room, motioning Galaeron to follow-and many others as well, judging by the cold swirl of darkness that accompanied them.
Hadrhune appeared at Telamont's side, his eyes opened again. 'A veserab patrol did return unexpectedly, Most High. The officer cannot be found, and the mounts have burns where they were harnessed with Weave magic.' 'Not impossible,' Telamont said. 'Recall the princes.'
They were in the throne room, striding through the whispering shadows toward the reception hall, surrounded by a throng of increasingly substantial figures. Several of the silhouettes drifted apart long enough for Vala to emerge and step to Galaeron's side. 'What happened?'
'Phaerimm infiltrators,' Galaeron explained. 'They're after the mythallar.'
Vala raised her brow, but said, 'That's not what I was asking about' 'No?'
'You, Galaeron,' Telamont said, speaking from a dozen paces ahead. 'She wants to know what happened to you.'
Galaeron frowned. 'My shadow?' He glanced over at her. 'You can tell just by looking?'
Vala nodded. 'Galaeron, I don't even have to look anymore,' she said, 'and I don't much like that.' 'Ready weapons!' Hadrhune called.
Vala reached for her darksword and asked, 'They're coming here?'
They were somewhere else, dropping out of the shadows into a huge obsidian basin, sliding down the glassy slopes with purple sheets of light burning all around them, voices screaming, bolts cracking, air reeking of charred flesh. It took Galaeron a moment to recall where he was and why, a moment longer to realize the pain in his arm was Vala's free hand digging into his biceps, then he finally began to make sense of what he was seeing.
At the bottom of the basin sat a huge ball of obsidian, easily a hundred and fifty feet in diameter, with pale, ghostly shapes gliding about inside and a halo of deepening darkness radiating from its surface. A flight of phaerimm were descending out of the gloom above, flinging spells of fire and light as they came, trying to fight their way through the swarm of teleport-dazed Shadovar tumbling and sliding down the slopes of the glassy basin along with Galaeron and Vala.
An orb of darkness streaked up out of the basin and drilled a fist-sized hole through a creature close over their heads. It dropped onto the slope above and started to slide down toward them, roaring its pain in a swirling tempest of winds and lashing out with a wild flurry of lightning and burning light. Galaeron took a white fork of energy in the shoulder and went rigid, biting down on his tongue so hard that his teeth met through the flesh.
Vala hurled her sword, slicing off one of the phaerimm’s arms and a good portion of its sinewy shoulder. The creature rolled away, then whistled something in the phaerimm wind language and vanished.
Galaeron felt Vala catch him by the collar, then their descent began to slow as they reached the bottom of the basin and the slope lost its steepness. She called her darksword back to her hand, and only after it had returned did she turn her attention to the smoking hole in his shoulder. 'How bad?'
Galaeron managed to unclench his jaw and, with a mouthful of blood, said, 'Stiff, but all right.'
He tried to rise, making it as far as his knees before discovering his muscles would not obey. Vala moved his leg into a stable kneeling position, then they both scanned the area. The battle appeared to have ended as quickly as it had started. Shadovar warriors and pieces of Shadovar warriors were sliding down the slope toward them, accumulating in groaning, knee-deep piles. Half a dozen phaerimm-or rather sections of half a dozen phaerimm- lay interspersed among the smoking bodies.
Telamont Tanthul stood a quarter of the way around the basin, Hadrhune at his side as always, calling for his princes and ordering the survivors to arrange search parties. There were no thornbacks in sight; once a battle started to turn against them, it was phaerimm instinct to teleport away. Galaeron knew the enclave defenses would prevent them from leaving the city via translocational magic-but he also knew the phaerimm would have anticipated that and picked a safe rallying point. Galaeron grabbed Vala's arm and pulled himself up. 'Take it easy,' she said. 'You're not looking so good.'
Though he was still angry with Telamont for drawing out his shadow and at that moment truly wanted to see the Shadovar mythallar destroyed-considering the number of deaths that would mean, he hoped that particular desire was his shadow's instead of his own- Galaeron also knew that Evereska's fate depended on Shade Enclave's continued survival.
'It's not done,' Galaeron said. 'They're still in the city.'
Vala wrapped him in a supporting arm and started toward the Most High. 'Telamont isn't going to like this. Didn't he order you to stay out of fights until you're able to pass on Melegaunt's knowledge?'
Galaeron nodded at the huge sphere of obsidian they were circling past. 'He seems to have made an exception for the mythallar.'
Vala glanced at the orb and raised her brow. 'That's the mythallar? I was sort of expecting it to be the Karse-stone.' 'Me, too,' Galaeron said.
After unleashing the phaerimm, they had journeyed into the Dire Wood, fighting liches and other undead guardians in order to help Melegaunt recover the famed Karsestone and use its 'heavy' magic-from a time before the Weave and Shadow Weave split-to return Shade Enclave to Faerыn.
'I guess they only needed the stone to open a large enough gate between the dimensions,' he said. 'Apparently, the Shadow Weave can still support spells powerful enough to levitate a city.' 'The Weave can't?' Vala asked.
'It hasn't,' Galaeron answered, shrugging. 'Not since the fall of Netheril.'
If Vala saw the danger in that, her expression didn't show it. 'That is good news for Evereska, if it means the Shadovar are more powerful than the phaerimm.'
Galaeron nodded, but didn't say what it might also mean. If the Shadovar were more powerful than the phaerimm, then they were also more powerful than most of the great wizards of the realms. Only the Chosen themselves, or perhaps an entire circle of high mages, could rival their power.
They were almost to Telamont and Hadrhune when the first of the princes, with half a dozen Shadovar lords at his back, stepped out of the murk at the rim of the basin and began to descend the slick wall. Galaeron recognized Brennus by his large, crescent-shaped mouth and the orange tinge of his iron-colored eyes. Not slipping on the steep obsidian slope, he and the others began to angle more or less in Telamont's direction, their faces showing no reaction at all to the carnage around them. When they reached the body piles at the bottom they began to clamber across without drawing so much as a moan or disturbing even one arm. 'Vala, do you see that?' Galaeron asked. 'What?' she asked.
Like almost everyone else in the basin, Vala was focusing her attention on the murk near the rim, blithely awaiting the arrival of the rest of the princes. 'Lower. Look at Brennus's feet.'
Vala looked, then frowned at the way no one seemed bothered that Brennus was stepping on them. 'That's just wrong.' 'So I thought,' Galaeron said.
They were still thirty paces from Telamont, perhaps half that from Brennus and his companions. He stopped and pulled a small flake of obsidian from his robe pocket. 'Galaeron, no.' Vala grabbed his arm. 'You're-'
'Let go!' Galaeron ripped his arm free, then began to scrape the flake over his palm. 'If that's really Brennus, he'll never know.'
Galaeron began the incantation of a shadow divination-a more powerful one than he should have been using but necessary if he was to dispel a phaerimm's disguise magic. A surge of cold shadow magic rushed into his body, chilling him down to the marrow in his bones and filling him with a cold, bitter resentment at… well, everyone: Melegaunt and the other princes, Telamont, Hadrhune-even Vala.
The spell ended as the 'prince' and his escorts were stepping over the last of the casualties onto the basin floor. The shadow drained from their bodies like water, revealing six phaerimm and a strange, three-eyed, three- tentacled orb with a huge, finch like beak. 'Impos That was as far as Vala's warning got before the basin erupted into flying shadow balls and sizzling fans of light. Two of the phaerimm and fifty Shadovar fell in the battle's first breath, and the three-eyed creature spun toward Galaeron, its tentacles whirling like the scimitars of a drow blademaster. Vala intercepted it, her darksword rising to meet the spinning tentacles-and fell back as the thing beat down her guard, slashing her up the cheek, above the eye, and then across the neck.
Galaeron pulled her back and drew his own sword, his elven steel severing one hooked tentacle as it struck at the hollow of her throat, then falling to his back as the thing's wicked beak clacked at his head. Another hook came whipping down toward Galaeron's unarmored heart-and was intercepted by Vala's darksword. She twined
