The Siege (13 page)

A distant thunder began to roll over the horizon from the direction of the Forest of Wyrms. Laeral assigned her battle mages to ground defense, then took her hippogriff riders into the air to establish a protective screen fifty paces ahead of the shoreline. The thunder grew into the unmistakable roar of pounding boots and growling voices, but the rain clouds were so thick that Laeral couldn’t see their enemies even from a hundred feet above the ground.

The roar grew steadily louder and passed underneath her. Laeral dropped down until she saw first the hazy darkness of land, then thousands of oblong boot prints simply appearing in the mud. Someone had turned the entire army invisible, and that meant phaerimm—probably several of them.

She aimed her palm at the front rank and spoke a few syllables of dispelling magic, and a ten-yard circle of charging bugbears appeared no more than thirty paces from the shoreline.

Several of the battle mages raised their hands in spellcasting, and a mile-long wall of flame rose up to devour

the first rank of bugbears. Most fell where they stood, but hundreds of the beasts stumbled forward, roaring in pain and raising huge double-headed axes as they staggered toward the thin line of mages. The first Uthgardts were already splashing ashore to meet the beasts, but the mud was deep, they were few, and time was short.

Laeral pulled a nugget of coal from her spell pocket and flew low in front of the burning bugbears, crumbling the coal into powder and uttering a complicated incantation. The ground turned black and viscous beneath the charging beasts, miring them to their knees, then to their waists and, as they continued to struggle, their chests. Wherever their flaming bodies came into contact with the black sludge, it began to burn as well, and the band was soon filled with roaring scarecrows of orange flame.

At the end of her attack run, Laeral rose into a storm of sling stones and hand axes. None of the attacks penetrated her shielding magic, but the sheer volume was enough to slow her ascent. She turned and found herself staring out over a sea of bugbears and gnolls, all visible the moment some had begun to attack. Pushing through the horde were small bands of beholders and tentacle-faced illithids, coming forward to punch holes in the magic defenses holding their masses at bay.

Of the phaerimm who controlled the army, Laeral saw no sign at all. It was even possible that the illithids and beholders themselves did not know where the creatures were or even that they were there. The phaerimm delighted in using their magic to make other beings do their will, and often the victims were not even aware they were being controlled.

A chorus of shouts drew Laeral’s attention back to the flood-swollen river, where two flights of beholders were bobbing in from the flanks to attack the raft line. She

flicked a finger over her thumb ring to activate its sending magic. She pictured the craggy face of the leader of her hippogriff scouts and thought, Aelburn, they’re trying to take the rafts from the flanks.

As you predicted, Milady, came Aelburn’s reply. We’ll turn that against ‘em.

Aelburn’s mount voiced a series of sharp screeches that caused the scouts to divide into two groups and wheel around to dive on the two flights of beholders from behind. Laeral watched the gray sky to be certain that no phaerimm emerged from the clouds behind her scouts. A tempest of crackling and booming exploded over the river as the mages and clerics on the rafts began to fling spells at the attacking beholders. An instant later, the sound was joined by the screams and shrieks of drowning warriors as the creatures responded with disintegration rays and death beams. Hippogriffs started shrieking and crossbows clacking, and bodies from both sides began to splash into the water.

When Laeral turned back to the main battle, the first beholder was already at the wall of fire, spraying a green ray from its huge central eye and slowly dispelling the magic that had kept it burning. She pointed her fingers down at the creature and tore it apart with ten golden bolts of magic. The battle mages filled the gap with a new curtain of fire even as the first bugbears pushed forward to exploit it, but a dozen beholders more were already floating up to spray the flames with their magic-killing rays.

Laeral pulled a pair of wands from her belt and flew down the line, flinging bolts of magic with one hand and forks of lightning with the other. The nearest beholders died before they could open a breach, but those at the far end extinguished huge swaths of flame, and bugbears and gnolls poured through by the dozens. They were

met by storms of fiery meteors and dancing chains of lightning, but the battle mages could not stop them all. The meager bands of Uthgardts were forced to meet them at Laeral’s tar trench, and all too often it was the barbarians who fell. More warriors were rushing up from the second and third waves of rafts, but with the raft convoy still under attack from the beholders the flow would soon stop.

Laeral finished her run and took out the last of the beholders—then turned and found another two dozen assailing the fire wall behind her. She started down the line again and felt a mental jolt as an illithid tried to blast her with its mind numbing powers. Her thought shield held firm against the assault, but she knew it would only be a matter of time before the creature had one of its beholder companions turn its magic-dispelling ray on her and tried again, and that would work.

She would have to call her sister … again.

“Storm.” Laeral did not bother to use magic. Like all the Chosen of Mystra, when Storm’s name was spoken anywhere on Faerűn, she always heard it, and the next few words. “Need help. I’m in—

Laeral was still speaking when Storm appeared, reeling from teleport afterdaze and plummeting toward the ground. Laeral barely caught hold of her wrist in time to keep her from falling into the morass of bugbears and gnolls clamoring to get past the fiery wall below.

“If you’d have let me finish,” Laeral said, rising above the range of the bugbears’ slings, “I would have said ‘in the air.’”

“By the bleeding stars, where do they find so many brutes?” Storm asked, getting her bearings and staring down on the horde below. Having been warned about the crossing, she was fully armed and armored. “No help from Shade this time, I see.”

“The Shadovar may have better things to do than look after me,” Laeral said. “That doesn’t mean they’re betraying us.”

“Doesn’t it?” Storm activated her own flying magic, then drew a pair of wands and cocked her brow. “Heard from Khelben yet?”

“The Shadovar didn’t have anything to do with his disappearance.” Laeral pointed her sister toward the opposite end of the battle line, then added, “They weren’t even here, yet.”

“One of them was,” Storm added. “Do you think we ought to call some more sisters?”

“Absolutely not,” Laeral answered, diving toward her own end of the battle. “You’re bad enough.”

They spent the next quarter hour flying back and forth over the battle lines, blasting beholders and illithids with magic from on high, occasionally resorting to more powerful magic like sunburst spells and incendiary clouds when they fell behind and the enemy creatures broke through in numbers larger than the battle mages could stop. Once, Storm was caught in a beholder’s antimagic ray when an illithid mind-blasted her, and Laeral had to use time-stopping magic to rescue her. After being restored to capacity by one of Tempus’s war clerics, Storm returned the favor twice, once enclosing Laeral in a protective sphere of scintillating colors and the other time creating a magic hand that beat would-be attackers away until she arrived to carry her sister to safety.

Eventually, they simply ran out of beholders and illithids to kill. Laeral’s plan for defeating the flank attacks against the raft convoys also worked, and the bugbears and gnolls were forced to stand idle while the relief army hauled itself to shore behind its protective wall of fire. The sisters knew by the simple fact that their

monstrous foes remained to fight that there were still phaerimm somewhere in the horde, but they also knew that the creatures would be careful not to reveal themselves in the presence of Mystra’s Chosen. The special weapon of the Chosen, silver fire, was one of the few forms of magic that was sure to harm thornbacks, and the creatures were nothing if not cautious.

Once the last of the rafts was across, Laeral and Storm descended to join the commanders of each of the different companies in a war council. It was raining harder than ever, their warriors were exhausted from the crossing, and their foes were both fresher and stronger. On the other hand, they had a slight advantage in numbers and a large advantage in magic, and Laeral felt confident they could carry the day.

Though the wall of flame was a good twenty paces behind her, Laeral could feel its heat chasing the dampness from her rain-soaked clothes.

“What do you think, gentlemen?” she asked. “Attack now or rest the night behind our wall of fire and take the battle to them in the morning?”

“We elves will be no fresher in the morning,” said Lord Yoraedia, who commanded Evermeet’s five hundred warriors and mages. He glanced at Laeral with an unmistakable expression of scorn, then turned to the black-haired leader of the Black Lion Uthgardts, Chief Claw, and said, “I cannot imagine that even your tribesmen would sleep well this night.”

Claw shrugged. “Sleep or not, it is nothing to us,” he said, “but night favors the yellow hides and the walking dogs. We will take more to the death fires with us by attacking before dark.”

Uncertain whether she was more surprised or alarmed by the fatalism in their voices, Laeral scowled and started to rebuke the commanders—then caught

herself and forced a smile.

“You gentlemen are letting the weather cloud your judgment,” she said. “There are two of Mystra’s Chosen here. Do you really think we can be defeated by a few thousand gnolls and bugbears?”

“You? No,” Chief Claw replied, waving his hand vaguely in the direction of the army, “but the rest of us are not Chosen. The rest of us will die.”

Laeral heard a nervous murmur building in the ranks but ignored it and kept her attention focused on the commanders.

“Even Chosen die,” she said, “but this army is not going to die—not today.”

“Forgive me if I find your judgment somewhat clouded,” Lord Yoraedia said.

“Clouded?” Laeral was growing angry—and the rising murmur in the ranks was not helping matters. “In what way is my judgment clouded?”

“You fear for your man.” Chief Claw glanced over his shoulder, then looked back to Laeral just as she found herself clenching her fists to keep from doing something she would regret. “Your devotion does him honor, but it blinds you to our danger.”

Laeral felt as if she had been struck. Yoraedia, Claw, all of the commanders were looking at her as though they truly believed she had led them all to their deaths for Khelben’s sake alone.

“I am not the blind one here,” she said. “If you can’t see—”

“Laeral, wait,” said Storm.

She pointed upriver, to where a flight of dozens of huge, scaly wings was just appearing out of the rain. They were as large as sails and blue enough to show their color in the gray light, and even had the sisters never before seen a Rage of Dragons, they would have

known what was coming by the sight of so many fang-filled mouths.

Storm said, “Maybe they have a point.”

Through the world-window in Telamont Tanthul’s palace in Shade Enclave, the dragons looked like an expanse of blue sea shining up through a hole in the clouds, their great wings undulating like waves, their blue scales flashing like light on water—all but the leader. The leader was naked bone, with blue embers gleaming in the empty eye sockets of its skull and claws large enough to grasp the heads of even its biggest followers.

It could only be Malygris, the foolish blue who had traded his soul to the Cult of the Dragon in order to slay his hated ruler, Sussethilasis, and claim for himself the title of the Blue Suzerain of Anauroch. Though Galaeron had never met the dracolich himself, the younger blues who came to the edge of the desert to feed on tomb thieves and their horses often made a show of defiance by speaking of their suzerain’s folly. They were not too rebellious, though—several of the smallest wyrms in the Rage were the very ones who had taken such delight in deriding their ruler to Galaeron.

A tilted plain of brown appeared before the dragons, with an orange half-circle of fire lighting the top edge and thousands of tiny flecks blackening the surrounding ground. Galaeron recognized the specks as warriors, but he didn’t identify the brown plain as a river in flood until a few moments later, when the diving dragons drew near enough for him to see the current pouring over a barn’s roof.

Galaeron focused his attention on the fire wall, and the specks resolved themselves into two armies. The greater

one, composed of larger figures as well as superior numbers, was being held at bay by the crackling wall of fire. The smaller army was trapped against the river, with a flotilla of log rafts beached on the muddy shore behind them and the much larger army in front of them. They were, by all appearances, aware of the dragons swooping down behind them, for their orderly ranks were dissolving into chaos, bleeding into the river or bunching against the wall of fire.

The image in the world-window began to grow blurry and coarse, with wisps of shadow closing in around the edges. Galaeron focused his attention in the center of the panicking army, where a small knot of figures stood looking up toward the dragons in relative calm. The world-window struggled to obey his will, but whatever was interfering with it was too powerful. He glimpsed a pair of women with familiar faces and long silver tresses, a frightened Gold elf, and a black-bearded, blue-eyed Uthgardt barbarian. Then the image became an unrecognizable blur and the shadows rolled in, and there was nothing but darkness.

A cold and familiar stillness settled over Galaeron. He turned and found the platinum eyes of Telamont Tanthul shining out at him from beneath his shadowy cowl.