Richard Baker - Final Gate

With a great ragged roar, the armies of the Dales, of Evermeet, and of Sembia threw themselves forward, racing over the cool wet grass. Fflar drew Keryvian and followed close by Seiveril.

“Archers, rake those hellspawn!” the elflord cried. “Clerics, ward the ranks! Mages, cast at will!”

Better than a thousand elves, and hundreds of Dalesfolk and Sembians, paused to loose their arrows at the monsters charging up to meet them. Many of the demons and devils among the Dlardrageth armies could not be harmed by mundane steel-but some could, and more than a few of the elf archers carried enchanted arrows. Monstrous shapes stumbled and fell beneath that terrible storm of arrows, but many more shrieked and hissed in defiance and leaped forward to meet the first ranks of the oncoming warriors. Huge bursts of fire and brilliant strokes of lightning crisscrossed the battlefield, banishing the night in flashes of white and sullen red.

The fey’ri arrowed past overhead, seeking to surround the army as they had before. Many shot arrows or threw darts as they passed over, while others contributed deadly spells of their own. Some of the daemonfey spells winked out or rebounded harmlessly, stopped by hasty spell-shields or countered by the Crusade’s own spellcasters, but more hammered the elven ranks. All around Fflar blasts of fire and deadly gouts of acid seared man and beast alike, sowing chaos across the battlefield.

“Seiveril!” Fflar shouted. “It’s time!”

The elflord had his eyes on the fey’ri. As they crossed overhead, he bared his teeth in defiance and raised one hand in the air. “Guardians of the Vale, I call on you!” he shouted. “Aid us against the fey’ri!”

For a moment, Fflar feared that somehow the spirits had not heard Seiveril in the chaos of the battle. Spells, arrows, and furious melees on all sides were all that he could see. But then, a golden light caught his eye. He glanced in that direction, and it seemed that a path of molten light had sprung up in the sky-but this dawn was breaking in the west, not the east. Out of the shining door a host of brilliant white warriors streamed forth. Hundreds of elf spirit-warriors appeared silently and ran to meet the wheeling fey’ri overhead, simply mounting into the air to grapple with their foes.

The fey’ri cried out in consternation and shifted their attacks to the Vale spirits. Fireballs and blasts of lightning scoured the celestial ranks. Some of the ghostly figures winked out, extinguished or driven off by fey’ri spells. But more of the spirits leaped up, attacking the daemonfey legions with swords of blazing light. Despite the battle raging around him, Fflar could not help but watch the spectacle in the sky above the furious clashing armies, and he was not the only one.

“Starbrow, look out!” Felael shouted. Fflar whirled around and found a nycaloth rushing up from behind him. The huge winged daemon leaped for him, claws hooked to tear out his throat, but Fflar spurred his horse and ducked under the scaly monster’s swing. He spun in the saddle and lashed out in a backhand slash that dug a long, shallow gash across the nycaloth’s shoulders. Holy fire blackened its flesh.

The nycaloth howled in agony. “You will pay threefold for that insult, elf!” it screeched.

It leaped into the air with one snap of its vast leathery wings, and dropped down on Fflar like the shadow of a mountain. But the moon elf took his baneblade in both hands and rose in the saddle to stab the point straight through the nycaloth’s black heart. The creature fell on him, one clawed hand clenching its talons in his shoulder, and its fanged maw gnashed only inches from his face. Fflar managed to duck under the worst of the monster’s weight and let the horse ride out from beneath. The nycaloth fell heavily to its side and moved no more.

Remember, you still have a battle to fight, he berated himself. The shining spirits of the vale won’t keep you from having your head torn off by one of Sarya’s demons.

“My thanks, Felael,” he said, but the guard captain was no longer in sight. The battle had carried him away.

A chorus of sudden cries of dismay caught his attention. Fflar pulled the reins in that direction and spurred his horse forward. Seiveril’s banner was under attack. Barbed devils and mezzoloths swirled around the standard, battling Felael and the rest of Seiveril’s guards. The elflord himself laid about furiously with his silver mace, which flashed and thundered with holy enchantments. Without another thought, Fflar charged forward into the fray, and for a terrible instant he slashed and stabbed, and shouted defiance at the infernal creatures all around him.

He suddenly found himself standing in a space cleared of enemies, and briefly wondered if they’d driven off all their foes. He glanced at Seiveril, who was also looking for foes.

“Where did they go?” he asked the elflord.

“They drew back,” Seiveril answered. He started to say more but suddenly stopped in mid-word. And Fflar felt a presence, a malevolence so powerful and close that his war-horse gave off a high shrill whinny of panic and shied away. He wrenched at the reins to keep the animal under control, and looked up to see what new terror had come to the battle.

A dreadful king with pale skin and great gray wings confronted them, bearing a terrible black sword. Dark blood seeped from a wound or mark on his brow, and a guard of devils and yugoloths simpered at his side. The infernal lord studied the two elves with a predatory grin.

“It seems that I must take matters into my own hands,” he said. His voice was rich and musical, unbearably sweet. “Your Crusade ends here, Seiveril Miritar. I have raised up Sarya Dlardrageth as Queen of Cormanthor, and I do not intend to allow you to interfere with the work of fifty centuries.”

“You are Malkizid,” Fflar said.

The archdevil turned his black eyes on Fflar. “So I am, Fflar Starbrow Melruth. I well remember who you are and how you failed… though I have never forgiven you for destroying my servant Aulmpiter. I look forward to granting you a second death.”

“I do not fear you, devil!”

Malkizid’s cold smile failed. “Then you are a fool, mortal,” he snarled.

The mark burned into his forehead began to smolder, and the Branded King advanced to meet Fflar and Seiveril.

The rocky defile grew steeper and more narrow as Araevin and his friends pressed on from the scene of their battle against the hell hounds, until they finally found themselves toiling up a trail of sorts that switchbacked its way up to a bladelike saddle between the jagged hilltops. Here they found the first pitiful signs of vegetation that they had seen so far-black, iron-hard briars that clung to the deepest clefts in the rock. The wind grew stronger as they gained height, blasting at them with unpredictable and malicious gusts. Dust and grit coated their faces and hands, and clung to their garments.

With one last nerve-racking scramble, they reached the saddle proper and finally glimpsed what lay on the other side of their climb.

“That, I did not expect,” Nesterin breathed.

“Me, neither,” Maresa agreed.

The serried ridges continued on into the distance, their flanks scorched and bare. Immediately before Araevin and his friends, the steep-sided valley separating the ridge they had just scrambled over from the next was filled with a forest of sorts. The trees were black and dead-scorched by the dry heat of the Barrens, Araevin guessed, though he couldn’t imagine how they had grown there in the first place.

In the center of the dry, dead forest stood a tower of blackened glass. Its needle-like spires soared above the barren branches, glistening darkly in the ruddy light. Araevin had glimpsed its like only a few times in his life in some of the most ancient places of elvenkind. The spiraling ascent, the slender buttresses that arched away from the tower, the fluid lines of the place… it was a citadel of the Crown Wars, a glimpse of elven castles from the dawn of the world. But the fortress was blackened, its crystalline substance scorched and cracked.