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  “Find yourself another slave, Malkizid. Our alliance is at an end.” Sarya whirled away, her black wings snapping out behind her. She took three steps back toward the portal when Malkizid spoke again.

  “As you wish,” he said in his sweet, perfect voice. “But if that is your decision, I shall withdraw from your service the devils of Myth Drannor—they answer to me, you know—and the yugoloths I have provided you over the last six months. How long do you think you will be able to fend off Seiveril Miritar’s Crusade with two-thirds of your strength removed?”

  Sarya hesitated. “I still command the loyalty of hundreds of demons,” she said. “I do not need you, Malkizid!”

  “Are you so confident in the weavings of your mythal spells, Sarya? You are certain that you will have no further need of my assistance in maintaining the defenses you have raised over Myth Drannor?” Malkizid caressed the pommel of his greatsword, tracing with one talon the sinister runes graven on the blade. “Or do you think that I might have instructed you to weave your spells in such a way that you would need my assistance to continue them? How long will your ‘loyal’ demons remain in your service once Seiveril Miritar and his paleblood mages wrest control of the mythal away from you?”

  “Let me punish him, Mother,” Xhalph rumbled. “His arrogance cannot be borne!”

  Malkizid threw back his head and laughed out loud, a rich and melodious laughter that hinted of the celestial he had once been. “You think to challenge me, half-demon? I slew princes of your kind ten thousand years before you were spawned! Now be silent, for I am not done speaking with your mother.”

  Xhalph set his hands on the hilts of his scimitars and took a step toward Malkizid, but the archdevil simply looked at him. The awful bleeding mark burned into Malkizid’s visage gleamed with dark power, and Xhalph halted in mid stride, his eyes blank and unseeing.

  “I should strike off one or two of your arms while you stand there. That might teach you to show respect to your betters,” Malkizid said to the mesmerized daemonfey.

  “Kill him if you must, but do not maim him,” Sarya said. “He is of no use to me crippled.”

  “Perhaps you are right.” Malkizid turned his attention back to Sarya. “So, dear Sarya, what is it to be? Shame, defeat, a bitter existence of crawling through the shadows, tormented by the knowledge that you might have been queen over Cormanthyr for a thousand years? Or would you prefer power unfettered, the might to defy your enemies, a dark and glorious reign as my favored emissary to the world of mortals? It is no more or less than the arrangement I had with your Vyshaan forebears, after all. But it matters not to me. Should you decline, I will find another to elevate in your place.”

  Sarya stood fuming, more furious than she had ever been in her thousands of years of life. But Malkizid had judged her all too well. Without the infernal monsters he provided to serve as her warriors, she would not long fend off the Crusade of Evermeet. And she could not bear the thought of spending the rest of her days hiding from her enemies, never daring to strike at them, never claiming openly the inheritance that was hers.

  Grinding her teeth in anger, she turned back to Malkizid and slowly prostrated herself before him. “I will take you as my lord and master,” she spat. “But you must give me the strength to destroy my foes once and for all!”

  “Of course, dear Sarya, of course,” Malkizid said. “You will find that I am generous with my gifts.” He reached down with one taloned hand and elevated her chin. “Now rise. I require you to offer me a token of your loyalty, if you will. And it may be instructive to Xhalph to witness your fealty.”

  Sarya climbed to her feet and looked up into the pale marble face of the archdevil. Malkizid’s black eyes burned with a hot hunger that left little room for evasion. Even though her hands shook with rage, she began disrobing in submission to her lord.

  CHAPTER NINE

  9 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

  Storms swept through Tasseldale late in the afternoon, deluging Tegal’s Mark with sheets of rain and a spectacular display of summer lightning. But as the afternoon faded toward dusk, the thunderheads marched off to the southeast, and the heavy rain slackened. In the evening, when Ilsevele and the rest of the Crusade’s embassy climbed into the carriages waiting to take them to the Sharburg, Fflar slipped away with the aid of a potion of invisibility.

  He found Elgaun Manor a quarter-mile or so from the center of the town. The road climbed up a wooded hill past a small shrine to Chauntea, and the manor house stood at the hilltop. Fflar passed through a small, unguarded gate of wrought iron that marked the lane leading to the manor. He noticed that his invisibility potion was beginning to wear off as he approached the manor. Good, he thought. Let Terian wonder how he had slipped away from the Markhouse.

  He climbed a short flight of stone steps to the manor’s front door. It was a handsome house of native fieldstone, with a broad veranda framed by great dark beams of Cormanthyran hardwood. He’d asked about the Elgauns during the day. They were a wealthy Sembian family from Yhaunn who often summered in the Dales.

  I doubt that it’s the Elgauns I’m here to meet, Fflar decided.

  He set his hand on the door and pushed it open. A shadowed foyer stood within, tastefully appointed with several fine paintings. He could make out a staircase leading up to the second floor, and various anterooms and parlors opening from the front hall.

  “Terian?” he called softly.

  No one answered him. Frowning, he started forward into the room … but then he heard a faint creaking sound from the shadows under the staircase.

  Bowstring!

  Quick as a cat, he threw himself backward out of the doorway, where he stood silhouetted against the evening sky outside. Bows snapped and sang in the darkness, and arrows pelted at him. One stuck quivering in the door not five inches from his face, a second hissed past his ear and sailed out into night, and a third struck him on the right side of his chest—but bounced from the shirt of mithral mail he wore under his tunic. A slower man would have died in that doorway, but Fflar was just quick enough to spoil the unseen archers’ aim.

  Cursing savagely, he yanked the door shut behind him. Arrows thudded into the wood of the other side. “Stupid, stupid,” he muttered. “You walked right into that one!”

  Now what? He could make a run for it and reach the cover of the manor wall. Or he could sidle around the side of the house and head away in an unexpected direction. But whatever he did, he would have to do it quickly.

  Make it something they’re not expecting, he decided. With one swift motion he drew Keryvian. He counted to four, and he threw open the door and leaped back into the hall.

  He found himself face-to-face with two drow archers, hurrying up to the door with bows in hand. The dark elves halted in astonishment, fumbling to draw and shoot. Fflar threw himself at the first archer and cut him down with a great overhand swing of Keryvian that struck sparks from the marble floor after laying the assassin open from collarbone to groin.

  The second drow backed up two steps and shot. Fflar tried to spin out of the way, but the arrow caught him high in the left arm. The range was so close that the archer drove the shaft completely through mail, flesh, and mail again, transfixing Fflar’s arm. Fflar cursed and stumbled, but he finished his spin within sword reach of his foe and skewered him through the middle with a single deadly thrust. The dark elf groaned and slumped to the ground.

  Drow? What in the world are drow doing here? Fflar leaned over the dying archer at his feet. “Who sent you?” he demanded. “Who are you working for?”

  Stealthy footsteps rushed up behind him. Fflar whirled and raised Keryvian just in time to block a murderous thrust from a third drow, who snarled in frustration and launched a furious attack. The fellow was armed with a slender rapier, and his swordplay was blindingly quick. Keryvian was really too heavy to fence with, especially with a wounded arm, and Fflar narrowly avoided at least three deadly thrusts in the space of as many heartbeats.
/>   “Die, lightwalker!” the drow hissed. He launched another vicious thrust at the center of Fflar’s belt buckle, but Fflar turned aside and let the rapier’s point glide past him, slicing a neat furrow in his tunic. He was far too close to make use of Keryvian’s point or edge, so he simply smashed the baneblade’s pommel into the drow’s face. Teeth shattered and bone crunched. The swordsman staggered in his tracks, until Fflar took his head off with a backhand swing.

  Panting in the shadows of the manor, Fflar looked around for any more assailants, but none appeared. Before he could think about it, he set down his blade and snapped off the arrow shaft in his arm. Then he yanked it clear and threw it to the ground, stifling a ragged cry of pain. He hoped it wasn’t poisoned. Drow knew more about poisons than anybody had a right to.

  “Another kind of assignation, indeed,” he muttered. If he ever got his hands on Terian, he’d wring her pretty neck.

  Three dead drow in an empty manor—a manor he was lured to, specifically at this very time. Why in the world would drow want him dead? Of course, they had to be working for Terian, that was a given. Or she was working for them. But for what purpose? He stood silent for a moment, trying to puzzle it out, and it came to him.

  “Damn it all to the Abyss,” he snarled. “Ilsevele!”

  Without another thought he rammed Keryvian back into its sheath, then turned and dashed out into the evening. In the lane outside, he reached into his vest pocket again and found another potion bottle. Ilsevele had insisted that he should be prepared for almost anything before setting out for his mysterious appointment, and so she had given him several of the more useful potions she and the others had brought from Semberholme. Fflar took a moment to make sure he had the right one and drank down its contents. Then he leaped up into the air.

  The magic of the potion carried him up into the sky. Whooping in surprise and sudden panic, Fflar spun wildly in midair and nearly landed even quicker than he had taken off, but then he got the hang of it. In a matter of moments he was arrowing over the rooftops of Tegal’s Mark, streaking toward the Sharburg.

  Treetops and streetlamps streaked by under him. Fflar saw a handful of people in the streets below look up in amazement, pointing and shouting as he sped past. The roaring of the wind in his ears drowned out their words. It might have been wiser to try to circle the town or perhaps fly a higher, slower arc, but he was beyond such concerns. If the Sembians didn’t like him flying over the town, they could damn well take it up with him after he was certain that Ilsevele was safe. His arm burned and tingled, blood flowing freely from the arrow wound, and Fflar found his vision beginning to swim drunkenly.

  It’s just the potion, he told himself. Flying is too much for the senses, especially after you lose a little blood. But his arm ached and burned with a strange cold sensation that he didn’t like at all.

  “Fight it off a little longer,” he snarled at himself. “A little longer.”

  The towers of the Sharburg loomed before him, and he saw the high windows of the banquet hall where Selkirk had received them before. He angled down and swooped in at the castle, flashing across the battlements so swiftly that the sentries walking there could only stare dumbfounded. Then he threw his arms up over his face and barreled through the nearest of the windows in a shower of breaking glass. He glimpsed dozens of Sembians, Ilsevele and her guards, even a quartet of musicians, all frozen in amazement. Then he overshot them all and slammed into a vintner’s table, sending bottles and fine glass flying everywhere.

  “What in the world—?” Miklos Selkirk snarled. He surged to his feet, his hand leaping for his sword hilt.

  “Starbrow!” cried Ilsevele. She stood too, and started toward him.

  Fflar’s vision reeled from side to side, and he hurt all over. But somehow he found his way to his feet. “Ilsevele,” he groaned. “It’s a trap! A trap!”

  Ilsevele whirled around, seeking a threat. Around her, Sembians and elves scrambled to their feet, all looking wildly from side to side. She turned to Selkirk to demand an explanation—and behind her, the quartet of musicians calmly set down their lutes and bitterns, and raised deadly wands instead.

  Fflar threw himself into motion, racing crookedly across the floor. The musicians were simply too far, but he launched himself headlong toward Ilsevele just as the assassins barked their commands and unleashed a storm of fire and lightning in the crowded hall. He managed to fling her to the floor as a brilliant blue-white bolt burned through the air where she had been standing, charring his back instead. Hot white agony seemed to pick him up and throw him down again, leaving him contorted on the hard stone floor. Screams of panic and mortal agony filled the air, amid the angry roar of searing magical flame and the deafening crack! of lightning bolts exploding in the elegant hall.

  Ilsevele picked herself up and drew a wand of her own from the sleeve of her beautiful gown, now torn and blackened. She aimed it at the nearest of the assassins and cried out, “Elladyr!”

  A coruscating bolt of white energy shot out and caught the fellow in the center of his chest, flinging him head over heels through the smoking wreckage of the bandstand. The others responded with another barrage of spells that wreaked even more carnage in the hall. “Defend Lady Miritar!” Fflar croaked. He rolled to all fours and shook his head to clear it of the ringing and the dizziness. It didn’t work, but he planted one foot on the ground and levered himself upright, drawing Keryvian. The banquet hall was nothing less than screaming, smoke-wreathed pandemonium, the equal of any battlefield he had ever set foot on. Several of the Sembian lords, led by Selkirk himself, rushed the bandstand and struck up a furious melee with the surviving assassins.

  Ilsevele whirled and fired her wand again, this time at a crossbow-wielding sniper who appeared on one of the upper balconies overlooking the hall. The thundering lance of white energy smashed the balcony to pieces, dropping the fellow to the floor below in a cascade of rubble.

  Fflar turned, looking for any other threat, just in time to see an assassin dressed in the livery of a wine steward stealing up behind Ilsevele, a wavy-bladed dagger in his hand. But the young captain Seirye, so badly burned and charred that he couldn’t even hold a blade in his gnarled hands, simply lurched into the knife wielder and held him up for a crucial moment. The blade flashed once, then twice, and Seirye sank to the floor, still clawing at the killer’s tunic. But the young elf’s valor was not in vain. Before the knifeman could pull himself free, Fflar staggered over and took his arm off at the shoulder with one wild, off-balance swing.

  “Drow! They’re drow!” cried one of the Sembians.

  Fflar glanced down at the man he’d just downed, and saw the magical guise slip away with the assassin’s death. In place of a round-faced, unremarkable human, an ebon-skinned drow with red eyes lay staring sightlessly up at him.

  “I could have told you that,” he muttered to no one in particular.

  Keryvian rang shrilly on the stone floor. He looked down, surprised that he had dropped the blade. He leaned over to pick up the sword, but lost his balance entirely and crumpled to the ground beside his blade. Fight it! Fight it! he raged, trying to find the strength to push himself upright again. But all he managed to do was roll weakly onto his back. He found himself looking up at the proud banners that hung in the upper part of the hall, now burning merrily from the fireballs and lightning bolts that had been loosed in the attack.

  The hall seemed to fall silent. The ringing of steel on steel faded, and no more thunderbolts or roaring blasts of flame split the smoke-filled hall. The battle was over, and a dozen drow warriors lay scattered here and there on the floor, still dressed in the tatters of their disguises.

  “Starbrow! Starbrow!” Ilsevele rushed up to him and fell to her knees at his side, grasping his hand in hers. Tears streaked her face. “What happened? Are you hurt? What’s wrong?”

  “Arrow in the arm,” he managed. “I think … I’ve been poisoned.”

  “You saved me,” she murmured. “Just
like the time you faced the ghost in the vault. You saved me again, Starbrow.”

  “I couldn’t let you get hurt, Ilsevele,” he said. He was so tired … all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sleep. “I couldn’t bear it.”

  “I know.” Ilsevele smiled through her tears, and she leaned over him, her hair of fiery red cowling her face and his, and kissed him deeply, passionately, her hands cupping his face and lifting him up to her. “Stay with me, Starbrow,” she whispered between her kisses. “Don’t die, not now! Stay with me.”

  Somehow he found the strength to reach one hand up to her face, to caress her perfect face and brush away her tears. Then he laced his fingers in her hair and gently pulled her down to kiss her again, to feel her breath mingling with his, her lips warm and soft.

  “I won’t die,” he whispered to her. “I’ve found what I came back for.”

  Then he fell away into darkness, still lost in her emerald eyes.

  Araevin and his companions passed the night, such as it was, in a princely suite. Ornate lanterns of gold ringed the room, but the dim lanterns did little to push back the encroaching darkness outside, and nothing at all to alleviate the bitter cold. They eventually had to make use of the sleeping-furs waiting atop the great round beds, even though Araevin’s skin crawled at the dusty age of the covers. He couldn’t avoid the impression that he was wrapping himself in the cerements of the grave.

  After what seemed like an age in the dimly lit apartments, two of Selydra’s pallid warriors came for them. Araevin and his friends followed the Lorosfyrans through the long, echoing corridors of the palace for quite a distance. Shadows gathered in each doorway they passed, fleeing their light slowly and reluctantly. They came to a winding staircase and climbed up a floor, and their grim guides led them out into a courtyard of sorts. A tall white tree grew in a knurled knot of clawlike branches and leaping roots. Not a single leaf graced its sharp branches, but here and there dark red fruit like drops of blood gleamed in the darkness.