With a curt gesture of his dragon-clawed scepter, Maalthiir vanished from sight, and the swordsmen swept out their blades as one. Sarya bared her fangs and crooked her hands to cast a spell-but an instant later she was battered by a whole array of deadly magic, as Maalthiir suddenly reappeared, surrounded in a shimmering spell-shield. A scintillating blast of vibrant colors embraced her in magical destruction, sending sheets of crimson fire racing over her body, while at the same time a sinister black ray struck her over the heart like a spear of ice, draining life and power from her, and a dancing sword of emerald green energy appeared above her head and slashed at her with dizzying speed. Xhalph was struck by a yellow ray that sent crackling yellow lightning racing over his body, charring and stabbing him.
He froze time to cast all those spells! Sarya realized. The sudden assault filled her with anger beyond measure. The fires burning on her skin troubled her not at all. She was the daughter of a balor lord, and no flame could harm her, magical or otherwise. But the other spells were dangerous.
With a savage snarl, Sarya conjured an orb of hell-tainted fire and detonated it in her hands, scouring the whole room with the sinister flames. The cabinets exploded in shards of hot glass, and the Red Plumes were virtually incinerated before they even took a step. But Hardil Gearas threw himself into a corner and survived, and Maalthiir’s swordsmen, while scorched badly, did not even break stride or show the slightest reaction to the clinging hellfire that burned on them. Maalthiir himself stood unharmed, protected by his spell-shields.
“You will have to do better than that, Sarya,” he called.
Xhalph abandoned his magical guise with a roar of rage, instantly gaining two full feet in height as his scarlet-scaled form appeared. He leaped straight for Maalthiir, sweeping his swords out in one quick motion, but two of the pale swordsmen interposed themselves with uncanny swiftness. The daemonfey lord tried to simply bull his way through the unearthly guards, but their sword points darted and stabbed, drawing blood at thigh, hip, and shoulder before Xhalph even began his first parry. The daemonfey swordsman whipped around to confront one of the pair and drove four swords into the fellow at once, ripping the blades free with a shout of bloodlust-but nothing except strange black mist came from the wounds, and despite being almost ripped apart, the pale swordsman made no sound. He only staggered a bit with the force of the blows, and came on again, moving a little slower and more awkwardly as slashed tendons and rent muscle failed him.
Sarya found the other two swordsmen closing on her, while the blazing blade of green energy slashed and darted at her face. She quickly backstepped and managed to dispel the emerald sword before it did more than give her a couple of shallow cuts, but while she did that, Maalthiir intoned another spell, hurling a deadly blast of scathing cold at her. The thin white beam grazed her left arm and turned a solid foot of her forearm white and dead. Sarya screeched in pain, and nearly died on the sword point of the first of Maalthiir’s strange guardsmen to reach her.
Maalthiir cannot be beaten here and now, she realized. The First Lord’s Tower was the heart of his domain, and he had prepared for a fight, while she had not. As much as she longed to rip the human dog to pieces with her own talons, she risked destruction with every moment she remained.
“Xhalph!” she shouted. “The window!”
Xhalph wheeled away from his antagonists at once, and hurled his heavy form at the row of narrow windows along the wall. They were not large enough to permit him to pass, but Xhalph’s strength was immense, and he was caught up in the fullness of his wrath; nothing could stand in his way. Lowering his shoulder, he battered the lintel with such force that he sent a shower of masonry out of the tower’s side and burst through into clear air.
Sarya darted after her son, abandoning her human appearance in midstep. Swords slashed and hissed through the air only a step behind her, and Maalthiir’s last spell-a great, golden hand of magical energy that tried to snatch her out of the air-faltered and broke against the power of her demonic heritage, fizzling into nothingness. She spread her dark wings wide and soared away from the tower.
“I will tear him to pieces with my naked claws!” Xhalph bellowed, hovering in the air. “I will feed his entrails to rutterkin while he watches!”
“Yes, but not today,” Sarya snapped.
She caught hold of Xhalph’s hand and barked out another teleport spell. In the space of an icy instant, they hovered in the air above the green vastness of Cormanthor, with Hillsfar’s spires and towers dimly visible in the warm haze far to the north and east. Sarya glared at the distant city, her eyes glowing red with pure hate.
“I should have known better than to try to find a use for stinking humans,” she muttered. “Maalthiir thinks he is strong enough to defy me? He will learn otherwise. I will teach the humans to fear the wrath of House Dlardrageth!”
As he had promised, Nesterin Deirr led Araevin and his companions toward his home. They walked over silver-grassed hilltops beneath the open, starry sky, leading the star elf’s mount and Donnor’s packhorse. As they walked, Nesterin questioned them about their presence in Sildeyuir and their travels in the realm-though he was fairly courteous and indirect about it, so much so that Araevin doubted whether any of his companions other than Ilsevele noticed that they were being skillfully interrogated as they walked.
Araevin decided to turn the tables on their host after Nesterin succeeded in drawing out of Maresa a good account of their meeting with the Simbul’s apprentice and their journey through the Yuirwood. As the company fell silent for a moment, he asked, “What were those monsters you were fleeing from, Nesterin? We saw several others like them in the forest.”
“They are the nilshai, and as you have seen, they are formidable sorcerers. They haunt the lonelier stretches of our forests.” The handsome star elf glanced toward the dim line of trees, a dark tide washing against the hills by starlight, miles behind them. “It does not surprise me that you met them on your way here. They have been trying to poison our realm for many years now, loosing monsters in our forests and pulling the outlying reaches of Sildeyuir into their own sinister realm.”
“Where do they come from? What do they want with you?” Ilsevele asked.
Nesterin shook his head. “We do not know. Some of our sages say that the nilshai are creatures of the Ethereal Plane, the spectral reality that infuses all the rest of existence. But Sildeyuir was disjoined from the Ethereal when our mages created this domain long ago. I cannot fathom why they would go to such lengths to bore gates into this realm, when the daylight world that you all come from is far more accessible to them.”
“These things are even closer to our world than they are to yours?” Maresa asked. She shook her head. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“What business did you have in the forest we passed through?” Ilsevele asked Nesterin. “It seemed to be wild and desolate. You are the first person we’ve seen since crossing over from Aglarond.”
The star elf was slow to answer. Araevin glanced over his shoulder at Nesterin, who was leading his horse as he walked alongside the rest of the company. The mage wondered for a moment whether Nesterin intended to keep his errand a secret, but it seemed that the star elf was simply organizing his thoughts.
“I had ridden out to the seat of House Aerilpe, where my cousin Leissera has lived for many years,” Nesterin began. “It is a strong tower far to the south, overlooking the Shimmersea that marks the bounds of our kingdom in that direction. The nilshai have always been strong in that region, and their taint has filled vast tracts of the forest there with strange and dangerous creatures-things like plants or great funguses, but alive and hungry, and monsters to suit.