Richard Baker - Farthest Reach

“Whoa! Whoa, damn you!” Curnil cried, but he realized that he would never get the animal under control with the fire clinging to its face.

Curnil kicked his feet out of the stirrups, and let the horse run out from under him. He stumbled into the mud on the trail, but a moment later he had his feet under him again, and he scrambled ten feet toward the river to crouch by a boulder and figure out what was going on.

The air was filled with winged swordsmen and sorcerers, armed for battle. Curnil stared in amazement. They were elves, of a sort, though their skin had a crimson hue and their eyes blazed with malice. “The daemonfey,” he breathed.

The first flight swooped past the panicked column, and Curnil saw that it was not a true ambush. The daemonfey had simply streaked in through the rain and drizzle, soaring low and fast over the treetops and falling on the elven column like a fiery thunderbolt. More spells and blasts came from above as the creatures wheeled in midair, scouring the track with emerald globes of acid and crackling yellow lightning. Curnil’s ears rang with the fury of the explosions.

White arrows hissed up through the air at the flying sorcerers, and a few of the daemonfey warriors reeled or crumpled in flight. Storm Silverhand burned half a dozen of the sinister warriors out of the air with a great blast of blinding silver fire, carving an argent swath out of the rain-streaked sky.

Curnil swept his swords out of their scabbards and shouted defiance up at the sky. “Come on down and fight, you bastards!”

He had cause to regret his challenge only a moment later. A wave of strange, low booming sounds washed over him, leaving a foul acrid stink in the air. All around the column terrible demons appeared, teleporting into the elven ranks. Behind Storm Silverhand a pair of hulking monsters materialized, gripping huge cleavers in their horned claws. But the silver-haired swordswoman was already engaged in a furious melee with two more monsters in front of her, her sword flashing as she battled against them.

“Storm! Behind you!” Curnil shouted.

He hurled himself forward, charging at the demons attacking her. For one timeless instant the battle drifted motionless around him, his blood thundering in his ears, and Storm turned slowly to meet the new threat. Then he crashed into the closest of the ogre-sized monsters, ramming the point of his silvered sword into the small of its back. Curnil was not a small man, and even though the green-scaled monster towered over him, he sent the thing stumbling off-balance directly into Storm Silverhand.

With a single clean slash of her gleaming sword, she took the demon’s head. She flashed Curnil one quick smile, the fierce smile of a warrior born, and her eyes flew open in horror.

A terrible blade of bronze flashed past Curnil’s eyes and slammed into his shoulder, driving him to his knees. He grunted in cold shock, as the hulking demon wrenched its gore-spattered cleaver out of his chest. Hot metal grated on bone, and a horrible spurt of blood burst out of Curnil’s collar.

“Curnil!” screamed Storm.

The demon’s blade stuck for a moment, and with a growl of irritation the hellspawned monster shook Curnil viciously until he was flung off the axe. He landed badly, crumpled in the mud of the trail.

Get up, he told himself. You’ll die if you just lie here.

But dark spots gathered at the corners of his vision, and he felt empty. His swords slipped from his grasp.

He tried to push himself upright, to stand, to clap a hand over the awful wound, even to call for help, but he had no strength in his limbs and no breath in his throat.

Damn, he thought. I don’t think I can get up.

Then the darkness swallowed him.

Araevin sat cross-legged on the floor of Morthil’s vault. The great tome of the star elf archmage lay open on his lap, but he no longer looked at it. The telmiirkara neshyrr was upon him, and having begun it, he was powerless to draw back. Of their own accord the endless passages and phrases of the rite tumbled from his mouth, and the air of Morthil’s library trembled with the magic he had unleashed.

Some small part of him wondered how long he had been engaged in the reading, how much time had passed since he had spoken the words Morthil had learned from Ithraides and left for others after him to find. With each word he felt his power, his strength, his vitality draining away, dissipating like frost misting away on a winter morning, leaving him empty, hollow and aching. He could not bear to continue another moment, and yet he realized that if he halted there he would not survive.

He pressed on, repeating the ancient prayers and supplications of the spell, even as his strength began to fail him and his chin drooped toward his chest.

I cannot stop, he told himself. I must not stop.

Yet even though his will was firm, his words began to slur, and his voice dropped to a mumble. He felt like a cold cinder, a graying coal reduced to nothing but an empty shell of ash.

Softly, slowly, he slumped to the mist-wreathed floor. It feels as though I’m falling asleep, he thought. Falling asleep with my mind awake. Am I dying?

He knew that he should care about dying, that he had great things to do and friends who needed him, but Araevin had no determination left to fend it off. He had lived long and well, he had traveled the world and left it a better place than he had found it. What was there to fear?

He surrendered to the soft gray blanket that was stealing over him. Darkness hovered within, strangely close and warm, but then he sensed a growing light. He felt a presence approaching, coming to him through the dark. It was a woman, radiant and beautiful, an elf in shape and features, yet incandescent with the power contained in her form.

He looked up to her, and saw her with his own eyes. She was a creature of starshine and wonder, a fey queen whose eyes shone like the sun. There was light and affection of a sort in her face, but there was something more besides-a terrible strength and willfulness that awed him. She was magic made flesh, the sudden power of the storm, the capriciousness of the wind, the delight of the ancient stars.

“An eladrin,” he whispered. I have called a queen of the Court of Stars, a high lady of the fey lords!

She stooped over him, her eyes stern, and laid a hand on his forehead. Her touch was frigidly cold.

Few have spoken the words you have spoken this day, she said with her eyes alone. Is this truly what you wish, Araevin Teshurr?

“It is what I have to do,” he answered, his breath as faint as candlelight.

There is nothing that you have to do, she said. That is the gift of the gods to mortals. To complete the telmiirkara neshyrr is to surrender something precious beyond words.

He looked into her eyes, as brilliant as suns, and did not flinch.

The fey queen seemed to sigh. You will learn the price of your power, Araevin, she told him. But this, too, you are free to choose.

She leaned down and kissed him, her lips soft yet bitterly cold, and she breathed into his mouth a single whisper of breath.

Radiance, warmth, and life poured into his heart. He drew a great breath, and felt his soul kindle in unbearable fire. Yet it did not harm him, and it did not diminish. In the space of a dozen heartbeats the fire within had spread to the tips of his fingers and the bottoms of his feet, until it felt as though his entire body was a single sheet of steel-hard flame, dancing and flowing and burning and yet frozen into the shape of an elf.

He looked at the white lady in wonder. “What have you given me?” he asked.

It is not what I have given you, Araevin Teshurr. It is what I have taken away. She smiled sadly, and her eyes glimmered. You will count this a great gift for now, yet you will also know regret.