Hot tears gathered in Daried's eyes, but he did not allow himself to avert his gaze. Having come this far, he would not allow himself to turn away until he had seen all that there was to be seen.
It was not the elven way to send the dead to Arvandor with roomfuls of precious jewels or wealth for use in the next life. Sun elves were not humans, so frightened of death that they hoped such rites and treasures promised dominion in ages to come. Most sun elves of high family were interred in their finest clothes, wearing the jewels and diadems that went with such formal dress, as a simple matter of reverence. But that did not mean that the remains of the honored dead were to be picked over by whatever scavenger happened along.
He came to the last vault, and there the loss was bitter indeed. It was the resting place of his mother's cousin Alvanir, last of the Morvaerils. He had been interred with the ancient moonblade of House Morvaeril, since with the passing of the last of the line the sword of the Morvaeril clan had itself faded into powerlessness and slumber. Each moonblade was meant for one elven House, and if the House failed, the moonblade was of use to no other.
The ancient sword had been taken too, of course.
Even though the blade was dormant or extinguished outright, it was still a treasure of House Morvaeril, and through Daried's mother, House Selsherryn as well. All else Daried could bear, bitter as it was, but the theft of a dead moonblade left a deep, hot ache in the center of his chest.
"What good is it to you?" he asked the long-vanished plunderers of the tomb. "Is there nothing you hold sacred?"
He drifted back to the central chamber, and wept silently in the gloom and shadows. He'd been born in this house, seventeen decades ago. He remembered the soft lanterns swaying in the chill evening breezes of the spring, the green and lush canopy of leaf and vine that had roofed the courtyard in summer, the tall windows of the library gleaming orange and gold on a frosty autumn morning. Nothing else was left to him of his youth, so many years ago.
The soft click of a taloned claw on the steps behind him saved his life.
Daried roused himself from his sorrow just in time to leap aside, as the foul hellborn monster threw itself on him from the stairs. In a dark rush the thing bounded past him, its hooked talons hissing through the air where the elf s face and throat had been an instant earlier. A hot sharp claw grazed Daried's cheek, and the thing's powerful rush sent him spinning to one side as the creature missed its chance to bear him to the ground and rip out his throat.
Daried grunted once in surprise and backstepped, gaining a double arm's-reach of space to get his bearings and sweep out his sword. His adversary had a shape not unlike that of a man, but a long, thick tail twisted behind it like a hungry serpent, and from head to toe it was studded with barbs of steel-hard horn as long as daggers.
'
Its skin was crimson and hot, and its eyes glowed like balls of green flame in the shadows of the crypt.
"You weep for the dead, elf?" it hissed. "Be at ease. I will leave your bones here with the rest of this dry old wreckage."
"You mock my ancestors at your peril, hellspawn," Daried growled, keeping his swordpoint between the monster and himself.
The creature grinned with a mouthful of sharp, carious fangs, and leaped at the elf with a flurry of jabbing barbs and slashing talons. But Daried was ready for the monster; he allowed himself to slide easily into the bladesinger's waking trance, a timeless state of mind and body in which each movement became a choreographed dance. With calm deliberation Daried moved his sword to guide the monster's talons away from his flesh, parry the stabbing tail, disguise delicate ripostes and counters.
The thinblade's razorlike point darted between barbs and spikes to pierce infernal flesh, then again and again. Hot spatters of black blood fell to the dusty floor, but the creature gave no sign that it had been hurt. It snapped and flailed wildly, claws and fangs and stabbing spikes whistling past Daried. Elf and devil fought in grim silence, with no sound other than the dull click and scrape of talons against steel. Sharp barbs gouged Daried's limbs and talons raked his shining mail, but he battled on, refusing to allow pain or fatigue a foothold in his concentration.
The devil managed to seize Daried's sleeve in one tal-oned hand, and it hurled itself on him, trying to impale him like a living bed of nails. But Daried twisted away, turning the creature's hand over as he spun. At the same instant he barked out syllables of a deadly spell, and with his free hand grasped the monster's arm. Golden lightning exploded from the bladesinger's touch, charring his adversary's arm into useless black ruin.
With a low hiss the devil recoiled, its grip on Daried failing. It crouched low and whirled, bringing its fiercely spiked tail whistling around in a blow powerful enough to crush stone. But Daried leaped over the devil's strike, and with one smooth motion he sank a foot of his thinblade into the hollow of the monster's throat.
The devil drove him back with a frenzy of slashes and jabbing barbs. But black blood fumed in its mouth and ran between its yellow fangs. It took two more steps toward Daried, the green flame in its eyes dimming, and it stumbled to the floor in a pool of its own foul ichor.
Daried took careful aim and transfixed its head with one more thrust. Then he backed away, waiting for the corpse to vanish. Summoned monsters always did. But nothing happened; the hellspawn's body remained where it had fallen.
"It wasn't summoned?" he muttered in dismay. It hadn't been called to Faerun by a conjuring spell, it had traversed some sort of gate between the planes of its own volition. It was as real in this world as he was.
An ill omen indeed. Was the creature's presence in the world the work of the daemonfey, or did some other peril confront Daried and the elves who followed him?
Whatever the answer, it did not seem likely that he would find out more in the ruins of the Morvaeril manor. Nor, for that matter, would he learn anything about who had taken the ancient moonblade and what the Dalesfolk had had to do with the theft.
Battered and heartsick, Daried shook the foul blood from his sword and climbed back up the stairs to the summer warmth above.
Daried returned to the encampment an hour before sunset. It was a pleasant spot, a well-shaded forest glade a stone's throw from the gravel-voiced Ashaba, where a score of elf warriors under Daried's command kept watch. It was their task to make sure that the Sembian mercenaries in Battledale-allies or dupes of the daemonfey,
Daried did not know or care which-did not reach the west bank of the river by crossing unopposed in the green depths of the forest. Should the Sembians get across the Ashaba here, they would outflank the elf legions that stood ready to defend the main crossing at the town of Ashabenford fifteen miles farther north.
It struck Daried as a fool's errand. No one considered it very likely that the Sembians would search for a path through the trackless depths of the forest in order to try a river crossing where no easy fording-point existed. That was why Vesilde Gaerth, the knight-commander who captained the Crusade forces in Mistledale, had detached only two dozen warriors to guard against the possibility. If, by some amazing feat of endurance, the Sembians succeeded in the forest march and river crossing, Vesilde Gaerth needed a few hours' warning so that he could abandon his defenses at Ashabenford and retreat out of the trap.
Gaerth had also told Daried that he was to capture, drive off, or kill any Sembian scouts who tried to spy out the elven defenses in the southern verge of the dale. And for that matter, he was supposed to do what he could to deal with any demons, devils, or similar monsters who appeared to harry the human villagers and farmers who lived nearby. In fact, that was why Daried had been given this task. As a bladesinger, he at least had a chance of dealing with such monsters using his skill and magic. Most of the other elves in his small company would have been overwhelmed by a hellspawn of any real strength.