"This is no sending," Florin murmured. " 'Tis truly him."
Merith nodded. "His want-or need-must be very important."
Swords ready, the two rose slowly to their feet, each out of long habit stepping to one side to spread out and so offer this new foe more widely-spread targets, and a broader field of menace.
Larloch ignored them. Those chilling eyes regarded Dove and Storm as they stepped forward in slow unison, hands empty of weapons and hair rising to swirl around them restlessly.
"And now?" Storm asked, her words a clear challenge.
Silver fire danced in her eyes, and those of her sister.
The Shadow King made no reply, and Storm did something wordless that made a tear of silver fire drop from her eye to her breast-where it became a thin line of silver flame that raced up to her shoulder and down her arm, consuming and darkening nothing, to fill her palm and rise there in restless hunger, flickering and blazing.
Even stronger hunger rose in Larloch's eyes as he gazed at what danced in Storm's palm. "And now," he replied, lifting his gaze only reluctantly from silver flames to Storm Silverhand's eyes, "I tender my apologies and depart. I seek greater Art, always. I do not seek battle with you, or any who serve the Lady."
"No?" Dove asked, lifting her empty hand as if to hurl something.
"No," Larloch said, bowing to her. Emerald fires crackled from nowhere to trail across withered gray flesh. "I am not a fool. No matter how powerful one becomes, there are always those who are stronger."
"Yet you tarry," Storm reminded him, as politely as a lady of minor nobility conversing with a king.
"Lady, I go," the undead lord replied. "I confess I… " He sighed, and announced in a near-whisper, "Looking upon the silver fire is precious to me."
Storm regarded him wordlessly for what seemed a long time then slowly stepped forward, her face solemn. In breath-held silence the Knights watched her walk to him.
The Shadow King took a step back in the face of her calm, lilting advance. Then another.
Where he held his ground, an errant breeze stirred the long, stringy white hair that clung to the tight-stretched gray flesh on his skull. His eyes seemed to burn with rising white fire, and green lightning leaped out of his skin to race restlessly across him at Storm's approach. They heard him murmur, "I know my peril."
The Bard of Shadowdale came to a stop almost touching Larloch, and lifted her hand slowly between them. He held his staff hastily aside, out of the way, and stared down.
Storm let silver fire leap and dance in her palm, and Larloch bent to peer at it until his nose was almost touching the tallest licking silver tongues. He trembled with desire, his hands rising almost involuntarily.
Dove seemed to rise with them, gathering herself to do something, and Jhessail licked her lips and lifted her hands to be ready to work what would almost certainly be an utterly futile spell.
And Larloch straightened up, looked at Storm eye to eye, and said, "Thank you. It has been a very long time since someone has shown me kindness."
He stepped back, bowed deeply, and said, "Fear me no more. Inspired, I return to my Art."
The Shadow King turned, whipped his cloak around himself-and it fell to the ground, empty, fading to nothingness as it touched the earth of Storm's freshly-turned roseberry bed. There was a faint chord of chimings, like a flourish on the highest strings of a harp strung with metal, in the wake of the departing stones that had floated above Larloch.
Storm stood watching, twirling her fingers in a swift spell… and turned, visibly relaxing, to announce, "He's gone. Quite gone, with no spying magic nor lurking peril left behind."
"What?" The whisper was raw and horrible, but the fire in the Simbul's eyes, as she lifted her chin from the ground, was as fierce as ever. "Without even giving me a chance at him?"
"Alassra," Dove said with sincere tenderness," 'Twould have been no chance at all."
The Queen of Aglarond whirled and stiffened in an instant, like an aggrieved cat. "Sister, are you implying-?"
"No," Dove said, effortlessly plucking the Simbul up by the shoulders and holding her upright, "I'm saying it straight out. No matter how broken or weary you may be, you can turn yourself into leaping lightning-I've seen it often enough, Mother Mystra knows-and nothing Larloch can muster can stand as a barrier against silver fire. As sheer silver fire, you couldn't help but reach him, and at a touch destroy him."
Storm nodded as she rejoined them all in the trampled beans. "That's what he meant when he spoke of knowing his peril. You saw the green fire crawling all over him? That's the spell he's crafted to maintain his unlife, quickening as Mystra's fire came close."
"He dares not have silver fire, but desires its power so much," Jhessail said. "He knows 'twill bring him oblivion-and longs for that, too-yet cannot bring himself, after so fierce and long a struggle to cling to life, to let it all go in an instant."
The three sisters all nodded, in their own ways.
"While mere young, vigorous brutes watch," Florin added. "Seeing through his dignity."
Merith gave his friend a sidelong look. "Not so much of the 'vigorous,' there. I'm feeling a touch weary, myself. Perhaps 'tis all this listening to high-tongued jabber."
"Perhaps," Storm agreed, a familiar twinkle in her eyes. "Tea, anyone?"
"Tea?" The Queen of Aglarond twisted that word into a dripping symphony of disgust. "Is that all you can offer?
After I destroyed nigh on a hundred liches, the replacement of which should keep Old Shadow-wits busy for a few decades at least?"
"I can manage wine if Merith and Florin yet have strength enough to stagger down to my cellar, and soup if you've patience to wait till 'tis ready," Storm chuckled. "But as to something more substantial, I fear Torm and Rathan have taken to dining here every evening in your absence, on the pretext of being ready-to-hand upon your return, and there's not a joint of meat nor a barrel offish left in my larder."
The Simbul frowned, sighed, and frowned a little harder. And an entire roast boar-spit and all-sizzled and dripped onto the beans, floating in midair right in front of her.
She smiled in triumph, spread her hands in a flourish, and reeled. The boar sank, and Dove flung an arm around her shoulders to steady her. The Simbul winced and shuddered, white-faced.
Storm's hair stirred around her shoulders like a whirlwind, and the boar's descent halted. "I suppose you'd be offended if I asked where you thieved this from?"
Leaning into Dove's shoulder, the Simbul gave her sister a dirty look and muttered, " 'Tis mine. From my kitchens, I mean, and taken with a spell that tells my cooks whose hand removed it."
Dove examined her own fingernails, and said to them, "My, working in your palace must be fun."
The Simbul rolled her eyes. "Don't bother fighting to win a throne, and defend it by slaughtering Red Wizards year in and year out," she told Florin, straightening and stepping away from Dove's arm with a determined effort. "See the respect it wins you?"
"Lady Queen," the ranger replied, offering her his arm like a grave courtier, " 'twas not foremost in my personal plans, no."
With a smile, the Simbul leaned on him. She was surprisingly heavy, but Florin saw no safety in commenting on that or even betraying his realization of it. With stately tread he led her along one of the garden paths in Storm Silverhand's wake.
Behind him, Jhessail shook her head. "Sunrise, sunfall, and as inevitably, here we go again!"
"What," Merith chuckled into her ear, "there're more liches? Where?"
"Oho ha hearty ha," she replied. " want tea, if no one else does. I'll stay for that soup, too. Right now, I could eat a-"