Ed Greenwood - The Herald

“Dove hath called, and we answer,” the tallest of them announced, and raised her scepter.

The line of blue-white fire smashed a dozen mercenaries as if a stone had been dashed into a heap of raw eggs. Torn bodies flew through the air, and the screaming began. Then other scepters spat, and the slaughter really began.

Sapphire-blue hair swirled, dark eyes blazed, and the lone petite elf slashed with a sword that was not there, a bloody edge of sharp force sweeping through the air and cleaving flesh, bone, armor and blade alike.

It cut a bloody swath through shouting, shrieking mercenaries-and then she was gone, darting like a hummingbird across the glade to thrust and slice anew.

This time she swooped and stabbed among arcanists, haughty and bewildered shades of Tultanthar who, until a moment ago, had been relaxing in the secure knowledge that they were far in the rear of the besieging army, on the winning side, with not a foe who could reach them anywhere near.

“Who the-?” one arcanist shouted, watching the diminutive figure dart away again through the trees.

“Blast it down, whatever it is!” snarled another. “ Quickly , or-”

He’d meant to say before this unlooked-for solo attacker was out of range and lost to them in the endless trees of the deep forest, but before he could frame the words, she was back, and he saw what he was facing.

A small and shapely female elf, brows and hair of sapphire, clingingly clad in high soft leather boots and a leather harness of indigo hue. Whose hands seemed empty, yet sliced as if she swung a weightless, invisible sword four times as long as her slender arm, and whose eyes were ablaze with anger.

She looked … splendid, he had to concede. Her beauty was the last thing he saw, before his own blood blinded him, cloven skull and nose cut open and much of his face torn bloodily off in the wake of her slash.

Her unseen blade claimed the throat of the arcanist standing beside him, and several fingers from the next Thultanthan beyond, and then she was gone again into the trees, swooping and darting.

Not that he could see her, choking on his own blood and going down. He bounced as he hit the ground, and the pain was enough to jolt him to his senses for long enough to hear the oldest arcanist in the glade shout, “The Srinshee! It’s their undead ruler, or whatever she is! Every arcanist still standing, to me! To me now !”

That bellow ended in a rough, wordless scream that cut off abruptly.

It was replaced by something loud and booming and teeth-jarringly deep-the roar of a large and angry dragon.

It, too, ended with brutal suddenness, rising into a yip of startled pain.

The Srinshee didn’t unleash herself often, but right now was one of those rare times.

Prince Mattick Tanthul was two ridges away, slowing warily as he saw more and more high mages and baelnorn between himself and those elf children. They were no longer easy kills.

He turned and sought higher ground, the natural refuge of the close-clustered trunks of soaring shadowtops where he could catch his breath and take a good look around.

He was still a few panting breaths from reaching them when he saw a thousand-some mercenaries coming out of the trees in a huge flood of armored humans, heading for that last beleaguered cluster of elves.

Well, it should be a short slaughter, but an entertaining one.

And then he saw something cleaving a furrow through all those hireswords, something too small to be easily seen, yet as devastating as a swooping dragon. He blinked at all the screaming and the reeling, falling dead. Was it a spell? If so, from where, and what magic could do this-and cast by whom?

He certainly couldn’t wreak that sort of havoc with just one spell. Yet perhaps it was a succession of identical magics, cast along the same path, and-

Then he saw it-no, her . A tiny flying figure, impossibly blue hair streaming out behind her in a streaming tail, wheeling in the air at the end of the great channel of death she’d just sliced through an army, and now plunging right back into the armored ranks, just behind the foremost mercenaries, cleaving through them and leaving a chaos of dying and maimed men behind.

He saw an arcanist blast at her with a spell, down the trail of the dead in her wake. His magic rebounded on him, hurling him broken limbed and limp into the nearest tree, while his flying target hacked and hewed her way on.

Prince Mattick of Thultanthar swallowed, shook his head-and just turned and ran.

The courtyard was eerily quiet. Only the fast-scudding clouds betrayed the fact that Thultanthar was flying through the air in a killing plummet beneath all their feet.

The vast and usually open space was crowded, seemingly filled with robed and cowled pillars standing almost shoulder to shoulder: the assembled arcanists of the city. Each of them held still, in the precise spot chosen for him or her by the Most High, and every face was set with the strain of intense concentration.

Telamont’s great draining magic was underway, and the fear and awe the younger arcanists felt at being part of such a meld, working in concert with so many other minds of power, was starting to subside as the dark and driving force of the Most High’s will really took hold.

Overhead and all around, in the hitherto empty air, an impossibly complex and glowing tangle slowly faded into view, lines of racing white fire tinged with gold, ever changing but growing steadily brighter.

The Weave had become a visible thing.

From high windows all over the city, lesser Thultanthans exclaimed in startled wonder as the shining network spread. Filling the sky above the city and stretching into vast distances through the clouds and everywhere below-including the white spires ahead, poking through the great green carpet of trees that marked the heart of embattled Myth Drannor.

And along those strands of racing force, leaping up from those spires, rose a thin, soft, high-pitched, ethereal song. Singing that swelled, mournful and defiant.

As the baelnorn who’d guarded elf crypts for so long fought the hiresword army converging on the last few spires of the city still in elf hands, the elf dead in their now unguarded tombs beneath Myth Drannor were singing.

The City of Shadow was coming to the City of Song.

“Well,” Elminster growled, as they reeled away from the sighing collapse of a half-magical pillar, breaking the human triangle they’d formed around it, “at least they’re hurting less, with each one we destroy.”

Laeral gave him a smile. “Stop looking so worried , El. This either works-or it doesn’t. If we fail, we’ve done the best we could. And at least we haven’t done nothing.”

“Which is how so much evil crawls unchecked in this world for so long,” Alustriel put in. “Good folk tending to their own lives and concerns, and doing nothing for their neighbors, their villages, their realms. Leaving the hard and distasteful work for someone else.”

“Aye,” El grunted. “Us.”

“How many anchors is that now? I’ve lost count,” Alustriel asked.

Laeral grinned. “Is now a good time to admit I’ve never been able to keep track of coins, or numbers of any sort, above about seven at once?”

El grinned at her. “A serious failing in a ruler, I’d say. And one that I share.”

Laeral turned to her sister. “Well, High Lady of Silverymoon? And whatever-they-called-you, of Luruar?”

Alustriel gave her a wry look. “ I generally lose count somewhere around forty-odd. And we passed that many anchors destroyed, long ago. Speaking of which, the next one is over that way, about-” She broke off, her face changing, and asked, “What’s that?”