the cobblestones, but that troubled him no more than did the distant pain burning in his belly.
Lord Duirsar was there, beating the phaerimm back with spell and blade. Galaeron continued to sing. He was one with the high mages, concerned only with the casting. The leader reached up and took the next strand from Galaeron with an invisible hand. This time, when he plaited the thread into Hanali's cloak, he followed it in.
Galaeron came to the end of his song, and his belly erupted in pain. He did not realize that the casting was finished and he had been released from the spell until he saw Lord Duirsar below him, fighting the phaerimm leader toe-to-tall, driving it back with flashing steel and pelting it with bolt after bolt from a magic ring. Storm was rushing to the elf lord's side, one hand raised to hurl her own spells, the other still carrying her sword.
Galaeron reached for his shadowsilk but knew even as tried he would not succeed. The phaerimm's poison had left him paralyzed and floating helplessly above the ground. As he watched, two more phaerimm appeared at Storm's back, spraying fire and lightning blindly and lashing out with their tolls. He shifted his eyes in the opposite direction and saw that the situation was much the same in the rest of the courtyard, with Khelben and Laeral standing back-to-back and wary phaerimm pelting them from a distance.
Newly repaired though it was, the mythal remained exhausted and starved from the abuse it had suffered since the start of the phaerimm invasion. It mustered itself enough to send a single golden meteor streaking down into the courtyard. The orb blasted only one of the phaerimm that had just teleported in behind Storm, leaving the other to tumble off smoking and teleport away.
The boom was loud enough to draw the attention of everyone in the courtyard. Lord Duirsar narrowly blocked a tail barb when he spun around to see what had caused the sound. Storm, who had been much closer to the explosion, was left picking herself up off the cobblestones.
'Storm!' Galaeron had to hiss the words between clenched teeth, but he knew that as one of the Chosen, she would hear. 'The mythal is whole! Use the silver-'
The phaerimm leader gestured in Galaeron's direction, and even his muttering grew silent Lord Duirsar took advantage of the opening to pour a flurry of magic bolts into the thornback's torso and send it tumbling away, then Storm turned and loosed a stream of silver fire into the base of Hanali's statue. Khelben and Laeral followed her lead an instant later, and the statue began to glow with a bright silver light.
The glow faded as quickly as it had appeared. The phaerimm leader hurled a black death ray at Lord Duirsar that the elf lord sent ricocheting off with a spell mirror. Taking a cue from their leader, the other phaerimm renewed their attacks, and Galaeron began to think that he had failed Evereska again, that his idea had been disastrously misguided and even the unadulterated magic of the Chosen's silver fire could not provide the burst of energy the mythal needed to defend Evereska. Fighting through his disappointment and pain, he opened himself to the Shadow Weave and prepared to loose a shadow blast. He had no control over his own movement, but if a phaerimm happened to pass-
A rain of golden meteors came streaking down from the sky, crackling, sizzling, and leaving a long trail of black smoke in their wake. The first one struck the phaerimm leader, blasting the creature into a spray of sparkling nothingness and laying Lord Duirsar out on the ground next to it. The next three landed in a semicircle around Khelben and Laeral, leaving the two Chosen slumped back-to-back, their eyes as round as coins and their jaws hanging slack. Two more crashed down behind Storm, who flinched a little and looked around to see if there was anything left to kill.
It took only four more strikes in half as many seconds before there wasn't anything left to kill. The rest of the phaerimm-the few who had survived-teleported away, and the meteor shower began to spread outward from the statue, seeking targets in other parts of the city. Galaeron saw perhaps another dozen strikes before the rain grew erratic and dwindled away, leaving the sky streaked with the smoky trails of their descent
No, not smoke. Smoke trails grew crooked and feathery as they dissipated in the breeze. The streaks remained straight, narrow, and dark.
'Are those what I think they are?' Storm asked.
Galaeron looked down to see Storm below him. She had a coil of elven rope she had taken from Kiinyon’s belt and was busy tying a slip knot. He would have asked her what she thought the stripes were, except that he remained both paralyzed from the phaerimm leader's poison and silenced by its magic. It was probably just as well-he really didn't want to be the one to say they were shadows.
Storm finished her knot, then deftly tossed the loop up over Galaeron's feet.
'Well, Galaeron,' she said as she began to pull him down, 'when you save a city, you certainly leave your mark.'
•O- •©• •©••©••€›•
For the third time in as many hours, the Chosen poured their silver fire into the base of Hanali Celanil’s statue. A silver blush rolled up the goddess's imposing figure, then slowly faded as the ravenous mythal drew the raw magic into itself. Moments later, a swarm of golden meteors crackled down from the sky, each streaking toward a distant part of the city where some enemy of Evereska's lay hiding from the mythal’s justice.
Galaeron supposed that most of those enemies were still phaerimm, but the last time the meteors had fallen, he had seen them strike beholders and illithids, even a bewildered bugbear who looked more interested in fleeing the city than conquering it. Once the mythal might have shown mercy on a hapless mind-slave as much a victim of the phaerimm as Evereska's own citizens, but no longer. The renewed mythal concerned itself only with who was an enemy to the city and who was a friend, and it destroyed enemies and protected friends.
Considering the stripes of shadow that remained behind every time a meteor descended, Galaeron half expected the next golden ball to land on him, but the mythal had finished with the courtyard surrounding Hanali’s statue, and even with the hill below. No attacks had fallen anywhere near the hill since the second wave, when its deadly barrage had broken the counterattack on the captured entrenchment and sent the phaerimm mind-slaves fleeing for the far corners of the city. With reinforcements pouring up the hill by the dozens, victory was only a matter of waiting and consolidating, of carefully expanding the areas of elf control each time the mythal struck.
Galaeron should probably have felt proud, but in truth he was simply restless. After the mythal's initial strike, Laeral Silverhand had attended to his stomach wound, and finding no phaerimm egg planted inside, pronounced him likely to survive but in need of rest. Storm had trickled a healing potion down his throat, then tied him down to a tree root to wait for the phaerimm's paralysis poison to wear off, and there he had been stuck, wondering what had become of Vala and Aris, of Keya and her Vaasan friends, and most of all, what had happened between Takari and Kuhl and their sword.
It was another quarter hour before Galaeron could move his fingers, and a quarter hour after that before he had control enough to untie Storm's torturous knots. By the time he succeeded, Lord Duirsar was holding a meeting with the Chosen, the commanders of the city's surviving companies, Aris, and anyone else likely to play an important part in the events to come.
Galaeron coiled the rope and hung it on his belt, then straightened his armor and started across the courtyard to join the others. Storm's healing potion had proven remarkably effective. Though he had felt the phaerimm's tall barb sink deep, the wound caused him little discomfort as he walked, and when he looked down, he was surprised to find the puncture already closed.
As Galaeron approached, his sister Keya was the first to notice. Without excusing herself from the circle kneeling in front of Lord Duirsar, and apparently not caring that she was bringing the meeting to a dead stop, she leaped to her feet and rushed across to him with her arms spread wide.
'Brother!'
Keya threw herself into Galaeron so hard that he stumbled back and would have fallen, had she not closed her arms around his shoulders and caught him.
'You're well?' she asked.
'Well enough,' Galaeron laughed. He pried himself loose and held her at arm's length. 'And you?'
'Not a scratch.'
Keya did a twirl to demonstrate, though she was so crusted in dirt and blood that it was barely possible to tell she was female.
'I'll take your word for it. And what of the others?'
'We lost Kuhl,' said Vala, coming to join them. She smiled grimly. 'Everyone else made it.'
'I'm sorry for Kuhl's loss.' Galaeron took her hands, then said quietly, 'And glad to see you still here.'
