"Well, Lord Floshin, let me see my prize," she said.
Nurthel lifted his eyes to his queen's face and stood. Despite her fiendish heritage, she was seductively beautiful, with classic elf features and the figure of a winsome girl. At a glance one might think her no more than twenty years of age… but her eyes were cold and malevolent with an ageless evil. Sarya Dlardrageth had first walked the world more than five thousand years past.
"As you command, my lady," he said. He reached beneath his tunic of scale mail and drew out the broken crystal in its pouch, offering it to her. "The paleblood elves and their rabble were careless, as you said they would be. They were not expecting an attack, and we slew dozens before they remembered how to fight."
"No one remembers how to fight, in this diminished age," Sarya replied. "How many did you lose?"
She did not place any great value on her servants' lives, but she didn't have many fey'ri at her command. Each life was a resource not to be wasted lightly.
"Five fey'ri fell to the Tower defenders, my lady. We were careful to carry off the dead. Most of the yugoloths and demons died too, but of course they were summoned and bound for that purpose, and we expected to spend them in battle."
"You have done well, Nurthel. Very well indeed."
Sarya took the bundle from his hand and quickly unwrapped the crystal, discarding the cover. She caressed the device with her taloned hands. The stone was a pale, milky white, perhaps six inches long and triangular in shape, with a curiously beveled base and a long, tapering point. A glimmer of violet fire seemed to dance in its depths. Swirls of phosphorescence drifted in the wake of Sarya's fingertips as she touched the crystal.
"For over five thousand years I dreamed of holding the key to my prison in my hand," she mused, admiring the stone. "Fifty-eight centuries crawled by while I waited and watched. Sharrven and Siluvanede passed away, and I waited. Eaerlann-hated Eaerlann-grew old and decrepit and forgot the ancient enemies her lords had imprisoned beneath their fortresses, and still I waited and watched. The city of Ascalhorn was raised up over my living tomb, and I watched when demons and devils warred in the streets, driving out the simpering humans and their paleblooded friends. Fifty centuries I dreamed of this, Nurthel, and now only five short years after gaining my freedom, the crystal is mine. The irony of it!"
"You are free now, my lady. The ancient treachery of your foes has been undone."
Sarya's eyes narrowed and she said, "Only through the ignorance of foolish adventurers, who thought to cleanse Ascalhorn with no less a weapon than the Gatekeeper's Crystal."
They succeeded in throwing down Hellgate Keep-dying heroically in the process, of course-but they had also managed to crack the deeply buried magical prison in which
Sarya and her daemonfey sons had been interred thousands of years before the city of Ascalhorn had been raised.
At once Sarya had set about exploring the new world that had grown over the ruins of the one she had known five millennia earlier. In the five years since the Harpers had unknowingly set her free, she had gathered together the remnants of the fey'ri, demonspawned elves who had served House Dlardrageth in the days of her glory. Some, such as Nurthel himself, she had liberated from lesser prisons similar to her own. Others she had found hiding in distant planes, and a handful had survived unimpris-oned, hiding amid the cities of her enemies. And she had also turned her attention to unraveling the mystery of her freedom, employing all of her formidable sorcery to learn how and why she had come to be freed.
"I wonder how the palebloods of Evermeet found the third piece," he said.
The daemonfey princess shrugged.
"Most likely it was found by some human mageling or tomb-plunderer," she said, "who recognized it as elf-work and sold it to someone who understood its true worth. My divinations informed me of the crystal's location, but did not suffice to solve the mystery of its travels."
She turned to a golden coffer that stood on one table, and spoke a charm of opening. Inside gleamed two crystals virtually identical to the one she held in her hand. The first segment Sarya had found in the rubble of Hell-gate Keep, soon after gaining her freedom. It took her four years, but she eventually found the second piece in a volcano in Avernus, first of the Nine Hells.
She lifted out the other pieces one at a time and joined them, base-to-base. As each segment's lower facet touched that of the neighboring segment, the crystal glowed blue and melded together, forming a seamless, perfect whole. When the last piece was added, the device seemed to hum with power. It resembled a three-pointed star almost a foot in diameter, stronger than steel and imbued with magic beyond mortal means.
"Ah," Sarya purred. "What a pretty trinket this is!"
"Will it work?" Nurthel asked, peering at the artifact.
"Oh, yes," Sarya said. "Nothing can stand against it, though we must be careful, or else it will fly apart and fling its component crystals to the far ends of the multi-verse. I dare not invoke its powers here, not within the spell wards of Myth Glaurach-but it will serve for the task I have in mind. I am confident of it."
Sarya replaced the conjoined crystal in its coffer, then set a lethal spell over the chest. She gestured at a decanter of dark wine and a pair of golden goblets across the room, summoning them to her hand.
"Now, what of the rest of your mission? How did that proceed?"
"We battled at least two, perhaps three high mages. We killed the two we were certain of and destroyed a number of lesser mages, too. Some had skill, others were mere novices. We plundered what we could from the Tower, and left before the mages managed to organize their defenses."
"And what of Kaeledhin's key?"
"We did as you directed, my lady. I attended to the matter personally," Nurthel said. The fey'ri lord accepted a goblet from his lady's hand and sipped the fiery vintage within. He dropped his eyes to his golden cup and swirled the wine thoughtfully. "Still… I do not see the point of it. We have the Gatekeeper's Crystal. That seems sufficient."
"Perhaps," Sarya replied. She turned and paced absently away, resuming the endless prowling she fell into when her mind was engaged. "But once I use the crystal, it is almost certain to fly apart again, and it may take years to reassemble. I would like a more permanent weapon at my disposal. In any event, it seems that Evermeet will remember our visit for some time."
CHAPTER 3
16 Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms
Araevin spent most of the day lending his spells and lore to the restoration of the Tower's magical defenses, aiding Quastarte and the other mages. An hour before sunset, he and Ilsevele left Tower Reilloch, following the coastal track west.
While they walked, Araevin carefully replayed the battle over and over in his mind, setting its every detail in his memory and thinking long and hard on the nature of the Tower's foes. The demons and yugoloths were clearly little more than footsoldiers, brought to the tower in order to destroy its defenders and guard the winged sorcerers. The latter were the creatures that most concerned Araevin. He'd seen at least three of them among the attackers. Each had possessed the narrow face, elegant features, and graceful build of an elf… along with the fine scales, sinister wings, and supernatural malice of a demon. It shouldn't have been possible for the winged ones to gate their demonic minions into Evermeet, not with the magical wards surrounding the island, but somehow they had managed the feat.
They have elf blood, he thought grimly. They pierced our defenses because Evermeet did not recognize them as enemies. But what manner of elf is so clearly spawned of the lower planes? Not even the cursed drow are so debased.