CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
3 Flamerule, the Year of Lightning Storms
The horrors of the last two days and nights had hardened Seiveril to death in a dozen gruesome forms, but at last he looked upon something that he could not bear. Not caring who saw him or what they might think, he staggered to his knees and covered his face.
“Ah, Corellon! How have you allowed me to fail your people so?” he cried.
Demons had fallen on a small company of wood elves- his wood elves, the merry band from Evermeet’s forest who had followed him to Faerun with such pluck and bravado-and flayed alive all they could catch. Seiveril stood in the center of the carnage, sickened by the sound of flies buzzing thickly around the dead and the mewling cries of those the demons had chosen not to kill. Starbrow let him grieve for a time, standing close by with Keryvian naked in his hand in case the demons returned. Over the past few days Sarya’s infernal hordes had struck again and again, hammering at the Crusade as the army of Evermeet fought its way back toward Mistledale to rejoin Vesilde Gaerth. They were still ten miles from Ashabenford, but the smoke of the town’s burning streaked the eastern sky.
Starbrow looked at the place where a handful of Seiveril’s soldiers had fought and died alone, with no help at hand, and shook his head.
“Gods, what a scene,” he murmured. Then he trudged over and set a hand on Seiveril’s shoulder. “Come, my friend,” he said wearily. “We cannot stay here any longer. The demons may return to attack our healers, and we cannot afford to lose any more clerics. Or you, for that matter.”
“I have led us into disaster, Starbrow,” Seiveril said. “My pride brought these wood elves to this place, and my stupidity killed them. How can I bear to live?”
“The measure of a general does not lie in victory, Seiveril. It lies in defeat. To continue after the worst has happened is hard, but if you do not lead us from this place, no one will.”
Seiveril remained motionless, giving no answer. But then he slowly came to life again, and he nodded once. “If only we had been closer…”
“Frankly, Seiveril, it is a miracle you have kept the army together as well as you have,” Starbrow said. “Many have fallen, yes. But many have lived, too. We are not defeated yet.” He looked around at the bloodstained clearing, and the gray-cloaked healers who worked silently among those who could still be helped. “Come. You can do nothing more here.”
Seiveril followed Starbrow to the far side of the clearing, where Adresin and the rest of Seiveril’s guard waited with their mounts. They climbed up into their saddles and rode away, passing through a narrow belt of trees before emerging into the open fields and groves of the Dale proper. The weather had warmed quickly since the fight at the river, and the day was hot and humid. Seiveril could smell a thunderstorm gathering in the air. Doubtless Sarya’s demons would strike again in the storm, falling on some other part of his harried army to maim and kill and burn, melting away before he could bring them to battle. That had been the way of it for days.
“We should join up with Gaerth and the companies we left here soon,” Starbrow offered. “That’s almost two thousand bows, plus many of our best champions. Even Sarya’s demons will be deterred by that.”
Seiveril suspected that the moon elf was speaking simply to set Seiveril’s mind on something other than the horror back in the clearing, but he allowed his friend to pull his thoughts to a new course.
“Vesilde has had an easier time of things than we have,” he admitted.
The knight-commander had done as Seiveril had asked, giving ground instead of fighting. His footsoldiers had retired south and west down the Dale, covering the flight of the Dalesfolk and surrendering Ashabenford to the oncoming Sembians. Had the Sembians wanted to, they might have overrun the whole Dale with the help of the Red Plumes, and forced Gaerth to fight, but they had not moved farther into the Dale in days, and Seiveril could not fathom why.
Seiveril rode closer to Starbrow and lowered his voice. “There is something I need to know,” he asked. “In the last days of Myth Drannor, when the Army of Darkness roamed Cormanthor… Was it like this?”
Starbrow did not look at him. He kept his eyes fixed ahead, gazing on the smoke from the burnings in the distance. “Yes,” he said with a sigh. “Yes, it was like this. The orcs, ogres, and gnolls outnumbered us badly, yet we could have defeated them regardless of numbers. But not while legions of demons fought against us too.”
“I was afraid you would say that.”
Starbrow shrugged. He had always been reluctant to speak of his long-ago life in the days of Myth Drannor. “It’s harder than you might think to pick your wars. The ones you least wish are the ones you often have to fight.”
“I picked this one, didn’t I?”
Starbrow halted and set a hand on Seiveril’s reins, pulling the elflord around to face him. Seiveril’s horse nickered in protest but turned.
“Sarya Dlardrageth picked this war, Seiveril. If you hadn’t decided to stand up to her, she would have sacked Evereska and burned half of the North in her wrath. You answered the call to arms, yes. But that does not mean that you chose this fight.” The moon elf looked into Seiveril’s face, and after a moment he released the elflord’s reins. “If it’s any comfort to you, Sarya is not happy with her choice of enemies. She thought she was making war on a scattering of isolated wood elf settlements and a city weakened by a war against the phaerimm. She did not plan on you, my friend, and that is a cause for hope.”
Seiveril considered that as they rejoined the column of weary elf soldiers who marched across Mistledale’s open fields like a river of dusty steel.
“So what do I do now?” he asked Starbrow.
“Withdraw,” the moon elf said. “We don’t have the strength to move on Myth Drannor, and there’s no point in staying here. The folk from Mistledale have fled to the southern parts of the Dale. We’d be defending empty farmland.”
“I can’t bear to turn my back on Myth Drannor, not when we’re this close.”
“What do your auguries tell you?”
Seiveril looked sharply at Starbrow. He hadn’t realized that his friend knew the extent to which he had relied on his prayers and spells of guidance during the campaign.
He sighed and said, “This is not the hour to march against Myth Drannor, and disaster awaits us if we stay here. But I can’t see what follows from this, Starbrow. If we retreat, what must change for the better before we can take the fight to Sarya again?”
“If we don’t retreat, will any of our army be left to draw sword against her in the first place?” Starbrow asked. “There will be another day, Seiveril. The Seldarine did not bring you to this place-or me to this place, for that matter-without a purpose.”
Seiveril nodded. He, of all people, was not likely to forget that. “Call the captains, Starbrow. We must plan a fighting retreat.”
Starbrow clapped him once on the shoulder, and rode off, calling for the captains of the Crusade. The elflord watched him ride off, and looked again to the east. The thunderheads gathered there, moving lazily against the wind. Ominous rumbles rolled across the dry fields.
The storm is upon us, he thought. In more ways than one.
Araevin plummeted through darkness, an infinite abyss in which the vast power of Saelethil’s will threatened to swallow him completely. Grimly, he resolved to endure as long as he could. Even if he was to be extinguished in Saelethil’s black hate, he would not go gently.
“You are not real!” he shouted into the endless night. “You are a ghost, a reflection, an echo of a mage who died five thousand years ago! You are not Saelethil Dlardrageth!”
He felt his fall begin to slow, and he turned his will toward arresting his plunge.
“You are nothing, Saelethil! A ghost!”