came.
As he came down softly into unbroken whiteness where the baelnorn should have been lying-but seemed to have entirely faded away-Florin saw that those singing lines of force stabbed out from the thickenings in two strands that marked where Elminster and Dove had melded into the whiteness.
He didn't actually have to see those beams aim the daggers, curving their flights into arcs that bit into glaring eyes in lich-palms, he knew they'd done so. The chill that clawed him was gone, he could move again, and Jhessail thudded into him, trailing startled curses.
Florin cradled her and hurled her back upright, watching his oldest friend sway, seeking her balance in a swirl of flame-hued hair. He fought his own way back to his feet in time to see the liches grimace, their palms pierced with Merith's daggers-daggers that blazed like little torches, burning away to nothing but inky wisps of smoke. Beyond them, the mist flickered red and green in a dozen places or more, and liches stalked forth in scores, a walking wall of silent undeath.
Jhessail shook her head. 'Sweet Mystra,' she murmured, 'if they could work their spells…'
Her husband chuckled, shrugged, and replied almost merrily, 'If magic served us here, I'd be able to keep us alive-I think. As it is…'
Merith shrugged again, and hefted his humming sword in one hand, and the long knife he so rarely drew in the other. Catching Florin's look, he murmured, 'Wanted to use it one last time, if we're going to-'
And the menacing ranks of liches were swept aside as if by a giant hand, as the white mists erupted into blue-white fire.
Out of the heart of those blue-white rifts strode upright warriors of metal, stiffly stalking things that moved in a series of jerks and swiveling movements, all gleaming battle-limbs and keening, whirling blades. They had no faces, but moved as if they could see. No two of them were the same. Some had arms ending in great axes, and others sported heads that looked like gigantic kettles with spouts that stuck out straight rather than angling upward. Gears and cogs whirred and clattered in chorus within their shining hides.
All three Knights stared in disbelief, and just a little wearily lifted their weapons and prepared to die by sharp, slicing steel rather than chilling lich-claws.
'Delight me,' Jhessail whispered bitterly. 'Show me new and exciting sights, take me far from the boringly familiar-and there slay me!'
'Steady, love,' Merith murmured, beside her. 'We'll be together.'
The clockwork automatons whirred and clanked right up to the Knights-and turned aside, to stab and stalk liches.
Dark robes and cloaks swirled as undead limbs drew back in alarm, long-fingered hands became talons, and A kettle-head gouted fire that made a lich blaze up like a torch, and before Merith could begin to chuckle, half a dozen of the gaunt undead collapsed in the flashing flurry of a dozen dicing clockwork blades.
The three adventurers watched, open-mouthed, and became aware that the blue-white fire was fading, revealing in its darkening remnants the beautiful elf they'd seen earlier, standing smiling at them. Her sapphire-blue hair gently quested through the air around her, as if possessing a restless, curious life of its own.
'Well met again, Knights. Valiantly fought-too valiant to fall, if this or any world knew fairness. Fight on!' A tiny tan hand waved at them-and faded again, along with the last of the blue-white fire.
Crimson and bright green flashes flared in a score or more places in the mist, rolling across the whiteness as if angered or goaded by the blue-white rift. Baelnorns winked into being here, there, and everywhere to stare in bewilderment then-one after another-turn their heads to glare at the Knights, and thrust out withered blue arms straight, pointing.
They pointed not at the Knights, but at the largest red-and-green rift yet, which split the mists vertically like a giant, reluctant clam parting its shell. The high, eerie keening that the Knights knew to be mythal-song trilled forth along those arms, ringing through the air in almost visible echoes as it met and roiled along the edges of the widening rift.
'Ah, yes,' Merith murmured. 'This would be the traditional time for me to announce that I have a bad feeling about this, would it not?'
Florin grinned. 'It would.'
Jhessail rolled her eyes.
With clanks and gleamings, the marching automatons turned in unison from the last smoking remnants of liches to face the widening rift-and started walking toward it.
'As I recall,' Jhessail observed with an edge to her gentle voice, 'I was just going to ask Storm for some more tea, when Old Weirdbeard stepped out of thin air and volunteered us for this little jaunt. Someone remind me why I ever agree to go along on these-'
A lone figure stepped out of the green flare of the rift. Tall, dark, and terrible, it stood motionless in the heart of the rising trilling of mythal force that seemed to enshroud it in gilded, half-seen, writhing curves and fantastic curlicues of force that shaped and reshaped themselves constantly around it.
Within that writhing of mythal magic, the lich grew visibly darker and taller, looking at the Knights in silent menace. It was more intact and muscled than any they'd yet seen, looking more like a mighty, black-cloaked archmage with a sickly pallor than an undead.
'Mystra forfend,' Jhessail muttered, 'is this Larloch?'
'No,' Merith replied. 'Or at least, if it is, he looks much different than he did when I saw him.'
Both of the other two Knights gave the elf sharp glances.
'When this is done, friend Merith,' Florin said, 'if the gods grant that both of us can still speak together, I'll be wanting to hear some answers from your lips, believe you me.'
Merith's grin was as bright as ever. 'I find myself unastonished.'
Bereft of liches to dice and scorch, the clockwork automations clanked toward the lich, passing in front of the Knights to converge on the lone figure that stood a head taller than the largest of the clanking things.
'Stop the baelnorn,' Merith said. 'Whatever they're doing, it's feeding yon Bad Sir Blackcloak with power, and fairly soon he's going to-'
Silver fire snarled out in a cone of torn and shrieking mists. Jhessail's grim smile of satisfaction fell into a soft curse as the flames died away and the lich's spell took effect-blasting an automaton into shards of flying metal.
'Its spells are working, blast it!' she snarled. 'Mother Mystra's tears!'
The Knights flung themselves hastily down as another two clockwork things exploded in twin shattering roars.
Deadly metal whirred in all directions. Jhessail saw a cog bounce once in the mist, and soundlessly sink out of sight as if into a bog.
The next spell bore no silver flames at all, and seared away the mist, as four streaking spheres shot into the heart of the marching automatons and burst with an ear-shattering roar and a flash of blinding, blistering-hot flame.
'Well,' Florin said, 'at least we're already lying down, and can die reclining at ease.'
A second meteor swarm smote their ears, and the mists rained shrapnel and the twisted toothed arcs of gears and cogs that would turn no more.
Merith peered into smoke-darkened, shifting mists and muttered, 'That's pretty well taken care of the clock-'
Another four spheres spun out of the mists, trailing sparks as they came, right at the Knights.
'Farewell, friends,' Florin said, 'we've had a good ride togeth-'
Right above their heads, the spheres flickered as they always did in the instant before they exploded-and froze, spinning vainly in the grips of four vibrating silver spheres that had formed out of nowhere.
The spheres had spark-trails of their own, leading back to the thickened strands that were, or had been, Elminster and Dove.
The humming strands faded, the spheres tightened like crushing fists, and the lich's four meteors winked once and were gone as if they'd never been.
More lines of thrumming force raced out from the two strands, flaring out into a great web as they raced toward the Knights. There was a sudden flare of crimson beneath their glow, and the lich stood beside the strands, leaning toward them malevolently.
