“I will speak a prayer for Lathander’s protection, too,” Donnor said.
Araevin moved his hands in the arcane passes of the spell and murmured the familiar words, while Donnor chanted his own prayers. In the space of a few moments his companions grew translucent and faint. The cleric’s protective spell left no visible sign, but Araevin felt a reassuring warmth on his shoulders, almost as if he stood in the bright sunshine of the World Above. Satisfied that they were as ready as they were likely to get, he turned back to the portal and woke it with another spell.
“Follow me,” he said to his companions, and he strode into the gray mists.
As usual, there was an instant of darkness and a flutter in his stomach as if he were suddenly falling, and he emerged in the Waymeet. He stopped dead a step inside the doorway, appalled.
Half the Waymeet had been consumed by the hot black iron of infernal magic.
Like some torturer’s machine, the rune-scribed iron bands affixed to the pillars and columns of the crystalline cathedral had chewed their way deeper into the fragile glass. It almost seemed that a second, parasitic Waymeet was being built over the first, riveted to its skeleton. The pearly luminescence of the whole structure had died away to a lifeless dull gray, and the air was hot and acrid.
“By the Seldarine,” he murmured.
The portal whispered at his back, and Donnor staggered into him. Araevin flailed for balance, and his outstretched hand brushed against one of the metal bands. Searing heat scorched his flesh, and he yanked back his hand with a stifled cry. In the space of a moment, Jorin, Nesterin, and Maresa filed out of the doorway after the cleric.
“Bane’s brazen throne, but someone has been hard at work here,” Jorin said. The Yuir ranger scowled fiercely. “Is this as bad as it looks?”
“Araevin, what happened to his place?” Donnor asked.
“Malkizid’s servants have increased their efforts. We have less time than I thought.” Araevin did not give his friends much time to get over their shock. “Come on. I want to see if the Gatekeeper can help us, and our spells will not hide us for long.”
Stilling their questions, his companions hurried after him while he quickly retraced the path leading back to the plaza of the speaking stone where he had questioned the mythal before. At one intersection they found a pair of barbed devils crouched atop ramparts of iron-scarred glass. The spine-covered monsters kept watch over the path below, but Araevin managed to double back and go around the creatures. He simply wasn’t certain that he could rely on the invisibility spell to fool the devils.
With no more close calls, they came to the open space where the speaking stone stood. Iron plates had been riveted to each side of the triangular pillar, encasing the crystal in a cruel coffin. Not a glimpse of the original crystal showed through the plating.
“Damnation,” Araevin murmured. “I should have expected that.”
“Have the devils finished their work here, then?” Nesterin asked.
Araevin studied the scene, searching for the subtle strands of magic that pervaded the structure. Angry reddish-gold threads of infernal power coiled around the original weavings of the ancient mythal, strangling vines that slowly tightened their grip on the living artifice that hosted them. At first he feared that Malkizid’s cruel siege was complete, and that nothing remained of the original spells the hellish sorcery replaced. But then he sensed a dim blue pulse, soft and shallow.
“Not quite yet,” he answered the star elf. “It took the high mages of Aryvandaar a hundred years to raise this mythal. It’s not entirely corrupted yet.”
“Another tenday or two, and they’ll have the whole thing riveted shut in those rune-covered bands,” Maresa said. “What happens then?”
Araevin did not answer. Instead he moved closer to the speaking stone, examining the iron driven into its face. He hesitated to interfere with the spells burned into the metal for fear of announcing their presence to the power or powers behind the device, but he could see at a glance that the Gatekeeper was barred beneath the metal. After a moment, he decided that it was more dangerous to delay within the Waymeet than it was to risk a disturbance.
“Watch for Malkizid’s servants,” he warned his friends. “I am going to try to reach the Gatekeeper.”
He felt quick glances at his back, but his comrades didn’t question his judgment. Blades whispered out of their sheaths as Donnor and Nesterin drew their swords and set themselves at Araevin’s shoulders, while Maresa and Jorin found good places to crouch in the shelter of soaring spars of iron-banded glass. Trusting that his friends would warn him if anything threatening appeared, Araevin quickly considered the spells ready in his mind and settled on a powerful spell of unjoining. It was the most potent counterspell he knew, which worked by rending spells into their component parts. He thought it might separate the diabolic curse from the Waymeet, at least in that one corner of the edifice.
He hummed a strange atonal tune and wove his hands in the sinuous passes of the disjunction. “Estierren nha morden! ” he called out, and plunged his mind into the tangled skein of magic in front of him.
He brushed his hand to one side, as if to clear away the foul clinging webs of the devilish magic, while holding the original magic in place with his other hand and fierce concentration.
Iron shrieked in protest. Araevin was so intent on his work that he did not even notice the heavy plate facing him come loose until Donnor muttered an oath and dragged him back three steps. The sinister runes cut into the plating blazed an incandescent orange for one long moment, and they grew dull and dark.
The iron cladding over the speaking stone peeled away and toppled to the hard paved ground with hideously loud clangs. The revealed crystal was pitted and cracked, leaking tears of blue from the places where iron bolts had been driven into its surface.
“Mask’s sweet night, Araevin, could you have made any more noise?” Maresa demanded. But then the genasi fell silent, for the speaking stone guttered into a weak, fitful life again. A tiny candle-flame of pure light danced and flickered in the shattered facets of the stone.
“Gatekeeper, can you hear me?” Araevin asked urgently. “Are you there?”
“I… hear you… Araevin Teshurr…” the speaking stone replied. “Speak quickly… I do not have much strength.”
“I have the second shard of the master crystal. I divined the location of the third shard, but it lies in one of the infernal planes. Can you direct me to a portal that will take me to its location?”
“Yes… but you must hurry. Your spell… has not gone unnoticed.”
“I thought that might be the case. Which door do we need?”
“Turn toward the center… at the next intersection. It will be the third arch…” A faint blue gleam briefly flickered across the face of a broken pane on the far side of the open space, illuminating the way. “Good fortune to you, Araevin Teshurr… I fear that we will not speak again.”
“How long can you endure, Gatekeeper?” Nesterin asked.
“Not much longer… Nesterin Deirr… a few days, perhaps… Go now! Many devils come…”
“That’s good enough for me,” Maresa said. Turning in a quick circle to clear her back, she started across the square. She spared Araevin a quick look and jerked her head at the corridor marked by the failing blue gleam. “Come on, let’s not wait around to see exactly what it means by ‘many.’”
Araevin nodded, and backed away from the speaking stone. The broken iron cladding at its foot would certainly reveal that someone had been there, and if the Gatekeeper was right, the devils infesting the place would know that a skilled mage had worked magic to communicate with the mythal. Malkizid will be looking for me, he realized. Well, perhaps he will not think to look where we are going.