High magic, he thought. Of course! Tessaernil said as much. The plane of Sildeyuir was called into being by high magic.
He couldn’t even begin to imagine the difficulty and precision of the high magic ritual that had called a whole world into being, but the evidence was before his eyes. He tore his gaze from the faint silver vault of flowing magic that filled the sky and shaped the ground, and looked again at the gray stream of dust.
It was a crawling black gate, a ghostly portal that flickered and shifted beneath the mist. And it was growing. Whatever it touched was consumed, taken out of Sildeyuir to some other place. When the mist dissipated, its contents might return-or they might not. Like a great boring worm, the mist was chewing its way through the homeland of the star elves, devouring the magic and the very existence of the plane itself.
“Corellon’s sword,” Araevin whispered.
“Well, what do you see?” Maresa asked.
“You did well to turn away from the mist,” Araevin answered. “It’s a portal to another dimension, and if I am any judge of such things, not a dimension you would want to visit. We will have to avoid any such rivers we come across.”
“That will become more and more difficult the farther we venture from Sildeyuir’s heart,” Nesterin warned. “In the farthest reaches of the realm, there is nothing but this cursed mist.”
They turned their horses from the road and climbed up the side of the dell, simply circumventing the silver-gray pool roiling across the road. But as they continued on their way, they began to meet with more and more of the glimmering streams. Sometimes long tongues or arms of the mist seemed to shadow their path, twisting through the trees and glades of the forest beside the road. Other times pools or streams blocked their path, forcing them to detour away from the road and feel their way forward through the forest. The woodland fell ominously silent, with not a hint of birdsong or animal movement. Araevin realized that most of the forest creatures had long since abandoned the mist-haunted districts of the forest, seeking more wholesome environs.
At the end of Sildeyuir’s dim day, they made their camp atop a small knoll in the forest. Araevin had observed that the silver mist tended to cling to low-lying areas, and it seemed prudent to seek a camp in some high place so that they would not be overcome while they rested. When they rose in the morning and studied their surroundings, they found that the knoll afforded a good view of the country around them.
A great gulf of silver-gray mist lay only a few miles away, carving its way through the forested hillsides like a fog-shrouded arm of the sea. Other inlets and channels glinted in the bright distance ahead and on all sides, as if they were approaching a sea coast of sorts.
“It’s closing in behind us,” Jorin murmured, looking back the way they had come. “I don’t know if we could retrace our steps.”
Araevin followed the Yuir ranger’s gaze, and saw that large parts of the road they had passed along in their travel of the day before seemed to have been swallowed by the pearly streaks. He steeled himself and turned back toward the land ahead.
“We will find a way through,” he told Jorin. “I know some spells that may help.”
They broke camp quickly, unwilling to risk being stranded on the hilltop, and continued toward the edge of the realm. During the last hour of their ride great arms of silver-gray nothingness came to surround them on either side, so that it seemed that they were riding along a low, treacherous peninsula jutting out into a misty sea. Small patches and pools of mist began to appear in the road and in the woods to either side, slowly growing larger and more frequent as they pressed on, until they met and merged together. Finally they came to a place where they simply could go no farther. Ahead of them lay nothing but endless silver-gray mist, cold and perfect.
They halted and stood still for a time, looking out over nothingness. Finally Araevin shook himself and looked over to Nesterin.
“How much farther to Mooncrescent?” he asked.
The star elf looked around, studying those landmarks that hadn’t been swallowed yet. “Five miles, I think. But there’s no other way through. It’s gone.”
Araevin stared at the mist, and remembered the pure shining fountain he had seen in his vision many days and long miles before. The Nightstar was cold and hard in his chest, a dull aching weight that seemed to transfix his heart. He could almost hear Saelethil’s mocking laughter, as this strangest of all obstacles checked his path toward high magic and the knowledge he needed to contest Sarya Dlardrageth’s power in Myth Drannor.
I am not about to let Saelethil Dlardrageth laugh at me, he told himself.
Without glancing at his companions, he dismounted from his horse and began to undo the animal’s saddle belt.
“Araevin? What are you doing?” Ilsevele asked.
“The horses are terrified of the mist,” he said. “We can’t take them in there.”
“To the Nine Hells with the horses!” Maresa snapped. “We can’t take us in there!”
“Nevertheless,” Araevin said, “I am going forward. I ask no one else to come with me.”
The rest of the company stared at him for a long moment, and Ilsevele slid wordlessly from her saddle and began to remove the harness from her own horse. A moment later Donnor Kerth and Jorin followed suit, and Nesterin as well. Finally Maresa swore and swung herself down from the horse.
“You’re all mad,” she snapped. “This is the worst idea I’ve heard in a long time!”
“I know,” Araevin said. He tossed the saddle into the grass at the side of the road, and patted his horse’s neck. “But it’s the only one I have right now.”
The First Lord’s Tower gleamed above the thin blanket of mist, smoke, and lanternlight that pooled in Hillsfar’s streets. Despite the late hour, the city was not entirely asleep. The distant sounds of raucous shouts and bawdy singing drifted from those taphouses that were still open, apprentices worked to keep ovens and kilns stoked in workshops that needed their fires throughout the night, and folk were already rising to go to bakeries and smokehouses and begin their work for the morning. Squads of Red Plume guards patrolled the streets and kept watch from the battlements of Maalthiir’s keep.
Sarya Dlardrageth looked over the rooftops of the human city and bared her fangs in a malice-filled smile. She’d spent days preparing her counterstroke to Maalthiir’s treachery. Through her mastery of Myth Drannor’s mythal she had summoned hundreds of yugoloths and demons to her banner. She commanded the allegiance of scores upon scores of Malkizid’s devils, outcasts from the Nine Hells who followed the Branded King. Gathered around her was a small horde of infernal monsters: demons and devils stronger than ogres, and invulnerable to anything other than magic spells or enchanted weapons. Some were armed with fearsome claws, fangs, and stingers, others with brazen swords and cruel axes forged in the fires of the pit, and each of them was capable of summoning scathing blasts of hellfire, blinding, choking, or stunning their foes with words of evil power, or calling on even more terrible supernatural powers. And close beside her were three hundred of her most dangerous fey’ri warriors, skilled sorcerers and swordsmen who could fight with blade or spell with equal adeptness.
Maalthiir, the First Lord of Hillsfar, was about to wake to a city far less peaceful and secure than he’d imagined.
“Slay every soul you find in the First Lord’s Tower,” Sarya called to her fiendish horde. “Then tear it down and set the city afire. Now fly, my warriors! Fly!”
With a thunderous beat, Sarya’s fey’ri warband leaped into the air as one. Those demons and yugoloths that could fly followed her fey’ri warriors, while the others simply teleported themselves directly to the battlements of Maalthiir’s citadel. With the swiftness of a stooping dragon Sarya’s winged warriors arrowed over the stout city walls, streaking toward the high tower gleaming in the moonlight.