One by one the liches fell to the Simbul's stabbing silver fire, as the whiteness all around the shuddering, struggling-to-their-feet Knights seemed to pulse with silver, and surge beneath their boots. It began to fold up around them, the whiteness slashed with rifts, countless spiderweb cracks, and great tumbling vistas of spreading darkness. Strands collapsed into glowing white soup; mist, blazing liches, and all whirled around them wildly; a great roaring rose from bone-shaking depths into ear-clawing heights; and Out of the deafening chaos, the Srinshee plucked at Merith and shouted, 'The shaddarn is collapsing!'
He twisted, trying to reach his wife, but Jhessail was beyond the tips of his straining fingers, and falling away from him-into the waiting grip of a long-fingered hand that looked familiar.
Merith had just time to conclude it must belong to Elminster, and that the elbow streaking past his nose must be Dove's, grabbing Florin, before everything whirled up into shrieking darkness and he was falling…
Falling…
Falling through sunlight into soft, dark earth with a crash and clatter of beanpoles, as familiar tripods of silver-with-age spars of wood toppled over, trailing tendrils and dancing leaves.
Lush green leaves? Roseberry leaves? Warmth and sun and no snow? Just when had high summer come to Storm's kitchen garden?
Just how long had they been away in the shaddarn?
Merith bounced as someone heavy landed on him and was as suddenly gone again, more leaves dancing past his gaze. He felt someone else's boot strike his and flop down on him and roll aside… and he was blinking up at the amused face of Storm Silverhand, reaching a sun-browned hand down to him.
'Things went well, I see,' she commented, 'unless one happens to be a bean plant. Sister, must you always crush the same sort? 'Tis not as if you ever actually eat them…'
The Simbul, sprawled face-down under most of the Knights amid a welter of poles and crushed greenery, neither moved nor responded. winked out, together.
Dove and Storm looked at each other, sighed, and reached down for the Simbul. 'She sent forth a lot of power,' Dove said. 'One of these days, she's going to spend too much, and-'
Jhessail caught her breath then, so sharply that the sound she made was almost a sob.
Florin and Storm looked up sharply-and froze, letting silence fall and deepen like an unrolling cloak.
The cloaked figure standing on air a few strides away across Storm's garden was tall, terrible, and a-crawl with chill power. A ring of floating, faintly-glowing gem-stones that fairly throbbed with power drifted in a slow, patient circuit in the air above the apparition's gray head. Eyes like twinkling pits of white fire regarded the three sisters and the trio of Knights on their knees around them, and a hand that was little more than withered gray flesh over bones tightened around a staff that crackled with power.
Merith hefted his sword, strangely thrilled that it was no longer humming, and opened his mouth to spit words of defiance.
'Larloch,' Storm said in greeting, as calmly as if she'd been identifying the sort of tree a leaf blowing by had fallen from.
'Who never risks himself,' Jhessail whispered. 'So why…?'
The lich-king kept his eyes on the Bard of Shadowdale. His withered hands spread slightly, as if in entreaty, nothing about the gesture suggesting fragility or enfeeblement.
'This was… not my doing,' Larloch said, his voice dry and deep. 'From time to time I… test the lichnee who serve me by showing them a measure of freedom, and observing what they do with it. This time, they did foolishness.'
'This is no sending,' Florin murmured. ' 'Tis truly him.'
Merith nodded. 'His want-or need-must be very important.'
Swords ready, the two rose slowly to their feet, each out of long habit stepping to one side to spread out and so offer this new foe more widely-spread targets, and a broader field of menace.
Larloch ignored them. Those chilling eyes regarded Dove and Storm as they stepped forward in slow unison, hands empty of weapons and hair rising to swirl around them restlessly.
'And now?' Storm asked, her words a clear challenge.
Silver fire danced in her eyes, and those of her sister.
The Shadow King made no reply, and Storm did something wordless that made a tear of silver fire drop from her eye to her breast-where it became a thin line of silver flame that raced up to her shoulder and down her arm, consuming and darkening nothing, to fill her palm and rise there in restless hunger, flickering and blazing.
Even stronger hunger rose in Larloch's eyes as he gazed at what danced in Storm's palm. 'And now,' he replied, lifting his gaze only reluctantly from silver flames to Storm Silverhand's eyes, 'I tender my apologies and depart. I seek greater Art, always. I do not seek battle with you, or any who serve the Lady.'
'No?' Dove asked, lifting her empty hand as if to hurl something.
'No,' Larloch said, bowing to her. Emerald fires crackled from nowhere to trail across withered gray flesh. 'I am not a fool. No matter how powerful one becomes, there are always those who are stronger.'
'Yet you tarry,' Storm reminded him, as politely as a lady of minor nobility conversing with a king.
'Lady, I go,' the undead lord replied. 'I confess I… ' He sighed, and announced in a near-whisper, 'Looking upon the silver fire is precious to me.'
Storm regarded him wordlessly for what seemed a long time then slowly stepped forward, her face solemn. In breath-held silence the Knights watched her walk to him.
The Shadow King took a step back in the face of her calm, lilting advance. Then another.
Where he held his ground, an errant breeze stirred the long, stringy white hair that clung to the tight- stretched gray flesh on his skull. His eyes seemed to burn with rising white fire, and green lightning leaped out of his skin to race restlessly across him at Storm's approach. They heard him murmur, 'I know my peril.'
The Bard of Shadowdale came to a stop almost touching Larloch, and lifted her hand slowly between them. He held his staff hastily aside, out of the way, and stared down.
Storm let silver fire leap and dance in her palm, and Larloch bent to peer at it until his nose was almost touching the tallest licking silver tongues. He trembled with desire, his hands rising almost involuntarily.
Dove seemed to rise with them, gathering herself to do something, and Jhessail licked her lips and lifted her hands to be ready to work what would almost certainly be an utterly futile spell.
And Larloch straightened up, looked at Storm eye to eye, and said, 'Thank you. It has been a very long time since someone has shown me kindness.'
He stepped back, bowed deeply, and said, 'Fear me no more. Inspired, I return to my Art.'
The Shadow King turned, whipped his cloak around himself-and it fell to the ground, empty, fading to nothingness as it touched the earth of Storm's freshly-turned roseberry bed. There was a faint chord of chimings, like a flourish on the highest strings of a harp strung with metal, in the wake of the departing stones that had floated above Larloch.
Storm stood watching, twirling her fingers in a swift spell… and turned, visibly relaxing, to announce, 'He's gone. Quite gone, with no spying magic nor lurking peril left behind.'
'What?' The whisper was raw and horrible, but the fire in the Simbul's eyes, as she lifted her chin from the ground, was as fierce as ever. 'Without even giving me a chance at him?'
'Alassra,' Dove said with sincere tenderness,' 'Twould have been no chance at all.'
The Queen of Aglarond whirled and stiffened in an instant, like an aggrieved cat. 'Sister, are you implying-?'
'No,' Dove said, effortlessly plucking the Simbul up by the shoulders and holding her upright, 'I'm saying it straight out. No matter how broken or weary you may be, you can turn yourself into leaping lightning-I've seen it often enough, Mother Mystra knows-and nothing Larloch can muster can stand as a barrier against silver fire. As sheer silver fire, you couldn't help but reach him, and at a touch destroy him.'
Storm nodded as she rejoined them all in the trampled beans. 'That's what he meant when he spoke of knowing his peril. You saw the green fire crawling all over him? That's the spell he's crafted to maintain his unlife, quickening as Mystra's fire came close.'
'He dares not have silver fire, but desires its power so much,' Jhessail said. 'He knows 'twill bring him oblivion-and longs for that, too-yet cannot bring himself, after so fierce and long a struggle to cling to life, to let it all go in an instant.'
