“Seiveril! ” Fflar cried. With no thought for the enemies around him, he hurled himself toward the castle.
Xhalph leaped down beside Seiveril with an easy bound. He raised his swords to butcher the elflord, but Fflar roared out a wordless challenge. Keryvian flashed in white wrath, sensing the blinding fury in his heart.
Xhalph looked up and grinned, his mouth full of small fangs. “You wish to be next, hero?” he hissed. “I have not forgotten our duel of a month ago. We have unfinished business, you and I.”
“You will not live out the day, murderer!” Fflar cried.
Xhalph readied his swords, preparing to receive Fflar’s attack. Then a blazing white arrow streaked into the daemonfey’s breastplate, taking him high on his left chest. The blow spun him half-around, but his armor took the worst of the impact. Xhalph roared once and reached up to snap off the shaft. Another arrow hissed toward him, and he threw up one of his swords in its path and batted it aside.
Fflar glanced to his side. Ilsevele knelt by her father, drawing her bow again.
“Xhalph, come!” Sarya Dlardrageth appeared in the empty doorway of the castle, dressed in her armor of black and gold. Ilsevele shifted her aim and loosed an arrow at her, but the daemonfey queen deflected it with a word and a gesture.
“Another time,” Xhalph growled. The wounded daemonfey spared one fang-filled snarl for Fflar, and leaped back up the stairs and disappeared into the castle proper.
Fflar started after them, but Ilsevele’s voice stopped him. “Starbrow!” she wailed. She cradled Seiveril in her arms, his blood streaming down the marble steps.
With one more glance after the fleeing daemonfey, Fflar turned back to Seiveril and hurried to his side. He stumbled to his knees beside the elflord. “Seiveril,” he murmured.
Seiveril’s face was pale, and blood flecked his lips. He breathed in shallow gasps. “Starbrow… my friend… I had hoped to walk with you in Cormanthor… when all this was at an end.”
“You will, Father. You will,” Ilsevele promised through her tears. “We will summon a healer. Stay with us just a little longer!”
“I am afraid… that it is too late for that, Ilsevele. It is time
… to walk in Arvandor instead…”
Fflar’s eyes blurred with tears. He had seen too many warriors fall on too many battlefields to argue with Seiveril. “Ilyyela is waiting for you there, my friend.” He reached down and found Seiveril’s hand, and gripped it tightly. “There is nothing to fear. I know it.”
The dying elf found a smile. “I saw Myth Drannor before I died… I am content. Ilsevele… you must finish what I have started here. Starbrow… live the life you have been called back to. You have surpassed any failures… you carry in your heart.” He reached out and set Ilsevele’s hand in Fflar’s, and breathed one last time. “… Love…” he whispered, and his eyes closed forever.
“Father,” Ilsevele murmured. She lowered him to the palace steps and sobbed over his chest. “Father!”
Fflar simply bowed his head. No words came to him. He clasped Ilsevele’s hand in his and knelt in silence by Seiveril’s torn body. He knew he was soon to leave this world, Fflar thought. He knew, and he set out to right the wrongs he could before he was called home.
“Rest, my friend,” he finally whispered.
Ilsevele looked up at him, ignoring the tears that streaked her face. “Starbrow, the daemonfey,” she said. “They fled into the palace. Sarya must have another portal inside.”
“It would not surprise me,” Fflar grated. He picked up Keryvian and climbed to his feet. The broken gates of the castle waited for him. “We cannot let them escape again, Ilsevele.”
“Go, Starbrow!” she said. “I will finish the fight here.” She stood, bow in hand, and raised it above her head. “To me, warriors of Evermeet! To me!”
Sehanine, watch over her, Fflar silently prayed. He looked around and saw Jerreda Starcloak and two of her wood elves, who stood gazing at Seiveril with horror.
“Jerreda, follow me!” he said, and he turned and leaped up the stairs.
The wood elves tore their eyes away from the fallen leader of the Crusade and bounded after him. Together they dashed into Castle Cormanthor, blades bared.
Fflar could hear the sounds of battle echoing throughout the castle. He followed the first hallway he came to for thirty paces or so, and it opened out into a small chapel or shrine. The old symbols of the Seldarine had been removed, but a blank alcove behind the altar still shimmered with a thin gray mist.
“As I thought,” he said. “It’s a portal.”
Jerreda recognized it too. “What do we do?” the wood elf princess said. “The daemonfey might have gone anywhere.”
Fflar hesitated only a moment before deciding. “After them,” he growled. Then he ran up and hurled himself through the gray mists.
It did not take Araevin long at all to find a portal in Myth Drannor. The city was riddled with them. A brief search and a quick spell of portal mastery allowed him to locate a suitable gate and shift its destination to the Fhoeldin durr.
They emerged in a blind alley of the Waymeet, surrounded by a thin, acrid yellow fog. Riveted iron plate inscribed with red-glowing runes covered the walls and pillars around them. Lurid firelight reflecting from the low-hanging clouds that roofed the Waymeet illuminated the place, striking angry gleams from the scorched glass spars and columns that still survived.
“By Tymora, they’ve ruined the place,” Jorin said. “Malkizid’s devils have made it into some kind of infernal machine.”
“Araevin, what is the purpose of all this? What is Malkizid trying to do here?” Nesterin asked.
“I am not sure,” Araevin breathed.
He frowned at the sharp smell of hot metal in his nostrils and made himself study the evil runes driven into the ancient glass walls. Hellish sorcery pooled and churned slowly through the metal conduits, pinning the ancient elven mythal spells open in the same way that a vivisectioned animal might be opened for inspection. What more could the archdevil want with the device? Didn’t he possess sufficient knowledge of mythalcraft to do what he wanted with the Fhoeldin durr?
Unless… Araevin peered closer, studying the mythal weave before him, and it came to him. The ancient weave of the Fhoeldin durr was spun by the Vyshaanti of Aryvandaar… and they had woven their mythal in such a way that it could not be changed from its purpose except by another scion of House Vyshaan. Malkizid, for all his lore and skill, was not a sun elf of House Vyshaan, and so he could not exert his mastery over the Last Mythal of Aryvandaar without first devising a means of overpowering those ancient restrictions. The iron runes were Malkizid’s own mythal, a mythal the archdevil was building for the purpose of destroying the ancient concordance governing the Fhoeldin durr and replacing it with rules more to his own liking.
“It’s a battering ram to break down the Waymeet’s defenses,” he told Jorin. “Malkizid is building a mythal of his own that will take over the governing of the Waymeet.”
“How much time do we have?” Donnor asked.
“None,” Araevin said grimly. “Malkizid’s spell is complete. I can’t excise his influence with the Gatekeeper’s Crystal.”
“So all this was for nothing?” Maresa shook her head and muttered a savage oath as she turned her back on the rest of the company and kicked at the iron bands on the wall. “What was the point?” she demanded.
Araevin looked again at the corrupted mythal around him. Then he withdrew the Gatekeeper’s Crystal from under his cloak and looked at the three-pointed star. Its substance had taken on a sullen reddish hue, but power still coursed through it. The crystal still draws on the Waymeet for its power, he thought. Maybe… “The crystal no longer commands the Waymeet, but it still channels the power of this place,” he said to Maresa. “We must use the crystal to destroy the Fhoeldin durr.”