Richard Baker - Forsaken House

"Hmm. Yes, I feel it too. A defense of his? Or some curse of his enemies?"

"It was not very powerful. Not much of a defense or a curse." Araevin considered for a moment. "I will try to negate it."

Quastarte nodded. Araevin drew a breath, then spoke the words of a spell of negation, canceling out the charm he had sensed. To his surprise, the spell crumpled at once, flaring bright blue as it did so. He saw at once that it was a minor dimensional pocket of some sort, a temporary storing place not much larger than a big goblet. The spell ended, and from the imaginary space a small gemstone suddenly appeared, clattering to the ground. It was a deep green, so dark as to be almost black, and a glimmering white star flickered in its depths.

"What in the world?" Araevin breathed.

"A telkiira! " Quastarte said. "I have not seen one like this before."

Araevin leaned back, thinking. Telkiira were small gemstones that could hold the thoughts or memories of their makers, even potent arcane lore such as spells or the rites necessary to create enchanted items.

"I wonder what this one holds?" he said.

"Whatever it was, Philaerin considered it important enough to conceal from his attackers." Quastarte frowned and picked it up in his hand, studying it carefully, and continued, "It doesn't advertise its secret, it seems. Sometimes all one has to do is touch a telkiira in order to find out what it contains. But this one is guarded against casual contact."

"Would the demons return for that, do you think?"

"I don't know," the loremaster said. "But we should make sure that it does not fall into their hands. Perhaps you should hold onto it, Araevin. If the demons do return, you will defend it better than I."

Araevin took the stone and gazed into its depths. It seemed an ordinary gemstone, if a somewhat valuable one.

"Very well," said Araevin. "Since our enemies have shown that they can enter our vaults and know something of where we keep our more powerful relics, it may make sense to keep it close at hand instead of simply hiding it again."

He exchanged a dark look with Quastarte and understood that the old loremaster shared his true concern. The raiders had known their way around Tower Reilloch quite well. They might have prepared their attack for months, secretly scrying the Tower's defenses… or perhaps they had had assistance from someone familiar with the Tower's secrets.

"True," Quastarte said, thinking aloud. "Of course, that suggests to me that perhaps you should remove it from the tower entirely. Do you think you might absent yourself for a short time?"

"If you are certain you will not need me here," Araevin replied. He found a silk handkerchief in his pocket and carefully wrapped the telkiira within. "I could go to Lord Miritar's estate and visit with Ilsevele and her father for a time. He is a councilor of the realm, and deserves a firsthand report of what happened here. And it would seem perfectly innocuous for Ilsevele and I to go to Elion for a time. No one would think it out of the ordinary, would they?"

The old loremaster grasped Araevin by the shoulder and said, "We may be jumping at shadows, but at this moment I would rather take too many precautions than too few."

"Do not hesitate to summon me back if I am needed," Araevin replied. He stood and slipped the small, silk-wrapped stone into his belt pouch. "Once I am away from here, I will examine the stone more closely to see if I can determine what is hidden inside. It may shed some light on who our attackers were, and what they intend to do with the shard."

"And I will search through Philaerin's tomes and journals to see if he makes any mention of it." Quastarte rose as well. "Come. Before you leave, we must summon the other mages and tell them what has been taken from the Tower."

Nurthel Floshin stretched wide his black, leathery wings, and dropped closer to the snow-covered ground. He was in a hurry, and he beat his powerful wings tirelessly against the winter sky. Nurthel cut a striking figure, a demonic elf with scarlet-scaled skin and large batlike wings, clad in armor of enchanted golden scales, one eye covered by a rune-scribed patch.

Miles behind him, the rest of his raiding party proceeded on foot, too heavily burdened with their plunder to fly. It was not a particularly good day for flying, anyway. The clouds were low and thick, and freezing rain was falling all across the rugged hills and thick forests of the Delimbiyr Vale.

Nurthel allowed himself a smile of pleasure. The Gatekeeper's Crystal gave him the perfect excuse to hurry on ahead of the other fey'ri. He carried the artifact inside his golden scale shirt, wrapped tightly in a leather pouch. He started gaining altitude again, as the foothills of the Nether Mountains began to mount skyward from the river vale. His mistress had chosen her stronghold with an eye toward remoteness and isolation. None but the most determined-or foolhardy-of travelers passed that way. There the Delimbiyr turned east, fed by numerous streams known as the Talons-swift, racing rivers that descended from the snow-covered mountains to the north.

Nurthel followed the Starsilver, the second of those streams, and after a few miles found a round hilltop rising up before him. Its slopes were shaped in graceful terraces inundated by the forest, and old white ramparts green with moss and vines climbed across the hillside. Glaurachyndaar, a great city of fallen Eaerlann, had once been known as Myth Glaurach, City of Scrolls. Crumbling colonnades and empty buildings choked with rubble were all that remained of the elven city, but deep catacombs led to hidden armories and jagged chasms beneath the hill.

He wheeled once and dived down through the snow-clad fir trees, alighting in a ruined old courtyard. He shook his wings vigorously, ignoring the quiver of fatigue from his rapid flight, and folded them behind his back. Nurthel made his way through an old archway into the palace proper. A thin crust of snow lay on the uneven ground within the white walls, and most of the halls and corridors were open to the sky above. It struck Nurthel as supremely ironic that the very palace of Myth Glaurach's grand mage should serve as the hidden citadel of she who had once been the most dangerous enemy of the realm of Eaerlann.

He came to a broken white tower and entered. That place at least still had intact floors above, so the ceiling kept out the rain and the snow, but its broad windows were blank and empty, the old theurglass that once covered them long since gone. The chamber possessed a magnificent view of forest-covered hills and snowy mountain peaks beyond. Comfortable furnishings-elegant divans, credenzas, and bookshelves, with a gorgeous tapestry secured on one wall-stood carefully placed in the room's interior so as not to be exposed to the weather.

"My lady!" he cried. "I have returned!"

"So I see, Nurthel." A sinuously graceful figure turned from the wide, empty window. "You took care to conceal your retreat?"

"Yes, my lady. We used the ring gate to return to the ruins of Ascalhorn."

Ascalhorn, the city later known as Hellgate Keep, and later still nothing but a windswept ruin, was almost thirty miles away. The fey'ri lord went to one knee, bowing in the presence of his mistress.

Like the fey'ri who served her, Sarya Dlardrageth possessed both demon and elf blood. But in her case, she was a true daemonfey, and her demonic bloodline was pronounced indeed. The demonspawned sun elves known as fey'ri were descended through several generations from the mating of elf and demon, but Sarya was a princess of House Dlardrageth. Her father was a balor, a great and terrible demon lord. Sarya's skin was deep red and her hair a blazing orange-gold as bright as a flame. She favored gold-embroidered robes of black that overlapped like plates of dark armor, carefully crafted to incorporate powerful defensive enchantments and leave her adequate room to flex her wings in flight or wield the sinister spells at her command.