Galaeron grabbed the giant by his arm and pulled him forward so the back blast wouldn't burn him.
Khelben appeared an instant later, in the middle of a slowly wagging tail of flame. He floated there in the fire for a moment, afterdazed and no doubt finding it even more difficult than had Galaeron to adjust to his new surroundings. Galaeron shoved Aris's arm toward Vala, then he floated over and pulled the Chosen out of the fire.
'Where are we?' hi his confusion, Khelben neglected to use thought speech. 'This isn't-' He caught himself and switched. Cloudcrown Hill!
We came out on the other side of the city, Laeral informed him, near the Groaning Cave.
Worse than that, Galaeron said. We came out in the past.
How can that be? Storm demanded. She reached behind Galaeron and batted an arrow aside. It can't happen.
It did, Galaeron replied. A little after we arrived in the Vine Vale, this whole wood was leveled by an explosion. And now-
It's still standing, Vala finished. / saw the blast, too. Somehow, we got here before the trees fell.
A fork of lightning snaked down from the cave mouth and caught Storm square in the center of her phaerimm disguise. The blast drove her to the ground but seemed to cause her no injury. Khelben and Laeral lifted their head-disks toward the source of the attack, and that alone was enough to send several dozen elves scrambling away in slow motion.
These disguises have one drawback, Vala sent as she rushed to take cover behind a fallen bluetop. They work!
She vanished over the trunk. Galaeron and the Chosen followed, and a moment later they were taking shelter in the crook of a massive limb. Aris came and stood behind them, his camouflage working so well that had Galaeron not been directly under the giant, he would never have seen him.
/ should have realized something like this would happen. Khelben's tone was apologetic. We've already seen what comes of mixing Weave and Shadow Weave.
We have, agreed Storm, but not this time. If this had something to do with shadow magic, how could Aris be here? He has no shadow magic.
That's true, Laeral said. Whatever went wrong, it happened when Khelben opened his magic door.
'The mythal!' Galaeron was so excited that he forgot himself and said this aloud. It had a defense against teleporting!
Not 'had,' Khelben replied. Evereska's mythal still has a bite.
So it sent us into the past? Vala asked.
Arrows began to sink into the trunk of the fallen bluetop at sporadic intervals.
And it relocated our exit portal, Laeral said. We're lucky the mythal was weakened, or the displacement might not have been so minor.
If this is minor, Vala said, / don't want to see major.
The comment brought to mind the strange blast that had leveled the woods around the Groaning Cave shortly after Galaeron and the first group arrived in the valley. He turned to look at Khelben.
Khelben? Do you remember that big blast we saw after we arrived?
The gray light? he replied. Of course.
Well, Galaeron said, that happened here.
It was impossible to say what happened beneath Khelben's disguise, but all four of phaerimm arms stopped moving, and his tail dropped to the ground.
Time! he gasped. We're moving through it faster than everyone around us-
And when we catch up… Laeral let the sentence trail off.
What? Aris asked. He had vanished so completely into the forest that Galaeron had forgotten he was there. I don't understand.
Trouble, Storm said. Really big trouble.
It seemed to Galaeron that the arrows were starting to thunk into their tree trunk more rapidly. He peered up toward the Groaning Cave and saw the archers moving a little less torpidly now, sending their shafts down the hill with a speed that could almost be described as flying rather than drifting. A battle mage caught sight of him and stretched out a finger to send a lightning bolt in his direction.
Galaeron used his shadow magic to send a thought message to the man.
Hold your attack! I am Galaeron Nihmedu, an elf and a friend.
The mage followed his order by stumbling back to the balustrade and completing his spell. The lightning bolt shot down the slope far faster than previous ones, almost too fast for the eye to follow. Galaeron barely had time to roll aside and cry a warning before the bolt was there.
Storm rose into its path and took the bolt full in the body.
Storm! Galaeron cried.
The bolt sank into Storm's body and vanished with no stench of charred flesh and not even much of a crack. She settled back behind the tree trunk and let out a satisfied belch.
Don't concern yourself, Galaeron, Laeral said. Storm can eat lightning all day.
A little gift from my sisters when I went to fight Iyachtu Xvim, Storm explained. Now, don't you think we ought to get away from here? Far away from here?
What could it hurt? Khelben replied.
For one of the Chosen, you don't sound all that confident, Vala observed.
It's not a matter of confidence, Laeral said. It all depends on whether the temporal displacement wave is centered on us or our point of arrival.
Huh? Vala asked.
She means run! Galaeron said.
He lifted Vala to her feet and shoved her into the woods in the direction opposite the elves who were attacking them. Khelben and the other Chosen rose into the air and floated along beside her, using their magic and their bodies to deflect the barrage of attacks that rained down from the veranda of the Groaning Cave. Before following, Galaeron took a moment to dispel the shadow web he had cast on the bladesinger.
Leave… this… place… now! he urged, spacing his words so the elf would be more likely to comprehend. Big danger!
The bladesinger pulled out of the dissolving shadow web looking more confused than alarmed but quickly took the advice when a beholder and his escort of bugbears came charging after him from the phaerimm side of the battle. Galaeron sent a similar warning to the elves on the veranda outside the Groaning Cave. Their only answer was a shimmering sphere of force that closed to within a dozen paces before Galaeron noticed it and fled his hiding place. A dull rumble sounded behind him a moment later, and he looked back to see the bluetop erupting into a spray of splinters. The ball expanded almost swiftly enough to catch him. Time was definitely moving faster.
Galaeron caught up to the others and followed close behind, dodging silver snakes of lightning and using his magic to turn arrows with wind spells or shadow shields. Aris ran alongside at a distance of twenty paces, slipping through the woods as stealthily as any ranger. As long as the companions kept moving, they had little to fear from their elf attackers, who clearly found it impossible to hit targets that must have seemed mere blurs. Though there were bugbears, illithids, and beholders aplenty in the wood, they were too busy fighting to pay any attention to a shadowy band of 'phaerimm.'
The companions had little trouble leaving the area of the cave, only to discover that the battle in the rest of the forest was just as fierce and twice as confused. There seemed to be no clearly drawn ranks or objectives, just random clusters of elves and mind-slaves and the occasional phaerimm attacking each other with spell and steel, sometimes from a hundred paces distant, sometimes standing toe-to-toe. All too often, the battles were between elves and elf mind-slaves, the former reluctant to strike killing blows and the latter all too eager. Whoever the combatants were, they seemed to be moving faster, their lightning bolts flashing through the wood faster than Galaeron's eye could follow, their arrows whizzing past too swiftly to deflect
Whenever possible, Galaeron urged the warriors to flee and used his magic to free the elf mind-slaves. It was this last good deed that complicated their flight, when six phaerimm appeared behind a rank of advancing bugbears and began to whistle at them in Winds.
