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  “Kneel, paleblood dog!” growled one of Araevin’s guards. The elf mage was shoved to his knees, as were his companions. “Grovel before your queen!”

  “Go to hell,” Maresa snapped, but she was quickly hammered to the ground by three or four cruel kicks and blows.

  “Well done, Nurthel,” the woman said. She gazed at each of them before fixing her emerald eyes on Araevin. “I am Sarya Dlardrageth, and you will be my guests for a short time. The comforts of your visit are largely up to you. Now, who are you?”

  Araevin briefly considered a sullen silence, but given the way Maresa had been mishandled, it seemed likely that the daemonfey would eventually compel him to speak. He decided to save his resistance for something that mattered.

  “Araevin Teshurr,” he said, his jaw still aching from Nurthel’s open-handed slap.

  “And your companions?”

  “So you are the Dlardrageths,” Araevin said. “You have survived all the long centuries since Siluvanede’s fall … and no one knew. Where are we?”

  Sarya snorted softly and said, “You forget who is asking the questions.” She glanced at Nurthel. “Has he opened the third stone?”

  Nurthel shook his head, then he produced the telkiira from a hidden pocket and carried it to Sarya’s divan.

  “Good,” said Sarya.

  Sarya examined the gemstone closely, turning away from her captives.

  Over her shoulder, she said, “Since you have not told me who your companions are, Araevin, choose one of them to die—the human dog or the planar mongrel, I don’t care. If you don’t pick, I’ll kill them both.”

  “Wait!” cried Araevin. He indicated them with a nod of his head. “He is Grayth Holmfast, a cleric of Lathander. She is Maresa Rost. And this is Ilsevele Miritar.” He drew a deep breath, and fixed his eyes on Sarya’s back. “You’ve won. You have your damned telkiira. The others had no part in this affair. I asked them to join me in recovering the stones. Let them go, and you can do as you will with me.”

  Sarya laughed aloud—a husky, predatory sound—and said, “Why, Araevin, I believe I will do with you as I please, regardless. You have little to bargain with.”

  “They’ll most likely kill us anyway, Araevin,” Grayth growled. “There isn’t much point in trying to spare us any trouble.”

  “I thought I heard a dog barking,” Sarya remarked.

  Nurthel turned at once and snapped a vicious circle kick to Grayth’s chin, smashing the cleric to the floor. Grayth groaned once and lay still, knocked senseless by the blow.

  In spite of his determination to endure whatever petty malice the daemonfey chose to inflict, Araevin surged to his feet before the demons behind him caught his shackled arms and hurled him back down to the cold, marble floor.

  “Get on with it, then!” he snarled, spitting blood from his mouth. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it.”

  “Ready to die already?” Sarya laughed.

  Araevin simply glared at her. The daemonfey queen arose and paced near. She leaned down close to him, and held the green-black gemstone before his face.

  “Don’t you want to find out what is in this third stone,” Sarya teased, “and puzzle out the little mystery Philaerin left for you, the old fool?”

  Araevin glanced up, despite himself. Sarya smiled and drew away, her sharp nails gliding across his cheek.

  Araevin forced himself to say, “If Philaerin had lived, you never would have found any of the telkiira.”

  “That is not entirely true, paleblood. The second and third stones we never would have found without your help. But the first stone … that one belongs to me. I took it from Kaeledhin more than five thousand year ago, and I gave it to Nurthel to conceal on Philaerin’s body once he’d killed the high mage. I knew that some enterprising young fool just like you would find it and seek out its sisters.”

  Araevin looked at her blankly. He couldn’t make sense of it. The daemonfey had the stone, and hid it in the stronghold of their enemies? Were the telkiira some form of insidious trap? Had the daemonfey manufactured them to destroy Philaerin? It explained how the daemonfey found him so quickly with their scrying spells and anticipated his efforts to find the stones. In fact, they had likely prepared the telkiira with enchantments that would make its bearer easier to find. He felt sick.

  “You spied on me, waiting for me to find each stone. They are sealed against you.”

  Sarya paced away again, pausing to study Ilsevele before nodding in approval.

  “A fine-looking girl,” said Sarya, looking at Ilsevele. “I should give you to my son. We need more Dlardrageths.” Ilsevele’s face paled, but she refused to look away from Sarya until the daemonfey turned back to Araevin. “Yes, they are sealed against us. You can open the telkiira, but we cannot. Before my imprisonment, I spent years trying to open Kaeledhin’s key with no success.”

  Araevin shook his head, horrified. All his efforts since the raid on Tower Reilloch had played directly into the hands of the daemonfey queen.

  Ilsevele drew herself up and looked Sarya in the eye.

  “What are the stones for?” she demanded. “Why are they important?”

  “We were betrayed,” Sarya hissed. “The telkiira are the key to redressing many wrongs. My family was destroyed by the Coronal of Arcorar and his High Spell-star, Ithraides. Only a few of us escaped from Arcorar.

  “Of all the heirlooms we abandoned in Arcorar, the greatest was the selukiira known as the Nightstar. High mages of my House preserved many of the old secrets of glorious Aryvandaar in its depths. After the Coronal of Arcorar destroyed my family, Ithraides discovered our selukiira in the ruins of our palace. He hid it away very carefully to make sure it would never fall into our hands again, but he recorded the hiding spot in these three telkiira you have helped us find.

  “During the days of my exile in Siluvanede, I searched assiduously for the Nightstar. With the secrets of the selukiira, I could remake Siluvanede in the image of glorious Aryvandaar, and take the throne denied my House for generations. I found Kaeledhin, and from him I extracted the tale of what Ithraides had done with my family’s heirloom. But I could not defeat Ithraides’ wards guarding the telkiira, and so I could not follow it to its fellows or discern the hiding place of the Nightstar.”

  “Siluvanede fell almost five thousand years ago,” Ilsevele said. She tossed her head and studied Sarya with determination. “Why wait for so long?”

  “Because my enemies buried my son and I in a forgotten tomb, and claimed that they were showing us mercy!” Sarya whirled away from Ilsevele and stalked over to Araevin again. She stooped and cupped his face in her hand. Her iron-hard nails dug into his flesh. “And that is where you come in, my paleblooded friend. We cannot use these telkiira, since they were made to deny us access. You, on the other hand, can read these stones and tell us where our heirloom lies.”

  “I will not help you,” he rasped.

  “I have waited five thousand years to come into my inheritance,” Sarya said. “I am not about to be balked by any inconvenient stubbornness on your part, paleblood.” She gripped his face until blood ran from the points of her fingernails. She leaned close to whisper in his ear, “You understand what I am capable of, I think. I will not harm you, not at first. But the things that will happen to your companions, they will be hard to watch. When shall we begin?”

  “Once I do as you ask, all our lives are forfeit. Now or later, what is the difference?” Araevin quivered with terror, but he kept his voice even and level. “If you let the others go, I will do as you ask. But I must know that they are safe before I cooperate.”

  “As you wish,” Sarya said. “I would love to explore the question of how much pain you could stand to inflict on your comrades. But it might take a little time to persuade you to cooperate, and I am out of patience.”

  She wove her hands in arcane passes, and began to speak the words of a spell. Araevin recognized it at once and steeled his will to resist. Sarya’s spell settled over
his mind, seeking to shackle his will to hers. Shadowy fingers seemed to creep into his soul, insidious as serpents, their merest touch enough to render him cold and numb. He bared his teeth in a fierce snarl and battled against the enchantment, refusing to buckle beneath the daemonfey queen’s sorcery.

  “Your will is strong. I should have expected that,” Sarya observed. She glanced at Nurthel. “Kill the human dog.”

  The fey’ri lord drew a dagger of black iron at his belt and strode over to Grayth. He knelt behind the Lathanderite and seized the semiconscious cleric by his hair. Araevin watched in horror, still battling against Sarya’s spell, as the fey’ri fixed his remaining eye on Araevin’s face and buried the knife in Grayth’s throat. Bright blood poured from the wound. Grayth’s eyes opened wide, and an awful gagging sound came from his mouth as blood drowned him.

  “Grayth!” cried Ilsevele.

  She wrenched herself free of the fey’ri gripping her shoulders and surged to her feet, only to be knocked down again. Maresa swore a vile oath and struggled as well, her hair streaming with her fury.

  Grayth’s feet clattered against the stone, and he shook, as if trying to free his bound hands. Then his eyes drooped, and he sank down to the cold marble, face down in the spreading pool of crimson. Nurthel jerked out the dagger, and held its bloody edge in front of him.

  “I’ve soiled my blade with a dog’s blood,” he complained. “I’ll never get the stink off it now.”

  Twenty years and more he has been my friend, Araevin thought. This is the end he comes to for leaving his temple and helping me.

  He thought of the sons Grayth had mentioned, and wondered how he could ever apologize to them for their father’s death. And that moment of black despair was all that Sarya’s spell required. As swiftly and surely as the fey’ri had clapped him in irons, the deadly shackles of the sorceress’s will enchained his mind.

  “That’s better,” Sarya said pleasantly. She looked to the demons behind Araevin. “Unbind him, let him stand. He is under my dominion.”

  The vrocks clacked and hissed behind Araevin, but they undid his fetters. He found himself on his feet, without knowing exactly how he had stood.

  “We could play some very entertaining games,” Sarya said. “I could command you to do terrible things to your companions … or to yourself. However, I must indulge myself another day.”

  Araevin stood motionless, unable to move his limbs. His thoughts were unimpaired—he reviewed spell after spell that he could hurl to blast Sarya and her minions or free Ilsevele and Maresa—but he could not join them to any action. Sarya took the third telkiira and placed it in his hand.

  “Decipher this stone, as you did the others,” she commanded.

  He held the telkiira up to his eye, helpless to do otherwise, and sent his mind into its dark depths, seeking out its secrets. As before, he spied a fearsome glyph in the gemstone’s facets, barring any deeper approach as surely as a rampart defended a castle. But he still remembered the name of the sigil from the vision he invoked in his workroom in Tower Reilloch, when he’d investigated the second stone.

  “Larthanos,” he whispered, and the telkiira opened to him.

  Information poured into his mind: glimpses of distant memories, arcane formulae, dazzling vistas of elven cities long fallen and swallowed by forest. Again he saw the scene of the moon elf Ithraides giving his three telkiira to his younger colleagues, and the image of the sun elf with the bright green eyes and the cruel smile, who contemplated a thumb-sized crystal of purple, its surface covered with intricate runes. Saelethil Dlardrageth, the Dlardrageth high mage, and the Nightstar, the telkiira’s frozen memories told him. Then Araevin’s vision whirled and shifted, as arcane formulae and complex patterns flashed before his eyes, the record of spell after spell contained in the telkiira.

  He recognized several of the spells, as he had before—a spell for seeking out hidden things, a spell to reflect an enemy’s spell back at him or her, a spell that would transfer one to a different plane of existence. And he viewed the mysterious spell, the one left incomplete in the first two gemstones. In his mind’s eye he saw the three parts of it merge, the missing symbols arranging themselves, organizing into a pattern he could decipher and recognize. It was unique, he could see that at once. It could only be cast in one place, for one result.

  It was the spell that would pass Ithraides’ wards.

  Araevin blinked, starting to lower the gemstone, but then his vision blurred again and a quick, final vision imposed itself on his sight. He glimpsed a spherical chamber of perfect white stone, in which the Nightstar hovered. Then he saw a mist-filled hall of silver pillars, and an old elven tower half buried by the forest. He sensed the tower, as if he followed the path of a lighthouse’s searching beam across dark and unseen waters to a distant goal.

  It still exists, he knew. And I know where it is.

  “Well?” demanded Sarya, calling him back to awareness. “Tell me what you have seen! Do you know where the Nightstar lies? Can you find it?”

  “Yes,” Araevin said. “It is buried in a stronghold in Cormanthor. I can show you where it lies, but you will be unable to approach it. Powerful wards will bar your entry.”

  Sarya’s face grew dark, and she whirled away, frowning. Araevin watched her fuming, wondering if she would slay him out of hand or perhaps indulge herself by murdering Maresa or Ilsevele first. But then Sarya halted, her eyes thoughtful. She turned back to him slowly.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Could you reach it?”

  “Saelethil’s High Loregem will destroy anyone not of your House who touches it. It would burn out my mind and take possession of my body in order to have itself carried to a suitable wielder, one of House Dlardrageth.”

  “But you could reach it and bring it out to us?” Sarya asked, her eyes avid and hungry.

  Araevin felt himself nodding, and was appalled.

  The Lost Peaks were aptly named. So dense was the forest cover on their lower slopes that the soldiers marching under Silverymoon’s banner could not see the mountaintops towering over them as they ascended the steep river valleys climbing up into the peaks. Every now and then a break in the trees permitted a glimpse of green, mist-wreathed mountains high overhead. The trail from time to time skirted a great mossy wall of stone or traversed a jumble of boulders and rubble that had slid down through the trees from the unseen slopes above. Even elves could not march swiftly over such rugged terrain.

  Methrammar led his horse a few steps from the trail to let his soldiers continue past. Dressed in his armor of mithral mail and forest-green cloak, he resembled an elf warlord of old. He waited for Gaerradh and Sheeril to follow him off the trail.

  “How much farther is Daelyth’s Dagger?” he asked her.

  “Seven miles. If we push hard, we can reach it tonight.”

  “Will your folk be there?”

  “I can’t be certain, but I think it’s likely,” Gaerradh replied. “It’s a deep dell, with old fortifications overlooking the valley floor. There’s a narrow trail alongside a swift stream winding between two huge shoulders of rock, so that any foe pursuing you must come single file along a treacherous path. It won’t discourage the fey’ri, of course, but they’ll have to leave their orc allies outside.”

  “Is there any exit?”

  “There is a hard trail at the top of the dell that climbs steeply up the valley head, leading to the higher slopes of the mountains. And there is a secret way through the caverns in the valley walls, leading to the neighboring valleys.”

  Gaerradh watched the soldiers march past, while Sheeril pranced anxiously about. The wolf was uncomfortable with so many humans and dwarves in her forest.

  “If there is any place to stand against an attack,” Gaerradh finished, “that is it.”

  Methrammar studied the sheer cliffs rising above them on their right, and the rugged slope falling away from the trail.

  “This will be hard ground to fight on,” he said. “Mounte
d troops will be useless, but the dwarves will like it well enough.”

  “Lord Methrammar!” A half-elf officer approached, walking back against the direction of the march, calling, “There is a party of wood elves here to speak with you, my lord.”

  “Bring them,” Methrammar called back.

  He and Gaerradh waited a few minutes and the officer returned, leading a small band of wood elf archers who trotted along the trail, mixing with their moon elf cousins from Silverymoon or slapping human soldiers on the back, grinning and laughing.

  Gaerradh recognized several and raised her hand, calling out a greeting of her own: “Well met, Silverbow! Fomoyn! It is good to see you!”

  Among the archers, she saw Morgwais, the Lady of the Wood, who wore the green leather of a wood elf ranger. Sheeril bounded up to Morgwais with a happy yip, tail wagging like a pup.

  “Well met, Gaerradh—and Sheeril,” Morgwais said. She ruffled the thick white fur of the wolf’s neck, one of the very few people who could try that without losing a hand. “I see you have brought us help from Silverymoon.”

  “Lady Morgwais,” said Gaerradh. She gestured to the Marshal at her side. “This is Methrammar Aerasumé, the commander of Silverymoon’s army.”

  “Thank you for your help, Lord Methrammar,” Morgwais said. “There are no words to express our gratitude. We need all the swords and bows we can muster.”

  “I only wish we could have brought more soldiers to aid you,” the high marshal replied. He bowed deeply to Morgwais. “Unfortunately, these daemonfey and their orc minions threaten Everlund and the towns of the Rauvin Vale as well as the High Forest. We had to leave a strong force behind to guard our homeland in case they turned north.”

  “Where are the fey’ri now?” Gaerradh asked.

  “Mustering at the Rivenrock, about twenty miles south of here. We’ve gathered the warriors of a dozen villages at Daelyth’s Dagger. We’ve already fought off one assault, which is why they’re drawing together now. They hope to overwhelm us at a place where we have decided to stand.” The Lady of the Wood looked over the Silvaeren company and said, “Lord Methrammar, I know your troops must be weary after such a long march and a bitter fight, but you must join us at Daelyth’s Dagger as soon as you can. The daemonfey will certainly try to cut you off and keep you from reinforcing us, and if their whole army came upon you here, it would go poorly for you.”