The gigantic eye then began to shudder and lose its form. The pressures being exerted by the portal were too much for the sphere. Its pupil spun wildly as if it were searching for a glimpse of the being that had been its undoing. The dark iris stopped for a moment as it fixed its gaze on Myrmeen.
Fear gripped her. She wondered if the sphere really was the eye of the night creatures' god, as she had imagined earlier. If so, had it seen her? Had it sent an image of her face to its own counterpart in a dimension of undreamt of horror? Would it remember her and seek vengeance?
The street began to shudder, and she scrambled to her feet, prepared to run, but there was no time and nowhere for her to go. The vengeance of the dark god was at hand, it seemed. Suddenly the sphere exploded, spreading a cloud of blue-white energy that resembled shimmering sand released from a shattered hourglass. The energies licked at the sky above Calim-port, tinging the heavy rains. Before the unnatural rains could fall, the vortex spread even wider, cutting across an area two blocks in diameter. Buildings were cut in half, their upper portions disintegrating.
The vortex sat there, only five feet over Myrmeen's head, and she felt as if she were experiencing the worst possible gale winds. She found a post buried deeply in the ground and hung on, even though its upper half had been eaten away by the vortex. Staring up at the wildly changing kaleidoscope of color, Myrmeen felt an intense heat wash over her. The vortex was translucent, and through it she could see the glimmering blue-white raindrops fall to the yawning, hungry void, vanishing as they struck its surface. The portal shuddered as if it had gorged to the point of explosion, but it swallowed the darksome energies released by the sphere anyway. When they were gone, the vortex trembled, as if it was now addicted to the energies of the apparatus.
Myrmeen shook as she watched the vortex. She wondered if it still retained some of Pieraccinni's mind, or if it operated solely on instinct, need, and lust. The city was rich in magic, and if the vortex still hungered, it might yet attack the city.
Without warning, the vortex shrank with incredible speed and collapsed in on itself. It dwindled until it once again hovered over the remains of the Gentleman's Hall, then it became too small to see through the heavy rains and vanished. The portal apparently had followed the rest of the apparatus and its power to the dimension where it had sent the mystical object.
Myrmeen began to laugh, and soon her laughter gave way to tears of thanks that were washed away by the storm raging on around her. After a time, she became vaguely aware that people were coming. She hoped they were human. There was no fight left in her. Only the steady, insistent drumming of the rain upon her back kept her from losing consciousness. Soon she felt hands on her back, and she angled her head to see that the men who had found and were helping her to her feet were indeed human.
She stared up at the sky and smiled as she realized that the night had not left them. In the fairy tales her mother had read to her when she was a child, and in the stories that Reisz had recited on the long nights when he had held her in his arms and she had quaked in terror at the storm, the dawn always arrived with the expulsion of evil.
There was no dawn. There would be no perfect day for a very long time.
Myrmeen turned to the faces of the men surrounding her, stunned to recognize the dark-haired nineteen-year-old she first had glimpsed at a table in Arabel. "Ord?" she asked.
He nodded weakly, explaining that he had been wounded but not killed. He was found by the men who had come to help her, a band of adventurers who had several vials of healing potions and felt obliged to pour them all down Ord's throat when they saw the pin that marked him as a Harper. A cleric was with them, and his magic had completed the task of restoring the young man.
Ord reached to his breast and removed the pin, gesturing for Myrmeen to come closer. "You should be the one to wear this for a time. It's what my parents would have wanted."
Myrmeen did not object when he secured the pin to her leathers. She took the young man's hand as they went out into the rain-swept night to find Krystin.
Epilogue
Myrmeen stared into the face of Pho-luros Argreeves, a tall, handsome, brown-haired man in his early forties. Argreeves ran a private temple for the worship and study of magic, and he had been a member of Suldolphor's highly touted Council of Mages for two decades. He had a forceful personality coupled with a fairness and a gentle nature that had surprised Myrmeen.
She had arrived at the city with a military force large enough to show the council that her request for an audience with Argreeves and his daughter would not be denied. Her show of force had turned out to be completely unnecessary. The mage acted as if he had been expecting her and explained that he had always known this day would come. He made no excuses for his actions and did not beg Myrmeen's forgiveness. They met in the beautifully adorned audience chamber of his temple, statues of the great fallen sorcerers of the last two decades lining the walls-including one of the archmage Elminster, who had "died" and been resurrected so many times that the council found it easier to leave his statue on display, just in case. Weapons and arcane items that once had been rumored to contain spirits or curses were hung on the wall or preserved under glass. Murals had been painted on the arched ceiling, depicting great moments of triumph and tragedy for their kind, the births, lives, and deaths of the most revered mages in recorded history. Elminster once again took up more than his share of space.
Through a handful of windows on the right-hand wall Myrmeen saw Krystin walking through the garden with Ord, who was too busy enjoying the pleasures of life and allowing his wounds, both physical and emotional, to heal before he launched himself on a new quest.
Calimport had survived the second coming of the great storm, and this time the citizens were well aware of the Night Parade and its activities. Without the apparatus, the creatures could not reproduce, but many thousands of the monstrosities had survived and escaped, and there were doorways still to be discovered leading between their world and the Realms. All of the creatures who had been near the temple of Sharess had been consumed by the gigantic eye of entropy that had been released from the apparatus's cage.
Vizier Djenispool had formed a special arm of the military to deal with the city's infestation, and warnings about the night people had been spread throughout the Realms. The war was far from over, but Myrmeen's part in the battle was finished, at least for now.
"Are you certain you want to do this?" Pholuros Argreeves asked.
Myrmeen stared at the mage before her. "No," she said, "but I have to do this."
Argreeves lowered his gaze. "Then what you tell her is up to you," he said, his words gossamer as he turned and walked to the end of the long corridor, leaving Myrmeen to absently admire the many artifacts on display until she heard a soft, feminine voice call to her.
"Milady?"
Myrmeen looked up. The child approaching her from the double doors at the end of the hall was dressed in a white, flowing gown with a frilly bodice and elegantly styled sandals. Her soft brown hair was pushed back in a bun, held in place by a jeweled headband with white and red roses tucked into her hair. Her skin was pale, her eyes jade green, and her lips were touched with only a trace of scarlet.
Myrmeen's first thought was that the child did not even look like her, and she wondered if she had been deceived. Then she looked closely and saw that the deep emerald eyes were those of Dak, the hair jet black at the roots and dyed to appear the same as that of her adopted parents. The child's hands had been at her side, but Myrmeen could see that they were soft and delicate hands that clearly had never been sullied by the hard lessons of manual labor or the artistry of sword wielding and combat. The girl wrung them nervously as she approached.