The sheer ingratitude of the thing simply stunned him. Daried Selsherryn had returned to the forests of Cormanthor with the army of Seiveril Miritar, in order to destroy the daemonfey who had attacked Evermeet. The wretched hellspawn hid themselves in ruined Myth Drannor, threatening all the surrounding human lands with their conjured demons and fell sorceries. Daried and all who marched in the Crusade hazarded their lives to oppose that evil. Elf blood and valor stood as the only shield between those same Dalesfolk and a nightmare of hellfire and ancient wrath. Not five miles from where he stood twenty more elf warriors in the service of Lord Miritar's Crusade guarded that miserable human village. Yet he could see all around him how the wretched human thieves and squatters who'd inherited stewardship over Cormanthor had treated the things Daried's People had left behind.
Did they forget us in less than a hundred years? he fumed silently. Why should a single elf warrior risk harm in order to protect such creatures? What sort of fool was Seiveril Miritar, to waste even one hour in seeking out the goodwill and aid of the Dalesfolk, or any humans for that matter?
Grimacing in distaste, Daried wrapped the dead thief s pendant in a small cloth and dropped it into a pouch at his belt. He meant to ask hard questions about that emblem, and soon. Then he ducked his head beneath the low stone lintel of the stairs leading below the manor-house, and descended into the chambers below.
The air grew cool and musty, a striking change from the humid warmth of the summer woodland above. He didn't bother to strike a light; enough of the bright midday sun above glimmered down the stair for his elf eyes to make out the state of the vault below.
It, too, had been despoiled.
Jagged pock-marks of bubbled stone showed where some fierce and crude battle-magic had been unleashed. The old summoning-traps that would have confronted the intruders with noble celestial beasts, loyal and true, had been scoured from the walls.
Five pointed archways led away from the room at the foot of the stair, and the adamantine doors that had sealed each one were simply gone. Destroyed by acid, disintegrated by magic, perhaps carried away as loot-it didn't matter, did it? What mattered was that the old vaults stood open, unguarded.
Daried's clan had not left any secret hoards of treasure behind in a manor they abandoned, of course. But they had certainly thought that the long-buried dead of the family would be safe behind walls of powerful magic and elven stonework. One by one Daried glanced into each vault, and found dozens of his mother's ancestors and kin stripped of any funereal jewelry they might once have possessed. Their bones lay strewn about in thoughtless disorder, rummaged through and discarded like trash.
Hot tears gathered in Daried's eyes, but he did not allow himself to avert his gaze. Having come this far, he would not allow himself to turn away until he had seen all that there was to be seen.
It was not the elven way to send the dead to Arvandor with roomfuls of precious jewels or wealth for use in the next life. Sun elves were not humans, so frightened of death that they hoped such rites and treasures promised dominion in ages to come. Most sun elves of high family were interred in their finest clothes, wearing the jewels and diadems that went with such formal dress, as a simple matter of reverence. But that did not mean that the remains of the honored dead were to be picked over by whatever scavenger happened along.
He came to the last vault, and there the loss was bitter indeed. It was the resting place of his mother's cousin Alvanir, last of the Morvaerils. He had been interred with the ancient moonblade of House Morvaeril, since with the passing of the last of the line the sword of the Morvaeril clan had itself faded into powerlessness and slumber. Each moonblade was meant for one elven House, and if the House failed, the moonblade was of use to no other.
The ancient sword had been taken too, of course.
Even though the blade was dormant or extinguished outright, it was still a treasure of House Morvaeril, and through Daried's mother, House Selsherryn as well. All else Daried could bear, bitter as it was, but the theft of a dead moonblade left a deep, hot ache in the center of his chest.
'What good is it to you?' he asked the long-vanished plunderers of the tomb. 'Is there nothing you hold sacred?'
He drifted back to the central chamber, and wept silently in the gloom and shadows. He'd been born in this house, seventeen decades ago. He remembered the soft lanterns swaying in the chill evening breezes of the spring, the green and lush canopy of leaf and vine that had roofed the courtyard in summer, the tall windows of the library gleaming orange and gold on a frosty autumn morning. Nothing else was left to him of his youth, so many years ago.
The soft click of a taloned claw on the steps behind him saved his life.
Daried roused himself from his sorrow just in time to leap aside, as the foul hellborn monster threw itself on him from the stairs. In a dark rush the thing bounded past him, its hooked talons hissing through the air where the elf s face and throat had been an instant earlier. A hot sharp claw grazed Daried's cheek, and the thing's powerful rush sent him spinning to one side as the creature missed its chance to bear him to the ground and rip out his throat.
Daried grunted once in surprise and backstepped, gaining a double arm's-reach of space to get his bearings and sweep out his sword. His adversary had a shape not unlike that of a man, but a long, thick tail twisted behind it like a hungry serpent, and from head to toe it was studded with barbs of steel-hard horn as long as daggers.
Its skin was crimson and hot, and its eyes glowed like balls of green flame in the shadows of the crypt.
'You weep for the dead, elf?' it hissed. 'Be at ease. I will leave your bones here with the rest of this dry old wreckage.'
'You mock my ancestors at your peril, hellspawn,' Daried growled, keeping his swordpoint between the monster and himself.
The creature grinned with a mouthful of sharp, carious fangs, and leaped at the elf with a flurry of jabbing barbs and slashing talons. But Daried was ready for the monster; he allowed himself to slide easily into the bladesinger's waking trance, a timeless state of mind and body in which each movement became a choreographed dance. With calm deliberation Daried moved his sword to guide the monster's talons away from his flesh, parry the stabbing tail, disguise delicate ripostes and counters.
The thinblade's razorlike point darted between barbs and spikes to pierce infernal flesh, then again and again. Hot spatters of black blood fell to the dusty floor, but the creature gave no sign that it had been hurt. It snapped and flailed wildly, claws and fangs and stabbing spikes whistling past Daried. Elf and devil fought in grim silence, with no sound other than the dull click and scrape of talons against steel. Sharp barbs gouged Daried's limbs and talons raked his shining mail, but he battled on, refusing to allow pain or fatigue a foothold in his concentration.
The devil managed to seize Daried's sleeve in one tal-oned hand, and it hurled itself on him, trying to impale him like a living bed of nails. But Daried twisted away, turning the creature's hand over as he spun. At the same instant he barked out syllables of a deadly spell, and with his free hand grasped the monster's arm. Golden lightning exploded from the bladesinger's touch, charring his adversary's arm into useless black ruin.
With a low hiss the devil recoiled, its grip on Daried failing. It crouched low and whirled, bringing its fiercely spiked tail whistling around in a blow powerful enough to crush stone. But Daried leaped over the devil's strike, and with one smooth motion he sank a foot of his thinblade into the hollow of the monster's throat.
The devil drove him back with a frenzy of slashes and jabbing barbs. But black blood fumed in its mouth and ran between its yellow fangs. It took two more steps toward Daried, the green flame in its eyes dimming, and it stumbled to the floor in a pool of its own foul ichor.
Daried took careful aim and transfixed its head with one more thrust. Then he backed away, waiting for the corpse to vanish. Summoned monsters always did. But nothing happened; the hellspawn's body remained where it had fallen.
'It wasn't summoned?' he muttered in dismay. It hadn't been called to Faerun by a conjuring spell, it had traversed some sort of gate between the planes of its own volition. It was as real in this world as he was.
An ill omen indeed. Was the creature's presence in the world the work of the daemonfey, or did some other peril confront Daried and the elves who followed him?
Whatever the answer, it did not seem likely that he would find out more in the ruins of the Morvaeril manor. Nor, for that matter, would he learn anything about who had taken the ancient moonblade and what the Dalesfolk had had to do with the theft.
Battered and heartsick, Daried shook the foul blood from his sword and climbed back up the stairs to the
