It clawed the air, flung up a hand in which an eye was opening, and Florin's backswing cut that hand into ruin. Shards of dry flesh, dust, and tumbling fingers sprayed back into the lich's silently-snarling face.
Merith whirled from his completed butchery to chop Florin's lich down, muttering, 'No spells, and not a word do they speak! This seems… unsubtle for Larloch. Too stumble-headed.'
Florin nodded. They dismembered their silent foe, turned its remains over with their swordpoints to peer in vain for items of interest, and hastened back to Jhessail.
'Far more fumbling than Larloch's reputation suggests,' Florin agreed, as they turned back-to-back once more. 'And why offer themselves to our steel so? Without their spells, we can destroy them readily enough. Why attack us? If they're compelled, whoever commands them must be slow-witted indeed!'
There was another red flash to Jhessail's left, and another to her right-and two more liches strode forward. The more distant one winked out of sight again, even as another two appeared, not far from Merith.
'Huh,' the elf grunted, 'this is more what I'd been expecting. Perhaps he's just been testing us.'
'Costly way to test a foe,' Florin commented, lunging out from the cluster of Knights to hack at a startled lich's arm, and drawing smoothly back before it could even start to reel.
Jhessail frowned. 'Perhaps that's just it. Impress our livers out of us, as we gasp at how many liches the foe sending them can afford to lose.'
'That's minstrels' thinking,' Merith said, holding off a glaring lich with his sword and kicking it hard in the belly-if it still had a belly-to send it stumbling away. 'Taunt and gloat time. Why impress someone you're going to slay?'
More liches stepped out of rifts all around the Knights-a dozen or more-and they were joined by a baelnorn, tall, gaunt, and bewildered. It stared all around in seeming anger, and stumbled toward the Knights, shuffling reluctantly. As it came, it grimaced, convulsed, and trembled, murmuring something inaudible and visibly struggling.
'At war with itself,' Jhessail murmured.
'Fighting Larloch or whoever's bidding it, you mean,' Florin murmured. He raised his thrumming-anew blade and took a step to one side so he and Merith-who stayed right where he was-could flank the guardian.
The baelnorn halted and gazed at them sadly, well aware of the peril prepared for it. Then, with a sigh, it reached over its shoulder and from an unseen baldric reluctantly drew forth some sort of long, very slender, black- bladed sword that bent readily-and nickered, but did not start to hum. Runes flashed up and down the sable length of that strange sword as the guardian swung the supple steel around itself at shoulder-height, as if limbering up for a fray.
As it stepped forward, blade still whirling, four liches were flanking it, bearing long knives in their hands.
Florin thrust his sword up high to parry that black blade-and ducked his body low, hurling himself into a forward roll even as sparks showered him. His arm went numb, and his sword shrieked in protest overhead.
A moment later he was slamming into the baelnorn's shins, and it was toppling, black blade whipping wildly- into the nearest lich. Florin rode it to the ground, twisting himself to bring what was left of his own sword around in a slash at the closest lich that had stood on the baelnorn's other flank.
He caught a momentary glimpse of a malevolent eye glaring out of one of its palms. Then he bounced atop two struggling bodies and the twisted stub of his sword could no longer reach the lich he'd swung at-and it bent forward.
Jhessail hurled herself through the air like a thrusting sword, feet first. The lich folded up around her with a startled crunch, and fell, leaving the lich beyond them both to stare down in what would have been bewilderment if there'd been enough flesh left on its skull to express any emotion.
Jhessail bounced to her feet out of the writhing limbs of the lich she'd felled, slashed the throat of the staring undead with speed and savagery enough to send its skull whipping around on its shoulders in an unsteady, bobbing wobble, and hissed at it, 'Shall we dance? If'tis my death you seek, care to try again?'
It glared at her and brought its hands up, its fingers lengthening like talons, so she sliced each of them off, wondering how soon her blade would grow dull-or one of them would loom out of the mists and serve her the same way.
Behind her, Merith finished dismembering the lich she'd first taken down, and murmured, 'Ladylove mine, would the flames your spells become burn lich-flesh, d'you think?'
Florin hacked at liches' shoulders, thighs, and necks, ignoring the baelnorn. He was aware of Merith doing the same, off to his left, and… the last lich left standing faded away. The baelnorn sank into nothingness with its black blade writhing like a lashing-tailed snake, and there was another gods-blasting disturbance in the white mist. A rift of dark, raging red laced about with flickering green radiance spilled down for all Faerun as if it was a glowing green waterfall.
In its wake was a bright green gulf-out of which strode yet another pair of liches. These stalked purposefully, menacing, their hands up to cradle glimmering eyes that glared out of their palms as they came.
The moment Florin met the gaze of one of those palm-eyes, he felt a sudden deep iciness stab through him as if driven like a thrusting sword blade.
He staggered, and found himself shuddering-an uncontrollable shiver that wrenched at him more and more slowly, his spasms becoming slow driftings, his limbs heavy, his…
They strode toward him, dark and terrible, and beside him Jhessail sobbed with effort, struggling against the same fell cold.
Florin heard Merith curse, close by on the side his head was turned away from. He could not hope to turn his head to see before the liches reached him, their hands raised like claws to rend and tear.
Sister?
The mind-voice snapped into Storm Silverhand's mind with such savage force that she gasped and almost spilled the herb-brew she was dipping her fingertips into, to gentle into a sick child's mouth.
The little lad's mother drew back in alarm, whirling her ailing son behind her. All Shadowdale knew that when the Bard did something sudden or unexpected, magic was apt to come roaring forth from her-and people died.
'Yes?' Storm answered, speaking aloud to try to reassure the farmwife. 'What troubles the Queen of Aglarond this fair night?'
Ethena Astorma, HAVE DONE! Where is my Elminster, and why can I not reach him, or feel his presence anywhere?
Storm drew in a deep breath, beckoning to the farm-wife to put the sick infant into her arms, and thought back: Alassra, back in Alturiak, El led Dove and three of the Knights So frightened and furious was the Simbul that she broke all courtesy and sent her mind racing along the link between them, flooding unbidden into Storm's own consciousness in her impatience to see all the Bard of Shadowdale knew.
Memories and mind-pictures flashed and crashed, washing over the farmwife and the child alike. Storm barely heard their startled cries in the swirling tumult that ended abruptly. She was left trembling and drenched with sweat in the lamplit room, alone in her own head again, all contact with the Simbul gone.
The farmwife stared at her in terror, too frightened to do more than mew softly. Her baby, however, blinked, and said the first coherent words he'd ever uttered-in the fierce, feminine tones of the Witch-Queen of Aglarond:
'And when I find them-!'
The two women stared at him, but his face was once more full of wonder, as he stared back at them, and his next word was: 'Glaaooo?'
Steel flashed into Florin's view: Merith's daggers, spinning smoothly end-over-end, heading for the eyes glaring out of liches' palms-forlorn strikes, doomed to miss those swiftly-moving targets.
The liches thrust their arms forward to keep the eyes glaring at Florin and Jhessail as they twisted around to head away from Merith's hurled daggers.
Something else flashed past Florin's shoulder-two somethings that sang and shimmered, whisker-thin and silvery-white. Bright beams of force stabbed out to strike the tumbling daggers in a spinning, whirling cage of silver-white stabbings, and turn them-yes, turn them- guiding them toward the liches.
Florin overbalanced, trapped in a shudder that held his body captive. Jhessail fell too, toppling over him.
She'd come down on his arm, the war-leader of the Knights thought calmly, as his spasms spun his turned- to-the-side head helplessly around to regard the place where they'd all been standing before the baelnorn
