'Siluvanede fell almost five thousand years ago,' Ilsevele said. She tossed her head and studied Sarya with determination. 'Why wait for so long?'
'Because my enemies buried my son and I in a forgotten tomb, and claimed that they were showing us mercy!' Sarya whirled away from Ilsevele and stalked over to Araevin again. She stooped and cupped his face in her hand. Her iron-hard nails dug into his flesh. 'And that is where you come in, my paleblooded friend. We cannot use these telkiira, since they were made to deny us access. You, on the other hand, can read these stones and tell us where our heirloom lies.'
'I will not help you,' he rasped.
'I have waited five thousand years to come into my inheritance,' Sarya said. 'I am not about to be balked by any inconvenient stubbornness on your part, paleblood.' She gripped his face until blood ran from the points of her fingernails. She leaned close to whisper in his ear, 'You understand what I am capable of, I think. I will not harm you, not at first. But the things that will happen to your companions, they will be hard to watch. When shall we begin?'
'Once I do as you ask, all our lives are forfeit. Now or later, what is the difference?' Araevin quivered with terror, but he kept his voice even and level. 'If you let the others go, I will do as you ask. But I must know that they are safe before I cooperate.'
'As you wish,' Sarya said. 'I would love to explore the question of how much pain you could stand to inflict on your comrades. But it might take a little time to persuade you to cooperate, and I am out of patience.'
She wove her hands in arcane passes, and began to speak the words of a spell. Araevin recognized it at once and steeled his will to resist. Sarya's spell settled over his mind, seeking to shackle his will to hers. Shadowy fingers seemed to creep into his soul, insidious as serpents, their merest touch enough to render him cold and numb. He bared his teeth in a fierce snarl and battled against the enchantment, refusing to buckle beneath the daemonfey queen's sorcery.
'Your will is strong. I should have expected that,' Sarya observed. She glanced at Nurthel. 'Kill the human dog.'
The fey'ri lord drew a dagger of black iron at his belt and strode over to Grayth. He knelt behind the Lathanderite and seized the semiconscious cleric by his hair. Araevin watched in horror, still battling against Sarya's spell, as the fey'ri fixed his remaining eye on Araevin's face and buried the knife in Grayth's throat. Bright blood poured from the wound. Grayth's eyes opened wide, and an awful gagging sound came from his mouth as blood drowned him.
'Grayth! ' cried Ilsevele.
She wrenched herself free of the fey'ri gripping her shoulders and surged to her feet, only to be knocked down again. Maresa swore a vile oath and struggled as well, her hair streaming with her fury.
Grayth's feet clattered against the stone, and he shook, as if trying to free his bound hands. Then his eyes drooped, and he sank down to the cold marble, face down in the spreading pool of crimson. Nurthel jerked out the dagger, and held its bloody edge in front of him.
'I've soiled my blade with a dog's blood,' he complained. Til never get the stink off it now.'
Twenty years and more he has been my friend, Araevin thought. This is the end he comes to for leaving his temple and helping me.
He thought of the sons Grayth had mentioned, and wondered how he could ever apologize to them for their father's death. And that moment of black despair was all that Sarya's spell required. As swiftly and surely as the fey'ri had clapped him in irons, the deadly shackles of the sorceress's will enchained his mind.
'That's better,' Sarya said pleasantly. She looked to the demons behind Araevin. 'Unbind him, let him stand. He is under my dominion.'
The vrocks clacked and hissed behind Araevin, but they undid his fetters. He found himself on his feet, without knowing exactly how he had stood.
'We could play some very entertaining games,' Sarya said. 'I could command you to do terrible things to your companions… or to yourself. However, I must indulge myself another day.'
Araevin stood motionless, unable to move his limbs. His thoughts were unimpaired-he reviewed spell after spell that he could hurl to blast Sarya and her minions or free Ilsevele and Maresa-but he could not join them to any action. Sarya took the third telkiira and placed it in his hand.
'Decipher this stone, as you did the others,' she commanded.
He held the telkiira up to his eye, helpless to do otherwise, and sent his mind into its dark depths, seeking out its secrets. As before, he spied a fearsome glyph in the gemstone's facets, barring any deeper approach as surely as a rampart defended a castle. But he still remembered the name of the sigil from the vision he invoked in his workroom in Tower Reilloch, when he'd investigated the second stone.
'Larthanos,' he whispered, and the telkiira opened to him.
Information poured into his mind: glimpses of distant memories, arcane formulae, dazzling vistas of elven cities long fallen and swallowed by forest. Again he saw the scene of the moon elf Ithraides giving his three telkiira to his younger colleagues, and the image of the sun elf with the bright green eyes and the cruel smile, who contemplated a thumb-sized crystal of purple, its surface covered with intricate runes. Saelethil Dlardrageth, the Dlardrageth high mage, and the Nightstar, the telkiira's frozen memories told him. Then Araevin's vision whirled and shifted, as arcane formulae and complex patterns flashed before his eyes, the record of spell after spell contained in the telkiira.
He recognized several of the spells, as he had before-a spell for seeking out hidden things, a spell to reflect an enemy's spell back at him or her, a spell that would transfer one to a different plane of existence. And he viewed the mysterious spell, the one left incomplete in the first two gemstones. In his mind's eye he saw the three parts of it merge, the missing symbols arranging themselves, organizing into a pattern he could decipher and recognize. It was unique, he could see that at once. It could only be cast in one place, for one result.
It was the spell that would pass Ithraides' wards.
Araevin blinked, starting to lower the gemstone, but then his vision blurred again and a quick, final vision imposed itself on his sight. He glimpsed a spherical chamber of perfect white stone, in which the Nightstar hovered. Then he saw a mist-filled hall of silver pillars, and an old elven tower half buried by the forest. He sensed the tower, as if he followed the path of a lighthouse's searching beam across dark and unseen waters to a distant goal.
It still exists, he knew. And I know where it is.
'Well?'' demanded Sarya, calling him back to awareness.
'Tell me what you have seen! Do you know where the Night-star lies? Can you find it?'
'Yes,' Araevin said. 'It is buried in a stronghold in Cormanthor. I can show you where it lies, but you will be unable to approach it. Powerful wards will bar your entry.'
Sarya's face grew dark, and she whirled away, frowning. Araevin watched her fuming, wondering if she would slay him out of hand or perhaps indulge herself by murdering Maresa or Ilsevele first. But then Sarya halted, her eyes thoughtful. She turned back to him slowly.
'What about you?' she asked. 'Could you reach it?' 'Saelethil's High Loregem will destroy anyone not of your House who touches it. It would burn out my mind and take possession of my body in order to have itself carried to a suitable wielder, one of House Dlardrageth.'
'But you could reach it and bring it out to us?' Sarya asked, her eyes avid and hungry.
Araevin felt himself nodding, and was appalled.
The Lost Peaks were aptly named. So dense was the forest cover on their lower slopes that the soldiers marching under Silverymoon's banner could not see the mountain-tops towering over them as they ascended the steep river valleys climbing up into the peaks. Every now and then a break in the trees permitted a glimpse of green, mist-wreathed mountains high overhead. The trail from time to time skirted a great mossy wall of stone or traversed a jumble of boulders and rubble that had slid down through the trees from the unseen slopes above. Even elves could not march swiftly over such rugged terrain.
Methrammar led his horse a few steps from the trail to let his soldiers continue past. Dressed in his armor of mithral mail and forest-green cloak, he resembled an elf warlord of old. He waited for Gaerradh and Sheeril to follow him off the trail.
'How much farther is Daelyth's Dagger?' he asked her.
'Seven miles. If we push hard, we can reach it tonight.' 'Will your folk be there?'
