Douglas Niles - Prophet of Moonshae

Some of the men-at-arms fidgeted with their own weapons, as if they would help their lord, but they found themselves confronted by slavering hounds, baring white fangs and standing in stiff-backed, bristling readiness.

The two knights chopped and parried, asking and giving no quarter. Their blades cut silvery arcs through the air, and the momentum of their attacks slowly carried them down the gentle slope toward the shore of the pool. The man tied to the stake watched them impassively, as did the ragged pilgrims around the fringe of the vale, while the men-at-arms stayed well back from the menacing hounds.

One man, however, did more than watch. Unseen by either of the combatants, Pryat Wentfeld, devout cleric of Helm, slowly withdrew something from his pouch. Carefully, surreptitiously, he prepared to cast a spell.

Musings of the Harpist

She is here, and alive, though just barely. I have seen an essence in my dreams these past nights, and I curse my old brain that it did not understand more quickly. But now I am certain.

The Earthmother has returned. A glimmering of her might was born in the Fairheight Moonwell, and now that fragment struggles for life, as a sapling struggles to raise its leaves to the sun.

She has floated through a long night, and her awakening is not yet assured. It remains to us to give her that chance.

As usual, dawn was an obscure moment in the dark, gray hours of early morning, yet Deirdre sensed it was just at that moment she awakened. She knew that somewhere, above the leaden clouds and beyond the icy, stinging rain, the sun had just crested the eastern horizon. Languorously she stretched, the events of the previous night coming back to her bit by exhilarating bit.

The oath of worship! The memory of that experience awed and moved her as much as had the ceremony itself. Now, as she met her first day following that pledging, she felt as though she had moved in a few hours from a child to some stage far beyond adulthood. The power pulsing within her animated Deirdre's body, compelling her to full alertness, tingling her nerves with suppressed tension.

And the oath had only been the first part, for then there had been Malawar. He had taken her to her bed, and for the first time, he had remained with her through the night.

She sat up in the bed and looked at the form beside her, covered by the heavy quilt. A smile played with her lips as she recalled the forbidden delight, the glorious culmination of their love. Now he still slumbered, and she cherished her private moment of joy.

Gently, tenderly, she reached out and pulled the coverlet away, longing for just a glimpse of his straw-colored hair, his fine-chiseled features. The quilt flipped away-and Deirdre gagged in shock.

Biting back her scream of terror, she threw herself from the bed, pulling the covers with her and wrapping them around her nakedness as she backed toward a corner of the room. The thing that had lain beside her stirred and then sat up-slowly, and stiffly, as befitted the wrinkled figure, withered and wizened with age.

Cold eyes, as dark as the Abyss, stared out at Deirdre from lined sockets. A bald pate of blotched skin covered the man's scalp, and his ears lay back against his skull as if they were too tired to support themselves. His mouth was almost lipless, his cheeks and chin creased with a multitude of lines.

It was a man, she knew, but a man who was extremely, impossibly old.

"Where is Malawar?" she demanded, finding her voice.

"My dear," cackled the ancient shape through toothless gums. "I'm disappointed you do not recognize me."

"No!" Deirdre moaned, unaware that she slumped against the corner of her room and slowly sank to the floor. "You-you're not! It's impossible!"

But even as she spoke, she knew that she lied to herself. How else had he come to sleep and awaken beside her?

The stooping figure rose stiffly from the bed and pulled Malawar's robe over his scrawny form. "Must serve the needs of dignity," he noted, with an obscene edge to his laugh.

Suddenly Deirdre's stomach heaved in revolt. She turned away from the grotesque form and vomited onto the floor, retching until she could barely breathe.

"I hope you're quite finished," announced the now-hooded priest, his tone acid, "because we have a lot of work to do."

But Deirdre could not bring herself to rise. Instead, she turned toward the window, curling herself into a protective ball. The world swam around her, and then it felt as though she was swallowed up by blackness.

King Sythissal drove his finned legion with all the brutal authority of his command, yet he knew that the sahuagin could never match the pace of the flying dracolich. Still, the fish-men slipped through the sea a hundred feet below the surface to avoid the turbulence of the storm.

Yet by the time the Army of Kressilacc reached the coast of Alaron, the sea battle was over. The ravenous sahuagin discovered, much to their delight, the wreck of the Vulture. The bodies of her crew served as splendid sustenance in restoring the creatures' stamina.

Beyond this wreck loomed rainswept Alaron. Here Sythissal would not go. Too often in the past his warriors had ventured upon land, only to meet with gory disaster before they could reach the protective refuge of the sea.

Instead, the sahuagin turned back from the battle, swimming to their deep home in Kressilacc. His forces intact, the King of the Deep would await a more opportune time to work the will of Talos.

"Hey! That's not fair!"

Pryat Wentfeld started backward, interrupted in the casting of his spell. He had attempted to summon an air elemental in order to set the creature against Hanrald and quickly end this duel between the brother knights. But now this high-pitched voice from nowhere distracted him, and the spell was wasted.

"Who speaks?" he demanded. "Show yourself or face the vengeance of Helm!"

"It's not fair, I told you!"

The priest gaped in astonishment, for the speaker was a tiny dragon, bright blue and hovering on wings that belonged more appropriately to a great butterfly.

"How dare you destroy my spell!" snarled the pryat, lunging toward the creature, who instantly blinked out of sight as the man stumbled through the place he had been.

"I didn't destroy your spell!" The now invisible dragon was indignant. "I just made it more interesting!"

Staring in shock, which quickly blossomed into mind-numbing horror, the cleric saw that the diminutive dragon spoke the truth: The spell had in fact already begun to work.

The summoning and control of an elemental by a spell-caster is a two-stage procedure, and it is always dangerous. These beings, representing the fundamental forces of air, water, earth, and fire, are called only reluctantly from their respective home planes. Vengeful and mighty, they constantly seek a way to release themselves from the bondage of their sorcerous masters.

Once summoned, the caster must maintain careful concentration in order to shape its unwieldy slave to the controller's will. Pryat Wentfeld had successfully concluded the summoning portion of his enchantment, but Newt had distracted him at the very moment when he should have been asserting his control over the invoked being.

In the case of this air elemental, it had been dragged summarily from a windy display of exuberance with hundreds of its kin, the usual pastime of the creatures on their home realm in the Inner Planes. Now, alone, confused, and compelled to enter a hateful world of unpleasant solidity, it reacted with forceful resistance. Then it suddenly found itself freed of its summoner's will.

The full vengeance of the air elemental swirled into the vale. Immediately it saw the two knights bashing at each other, the hounds and the men-at-arms all awaiting the outcome. It sensed the druid staked to the pole, and even the pilgrims who watched the fight from above. But most of all, the air elemental detected the cowering cleric-the one who had forced the creature to come here but now held no power over it. The tenuous form became a howling vortex, swirling upward into a funnel-shaped cloud of destruction. Furiously the mighty wind surged toward the cleric, casting limbs of trees and piles of wood chips into hailstorms of splinters.