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  “Lady S-Sarya,” it hissed. “I have f-found the enemy commander-r. He stands th-there, a hundred yards from the s-standard.”

  The creature extended one filthy talon to point at a spot in the enemy center.

  Sarya leaned closer to peer in the direction the demon indicated. The day was growing brighter, and while her orcs would not like that much, it was becoming easier to descry detail at a distance. She could see a small number of paleblood elves behind a strong line of Evereskan guards. Spell shields sparkled and glimmered over them. At the very least, there were some accomplished clerics and mages among that group.

  “That will do,” she decided. “I want those elves torn to pieces. Let’s see if that disheartens the defenders a bit.”

  The vrock bobbed its vulturelike head. It flapped down to the high hillside below, where a great and terrible company of demons and yugoloths—vrocks and hulking, toadlike hezrous, skeletal babaus, and huge, gargoyle-like nycaloths—waited for Sarya’s command. Each one of the infernal creatures on the hillside could teleport itself, appearing out of nowhere to maim and rend. At the head of the company towered the glabrezu Grushakk, a terrible monster the size of a storm giant, with four arms and a canine face whose eyes glowed red with malice. Grushakk looked up to Sarya, who flung out her arm to indicate the direction of the prey.

  “There!” she cried. “If you cannot find the commander, slay any mages you see.”

  Grushakk howled in glee, and clacked his pincers together.

  “Rise!” the demon hissed. “Now we slay!”

  The other demons stirred and spat. The glabrezu barked out his commands, and the demon company vanished in a ragged volley of teleportation.

  Sarya wheeled on Mardeiym and said, “Pass the word to left, to right, and to center: Press now! We want to keep any help far from those the demons attack. This is our chance.”

  Seiveril studied the battle from the small prominence he’d chosen for its view over the Cwm. Since the elven army had formed ranks near the eastern end of the vale, directly before the Sunset Gate, they held land that was generally higher than that their attackers had to cross to reach them. Not only did that provide the elf archers and mages with good fields of fire, it also slowed the rush of orcs and ogres, and it gave the elf commanders a good view of the entire battlefield.

  A strong company of fey’ri swooped down over the Vale Guards directly in front of him, hurling their darts and blasting with deadly spells. Seiveril groaned as new gaps appeared in the ranks, elves falling to their knees with heavy javelins piercing shoulders and chests, others hurled limply through the air by jabbing forks of lightning or turned into living torches by gouts of evil fire. But the archers standing behind the infantry raised their bows and sent a storm of arrows skyward, even as the daemonfey climbed again to avoid the missiles. Fey’ri staggered in midair as arrows tore through them, spinning from the sky or simply crumpling and dropping.

  “Jerreda doesn’t seem too busy over on the left,” he said to Starbrow. “Let’s get some more of her archers over here to help cover our infantry against those damned fey’ri.”

  “I concur,” Starbrow said. He called a runner over. “Find Jerreda on the left flank and ask her to send one hundred archers back to the center.”

  The messenger repeated the message back to ensure that he had it right, and dashed off toward the steep forests surrounding the tarn on the south side of the Cwm.

  Seiveril looked toward the right. Lord Muirreste’s mounted elves were hard-pressed, as well. The knights and lighter cavalry were much less numerous than the horde of orcs and ogres attacking them, but the open ground of the Cwm favored them. As long as they stayed in motion, the fey’ri had a hard time hitting them with any kind of massed magical assault. He wanted to send Muirreste some help, but he didn’t know if—

  “Demons!”

  In the space of three heartbeats dozens upon dozens of demons and yugoloths, crackling with sinister magic or stinking of brimstone, appeared all over the hillside surrounding Seiveril. Even though he had been expecting it, Seiveril was paralyzed with horror for an endless moment.

  So many of them! he thought. So many!

  “Vesilde!” he called. “Vesilde!”

  He wheeled to look for Vesilde Gaerth’s knights, just as the demons struck out with their vile sorcery. Demon fire and destruction blasted the hilltop. Dozens of elves died at once, consumed by foul flames, scoured by unholy power, or hurled like broken dolls by the invisible might of demonic magic. Seiveril endured two searing waves of fire that scorched him even inside his enchanted elven plate. A mighty telekinetic buffet sent him hurling through the air. He picked himself up slowly, and looked up to find a hulking nycaloth rushing at him, its great claws as long and sharp as daggers. Seiveril just had time to raise his shield before the creature was on him, roaring with rage.

  The nycaloth’s claws scored his armor and almost wrenched his shield away, but Seiveril crouched low and held on while he found the haft of his silver mace with his right hand. He surged up and counterattacked, smashing the holy weapon at the nycaloth. He caught it with a glancing blow across the shoulder, but the mace detonated with a pure, white light that charred a great black scar in the nycaloth’s flesh. The fiend screeched and reeled back, and Seiveril used the space he’d bought to quickly shout out a spell, dispatching the creature back to its infernal home.

  He turned, searching for another foe, and found himself looking up at three massive hezrous, demons the size of ogres, with wide, toadlike mouths full of needle fangs and huge, powerful talons. The monsters croaked and scrambled toward him.

  “Kill the cleric,” they snarled. “Break his bones, and suck the marrow. Rip his heart out!”

  The fearsome stench of the things gagged Seiveril. He went to one knee, trying to keep from losing his stomach as the monsters closed in. The hezrous hissed in glee and moved closer, their jaws gaping wide.

  Then from one side Fflar Starbrow Melruth leaped in among the monsters, his sword Keryvian glowing like a shining white brand too bright to look at. He hewed off the arm of the hezrou closest to him, the sword slicing through demon flesh with a pure ringing sound. The monster roared in pain and tried to recoil, but Starbrow followed closely and rammed the point of the long sword deep into the hezrou’s side, taking the monster under the ribs and stabbing it through its foul heart. The ancient magic of the weapon burned everything inside the hezrou’s ribs to a foul gray ash, and smoke poured out of the demon’s wide mouth as it collapsed.

  The second hezrou raked at Starbrow with its huge claws, but the moon elf ducked beneath the blow and rolled up under the demon’s guard. He took off its left leg at the knee as he passed by. The demon toppled, black blood pouring from the wound, but snapped and clawed at Starbrow even as it fell. The elf champion danced back out of reach, and darted in to bury Keryvian’s point between the hezrou’s eyes. Again the sword flashed with its terrible white light, and another demon lay dead.

  The third demon wheeled to face the threat of Keryvian, turning its back on Seiveril.

  “I will take that sword from your dead hand!” the creature snarled.

  It hammered Starbrow with a blast of unholy power, staggering him, but Seiveril hurled himself at the demon’s back and smashed the base of its spine with a mighty blow of his holy mace. The hezrou shrieked and threw its arms up in the air, toppling forward—and Starbrow took its head with his white sword.

  Seiveril looked over the bodies of the hezrous to Fflar and said, “My thanks, friend. You saved my life.”

  Fflar offered a smile and replied, “It only seems fair. Here, stay close by me. You watch my back, and I’ll watch yours.”

  Seiveril glanced around at the furious battle. Elf bodies lay everywhere he looked, but many demons had fallen with them. Straight ahead, the Seldarine Knights of the Golden Star advanced with the sunrise behind them, gleaming like titans of gold as they battled against the foul tide. And to his right Ilsevele, Araevin, and t
heir friends fought a terrible glabrezu. Ilsevele sent arrow after arrow into the creature’s torso, while Araevin hammered at the monster with powerful spell blasts, and the cleric Grayth warded them all with his divine spell shields.

  “There!” Seiveril called to Fflar. “The glabrezu!”

  Fflar nodded and dashed off down the hillside, leaping down at the monster. Seiveril followed, only a step behind. The towering, dog-faced demon seized Grayth in one of its pincer hands and began to squeeze the armored human in its grasp, but then the genasi Maresa darted in and skewered its hamstring with her rapier. The monster roared and batted her away with a backhand slap of another arm—and Fflar and Seiveril were upon the monster. Fflar laid open its thigh with two great cuts of his sword, while Seiveril smashed its kneecap with his holy mace.

  “I will destroy you all!” the demon rumbled.

  It hurled Grayth aside and reached for Fflar. Then a silver arrow lodged in the side of its neck, and black blood foamed through its mouth. The demon groped closer, catching Seiveril with a weak blow that the cleric easily parried with his shield, and it collapsed facedown in the heather of the hillside.

  “Well met, Father,” said Ilsevele. She hurried forward, her bow still in her hand. Seiveril winced when he saw that she limped badly, blood streaming from a long cut on her hip. Araevin’s cloak was tattered and singed, and the human Grayth was slow in picking himself up from the ground. “How are we doing?”

  “We’re still holding,” Seiveril managed.

  He looked around to see what had happened while he had been busy fighting for his own life, and he was surprised to see the daemonfey army falling back. Those demons who had survived the fray on the hilltop vanished one by one, teleporting away from the charge of the Knights of the Golden Star. The surging tide of orc warriors and marauding ogres retreated as well, their charge finally arrested by the terrible losses to bow, spell, and sword. Even the fey’ri overhead were falling back, unwilling to engage the elven army without the savage tribes of orcs to divide the elves’ attention.

  Maresa followed his glance.

  “Actually, I’d say you’ve held,” she observed. “Damn, but was that a fight!”

  Fflar turned to Seiveril, clapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Congratulations, Seiveril. You’ve won your first battle.”

  Seiveril looked out over the carnage of the elven lines. He felt weary beyond words, weary enough that a breath of wind would be sufficient to carry him to Arvandor. With the sounds of battle fading into a few isolated clashes of steel and occasional spells instead of the deafening crescendo of a few minutes before, he could hear the piteous cries of the wounded and dying—elf, orc, and ogre alike—over all the battlefield. He looked down and noticed that his armor was spattered with blood.

  “Have I, Starbrow?” he said quietly. “Because if I have, I don’t know how many more battles we can afford to win.”

  At the end of the day Seiveril summoned Araevin, Ilsevele, and their companions to the post he had picked out for his standard, a simple guardhouse close by the Sunset Gate. In peaceful times it had served as a watchpost and a place for a dozen or so of Evereska’s soldiers to stand guard over the path leading from the West Cwm to the Vine Vale. It had come to serve as the center of a sprawling field hospital. Hundreds of wounded elves lay beneath light shelters quickly raised to protect them from the elements. Several strong companies of knights and mages stood guard in case the daemonfey decided to mount a raid against the wounded.

  None of Araevin’s companions had been seriously hurt, so they had spent their day combing the battlefield for elves whose lives might still be saved by a cleric’s spells or a potion of healing, while standing guard against a resumption of the fight. But the daemonfey had retired all the way to the Sentinel Pass, hard pressed by Muirreste’s cavalry and Vesilde Gaerth’s Golden Star knights. They did not mount another attack, though Araevin suspected that they might try the gate again under cover of darkness, when the orcs were not exposed to the daylight they so detested.

  They found Seiveril working among the wounded, Starbrow standing guard over him. As a powerful cleric of Corellon Larethian, Lord Miritar knew much of the healing arts. Even though he had long since exhausted any healing magic he could muster, he still used his knowledge and lore to do what he could for the wounded. Seiveril looked up from the injured wood elf he’d been tending and offered Araevin and Ilsevele a weary smile.

  “Ah, there you are,” he said. “I am glad to see that you’re all in one piece. Too many of our folk have fallen today.”

  “How bad is it?” Araevin asked.

  “More than we can bear,” Seiveril said. He stood and showed them out of the shelter, leading the way as they walked back toward the stone watchpost. “So far we’ve counted over five hundred dead, and at least that many wounded seriously enough that they’ll need a cleric’s spells before they can fight again. And we lost some irreplaceable leaders, as well.”

  “Who fell?” Ilsevele asked, visibly steeling herself.

  “Celeilol Fireheart died in the first rush, standing at the head of the Leuthilspar spearmen. He was hacked down by a band of orc berserkers. The bladesinger Haraeth Echorn was slain by demon fire. Geren Festryth was torn apart by trolls.” Seiveril sighed. “Jorildyn tells me that we lost almost twenty of our mages and spellsingers, and you well know that they are worth their weight in gold. And I just learned that Elvath Muirreste died an hour ago, pursuing the daemonfey horde on the shoulders of the Sentinel. I never imagined such a disaster.”

  They reached the small stone building, and Seiveril threw himself down on a plain wooden bench in the guard post, his head in his hands. The others followed. Araevin sank down with his back to the wall, too tired to stand any longer. He watched Seiveril, head bowed in grief, and glanced at Ilsevele and Grayth.

  Grayth watched the elf commander, and took a breath.

  “Each death is terrible,” the human cleric said, “but you have not fought in vain, Lord Miritar. You repelled the daemonfey horde, and you inflicted grievous losses against them. Thousands of orcs and ogres and such lie dead in the Cwm, and we destroyed dozens and dozens of the demons and fiends who came against us. And you brought down many of the fey’ri, too. Your enemy is far less pleased with the day than you are.”

  “I’ve tried to explain that to him,” Starbrow observed, standing with his shoulders to the doorframe. “Seiveril doesn’t want to see it that way.”

  “All who died here, died because they answered my call!” Seiveril snapped, ire in his face. “I bear the responsibility for each of them. If I—”

  “Did you summon the Evereskans to fight in their own defense?” Ilsevele interrupted. “Did you bring the daemonfey here? If you had not launched your crusade, Father, Evereska would even now lie under siege, surrounded by the whole of the daemonfey army. Warriors from Evermeet have laid down their lives to protect the innocents of Evereska. It is a terrible price, but our dead do not begrudge this victory. You should not either.”

  Starbrow looked at Seiveril, and stepped up to grip the elflord’s shoulder with one hand.

  “Seiveril,” Starbrow said, “trust me when I say this: You did nothing wrong today. This is the cost of defending our homes and our lives from those who would take them from us. It’s a hard cost, but the only thing more awful than a battle won is a battle lost. Give thanks for that much.”

  Sensing it was time for the subject to change, Araevin asked, “What did you want to speak to us about, Lord Seiveril?”

  “I want to know more about this enemy,” Seiveril said. “This is a war that is just beginning. I want to know where they came from, and why they’re here. I suppose we’ve fought them to a stalemate today, and perhaps we may have the strength to drive them out of the Sentinel’s pass and repel the daemonfey from Evereska. But even if we do that, I still don’t know how to finish this war. What blow can I strike to mortally wound this foe? I am not content to chase the daemonfey into the wilds of th
e North and scatter their orc allies.”

  “How can I help you?” Araevin asked. “Whatever it is, I will do it.”

  “You know more about the daemonfey and their designs than anyone,” said Seiveril. “I think that your telkiira are at the bottom of this mystery. Unravel the story of the lorestones, and you will learn something about the daemonfey that they are desperate to keep hidden from us. I want you to continue your quest for the next loregem, and find out what it is that they are hiding from us.”

  “Are you certain you do not need me here?” Araevin asked. “We’ve lost many wizards, and I can stand spell-for-spell against any sorcerer the fey’ri have revealed so far.”

  “Of course your spells would be useful, but no one else has studied these loregems, and I cannot stand the thought of abandoning them to the daemonfey. The telkiira are important, I know they are.”

  Araevin glanced at his companions. He met Ilsevele’s eyes, and she offered a slight nod. He looked to Grayth, who shrugged in his heavy armor.

  “If this is the deadliest blow we can strike against the daemonfey, I am all for it,” the cleric said.

  “What about you, Maresa?” Ilsevele asked. “You are under no obligation to stay with us.”

  The genasi crossed her arms, tossed her head, and replied, “I’m not likely to leave now, am I? I want to see how this turns out, or I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what in the Nine Hells was in that third gemstone.”

  “Rest for tonight in Evereska,” said Seiveril, “and leave in the morning.”

  “But what if the daemonfey attack again?” Araevin asked.

  “We’ll hold them,” Starbrow promised. “We will have to.”

  CHAPTER 14

  1 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms

  At the dawning of the day after the Battle of the Cwm, Araevin and his companions rode out of Evereska, heading north into the rugged heart of the Shaeradim. The third telkiira glimmered in Araevin’s consciousness like a lingering daydream or a few notes of a familiar song that refused to be forgotten. When he closed his eyes, he could sense the gemstone, feeling its direction and closeness just as he might feel the sun on his face with his eyes closed and know whether it was a bright or cloudy day. From Evereska it lay north and somewhat west, and based on his experience in following the second telkiira’s pull from Waterdeep to the Forest of Wyrms, he knew it was far off.