"I feel for him," Cordyan said. "His pain is real."
"Yes, and I have the feeling that if we don't leave after morningfeast, we're going to be chasing him all the way home, hoping to catch up."
"Captain Closl and Lord Piergeiron are not going to be happy about Baylee's arrival there," Cordyan prophesied. "When I first heard the stories about him, I thought perhaps they were tall tales, made up because he walked for so long in Golsway's shadow. But now that I get the measure of the man, I don't think that is the case at all." She looked after the ranger, watching him disappear in the darkness between the campfires spread out across the forgathering.
"No," Calebaan agreed. "Baylee will bear watching even after he returns to Waterdeep. I don't think he will let-" Calebaan sat up, suddenly more straight. "Do you feel it?"
Cordyan looked at her friend. "Feel what?"
Calebaan pointed toward the east, in the direction Baylee had walked. "The cold breath of death itself."
Knowing her friend was sometimes given to poetic expression, Cordyan turned her head. Only darkness met her gaze. Then she felt the chill, like a high wind coming across Icewind Dale. The sensation came to her sharply, bringing with it the memory of two tendays the circus had spent playing Ten Towns when she'd been yet a girl, not then allowed to swing from the high wires with her brothers and sister.
But suddenly that dark space seemed to fold in on itself. Ruby light spilled from the corners of those folds in the next moment. Then the center of that fold collapsed, opening onto a hole.
Four figures stepped through that ruby hole into the midst of approaching rangers and a horde of animals.
"Something's wrong." Cordyan said. She stood and loosened her sword in its sheath. The copper and gold Shandaularan coin mounted in the hilt sparked a yellow light and felt warm to the touch. The sword was the watch lieutenant's as a reward from Khelben Arunsun for work she had done as a Harper while she was sixteen years old. The sword, Khelben had assured her, came from the renowned collection of Azoun, King of Cormyr for a bit of business the archmage had performed for the king.
The enchantment on the blade made it move lightly in her grasp, and it cleaved more surely through armor than any edged weapon she had ever owned. But the Shandaularan coin had an even further enchantment laid upon it. In the presence of drow, the coin would spark yellow.
Cordyan knew the enchantment was true because she'd seen it spark twice before. Both times, drow had been around. Once, the sword's warning had been enough to save her from a drow down in the warrens under the Waterdhavian docks.
The Shandaularan sparked again as she studied it. "Drow," she told Calebaan. She looked up at the glowing red hole to see the first of them step through. Her hand covered the Shandaularan coin as she bared her weapon.
12
"Hurry!" Krystarn Fellhammer ordered the three drow males hurtling through the dimension door behind her. She carried the staff in one hand and gestured with the other. Her magic swelled inside her for a moment, then burst out to roll over the line of approaching rangers.
A streak of flame leapt from her forefinger to arc across the sky above the forest. A few of the rangers managed to stop short, evidently having seen the spell before.
Krystarn narrowed her eyes as the fiery sphere took shape in the air, then burst with a low roar that spread flames in all directions. At least a handful of the rangers died in the immediate inferno, and others were dreadfully injured. Fires caught in the grasses and trees, driving the animals back in panic.
The advance of the rangers halted when they realized they faced a truly deadly foe. A number of arrows streaked toward the drow.
Krystarn loosed a second burst of magical energy. Thick strands materialized in the air, spanning the distance between the trees in front of her, becoming a mass of sticky gray webbing that ran twenty feet across, ten feet high, and forty feet deep.
The flying arrows didn't make it through the web, getting caught in the multilayered, sticky strands. Several of the rangers were also ensnared. A moment later and the webbing touched the fires burning in several spots across the ground. Extremely flammable, the webbing caught fire at once.
The rangers trapped within the webbing burned with it. Several of them screamed in agony. Many of them died. None of them were Baylee, Krystarn saw.
She gestured once more, unleashing the third spell she'd prepared for the raid. She felt the calm warmth surround her as the magic threaded into place before her just in time to stop two of the arrows that had managed to get through the webbing. Less than a yard in front of her, the arrows suddenly stopped dead and dropped to the ground.
Behind her, Captain Vnk'itn shook out the bag of holding that held the other draw males. They assembled around her at once, adding to her defense with their weapons. All of them were armed with hand crossbows, quivers tied down along their thighs with extra poisoned quarrels.
"The others," Krystarn ordered.
Vnk'itn emptied the other bag and jumped back as the four figures suddenly rose up from the ground. The drow warriors drew back from their unwelcome allies, swords and axes going up in defense.
Krystarn had seen a skeleton warrior only once before in her life, before it had ripped out the throat of the woman she had been tomb raiding with at the time. She had barely escaped with her life. The experience had left its mark upon her, and she found she had to fight to retain her calm.
Now, seeing four of the skeleton warriors take up their dread two-handed swords and immediately walk toward them, the drow elf barely managed to stand her ground.
They all wore the remnants of finery, but the holes were large enough to spot the yellowed bone through the hunks of dark purple corpse-flesh flushed with congealed blood. None of the clothing or the House markings on them looked familiar. Two of them still had fragments of ears hanging onto their hard planed, faces, and the ears held elven points. The elongated hands and feet also gave away the skeleton warriors' mortal beginnings.
They growled in shrieking voices as they closed on the drow.
"Don the circlets!" Krystarn ordered. She watched as Vnk'itn and the other two men put the circlets they held on their heads and immediately lapsed into unconsciousness while remaining on their feet.
Little more than ten feet away, three of the skeleton warriors halted. The fourth continued on toward Krystarn, drawing its sword back to strike.
Krystarn fitted the circlet on her head, having no trouble at all of fitting her mind into the magic built into the band. Her senses swirled as she watched the fourth skeleton warrior suddenly freeze into position. A further mental push put her inside the skeleton warrior's body.
She looked back at herself, noticing the way the firelight flickered over her own ebony skin. Then she tried lifting her sword arm, watching the long two-handed sword come up in the skeleton warrior's grip.
Movement to her right drew her attention. She whirled, finding the skeleton moved slightly slower than she was accustomed to her own body responding. Before she could fully turn around, a young male ran his heavy war spear into her.
Krystarn cursed, not believing she had left herself open to such an attack. Then she was surprised when there was no pain. The spear expertly shoved through her ribs, finding the place where a heart was supposed to be. Rotted meat broke away in chunks, streaming down to the ground in front of her.
Realizing that she was in no danger of dying, Krystarn raised the two-handed sword and smashed the blade against the spear haft. The hardened wood splintered almost effortlessly. Before the ranger could get clear, she swung the blade again, decapitating her opponent.