That left Mattick free to counterattack. He rose, wielding an oversized black sword in one hand and flinging a spray of winged black spiders from the other. The spiders swarmed Khelben's head in a droning black cloud, but it was the sword that proved most deadly, hacking Dove's leg off at the knee. She fell cursing and saved herself from a deadly second blow by unleashing a long ribbon of silver fire.
Mattick escaped a certain death only by flinging himself off to one side and bowling Khelben over by rolling into his legs. In the meantime, Dove's silver fire was burning through the shadowy fog above the basin, and Galaeron glimpsed a curving sweep of a sandy lakeshore far below. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing, and he realized why the mythallar was so difficult to find except through the shadows. The basin was in what had once been the top of the mountain but was now the bottom of the city, resting upside-down and looking straight down upon the desert below.
The hole in the clouds closed as quickly as it had opened, and Dove teleported to safety as well. Only Khelben, Laeral, and Storm remained, with the five Shadovar princes closing in around them and relentlessly herding the trio toward a whirling cyclone of shadow-filled air. There was Aris, too, still writhing on the floor, slowly sliding toward the middle of the basin on a sheet of his own crimson blood. No one was paying him any attention, and Galaeron quickly looked back to Telamont, lest the Most High sense the hope growing in his heart and do something to stop the clever giant.
Galaeron found even that strategy fraught with peril. Sliding down the basin wall behind Telamont was Vala, holding one hand clamped into a fist so she could point a star-shaped ring at the Most High's back. In the other she carried her darksword, her arm cocked and ready to throw at the first sign that he knew she was there.
Desperate to keep his mind on something else-and terrified that Telamont had already sensed his thoughts- Galaeron looked back to the Chosen.
"Use the silver fire!" he shouted. "It is the only-"
"Silence, you fool!" Telamont said. "Would you destroy Faer?n rather than let us have a place-"
He too fell silent as, to Galaeron's amazement, Khelben raised his hand and loosed a stream of the shimmering magic fire at Telamont. Crying out in rage and disbelief, Telamont had no choice but to lift both hands and raise a spell shield before him. Freed of the Most High's grasp, Galaeron plummeted toward the bottom of the basin and barely had time to cry out a spell of soft falling before the air erupted into whistling white sparks and cracking lances of black lightning. He brought his legs around beneath him and landed atop the mythallar itself-just in time to turn and see Vala come tumbling into Telamont from behind.
What happened next was impossible to say. He saw Telamont’s shadowy feet fly, Vala's sword arc, and a black arm whip into the crackling air. All of them dissolved into shadow.
The blow of a tremendous hammer shook the mythallar, and Aris cried out in triumph. Something like a volcano exploded beneath Galaeron's feet, and he found himself tumbling through air as black and as thick as tar.
He smashed into an obsidian wall and tumbled to his feet only to have his legs fly out from beneath him as the basin swung up beside him. He went somersaulting down toward the edge then came to a sudden stop, then went cartwheeling back toward the center. Three times he glimpsed the mythallar, chipped and pouring shadow fume out into the basin, with Aris wedging his legs beneath one side and still hammering at it with his sculpting hammer, before he hit it and stopped.
"Aha, Galaeron!" Aris cried. "It is an unworkable stone, but not too hard to flake!"
"I think-" the basin pitched wildly in the other direction, and Galaeron barely kept himself from tumbling away by grabbing hold of the giant's tool bag-"you have done enough!"
Aris stopped hammering long enough to ask, "What else is there to do?"
Galaeron saw Vala go tumbling by-and sweep Vattick off his feet to leave a severed Shadovar leg in her wake-before she vanished into the black mist and began to scream a savage Vaasan war cry. Galaeron plucked a handful of shadowstuff from the blackening air and shaped it into a pair of spiders. One of these he passed to Aris with instructions to swallow, and the other he gulped down himself. Two quick incantations later, and they were both scrambling across the basin on all fours, their hands and feet sticking to the slick surface as though coated with paste.
They found Vala and the last three Chosen in desperate straits, unable to keep their feet and caught inside a ring of Shadovar princes. Aglarel hurled a shadow ball at Storm, who barely managed to swing her legs around in time to take the attack in the thigh instead of her chest. The orb drilled a fist-sized hole through muscle and bone that clearly left her unable to fight, yet she did not teleport away as had the other Chosen when they grew too wounded to fight. Khelben leveled his staff at the prince who had wounded her, but the only thing that shot from the end was a laughable drizzle of yellow light.
Galaeron touched a finger to his temple, then used his shadow magic to speak to Aris in his thoughts
They're helpless! he explained. The shadowstuff is smothering their magic.
Aris nodded then pointed to Aglarel and Yder, and hefted his hammer.
Good, Galaeron sent. Go.
They sprang forward together, Aris catching the two princes by surprise, smashing their helms and sending them somersaulting across the basin floor before they vanished into the black mists. Galaeron caught Mattick from behind with a shadow bolt that sent him tumbling headlong into the Chosen's midst, where Laeral and Khelben quickly proved that they were not entirely helpless by planting their daggers at least twice in every unarmored inch before the prince beat a hasty retreat by dissolving back into the shadows.
That left Brennus, Clariburnus, and Dethud attacking from behind. A pair of dark bolts caught Khelben in the shoulders and sent him sliding across the basin toward Aris, while a shadow claw extended from Dethud's forearm to close around Laeral's throat and start dragging her back toward the Shadovar's ranks. Galaeron leaped forward to attack, but Vala was already hurling her darksword into the prince's chest. The weapon sank to the hilt, then dropped to the floor as Dethud retreated into the shadows.
Vala called the weapon back to hand and started to charge Brennus but was knocked from her feet as that basin made another wild swing. Her hip had barely touched down before she was back on her feet and starting forward.
Galaeron caught her by the arm and said, "It's done."
"Not yet." She turned and pointed up the basin wall into the black mists and said, "I got one of his arms, but Telamont’s still up there."
A pair of dark disks came hissing across the basin and would have slashed their heads off, had Aris not knocked them off their feet before it arrived. Galaeron rolled to his knees and counterattacked with a flight of shadow arrows.
Brennus blocked them easily and sent the dark shafts streaming back in their direction. Aris took two in his arm, and Vala one in her shoulder, and three more nicked Galaeron along one side of his neck and arm.
"If s done," Galaeron said. They were the most difficult words he had ever been forced to say, and also the surest. He took Vala's arm and shoved her back toward the three battered Chosen. "We aren't going to win this."
Aris refused to retreat.
"But the mythallar-"
"Is cracked," Galaeron said. "Perhaps that will be enough to bring the city down."
Aris turned and hurled his hammer at the heart of mythallar.
Clariburnus waved his hand and sent the tool somersaulting away, then Brennus sent a bank of black fog rolling toward them. Galaeron raised a wind spell that he hoped would send the fog rolling back toward the princes, but Brennus dispelled it with a gesture. Storm began to choke on the fumes, and it occurred to Galaeron that he was learning something else about power, that sometimes the most difficult part of wielding it was knowing when it was not enough.