CHAPTER 19
The sun was just rising over the vale as Thluna and his tiny army made their final preparations for the impending siege. The Thunderbeasts knew the effectiveness of an early morning attack. The famous siege Gundar led on Raven Rock was waged at dawn, when the watch guards were most weary, and an attack was unexpected. Still, the potential for surprise in this battle was remote.
The success or failure of this attack depended on whether Vell could impart his powers of transformation on the others.
"I can transform myself, I'm sure. But how do I change the others?" asked Vell.
"You voluntarily changed into a behemoth to fight Keirkrad, did you not?" asked Lanaal.
Vell nodded, and swallowed hard. "I know that this should be no different. But what if I simply don't have the power? Your hermit may have been lying. Even if he is capable of this, that is no guarantee that..."
"Then we will try something else, Vell," said Thluna. "We have a dozen potent allies imprisoned in Llorkh. You are in contact with them."
"I am. Contact of sorts, that is." Vell could feel the behemoths' every sensation when he let himself probe their minds. From their eyes, he could survey much of Llorkh. Alongside the misery of their containment, he found in them an animal excitement at the potential of liberation. In his mind, he received images of the place they wanted to be—the peaceful idyll of the Sanctuary where they had spent their entire lives. They had never imagined being anywhere else, had never realized there was anywhere else to be. And the Shepherds. They loved the Shepherds. They loved Vell because they thought he was one of them.
"They are ready to fight?" asked Kellin.
Vell nodded in affirmation. They chafed in their bondage, as any creature would.
"So are we," said Hengin. "In whatever body is necessary." He, Ilskar, Draf, Thanar, and Rask stood waiting for Vell to attempt the impossible and make behemoths of them all.
"If it does work," Vell warned them all, "you will find your senses much changed. It may be difficult to keep the consciousness necessary to do your job." He looked to Thanar. "I cannot know how this compares to a druid's wildforms. It's possible that your skills will not prepare you for this."
"I understand that," said the druid.
"I fear that all of you may become what I was the first time," said Vell. "A mindless, rampaging beast. We all know the blood rage. You know what it is like to lose yourself. The purity of that emotion is enticing. This transformation will be just as much, and a thousand times more." He surprised himself with his own eloquence.
"But we must try to lock up our rage. There are innocents in Llorkh. We must fear for them. Our tribe has killed enemy innocents before, but that is not something we remember as glory. Fear for your own minds too. It may be hard to come back. You might forget you were ever human."
A disquieted hush fell over the five as they absorbed Vell's speech.
"Do you still choose this?" asked Vell. They all nodded, but with less enthusiasm. "Keep whatever part of yourself you hold most dear foremost in your mind. That, I hope, will help you keep a level head."
The sun's early rays crawled across the sky, tracing the edges of the mine-scarred Graypeaks. The world seemed so peaceful, as if all of its troubles were vanishing just as the light dabbed the clouds in tones of gentle pink.
"To Llorkh," Thluna said. "To glory or ruin. We have come so far to do Uthgar's will. I can only hope, if we die, that we will die pleasing him." Rather than trumpeting his cry to battle across the plains, as he might when leading a throng of warriors, he whispered it. The moment was private and intimate. His eyes fell on each of his companions: this strange assembly of a bird-souled elf, a southern sorceress, a half-orc Tree Ghost, a druid exile, stalwart Thunderbeast warriors, and this strangest of creatures, Vell the Brown. His eyes shone with love and respect.
Vell's hands trembled as he extended them, one to Rask, the other to Hengin. With Draf, Thanar, and Ilskar they formed a circle of linked hands and sank into concentration. Something rose into his mind unbidden. He thought of Kellin, of the True Name the priests of Oghma had given her. All of her soul-searching could not tell her its meaning, but she said the search had meaning in itself.
Vell delved deeper into his lizard-tainted soul, and found a place he had never imagined.
* * * * *
Clavel Foxgray stood on the city walls of Llorkh surveying the terrain, holding his hand above his eyes as shelter from the cold wind. His purple robe fluttered in the breeze. Clavel avoided looking down at the ditch, the ugly scar on the earth that encircled the city, all the more terrible for anyone who had spent a night sleeping in it.
Nobody ever jeered him for being knocked into the ditch by that hobgoblin. But on that dreadful drunken night in the Wet Wizard, two of his colleagues taught him something when they had to beat sense into him—sense enough to keep his mouth shut about Ardeth.
The low rising sun was at Clavel's back, and as he stared west, the shadow of the wall crawled across the land. The strange and unsettling night, with those huge lizards wailing their lungs out, had left him shaken, and he was happy that it would soon be over.
Through the whistling wind, he could swear he heard a strange sound in the distance—a repetitive pounding. It triggered a faint recollection from his childhood, when the mines around Llorkh were still active, and their sounds echoed across the land. Now they were closed and gone.
Somehow Clavel was reminded of another night, too, when he had also stood on these walls. It was in the month of Ches in the Year of Wild Magic, when the phaerimm had emerged from their underground prison near Evereska. It seemed all the lands west of Anauroch were suddenly alive with danger, with strange monsters enslaving humanoid tribes to accomplish their foul objectives. An army of bugbears appeared out of the Graypeaks to march against Llorkh, led by a beholder. That day, with his city under siege, the walls on the verge of collapse, and bugbear corpses filling the ditch, he felt something unexpected. For a moment, part of him wanted the city to fall. He wanted the whole sad saga of Llorkh to come to an end. A good end, a bad end, it didn't matter. Just an end.
Only for a moment, Clavel felt that way once again.
* * * * *
As Geildarr slept in his luxurious feather bed within the oak-paneled splendor of his bedroom, the Heart of Runlatha clapped to his breast, the glowing red energies of the artifact crept forth and invaded his dreaming mind.
He dreamed he was in Netheril in its last days, walking the streets of Runlatha by night. He was calm, though the world around him was crumbling. The black waters of the vanished Narrow Sea trembled under a heavy breeze. The city buildings were not only damaged by war, but they seemed somehow colorless and stripped of something vital. Clearly they had once been fantastic feats of architecture, but now they were broken and decayed. Bodies were piled in the street, both human and orc. The place stank of rotting flesh, and cries of anguish filled the air. In the distance, smoke plumes rose to the sky.
The magic is gone, Geildarr knew. This is after Karsus's folly, when the greatest arcanist of Netheril—the most powerful and most foolish wizard Faerun had ever known—had cast an avatar spell to kill the goddess of magic, hoping to gain her power.
Instead, Geildarr recalled, Karsus destroyed all of the arcane magic in the world, sending all the sky citadels of High Netheril tumbling to the ground. Though Runlatha was part of Low Netheril, it too probably had much magic woven into its very structure—magic that failed the moment Karsus cast his spell. Without the protection of the citadels, Runlatha was vulnerable to the masses of humanoid hordes.
Even without Karsus's folly, the Great Desert was spreading, ruining farmland throughout what was once the heart of Netheril. From his own studies of history, Geildarr had decided that the fall of the Empire of Magic was inevitable, one way or another. Karsus merely hastened it.