Jhessail rolled her eyes.

With clanks and gleamings, the marching automatons turned in unison from the last smoking remnants of liches to face the widening rift-and started walking toward it.

"As I recall," Jhessail observed with an edge to her gentle voice, "I was just going to ask Storm for some more tea, when Old Weirdbeard stepped out of thin air and volunteered us for this little jaunt. Someone remind me why I ever agree to go along on these-"

A lone figure stepped out of the green flare of the rift. Tall, dark, and terrible, it stood motionless in the heart of the rising trilling of mythal force that seemed to enshroud it in gilded, half-seen, writhing curves and fantastic curlicues of force that shaped and reshaped themselves constantly around it.

Within that writhing of mythal magic, the lich grew visibly darker and taller, looking at the Knights in silent menace. It was more intact and muscled than any they'd yet seen, looking more like a mighty, black-cloaked archmage with a sickly pallor than an undead.

"Mystra forfend," Jhessail muttered, "is this Larloch?"

"No," Merith replied. "Or at least, if it is, he looks much different than he did when I saw him."

Both of the other two Knights gave the elf sharp glances.

"When this is done, friend Merith," Florin said, "if the gods grant that both of us can still speak together, I'll be wanting to hear some answers from your lips, believe you me."

Merith's grin was as bright as ever. "I find myself unastonished."

Bereft of liches to dice and scorch, the clockwork automations clanked toward the lich, passing in front of the Knights to converge on the lone figure that stood a head taller than the largest of the clanking things.

"Stop the baelnorn," Merith said. "Whatever they're doing, it's feeding yon Bad Sir Blackcloak with power, and fairly soon he's going to-"

Silver fire snarled out in a cone of torn and shrieking mists. Jhessail's grim smile of satisfaction fell into a soft curse as the flames died away and the lich's spell took effect-blasting an automaton into shards of flying metal.

"Its spells are working, blast it!" she snarled. "Mother Mystra's tears!"

The Knights flung themselves hastily down as another two clockwork things exploded in twin shattering roars.

Deadly metal whirred in all directions. Jhessail saw a cog bounce once in the mist, and soundlessly sink out of sight as if into a bog.

The next spell bore no silver flames at all, and seared away the mist, as four streaking spheres shot into the heart of the marching automatons and burst with an ear-shattering roar and a flash of blinding, blistering-hot flame.

"Well," Florin said, "at least we're already lying down, and can die reclining at ease."

A second meteor swarm smote their ears, and the mists rained shrapnel and the twisted toothed arcs of gears and cogs that would turn no more.

Merith peered into smoke-darkened, shifting mists and muttered, "That's pretty well taken care of the clock-"

Another four spheres spun out of the mists, trailing sparks as they came, right at the Knights.

"Farewell, friends," Florin said, "we've had a good ride togeth-"

Right above their heads, the spheres flickered as they always did in the instant before they exploded-and froze, spinning vainly in the grips of four vibrating silver spheres that had formed out of nowhere.

The spheres had spark-trails of their own, leading back to the thickened strands that were, or had been, Elminster and Dove.

The humming strands faded, the spheres tightened like crushing fists, and the lich's four meteors winked once and were gone as if they'd never been.

More lines of thrumming force raced out from the two strands, flaring out into a great web as they raced toward the Knights. There was a sudden flare of crimson beneath their glow, and the lich stood beside the strands, leaning toward them malevolently.

"Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Jhessail snarled, clambering to her feet again.

The lich turned its head to glare at her, another spell roaring from between its fingers-and the silver strands flashed blinding-bright before it, blocking the speeding magic.

From behind that sudden wall came a larger flash and roar. White strands bent outward and writhed. The dark figure of the lich reeled back, crashing against the strand that was Dove.

The strand grew arms-Dove's arms-that wrapped around the lich from behind, embracing it fiercely. Her face emerged from the whiteness, contorted in pain, her eyes closed and cords stood out like curved blades on her neck as she clung to the struggling lich.

The Knights were all on their feet, sprinting toward the struggle. The lich dwindled in Dove's grip, melting and shuddering even as it tried vainly to turn and claw her, its fingers lengthening into cruel, curved talons each as long as Jhessail's forearm.

Dove's arms tightened around the lich as it sank and sagged, crumbling. Ash fell in streams from it as she slid down the strand, bringing her arms in tightly and her knees up, curling around the undead as it crumbled entirely away, leaving her shuddering and gasping.

"Dove!" Florin cried, rushing up to her. "Love, I-"

She shook her head at him, fighting to speak, and managed only to gasp, "I'll call-" 'ere her violent shudderings overwhelmed her. Waving him away, she sank back into the strand, melting into smooth whiteness once more beneath Florin's reaching fingertips.

His fiercely-hissed curses were interrupted by Merith.

"She's back," the elf snapped, pointing.

By which he meant that the tiny, beautiful, blue-haired elf had returned, stepping out of a rift with one arm raised to point at the baelnorn.

It vanished. She pointed again, and the next one winked out. And the next.

She'd banished over a dozen baelnorn, and their singing" mythal-force with them, before the mists erupted in dozens of crimson-and-green mouths. Whereupon she vanished in an instant, even before more liches with glaring eyes in their open palms came striding through the new rifts and looked hurriedly in all directions.

They ignored the Knights as if the three humans were mere mist, to peer at the few remaining baelnorn. Then the liches hissed various curses, exchanged dark glances with each other, and started to cast spells-or rather, the same spell.

It was a magic unfamiliar to the warily-watching Knights, that made drifts of mist nee from the liches in all directions, laying bare the endless webwork of white strands-and the glittering web of silver threads around and above the Knights.

Several liches peered at that web with narrow, unfriendly eyes, and stood sentinel, watching it from right where they were in the distant mists. Others worked spells that sent seeking radiances bobbing among the strands like agitated will-o-wisps, searching behind every strand.

"So few," one lich snarled in disbelief. "What happened to them all?" It waved at the three Knights. "Those worms could not have slain more than a handful at most."

Even Merith, whose ears were far keener than those of his two human companions, could not hear the reply that the lich standing nearest made to that angry cry.

Nor could he properly hear what the loud-voiced lich said next, because a soft, melodious whisper sounded between his own ears. The voice was that of the she-elf who'd welcomed them there, the one he was almost certain was the-

Knights of Myth Drannor, the warm whisper said to them, and Merith knew they were all three hearing it; he could feel the mind of Florin, like a bright sharp sword, and his beloved Jhess, like her warm arms around him, moving against his own thoughts. I need you to strike at these creatures of Larloch. Please. Without their spells, they are but striding undead.

"Larloch? We can't prevail against Larloch!" Jhessail's voice held a sob of horror amid her incredulity. "Nor against so many liches!"

Oh, but you can, the whisper came, confident, with my aid and with what Elminster is sending you.

"And Larloch? What will you do to shield us when he appears?"

He won't. He plays a long game, and this is but one ploy among a thousand thousands for him. He's too coldly calculating to ever come to consider it worth risking his own existence. Long before that fate would be faced, he'll judge the cost in lost liches too high.

"Again," Jhessail snarled, "I'd like to know what by all the gods is going on."

There was silence in their heads; the mind-voice was gone.

"Sing, minstrels, of my total lack of surprise," Jhessail snapped. "I thought I took up adventuring to escape being marched through life under the commands of others-but then, to be an adventurer is to be a fool."

Florin said that last quotation along with her, grinning. She gave him a black look and said savagely, "Care to join me in blasting a lich or two?"

"Your spells won't work, remember?"

"Then I'll just have to scratch them to shreds with my bare hands, won't I?" she growled, striding toward the nearest lich. As she went, she dipped a hand into one of her boots to draw her largest dagger.

Merith and Florin exchanged glances, and watched silver tendrils drift after the purposeful mage known to many-behind her back-as "the Mother of the Knights." together in small groups, forming circles around every baelnorn and working strange, elaborate castings. Mythal force flowed golden once more.

Jhessail paid it no heed, just as the liches ignored the three Knights. When she overtook her chosen victim and stabbed him viciously, the liches walking just ahead of him-heading to join the nearest baelnorn cluster-kept right on walking, even after the three Knights hacked that lich apart and watched its limbs fade away into the whiteness around their ankles.

Jhessail shook her head, and started striding toward the next lich.

Merith and Florin rolled their eyes at each other and trotted after her.

At the heart of every circle, spell-glows rose, ghostly rings of emerald light forming and rotating at various inclinations around the motionless baelnorn. Gold mythal-force spun out to join those rings, and long, spider-fingered lich hands worked intricate spells that made the green and gold rings rise around their heads. Rise, and spin, and brighten…

"What're they up to now?" Jhessail wondered aloud.

Trotting at her shoulder, Merith grinned and shrugged. "You're the spell-hurler here, love."

Jhessail's answer wasn't long in coming. She was still a dozen hurrying strides away from the lich she was running down-and it was barely half that distance from joining a ring of undead around a baelnorn-when a familiar crimson radiance burst into being within the emerald rings above that circle of liches, and widened into a bright green.

And in that glow was another baelnorn, blinking in surprise as it floated down into the circle. Mythal-force tugged at its raised arms until golden curlicues flowed from its fingers, and it lost its look of alarm.

Merith frowned. "They're fetching more baelnorn hither!"

"Soon there won't be a mythal left unguarded in all Faerun," Florin commented, watching other rifts open above circles.

Jhessail slowed as her quarry joined a circle. "Should I strike at yon?" she asked. "Or will I just be dooming us for no good reason?"

Dooming yourselves, I'd say.

The voice in their heads was back.

The mage of the Knights sighed. "Are you going to tell us who you are? And what we're doing here? And what they are up to?" Jhessail kept her voice to a low mutter, but her gesture at the backs of the nearest liches was so violent it seemed a shout.

Of course. As soon as I work a particular spell. Larloch's creatures have obligingly prepared the perfect conditions forme.

The Knights looked all around, but saw no swirl of sapphire-blue hair, nor the tiny tan elf who should have been beneath it.

"Let's get back to Elminster and my lady," Florin suggested. "I'm thinking standing near liches might not be the wisest stratagem, just now."

In silent unison, the three Knights turned and hastened back together, glancing often over their shoulders.

They were about halfway back to the strands that sourced the silver web when it began.

A low ripple in the blood, an uneasy swell and surge. The Knights might have thought it mere indigestion if every white strand in sight wasn't bending in time to the slow, inexorable rhythm.

"I'm still not being told what's happening," Jhessail whispered, but she sounded more amused than exasperated.

Then something swept through the mist and strands, broke over them, and rolled on. Something vast and heavy and nigh-soundless, that plucked up and hurled away liches in velvet silence, and spun mythal-gold and emerald rings alike up into great spheres of white strands, englobing each and every baelnorn. The spheres fell softly from their heights, to bounce and roll gently among the strands, and halt here and there.

Something like a rag doll fell less gently out of the white misty nothingness overhead, and would have smashed Florin flat had he not cast aside his blade, stepped back, and cradled his hands to catch it.

The force of her fall drove him to his knees, and over onto his shoulders. Sapphire-blue hair blinded him, and soft limbs tumbled across his chest as their owner gasped, groaned, ducked under Jhessail's wary dagger, and plucked up Florin's sword.

On hands and knees, the elf grinned up at the lady mage. "Worry not, I won't be using this steel on you or anyone. 'Twould be poor reward for rescuing me from harm to lose one's blade." She turned her head to look at Florin. "My thanks, man."

The ranger rolled up to his knees, barely winded. The elf had been little heavier than a child. He gave her a polite smile, and she took hold of his sword by the blade and held it out to him.

As she did so, Merith went to his knees with the full flourishes, as if to a coronal or great lady.

She smiled at him. "I'm done with such things, young gallant. I hope. Yet I'll not entirely abandon the courtesies. Well met in a strange glade, blood of Meirynth. I see the blood runs strong."

Merith blushed, but the sapphire-haired elf turned her head to include the other two Knights as she continued, "Have my thanks, all of you." Then she turned fully to Jhessail, golden eyes twinkling. "And my explanations."

From up close, her beauty was even more breathtaking. Perfect skin of that tan, almost golden hue, long arms and longer legs for one so tiny… even Jhessail found herself staring.

A delicate hand waved dismissal. "I've seen far fairer; there's no need to be staring at these old bones."

"Ah, Lady…" Florin began, unable to take his eyes off that gorgeous sapphire-blue hair.

She sighed-and Florin found himself looking at a feminine version of Merith, with that glorious fall of hair turned jet black, and her skin a soft white.

"There. Does that set you more at ease?"

"Only if I could know I was seeing your true shape, Lady," Florin said. "We've fought so many fair-seeming foes who were scaled serpents-or worse-beneath the beauty they lured us with."

She shrugged, and became once more tan-skinned and blue-haired. "This is the one I've grown used to. In truth, I can't recall how far it is from what I looked like before I mastered my first spells."

She drew her feet under her and sat, hands planted on the misty whiteness that served as "ground" in the Tshad-darna. "Forgive me," she murmured. "I'm still weary after that mythal-twisting." She waved a hand at the nearest strand-spheres.

"You're the Srinshee," Merith said.

She turned to look at him, lost her smile, and nodded. "I am."

He regarded her cautiously, and murmured, "Forgive me, lady, but-are you of my sort… among elves, that is, or…?"

A slender shoulder lifted in a shrug. "Moon elf, sun elf," the Srinshee murmured. "I have moved so far beyond that."

Eyes fixed on his, she sat still and silent-as her skin turned a faint blue, her hair went silver-white, and her eyes deepened into bottomless pools of green. Then they went blue, along with her hair, as her skin turned bronze, her hair shifted again to a coppery hue and to a blaze of gold.

Florin made a wordless murmuring sound deep in his throat, at the striking beauty of one of her combinations-but the Srinshee went on changing. Her skin became deep brown, her hair shifted to match, her skin slid to copper tinged with green, her eyes went hazel and lilac-and obsidian black, and Merith drew in his breath with a hiss.

The Srinshee looked at him with blood-red eyes, lifted her lip in a mirthless smile that was more sneer than anything else, and fell back into tan skin, gold eyes, that sapphire blue hair, and a nice smile again.

"Enough games," she said. "I'll be happy to chat at ease with you later-if we can carve out a later for us all-but for now I need you still, valiant Knights. The sooner we prevail, the better, for know this: Time passes far more slowly here than in Faerun. Back in the Realms, days are racing by like scudding storm clouds."

Three pairs of eyebrows rose in silence, and her smile broadened. "Later."

"Lady," Jhessail said, "I'm content to wait for some lore, but please-why us, and what should we be doing next?"

"You, because Elminster thought you were the best to bring. We're here to foil Larloch's latest scheme. He's hit upon the idea of subverting baelnorn to act on his behalf. They'll eventually become his slaves, and he'll be able to draw on the magical energies of their mythals."

Florin blinked, and waved his hands at the mist all around. "Is this his… private play-yard?"

"No. I managed to lure the baelnorn into the Tshaddarna, so as to bring Larloch's liches here, too. Larloch will remain elsewhere, working only through his servitor liches. 'Tis his way."

Jhessail frowned. "What is this place?"

"The Tshaddarna-there are others-are extra-dimensional spaces created by spells, long ago."

Jhessail made a circular motion with her hand, an "out with it" prompting that made Merith grimace-and the Srinshee grin.

"The spells were cast by certain Imaskari, Netherese, and even by the Blood of Malaug, before they departed for their Place of Shadows that's much larger and better suits them."

The Srinshee waved her hand at the white mists and strands. "As I said, these are places only the Weave can reach, now. Their 'Faerun ends,' if you will, have been destroyed, but-obviously-the places themselves aren't swept away with them."

Florin looked at her rather grimly. "And how many armies are hiding in these hidden places? For that matter, how many Tshaddarna are there?"

"No armed hosts-there's nothing to eat in a shaddarn but each other, and nothing to drink but your own blood and leakings. More than that: gather an army in one, and months have passed in that brief mustering-where's your foe gone, in all that time, and what's he done? As for how many, no one knows. At least ten-and-four I know of. They're caught in the Weave like flies in a spider's web. It's finding and reaching them that's well-nigh impossible, unless one can ride the Weave."

"You can," Jhessail said, ducking her head so it wouldn't sound entirely like an accusation.

The Srinshee nodded. "Some few can. Larloch is one. He uses them to store magic and treasure. I can take you to a shaddarn that's waist-high with gold coins, as far as the eye can see."

"Don't tell Torm about that," Merith said to his fellow Knights, "whatever you do."

"Manshoon of the Zhentarim is another. He's left echoes of himself in various Tshaddarna, most of them in spell-stasis."

Florin crooked an eyebrow, his sword rising. "Should we expect to meet up with him here?"

The Srinshee smiled like a grandmother fondly guarding a secret, but said merely, "No."

Florin pounced on her momentary hesitation. "Just 'no'?"

The Srinshee's smile went wry. "One of the early Manshoons, still active and powerful in the Realms, retreats to a particular shaddarn like a snake seeking its burrow whenever danger gets too close to him in Faerun. Another shaddarn than this one."

Jhessail nodded. "You've been hiding in Tshaddarna too, haven't you?"

The Srinshee's smile never changed. "Of course."

"Why?"

"To let elfkind grow again, turning aside from decadence and the mind-death of shunning other beings-a shunning that could only grow into mutual hatred and slaying. So long as I and certain other elders were present, with the most powerful magic of the People in our hands, elves everywhere could trust in their matchless superiority, and exalt themselves over others. Even those who dwelt with humans could cling to inward beliefs that they were wiser, better… purer. And no race finds the condescension of others pretty-or its own condescension healthy."

"Mielikki have mercy, the patience you must have," Florin whispered.

The Srinshee's smile turned a little crooked. "I'm not the paragon you believe me to be, Lord Falcon-hand. In some ways, I'm what certain humans like to call a 'witch' or 'bitch.' Vindictive and childlike, in my way. I do consider myself superior to certain humans, you see."

"And so you are," Florin replied. "From outlaws to fell Zhentarim, Faerun holds no shortage of-"

"Villains? Indeed. I've amused myself-I cannot dignify my actions by any more noble description-by pruning the ranks of some of the more ambitious and magically-gifted among them."

Jhessail's eyes narrowed. "Oh? How, exactly?"

The Srinshee waggled her eyebrows and leered in a wild parody of maniacal villainy, until Jhessail couldn't help but smirk and both of the male Knights chuckled.

"Attempts to magically reach Tshaddarna can rob the seeker of their wits-that is, some spells, abilities, and memories-if I lure a prying one into a shaddarn that holds allips, chaos beasts, devourers, nishruu, or other beings who steal memories or cause insanity. When I find a Red Wizard, or a Zhentarim mage, I… give in to the temptation to cleanse your race, just a little."

"And thereby confirm yourself as no better…" Merith whispered, face failing.

"Exactly, Lord Strongbow. Precisely." The Srinshee's murmur went icy for a moment, and she added, "So if I'm slain by such a foe, 'tis no better than I deserve. Yet I'll not seek death by challenge or carelessness, nor take my life with my own hands, because so many foes all Faerun must be defended against remain. I am needed."

"So long as there are Larlochs," Florin observed.

"So long as there are Larlochs," the Srinshee echoed, and gave them a wide smile. "Ah, I've missed this. Not since I dwelt with Elminster in Myth Drannor have I tested wits and tongues like this. Swords crossed with respect."

"I… Lady, we are so unsuited to this, so unworthy," Merith began, groping for words-and stiffened as her hand touched his wrist. Her fingers were warm and alive with magic, and yet somehow icy, too.

"The Art's unreliable here," she told the Knights, "especially for undead. The magic that sustains them begin to fail. Wherefore you oh-so-unworthy Knights can be effective foes to the liches-and, if need be, to the baelnorn."

The Srinshee leaned forward, and sudden sparks swirled around them all, blotting out all sight of surrounding white mists and strands.

"My intent," she added, her shieldings vibrating around them, "is not just to defeat the liches, but to deceive Larloch as to how they were defeated."

"So?"

"So, Lady Strongbow, he'll believe his scheme with the baelnorn can never work-and won't keep trying. We all need those mythals to stand strong for years upon years to come."

"What if Larloch perceives you as the barrier to his plots, and comes here to destroy you?" Florin asked.

The Srinshee smiled. "I was fading away, lord, well on my way to becoming little more than a beckoning phantom and a half-remembered name-then Mystra died. Much of her essence came here, stealing into me in my loneliness, restoring me, and more than that, making me wiser than I ever was before. I had the pride all along, but she gave me the power."

Jhessail winced. "Those are words that probably fit many mages all too closely."

Even as the Srinshee nodded, her shieldings crackled and darkened around them.

"Up, friends," she said. "I believe Larloch's grown tired of being unable to listen in, and brought battle back to us."

The tiny elf waved a hand, and her shielding melted into glistening translucence. They could see white mist overhead, whiteness under their feet, and a dark, solid wall of maliciously-smiling liches all around, scores deep.

The Srinshee's face went grim. "He has more liches than I knew. This may mean doom for us all."

There was a flash of silver behind that dark wall of undead for a moment. It thrust unwilling liches aside for an instant, like a fire-crack in the blazing darkness of a log turning to ash, to show the Knights the strand that was Elminster ablaze with furious silver fire.

Then it darkened, and the wall of liches was whole once more.

There came another flash, dragging the liches asunder at a slightly different spot. They saw the strand that was Dove pulsing silver, more gently-or more feebly? — than Elminster's had blazed. Then it, too, darkened, and the liches came together again.

Grinning coldly, they closed in around the Knights, who raised their weapons and waited to die.

"Stout hearts, heroes," the Srinshee urged from behind their backs. "I've a trick or two yet-"

The world exploded in roaring silver fire.

Hurled down and tumbled in whirling helplessness like leaves dashed and rolled in a gale, the Knights beheld the Srinshee's startled eyes burst into leaping silver flames. More flames exploded from her mouth, and her body leaped at them, hurled like a helpless ragdoll.

Those tiny arms and legs overtook the rolling Knights and smashed them flat, silver fire rolled over them in a tingling, terrifying snarling that left them numbed and gasping.

A furious female voice snarled, "Stay down!"

Jhessail had ended up panting on her back, with one of the Srinshee's shapely legs across her throat, so she saw who spat out that angry command.

Silver hair lashing and whirling snakelike above a torn and tattered black gown, a woman whose eyes were two smoldering silver stars glared around at ranks of cowering, hissing liches. She curled her body back like a snake rearing to strike then lashed out with both arms flung forward, like a whip cracking, to send silver fire forth in an all-consuming flood.

The Witch-Queen of Aglarond had come calling.

All the liches in front of her were gone. Where they'd stood, the mists had given way to scores of tiny wisps of smoke streaming from lumps of ash that had been feet.

The liches behind the Simbul fled, dwindling into the mist like so many large and ungainly black bats, trying to escape before she Turned and let fly once more, hurling forth another destroying flood of silver fire to sear strands and running liches alike.

It was impressive, and went on for a long time. Severed white strands slumped in the dim, misty white distance. The barefoot woman in the black tatters reeled, her eyes going dark and her arms falling to her sides like boneless things, and fell on her face.

The few liches left nearby swarmed up from where they'd been cowering, flat amid the last curling sighs of mist, and raced desperately toward the fallen Chosen, hands raised into claws.

The Srinshee sped to the Simbul even faster, springing up from the Knights in a racing flight powered by vitality snatched from the three adventurers. Her life-leeching magic left the Knights sick and shuddering.

"Sorry, friends," she called back, as she flung out a hand toward the strands that had swallowed Elminster and Dove, and did something that called forth more silver fire from them.

The liches recoiled as it came racing to her in two thin, snarling beams, outlined her briefly in a halo of silver flames, and sank down into her. The Srinshee went to her knees atop the sprawled Queen of Aglarond and kissed her slack mouth-a kiss that leaked silver fire.

By then Florin was on his feet, swaying, leaning on his sword as if it was a walking-stick. He managed two unsteady steps toward the Srinshee before she was flung back into him by the Simbul's eruption back upright. Tumbling together, they rolled over a weakly-cursing Jhessail, and beheld the Queen of Aglarond once more hurling silver fire.

The radiance came not in great floods, but in tiny bursts that streaked from her pointing finger at this lone lich-who burst into flames, like a screaming torch-then that one, who burned even more violently.

One by one the liches fell to the Simbul's stabbing silver fire, as the whiteness all around the shuddering, struggling-to-their-feet Knights seemed to pulse with silver, and surge beneath their boots. It began to fold up around them, the whiteness slashed with rifts, countless spiderweb cracks, and great tumbling vistas of spreading darkness. Strands collapsed into glowing white soup; mist, blazing liches, and all whirled around them wildly; a great roaring rose from bone-shaking depths into ear-clawing heights; and Out of the deafening chaos, the Srinshee plucked at Merith and shouted, "The shaddarn is collapsing!"

He twisted, trying to reach his wife, but Jhessail was beyond the tips of his straining fingers, and falling away from him-into the waiting grip of a long-fingered hand that looked familiar.

Merith had just time to conclude it must belong to Elminster, and that the elbow streaking past his nose must be Dove's, grabbing Florin, before everything whirled up into shrieking darkness and he was falling…

Falling…

Falling through sunlight into soft, dark earth with a crash and clatter of beanpoles, as familiar tripods of silver-with-age spars of wood toppled over, trailing tendrils and dancing leaves.

Lush green leaves? Roseberry leaves? Warmth and sun and no snow? Just when had high summer come to Storm's kitchen garden?

Just how long had they been away in the shaddarn?

Merith bounced as someone heavy landed on him and was as suddenly gone again, more leaves dancing past his gaze. He felt someone else's boot strike his and flop down on him and roll aside… and he was blinking up at the amused face of Storm Silverhand, reaching a sun-browned hand down to him.

"Things went well, I see," she commented, "unless one happens to be a bean plant. Sister, must you always crush the same sort? 'Tis not as if you ever actually eat them…"

The Simbul, sprawled face-down under most of the Knights amid a welter of poles and crushed greenery, neither moved nor responded. winked out, together.

Dove and Storm looked at each other, sighed, and reached down for the Simbul. "She sent forth a lot of power," Dove said. "One of these days, she's going to spend too much, and-"

Jhessail caught her breath then, so sharply that the sound she made was almost a sob.

Florin and Storm looked up sharply-and froze, letting silence fall and deepen like an unrolling cloak.

The cloaked figure standing on air a few strides away across Storm's garden was tall, terrible, and a-crawl with chill power. A ring of floating, faintly-glowing gem-stones that fairly throbbed with power drifted in a slow, patient circuit in the air above the apparition's gray head. Eyes like twinkling pits of white fire regarded the three sisters and the trio of Knights on their knees around them, and a hand that was little more than withered gray flesh over bones tightened around a staff that crackled with power.

Merith hefted his sword, strangely thrilled that it was no longer humming, and opened his mouth to spit words of defiance.

"Larloch," Storm said in greeting, as calmly as if she'd been identifying the sort of tree a leaf blowing by had fallen from.

"Who never risks himself," Jhessail whispered. "So why…?"

The lich-king kept his eyes on the Bard of Shadowdale. His withered hands spread slightly, as if in entreaty, nothing about the gesture suggesting fragility or enfeeblement.

"This was… not my doing," Larloch said, his voice dry and deep. "From time to time I… test the lichnee who serve me by showing them a measure of freedom, and observing what they do with it. This time, they did foolishness."

"This is no sending," Florin murmured. " 'Tis truly him."

Merith nodded. "His want-or need-must be very important."

Swords ready, the two rose slowly to their feet, each out of long habit stepping to one side to spread out and so offer this new foe more widely-spread targets, and a broader field of menace.

Larloch ignored them. Those chilling eyes regarded Dove and Storm as they stepped forward in slow unison, hands empty of weapons and hair rising to swirl around them restlessly.

"And now?" Storm asked, her words a clear challenge.

Silver fire danced in her eyes, and those of her sister.

The Shadow King made no reply, and Storm did something wordless that made a tear of silver fire drop from her eye to her breast-where it became a thin line of silver flame that raced up to her shoulder and down her arm, consuming and darkening nothing, to fill her palm and rise there in restless hunger, flickering and blazing.

Even stronger hunger rose in Larloch's eyes as he gazed at what danced in Storm's palm. "And now," he replied, lifting his gaze only reluctantly from silver flames to Storm Silverhand's eyes, "I tender my apologies and depart. I seek greater Art, always. I do not seek battle with you, or any who serve the Lady."

"No?" Dove asked, lifting her empty hand as if to hurl something.

"No," Larloch said, bowing to her. Emerald fires crackled from nowhere to trail across withered gray flesh. "I am not a fool. No matter how powerful one becomes, there are always those who are stronger."

"Yet you tarry," Storm reminded him, as politely as a lady of minor nobility conversing with a king.

"Lady, I go," the undead lord replied. "I confess I… " He sighed, and announced in a near-whisper, "Looking upon the silver fire is precious to me."

Storm regarded him wordlessly for what seemed a long time then slowly stepped forward, her face solemn. In breath-held silence the Knights watched her walk to him.

The Shadow King took a step back in the face of her calm, lilting advance. Then another.

Where he held his ground, an errant breeze stirred the long, stringy white hair that clung to the tight-stretched gray flesh on his skull. His eyes seemed to burn with rising white fire, and green lightning leaped out of his skin to race restlessly across him at Storm's approach. They heard him murmur, "I know my peril."

The Bard of Shadowdale came to a stop almost touching Larloch, and lifted her hand slowly between them. He held his staff hastily aside, out of the way, and stared down.

Storm let silver fire leap and dance in her palm, and Larloch bent to peer at it until his nose was almost touching the tallest licking silver tongues. He trembled with desire, his hands rising almost involuntarily.

Dove seemed to rise with them, gathering herself to do something, and Jhessail licked her lips and lifted her hands to be ready to work what would almost certainly be an utterly futile spell.

And Larloch straightened up, looked at Storm eye to eye, and said, "Thank you. It has been a very long time since someone has shown me kindness."

He stepped back, bowed deeply, and said, "Fear me no more. Inspired, I return to my Art."

The Shadow King turned, whipped his cloak around himself-and it fell to the ground, empty, fading to nothingness as it touched the earth of Storm's freshly-turned roseberry bed. There was a faint chord of chimings, like a flourish on the highest strings of a harp strung with metal, in the wake of the departing stones that had floated above Larloch.

Storm stood watching, twirling her fingers in a swift spell… and turned, visibly relaxing, to announce, "He's gone. Quite gone, with no spying magic nor lurking peril left behind."

"What?" The whisper was raw and horrible, but the fire in the Simbul's eyes, as she lifted her chin from the ground, was as fierce as ever. "Without even giving me a chance at him?"

"Alassra," Dove said with sincere tenderness," 'Twould have been no chance at all."

The Queen of Aglarond whirled and stiffened in an instant, like an aggrieved cat. "Sister, are you implying-?"

"No," Dove said, effortlessly plucking the Simbul up by the shoulders and holding her upright, "I'm saying it straight out. No matter how broken or weary you may be, you can turn yourself into leaping lightning-I've seen it often enough, Mother Mystra knows-and nothing Larloch can muster can stand as a barrier against silver fire. As sheer silver fire, you couldn't help but reach him, and at a touch destroy him."

Storm nodded as she rejoined them all in the trampled beans. "That's what he meant when he spoke of knowing his peril. You saw the green fire crawling all over him? That's the spell he's crafted to maintain his unlife, quickening as Mystra's fire came close."

"He dares not have silver fire, but desires its power so much," Jhessail said. "He knows 'twill bring him oblivion-and longs for that, too-yet cannot bring himself, after so fierce and long a struggle to cling to life, to let it all go in an instant."

The three sisters all nodded, in their own ways.

"While mere young, vigorous brutes watch," Florin added. "Seeing through his dignity."

Merith gave his friend a sidelong look. "Not so much of the 'vigorous,' there. I'm feeling a touch weary, myself. Perhaps 'tis all this listening to high-tongued jabber."

"Perhaps," Storm agreed, a familiar twinkle in her eyes. "Tea, anyone?"

"Tea?" The Queen of Aglarond twisted that word into a dripping symphony of disgust. "Is that all you can offer?

After I destroyed nigh on a hundred liches, the replacement of which should keep Old Shadow-wits busy for a few decades at least?"

"I can manage wine if Merith and Florin yet have strength enough to stagger down to my cellar, and soup if you've patience to wait till 'tis ready," Storm chuckled. "But as to something more substantial, I fear Torm and Rathan have taken to dining here every evening in your absence, on the pretext of being ready-to-hand upon your return, and there's not a joint of meat nor a barrel offish left in my larder."

The Simbul frowned, sighed, and frowned a little harder. And an entire roast boar-spit and all-sizzled and dripped onto the beans, floating in midair right in front of her.

She smiled in triumph, spread her hands in a flourish, and reeled. The boar sank, and Dove flung an arm around her shoulders to steady her. The Simbul winced and shuddered, white-faced.

Storm's hair stirred around her shoulders like a whirlwind, and the boar's descent halted. "I suppose you'd be offended if I asked where you thieved this from?"

Leaning into Dove's shoulder, the Simbul gave her sister a dirty look and muttered, " 'Tis mine. From my kitchens, I mean, and taken with a spell that tells my cooks whose hand removed it."

Dove examined her own fingernails, and said to them, "My, working in your palace must be fun."

The Simbul rolled her eyes. "Don't bother fighting to win a throne, and defend it by slaughtering Red Wizards year in and year out," she told Florin, straightening and stepping away from Dove's arm with a determined effort. "See the respect it wins you?"

"Lady Queen," the ranger replied, offering her his arm like a grave courtier, " 'twas not foremost in my personal plans, no."

With a smile, the Simbul leaned on him. She was surprisingly heavy, but Florin saw no safety in commenting on that or even betraying his realization of it. With stately tread he led her along one of the garden paths in Storm Silverhand's wake.

Behind him, Jhessail shook her head. "Sunrise, sunfall, and as inevitably, here we go again!"

"What," Merith chuckled into her ear, "there're more liches? Where?"

"Oho ha hearty ha," she replied. " want tea, if no one else does. I'll stay for that soup, too. Right now, I could eat a-"

"Boar?" Merith suggested.

"The problem with elves," the Witch-Queen of Aglarond observed from behind him, "is how easily their clever senses of humor rule them."

Storm Silverhand turned in her kitchen doorway, eyes dark and twinkling, and said, "Ah, no, sister, there you have matters wrong. That's not the problem with elves. That's their glory."