Коллектив авторов - The Realms of the Elves

The next spell bore no silver flames at all, and seared away the mist, as four streaking spheres shot into the heart of the marching automatons and burst with an ear-shattering roar and a flash of blinding, blistering-hot flame.

"Well," Florin said, "at least we're already lying down, and can die reclining at ease."

A second meteor swarm smote their ears, and the mists rained shrapnel and the twisted toothed arcs of gears and cogs that would turn no more.

Merith peered into smoke-darkened, shifting mists and muttered, "That's pretty well taken care of the clock-"

Another four spheres spun out of the mists, trailing sparks as they came, right at the Knights.

"Farewell, friends," Florin said, "we've had a good ride togeth-"

Right above their heads, the spheres flickered as they always did in the instant before they exploded-and froze, spinning vainly in the grips of four vibrating silver spheres that had formed out of nowhere.

The spheres had spark-trails of their own, leading back to the thickened strands that were, or had been, Elminster and Dove.

The humming strands faded, the spheres tightened like crushing fists, and the lich's four meteors winked once and were gone as if they'd never been.

More lines of thrumming force raced out from the two strands, flaring out into a great web as they raced toward the Knights. There was a sudden flare of crimson beneath their glow, and the lich stood beside the strands, leaning toward them malevolently.

"Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Jhessail snarled, clambering to her feet again.

The lich turned its head to glare at her, another spell roaring from between its fingers-and the silver strands flashed blinding-bright before it, blocking the speeding magic.

From behind that sudden wall came a larger flash and roar. White strands bent outward and writhed. The dark figure of the lich reeled back, crashing against the strand that was Dove.

The strand grew arms-Dove's arms-that wrapped around the lich from behind, embracing it fiercely. Her face emerged from the whiteness, contorted in pain, her eyes closed and cords stood out like curved blades on her neck as she clung to the struggling lich.

The Knights were all on their feet, sprinting toward the struggle. The lich dwindled in Dove's grip, melting and shuddering even as it tried vainly to turn and claw her, its fingers lengthening into cruel, curved talons each as long as Jhessail's forearm.

Dove's arms tightened around the lich as it sank and sagged, crumbling. Ash fell in streams from it as she slid down the strand, bringing her arms in tightly and her knees up, curling around the undead as it crumbled entirely away, leaving her shuddering and gasping.

"Dove!" Florin cried, rushing up to her. "Love, I-"

She shook her head at him, fighting to speak, and managed only to gasp, "I'll call-" 'ere her violent shudderings overwhelmed her. Waving him away, she sank back into the strand, melting into smooth whiteness once more beneath Florin's reaching fingertips.

His fiercely-hissed curses were interrupted by Merith.

"She's back," the elf snapped, pointing.

By which he meant that the tiny, beautiful, blue-haired elf had returned, stepping out of a rift with one arm raised to point at the baelnorn.

It vanished. She pointed again, and the next one winked out. And the next.

She'd banished over a dozen baelnorn, and their singing" mythal-force with them, before the mists erupted in dozens of crimson-and-green mouths. Whereupon she vanished in an instant, even before more liches with glaring eyes in their open palms came striding through the new rifts and looked hurriedly in all directions.

They ignored the Knights as if the three humans were mere mist, to peer at the few remaining baelnorn. Then the liches hissed various curses, exchanged dark glances with each other, and started to cast spells-or rather, the same spell.

It was a magic unfamiliar to the warily-watching Knights, that made drifts of mist nee from the liches in all directions, laying bare the endless webwork of white strands-and the glittering web of silver threads around and above the Knights.

Several liches peered at that web with narrow, unfriendly eyes, and stood sentinel, watching it from right where they were in the distant mists. Others worked spells that sent seeking radiances bobbing among the strands like agitated will-o-wisps, searching behind every strand.

"So few," one lich snarled in disbelief. "What happened to them all?" It waved at the three Knights. "Those worms could not have slain more than a handful at most."

Even Merith, whose ears were far keener than those of his two human companions, could not hear the reply that the lich standing nearest made to that angry cry.

Nor could he properly hear what the loud-voiced lich said next, because a soft, melodious whisper sounded between his own ears. The voice was that of the she-elf who'd welcomed them there, the one he was almost certain was the-

Knights of Myth Drannor, the warm whisper said to them, and Merith knew they were all three hearing it; he could feel the mind of Florin, like a bright sharp sword, and his beloved Jhess, like her warm arms around him, moving against his own thoughts. I need you to strike at these creatures of Larloch. Please. Without their spells, they are but striding undead.

"Larloch? We can't prevail against Larloch!" Jhessail's voice held a sob of horror amid her incredulity. "Nor against so many liches!"

Oh, but you can, the whisper came, confident, with my aid and with what Elminster is sending you.

"And Larloch? What will you do to shield us when he appears?"

He won't. He plays a long game, and this is but one ploy among a thousand thousands for him. He's too coldly calculating to ever come to consider it worth risking his own existence. Long before that fate would be faced, he'll judge the cost in lost liches too high.

"Again," Jhessail snarled, "I'd like to know what by all the gods is going on."

There was silence in their heads; the mind-voice was gone.

"Sing, minstrels, of my total lack of surprise," Jhessail snapped. "I thought I took up adventuring to escape being marched through life under the commands of others-but then, to be an adventurer is to be a fool."

Florin said that last quotation along with her, grinning. She gave him a black look and said savagely, "Care to join me in blasting a lich or two?"

"Your spells won't work, remember?"

"Then I'll just have to scratch them to shreds with my bare hands, won't I?" she growled, striding toward the nearest lich. As she went, she dipped a hand into one of her boots to draw her largest dagger.

Merith and Florin exchanged glances, and watched silver tendrils drift after the purposeful mage known to many-behind her back-as "the Mother of the Knights." together in small groups, forming circles around every baelnorn and working strange, elaborate castings. Mythal force flowed golden once more.

Jhessail paid it no heed, just as the liches ignored the three Knights. When she overtook her chosen victim and stabbed him viciously, the liches walking just ahead of him-heading to join the nearest baelnorn cluster-kept right on walking, even after the three Knights hacked that lich apart and watched its limbs fade away into the whiteness around their ankles.

Jhessail shook her head, and started striding toward the next lich.

Merith and Florin rolled their eyes at each other and trotted after her.

At the heart of every circle, spell-glows rose, ghostly rings of emerald light forming and rotating at various inclinations around the motionless baelnorn. Gold mythal-force spun out to join those rings, and long, spider-fingered lich hands worked intricate spells that made the green and gold rings rise around their heads. Rise, and spin, and brighten…