A chorus of sudden cries of dismay caught his attention. Fflar pulled the reins in that direction and spurred his horse forward. Seiveril’s banner was under attack. Barbed devils and mezzoloths swirled around the standard, battling Felael and the rest of Seiveril’s guards. The elflord himself laid about furiously with his silver mace, which flashed and thundered with holy enchantments. Without another thought, Fflar charged forward into the fray, and for a terrible instant he slashed and stabbed, and shouted defiance at the infernal creatures all around him.
He suddenly found himself standing in a space cleared of enemies, and briefly wondered if they’d driven off all their foes. He glanced at Seiveril, who was also looking for foes.
“Where did they go?” he asked the elflord.
“They drew back,” Seiveril answered. He started to say more but suddenly stopped in mid-word. And Fflar felt a presence, a malevolence so powerful and close that his war-horse gave off a high shrill whinny of panic and shied away. He wrenched at the reins to keep the animal under control, and looked up to see what new terror had come to the battle.
A dreadful king with pale skin and great gray wings confronted them, bearing a terrible black sword. Dark blood seeped from a wound or mark on his brow, and a guard of devils and yugoloths simpered at his side. The infernal lord studied the two elves with a predatory grin.
“It seems that I must take matters into my own hands,” he said. His voice was rich and musical, unbearably sweet. “Your Crusade ends here, Seiveril Miritar. I have raised up Sarya Dlardrageth as Queen of Cormanthor, and I do not intend to allow you to interfere with the work of fifty centuries.”
“You are Malkizid,” Fflar said.
The archdevil turned his black eyes on Fflar. “So I am, Fflar Starbrow Melruth. I well remember who you are and how you failed… though I have never forgiven you for destroying my servant Aulmpiter. I look forward to granting you a second death.”
“I do not fear you, devil!”
Malkizid’s cold smile failed. “Then you are a fool, mortal,” he snarled.
The mark burned into his forehead began to smolder, and the Branded King advanced to meet Fflar and Seiveril.
The rocky defile grew steeper and more narrow as Araevin and his friends pressed on from the scene of their battle against the hell hounds, until they finally found themselves toiling up a trail of sorts that switchbacked its way up to a bladelike saddle between the jagged hilltops. Here they found the first pitiful signs of vegetation that they had seen so far-black, iron-hard briars that clung to the deepest clefts in the rock. The wind grew stronger as they gained height, blasting at them with unpredictable and malicious gusts. Dust and grit coated their faces and hands, and clung to their garments.
With one last nerve-racking scramble, they reached the saddle proper and finally glimpsed what lay on the other side of their climb.
“That, I did not expect,” Nesterin breathed.
“Me, neither,” Maresa agreed.
The serried ridges continued on into the distance, their flanks scorched and bare. Immediately before Araevin and his friends, the steep-sided valley separating the ridge they had just scrambled over from the next was filled with a forest of sorts. The trees were black and dead-scorched by the dry heat of the Barrens, Araevin guessed, though he couldn’t imagine how they had grown there in the first place.
In the center of the dry, dead forest stood a tower of blackened glass. Its needle-like spires soared above the barren branches, glistening darkly in the ruddy light. Araevin had glimpsed its like only a few times in his life in some of the most ancient places of elvenkind. The spiraling ascent, the slender buttresses that arched away from the tower, the fluid lines of the place… it was a citadel of the Crown Wars, a glimpse of elven castles from the dawn of the world. But the fortress was blackened, its crystalline substance scorched and cracked.
“Malkizid’s tower,” he murmured. “That’s it.”
“That has the look of elven work,” Nesterin said, frowning. “Was this place made in mockery of the People? Or did elves once live here?”
“The Vyshaan of Aryvandaar,” Araevin answered him. “They built the Waymeet, and they had dealings with Malkizid. They might have built the portal leading to this domain and raised a tower here.”
“Elves lived here?” Maresa asked, incredulous.
“The Vyshaanti were more like daemonfey than elves, Maresa,” Araevin told her. “They would not have been deterred by dealing with the evil denizens of the Barrens. I don’t know if they actually dwelled in this place, but I would not be surprised to learn that they visited it often enough to see the need for a strong refuge here.”
They fell silent, studying the old citadel and its dead forest, until Jorin cleared his throat. “We’d better start down from this ridgeline. We don’t want to be seen.”
The ranger led them down the steeply descending path that dropped from the barren hills into the dead forest. Sliding and scraping their way down the hillside, they finally reached the sparse cover of the desiccated forest. Their path grew easier as the slope lessened. When they reached the black woods, Araevin could see that the valley floor was choked with thick briars. Thorns as sharp and long as daggers gleamed on each side of the path.
Jorin led the company deeper into the forest, staying on the trail. On several occasions winged fiends-devils or yugoloths, Araevin could not easily tell-flew overhead, croaking to each other in harsh voices. Each time he and his friends crouched down under the cover of the burned trees and sullen briars, getting as close to the thorns as they dared, and waited until the monsters flew off.
“Do you think they are looking for us?” Donnor asked softly after the third such encounter.
“I doubt it,” Araevin said. “I think there would be many more devils prowling in this vale if they suspected our presence.”
“That’s reassuring,” Maresa snorted. “They’re going to figure it out sooner or later, you know.”
Araevin did not answer her. When the danger passed, they climbed to their feet and continued on. After another parched mile of walking beneath the bare branches and black trunks of the old forest, they came to a small clearing where an old fountain basin had once stood. It was crowned by a statue of a winged angel transfixed by a sword. Immortal agony and despair gaped silently toward the sky. Rising above the trees a few hundred yards away, the nearest spire of the ruined citadel peered down on them.
“I’ve seen this before,” Araevin murmured.
It was the place from which he had glimpsed the third shard’s hiding place in his vision. He could not make out any gleam of light in the spire to announce the shard’s presence, but that did not surprise him. Visions exaggerated things like that in order to convey information.
A broad balcony caught his eye. It ascended the outside of the spire for quite a distance before it came to a ruined edge. A dark doorway midway along its length seemed to lead to the tower’s interior. A sudden inspiration came to Araevin then. He’d been wondering how they could slip inside the tower proper, since he assumed that Malkizid’s minions would carefully guard what passed for the tower’s gate. But it might be possible to make their entry from the balcony outside.
“There,” he said, pointing out the balcony to the others. “We’ll enter the spire from the balcony. Link hands-I’ll teleport us all to the balcony.”
“Is it safe?” Donnor asked.
“Nothing here is safe,” Araevin admitted. “But I suspect that we may do better to trust in speed than stealth once we get inside. It will be very hard for me to conceal my presence.”
The Lathanderite bowed his head and murmured the words of a prayer. Then he looked back up at Araevin. “I’m ready.”
The mage reached out and seized his friends’ hands, and spoke the words of his teleport spell with his eye firmly fixed on the tower’s balcony. He felt the familiar icy plunge into blackness, an instant of disorientation… and he and his friends were standing high above the barren forest on a narrow balcony of ebon glass. Fortunately, it seemed sturdy enough to hold them all. Araevin had half-feared that it might give way beneath their weight.