"Up, friends," she said. "I believe Larloch's grown tired of being unable to listen in, and brought battle back to us."
The tiny elf waved a hand, and her shielding melted into glistening translucence. They could see white mist overhead, whiteness under their feet, and a dark, solid wall of maliciously-smiling liches all around, scores deep.
The Srinshee's face went grim. "He has more liches than I knew. This may mean doom for us all."
There was a flash of silver behind that dark wall of undead for a moment. It thrust unwilling liches aside for an instant, like a fire-crack in the blazing darkness of a log turning to ash, to show the Knights the strand that was Elminster ablaze with furious silver fire.
Then it darkened, and the wall of liches was whole once more.
There came another flash, dragging the liches asunder at a slightly different spot. They saw the strand that was Dove pulsing silver, more gently-or more feebly?-than Elminster's had blazed. Then it, too, darkened, and the liches came together again.
Grinning coldly, they closed in around the Knights, who raised their weapons and waited to die.
"Stout hearts, heroes," the Srinshee urged from behind their backs. "I've a trick or two yet-"
The world exploded in roaring silver fire.
Hurled down and tumbled in whirling helplessness like leaves dashed and rolled in a gale, the Knights beheld the Srinshee's startled eyes burst into leaping silver flames. More flames exploded from her mouth, and her body leaped at them, hurled like a helpless ragdoll.
Those tiny arms and legs overtook the rolling Knights and smashed them flat, silver fire rolled over them in a tingling, terrifying snarling that left them numbed and gasping.
A furious female voice snarled, "Stay down!"
Jhessail had ended up panting on her back, with one of the Srinshee's shapely legs across her throat, so she saw who spat out that angry command.
Silver hair lashing and whirling snakelike above a torn and tattered black gown, a woman whose eyes were two smoldering silver stars glared around at ranks of cowering, hissing liches. She curled her body back like a snake rearing to strike then lashed out with both arms flung forward, like a whip cracking, to send silver fire forth in an all-consuming flood.
The Witch-Queen of Aglarond had come calling.
All the liches in front of her were gone. Where they'd stood, the mists had given way to scores of tiny wisps of smoke streaming from lumps of ash that had been feet.
The liches behind the Simbul fled, dwindling into the mist like so many large and ungainly black bats, trying to escape before she Turned and let fly once more, hurling forth another destroying flood of silver fire to sear strands and running liches alike.
It was impressive, and went on for a long time. Severed white strands slumped in the dim, misty white distance. The barefoot woman in the black tatters reeled, her eyes going dark and her arms falling to her sides like boneless things, and fell on her face.
The few liches left nearby swarmed up from where they'd been cowering, flat amid the last curling sighs of mist, and raced desperately toward the fallen Chosen, hands raised into claws.
The Srinshee sped to the Simbul even faster, springing up from the Knights in a racing flight powered by vitality snatched from the three adventurers. Her life-leeching magic left the Knights sick and shuddering.
"Sorry, friends," she called back, as she flung out a hand toward the strands that had swallowed Elminster and Dove, and did something that called forth more silver fire from them.
The liches recoiled as it came racing to her in two thin, snarling beams, outlined her briefly in a halo of silver flames, and sank down into her. The Srinshee went to her knees atop the sprawled Queen of Aglarond and kissed her slack mouth-a kiss that leaked silver fire.
By then Florin was on his feet, swaying, leaning on his sword as if it was a walking-stick. He managed two unsteady steps toward the Srinshee before she was flung back into him by the Simbul's eruption back upright. Tumbling together, they rolled over a weakly-cursing Jhessail, and beheld the Queen of Aglarond once more hurling silver fire.
The radiance came not in great floods, but in tiny bursts that streaked from her pointing finger at this lone lich-who burst into flames, like a screaming torch-then that one, who burned even more violently.
One by one the liches fell to the Simbul's stabbing silver fire, as the whiteness all around the shuddering, struggling-to-their-feet Knights seemed to pulse with silver, and surge beneath their boots. It began to fold up around them, the whiteness slashed with rifts, countless spiderweb cracks, and great tumbling vistas of spreading darkness. Strands collapsed into glowing white soup; mist, blazing liches, and all whirled around them wildly; a great roaring rose from bone-shaking depths into ear-clawing heights; and Out of the deafening chaos, the Srinshee plucked at Merith and shouted, "The shaddarn is collapsing!"
He twisted, trying to reach his wife, but Jhessail was beyond the tips of his straining fingers, and falling away from him-into the waiting grip of a long-fingered hand that looked familiar.
Merith had just time to conclude it must belong to Elminster, and that the elbow streaking past his nose must be Dove's, grabbing Florin, before everything whirled up into shrieking darkness and he was falling…
Falling…
Falling through sunlight into soft, dark earth with a crash and clatter of beanpoles, as familiar tripods of silver-with-age spars of wood toppled over, trailing tendrils and dancing leaves.
Lush green leaves? Roseberry leaves? Warmth and sun and no snow? Just when had high summer come to Storm's kitchen garden?
Just how long had they been away in the shaddarn?
Merith bounced as someone heavy landed on him and was as suddenly gone again, more leaves dancing past his gaze. He felt someone else's boot strike his and flop down on him and roll aside… and he was blinking up at the amused face of Storm Silverhand, reaching a sun-browned hand down to him.
"Things went well, I see," she commented, "unless one happens to be a bean plant. Sister, must you always crush the same sort? 'Tis not as if you ever actually eat them…"
The Simbul, sprawled face-down under most of the Knights amid a welter of poles and crushed greenery, neither moved nor responded. winked out, together.
Dove and Storm looked at each other, sighed, and reached down for the Simbul. "She sent forth a lot of power," Dove said. "One of these days, she's going to spend too much, and-"
Jhessail caught her breath then, so sharply that the sound she made was almost a sob.
Florin and Storm looked up sharply-and froze, letting silence fall and deepen like an unrolling cloak.
The cloaked figure standing on air a few strides away across Storm's garden was tall, terrible, and a-crawl with chill power. A ring of floating, faintly-glowing gem-stones that fairly throbbed with power drifted in a slow, patient circuit in the air above the apparition's gray head. Eyes like twinkling pits of white fire regarded the three sisters and the trio of Knights on their knees around them, and a hand that was little more than withered gray flesh over bones tightened around a staff that crackled with power.
Merith hefted his sword, strangely thrilled that it was no longer humming, and opened his mouth to spit words of defiance.
"Larloch," Storm said in greeting, as calmly as if she'd been identifying the sort of tree a leaf blowing by had fallen from.
"Who never risks himself," Jhessail whispered. "So why…?"
The lich-king kept his eyes on the Bard of Shadowdale. His withered hands spread slightly, as if in entreaty, nothing about the gesture suggesting fragility or enfeeblement.
"This was… not my doing," Larloch said, his voice dry and deep. "From time to time I… test the lichnee who serve me by showing them a measure of freedom, and observing what they do with it. This time, they did foolishness."