Then the darkness swallowed him.
Araevin sat cross-legged on the floor of Morthil’s vault. The great tome of the star elf archmage lay open on his lap, but he no longer looked at it. The telmiirkara neshyrr was upon him, and having begun it, he was powerless to draw back. Of their own accord the endless passages and phrases of the rite tumbled from his mouth, and the air of Morthil’s library trembled with the magic he had unleashed.
Some small part of him wondered how long he had been engaged in the reading, how much time had passed since he had spoken the words Morthil had learned from Ithraides and left for others after him to find. With each word he felt his power, his strength, his vitality draining away, dissipating like frost misting away on a winter morning, leaving him empty, hollow and aching. He could not bear to continue another moment, and yet he realized that if he halted there he would not survive.
He pressed on, repeating the ancient prayers and supplications of the spell, even as his strength began to fail him and his chin drooped toward his chest.
I cannot stop, he told himself. I must not stop.
Yet even though his will was firm, his words began to slur, and his voice dropped to a mumble. He felt like a cold cinder, a graying coal reduced to nothing but an empty shell of ash.
Softly, slowly, he slumped to the mist-wreathed floor. It feels as though I’m falling asleep, he thought. Falling asleep with my mind awake. Am I dying?
He knew that he should care about dying, that he had great things to do and friends who needed him, but Araevin had no determination left to fend it off. He had lived long and well, he had traveled the world and left it a better place than he had found it. What was there to fear?
He surrendered to the soft gray blanket that was stealing over him. Darkness hovered within, strangely close and warm, but then he sensed a growing light. He felt a presence approaching, coming to him through the dark. It was a woman, radiant and beautiful, an elf in shape and features, yet incandescent with the power contained in her form.
He looked up to her, and saw her with his own eyes. She was a creature of starshine and wonder, a fey queen whose eyes shone like the sun. There was light and affection of a sort in her face, but there was something more besides-a terrible strength and willfulness that awed him. She was magic made flesh, the sudden power of the storm, the capriciousness of the wind, the delight of the ancient stars.
“An eladrin,” he whispered. I have called a queen of the Court of Stars, a high lady of the fey lords!
She stooped over him, her eyes stern, and laid a hand on his forehead. Her touch was frigidly cold.
Few have spoken the words you have spoken this day, she said with her eyes alone. Is this truly what you wish, Araevin Teshurr?
“It is what I have to do,” he answered, his breath as faint as candlelight.
There is nothing that you have to do, she said. That is the gift of the gods to mortals. To complete the telmiirkara neshyrr is to surrender something precious beyond words.
He looked into her eyes, as brilliant as suns, and did not flinch.
The fey queen seemed to sigh. You will learn the price of your power, Araevin, she told him. But this, too, you are free to choose.
She leaned down and kissed him, her lips soft yet bitterly cold, and she breathed into his mouth a single whisper of breath.
Radiance, warmth, and life poured into his heart. He drew a great breath, and felt his soul kindle in unbearable fire. Yet it did not harm him, and it did not diminish. In the space of a dozen heartbeats the fire within had spread to the tips of his fingers and the bottoms of his feet, until it felt as though his entire body was a single sheet of steel-hard flame, dancing and flowing and burning and yet frozen into the shape of an elf.
He looked at the white lady in wonder. “What have you given me?” he asked.
It is not what I have given you, Araevin Teshurr. It is what I have taken away. She smiled sadly, and her eyes glimmered. You will count this a great gift for now, yet you will also know regret.
Then she vanished, fading away into golden light and leaving him alone in Morthil’s ethereal sanctum.
Morthil’s great tome was lying beside him, closed.
Araevin lay there for a long moment, trying to understand what it was he felt. Then, slowly, he pushed himself upright. He glanced up at the ethereal walls of Morthil’s vault, and realized that he could see the threads of magic, the warp and woof of the Weave, woven with skill and care thousands of years ago. He reached out to touch a wall, and watched as his fingertips caused a ripple in the flowing magic just as a child might start a ripple in a still pool by brushing his fingers over the water.
Despite himself, he laughed out loud in delight.
He noticed that his fingertips seemed to glow in his mystic sight. Frowning, he drew his hand close to his face and studied it. Veins of magic pulsed beneath his skin, intertwined with his own blood. His flesh was possessed of an unmistakable radiance. It was still his own hand, warm, alive, and feeling, yet it was changed. Like a fine golden foil it served to indicate his shape and form, but it was delicate, paper-thin, nothing but a hollow shell of magic in which his sense of self existed.
Is this in my mind? he wondered. Only a perception of the rite’s completion? Or have I really… changed?
He decided that he simply could not encompass what had happened during the telmiirkara neshyrr, not at that moment. In time he might make sense of it, weigh the words of the eladrin queen, sort out the strange sense of self and detachment he felt mingled in his own body, but he could not do it now. He could only continue on this desperate course, and finish what he had started. There would be time to comprehend and reflect later.
Araevin drew the Nightstar from his breast and held the gemstone in his hand. In his new vision he could hardly stand to gaze on the device, so great and dire was its power; it blazed like an amethyst fire in his hand.
Is this what Kileontheal and the others saw when they looked on the Nightstar? he wondered. Or have I gained powers of perception that even other high mages do not share?
He frowned, and effortlessly he hurled his consciousness into the gemstone, descending down through its lambent depths like a falling meteor. He sensed the vastness and the purpose of the thing, just as he had before, but this time he retained his bearings. He arrowed straight for the heart of the gem. The Nightstar no longer held the power to overwhelm him.
“I am coming, Saelethil,” Araevin said, and he bared his teeth in challenge.
Ilsevele studied the oppressive gloom that smothered the ancient hall, and shuddered. The air was hot and rank, and she felt a cold sick sense of danger beneath her ribs. The place was perilous; she could feel it, and she knew that the others sensed it as well. They’d beaten off two more nilshai incursions in the time since they’d entered the place, but above and beyond the danger posed by the alien sorcerers infesting the place, the nilshai world itself was dangerous. The longer they remained, the deeper they seemed to sink into the darkness, even though they hadn’t moved from that spot for hours.
I fear that retracing our steps back to Sildeyuir will prove harder than finding our way to this tower, she thought.
“How much longer will Araevin need?” grumbled Maresa. She glanced over at the revolving spiral of faint white light hovering in the room’s center. They’d tried several times to follow Araevin through the door, but apparently they lacked something the portal required. “He’s been in there too long! I want to get out of this place.”
“Unless the nilshai return in overwhelming force, we will remain here and guard Araevin’s back,” Ilsevele said. “He is counting on us, Maresa.”
The genasi snorted and returned her attention to Ilsevele. “What if he’s stuck in there, and can’t get out? What if it’s a one-way gate? How long do we give him before we leave?”