There was silence in their heads; the mind-voice was gone.
"Sing, minstrels, of my total lack of surprise," Jhessail snapped. "I thought I took up adventuring to escape being marched through life under the commands of others-but then, to be an adventurer is to be a fool."
Florin said that last quotation along with her, grinning. She gave him a black look and said savagely, "Care to join me in blasting a lich or two?"
"Your spells won't work, remember?"
"Then I'll just have to scratch them to shreds with my bare hands, won't I?" she growled, striding toward the nearest lich. As she went, she dipped a hand into one of her boots to draw her largest dagger.
Merith and Florin exchanged glances, and watched silver tendrils drift after the purposeful mage known to many-behind her back-as "the Mother of the Knights." together in small groups, forming circles around every baelnorn and working strange, elaborate castings. Mythal force flowed golden once more.
Jhessail paid it no heed, just as the liches ignored the three Knights. When she overtook her chosen victim and stabbed him viciously, the liches walking just ahead of him-heading to join the nearest baelnorn cluster-kept right on walking, even after the three Knights hacked that lich apart and watched its limbs fade away into the whiteness around their ankles.
Jhessail shook her head, and started striding toward the next lich.
Merith and Florin rolled their eyes at each other and trotted after her.
At the heart of every circle, spell-glows rose, ghostly rings of emerald light forming and rotating at various inclinations around the motionless baelnorn. Gold mythal-force spun out to join those rings, and long, spider-fingered lich hands worked intricate spells that made the green and gold rings rise around their heads. Rise, and spin, and brighten…
"What're they up to now?" Jhessail wondered aloud.
Trotting at her shoulder, Merith grinned and shrugged. "You're the spell-hurler here, love."
Jhessail's answer wasn't long in coming. She was still a dozen hurrying strides away from the lich she was running down-and it was barely half that distance from joining a ring of undead around a baelnorn-when a familiar crimson radiance burst into being within the emerald rings above that circle of liches, and widened into a bright green.
And in that glow was another baelnorn, blinking in surprise as it floated down into the circle. Mythal-force tugged at its raised arms until golden curlicues flowed from its fingers, and it lost its look of alarm.
Merith frowned. "They're fetching more baelnorn hither!"
"Soon there won't be a mythal left unguarded in all Faerun," Florin commented, watching other rifts open above circles.
Jhessail slowed as her quarry joined a circle. "Should I strike at yon?" she asked. "Or will I just be dooming us for no good reason?"
Dooming yourselves, I'd say.
The voice in their heads was back.
The mage of the Knights sighed. "Are you going to tell us who you are? And what we're doing here? And what they are up to?" Jhessail kept her voice to a low mutter, but her gesture at the backs of the nearest liches was so violent it seemed a shout.
Of course. As soon as I work a particular spell. Larloch's creatures have obligingly prepared the perfect conditions forme.
The Knights looked all around, but saw no swirl of sapphire-blue hair, nor the tiny tan elf who should have been beneath it.
"Let's get back to Elminster and my lady," Florin suggested. "I'm thinking standing near liches might not be the wisest stratagem, just now."
In silent unison, the three Knights turned and hastened back together, glancing often over their shoulders.
They were about halfway back to the strands that sourced the silver web when it began.
A low ripple in the blood, an uneasy swell and surge. The Knights might have thought it mere indigestion if every white strand in sight wasn't bending in time to the slow, inexorable rhythm.
"I'm still not being told what's happening," Jhessail whispered, but she sounded more amused than exasperated.
Then something swept through the mist and strands, broke over them, and rolled on. Something vast and heavy and nigh-soundless, that plucked up and hurled away liches in velvet silence, and spun mythal-gold and emerald rings alike up into great spheres of white strands, englobing each and every baelnorn. The spheres fell softly from their heights, to bounce and roll gently among the strands, and halt here and there.
Something like a rag doll fell less gently out of the white misty nothingness overhead, and would have smashed Florin flat had he not cast aside his blade, stepped back, and cradled his hands to catch it.
The force of her fall drove him to his knees, and over onto his shoulders. Sapphire-blue hair blinded him, and soft limbs tumbled across his chest as their owner gasped, groaned, ducked under Jhessail's wary dagger, and plucked up Florin's sword.
On hands and knees, the elf grinned up at the lady mage. "Worry not, I won't be using this steel on you or anyone. 'Twould be poor reward for rescuing me from harm to lose one's blade." She turned her head to look at Florin. "My thanks, man."
The ranger rolled up to his knees, barely winded. The elf had been little heavier than a child. He gave her a polite smile, and she took hold of his sword by the blade and held it out to him.
As she did so, Merith went to his knees with the full flourishes, as if to a coronal or great lady.
She smiled at him. "I'm done with such things, young gallant. I hope. Yet I'll not entirely abandon the courtesies. Well met in a strange glade, blood of Meirynth. I see the blood runs strong."
Merith blushed, but the sapphire-haired elf turned her head to include the other two Knights as she continued, "Have my thanks, all of you." Then she turned fully to Jhessail, golden eyes twinkling. "And my explanations."
From up close, her beauty was even more breathtaking. Perfect skin of that tan, almost golden hue, long arms and longer legs for one so tiny… even Jhessail found herself staring.
A delicate hand waved dismissal. "I've seen far fairer; there's no need to be staring at these old bones."
"Ah, Lady…" Florin began, unable to take his eyes off that gorgeous sapphire-blue hair.
She sighed-and Florin found himself looking at a feminine version of Merith, with that glorious fall of hair turned jet black, and her skin a soft white.
"There. Does that set you more at ease?"
"Only if I could know I was seeing your true shape, Lady," Florin said. "We've fought so many fair-seeming foes who were scaled serpents-or worse-beneath the beauty they lured us with."
She shrugged, and became once more tan-skinned and blue-haired. "This is the one I've grown used to. In truth, I can't recall how far it is from what I looked like before I mastered my first spells."
She drew her feet under her and sat, hands planted on the misty whiteness that served as "ground" in the Tshad-darna. "Forgive me," she murmured. "I'm still weary after that mythal-twisting." She waved a hand at the nearest strand-spheres.
"You're the Srinshee," Merith said.
She turned to look at him, lost her smile, and nodded. "I am."
He regarded her cautiously, and murmured, "Forgive me, lady, but-are you of my sort… among elves, that is, or…?"
A slender shoulder lifted in a shrug. "Moon elf, sun elf," the Srinshee murmured. "I have moved so far beyond that."
Eyes fixed on his, she sat still and silent-as her skin turned a faint blue, her hair went silver-white, and her eyes deepened into bottomless pools of green. Then they went blue, along with her hair, as her skin turned bronze, her hair shifted again to a coppery hue and to a blaze of gold.
Florin made a wordless murmuring sound deep in his throat, at the striking beauty of one of her combinations-but the Srinshee went on changing. Her skin became deep brown, her hair shifted to match, her skin slid to copper tinged with green, her eyes went hazel and lilac-and obsidian black, and Merith drew in his breath with a hiss.