'My point exactly,' said Elminster. 'Whether he is a lone survivor-which would make him an archwizard of truly awe-inspiring might-or an expatriate seeking revenge, would it not make sense for him to make the phaerimm our problem?'
No one needed to ask what Melegaunt might be seeking vengeance for. The Netherese Empire had consisted primarily of floating cities, built upon the upturned bottoms of truncated mountaintops and kept aloft by the incredible magic of the empire's archwizards. Unbeknownst to them, their profligate abuse of magic was destroying the underground home of the entire phaerimm race, which depended on the inherent magic of nature for survival. To save themselves, the phaerimm had developed a powerful spell that drained the life from Netherese lands, turning their fields to sand dunes and their lakes to arid flats of cracked mud.
As the farms grew less fertile, the empire found it difficult to feed its people, and eventually the stress led to a strange series of wars. Some were fought for sport to keep the restless populace entertained, and some were fought to claim the remaining patches of arable land. The result was an ever-escalating magic arms race that culminated in the mad attempt of the empire's greatest archwizard, Karsus, to steal the mantle of divinity from the goddess of magic, Mystryl herself.
Sadly for all, Karsus was not up to the job. The sudden influx of godly knowledge left him too stunned to perform the most important role entrusted to the deity of magic-that of constantly reworking the Weave of life and mystic power that was the source of Faerun's magic. The Weave began to unravel.
To save it, the goddess-Mystryl-was forced to sacrifice herself, temporarily severing the link between Faerun and its magic Weave. Without magic to keep them afloat, the cities of Netheril plummeted to the ground. Karsus himself died imbued with the knowledge of what he had done, plummeting to the ground in the form of a huge red butte. Save for Shade, which had somehow foreseen the disaster in time to withdraw into the plane of shadow, the rest of the empire perished with him. By the time Mystryl could reincarnate herself as Mystra, the new goddess of magic, the empire was gone.
All were silent as they contemplated Elminster's suggestion, until Laeral voiced the question on all their minds.
'Surely, not even a Netherese-survivor or descendant- would unleash the phaerimm merely to have his revenge,'
To Khelben's surprise, it was Imesfor who shook his head. 'That would not be my sense of it all. This Melegaunt risked much to save my life and Kiinyon's, and his determination seems not to be in destroying the phaerimm, but to set right what he and Galaeron did wrong.'
'And this Galaeron?' asked Khelben. 'Forgive me, but it is not entirely unheard of for an elf to betray his own kind.'
'I know,' agreed Imesfor. '1 have given the matter no little thought, but I have known father and son for more than a century. Though the Nihmedu family is noble more by name than rank or power, Aubric is thought of so well that he has served the Swords of Evereska as blademajor for five decades now.' 'It is the son we are speaking of here,' said Elminster.
'That I know,' said Imesfor. 'Galaeron was known for his arrogance and stubbornness in both academies of the College of Magic and Arms, but he has served on the Desert Border without complaint for twenty years. Were he the betraying kind, he would have done it before now. I thought enough of his integrity to entrust my own Louenghris to his patrol, and even now I blame him for my son's death no more than any father would.'
Elminster looked back to Imesfor 'If ye can tell me one thing, then will I rest easy this night.' Imesfor nodded. 'I'll try.'
'How was it that this Melegaunt could snatch ye and the others from beneath the phaerimm's very noses? They see magic the way dwarves see body heat. And how was it that he shadow-walked ye right out of the Sharaedim, when neither Khelben nor myself nor any of the Chosen can so much as set foot inside its borders?' Imesfor could only shake his head. 'I wish I knew'
Khelben began to have a queasy feeling. 'Then we must consider at least one other possibility.' He felt Laeral's hand slip into his and was suddenly glad for its warmth. 'When the illithid attacked you, where was Melegaunt?'
Imesfor frowned. 'We had just parted ways. I was leaving the shadow way to teleport here, and he…' The elf let his sentence trail off. 'The human bastard!' 'He sent it after ye, did he?' asked Elminster. 'Not it,' said Imesfor. 'Them.'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
26Nightal, the Year of the Unstrung Harp Even with a veil of storm clouds sliding along the cliff tops and a snow squall blasting through the gorge, Thousand Faces was more museum than pass. At the entrance stood the statues of two stone giant warriors, so lifelike that their chests seemed to rise and fall with breath. Beyond these guardians stretched the sculpture of an entire stone giant steading, carved into the canyon wall in high relief. There was a smith hammering an axe blank, a hunter carrying a pair of mountain elk by their ankles, a mother watching two sons wrestle, and a hundred other figures farther in, increasingly obscured by the howling blizzard. Above the giants wheeled sculpted snow finches and boulder hawks, the finches darting through a breathtaking maze of tree limbs, the hawks soaring across sublime mountain peaks. There were no beholders in sight, but neither were there any stone giants-at least none of flesh and bone.
'Where did you see these beholders?' whispered Melegaunt.
The wizard was lying between Galaeron and Malik, peering into the canyon from beneath the ground- hugging branches of a spruce tree. Vala was on Galaeron's other side, her body touching his at shoulder and hip.
'Find the law keeper,' said Malik. 'Look into the door on the right.'
Galaeron searched the canyon until he came to an elderly stone giant holding a tablet in one hand and a dagger in the other. Next to him stood a doorway flanked by two columns. It ran only a couple of paces before ending in a wall at the same depth as the rest of the sculpture background, cleverly concealing the portal as a relief of itself. So convincing was the effect that had Galaeron not noticed a swarm of tiny eye-shaped reflections gleaming out of one shadowy corner, he would never have guessed the entrance to be real.
Armed with this insight into the wonder of the giants' art, he reexamined the canyon wall and spotted several other openings. There were two more doorways-one actually disguised as a door and another as the hollow between two trees-and half a dozen windows. A swarm of beholder eyes peered from most of them. 'Malik, you saved our lives,' said Galaeron. 'Thank you.'
'I don't know that he saved our lives,' grumbled Melegaunt, 'but he did save us some trouble. There are more beholders than I expected.'
'How can there be so many?' asked Vala. 'All the beholders 1 have fought were solitary'
'You live far from beholder civilization,' said Melegaunt. 'The phaerimm have enslaved a whole city.'
'Phaerimm?' gasped Malik. The little man backed out from beneath the tree. 'Perhaps it is not so far around the mountains after all.'
Melegaunt grabbed the newcomer's cloak. 'There aren't any phaerimm here, and I can sneak us past the beholders.'
He started to back out from beneath the tree, and Vala said, 'You're just going to abandon the stone giants?' Melegaunt did not stop. 'They're dead or gone.' 'Not all of them.' Vala pointed near the cliff top, where a distant pair of gray legs extended down out of the clouds to balance on the stone wing of a sculpted eagle. As the companions watched, one foot moved up the cliff in search of a foothold, but found none and reluctantly returned to its former place.
'That complicates things.' Melegaunt pushed himself out from beneath the tree. 'Well have to hurry, if we are to save him.'
'I beg a thousand pardons, but you have clearly lost your mind.' Malik crawled after the wizard. 'Dead men save no lives!'
'You're free to try another way, of course.' Melegaunt stood and started around the shoulder of a small hill. 'But there's nothing to worry about. You and the others will go through as I planned. Ill just take a small detour
