The Summoning

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

28 Nightal, the Year of the Unstrung Harp

Khelben had barely crested the slope before the first crack of war thunder rumbled across the frozen tussocks. Less than a mile distant, a rank of figures became visible along the moor's edge, their invisibility spells fading as they hurled sling stones and magic bolts down on Lord Ryence's elves. Khelben used thumb and forefinger to make a circle over his eye and uttered a spell. The figures resolved themselves into a couple of hundred bugbears, perhaps twenty beholders, and a dozen mind flayers. A pair of phaerimm hovered together near the center.

"As you predicted, milord," said the scout Shan-tar, landing his invisible hippogriff beside Khelben. "We'll ambush the ambushers and be done with it."

"Our enemies would not make things so easy," observed Naneatha Suaril, cresting the slope beside Khelben. A blonde beauty whose pearly smile and shining eyes belied her fifty winters, Naneatha was Priestess of the High Moonlight of the House of the Moon in Waterdeep- and the unofficial commander of the small band of priests accompanying Khelben. "They are creatures of darkness, full of treachery and deception."

Khelben nodded and glanced over his shoulder. The rest of the company was scrambling up the slope, wands and bows at the ready. He directed the Sword Captain to form a combat line and the Wand master to scatter the battle mages behind it, then turned back to Naneatha and Shantar. "The other scouts will be returning to the sound of battle?" Shantar nodded. "They'll be here any minute." "And your mounts can carry extra riders?" Khelben asked. "For a short while." Shantar's eyes showed curiosity. "And lance work will be out of the question."

"Spells will serve you better," said Khelben. "Have the scouts assemble behind the battle line and take up Naneatha's priests. They are to circle high, half a mile behind us. That will keep even phaerimm from seeing through your invisibility." Naneatha frowned. "A priest's place is in battle."

"And so it shall be." Khelben pointed his staff toward a scraggly pine hummock, then toward a cluster of moss-covered boulders. "Watch there for their rear guard. You and the scouts must strike them from behind-and strike hard."

Naneatha's scowl remained. "And if there is no rear guard?"

"There will be." Khelben turned to Shantar. "Do your sending, then wait until Lady Suaril is free to join you." "As you command."

Shantar flicked his thumb over his scout's ring to activate its sending magic, and Khelben turned to find his small force ready. The archmage laid his staff aside, then he and Naneatha began to cast combat guards over the company. The spells required several minutes to complete, but Khelben did not even consider advancing until they were finished. Without spell shields, sending men against phaerimm would be murder.

Once the last spell was completed, Khelben sent Naneatha off with Shantar, then took up his staff and led the way forward at a run. The company followed in silence, the normal clamor muted by his war magic. Despite the frozen tussocks and wind whistling into their faces, they covered the ground swiftly, invigorated as much by approaching battle as by the prayers Naneatha had said over them.

Even Khelben, who had fought too many battles to enjoy the prospect of another, felt his pulse pounding wildly. This was the rousing part of war, the anticipation of the victory, the fear of a violent end, the reckless joy of a mortal gamble. Later came the hundred stenches of death, the grieving, the maimed bodies. The company passed the scraggly pine hummock Khelben had pointed out to Naneatha, closing to within three hundred paces of the enemy The archmage slowed to a walk and raised his staff, signaling his archers to nock their arrows.

A pair of thunderclaps erupted from the pine hummock, and two lightning bolts exploded into the company spell shield and filled the sky with silver light. Next came a chorus of bugbear grunts, followed by a stone rain. The sling stones struck the missile guard and bounced away, but a dozen of Khelben's archers shot arrows into the ground.

Not bothering to look back, Khelben brought his company to a halt and lowered his staff. The archers loosed a cloud of dark shafts into the air. Half the arrows fell short and the others came to a sudden halt, hanging motionless twenty feet above their targets. The phaerimm tipped their toothy maws toward Khelben, but seemed the only ones who noticed the attack. The bugbears and beholders with them continued to hurl death down from the moor's edge, paying no attention as the reciprocating barrage of elven magic burst harmlessly against their spell shields. Another flurry of sling stones and lightning bolts struck Khelben's own missile guard from the rear, then Naneatha's priests sent a cacophony of crackles and booms rolling across the frozen moor as they unleashed their wrath. The answering chorus of anguished bellows left no doubt about the fate of the rear guard. Khelben leveled his staff at the phaerimm and advanced at a deliberate walk, assailing them with a stream of fiery missiles and magic blasts. The attacks exploded into fire storms and starbursts against the enemy spell shields, causing no damage, but blinding the phaerimm to Naneatha and the other hippogriff riders.

The phaerimm used their own fireballs and lightning bolts to disorient the humans, and a small band of beholders and bugbears turned to face Khelben's advance. He felt almost insulted. He had destroyed the phaerimm's rear guard and arrived behind their line uncontested, and still the creatures believed they could destroy his company with a handful of spells.

The beholders floated forward behind a screen of bugbears, using the hairy giants like shields until they closed to two hundred and forty paces-close enough to use their magic-disrupting beams on Khelben's spell guards. He brought his company to a halt, then planted his staff at his side and pulled a piece of amber from his pocket. After rubbing this against his beard, he began to stroke a handful of silver pins over the amber one by one.

By the time he finished, the leading bugbears had closed to within a hundred and seventy paces, well outside the phaerimm spell guards. He tossed the pins into the air and uttered a mystic syllable, then groaned as a bolt of lightning exploded from his chest and arced to the closest bugbear. The huge creature exploded into red haze and scorched fur, as did the beholder behind him and the next two bugbears, then the bolt continued down the line in a blinding flash that seemed to last forever. A second beholder and two more bugbears burst into flames, then another half dozen creatures spawned smoking holes in the centers of their bodies.

Had any other wizard cast the spell, the bolt's rampage would have fizzled there, but Khelben was no ordinary mage-He was Chosen of the goddess of magic herself, imbued with the power of the Weave and-at over nine hundred years old-nearly immortal himself, capable of withstanding energies that would incinerate any common man. The lightning continued, blasting through another dozen victims before the first dozen hit the ground. With each strike, the smoking holes shrank from the size of melons to fists to acorns. Finally, there were no more holes. One bugbear and two beholders died of nothing but shock. The last bugbear escaped altogether, stumbling three steps back and grabbing for his chest.

After the spell sputtered out, all that remained to carry on were half a dozen bugbears and two wide-eyed beholders. The bugbears turned to flee and perished instantly in a curtain of fire-phaerimm did not tolerate cowardice in their thralls. The two beholders focused their big central eyes on one another, encasing each other in a purple cone of magic-dispelling radiance. "Arrows at the beholders!" Khelben commanded.

A flight of shafts leaped toward the beholders. The creatures had no choice but to deactivate their magic-dispelling rays and bring their other eyestalks around to defend themselves. Khelben's battle mages unleashed a veritable shower of magic, and the eye tyrants vanished into a roiling storm of fire. "Forward walk!" Khelben called.

As the company started forward, the phaerimm assailed Khelben's spell shield with a tempest of fire and magic. Though the accompanying dazzle made it impossible to see what was happening ahead, Khelben was glad to have his foes finally showing him some respect. A little caution would do much to ease the attacks against the elves.

Had he wished, Khelben could probably have frightened the pair into a full withdrawal. As one of Mystra's Chosen, he carried within him a small part of the goddess's power-a power which manifested itself as Silver Fire. He could call upon silver fire to protect himself from most sorts of harm- hence his nine hundred years-and to assail his enemies with a blast of white, pure Weave magic. Even the mightiest magic-users quavered at its sight, for they usually recognized its true nature and knew what it meant for their survival, but Khelben was not ready to reveal all his secrets. The two phaerimm would teleport away the instant the battle turned against them, and he did not want them telling their friends back at Evereska what they were facing.

Khelben and his battle mages returned the phaerimm assault in kind, filling the area between them with a blinding wall of starburst radiance. Eventually, they would draw close enough to assail each other's spell guards with dispelling magic, and the killing would begin.

Khelben flicked his thumb over his signet ring, activating its sending magic. He pictured Shantar's face in his mind, then spoke to the scout with thoughts. Can't see. What's happening?

Elves regrouping slowly. Shantar's reply came to Khelben in his mind's voice. A hundred and fifty paces to hand-to-hand. Half their company is turning to face you.

Khelben sighed in relief, then boomed an order, "Ready arrows-and it will be to the swords."

A hundred warriors nocked a hundred shafts and continued to advance. A black fog appeared over their spell shield. Khelben blew it aside with a magical wind. "Mages halt-let the warriors screen you!"

The mages stopped in their tracks, adjusting their wands to arc fireballs and ice storms over the heads of their advancing comrades. Khelben himself slipped in behind a pair of archers and continued forward. He judged he would be close enough to dispel the enemy spell shields in thirty steps. "Steady now," he called. Half a dozen beholders zipped out of the enemy ranks, forsaking the safety of the phaerimm spell shields for a field of lightning and fire. Amidst all the flashing and streaking, they looked like mere cloud shadows, but that did not prevent Khelben's followers from peppering them with fiery bolts and hissing shafts. Three creatures erupted into flames the instant they left their spell guards, and two more fell to arrows.

The sixth eye tyrant dodged and weaved its way forward by flashing its magic-dispelling gaze on and off so its other eyestalks could spray the sky ahead with their various magics. It destroyed several arrows with its disintegration beam and deflected a whole cloud with its telekinesis rays, but even that was not enough. It sprouted a dozen shafts and plummeted to the ground, then rolled forward three paces and came up facing Khelben.

A cone of blue light shot from the creature's huge central eye and touched the front wall of Khelben's spell guards, creating an oval of shimmering radiance. The circle flickered, then swept over the rest of the shield in a flash of magic-dispelling brilliance. The enemy spells changed from dissipating starbursts to crackling bolts and sulfur-stinking ribbons. Men began to scream, flesh to sizzle, the frozen ground to rumble. Suddenly, the moor stank of charred flesh and opened entrails, sling stones hailed from the sky, and warriors fell by the dozen.

"Charge.1" Khelben boomed, using a cantrip to make himself heard. "Charge or die!"

Khelben had barely given the order before the air turned silver and fresh-smelling around him. The man beside him erupted into a spray of boiling blood, then a lightning bolt blasted through the archmage and struck the next man in line. Khelben was hit in the head by a disembodied shoulder and knocked to the ground. By the time he could raise his head, the lightning bolt was already sputtering to a stop ten men away. Before rolling to his feet, Khelben screened himself behind his charging warriors. He was protected from lightning strikes and magic bolts by Mystra's silver fire, but every second the phaerimm delayed him cost a dozen human lives. He scrambled forward on hands and feet, then laid his staff aside and stood. Though the phaerimm spell guards still blazed with the dazzling starbursts of dissipating magic, a dark line of bugbear silhouettes stood just inside the barrier, axes raised and ready to meet the charge. The last few beholders-Khelben counted four-hovered along the line at even intervals, their eyestalks whipping this way and that as they sprayed the charging line with death rays of a dozen varieties. Only the mind flayers were nowhere to be seen. Khelben raised his hands toward the enemy spell guard and spoke three mystic syllables.

The barrier flickered once, then faded. Khelben's battle mages rushed forward, using their war wands to assail the bugbears and beholders with lightning bolts and fireballs. The two phaerimm responded with a horrifying array of flame geysers and needle showers, black fogs and acid clouds, steaming pits and strangling tentacles. Half a dozen wizards fell in as many steps.

Khelben wrapped a pinch of coal in a swatch of gingham and flicked it in the general direction of the phaerimm. When the nugget landed, he raised a hand to point and began his incantation. As he rattled off the mystic syllables, he was careful to keep his finger aimed at the ground instead of at the creatures themselves. Centuries earlier, Khelben had learned that phaerimm were beings of magic and naturally resistant to its power. Any spell striking their bodies had a good chance of ricocheting back at the caster or being used to heal their wounds, so he was careful to use magic that affected the area around the phaerimm instead of the creatures themselves. He finished his spell, and a sphere of black gauze billowed up around the pair, encasing them in a cocoon of inky fibers. Though their spell flurry continued unabated, it was to far less effect

The swiftest of Khelben's swordsmen were within fifty paces of their foes, where the bugbears seemed content to wait in rank. It was a mistake they would regret. Khelben retrieved his staff. "Mages, redcloud!"

The battle mages exchanged their war wands for red candlewicks and began their incantations. As they spoke, they used simple cantrips to ignite the wicks, then held the burning strands at arm's length.

Determined to keep the phaerimm from interfering with the redcloud, Khelben rolled a parchment spell scroll into a cone and held it to his mouth. When he began to boom out the syllables of another spell, his voice sounded much closer to, and on the other side of, the black cocoon.

The phaerimm did not respond, even when the spell he had uttered turned the cocoon into a block of solid stone-Either they were not fooled, or they had decided it was time to flee. Khelben hoped it was the latter.

The first of the battle mages' candlewicks burned out. Above the heads of the bugbears appeared a single wisp of red haze, crackling so softly that only a handful of the creatures looked up. As more wicks burned themselves out, the red wisp became a ropy bank of crimson fog, and the crackling grew louder. Whole bands of bugbears glanced upward, and the eyestalks of the few remaining beholders swiveled overhead. By then, the last candlewicks were expiring, and the fog had coalesced into a roaring cloud of flame. "Now!" Khelben boomed.

The battle mages crumpled the candlewicks' sooty remains, and a curtain of flame rolled down from the red cloud.

A single beholder managed to whirl itself backward and bring its magic-dispelling eye to bear, opening a small gap in the long wall of fire. Khelben leveled his staff at the creature's exposed underside and blasted it with a fireball. The resulting eruption engulfed not only the eye tyrant itself, but the handful of bugbears whose lives it had spared.

With nothing ahead but a swirling curtain of flame, the charging swordsmen drew up short. There were far too many gaps in their line to please Khelben, for the phaerimm had taken a terrible toll. Fully a third of his warriors had fallen, and perhaps a quarter of his battle mages. Another "victory" like that one, and he would not have enough men left to defend the gate-even if Ryence had managed to keep his high mages alive to establish it.

Khelben raised his arms to dispel the fire curtain so he could take the survivors of his company and save Ryence's elves-then he saw a bushy-bearded warrior kneeling behind a frozen tussock. The man cried out and lifted the corpse of a dead comrade to his armored breast. When the archmage saw that nothing remained of the body beneath the shoulders, he lowered his arms and reached into his cloak for a feather instead. His men had done enough for the elves that day

Khelben! Come quick! This time, Shantar's message came in the form of a soft whisper. The scout could use the sending magic in his ring only once per day, but, as one of Mystra's Chosen, Khelben could hear the next sentence or so when someone spoke his name anywhere on Toril. They're after the high mages!

Khelben did not ask who "they" were. Unlike a sending spell, his eavesdropping gift did not allow a reply. Besides, he had a sinking feeling he knew who the scout meant He brushed the feather over his arms and legs, then spoke an incantation and launched himself into the air.

After flying over the wall of fire, he found himself above a slope of peat that fell sharply away to the sheer banks at the confluence of the Serpent's Tail and Winding Water. Judging by the number of pointy-eared corpses strewn along the lower half of the pitch, Ryence had tried to screen his crossing by sending part of his force to attack uphill. That the final line of bodies lay near the top of the slope spoke well of the elves' courage- if not of their commander's wisdom.

An enemy charge had caught the main body of the company preparing to cross the stream. The elves had felled most of the mind flayers and easily half of the bugbears on the way down, leaving the lower half of the slope strewn with almost as many foes as elves. The survivors had slammed into the rest of the company atop the gravelly bank of the Serpent's Tail, where a terrific melee continued to rage, with the bugbears trying to shield their last two mind flayers from an onslaught of gleaming elven steel. Nearly two dozen of Ever-meet's swordmages lay writhing on the ground, their palms pressed to their ears in a futile attempt to shut out illithid mind blasts, but Khelben did not pause to hurl any spells into that quarter of combat. Even as he swooped down toward the battle, a pair of bugbears fell with elven steel through their hearts, and a trio of golden bolts shot through the resulting gap to blast the nearest mind flayer.

The scene in the middle of the Serpent's Tail was far less encouraging. Ryence sat astride his horse, tumbling ever so slowly to the water. Just ahead of him, Bladuid and two other Gold elves-presumably the rest of Ryence's high mages- were also slipping from their horses, one bent almost in two by the torpidly-rising water column of a spell blast. They were followed by several dozen slow-motion bodyguards, all caught in mid twist as they turned in their saddles to fling bolts and blasts at two phaerimm hovering behind them.

One of the phaerimm was moving as slowly as the elves, as much a victim of its companion's powerful reality-altering magic as Ryence and the high mages. The caster of the spell was floating forward through the contingent of bodyguards, its four arms lashing out to rip open their throats as it bumped its way forward toward Ryence. Had Khelben believed the target to be Ryence alone, he would have tried mightily to save the elf, to blast the phaerimm with a death spell or banish it to the depths of the ninth hell.

But Ryence was not alone. He was with the high mages, and Khelben could not take the chance that his spell would be reflected or absorbed by the phaerimm. He needed something powerful and direct, something that would burn through even a phaerimm's natural magic resistance. He needed his silver fire.

Not for the first time, Khelben cursed the name of Laerm Ryence. The phaerimm cleared the last of the guards, reaching for Ryence's throat with one arm and for Bladuid with the other three. Khelben swooped down behind the creature, plummeting headfirst down from the sky, pointing one hand at the thing's open mouth and summoning his silver fire. A blissful pain hissed through his body, gathered for an instant in the pit of his stomach, then left his arm in a long streak of roaring fire. The phaerimm spun toward the sound on its tail, and the silver flame shot straight down its gullet. The creature came apart in a halo of white flame.

The reality-altering spell ended with the thing's death. Ryence and his high mages completed their falls, hitting the water with a loud series of splashes. Khelben wheeled toward the remaining phaerimm, frantically searching his mind for the safest way to destroy the thing quickly. It would take an hour for his body to reabsorb enough of Mystra's raw magic to use his silver fire again, so he would have to chance a spell.

A thunderous chugging filled the air, and elves began to wail. A scintillating tornado of gem-colored light appeared below him and began to dance across the river, raking the bodyguards of the high mages with spinning tentacles of death-dealing radiance. Each color brought an end more terrible than the previous. Those struck by red erupted into flames. The flesh of anyone touched by green sizzled away in a cloud of emerald gas. Blue brought death by choking, yellow by the foulest of stinking diseases, orange by spontaneous bleeding from every pore. Those touched by a black tentacle oozed away putrid part by putrid part, while those caught by white froze solid and floated away in the cold current.

Khelben had never before seen such a war spell. Nearly half the bodyguards already lay dead or dying, and the other half were scattering in every direction. The phaerimm itself did not seem to be aware of him, high in the air above it. Leaving the tornado to wander on its own, the creature glided toward the splashing forms of the high mages.

It was too late to be safe. Khelben stopped to hover and summoned to mind his most deadly spell. The phaerimm paused above a tangle of elf corpses, then reached down beside an ice-capped boulder to retrieve its companion's shredded tail. Khelben turned his palm toward the creature and barked out a syllable.

The phaerimm did not wave its arms or try to swing itself upright, nor even to make a last, desperate counterattack. At the sound of Khelben's voice, it simply teleported away, leaving his spell to splash harmlessly into the icy stream. Damn, but they were fast.