The morning shadows were just growing darker when Takari began to move more rapidly, leading them just fast enough so that it became difficult to travel without making noise. Melegaunt sent a shiver up their spines by stepping on a stick and filling the air with a low crunch. Vala slipped on a slope and fell to her knees with a soft thud and muffled curse. As they crossed a broad creek, Aris broke through the ice, and a loud splash purled through the trees. Galaeron did not need to look to know their foes were following somewhere behind. Takari had increased the pace to attract their attention, and now she was leading them closer to the Dire Wood.
The sun finally made a full appearance, an orange disk hanging low in the trees, shining down into the forest and striping the snow with trunk-shadows as long as some roads. Takari began to vary the pace, slowing for a time and wandering an erratic course, then plowing ahead in a sudden, steady surge. Galaeron knew without looking that their enemies were preparing to attack, trying to slip unseen along their flanks to cut the party off. Takari was using the same trick that a band of Darkhold Zhentarim had once used against Galaeron's patrol, feigning fatigue and poor discipline so the pursuers would hold their attack in hopes of catching the quarry at rest. Galaeron tried to help by acting the part, gulping down handfuls of snow and quietly instructing the others to do likewise. Once or twice, he even lagged behind, trying to convince the beholders that with enough patience, they might pick off a straggler and make their job that much easier.
At last, the forest seemed to thin ahead, the barren trunks of the sugar maples and shadowtops giving way to a broad, blurry expanse of white. At first, Galaeron thought they might be coming to a meadow or snow-covered lake, but as they drew closer, the pale blur resolved itself into a wall of albino oak trees. Amazingly, they were still in full leaf, and they were completely white, from the bases of their alabaster trunks to the height of their blonde crowns. Galaeron could even see a few ivory acorns hanging from their white stalks.
Takari gave a series of sharp siskin shicks, and Galaeron realized he was looking at the Dire Wood. He had expected it to be darker, more ominous-twisted, somehow, and tangibly evil. Instead, it looked like something out of an elven myth, beautiful and illusory and ancient beyond the ages. Galaeron answered with his cardinal's wit wit wit, and Takari stopped, nocking an arrow and spinning to fire in the same quick motion.
"Run for the white trees!" Galaeron shoved Vala forward. "Melegaunt can use his magic there."
Takari's arrow hissed past Galaeron's head and thudded into something soft. He pulled his bow from his back and dived over a log, then came up with his own arrow nocked and pointed in the same direction.
A shrieking beholder hovered seventy paces distant, its eyestalks spraying colored rays in every direction, the fletching of Takari's arrow protruding from its big central eye. Galaeron leveled his shaft at the same target-then, twenty paces ahead of the creature, glimpsed a plume of snow rising from the ground as some invisible foe raced for the Dire Wood. In a breath, Galaeron adjusted his aim and loosed the arrow.
The shaft flashed across the plume at about rib height, then drew a startled cry before it ricocheted away and sank into the snow. Galaeron uttered a curse on all phaerimm, then leaped up on the log behind which he was hiding and pointed in the direction he had fired.
"Watch over there!" he yelled. "The phaerimm's invisible, with an arrow shield!"
He was rewarded for his bravery by a black flash from one of the beholder's eyes, but he was already diving for cover behind a snowy boulder. The log he had been standing on shriveled into a mass of rotten pulp, then the eye tyrant screeched again as another of Takari's arrows sank into its body. Galaeron nocked another arrow and hurled himself from his hiding place, aiming as he rolled. A cone of golden light flashed from one of the beholder's eyestalks, and the boulder dissolved into dust. Galaeron loosed his arrow at the creature's big eye and saw it sink out of sight. This time, the beholder did not cry out. It simply dropped into the snow, its eyestalks drooping over its body like so many withered vines. Galaeron and Takari each planted a guarantee arrow into the lifeless orb and darted to new hiding places, and only then did they raise their heads to take stock-Malik and his horse were nowhere to be seen, of course. Aris was charging in the direction Galaeron had pointed, swinging a ten-foot deadfall log back and forth in a noble, if somewhat misguided, effort to smash their invisible foe through sheer chance. Vala and Melegaunt were running in the wrong direction, charging through the snow toward Galaeron and Takari.
He waved them back, only to have them stop and gesture him in their direction. He tried again, this time more urgently. Once Melegaunt reached the Dire Wood, he would be free to use his shadow magic-and if they stood any chance at all of escaping the phaerimm and its minions, it was the arch-wizard's magic.
Vala ignored him, instead pointing her darksword at the fallen beholder. "It was only the scout," she yelled. "Now, will you two stop clowning around and get your pointy ears over here?"
When no rays of any color leaped out to silence her, Galaeron dared to look behind him. Much to his relief, the rest of the beholders were a hundred paces distant, coming up fast, but still fist-sized spheres weaving through the trees. Behind them hovered the tornado-shaped figure of a phaerimm, no larger than Galaeron's thumb, yet terrifying enough even at that distance.
A dull thump echoed through the wood as Aris connected with their invisible foe. To Galaeron's amazement, the stone giant did not instantly erupt into a pillar of flame or drop dead with a gaping hole through his torso. Instead, he gave a deep groan of satisfaction and started forward again, shaking the snow from the trees around him as he beat the ground with his makeshift club. "Aris!" thundered Melegaunt. "Stop that at once!"
A series of colored flashes filled the air in front of Galaeron as the approaching beholders began to test the range of their eye rays. They were not close enough to strike yet, but it would not be long before the beams began to hit. Seeing that the foolish humans were determined to enter the Dire Wood together or not at all, he whistled to Takari and turned toward them. Even at their best pace, he doubted they would be fast enough to outrun the beholders' eye rays, but with a little dodging and weaving, they stood a reasonable-well, acceptable-chance of reaching the wood alive.
As Galaeron and Takari approached, Vala grabbed their hands and pulled them behind a tree. The beholder rays were starting to blast through the forest around them now, boring holes through massive shadowtop trunks and withering whole maples. Turlang would not be happy about the damage done to his forest, but as long as Melegaunt did not use his shadow magic within the wood, the treant would not hold them-or Lady Morgwais-responsible.
As Aris approached, a golden ray caught him square in the leg. The beam would have taken the torso off a normal man, but it merely drilled a melon-sized hole through the stone giant's thigh. He let out a great bellow and collapsed, shaking the ground beneath their feet as he crashed down behind Melegaunt. "That will do!" yelled Melegaunt, directing himself to Vala.
Vala grabbed Galaeron's hand and pressed it into Takari's, then looped her own arm through his and grabbed hold of Melegaunt's with the other. The archwizard locked her hand in the crook of his elbow, then pressed his other palm to the giant's biceps and began the incantation to a shadow spell.