The Sorcerer

CHAPTER NINETEEN

2 Eleasias, the Year of Wild Magic

Whether the caustic taste in her mouth was ash or fear, Keya Nihmedu could not say. She knew only that her tongue had gone as dry as a flame, that it had become impossible to tell the shuddering of the ground from her own trembling, and that the child in her belly would be lucky to see the world with its own eyes. Burning bluetops were crashing all around her, horse-sized boulders were tumbling down the slope in a ceaseless cascade, and the air was hot enough to bake acorns. The Cold Hand's objective had sounded simple enough when Galaeron explained it back under the Floating Gardens, but she was hoping he had a backup plan.

Crawling on her belly, Keya crept along beneath the upper slope of the trail cut to where Vala was taking shelter with Kuhl and Burlen. Unlike her elves, who were either lying flat on their bellies keeping a watch up the slope for tumbling boulders or blindly arcing arrows up in the general direction of the enemy, the Vaasans were sitting with their backs to the battle. They were sharing sticks of jerked thkaerth meat and laughing and shoving each other in the shoulder, though they had made concession enough to the fighting to remove their swords from their scabbards and leave them lying at their sides within easy reach.

As Keya approached, Vala removed a stick of dried meat from their rations bag and offered it to her.

"No, thank you," Keya shouted to make herself heard over the battle roar. "I don't have much stomach for thkaerth lately."

Though she hoped the Vaasans would think this was because of her pregnancy, the truth was she simply could no longer stand the sight of cooked meat; it reminded her too much of the burned bodies that lay scattered and unburied throughout all of Evereska. Trying to look as unconcerned as the Vaasans, she drew herself up beside Vala and removed her sword from its scabbard.

"What do you think?" Keya asked. "Concentrate our spell-casters and try to mount a breakthrough?"

Vala replied, That would only make them easy pickings for the phaerimm."

"What phaerimm?" Takari asked. "Manynests didn't say anything about phaerimm."

"Manynests is a bird. What he can't see doesn't exist for him. But they have one." Vala jerked her thumb over her shoulder and said, "Up there."

Burlen leaned in front of Vala, looking Keya over with a concerned expression, and held out a piece of jerked thkaerth.

"You sure you don't want one?" he said. "You need to keep your strength up."

Keya waved him off and continued to address Vala. "How do you know where the phaerimm is?"

Vala cast a pointed gaze in the direction of a line of charred bodies and said, "The best thing we can do right now is wait"

A sonorous rumble sounded from above and quickly began to grow louder. Keya started to roll to her stomach so she could crawl up the bank to see what was coming. Vala extended an arm and stopped her, pushing her flat against the slope before lying back herself. The rumble built to rhythmic crashing, then suddenly went silent A roth? — sized boulder tumbled off the rim of the slope and sailed over their heads, bouncing off the far side of the trail and vanishing into the woods below.

"Mind-slaves aren't very bright," Vala said. "Sooner or later, the bugbears will run out of boulders, and the beholders will knock down the last bluetop. Then we attack."

"We don't have that long," Keya objected. "According to Galaeron's plan, we should be taking out the perimeter defense now, before Khelben and the others arrive with the high mages. Otherwise, the mind-slaves will turn and counterattack-"

Then that's when we'll take them," Vala interjected. "Or maybe when Aris gets here. If he can hurl a few boulders back up the hill, we might be able to break their line."

"What we can't do is attack into the teeth of their defense," Burlen said. "We'll just get the Cold Hand wiped out, and who will there be to stop the counterattack?"

Keya glanced past Vala and Burlen to Kuhl, and asked him, "What do you think?"

Kuhl's expression merely darkened, and he looked away.

"He agrees with us," Burlen said. "Pay no mind to his manners. He's letting his sword do his thinking."

Burlen reached out and slapped his companion in the back of the helmet. Kuhl's scowl deepened, but he looked away and continued to remain silent

"Plans are good," Vala said, drawing Keya's attention back to the matter at hand. "Once the spell-flinging starts, they aren't worth the breath it took to speak them. We have to wait for our opportunity-"

She was interrupted by a gusty howl they all recognized as the screech of a wounded phaerimm.

"There's your thornback!" Keya called. She rolled to her stomach and began to shimmy up the bank. "While we sit here talking, someone is killing it."

She stuck her head above the rim just far enough to look up the shattered hillside. Fallen bluetops crisscrossed the slope, blast craters pocked the ground, and curtains of fire poured gray fume into the air. Fifty yards above, a long rank of mind-slaves peered down from behind a meandering breastwork, hurling boulders and magic, anything they could down upon the company of the Cold Hand. There were dozens of bugbears and maybe ten beholders, reinforced by a trio of illithids and a handful of vacant-eyed elves, but the wounded phaerimm was nowhere to be seen. The instant it suffered a serious wound, it had no doubt teleported to safety.

The dark dash of an elven death arrow flashed out of a bluetop behind the enemy breastwork and disappeared into the trenches. A beholder rose briefly into view, its sharp-toothed mouth twisted into a grimace of pain. Keya had just enough time to identify the Tomb Guard's distinctive black-feather fletching on the butt of the arrow before the Cold Hand's battle mages blazed the creature into a red spray.

A thick human hand grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her back down the slope.

"Get down!" Vala snarled. "Dexon will have my head if I let some beholder burn that pointy-eared head off your shoulders!"

Keya was about to protest when a purple ray droned past above, cutting a deep furrow in the rim of the slope, coming within a finger's width of disintegrating her skull. Her heart hammered in her chest so hard that she thought it would break a rib, but she managed to retain enough control of her wits to point her darksword up the slope.

"T-T-Takari!"

"Takari?" It was Kuhl who growled, "Where?"

"In a tree," Keya gasped. "Behind the enemy. I saw her arrow-"

"Which tree?"

Kuhl crawled to the rim and peered through the furrow that had nearly cost Keya her life.

"I don't see her," he said.

"Kuhl, she isn't after your darksword," Keya told him. The last thing they needed was to renew the fight over his ancestral weapon. "Takari's trying to help us break through."

"She's coming for my sword!" Kuhl insisted. He glanced away from the furrow long enough to scowl in Keya's direction. "And you-you're a thieving vixen just like her. The phaerimm took Dexon's leg, but you're the one who's stolen his sword-and his manhood."

There was a time when the raw rage in Kuhl's voice would have sent Keya fleeing, but now it only filled her with cold anger.

"Kuhl, I will overlook the affront to me because it is easy to see how your sword might be more powerful than your mind," she said, "but insult my husband's manhood again, and you will die choking on yours."

Keya glared at the Vaasan until she saw enough of the anger fade from his eyes that she felt certain there would be no need to make good on her threat She glanced over at Vala, who only shrugged and spread her hands. Keya frowned and nodded toward Kuhl. Vala looked away, thinking, then a veil of sadness seemed to fall over her face. She nodded and crawled up the slope next to Kuhl.

With the burly Vaasan safely under control, Keya turned her thoughts back to the battle. She hazarded a glance over the rim and saw that whatever Takari was doing up there, her attacks were having an effect A patrol of a dozen bugbears that had been dispatched up the hill to hunt her down lay scattered across the slope, some lying motionless with smoking holes through their torsos, others flailing about trying to pull long elven arrows from their backs. Several beholders were sweeping the forest canopy with their disintegration rays, reducing the number of attacks coming down the hill above Keya as well as raining boughs and limbs on the slope.

Keya slid to the bottom of the embankment and used fingertalk to order the Company of the Cold Hand to assemble behind her, leaving only the archers and every third battle mage to hold their current lines. Within moments, a long stream of warriors began to crawl along the base of the embankment Keya issued her orders to the first arrivals, along with instructions to pass them along, then she crawled back up to join Vala and the Vaasans.

Vala had her arm across Kuhl's shoulders and was whispering something into his ear that Keya could not hear.

"Another arrow!" Kuhl growled, pointing. "There she is."

Kuhl started to rise and charge up the hill, but Vala caught him by the belt.

"Not yet, Kuhl," she said, pulling him back down. "That's what she wants, isn't it?"

Kuhl considered a moment then nodded.

"Vala!" Keya gasped. "What are you doing?"

Vala whirled on her with an expression that could only be described as demonic.

"You want to use this or not?" she demanded. "Because Kuhl's the only chance we have to get there anytime soon."

As Vala spoke, Burlen continued to speak to Kuhl from the other side.

"She wants you to charge out there alone, doesn't she?" Burlen asked. "She wants you to get yourself killed."

"I won't," Kuhl replied. "She doesn't know. She'll never get my sword."

There was a darkness in his eyes that Keya had never seen there before, something cold, monstrous, and terrifying risen to mask the laugh-lined face she had come to consider that of one of her human brothers.

"What doesn't she know?" Keya asked.

"You'll see," Vala said. "If s Kuhl or Takari now. There's nothing we can do about that, except decide whether we're ready to use it Are you?"

Keya glanced along the embankment in both directions and saw a long line of warriors in position to charge up the hill. To an elf, their faces were pale and their knuckles white from squeezing their sword hilts, but their jaws were set and their eyes fixed on Keya, awaiting the command to charge.

"Ready when you are," Keya said. "May the gods forgive us."

"If s not the gods we should ask," Vala replied.

She placed a hand on Kuhl's shoulder then raised her head and pointed into one of the bluetops still standing behind the mind-slaves' breastwork.

"There she is, Kuhl," said Vala.

"None of this is your doing," Burlen added. "The pointy-eared vixen seduced you."

"That's right," Vala added. "She let you get a child on her on purpose." As she spoke, Kuhl started to darken-not only his expression, but his face and hands, his eyes, and even the huge ranger's cloak Lord Duirsar had presented him. "All Takari wanted was your sword."

"Oh, she wanted the child, too," Keya said, catching on to what the Vaasans were doing. "The Sy’Tel’Quessir sell their half-human children to pay for wine."

Vala and Burlen dropped their jaws, and Keya thought for a moment she might have taken the fib too far.

Kuhl turned soot-black, blurring around the edges like a shadow or a ghost, and he let out an angry wail. He rose and did not bound over the embankment so much as soar over it, and the slope instantly above exploded into a roaring tempest of death as the defenders hurled all manner of missiles and magic down upon him.

Thinking it had been the Vaasans' purpose to goad Kuhl into drawing the first wave of enemy attacks, Keya raised her hand to call the charge. Vala caught her arm and pulled it down.

Wait. Vala spoke in elven fingertalk — the only speech that would not be drowned out by the crash and roar of battle. Let him get a little ahead of us.

Ahead of us? Keya retorted. There can't be anything left of him.

But when she peered over the rim of the embankment, she saw that there was. Through a wall of smoke and flame twenty paces thick, Keya saw Kuhl's black silhouette still weaving and twisting up the hill. Lightning blasts passed through his shadowy form without slowing him down. Magic bolts glanced off him, trailing long wisps of black murk. Disintegration rays struck his dark aura and dissolved. Boulders he always managed to duck or dodge, spears he deflected and slipped, arrows stuck only in the strongest parts of his armor. It was as though he had become half phantom and half roth? a creature of the shadows that could be seen but never stopped. Keya watched in awe until he vanished into the thickening smoke, then turned to Vala and raised her own darksword — or rather her husband's.

Can this sword do that? she asked.

No!

And never try! It was Burlen who added the explanation, He's given himself to his sword. It can't be undone.

The roar began to abate as Kuhl continued his charge, and Vala looked up the hill and spoke a single syllable. She didn't shout or use fingertalk, but Keya didn't need words to understand her meaning. She brought her arm forward then rose and charged over the rim of the embankment.

From Takari's perch high among the rustling bluetops, the charge of the Cold Hand looked the stuff of songs.

Through the smoke and flame came a golden-helmed tide of elf spellblades, words of mystic power pouring out of their mouths, forks of silver and gold flashing from their fingertips, swords glinting in their hands and armor gleaming on their breasts. The mind-slaves met the onslaught with a tempest of ray and rock, hurling boulders, flinging death bolts, spraying fire. Still the elves came, bounding over blast craters, scrambling across fallen bluetops, leaping through fire curtains and falling by the dozens but never wavering, never dropping for cover, never slowing.

Leading the charge was a shadow-cloaked bear of a man, out ahead by twenty paces or more, twisting and turning, taking magic blasts full in the chest, eyes shining like bronze embers, darksword in hand, burly legs carrying him up the wrecked hill at a speed no elf message runner could match.

Kuhl.

Swaddled in murk though he was, Takari would have known the slope of those huge shoulders from a thousand paces distant, would have recognized among an army of men the grace with which her paramour carried his mighty frame. As humans went-as males of any sort went-he was a magnificent example, ferocious when there was need and kind when there was not, always brave and never boastful, a lover who knew how to give and take.

Takari could not be sorry for how she had used him-or she would never have known him as the gentle giant he was- but she was sorry for what had come between them, for the curse that had turned her simple plan into a deadly rivalry.

But the fault lay with Kuhl, not Takari. He should have warned her about the curse before he lay with her-and never mind that she had told him not to worry about children. She had not said there wouldn't be any, only not to worry about them. Even after the mistake had been made, all the stupid roth6 had to do was share. Had he only been strong enough to lend her the sword, everything would have been fine and there would have been no need to-

Takari did not grasp what she was about to do until she found herself staring down the length of an arrow at Kuhl's chest The shaft was marked with black fletching, of course, for she had only two death arrows remaining. The rest of her quiver she had exhausted trying to soften up the mind-slave defenses for Keya. But even had there been another choice, she knew better than to think she would have found anything else on her bowstring. It had been the curse that nocked the arrow, and the curse wanted Kuhl dead.

Takari released the tension on her bow slowly, but deliberately did not move her aim away from Kuhl. There had to be another phaerimm down there somewhere or the mind-slaves would not be fighting so hard, and Kuhl was in the most danger. Having seen how slyly the curse worked, she would be stronger than it was and protect Kuhl from afar. She was not some base human whose will could be dominated by a sword.

The shower of death ebbed as more mind-slaves fell to the onslaught of elven spells, and as they exhausted their supply of boulders and magic. The charge gathered speed, with an ever-growing number of Cold Hand warriors pouring up the hill from behind, pressing those in front onward and taking their places when they were struck down. Twice, Kuhl was attacked by spells powerful enough to have come from a phaerimm, but each time Takari traced the flash trail back to mind-slave mages. Through a break in the smoke, she glimpsed Keya dancing up the slope with Vala and Burlen pounding along at her heels, then a pair of beholders found her hiding place and began to attack the base of the tree with their disintegration rays. She slipped around the trunk out of their view, then raced along a limb and jumped into another tree.

By the time Takari found a new hiding place, Kuhl had crashed into the enemy lines and was whirling his way down the entrenchment, his darksword opening bugbear bellies left and right, his feet sweeping legs from under elf mind-slaves, his boot heels crushing the skulls of fallen illithids. Somehow, his free hand had tangled itself in a snarl of beholder eye-stalks, and he was swinging the eye tyrant around like a shield, catching bugbear axes and elven swords on its leathery body.

Takari was alarmed-and a little repulsed-to find herself feeling a secret thrill of delight Though Kuhl showed no sign of slowing down, he had to be hurting. Even through the finest Evereskan armor, the bugbear blows alone would be powerful enough to snap bones and crush skulls. Kuhl would soon fall, and she would have only to stretch out her hand-

No.

Takari did not dare speak the word aloud-not with two beholders hunting her-but she did think it. She was stronger than the curse. She was a wood elf, who knew what was important in life (dancing, honey wine, and jolly company)-and what was not (power, wealth, and authority). She would help Kuhl-if only she could find a way- and they would share the sword.

Kuhl's helmet came flying out of the melee, its chinstrap broken and its gaudy gold brim buckled by the impact of a bugbear axe. Takari thought that it was done then, that Kuhl would fall beneath the feet of his attackers and vanish.

But the Vaasan bear fought on, reaching the back of the trench and scrambling out onto the hillside. He spun on a knee and lopped the heads off a trio of pursuing bugbears. He smashed a foot into the face of an elf mind-slave and sent him tumbling back into the breastwork. He was free, with no living enemies within a dozen paces of him.

Instead of turning along the back of the trench to attack the enemy's flank, Kuhl started up the hill into the forest. Takari thought he intended to slay her two hunters, but he ignored the beholders-who did not seem to realize she had escaped their attack and were busy searching for her body in the tree they had toppled-and he angled toward her new hiding place. Though it seemed impossible he could have seen her move when the beholders had not, his angry bronze eyes went straight to the bough on which she was perched. It had to be the darksword. The weapon could feel her desire for it, and it was leading him to her. Takari might be stronger than the sword's curse, but Kuhl was not He'd kill her, if she didn't kill him first

That was nonsense. Kuhl was too heavy to move through the forest canopy like a wood elf. All Takari need do was stay high in the bluetops, out on the bough ends where Kuhl could not follow. What was it that Galaeron had told her? That she had opened herself to her shadow, and that if she killed Kuhl, she would be lost to it. Takari believed him. It was already working hard to claim her, to trick her into murdering the father of her child.

Would it be murder if he died in battle?

The question came to her in her own voice, but so wispy and cold that it sent a chill down her spine.

No one would ever know.

So startled was Takari that at first she didn't see the illithid climbing out of the entrenchment behind Kuhl. She was preoccupied with the voice, wondering whether someone was eavesdropping on her thoughts or her shadow had already grown strong enough to speak Of course, this distraction was exactly what the voice had intended. By the time she saw what was happening, the illithid had run a dozen steps toward Kuhl, and its mouth tentacles were extending in his direction. Angered by this manipulation, Takari did not think, hesitate, or even consciously aim. She simply drew her bowstring and let fly.

The angle was not a particularly difficult one, at least not for a Green elf ranger who had spent her whole life making exacting shots. The arrow zipped down in Kuhl's direction, passing a dozen feet over his head but still close enough to make him duck, and it planted itself in the center of the illithid’s mouth tentacles. The creature flew off its feet backward and crashed to the ground as still as a statue and immediately began to shrivel inward.

How Kuhl reacted, Takari never saw. The deafening boom of a magic blast rumbled up from the forest floor behind her, and she knew without looking that something powerful had found her hiding place. She jumped for a clump of leaves low on the adjacent tree, her stomach rising into her chest and limbs spread to slow her descent, one hand still clutching her bow.

As Takari crashed into the boughs, she was slapped in the back by the giant hand of a blast concussion. It pushed her deep into the tangle of twigs and leaves face first, but she caught a fistful of a branch with her free hand and hooked her legs around another limb as thick as a Vaasan arm.

Takari thought her descent would stop there, but she felt the limb shudder and suddenly found herself falling, staring up at the splintered end of a branch. She had just enough time to wonder why she hadn't heard it break, then she slammed down on the forest floor and was instantly buried beneath a snarl of leafy boughs.

It took only an instant for Takari to realize why she had not heard the limb shatter and that listening for the enemy would do her no good. Her ears were ringing like a halfling dinner bell. She pushed out from beneath a log and found her last arrow still in her quiver. Takari cautiously climbed for the top of the tangle.

Her shoulders ached, and her legs felt hall numb, but everything moved when she told it to. It was only a moment before she poked her head up to find Kuhl less than a dozen paces away, striding purposefully in her direction. Behind him were the two beholders that had been hunting her, making good use of his preoccupation to float up close for a sure kill.

Takari pushed herself up onto a somewhat steady branch and nocked her last death arrow. Kuhl narrowed his bronze eyes and broke into a sprint, cocking his sword arm to throw and inadvertently blocking her shot at the beholders. She found her aim drifting to his chest-then she jerked it up and away.

"No." More loudly, she yelled, "Kuhl, go left!"

Reacting perhaps by instinct or perhaps because he realized that the arrow would already be on its way if it was meant for him, he stepped left-and threw the sword anyway.

Takari cursed his human weakness, set the point of her arrow on the big central eye of the nearest beholder, and let fly. She watched only long enough to see her shaft pass beneath Kuhl's sword, then she dropped back into the tangle of boughs… and heard a sickly thump behind her.

A howling wind tore at the trees, and Takari knew before she turned to look that Kuhl had not thrown at her, but that he had found the phaerimm she had been hunting.

Ears still ringing, Takari scrambled out the back of the bough tangle and found the phaerimm lying motionless on the ground, opened down the center where Kuhl’s tumbling darksword had split it open. The sword itself lay a few paces beyond the dead thornback, so coated in gore it was barely recognizable.

Takari stretched her hand out, preparing to call the dark-sword to her grasp. She thought of Kuhl, and waited. He would need the sword to meet the second beholder behind him, and if he had to fight her for it… but the sword did not fly to his hand. It did not even rise, or wobble.

Go ahead-it's yours now, the dark voice inside whispered. The beholder is coming.

"Be quiet!" Takari hissed.

She turned her palm up and called the darksword to her hand.

With the beholder coming, what choice did she have?