'Takari?'
Galaeron glanced around the Fringe, finding nothing, and limped out onto the hillside. He was dizzy and sore, his arm so weak he could barely lift it.
'Takari!'
The only answer came in the form of a series of excited peeps from the tree above his head. Galaeron raised his chin and found the familiar white face of Manynests peering down at him.
'She did what?' Galaeron gasped. Takari was not the type to leave her post, not even when she was shadow touched. 'That can't be right'
Manynests answered with a sharp chirp, then pointed his beak down the hill.
'What about the leader?'
Manynests chirped a question.
'The phaerimm leader,' Galaeron said. 'The one you dropped the barb on.'
The finch peeped angrily.
'All right, the one you attacked' Galaeron said. 'What did she do about that phaerimm?'
The bird's answer caused Galaeron to limp around the tree as fast as he could move. There were no phaerimm in the courtyard surrounding the statue-at least at first glance-and there was nothing where the leader should have been, save for a puddle of steaming black blood.
'She let it go!' Galaeron cried. 'Takari left her post!'
Manynests dropped out of the tree. He landed on one of the darts still protruding from Galaeron's shoulder. He twilled a long question, then cocked his head and looked down the hill toward the battle.
'No,' Galaeron growled. 'I really don't think Kuhl needed her help.'
CHAPTER NINETEEN
2 Eleasias, the Year of Wild Magic
Whether the caustic taste in her mouth was ash or fear, Keya Nihmedu could not say. She knew only that her tongue had gone as dry as a flame, that it had become impossible to tell the shuddering of the ground from her own trembling, and that the child in her belly would be lucky to see the world with its own eyes. Burning bluetops were crashing all around her, horse-sized boulders were tumbling down the slope in a ceaseless cascade, and the air was hot enough to bake acorns. The Cold Hand's objective had sounded simple enough when Galaeron explained it back under the Floating Gardens, but she was hoping he had a backup plan.
Crawling on her belly, Keya crept along beneath the upper slope of the trail cut to where Vala was taking shelter with Kuhl and Burlen. Unlike her elves, who were either lying flat on their bellies keeping a watch up the slope for tumbling boulders or blindly arcing arrows up in the general direction of the enemy, the Vaasans were sitting with their backs to the battle. They were sharing sticks of jerked thkaerth meat and laughing and shoving each other in the shoulder, though they had made concession enough to the fighting to remove their swords from their scabbards and leave them lying at their sides within easy reach.
As Keya approached, Vala removed a stick of dried meat from their rations bag and offered it to her.
'No, thank you,' Keya shouted to make herself heard over the battle roar. 'I don't have much stomach for thkaerth lately.'
Though she hoped the Vaasans would think this was because of her pregnancy, the truth was she simply could no longer stand the sight of cooked meat; it reminded her too much of the burned bodies that lay scattered and unburied throughout all of Evereska. Trying to look as unconcerned as the Vaasans, she drew herself up beside Vala and removed her sword from its scabbard.
'What do you think?' Keya asked. 'Concentrate our spell-casters and try to mount a breakthrough?'
Vala replied, That would only make them easy pickings for the phaerimm.'
'What phaerimm?' Takari asked. 'Manynests didn't say anything about phaerimm.'
'Manynests is a bird. What he can't see doesn't exist for him. But they have one.' Vala jerked her thumb over her shoulder and said, 'Up there.'
Burlen leaned in front of Vala, looking Keya over with a concerned expression, and held out a piece of jerked thkaerth.
'You sure you don't want one?' he said. 'You need to keep your strength up.'
Keya waved him off and continued to address Vala. 'How do you know where the phaerimm is?'
Vala cast a pointed gaze in the direction of a line of charred bodies and said, 'The best thing we can do right now is wait'
A sonorous rumble sounded from above and quickly began to grow louder. Keya started to roll to her stomach so she could crawl up the bank to see what was coming. Vala extended an arm and stopped her, pushing her flat against the slope before lying back herself. The rumble built to rhythmic crashing, then suddenly went silent A roth? — sized boulder tumbled off the rim of the slope and sailed over their heads, bouncing off the far side of the trail and vanishing into the woods below.
'Mind-slaves aren't very bright,' Vala said. 'Sooner or later, the bugbears will run out of boulders, and the beholders will knock down the last bluetop. Then we attack.'
'We don't have that long,' Keya objected. 'According to Galaeron's plan, we should be taking out the perimeter defense now, before Khelben and the others arrive with the high mages. Otherwise, the mind-slaves will turn and counterattack-'
Then that's when we'll take them,' Vala interjected. 'Or maybe when Aris gets here. If he can hurl a few boulders back up the hill, we might be able to break their line.'
'What we can't do is attack into the teeth of their defense,' Burlen said. 'We'll just get the Cold Hand wiped out, and who will there be to stop the counterattack?'
Keya glanced past Vala and Burlen to Kuhl, and asked him, 'What do you think?'
Kuhl's expression merely darkened, and he looked away.
'He agrees with us,' Burlen said. 'Pay no mind to his manners. He's letting his sword do his thinking.'
Burlen reached out and slapped his companion in the back of the helmet. Kuhl's scowl deepened, but he looked away and continued to remain silent
'Plans are good,' Vala said, drawing Keya's attention back to the matter at hand. 'Once the spell-flinging starts, they aren't worth the breath it took to speak them. We have to wait for our opportunity-'
She was interrupted by a gusty howl they all recognized as the screech of a wounded phaerimm.
'There's your thornback!' Keya called. She rolled to her stomach and began to shimmy up the bank. 'While we sit here talking, someone is killing it.'
She stuck her head above the rim just far enough to look up the shattered hillside. Fallen bluetops crisscrossed the slope, blast craters pocked the ground, and curtains of fire poured gray fume into the air. Fifty yards above, a long rank of mind-slaves peered down from behind a meandering breastwork, hurling boulders and magic, anything they could down upon the company of the Cold Hand. There were dozens of bugbears and maybe ten beholders, reinforced by a trio of illithids and a handful of vacant-eyed elves, but the wounded phaerimm was nowhere to be seen. The instant it suffered a serious wound, it had no doubt teleported to safety.
The dark dash of an elven death arrow flashed out of a bluetop behind the enemy breastwork and disappeared into the trenches. A beholder rose briefly into view, its sharp-toothed mouth twisted into a grimace of pain. Keya had just enough time to identify the Tomb Guard's distinctive black-feather fletching on the butt of the arrow before the Cold Hand's battle mages blazed the creature into a red spray.
A thick human hand grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her back down the slope.
'Get down!' Vala snarled. 'Dexon will have my head if I let some beholder burn that pointy-eared head off your shoulders!'
Keya was about to protest when a purple ray droned past above, cutting a deep furrow in the rim of the slope, coming within a finger's width of disintegrating her skull. Her heart hammered in her chest so hard that she thought it would break a rib, but she managed to retain enough control of her wits to point her darksword up the slope.
'T-T-Takari!'
