Ed Greenwood - The Herald

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Storm nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So the great mythal-draining magic could begin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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