They strode toward him, dark and terrible, and beside him Jhessail sobbed with effort, struggling against the same fell cold.
Florin heard Merith curse, close by on the side his head was turned away from. He could not hope to turn his head to see before the liches reached him, their hands raised like claws to rend and tear.
The mind-voice snapped into Storm Silverhand's mind with such savage force that she gasped and almost spilled the herb-brew she was dipping her fingertips into, to gentle into a sick child's mouth.
The little lad's mother drew back in alarm, whirling her ailing son behind her. All Shadowdale knew that when the Bard did something sudden or unexpected, magic was apt to come roaring forth from her-and people died.
"Yes?" Storm answered, speaking aloud to try to reassure the farmwife. "What troubles the Queen of Aglarond this fair night?"
Ethena Astorma, HAVE DONE! Where is my Elminster, and why can I not reach him, or feel his presence anywhere?
Storm drew in a deep breath, beckoning to the farm-wife to put the sick infant into her arms, and thought back: Alassra, back in Alturiak, El led Dove and three of the Knights So frightened and furious was the Simbul that she broke all courtesy and sent her mind racing along the link between them, flooding unbidden into Storm's own consciousness in her impatience to see all the Bard of Shadowdale knew.
Memories and mind-pictures flashed and crashed, washing over the farmwife and the child alike. Storm barely heard their startled cries in the swirling tumult that ended abruptly. She was left trembling and drenched with sweat in the lamplit room, alone in her own head again, all contact with the Simbul gone.
The farmwife stared at her in terror, too frightened to do more than mew softly. Her baby, however, blinked, and said the first coherent words he'd ever uttered-in the fierce, feminine tones of the Witch-Queen of Aglarond:
"And when I find them-!"
The two women stared at him, but his face was once more full of wonder, as he stared back at them, and his next word was: "Glaaooo?"
Steel flashed into Florin's view: Merith's daggers, spinning smoothly end-over-end, heading for the eyes glaring out of liches' palms-forlorn strikes, doomed to miss those swiftly-moving targets.
The liches thrust their arms forward to keep the eyes glaring at Florin and Jhessail as they twisted around to head away from Merith's hurled daggers.
Something else flashed past Florin's shoulder-two somethings that sang and shimmered, whisker-thin and silvery-white. Bright beams of force stabbed out to strike the tumbling daggers in a spinning, whirling cage of silver-white stabbings, and turn them-yes, turn them- guiding them toward the liches.
Florin overbalanced, trapped in a shudder that held his body captive. Jhessail fell too, toppling over him.
She'd come down on his arm, the war-leader of the Knights thought calmly, as his spasms spun his turned-to-the-side head helplessly around to regard the place where they'd all been standing before the baelnorn came.
As he came down softly into unbroken whiteness where the baelnorn should have been lying-but seemed to have entirely faded away-Florin saw that those singing lines of force stabbed out from the thickenings in two strands that marked where Elminster and Dove had melded into the whiteness.
He didn't actually have to see those beams aim the daggers, curving their flights into arcs that bit into glaring eyes in lich-palms, he knew they'd done so. The chill that clawed him was gone, he could move again, and Jhessail thudded into him, trailing startled curses.
Florin cradled her and hurled her back upright, watching his oldest friend sway, seeking her balance in a swirl of flame-hued hair. He fought his own way back to his feet in time to see the liches grimace, their palms pierced with Merith's daggers-daggers that blazed like little torches, burning away to nothing but inky wisps of smoke. Beyond them, the mist flickered red and green in a dozen places or more, and liches stalked forth in scores, a walking wall of silent undeath.
Jhessail shook her head. "Sweet Mystra," she murmured, "if they could work their spells…"
Her husband chuckled, shrugged, and replied almost merrily, "If magic served us here, I'd be able to keep us alive-I think. As it is…"
Merith shrugged again, and hefted his humming sword in one hand, and the long knife he so rarely drew in the other. Catching Florin's look, he murmured, "Wanted to use it one last time, if we're going to-"
And the menacing ranks of liches were swept aside as if by a giant hand, as the white mists erupted into blue-white fire.
Out of the heart of those blue-white rifts strode upright warriors of metal, stiffly stalking things that moved in a series of jerks and swiveling movements, all gleaming battle-limbs and keening, whirling blades. They had no faces, but moved as if they could see. No two of them were the same. Some had arms ending in great axes, and others sported heads that looked like gigantic kettles with spouts that stuck out straight rather than angling upward. Gears and cogs whirred and clattered in chorus within their shining hides.
All three Knights stared in disbelief, and just a little wearily lifted their weapons and prepared to die by sharp, slicing steel rather than chilling lich-claws.
"Delight me," Jhessail whispered bitterly. "Show me new and exciting sights, take me far from the boringly familiar-and there slay me!"
"Steady, love," Merith murmured, beside her. "We'll be together."
The clockwork automatons whirred and clanked right up to the Knights-and turned aside, to stab and stalk liches.
Dark robes and cloaks swirled as undead limbs drew back in alarm, long-fingered hands became talons, and A kettle-head gouted fire that made a lich blaze up like a torch, and before Merith could begin to chuckle, half a dozen of the gaunt undead collapsed in the flashing flurry of a dozen dicing clockwork blades.
The three adventurers watched, open-mouthed, and became aware that the blue-white fire was fading, revealing in its darkening remnants the beautiful elf they'd seen earlier, standing smiling at them. Her sapphire-blue hair gently quested through the air around her, as if possessing a restless, curious life of its own.
"Well met again, Knights. Valiantly fought-too valiant to fall, if this or any world knew fairness. Fight on!" A tiny tan hand waved at them-and faded again, along with the last of the blue-white fire.
Crimson and bright green flashes flared in a score or more places in the mist, rolling across the whiteness as if angered or goaded by the blue-white rift. Baelnorns winked into being here, there, and everywhere to stare in bewilderment then-one after another-turn their heads to glare at the Knights, and thrust out withered blue arms straight, pointing.
They pointed not at the Knights, but at the largest red-and-green rift yet, which split the mists vertically like a giant, reluctant clam parting its shell. The high, eerie keening that the Knights knew to be mythal-song trilled forth along those arms, ringing through the air in almost visible echoes as it met and roiled along the edges of the widening rift.
"Ah, yes," Merith murmured. "This would be the traditional time for me to announce that I have a bad feeling about this, would it not?"
Florin grinned. "It would."
Jhessail rolled her eyes.
With clanks and gleamings, the marching automatons turned in unison from the last smoking remnants of liches to face the widening rift-and started walking toward it.
"As I recall," Jhessail observed with an edge to her gentle voice, "I was just going to ask Storm for some more tea, when Old Weirdbeard stepped out of thin air and volunteered us for this little jaunt. Someone remind me why I ever agree to go along on these-"