Troy Denning - The Siege

With more leaders marching their companies into the dusty square every minute, Khelben had given up on ending the argument between Yoraedia and Claw and was using his magic to intervene in actual outbreaks of violence.

Khelben pointed at a scowling dwarf in the gleaming armor of the Knights in Silver who was charging toward the center of the quarrel with a drawn hand axe and asked, "Would you mind?" "Not at all."

Laeral pulled two beads of tar from her cloak pocket. Voicing a short spell, she flicked first one, then the other bead at the scowling dwarf, whose progress immediately slowed to a sluggish crawl.

"As I was saying," Laeral said, "do you remember those detection amulets we passed out so the sentries would be able to see invisible infiltrators?"

Khelben frowned and used his black staff to sweep the feet from beneath one of Claw's barbarians who was reaching for one of Yoraedia's elves.

"I remember," he said. "You brought twenty of them-"

"Twenty-five," Laeral corrected. "They don't seem to be working." Khelben grimaced, then asked, "How badly?" "Fifteen," Laeral said. "On each side."

Khelben considered this for a moment, then growled, "The bastards! The slippery, shadowy, betraying bastards!" "I wouldn't go so easy on them."

Laeral had already done the math. After the battle in the Vine Vale, they had estimated that there could only be a hundred phaerimm left inside the shadowshell. Over the past few days, they had hunted down and killed another twenty, which meant there were only about eighty thornbacks left in the entire Sharaedim.

Somehow, most had converged on the relief army's camp within a few hours of the departure of the Shadovar. Clariburnus and Lamorak had not only abandoned their allies, they had invited the enemy to destroy them.

"What now, Khelben?" Laeral asked. She saw an elf reaching for his sword and waved her wand, turning him into a sleek hart. "Start dispelling and hope for the best?"

Khelben shook his head. "This requires something more… wondrous. Can you distract the phaerimm while I raise a sphere?"

"Of course," Laeral said, pulling a second wand from her belt. One of Khelben's favorite spells, the sphere of wonder created an area in which only one type of magic-chosen by the caster-would function. "But that won't hold forever." "I'll open a teleport circle from inside," Khelben said. "Good," Laeral said. "We'll meet at the Halfway Inn." "Meet?" "Somebody has to bring the rest of the army."

Laeral started across the assembly square, using one wand to paralyze anyone shouting and the other to turn those holding weapons into rabbits and raccoons,

"Quiet!" she called. "I have heard quite enough of this bickering!"

No one obeyed, of course, and several people were actually foolish enough to guarantee a shake of a wand in their direction by turning to argue. The distraction seemed to work, holding the phaerimm's attention so Khelben could raise his arms in the necessary circles and voice what was really rather a long and drawn-out incantation-an incantation that most of the Chosen except him agreed could use some editing.

Laeral paralyzed and polymorphic so many warriors that they were actually beginning to take notice of her commands and fail into a grudging silence, which all but guaranteed that the thornbacks would have to attack openly instead of using mind-slaves to goad the others into doing it for them-and that Laeral would be their first target.

Finally, a dome of faintly shimmering golden light rose up in the middle of the assembly square, prompting the phaerimm to reveal themselves by vainly hurling magic bolts and flame strikes against its wall. The dazed warriors stopped arguing and looked around with stunned expressions and arched brows. Leaving it to Khelben to help them recover, Laeral turned toward her tent and opened another translocational gate.

There was the familiar instant of falling before she emerged adjacent to the worst battle din she had ever heard. Blades were clanging off armor in mad cacophony and anguished voices were shrieking their pain. The air reeked of blood and opened guts, and warriors were streaming past in a torrent of dark silhouettes. A few were doubled over and some were missing limbs or pieces of limbs, but none had weapons in their scabbards or hands.

Still struggling with afterdaze and unable to make sense of what she was seeing, Laeral nevertheless responded instantly. She pulled a vial of granite dust from her cloak pocket and sprinkled it over her head, speaking the words of an armoring spell. Her skin grew cold and numb and as hard as rock. She turned toward the furor and found herself looking across the body-strewn cloth of a collapsed camp tent and finally recalled where she was and what she had come to do. She was too late.

A whirling tornado of blades was coming across the tent toward her, plucking the swords and daggers from the hands and scabbards of the soldiers fleeing before it. A handful of brave warriors stopped to fire crossbow bolts or hurl spears into the heart of the vortex, but these were plucked up with the rest of the weapons and came flying back around to slash the brave souls into a spray of blood and shredded armor. There had to be a thousand weapons in the storm already, with a dozen more flying into it every second, and the whirling cloud of steel was so thick that Laeral could not see to its heart.

The edge of the blade-storm reached her side of the tent. Swords and daggers began to shatter against her spell-hardened skin. The shards were sucked back into the tornado, more deadly than before. Laeral waded into the tempest, staggering under the constant hail of weapons slamming into her from the side. The tent cloth was slick with blood and strewn with bodies and pieces of bodies, some still animated enough to reach out and clutch her ankles. Several times, she stumbled and nearly fell, and once she had to kick herself free of a blood-soaked half-elf who managed to wrap both arms around her legs begging for her to save him.

Finally, Laeral began to glimpse the heart of the storm, where the cone-shaped silhouette of a phaerimm was floating toward her at an oblique angle. She raised her hand and loosed her silver fire. In the same instant, the terrain opened beneath her feet as the thornback tried to suck her into the ground. Quick as the counterattack came, the tactic was a tired one against which Laeral had long ago developed a magic immunity. The Weave simply kept her suspended over the hole until it closed.

In all likelihood, the phaerimm never knew its attack had failed. It was engulfed in silver fire and spent the next few seconds whirling around madly as it disintegrated into ashes. The blade-storm came to a sudden halt, covering Laeral's collapsed tent in a steel carpet as a thousand swords clanged to the ground.

By the light of the fires raging in every camp, Laeral could make out the broad swath of motionless silhouettes and writhing forms the phaerimm had cut through her army. It was a broad belt beginning over by Silverymoon's Knights of Silver and curving steadily inward, razing the entire camp of the Bloodaxe mercenaries sent on behalf of Sundabar and tearing a broad tract through the tents of the Slugsmashers representing Citadel Adbar before spiraling through the Waterdhavian encampment and coming up the hill to Laeral and Khelben’s tent.

Nor was this phaerimm the only one to attack the outlying camps while its companions prepared the main ambush. There were firestorms and lightning squalls everywhere, another blade-storm, and more mind-enslaved warriors fighting each other than the phaerimm. Heart sinking with sorrow and despair-and more than a little guilt at having failed to foresee the Shadovar betrayal-Laeral removed a silver thimble from her pocket, then uttered a spell and held it to her lips like a miniature horn.