“I crave an audience with the Anointed Hand of the Black Lord, Lord Fzoul,” she said, bowing deeply.
Fzoul Chembryl smiled coldly, an expression that failed to warm the measuring malice in his hooded eyes.
“Such formality is hardly necessary between us, Scyllua. You are no mere novice or underpriest, after all.”
“We are all novices before the Great Lord Bane, Lord Fzoul.”
“Yes, of course. But you must take care, Scyllua, to avoid the sin of humility. The Great Lord demands abasement in the face of one’s betters, true, but he also requires us to govern absolutely those who stand below us in the grand hierarchy Bane has prescribed for mankind. To suggest that any novice or initiate is your equal in the eyes of the Mighty King of All is to deny Bane’s will.”
Fzoul inclined his head to the idol that towered over the shrine, and descended to the chapel floor.
“Yes, Lord Fzoul. I submit myself for correction.”
“I deem no more necessary-this time. Now, I doubt that you came here to seek my instruction on minor matters of the Black Lord’s tenets. I am going to take some air on the walls. Consider your audience granted, and join me on my walk.”
Fzoul strolled out of the temple into the citadel’s courtyard, pausing in the doorway to hold his arms outright while a pair of attendants quickly draped a heavy mantle over his garments to keep him warm. He paid them no mind, nor did Scyllua. “There is something very odd going on in Myth Drannor,” she began.
“There is always something odd going on in that dreadful elven wreck. It’s the nature of the place.”
Fzoul climbed slowly up a nearby stairway to the top of the wall, ignoring the fiercely cold wind. In the distance, long, knifelike peaks still held flanks full of snow. The High Priest of Bane paused to survey the view.
“I would not report a routine occurrence to you,” Scyllua said. “A few days ago, the wizard Perestrom of the Black Network came to me in Yulash. He told me that the ruins of the city are now occupied by an army of demonspawned sun elves. He guessed that better than a thousand of these creatures occupy the ruins, and he also said that a great number were competent sorcerers as well as swordsmen.”
“Demonspawned sun elves?” Fzoul asked. He pulled his gaze from the distant peaks.
“I rode to Myth Drannor to see for myself, leading a small company of trusted soldiers.” Scyllua possessed an unusual steed, a nightmare of ghostly white. The demon-horse could gallop through other planes at need, and gave her the ability to ride fast and far by strange roads indeed. “Perestrom’s observations were accurate. There is an army of these fellows gathering in Myth Drannor. I took the liberty of instructing the clerics and mages in my command to scry and divine what they could of this, and they gave me a name: the daemonfey.”
“Now that is interesting,” Fzoul said. He pulled on one side of his mustache, thinking. “You may not have heard, yet, but I have just learned that the elves fought some kind of fierce campaign in the Delimbiyr Vale over the last couple of months. Soldiers of Silverymoon were sent into the High Forest to confront orcs led by demonic sorcerers, and an army of demons appeared near the ruins of Hellgate Keep and marched south into the trackless mountains where the elven city of Evereska is reputed to lie. A great battle was fought on the Lonely Moor only a few tendays ago.”
Scyllua nodded. The Delimbiyr Vale was more than five hundred miles distant, but Zhentarim spies and merchants were firmly established in the towns of Llorkh and Loudwater, which were not too far away. And Zhent agents had a way of gathering rumors from the savage races of the North, the orcs and goblins and such. If elf armies were marching around in the wilds of the Graypeaks, the orcs would have noticed.
“Were these daemonfey involved with that, my lord?”
“Our sources passed on stories of demon-elves and such, but I had frankly discounted them. But now… hearing of demonspawned elves twice in the course of only a few days, I am much less inclined to treat this as groundless rumor.” Fzoul resumed his pacing, his hands clasped before his chest. “So you say they are in Myth Drannor. What is the significance of an army in Myth Drannor?”
“It menaces any of the northern or central Dales,” Scyllua replied. “It serves as a check on any designs that Sembia or Hillsfar might have in the region. And it certainly might constitute a threat to our own holdings on the south shore of the Moonsea.”
“They are enemies of the elves. That suggests they are no friends of the Dalesfolk.”
“There is something more. Perestrom also claimed that these daemonfey had the allegiance of the devils of Myth Drannor.”
Fzoul frowned deeply, and continued his walk along the ramparts, passing guards posted along the imposing walls. No enemy was likely to approach the citadel unseen, so the sentries were little more than ornamentation, but Scyllua approved. Discipline and regimentation were the foundations of an army’s strength, and soldiers inured to onerous duties in times of peace would not balk at them in times of war.
“How many devils are there in Myth Drannor?” he wondered aloud. “One hundred? Two hundred?”
“There could be many more than that, if they have been keeping their true strength a secret. And baatezu are certainly clever and patient enough to conceal their numbers if it suits their purposes.”
The lord of Zhentil Keep halted suddenly, looking sharply at his high captain. “I had not considered that possibility.” He glanced off toward the south, as if he might catch a glimpse of the distant elven towers, forest-mantled. “Could this herald the beginning of a fiendish invasion of the Dales? Infernal hordes have brought down more than one kingdom in Faerun.”
“Myth Drannor itself was destroyed by such an invasion six hundred years ago,” Scyllua observed. “At least, powerful fiends captained that army. If they appeared in Cormanthor once, it could happen again.”
Fzoul grinned fiercely and struck one gauntleted fist into the other. “North of Myth Drannor lies Hillsfar. South, east, and west lie sparsely settled Dales. Any way a fiendish army in Myth Drannor turns, one of our enemies stands in the way. If we stood by and did nothing, we could hardly help but to profit from our enemies’ discomfort. How much more could we gain if we actively sought to turn events to our advantage?”
“You have a plan, my lord?” Scyllua asked.
“I will soon,” Fzoul promised. “I want you to march an army to Yulash, and be prepared to strike east toward Hillsfar or south toward the Dales, as events demand. In the meantime, I must seek Bane’s will in this matter. Opportunities such as this do not come along every day, and I want to be certain of the mark I’m shooting at before I loose my bolt.”
Araevin protected the portal in the mountain fortress with a powerful spell of sealing, just to make sure that the daemonfey would find it difficult to make use of the portal nexus even if they managed to somehow repair or restore the damaged gate at Myth Drannor. Then they gathered up for burial the body of the dead human mage whose ghost had attacked them, and returned to Myth Glaurach, four days after they had set out to chart Sarya’s portal network.
Starbrow went at once to report their findings to Vesilde Gaerth and the other captains of the Crusade. Weary and wounded, Araevin and the others trudged back to the ruined shell that had been set aside for their campsite, shucked their packs and armor, and tended to their injuries with spells of healing and restoration. Then they went in search of hot baths, eventually finding the city’s old bathhouse down in the main body of the elven camp. Though little more remained of the building than its pools and its crumbling walls, the forest that had grown up in and around the city roofed the bathhouse well enough, and elves had arranged several screens for privacy. The pools had been cleaned and filled with fresh water, well-heated by stones kept warm in a big brazier nearby. Araevin parted from his female companions and enjoyed a long, hot soak in the pool set aside for men.