Richard Baker - Farthest Reach

Then she vanished, fading away into golden light and leaving him alone in Morthil’s ethereal sanctum.

Morthil’s great tome was lying beside him, closed.

Araevin lay there for a long moment, trying to understand what it was he felt. Then, slowly, he pushed himself upright. He glanced up at the ethereal walls of Morthil’s vault, and realized that he could see the threads of magic, the warp and woof of the Weave, woven with skill and care thousands of years ago. He reached out to touch a wall, and watched as his fingertips caused a ripple in the flowing magic just as a child might start a ripple in a still pool by brushing his fingers over the water.

Despite himself, he laughed out loud in delight.

He noticed that his fingertips seemed to glow in his mystic sight. Frowning, he drew his hand close to his face and studied it. Veins of magic pulsed beneath his skin, intertwined with his own blood. His flesh was possessed of an unmistakable radiance. It was still his own hand, warm, alive, and feeling, yet it was changed. Like a fine golden foil it served to indicate his shape and form, but it was delicate, paper-thin, nothing but a hollow shell of magic in which his sense of self existed.

Is this in my mind? he wondered. Only a perception of the rite’s completion? Or have I really… changed?

He decided that he simply could not encompass what had happened during the telmiirkara neshyrr, not at that moment. In time he might make sense of it, weigh the words of the eladrin queen, sort out the strange sense of self and detachment he felt mingled in his own body, but he could not do it now. He could only continue on this desperate course, and finish what he had started. There would be time to comprehend and reflect later.

Araevin drew the Nightstar from his breast and held the gemstone in his hand. In his new vision he could hardly stand to gaze on the device, so great and dire was its power; it blazed like an amethyst fire in his hand.

Is this what Kileontheal and the others saw when they looked on the Nightstar? he wondered. Or have I gained powers of perception that even other high mages do not share?

He frowned, and effortlessly he hurled his consciousness into the gemstone, descending down through its lambent depths like a falling meteor. He sensed the vastness and the purpose of the thing, just as he had before, but this time he retained his bearings. He arrowed straight for the heart of the gem. The Nightstar no longer held the power to overwhelm him.

“I am coming, Saelethil,” Araevin said, and he bared his teeth in challenge.

Ilsevele studied the oppressive gloom that smothered the ancient hall, and shuddered. The air was hot and rank, and she felt a cold sick sense of danger beneath her ribs. The place was perilous; she could feel it, and she knew that the others sensed it as well. They’d beaten off two more nilshai incursions in the time since they’d entered the place, but above and beyond the danger posed by the alien sorcerers infesting the place, the nilshai world itself was dangerous. The longer they remained, the deeper they seemed to sink into the darkness, even though they hadn’t moved from that spot for hours.

I fear that retracing our steps back to Sildeyuir will prove harder than finding our way to this tower, she thought.

“How much longer will Araevin need?” grumbled Maresa. She glanced over at the revolving spiral of faint white light hovering in the room’s center. They’d tried several times to follow Araevin through the door, but apparently they lacked something the portal required. “He’s been in there too long! I want to get out of this place.”

“Unless the nilshai return in overwhelming force, we will remain here and guard Araevin’s back,” Ilsevele said. “He is counting on us, Maresa.”

The genasi snorted and returned her attention to Ilsevele. “What if he’s stuck in there, and can’t get out? What if it’s a one-way gate? How long do we give him before we leave?”

“We remain until we are forced to leave,” Ilsevele repeated. She turned her back on Maresa and walked a short distance away, making a show of peering down a black corridor as if to check on it, but in truth she was avoiding the argument, and she knew it.

What happens if the nilshai come back? she asked herself. Is it worth our lives to protect what Araevin is doing? Or do we abandon this expedition if the danger grows too great? It would be easier to answer that question if she were absolutely certain that Araevin’s quest was something that had to be done.

If I knew there had been no choice but to come here, it would be easy to steel myself to stand and die in this black chamber if necessary, she thought. But I wonder what Father is doing. Has the Crusade joined battle against the daemonfey in Myth Drannor? And just how might I have been able to help if I were there instead of here?

“Something is coming,” Jorin called in a low voice. The Yuir ranger crouched on the moss-covered remains of one of the higher balconies, his bow in hand. “The same thing we avoided in the forest, I think.”

Ilsevele cocked her head to one side, and she heard it as well-a distant wet wheezing or sucking sound, slowly squishing its way closer.

Did the nilshai corral the creature to send it at us? she wondered. Or did it follow us of its own accord?

“Everyone, move to a new place,” she called softly. “They’re expecting to find us where they saw us last.”

She followed her own advice, and darted across the hall to stand hidden in a narrow alcove. Maresa simply leaped up and levitated to the highest gallery; as a daughter of the elemental wind, she could take to the air when she liked. Donnor moved beside a pillar where he could watch the doorway leading back out to the courtyard of the keep. Nesterin flashed a quick smile at Ilsevele, and found an alcove opposite hers.

They waited in silence, listening to the approach of the unseen monster. Ilsevele laid a pair of arrows across her bow, and whispered the words of a spell to set them both smoldering with arcane power. The horrible squelching drew closer, and she heard the abominable piping voices of the nilshai, several of them warbling to each other in the black tunnels around the banquet hall. Peering into the dank gloom, she finally caught a glimpse of the massive creature drawing near.

Its skin glistened a translucent pink in the dim light of the glowing doorway in the room’s center. Its flesh oozed and rippled as it heaved itself closer, and Ilsevele glimpsed the indistinct outlines of a wormlike body and a ring-shaped mouth surrounded by small, rasping teeth. The thing was the size of a small inn, and she exhaled in relief. It was so large that it couldn’t fit through the archway leading to the courtyard outside.

“Thank Corellon,” she murmured, and straightened up.

The thing quivered for a moment, blindly groping for a way inside. Then it found the archway and began to press forward. Its flesh was so malleable that it squeezed through with ease, pouring itself into the room like a viscid stream of slime.

She looked over to Nesterin in horror, and found the star elf looking back at her with a similar expression on his face.

“I thought it couldn’t get in!” he protested.

Ilsevele raised her bow and shot. Two arrows flew as one, each flaring into brilliant fire in mid-flight under the power of her spells. They struck the blank wall of glistening flesh and vanished, sinking deep into the monster before coming to rest with the fletching completely submerged. The shafts hung in the thing’s body for all to see, burning with bright white light in the worm’s snout. The creature quivered and recoiled, but still it groped onward.

“What in the world is that thing?” Ilsevele muttered as she drew two more arrows and readied another spell.