“When did you explore this place, Starbrow?” Ilsevele asked the moon elf.
“A long time ago.”
“It can’t be that long ago. You’re not more than a hundred and fifty or so, are you?”
“That’s about right,” Starbrow said.
“That is certainly long by my standards,” Maresa observed. “Because you elves live so damned long, you have no idea of the value of time.”
Ilsevele smiled in the dim light. “That might be true, but I note that Starbrow here hasn’t answered my question. You’ve said before that you were from Cormanthor, but where exactly?”
“I thought the elves abandoned this place,” Maresa said, surprised.
“For the most part, we did,” Filsaelene told her. “Certainly no elves live near Myth Drannor any longer. But there are still a few small elven settlements in different places in this forest. Cormanthor stretches from the Thunder Peaks to the Dragon Reach, and from Cormyr to the Moonsea. It’s a big forest.”
“How did you come to meet my father?” Ilsevele asked. “Until he embarked on this crusade against the daemonfey, I never knew him to have visited Cormanthor.”
Starbrow remained silent for a long time. “You will have to ask your father about that,” he finally said. “It’s not a question for me to answer.”
“Now what does that mean?” Ilsevele asked, rather sharply.
“Ask your father,” Starbrow said again. Then he fell silent, and said no more.
Araevin finally stirred fully from his Reverie some hours later, and felt surprisingly refreshed. He ran his fingers over the blue moss of the cavern floor, and wondered what kind of healing magic the folk of Myth Drannor had imbued in it long ago. He found Starbrow sitting with his back to the wall, watching the secret door that led back out to the chapel. Ilsevele and Filsaelene were deep in their own Reveries, and Maresa was simply asleep, snoring softly.
Lying still, he closed his eyes and touched the Nightstar embedded in his chest, seeking the spells the selukiira stored as ably as his own spellbooks. He chose a simple spell of minor telekinesis first, the sort of thing that almost any apprentice could master, and concentrated on it until its mystic symbology and invocations were pressed into his mind, like a melody he could not get out of his head.
Then he sat up, moved his hands in the appropriate gestures, and muttered the words of the simple spell. To his great relief, he felt the magic, soft and familiar, streaming through his mind and his fingertips, as he picked up a small stone and carefully moved it over to drop into Starbrow’s lap.
The moon elf looked up. “You did that?”
Araevin nodded. “Yes. Sarya’s defenses simply emptied my mind of readied spells. They didn’t damage my ability to study and memorize more.”
“That’s a relief, then,” the moon elf said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Araevin replied. He focused his attention on the selukiira again, and began furiously memorizing spell after spell, rebuilding his repertoire from nothing. He felt as if his mind were humming with arcane energy, a sensation that he had become so accustomed to in centuries of practicing magecraft that he could not begin to guess when he might have stopped noticing it.
“How long will you need to ready your spells?”
“An hour, perhaps two,” said Araevin. “Then we will see about getting out of here.”
Sarya Dlardrageth stood by a ruined wall near the city’s old Burial Glen, and studied her handiwork with the mythal-weave. The dark bronze strands of her crafting drifted past her outstretched fingers, winding in and among the invisible golden net that comprised the city’s ancient magic field.
“Here,” she said. “He was here when the mythal’s defenses struck him.”
Xhalph waited nearby, towering over her. The daemonfey prince stood well over eight feet tall, with four powerfully muscled arms and just the slightest canine cast to his features-both inherited from his demonic father.
“The sun elf mage?” he asked. “The one who marred your weaving at Myth Glaurach?”
“Yes,” Sarya hissed.
In her long life she had learned to hate many adversaries, to nurse smoldering anger and cold fury for years upon years, but rarely had she been dealt such a reverse as Araevin Teshurr had dealt her in the heart of her own citadel. The very notion that he had somehow followed her to her new lair and had attempted to evict her from yet another mythal was enough to fill her with a wrath so hot and bitter than even Xhalph shied from meeting her eyes.
“Araevin was here,” she went on, “and he attempted to take this mythal from me, too.” She allowed herself a cold smile. “But my new defenses were more than he expected. I was ready for him this time. If I read the mythal right, he received a nasty little surprise when he started plucking at my threads.”
“Do you think he knows we are here?”
Sarya’s smile faded at once. “It is almost a certainty,” she admitted. “I want him caught before he carries word of our presence back to his friend Seiveril Miritar and the rest of Evermeet’s knights and mages.”
Xhalph glanced around the wooded glade. “Our fey’ri and baatezu have been scouring the area for hours, and the only sign they’ve turned up is a dead gelugon about half a mile from here. He has had ample opportunity to escape by now.”
“My mythal trap drained him of most, if not all, of his magic,” Sarya said. “Without his spells, he must flee on foot or hide somewhere until his magic returns. In either case, we can still catch him.” She looked up at Xhalph, and lightly leaped into the air, snapping her leathery wings until she hovered ten feet above him. “Take charge of the pursuit, Xhalph! Spare no effort to prevent the mage’s escape.”
The daemonfey swordsman bowed his head, and sprang into the air, arrowing off into the woods, calling for the fey’ri who attended him. Sarya wheeled and flew in the opposite direction, back to Castle Cormanthor. While she certainly hoped that Araevin was lying powerless and vulnerable somewhere nearby, it was clearly foolish to simply hope that he would be caught before he carried word of her tampering in Myth Drannor to her enemies. She would have to presume that he had already escaped, and that Seiveril Miritar and all who stood with him would soon learn of her new retreat.
She needed to speak to Malkizid.
Alighting on a high balcony, Sarya passed a pair of fey’ri who stood guard there. The proud daemonfey warriors knelt and spread their wings as she passed, grounding their long-headed spears in salute. She swept by them into the hallway beyond, and quickly made her way to the chamber of the mythal stone.
With the ease of long practice, Sarya whispered the words of a spell and woke the mythal’s magic to her hand.
“Malkizid!” she called out. “Answer me! I would speak with you.”
Her words reverberated in the dense magical fields dancing around the mythal stone. Then she felt Malkizid’s presence in the conduit, as the devil-prince responded to her call.
“I am here, Sarya,” he said in his melodious voice. “What is it you desire?”
“The mage Araevin Teshurr has visited us here,” she said.
“Ah! Did the spell trap I showed you snare him?”
“He triggered it, but he apparently made his escape on foot before my warriors could catch him. But it did empty him of spells, and he was completely unable to tamper with my mythal-weaving here.”
Even though she could not see him, she felt Malkizid nodding in satisfaction on the other side of the conduit.
“Good, good. You see what we can do when we combine my knowledge of these things with your special heritage and talent for sorcery?”
“Do not patronize me, Malkizid,” Sarya snapped. She paced anxiously in front of the stone, her tail twitching from side to side. She had had little use for confined spaces since escaping from her prison beneath old Ascalhorn three years ago, and even though the mythal chamber beneath the castle’s great hall was large and spacious, she still did not care for it. “If Araevin has discovered me here, he will certainly carry word to Evermeet’s army and anyone else who cares to listen.”
The devil-prince fell silent a moment.
“You fear Evermeet’s army will pursue you even here,” he said at last.
“Twice now I have been denied the realm that is mine to rule-once in ancient Siluvanede, and a second time
