began to seep back up into the sky. From time to time they crossed over rushing streams on bridges of pale stone or came to silent crossroads in the forests, places where dim roads led off into the shadows beneath the silver trees. They even passed by several lonely citadels or towers, isolated keeps whose gleaming battlements looked out over the forest from rugged hilltops or slumbered in broad, grassy vales. Some of the towers glimmered with lanternlight and song, but others were dark and still, long abandoned.
As they rode past another of the empty towers, Maresa gazed up at the shadowed tower and shuddered. “Is this whole realm desolate?” she asked aloud. “We’ve gone sixty miles or more from Tower Deirr, and we haven’t met a single person on the road. We’ve passed more empty keeps than occupied ones!”
Nesterin glanced back at Maresa and shrugged. “Most of the realm is like this,” he said. “My people built true cities long ago, but our numbers have been dwindling for centuries. With the whole plane to ourselves, we never saw a need to crowd together into narrow lands and teeming towns. But I fear that the distances between our keeps and towers and towns are growing longer with each year.”
“Do any towns or keeps lie ahead of us?” Ilsevele asked.
The star elf shook his head. “Our road doesn’t take us near any towns,” he said. “We are heading out toward the edge of the realm. In fact, I know of only one more keep on this road before we reach the place where Mooncrescent Tower once stood.”
As it turned out, the keep that Nesterin remembered was also abandoned, with no sign of its People. Its walls were pitted and charred, as if by acid.
“The nilshai,” the star elf said bitterly as they studied the ruins. “They must have come here, too.”
“You are under attack, Nesterin,” said Donnor. “Your foes are destroying you one by one. You must gather your strength, and soon, or you will be lost.”
“We are not as warlike as you humans,” Nesterin protested. “Sildeyuir has never had need of an army. We are the only realm on this plane!”
“War has come to Sildeyuir, whether you are ready for it or not,” Ilsevele said.
Nesterin bowed his head, and did not answer.
They managed another day and a half of riding before they came to the first of the gray mist rivers. The road dropped into a dark, shallow dell, and in the bottom of the small hollow a silvery mist or dust flowed sluggishly across the road like a low fog. At first glance the stuff seemed innocuous, but as they drew closer, the horses stamped nervously and refused to set foot in it.
“Is this the mist you encountered when you rode to Aerilpe?” Ilsevele asked Nesterin.
The star elf frowned. “Yes, it is. But I did not expect to meet it so soon. We’re many miles from Mooncrescent yet.” He glanced around the shining forest, his eyes dark and troubled. “Aillesel Seldarie! What is becoming of my homeland?”
“It’s just a little mist,” Maresa snorted. “Just ride on through, and have done with it!”
“The horses don’t like it at all,” Ilsevele said. “And now that I’m here, I find that I don’t like it either. Ride on through if you like, but I think we should look for a way around it if we can.”
The genasi tapped her heels to her mount’s flanks, and urged the animal forward until the mist lapped over the horse’s hooves, and strange tendrils or streamers of the silvery stuff seemed to wind around its legs. The horse began to shy in fright, its ears flat along its head, its eyes wide and rolling. Maresa struggled with the animal, but then she gasped and drew away, backing the horse quickly away.
“The mist tried to grab me!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t see anything,” rumbled Donnor. “Are you sure?”
“I felt it,” Maresa insisted. “It’s thick as molasses in there. And it was trying to pull me in deeper.” She shuddered, her white hair streaming from her face as if she stood in a strong wind. “Have you ever stood in a high place and felt as if you might fall? As if you were about to slip over, but you didn’t really want to stop yourself? It’s something like that.”
Nesterin nodded in agreement. “That’s how I recall it. I discovered that I didn’t dare cross more than a few feet of the mist, not even when the nilshai were on my heels.”
Ilsevele looked over to Araevin. “What is this, Araevin? Do you have any idea?”
The wizard studied the weird, silver-gray mist, streaming slowly through the hollow’s floor.
“I am not sure,” he said. “One moment…”
He murmured the words of a seeing spell and studied his surroundings, searching for signs of magic. His companions all glowed brightly, armed as they were with various enchanted weapons or protective spells. Araevin ignored them and bent his attention to the sluggish silver-gray river of dust-or mist or smoke-that flowed across their path. Slowly he realized that the whole forest around him, and the sky overhead, was a vault of deep and powerful magic, a great silver artifice of staggering size.
High magic, he thought. Of course! Tessaernil said as much. The plane of Sildeyuir was called into being by high magic.
He couldn’t even begin to imagine the difficulty and precision of the high magic ritual that had called a whole world into being, but the evidence was before his eyes. He tore his gaze from the faint silver vault of flowing magic that filled the sky and shaped the ground, and looked again at the gray stream of dust.
It was a crawling black gate, a ghostly portal that flickered and shifted beneath the mist. And it was growing. Whatever it touched was consumed, taken out of Sildeyuir to some other place. When the mist dissipated, its contents might return-or they might not. Like a great boring worm, the mist was chewing its way through the homeland of the star elves, devouring the magic and the very existence of the plane itself.
“Corellon’s sword,” Araevin whispered.
“Well, what do you see?” Maresa asked.
“You did well to turn away from the mist,” Araevin answered. “It’s a portal to another dimension, and if I am any judge of such things, not a dimension you would want to visit. We will have to avoid any such rivers we come across.”
“That will become more and more difficult the farther we venture from Sildeyuir’s heart,” Nesterin warned. “In the farthest reaches of the realm, there is nothing but this cursed mist.”
They turned their horses from the road and climbed up the side of the dell, simply circumventing the silver- gray pool roiling across the road. But as they continued on their way, they began to meet with more and more of the glimmering streams. Sometimes long tongues or arms of the mist seemed to shadow their path, twisting through the trees and glades of the forest beside the road. Other times pools or streams blocked their path, forcing them to detour away from the road and feel their way forward through the forest. The woodland fell ominously silent, with not a hint of birdsong or animal movement. Araevin realized that most of the forest creatures had long since abandoned the mist-haunted districts of the forest, seeking more wholesome environs.
At the end of Sildeyuir’s dim day, they made their camp atop a small knoll in the forest. Araevin had observed that the silver mist tended to cling to low-lying areas, and it seemed prudent to seek a camp in some high place so that they would not be overcome while they rested. When they rose in the morning and studied their surroundings, they found that the knoll afforded a good view of the country around them.
A great gulf of silver-gray mist lay only a few miles away, carving its way through the forested hillsides like a fog-shrouded arm of the sea. Other inlets and channels glinted in the bright distance ahead and on all sides, as if they were approaching a sea coast of sorts.
“It’s closing in behind us,” Jorin murmured, looking back the way they had come. “I don’t know if we could retrace our steps.”
Araevin followed the Yuir ranger’s gaze, and saw that large parts of the road they had passed along in their travel of the day before seemed to have been swallowed by the pearly streaks. He steeled himself and turned back toward the land ahead.
“We will find a way through,” he told Jorin. “I know some spells that may help.”
They broke camp quickly, unwilling to risk being stranded on the hilltop, and continued toward the edge of the realm. During the last hour of their ride great arms of silver-gray nothingness came to surround them on either side, so that it seemed that they were riding along a low, treacherous peninsula jutting out into a misty sea. Small patches and pools of mist began to appear in the road and in the woods to either side, slowly growing larger and more frequent as they pressed on, until they met and merged together. Finally they came to a place where they simply could go no farther. Ahead of them lay nothing but endless silver-gray mist, cold and perfect.
They halted and stood still for a time, looking out over nothingness. Finally Araevin shook himself and looked over to Nesterin.
