Элейн Каннингем - The Floodgate

"There is, my lord," she said firmly. "I want to break the Cabal."

The years slipped away. Akhlaur remembered the creation of that great artifact, the friends who had shared in its shaping-and the betrayals that had led to his exile. Hatred washed through him in great waves. He let none of it enter his voice or show in his face.

"Ah, yes. An interesting experiment, that, but long past its usefulness. Tell me, little elf, who holds the heart of Halruaa?"

This time there was no mistaking the feline glint in her eyes and smile. "Your old friend Zalathorm rules as wizard-king."

This time Akhlaur could not hold back the crow of laughter. This was too rich! Zalathorm lived and ruled, and by the power of the Cabal!

"He is considered to be the most powerful wizard in the land."

"We shall see about that," the necromancer said, reaching for the emerald in Kiva's hand. "Take me to the battle at once."

Matteo rubbed the grit from his eyes and rose slowly from the ground. Instinctively he extended a hand to Andris, who was also stumbling back into consciousness. They clung together, wavering unsteadily as they struggled to remember where they were and how they came to be here.

Memory returned to Andris's eyes, and with it came a bitter chill. He wrenched free of Matteo's grasp and made his way unsteadily over to the spring. He dropped to one knee beside it. After a moment his shoulders slumped, and his head dropped to his chest.

Silence shrouded the mountains. After the tumult of battle and magic, the quiet was eerie. Even the clamor from the valley below had faded to a murmur of steel and voice. Matteo looked about for Tzigone. The veil was gone, and the song of the dark fairies silenced. Tentatively he placed his palm up as if to touch the place where the veil had hung, and where his friend had disappeared. Nothing remained of the dark fairies or the girl who had banished them.

"Why, Tzigone?" he murmured.

From long habit, he turned to Andris for answers. The jordain still knelt at the mouth of the stream. No more water flowed. The spring was gone.

The floodgate was closed.

Beginning to understand, Matteo felt for the strap that tied a bag to his back. The bag was gone, and with it the magical devices that Basel had given him, the ones Matteo would have cast into the spring so Basel could trigger a powerful implosion. They had not been certain this could close the floodgate. Now they knew.

He shook his head, hardly believing Tzigone's skill and nerve. She'd managed to cut the straps on his bag while he was fighting, while she was spellcasting, and to weave Basel's spell into her own. The result was an explosion that not only shattered the portal to the Unseelie realm but also slammed shut the tiny gate to the Plane of Water.

Once more, Tzigone had thwarted Kiva's plans, but this time it had cost her her life.

Because rage was easier than grief, Matteo snatched up his sword and stalked over to Andris. He thrust the blade firmly beneath Andris's chin and forced the traitor's head up. "Where is Kiva?" he demanded.

"She is dead." Andris looked up, and his ghostly hazel eyes held Matteo's implacable stare without wavering. Translucent blood dripped from the blade to mingle with the dying spring. "Kiva entered the Plane of Water to confront and destroy Akhlaur. Whether she succeeds or fails matters not. The gate is closed, and her fate is sealed with it."

Matteo took less comfort from this than he had expected to. This long-sought victory could not assuage the yawning void Tzigone had left behind. But neither the victory nor the loss released him from his duty. He slowly edged the sword away from Andris's throat.

"You will swear to this?"

"Send to Azuth's temple for their most powerful magehounds. I will submit to their inquisition, as I submit to you as prisoner."

"Just like that."

"Just like that," Andris said wearily. "My part in this is finished."

Matteo let him rise, but he kept his sword out and ready as they walked down the mountain, to the battles that lay ahead. Kiva might be dead, but Matteo suspected she was far from finished.

Avariel skirted the eastern mountains, moving swiftly toward the invading forces. Andris had been secured in a cabin below, and Basel Indoulur and Matteo stood in numb silence at the skyship's prow, staring with unseeing eyes at the forbidding terrain below them. They were nearly to the battlefield before the wizard put words to the loss they both felt.

"At least she took Dhamari with her."

"Yes." Matteo attempted a smile. "I wonder whom he has most reason to fear: Tzigone or the Unseelie folk."

"Indeed."

Again they fell silent. Matteo stared at the ground, forced himself to focus on the task at hand. The invading army was coming into view now. A host of dark-clad soldiers, looking distinctly antlike from this vantage, swarmed through the Halruaan militia. The Halruaans, distinctive in their sea-green uniforms, went down like trod-upon grass.

"Too few," Matteo muttered.

"And too close," the wizard added, his round face furrowed with distress. "I know of no battle spell that will sort through a hand-to-hand melee."

"What is needed are more troops." An odd quirk of memory came to Matteo: Tzigone holding a string of odiferous mushrooms, dressed as a street urchin so that she could seek out mischief to lighten the mundane shopping task assigned her.

"The fagoila mushrooms that Tzigone recently purchased-do you keep the spores aboard ship?"

Basel's eyes focused, then hardened. "Indeed I do, and I have prepared the instant army spell. A good thought, but there is no sign of rain."

"Strew the spores anyway, and then take Avariel above the clouds."

While the ship's mate relayed the orders to the crew, Basel took his place at the helm. Eyes closed, lips moving in a spellcasting frenzy, he clenched both hands around the magic-storing rod that gave the ship lift and momentum.

The skyship began a rapid ascent. Two minor wizards dumped small bags of pungent powder over the rail while the sailors others busied themselves with rope and sail, struggling to maintain the ship against quickening and capricious winds.

It was a dangerous gambit, and everyone aboard knew it. The skyship was not meant for such heights, and Basel stretched both its mundane frame and its magic to the edges of endurance. If they crossed that line, the ship would break up and plummet to the ground like an arrow-shot swam.

The deck pitched and shuddered as Matteo hurried along, hanging on to the rail for support as he showed the skysailors how to seed the clouds with handfuls of sand from the ballast bags. Bereft of this weight, the skyship rose still higher. Swirling winds caught the ship and shook it like an angry dog. Matteo clutched the rail and leaned far out, gazing at clouds below them. To his relief, they were beginning to roil and darken.

"It's working," Matteo shouted above the rising gale. "We've got to get back down, and fast."

Basel nodded curtly and said something to the bosun, who snatched up a glowing horn, raised it to his lips, and shouted a single word: "Brace!"

As the magical warning resounded over the ship, Matteo dropped to the deck and wrapped his arms around a bolted-down barrel. The skysailors, their feet kept in place by the horn's magic, frantically lowered the sails.

Avariel plummeted though the clouds, spinning slowly as it passed through the grumbling gray mist. Canvas flapped thunderously as the sailors struggled to lower and bind the sails. Their efforts were hampered by churning hail. Bits of ice formed in the seeded clouds, kept airborne by the roiling winds until they were too heavy to hold.

Light broke over the ship as they dropped beneath the cloud bank. The storm began almost immediately. Hail pelted Avariel on its way to the battleground beneath, melting as it went. As soon as the droplets touched the ground, Basel's spell took effect.