A lone figure stepped out of the green flare of the rift. Tall, dark, and terrible, it stood motionless in the heart of the rising trilling of mythal force that seemed to enshroud it in gilded, half-seen, writhing curves and fantastic curlicues of force that shaped and reshaped themselves constantly around it.
Within that writhing of mythal magic, the lich grew visibly darker and taller, looking at the Knights in silent menace. It was more intact and muscled than any they'd yet seen, looking more like a mighty, black-cloaked archmage with a sickly pallor than an undead.
"Mystra forfend," Jhessail muttered, "is this Larloch?"
"No," Merith replied. "Or at least, if it is, he looks much different than he did when I saw him."
Both of the other two Knights gave the elf sharp glances.
"When this is done, friend Merith," Florin said, "if the gods grant that both of us can still speak together, I'll be wanting to hear some answers from your lips, believe you me."
Merith's grin was as bright as ever. "I find myself unastonished."
Bereft of liches to dice and scorch, the clockwork automations clanked toward the lich, passing in front of the Knights to converge on the lone figure that stood a head taller than the largest of the clanking things.
"Stop the baelnorn," Merith said. "Whatever they're doing, it's feeding yon Bad Sir Blackcloak with power, and fairly soon he's going to-"
Silver fire snarled out in a cone of torn and shrieking mists. Jhessail's grim smile of satisfaction fell into a soft curse as the flames died away and the lich's spell took effect-blasting an automaton into shards of flying metal.
"Its spells are working, blast it!" she snarled. "Mother Mystra's tears!"
The Knights flung themselves hastily down as another two clockwork things exploded in twin shattering roars.
Deadly metal whirred in all directions. Jhessail saw a cog bounce once in the mist, and soundlessly sink out of sight as if into a bog.
The next spell bore no silver flames at all, and seared away the mist, as four streaking spheres shot into the heart of the marching automatons and burst with an ear-shattering roar and a flash of blinding, blistering-hot flame.
"Well," Florin said, "at least we're already lying down, and can die reclining at ease."
A second meteor swarm smote their ears, and the mists rained shrapnel and the twisted toothed arcs of gears and cogs that would turn no more.
Merith peered into smoke-darkened, shifting mists and muttered, "That's pretty well taken care of the clock-"
Another four spheres spun out of the mists, trailing sparks as they came, right at the Knights.
"Farewell, friends," Florin said, "we've had a good ride togeth-"
Right above their heads, the spheres flickered as they always did in the instant before they exploded-and froze, spinning vainly in the grips of four vibrating silver spheres that had formed out of nowhere.
The spheres had spark-trails of their own, leading back to the thickened strands that were, or had been, Elminster and Dove.
The humming strands faded, the spheres tightened like crushing fists, and the lich's four meteors winked once and were gone as if they'd never been.
More lines of thrumming force raced out from the two strands, flaring out into a great web as they raced toward the Knights. There was a sudden flare of crimson beneath their glow, and the lich stood beside the strands, leaning toward them malevolently.
"Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Jhessail snarled, clambering to her feet again.
The lich turned its head to glare at her, another spell roaring from between its fingers-and the silver strands flashed blinding-bright before it, blocking the speeding magic.
From behind that sudden wall came a larger flash and roar. White strands bent outward and writhed. The dark figure of the lich reeled back, crashing against the strand that was Dove.
The strand grew arms-Dove's arms-that wrapped around the lich from behind, embracing it fiercely. Her face emerged from the whiteness, contorted in pain, her eyes closed and cords stood out like curved blades on her neck as she clung to the struggling lich.
The Knights were all on their feet, sprinting toward the struggle. The lich dwindled in Dove's grip, melting and shuddering even as it tried vainly to turn and claw her, its fingers lengthening into cruel, curved talons each as long as Jhessail's forearm.
Dove's arms tightened around the lich as it sank and sagged, crumbling. Ash fell in streams from it as she slid down the strand, bringing her arms in tightly and her knees up, curling around the undead as it crumbled entirely away, leaving her shuddering and gasping.
"Dove!" Florin cried, rushing up to her. "Love, I-"
She shook her head at him, fighting to speak, and managed only to gasp, "I'll call-" 'ere her violent shudderings overwhelmed her. Waving him away, she sank back into the strand, melting into smooth whiteness once more beneath Florin's reaching fingertips.
His fiercely-hissed curses were interrupted by Merith.
"She's back," the elf snapped, pointing.
By which he meant that the tiny, beautiful, blue-haired elf had returned, stepping out of a rift with one arm raised to point at the baelnorn.
It vanished. She pointed again, and the next one winked out. And the next.
She'd banished over a dozen baelnorn, and their singing" mythal-force with them, before the mists erupted in dozens of crimson-and-green mouths. Whereupon she vanished in an instant, even before more liches with glaring eyes in their open palms came striding through the new rifts and looked hurriedly in all directions.
They ignored the Knights as if the three humans were mere mist, to peer at the few remaining baelnorn. Then the liches hissed various curses, exchanged dark glances with each other, and started to cast spells-or rather, the same spell.
It was a magic unfamiliar to the warily-watching Knights, that made drifts of mist nee from the liches in all directions, laying bare the endless webwork of white strands-and the glittering web of silver threads around and above the Knights.
Several liches peered at that web with narrow, unfriendly eyes, and stood sentinel, watching it from right where they were in the distant mists. Others worked spells that sent seeking radiances bobbing among the strands like agitated will-o-wisps, searching behind every strand.
"So few," one lich snarled in disbelief. "What happened to them all?" It waved at the three Knights. "Those worms could not have slain more than a handful at most."
Even Merith, whose ears were far keener than those of his two human companions, could not hear the reply that the lich standing nearest made to that angry cry.
Nor could he properly hear what the loud-voiced lich said next, because a soft, melodious whisper sounded between his own ears. The voice was that of the she-elf who'd welcomed them there, the one he was almost certain was the-
Knights of Myth Drannor, the warm whisper said to them, and Merith knew they were all three hearing it; he could feel the mind of Florin, like a bright sharp sword, and his beloved Jhess, like her warm arms around him, moving against his own thoughts. I need you to strike at these creatures of Larloch. Please. Without their spells, they are but striding undead.
"Larloch? We can't prevail against Larloch!" Jhessail's voice held a sob of horror amid her incredulity. "Nor against so many liches!"
Oh, but you can, the whisper came, confident, with my aid and with what Elminster is sending you.
"And Larloch? What will you do to shield us when he appears?"
He won't. He plays a long game, and this is but one ploy among a thousand thousands for him. He's too coldly calculating to ever come to consider it worth risking his own existence. Long before that fate would be faced, he'll judge the cost in lost liches too high.
"Again," Jhessail snarled, "I'd like to know what by all the gods is going on."