"Storm." Laeral did not bother to use magic. Like all the Chosen of Mystra, when Storm's name was spoken anywhere on Faerыn, she always heard it, and the next few words. "Need help. I'm in Laeral was still speaking when Storm appeared, reeling from teleport afterdaze and plummeting toward the ground. Laeral barely caught hold of her wrist in time to keep her from falling into the morass of bugbears and gnolls clamoring to get past the fiery wall below.
"If you'd have let me finish," Laeral said, rising above the range of the bugbears' slings, "I would have said 'in the air.'"
"By the bleeding stars, where do they find so many brutes?" Storm asked, getting her bearings and staring down on the horde below. Having been warned about the crossing, she was fully armed and armored. "No help from Shade this time, I see."
"The Shadovar may have better things to do than look after me," Laeral said. "That doesn't mean they're betraying us."
"Doesn't it?" Storm activated her own flying magic, then drew a pair of wands and cocked her brow. "Heard from Khelben yet?"
"The Shadovar didn't have anything to do with his disappearance." Laeral pointed her sister toward the opposite end of the battle line, then added, "They weren't even here, yet."
"One of them was," Storm added. "Do you think we ought to call some more sisters?"
"Absolutely not," Laeral answered, diving toward her own end of the battle. "You're bad enough."
They spent the next quarter hour flying back and forth over the battle lines, blasting beholders and illithids with magic from on high, occasionally resorting to more powerful magic like sunburst spells and incendiary clouds when they fell behind and the enemy creatures broke through in numbers larger than the battle mages could stop. Once, Storm was caught in a beholder's antimagic ray when an illithid mind-blasted her, and Laeral had to use time-stopping magic to rescue her. After being restored to capacity by one of Tempus's war clerics, Storm returned the favor twice, once enclosing Laeral in a protective sphere of scintillating colors and the other time creating a magic hand that beat would-be attackers away until she arrived to carry her sister to safety.
Eventually, they simply ran out of beholders and illithids to kill. Laeral's plan for defeating the flank attacks against the raft convoys also worked, and the bugbears and gnolls were forced to stand idle while the relief army hauled itself to shore behind its protective wall of fire. The sisters knew by the simple fact that their monstrous foes remained to fight that there were still phaerimm somewhere in the horde, but they also knew that the creatures would be careful not to reveal themselves in the presence of Mystra's Chosen. The special weapon of the Chosen, silver fire, was one of the few forms of magic that was sure to harm thornbacks, and the creatures were nothing if not cautious.
Once the last of the rafts was across, Laeral and Storm descended to join the commanders of each of the different companies in a war council. It was raining harder than ever, their warriors were exhausted from the crossing, and their foes were both fresher and stronger. On the other hand, they had a slight advantage in numbers and a large advantage in magic, and Laeral felt confident they could carry the day.
Though the wall of flame was a good twenty paces behind her, Laeral could feel its heat chasing the dampness from her rain-soaked clothes.
"What do you think, gentlemen?" she asked. "Attack now or rest the night behind our wall of fire and take the battle to them in the morning?"
"We elves will be no fresher in the morning," said Lord Yoraedia, who commanded Evermeet's five hundred warriors and mages. He glanced at Laeral with an unmistakable expression of scorn, then turned to the black-haired leader of the Black Lion Uthgardts, Chief Claw, and said, "I cannot imagine that even your tribesmen would sleep well this night."
Claw shrugged. "Sleep or not, it is nothing to us," he said, "but night favors the yellow hides and the walking dogs. We will take more to the death fires with us by attacking before dark."
Uncertain whether she was more surprised or alarmed by the fatalism in their voices, Laeral scowled and started to rebuke the commanders-then caught herself and forced a smile.
"You gentlemen are letting the weather cloud your judgment," she said. "There are two of Mystra's Chosen here. Do you really think we can be defeated by a few thousand gnolls and bugbears?"
"You? No," Chief Claw replied, waving his hand vaguely in the direction of the army, "but the rest of us are not Chosen. The rest of us will die."
Laeral heard a nervous murmur building in the ranks but ignored it and kept her attention focused on the commanders.
"Even Chosen die," she said, "but this army is not going to die-not today."
"Forgive me if I find your judgment somewhat clouded," Lord Yoraedia said.
"Clouded?" Laeral was growing angry-and the rising murmur in the ranks was not helping matters. "In what way is my judgment clouded?"
"You fear for your man." Chief Claw glanced over his shoulder, then looked back to Laeral just as she found herself clenching her fists to keep from doing something she would regret. "Your devotion does him honor, but it blinds you to our danger."
Laeral felt as if she had been struck. Yoraedia, Claw, all of the commanders were looking at her as though they truly believed she had led them all to their deaths for Khelben's sake alone.
"I am not the blind one here," she said. "If you can't see-" "Laeral, wait," said Storm.
She pointed upriver, to where a flight of dozens of huge, scaly wings was just appearing out of the rain. They were as large as sails and blue enough to show their color in the gray light, and even had the sisters never before seen a Rage of Dragons, they would have known what was coming by the sight of so many fang-filled mouths. Storm said, "Maybe they have a point."
Through the world-window in Telamont Tanthul's palace in Shade Enclave, the dragons looked like an expanse of blue sea shining up through a hole in the clouds, their great wings undulating like waves, their blue scales flashing like light on water-all but the leader. The leader was naked bone, with blue embers gleaming in the empty eye sockets of its skull and claws large enough to grasp the heads of even its biggest followers.
It could only be Malygris, the foolish blue who had traded his soul to the Cult of the Dragon in order to slay his hated ruler, Sussethilasis, and claim for himself the title of the Blue Suzerain of Anauroch. Though Galaeron had never met the dracolich himself, the younger blues who came to the edge of the desert to feed on tomb thieves and their horses often made a show of defiance by speaking of their suzerain's folly. They were not too rebellious, though-several of the smallest wyrms in the Rage were the very ones who had taken such delight in deriding their ruler to Galaeron.
A tilted plain of brown appeared before the dragons, with an orange half-circle of fire lighting the top edge and thousands of tiny flecks blackening the surrounding ground. Galaeron recognized the specks as warriors, but he didn't identify the brown plain as a river in flood until a few moments later, when the diving dragons drew near enough for him to see the current pouring over a barn's roof.
Galaeron focused his attention on the fire wall, and the specks resolved themselves into two armies. The greater one, composed of larger figures as well as superior numbers, was being held at bay by the crackling wall of fire. The smaller army was trapped against the river, with a flotilla of log rafts beached on the muddy shore behind them and the much larger army in front of them. They were, by all appearances, aware of the dragons swooping down behind them, for their orderly ranks were dissolving into chaos, bleeding into the river or bunching against the wall of fire.