They each took their pieces and set off at once, arrowing through the overcast skies to alight high on the shoulders of the hill, overlooking the cleft in which Sarya and the others stood. The daemonfey queen eyed their positions carefully, then gestured for the fey'ri to separate a little more. Then, content with their placement, she focused her attention on the brilliant crystal in her taloned hands, and summoned forth its power.
Instantly, a blazing line of energy sprang into existence, linking each of the three pieces and forming a triangle of fire above Nar Kerymhoarth's hilltop. Sarya recoiled, but maintained her hold on the gemstone. Despite its brilliance and the ravening power streaming from its depths, it remained cool to the touch and steady in her hand. The actinic light glared back at her from the hoary stone doorway, shadows snapping like banners in a gale.
Her fangs bared in a ferocious grin, Sarya invoked the crystal's most terrible power. In the space of a heartbeat, every spell, every ward, every shred of magic that existed within the bounds of the burning triangle ceased to exist. Ancient enchantments laid thousands of years before, strong enough to bind and hold for uncounted ages, were sundered in the blink of an eye. All the mighty magical power that had been laid into Nar Kerymhoarth's building and its defenses came unshackled in a single calamitous detonation. The force of the blast hurled Sarya and her followers to the ground. Vast portions of the hillside were thrown into the air, and came crashing down in the forest below. Thunder pealed throughout the ancient woods, rumbling like the roar of some massive dragon.
The broken crystal in Sarya's hand shimmered once and vanished. The blazing white lines flickered and guttered out as boulders and splintered trees pelted down from the sky. Sarya growled in frustration, snatching futilely at the vanishing crystal. She rolled over on her hands and knees and looked up the hillside, to where the two assisting fey'ri had stood. Nothing was left there but complete devastation. Their pieces of the crystal were gone as well, along with any trace of the two hapless sorcerers she had pressed into service.
It was not unexpected, she told herself. The crystal disperses when its full power is invoked-that is the curse-and those who assist in the invocation of its might often pay with their lives.
It was exactly what had happened when the Harpers destroyed Ascalhorn. The two fey'ri she would not miss, but she had hoped that perhaps one portion of the crystal might remain within her grasp after she had finished with it.
'It is done,' she hissed at her followers. 'You can get up.'
Though smaller pieces of rock and splintered wood continued to patter onto the ground around them, Xhalph, Nurthel, and the other fey'ri picked themselves up off the ground. More than a few had suffered injury from the explosion, but Sarya didn't even spare them a glance. Instead she looked on the empty vaults and naked halls of Nar Kerymhoarth, which were bared to the sky.
'I did it,' she said, then laughed and sprang to her feet. 'I did it!'
She took to the air and flew down into the dungeon, alighting before a great brazen seal set above a huge well in the floor. With a quick invocation, she gestured and hurled the seal aside, laying open the well below.
'Warriors of Reithel!' she called. 'Ilviiri! Ursequarra! Come forth!'
From the dark well below her came a flutter of movement. Slowly, laboriously, a single fey'ri climbed into the air, gazing at the ruin around him with malice dripping from his eyes.
'I am free,' he hissed.
Other fey'ri followed, struggling to fight their way free of the well, male and female both.
Sarya watched the demonspawned elves emerge, dark delight in her face. She and her two sons had been imprisoned beneath Ascalhorn with dozens more of her followers elsewhere in the old fortresses of fallen Eaerlann. But the great bulk of her army-nearly two thousand of her fey'ri, each a deadly swordsman as well as a skilled sorcerer- had been entombed in Nar Kerymhoarth. That was the army with which she could finally build her empire, after her enemies had cheated her of victory so long ago.
'You!' she called to the first fey'ri. 'Do you know who lam?'
The fey'ri turned at the sound of her voice. He was a tall fellow with long black hair, clad only in a short kilt. Small horns jutted from his forehead. He took one menacing step toward Sarya, then recognition flared in his eyes.
'Lady Sarya!' he said. 'You have come to free us! Give me a sword, and for you I will blood it with the warriors of Sharrven!'
'Sharrven is no more,' Sarya said. 'Nor Eaerlann, nor even Siluvanede. You have been imprisoned a long, long time, my fey'ri.'
'How long has it been, my lady?'
'Fifty centuries, warrior. Five thousand years you and your comrades have been imprisoned here.'
The fey'ri warrior wailed in anguish, 'It was only to be one thousand years! They lied to us!'
'Yes,' said Sarya. 'The cursed paleblooded elves of Eaerlann and Sharrven lied to you. They bound you and your fellows in Nar Kerymhoarth for a thousand years. And they died, or forgot their promises, or chose not to honor them. You will not have your vengeance upon those who jailed you, warrior. They have gone down into the dust of history, while their watch failed and their cities crumbled. The world has changed beyond recognition, while we dreamed away the centuries in our magical slumber.
'But know this, my fey'ri: All our ancient foes are gone. Now no one remains to oppose us.'
'Araevin, what is it?' Ilsevele set a hand on the mage's arm, a frown on her face.
They stood in a small, wooded glade high on a hillside, a few miles inland from Seamist and the city of Elion. Sunset painted the sky with brilliant rose and pale gold.
'I am not sure,' he said. 'There was something…' He peered toward the east, toward distant Faerun, thinking. Finally he turned away, shaking his head. 'I thought that I felt a tremor in the Weave. Almost as if someone had plucked the string of a great harp a long distance away.'
'I thought I felt something too,' Ilsevele said. 'It came from the east.'
'I've felt that before,' Araevin said. 'The last was two years past when the city of Shade was called back from the Plane of Shadow. Someone has worked mighty magic indeed. I would not be surprised if half the mages in Faerun just started from their beds.'
'The Gatekeeper's Crystal?'
Araevin looked sharply at Ilsevele. She had named his fear before he had himself.
'It could be,' he said. 'My Circle noticed a similar disturbance about five years ago. That would have been in the Year of the Gauntlet, around the time when the crystal was used to shatter Hellgate Keep. Corellon grant that we're wrong about this.'
Ilsevele shrugged and said, 'We'll know soon enough.'
She picked up her pack and slung it across her back, carefully arranging it so that the rucksack did not interfere with the bow and quiver she wore across her shoulders. Beneath her cloak she wore the arms of a captain of the spellarchers, an embroidered doublet of leather sewn with fine steel rings, strongly enchanted to ward its wearer from harm. A pair of fine elven short swords graced her hips.
'I'm ready,' she said.
Araevin nodded and picked up his own pack. He was also dressed for travel in dangerous lands, wearing his shirt of mithral mail beneath a dove-gray tunic, and his scarlet cloak with its magic of warding and protection over all. His bandolier of spell reagents crossed his chest from left hip to right shoulder, and three wands were holstered at his side-the disruption wand he'd used in the fight at Tower Reilloch, plus a pair of additional wands he thought he might find a use for. At his hip he wore the blade of House Teshurr, an enchanted long sword named Moonrill. Spell and wand were his chosen weapons, but he knew how to wield a sword, and long ago an ancestor of his had imbued Moonrill with magic that a mage might find useful at times.
He joined Ilsevele in front of a simple stone marker in the center of the glade. Faded old runes, half-filled with moss, were graven into its surface. Most of Evermeet's old elfgates had been dismantled in the past few decades, as the elves of the isle had come to see the magical portals as weaknesses in their defenses, places from which resourceful enemies could attack the island. But a few had been left standing, secured by powerful defensive spells. Only those who knew the secret of their activation could make use of the elfgates, and with every year the folk of Evermeet grew more careful of that knowledge.
'Where in Faerun will this gate take us?' Ilsevele asked.
'The Ardeep Forest, not far from the House of Long Silences. Many old portals meet there, and it's close to Waterdeep, where many less magical roads meet.'
