so badly they were about to pop their sockets, and the black stuff running from his nose and ears had fanned across his entire lower face. The undead elf began to fumble through the gestures of an enchantment.
So clumsy were his efforts that even Vala knew the spell would never go off. The phaerimm simply floated there before him, and eventually Corineus stopped trying. The pair simply stood beside each other and did nothing. Vala was confused for the first several moments, until the baelnorn's gaze shifted to the captured spellbooks, and she recalled that phaerimm communicated with their captives telepathically. The thing was interrogating him, no doubt trying to learn how he had been slipping past the wards designed to keep him at bay.
Vala prayed to Tempus to give Corineus strength- then remembered herself and asked Corellon Larethian, the elf god of war, for the same thing. They had taken care to leave behind no trace of her presence in the lairs they had broken so far. If the baelnorn betrayed the secret, she would not survive long enough to realize their plan had failed.
A tremble in the web drew Vala's gaze to the opposite corner of the ceiling, where a wolf-sized spider was creeping out of its bolt hole. She fixed it in place with a glare but did not dare do more. Corineus had warned her not to move until the instant she attacked. Her only camouflage was spider silk and darkness; any magic that the baelnorn might have used to hide her would have drawn the phaerimm's attention as surely as a flame.
Emboldened by the first, a second spider crept out onto the web, this one only half a dozen yards from Vala's feet. She glanced toward the phaerimm, trying to gauge her chances of making the leap. Not good. The thornback was over by the main door with the baelnorn; she was in the opposite corner, above the spellbooks. Corineus had said the thing would not be able to resist such a treasure. So far, it seemed to be withstanding the temptation all too well.
A third spider crept onto the web, this one in the corner above Corineus, who was enduring long past the point when a living elf would have been crushed. His eyes were hanging out of their sockets, flattened against his cheeks, while his arms and legs were bent at impossible angles and pressed back against his body. Vala wanted to yell at the baelnorn to give up and let himself be destroyed already, but she didn't even know if that was possible. Besides, he had to make it look real. If he gave up too easily, his tormentor would grow suspicious-and few things were more dangerous than a suspicious phaerimm.
The web began to tremble violently as the first spider darted for Vala, fangs dripping venom and pedipalps reaching out. The second made a dash for her legs but stopped to face the other one when it changed its direction.
Vala started to throw her sword in desperation-then had a better idea and looked back to the spiders. She ran her blade through the spider web, cutting a huge crescent around the bottom of her feet. The web came free with a series of brittle pops, and she swung down from the ceiling, descending toward her target in a swift-moving arc. The phaerimm swung its huge mouth toward her.
Vala leaped straight at it, whipping the darksword around for a vicious, two-handed down strike. She heard scales cracking and felt the blade splitting flesh. A pair of phaerimm hands caught her by the throat and began to squeeze. She turned the blade and began to drag it through the thing's body. The barbed tail arced up, clanked off her backplate, and drew back to try again.
Vala knocked a phaerimm hand from her throat-only to have it replaced by two more. Her vision began to fade, and her right leg erupted into fiery pain as the tail barb penetrated her armor and began to pump its poison into her body. She pried her darksword free, swinging the blade up through two feet of tendon and flesh. Her vision darkened to something darker than black, and Vala's stomach suddenly rose into her chest. A bitter chill stung her flesh, and there was an endless eternity of falling. She grew queasy and weak and heard nothing but the pounding of her own heart, slowing with each beat, then even that was gone.
Vala's first hint that she was not… well, gone, was the reek of battle gore. The second was pain. Something was lodged in her leg, holding up her whole body by the big thigh muscle and flicking across the bone. She thought for a moment that she was dead and in the Nine Hells with no memory of how she had come to be there. Then she saw a huge, amber-colored phaerimm lying flayed and motionless on the floor above her-no, below-and recalled the fight in the sanctum.
Vala was not in the sanctum. Instead of the four captured spellbooks and great heap of recovered magic she and Corineus had piled in the corner, there was a single open book floating in a green spell field and several shelves of neatly arranged relics. There were the mind-slaves' sleeping palettes lined up along the wall, and the ward symbol above the door that kept her baelnorn ally at bay. Most of all, there was the thornback itself, lying motionless and gutted on the floor beneath her, its long tail preventing her from floating to the ceiling by the painful barb lodged in her thigh.
After Vala's attack, the thing had attempted to teleport to the safety of its lair and arrived dead. At least she thought it was dead. She brought her arm down to cut herself free-or, rather, tried to bring her arm down. It didn't move in response to her will, nor did her legs or neck when she tested them-or even her tongue, when she attempted to curse.
Eventually, Vala knew, the crushing sphere would destroy Corineus's body and free his spirit to seek one of the spare bodies he had hidden in the Irithlium-but that was not going to help her. Until she broke the warding symbol above the door, the baelnorn could not enter the lair. There was nothing to do but hang there in pain until the poison wore off. ‹S› — O- ©- •©••© The Shadovar were not conspicuous in Arabel-or rather in what had been Arabel before the ghazneths and their ore hordes reduced it to rubble-but they were there. On the dark side of a broken tower, a pair of swarthy masons were using a shadow saw to size blocks. Through the window of a bakery, a potter with gleaming amethyst eyes was fashioning an oven from darkclay. In an alley, a tall and gaunt carpenter was installing an ebon-wood door.
None of them more than glanced in Galaeron's direction as he passed by with Aris and Ruha, but that meant nothing. With an elf, a Bedine witch, and a stone giant traveling together, the Shadovar had to know who they were looking at.
Aris stooped down to within three feet of Galaeron and Ruha. Though the giant had spent much of the past two days sipping Storm Silverhand's healing potions, he remained unsteady enough that Galaeron would rather he wasn't leaning over them.
'This is going to be harder than we thought,' Aris said quietly. 'I keep seeing Shadovar.' Galaeron nodded. 'Sent to watch for us.'
'So many?' Ruha shook her head. 'The Shadovar have easier ways of watching than rebuilding a whole city.'
'What do you know?' Galaeron snapped. 'With the information I have about the phaerimm, the Shadovar would do anything to get me back.' 'I am sure they would,' Ruha said patiently.
She pointed at the base of a nearly rebuilt tower, where the foundation had been patched with the same dark amalgam that served as mortar in Shade Enclave. 'They have been here for some time,' the witch continued. 'Their purpose here is to make an ally of Cormyr, not find us.'
Galaeron considered first the foundation, then the rest of the broad street, and had to nod. While the city still looked like a rubble heap at first glance, the outlines of its former shape were beginning to re-emerge. Many of the larger buildings were already rising to the second or third story, and most showed signs of Shadovar work- if not in the mortar then in the precision fit of the stones and the dark wood of the balconies, or even in the depth of the shadowed window alcoves.
'You're right, of course,' Galaeron said, transferring his ire from Ruha to Storm Silverhand. 'Even the Shadovar couldn't do this overnight-and Storm had to know it when she teleported us here.' 'Most likely,' Ruha admitted.
'So why send us?' Galaeron demanded. 'It would have made more sense to teleport us to Waterdeep and come to Cormyr herself.'
'Perhaps you have answered your own question,' Ruha said. 'That is what the Shadovar would expect Or matters in Waterdeep may be more complicated than we know. I am given to understand that Storm's sister Laeral is friendly with the Shadovar.' 'Say no more,' Galaeron grumbled.
Storm's reaction to him in Anauroch had convinced him how unlikely he was to persuade any of the Chosen of anything. For loosing the phaerimm on the world, they might have forgiven him eventually, but for bringing the Shadovar into the world after them, and getting Elminster banished to the Nine Hells-never.
'We're better off taking our chances with the Cormyreans,' Galaeron admitted.
'Then you accept that Storm did the wisest thing?' Ruha asked.
