Richard Baker - Final Gate

“There it goes,” Nesterin whispered. “She has it.”

Behind Maresa, one of the old bronze coins in the stone bowl slid off the shallow mound and clattered to the stone floor.

Ophidians raised their heads from the floor and peered at the idol. In the space of three heartbeats hisses of anger arose throughout the hall, and the serpent folk thrashed in agitation. Some surged upright, balancing on thick, scaly torsos as they looked around the chamber. Others slithered toward the great statue, forked tongues darting.

Maresa did not delay an instant. She dashed at once back toward the steps, dodging between writhing coils and leaping over those that lay on the ground. The ophidians still could not see her, but they sensed something brushing past, and the genasi left a wake of rearing torsos and snapping fangs in her wake.

From the pool in the center of the room, a powerful hooded serpent slowly rose up, its back gleaming with a brilliant black-and-red pattern of diamond scales. It glanced around at Maresa, and Araevin saw that its face was almost human, with cold yellow eyes and deadly fangs. A naga! he realized. It spotted the fleeing genasi at once and said something to its followers in a harsh, hissing speech. Ophidians threw themselves forward, trying to cut off her escape.

“Araevin!” Maresa cried. “Do something!”

Bowstrings sang as Jorin, Nesterin, and Gaerradh loosed their arrows at the ophidians below. The naga started to spit out the words of a spell, but at that moment Maresa leaped up the first few steps of the staircase. Araevin saw the chance he had been waiting for. Quickly intoning his own spell, he raised a great barrier of glittering white ice across the steps and the great hall, walling off the naga and its ophidian minions. White frost motes sparkled in the gloom as his companions’ arrows rebounded from the icy wall.

Maresa reached the balcony and risked a quick glance behind her. “That should keep them. Nicely done,” she said to Araevin.

“And you as well,” he told the genasi.

“Hardly. If I’d done it right, they never would have known I was there.”

“It was good enough,” he reassured her. Then he looked to his companions. “Come on, my friends. We should make sure that we are well away from here by the time the ophidians find another way up to this balcony.”

27 Flamerule, the Year of Lightning Storms

To make sure that they outdistanced any pursuit from the ophidians or their masters, Araevin and his companions marched hard for a long time after climbing back up from the from the depths of the Nameless Dungeon. Only when the tor of Nar Kerymhoarth was lost to sight in the green sea behind them did Araevin signal for a halt.

“This should be safe enough,” he said to his friends. “I don’t think the serpent folk will follow us so far from their lair, but I’ll weave some spells to hide us from them just in case.”

“Good,” Donnor said wearily. The human knight was soaked with sweat. He’d kept up with the long-striding elves despite the fifty pounds of steel he wore, but he heaved a deep sigh of relief as he began to unbuckle the straps and fastenings of his heavy armor. “Once I sit down, I won’t be getting up for a long time, not even if the king of all serpent men himself comes to murder me in my sleep.”

Maresa sat down nearby, loosed the collar of her scarlet-dyed leather coat, and shrugged her satchel off her shoulder. “Before we get too comfortable, maybe Araevin had better make sure that we got the right crystal. If we have to go back and try it again, I’d rather know right now.”

She handed the satchel to Araevin, who drew out the shard and unwrapped it from the dark cloth Maresa had used to hide it. The piece was smooth and cool to the touch, roughly daggerlike in shape, and a little more than half a foot from tip to tip. In his hands it seemed to stir, as if it recognized the magic in his touch, and a bright violet-white gleam appeared in its depths. He turned it slowly in his hand, studying it closely.

“Well?” the genasi demanded.

“It’s a piece of the Gatekeeper’s Crystal. I saw the shard we kept in the vaults of Tower Reilloch years ago. I don’t know for certain if this is the same one, but if it isn’t, it’s an exact copy.”

“Can you sense the presence of the second or third shards, Araevin?” Nesterin asked.

Araevin allowed his perception to sink into the shard, absorbing the faint pearlescent glimmers that danced in its depths, groping for a spark of recognition or acknowledgment. Unlike the selukiira of Saelethil Dlardrageth, there was no guiding consciousness preserved in the Gatekeeper’s Crystal. He could feel the power of the thing, a hidden wellspring of living magic waiting to be tapped, but the shard was not aware of itself or its surroundings.

While his companions watched, Araevin whispered the words of a finding spell and fixed his attention on the gleaming white crystal in his hand. At once he felt a sharp jolt of connection, as if the shard had sent some intangible call echoing out from the small clearing in the great forest, a call that swept swiftly and silently across the miles. And he felt an answer, a keen ringing tone somewhere far to the east and north. It was the sort of shrill, high tone he might have expected if he’d struck the shard in his hand with a small hammer. He scrambled to his feet without even noticing, and looked in the direction of the sound. “There,” he breathed. “Did you feel that?” Maresa and Donnor simply shrugged, but Nesterin frowned. “I thought I sensed something, but I could not tell you what it was I felt,” the star elf said.

“That direction,” Araevin said, pointing. “Very far, I think. Possibly hundreds of miles.”

“Hundreds?” Maresa picked up a handful of pine needles from the forest floor and threw them down again with a snort of disgust. “I’m getting tired of crisscrossing Faerun chasing after your intuition, Araevin. Could you just for once go looking for an ancient elven gemstone that’s been left out in some close-by, cheerful spot? For that matter, I’m tired of chasing after gems. Why is everything a damned gem or crystal?”

“Durability,” Araevin answered. “The sun elves of old knew ways to fashion crystal that remains almost indestructible today, thousands of years after it was cast. We’ve been chasing after crystals because that’s the form in which magical power and knowledge from elder days was preserved.”

“It was a rhetorical question,” Maresa grumbled. “So how far east do we have to go? Back to Cormanthor? Thay? Kara-Tur?”

“I am not certain,” Araevin admitted. He could clearly sense the direction, but the distant ringing of the crystal had held an odd note, something he could not easily put into words. Somehow he doubted that it would be as simple as riding toward the dawn until they found the second shard. “We’ll make for Myth Glaurach before we do anything else. We need to collect our mounts and provision ourselves for a long journey.”

The short summer night passed quietly, and in the morning they retraced their steps back toward the conquered fey’ri stronghold. They reached the ruined city in the hills late in the day, and passed the night among the wood elves who guarded the place. Beneath the lanterns and starlight, Myth Glaurach’s overgrown ruins did not seem as sad as they once did-but then again, the songs of the wood elves had a way of dispelling the gloom. They rested for the night in the small chapel where they had stayed a few tendays before, when the whole of Seiveril’s Crusade was encamped in the ruins.

Early the following day, Gaerradh took her leave of the small company. “I must go visit Lady Morgwais in the High Forest and tell her what happened in Nar Kerymhoarth,” she said. “And after that, I should go see Alustriel and Methrammar in Silverymoon. But I wish you luck in your search for the remaining shards.”