She paced across her Vyshaanti battle-platform, watching the fray closely. She was dressed in golden mail of exceptional quality and exquisite workmanship, a highly enchanted artifact she had found among the spoils of Nar Kerymhoarth. Sarya intended to lend her own mastery of the Art to the attack, and she was well prepared to do so.
The fey'ri, hovering well above arrow-reach, passed over the entirety of the elven army and alighted behind her foes. The sorcerers and warriors of her daemonfey legion began to attack the rearmost companies of the elven army, guarding themselves with potent spell shields as they scoured and blasted the elf ranks with their terrible spells and fire wands. She had deliberately ordered her captains to allow Evermeet's host to reach the moorland unchallenged in order to draw them well and truly into the open. The elven army was engaged on three sides by her left flank, her center, and the fey'ri.
The moment was as right as it would get.
Sarya laughed with malice and hissed, "Now we shall test the mettle of our enemies. Mardeiym, you will take command of the center. Send word to the right that I want them in the fight in five minutes, or I will personally slay every captain in that host."
The fey'ri general struck his fist to his chest and replied, "As you wish, Lady Dlardrageth."
Sarya made a gesture with her hand activating one of the useful enchantments in her battle-platform. Switching to the Abyssal tongue, she barked out her orders.
"Time to spring our trap," she grated. "All of you, follow me and slay to your hearts' content!"
Lurking in the shadows sheltering her from sight, hundreds of demons waited-virtually all who could transport themselves from place to place with a simple act of will. Many were survivors of the Battle of the Cwm, but better than threescore were newly summoned and bound to her service. Sarya spoke a command word, and her platform teleported from its place of concealment to a barren, sandy stretch on the unengaged left flank of the elven army. An instant later, the first of her demon marauders followed her, appearing from midair like a rain of horror.
Her army surrounded Evermeet's host on all four sides.
"Destroy them!" she cried, sweeping her arm at her foes.
Demons howled, barked, and laughed in response, and threw themselves against their prey.
CHAPTER 18
12 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms
Araevin trotted swiftly through the damp, rain-soaked trees of Cormanthor, distancing himself from the vault behind him. He deliberately avoided the old elfroad, just on the chance that the daemonfey might discover his freedom and their dead comrades and come looking for him. The side of his chest still burned with the broken ribs the behir had given him, and various other injuries announced themselves as he traveled, but he refused to give the pain a place in his thoughts, and instead considered what to do next as he jogged on.
Ilsevele first, he thought. And Maresa too. I have to get them out of Sarya's hands before the daemonfey discover my escape. All I have to do is walk into the demons' den.
Armed as he was with a mind full of spells and abjurations as potent as anything he could ever have prepared in his own workroom, Araevin didn't shy from returning to the daemonfey halls. He even thought he might have an unpleasant surprise or two for them.
This should do, Araevin decided.
He looked around at the wet woodland and shivered. The vault of Ithraides, with its teleport-distorting spell wards, lay two miles behind him. He was well outside its magical mantle.
"Now, for the difficult part," he breathed.
Gesturing absently, he prepared a couple of defensive spells to protect himself-one that covered him in an intangible shield of magical force, and another to turn himself invisible. He gazed around at the forest, breathing in the scent of spring rising from hidden roots and deep places.
Hold it in your mind, Araevin, he told himself. It might be the last good thing you look on in this life.
Then he incanted the teleport spell, fixing in his mind the image of the marble-floored cavern in the daemonfey stronghold.
The forest reeled away into darkness, and he felt himself falling through icy void for the space of an instant-then he appeared in the dim, lamplit halls of the daemonfey.
Araevin did his best to avoid making any sound as he arrived, but he couldn't stop a soft gasp as the suddenness of the change staggered him. Fortunately, no one was in the hall. It was cold and forbidding even in the absence of its infernal masters, a stark and comfortless place where the air carried a subtle taint of blood and hot metal. Several passageways led away from the room, he presumed to other halls and chambers. At his back the hall ended in a crevasse or natural chimney that climbed up into the dark and fell away into measureless shadow below.
"What is this place?" he muttered.
He turned, studying the room again and trying to guess which way his friends might have been taken. His eye fell on the dark pool of blood where Grayth had died.
Any fear or uncertainty he might have entertained vanished like yesterday's winds.
Information is the first order of business, he decided.
He held himself still and closed his eyes, listening and feeling for the magical ward he had noted when Nurthel brought him before Sarya. If he was right about it…
"I thought so," he murmured.
As before, he felt the peculiar magical vibration or resonance of a mythal ward embracing him. It was not a sound, a smell, or any sort of physical sensation he could accurately describe, but something in the very air and rock of the place announced itself to his wizard's senses. There was no doubt the daemonfey stronghold was protected by a mythal stone, and a strong one at that.
How did Sarya raise a mythal in secret? he wondered.
More likely she'd found one and repaired it, he answered himself. It would require patience and lore, but there's no reason to think that the daemonfey lack either.
Araevin paused, considering his next move. He glanced around to make sure that he was still alone, and moved to a somewhat more sheltered corner of the room just in case. He had intended to immediately set about searching for Ilsevele and Maresa with his divinations, but it occurred to him that the mythal's properties might include alarms or spell traps against intruders. Each one of the old mythals was unique, and there was really no way of knowing what spells might or might not have been woven to shield the place before the daemonfey found it, or for that matter, whether or not the original spells still worked as intended. Old mythals tended to fray with time, and their powers sometimes faded away or decayed into new and dangerous properties unplanned by their makers.
It would help him judge the dangers of the mythal if he knew how long ago and by whom it had been raised. He was pretty sure Sarya's stronghold was somewhere in the North. After all, the daemonfey army had marched on Evereska from somewhere in the vicinity of old Hell-gate Keep-but Hellgate Keep itself had been completely destroyed. Most likely he was in some forgotten hold or vault of ancient Siluvanede or Sharrven, but he could not be certain.
"Enough speculation," he told himself.
He spoke one of the spells Saelethil had taught him, coaxing the mythal's woven web of ancient spells to become visible to him. All around him a bright golden network of drifting strands of magic slowly appeared.
Araevin carefully observed the tangible dweomers pervading the hall, analyzing them. First he looked for signs of alarms or spell traps that would catch the unwary. He spotted an alarm first, a spell designed to warn anyone within the mythal if a non-daemonfey spellcaster entered the ruins-a reasonable precaution, given the nearness of Silverymoon and Alustriel. He grimaced, realizing that again the faint blemish in his bloodline turned to his advantage. Then he examined the drifting thread more closely, and saw that it was a dark and potent red-gold in color. It was clearly something new, something added to the existing mythal.