enough to walk the world for centuries yet before departing for Arvandor together.
'Corellon did not deny me the spell. I think he knew that I had to make the attempt. At sunset of a warm summer evening I chanted the prayers and cast the spell of resurrection, and Ilyyela's spirit answered my call. But she would not cross back into life. Ilyyela, my love, come back to me,' I begged. Yet she refused. 'My time is done,' she said. 'Do not mourn for the years we might have shared in Evermeet, for we will be together in Arvandor's summer forever.'
'I pleaded with her. 'I cannot stand to be apart from you, not for the long years I might remain. I will join you in Arvandor, if you will not return.'
'Then Ilyyela regarded me with sadness. 'That is not for you to decide,' she told me. 'It is not for any to decide. There is a great labor before you, my love, which you must begin before you come home. And you will not have long to wait. You will come to Arvandor very soon, Seiveril. Until that day you must live the life allotted to you.''
Fflar smiled in the darkness and said, 'I suppose you must wonder what she meant by 'very soon.' But what does this have to do with me?'
'I said my farewells to Ilyyela's spirit then,' Seiveril said. 'Before she departed entirely, she told me this: 'I cannot answer your call, love. But there is one here who will. Heal him, Seiveril. His wait has been long.' '
The moon elf was silent for a long time.
'And you thought she meant me?' he said finally. 'Why me, Seiveril? I never knew you in life.'
'No, you did not. But you did know my father, Elkhazel. He told me many stories of your valor in the Weeping War. When he finally passed to Arvandor himself, he told me where to find Keryvian. I suppose I have regarded you as something of a hero, since I was a small lad.'
'I'm only one hundred and fifty years old, Seiveril. I can't abide the notion that a fellow three times my age regards me as his boyhood hero. Nor can I believe that I was unhappy in Arvandor,' Fflar said. He stood up, shaking his head. 'You'd better get some rest, old man. You'll need clear wits and all your strength for tomorrow.'
At daybreak the elves broke camp and began to climb the flanks of the moor, marching in battle order-tight, disciplined companies instead of the loose columns of the past few days. They marched not more than two hours before an Evereskan scout galloped up to Seiveril and Fflar at the false standard.
'Lord Seiveril! The daemonfey army has turned!'
Fflar looked at Seiveril and said, 'You were right. It seems they've stopped running.'
The sun elf flicked the reins of his mount and followed the messenger as they rode ahead, climbing up a sparsely wooded hillside flanking the valley through which wound the weathered old track they followed. To the north the gray, flat emptiness of the Lonely Moor stretched unbroken for mile after mile. In the distance to the east Seiveril glimpsed the brown-gold desolation of Anauroch. On the rugged downlands of the moor the daemonfey army had halted, spreading out from the ragged, misshapen column the elves had chased for days into long lines facing south.
'Can we take them, do you think?' Seiveril asked.
Fflar replied, 'That is your decision, not mine.'
'I am asking you for your assessment of the situation.'
The big moon elf studied the enemy ranks for a while then said, 'You can't win this war by seizing some piece of territory these demonspawn control. They have no cities for you to raze, no castles to pull down. If you want to end this threat, you have to beat their army, and that means you have to wait for them come to you, or you have to run them down. I faced this same dilemma in the Weeping War, except that time I faced an army that outnumbered mine by ten to one. This foe you can defeat, if you are certain that the fight is necessary.'
Seiveril studied the distant ranks of the enemy army, searching for certainty. He frowned, recalling his misgivings, and wondering what had changed for the daemonfey that had encouraged them to halt their retreat and turn back. Did they like the battleground? Had they garnered reinforcements? Or had they simply reached the right time to execute some greater plan of which he was not aware?
'Well?' asked Fflar.
Corellon, grant me wisdom, Seiveril prayed silently.
He wheeled his horse around to face the officers and messengers who followed him and snapped, 'Send word to all the captains. We will attack!'
Araevin found himself standing in a strange, spherical chamber of pale white stone. The room was perhaps three times his height, and the center of the floor had been leveled, so that it was not a true sphere. The walls shone with a pale radiance that illuminated the entire chamber with a strange and threatening light. He could feel the powerful spell wards that pervaded the place, spells to foil scrying, spells to make the walls impervious… The room was without exit, as he knew it would be-the chamber had been carved out of the bedrock hundreds of feet below the ghost's hall, and it was only accessible by magic.
The Nightstar hovered in the center of the room, held aloft by the spells of the ancient wizard who had built the place. It was exactly as Araevin had seen, a dagger-shaped crystal about three inches long. In color it was a deep, iridescent purple reminiscent of the last gloaming of a storm-clouded sunset, and pale lavender glyphs were etched into its surface. Unseen emanations of magical power ringed the device like heat shimmering in the air, an aura of arcane potency that halted Araevin even in the face of his compulsion to seize the gem.
For all his years of study alongside high mages and loremasters, he had never seen a selukiira before. Like their lesser kindred the telkiira, they served to store knowledge-memories, spells, secrets, whatever their creators chose to infuse them with. But the high lore-gems were also reputed to be teaching devices, a means by which the arcane study of a hundred years might be conferred to the wearer in the blink of an eye. A selukiira might make a novice into a powerful mage in a single searing instant. If what Sarya had said was true, then locked inside its violet depths lay the secrets to high magic, knowledge of ancient rites and mighty spells that otherwise might take decades of study to encompass.
This was made by a Dlardrageth, he reminded himself. A Dlardrageth who studied firsthand the forgotten magic of old Aryvandaar, the most powerful realm of elves that ever existed. From their mighty towers in the North the High Mages of Aryvandaar launched spells that destroyed entire nations and enslaved half a continent. What would Sarya do with such knowledge?
It did not matter. He didn't have the ability to refuse.
Since the gemstone hovered ten feet above the marble floor, Araevin cast a simple spell to catch hold of it and draw it down to him-but the spell failed. The Nightstar was not to be moved by such a minor magic. He stood silent, thinking, then he muttered the words of his spell of flying, and willed himself into the air. Moving slowly, as if he watched himself in a dream, he reached out to touch the crystal. Dread welled up in his mind as his fingertips neared the gem, yet he was helpless to turn away his face or even wince in anticipation of what might happen when his flesh touched the crystal.
Selukiira burn out the minds of those who are not meant to handle them, he reminded himself. They recognize those who are false, and destroy them utterly.
'I refuse,' Araevin whispered.
For an awful moment he fought to keep his hand from moving an inch nearer, his muscles straining to obey Sarya's command while his mind and will woke to full power, shaking off the daemonfey enchantment. He closed his eyes and bared his teeth, throwing the entirety of his consciousness into the simple effort to hold his hand still.
'I refuse!' he snarled, and he drew his hand back half an inch. Sarya's spell enticed him toward his doom with the seductiveness of a high, rocky clifftop and the lure of the leap, but Araevin proved the stronger.
He snatched his hand away, and howled, 'I refuse! '
The Nightstar hung before his face, less than an arm's length from his eyes. It stood quiescent, showing not a hint of the fearsome doom it held for him. Araevin drifted back in midair, thinking hard. He took a deep breath.
'Now what?' he asked aloud.
Though his free will had been restored, the fact remained that he could not escape the chamber except by means of the portal, and that would return him to the hall where the daemonfey waited. Any teleportation he attempted there would destroy him, as surely as the vrock had been destroyed in the rooms above. He could try to surprise Nurthel with his sudden return, and attack-but Araevin had not had the opportunity to replenish his magic
