'Breden Yesve's warband was supposed to keep Silverymoon out of the High Forest,' Sarya said. 'Did he just allow the palebloods to march right by him?'
'The Silvaeren marched south from Everlund and passed west of Yesve,' Xhalph replied. 'He had to march far and fast to meet the humans when they left the Yartar road, and all he has been able to do is harry their advance. Since he could not stop them, I recalled his warband to add it to my own forces.'
'That is sound. I approve,' Sarya said. She thought over the suggestion, her slender tail slithering anxiously from side to side. 'Evereska has proven harder than I had thought. A strong expedition from Evermeet has reinforced the LastHome. We were checked in our first attempt to enter the Vine Vale.'
'Abandon the orcs and giants,' Xhalph rumbled. 'Evereska can be taken with an aerial assault while the palebloods* army sits in the mountains. You can sack the city without even engaging them.'
Sarya looked over her shoulder at her towering son, and cocked an eyebrow. Xhalph had little use for stratagems of maneuver, but from time to time he surprised her-which did not mean that he was right.
'We lack the numbers to take the city with fey'ri alone,' she said.
'Each of our fey'ri is a formidable opponent, Mother. Elf for elf, our warriors are better fighters than the palebloods.'
'I have studied Evereska's defenses exhaustively through the telthukiilir, Xhalph. The forces that guard the city outnumber our fey'ri legion, and include many mages and clerics. And you discount the mythal,' Sarya said as she paced back and forth. 'It may be that we could take the city, but we would suffer dreadful losses. More demons can be summoned, more orcs and giants bribed or threatened to march in our forces, but my fey'ri are irreplaceable, and they would be the ones who die in an aerial attack. Your suggestion would also leave our enemy's true strength, the army at the Sentinel pass, untouched. We would not keep the city for long.'
'Do we need to?' Xhalph growled.
Sarya glared at him.
'Yes', she hissed. 'It means nothing to win a battle if ultimately it will cost us the war. When I take Evereska, I mean to keep it. Our enemies destroyed our homeland, leaving us an army without a realm. We will not long survive in this new age if we remain such.'
'Should I abandon my attack on the wood elves and bring my warriors to join you at Evereska?'
'No. I need to draw out their army and expose it. You must press your attack on the wood elves with all your strength and ferocity. Meanwhile, I will retreat from Evereska's gates, and feign a disordered withdrawal while I rebuild our numbers. The palebloods will be tempted to pursue. After all, they will want to make sure that my army is truly defeated, and does not make its way to the High Forest to finish the destruction of the wood elves. But I will lay a trap for them'
Xhalph grinned and said, 'Turning an enemy's hopes to disaster is the essence of strategy. But what if the Evereskans do not give chase?'
'Then I will in fact bring the entire fey'ri legion to the High Forest, and we will make a smoking hell of the mongrel elves' homeland. After which, we will add your soldiers to mine, and return to Evereska to finish what we started. Now go, and redouble your efforts against the wood elves. I have some special preparations to make.'
Xhalph bowed and said, 'I will make you a throne of Eaerlanni skulls, Mother.'
He stepped back and teleported away, vanishing in an orange cloud of brimstone.
'You'll have to catch them first,' Sarya said after him.
She took one more look from the portico and stepped inside the hall. The city was not completely empty. A hundred or so fey'ri remained behind to garrison the place and guard the treasures Sarya had brought to the city, and bands of orcs and trolls encircled the hilltop with their squalid camps, making ready to march on the High Forest and join the fighting there.
She abandoned the ruined splendor of the grand mage's hall, and descended into the secret delvings beneath the hill, passing through the steep tunnels and great caverns, taking wing when it suited her. She disliked so much stone over her head-how could she not, after so many centuries of living entombment? — but she was not so weak-willed that she allowed herself to avoid going where she must.
Powerful magic wards defended the hidden depths of her buried citadel, defenses that not even the fey'ri were permitted to pass. With long familiarity she made the signs and spoke the passwords, finally spiraling down through a great vertical shaft to a mighty chamber far below.
A great boulder of pale pink stone lay at the bottom of the shaft, hundreds of feet below the Grand Mage's Hall above. A beard of green moss clung to the rock, staining its glossy surface. To anyone with arcane sight the stone virtually pulsed with power. It was an artifact of pure magic, the keystone of the great mythal of magic that had once shielded Myth Glaurach, and while the city above had long since fallen into ruin, the mighty enchantments laid into the stone over decades of work still endured. Once the stone had rested in the grand mage's garden, near the center of the city above, but Sarya guessed that during Myth Glaurach's final days it had been moved to the buried pit in order to protect it from the attackers, in hopes that someday the folk of Eaerlann might return and wake its slumbering power to rebuild their realm. That had never happened; she had found it instead.
'Welcome, Sarya.' A deep, melodious voice filled the chamber, speaking from the air itself. 'How goes your war against Evereska?'
'Our first attack has been repulsed,' Sarya said. She suspected that the unseen speaker knew perfectly well how matters stood. 'Evermeet reinforced the city with much greater strength than I expected. I need more demons and yugoloths to destroy this foe. Many more.'
'You have summoned a great number in the last few days.'
'I have no other choice. I need soldiers-powerful soldiers.'
'You will have to sustain them in your world with the mythal's power, as before.'
'That takes time,' Sarya growled. 'I need a great army of mighty fiends, enough to scour all this land of my ancient enemies. Is there nothing more you can do to help me?'
'You could empty the nether planes to fill your ranks, Sarya, if you could reweave this mythal in the proper way. Without the proper high magic rites you cannot alter the basic purposes for which the mythal was raised over Myth Glaurach.'
'I know,' Sarya snapped. 'You have told me many times, Malkizid. Unfortunately, only one of my line ever mastered high magic, and his knowledge is not available to me-though I may soon be able to remedy that shortcoming.'
'You have found Saelethil's arcana?' the voice said, surprised.
'Not yet, though I am closer than I have ever been. Nurthel is seeking the third of Ithraides's telkiira even as we speak.' Sarya caressed the mythal stone, feeling its magic stir beneath her fingertips, and continued, 'Deciphering the telkiira may be the work of tendays or months, and my army requires reinforcement now.'
'I eagerly anticipate your success.'
'So do I.'
Sarya bared her teeth in a fierce smile. Then she drew a deep breath, gathering her strength for the ordeal ahead. She had prepared her spells for the day with that task in mind, and so dozens of powerful conjurations filled her mind, a jumble of arcane symbols and words of binding that she could scarcely hold. By herself, she could call up another dozen or fifteen demons with her spells, and that would be useful, of course, but by drawing on the power of the mythal she would be able to re-use her spells over and over, and fix the demons she summoned to her plane by the power of the ancient device. All it took was time and her own personal attention. She raised her hands and called the first of the demons.
The fey'ri stripped Araevin and his companions of their weapons and armor, binding them securely with shackles of enchanted steel. Then the captain of the fey'ri, the one-eyed sorcerer in the armor of golden scales, drew a scroll from a case at his belt and read out a spell quickly and surely, the arcane words falling from his tongue with a sibilant hiss. In the cold damp of Grimlight's lair, a shining gold hoop appeared on the wet stone floor.
Exactly like the one we saw them use in Tower Reilloch, Araevin realized.
He was not given much time to wonder about the destination. The fey'ri soldiers dragged him to his feet and marched him to the circle, their taloned hands firmly gripping his arms.
A faint golden aura rose around Araevin and his escorts, and his stomach dropped away from him in the disconcerting way it often did during teleportation. Then he was somewhere else, a great, dark hall with a floor of
