nothing more here.”
Seiveril followed Starbrow to the far side of the clearing, where Adresin and the rest of Seiveril’s guard waited with their mounts. They climbed up into their saddles and rode away, passing through a narrow belt of trees before emerging into the open fields and groves of the Dale proper. The weather had warmed quickly since the fight at the river, and the day was hot and humid. Seiveril could smell a thunderstorm gathering in the air. Doubtless Sarya’s demons would strike again in the storm, falling on some other part of his harried army to maim and kill and burn, melting away before he could bring them to battle. That had been the way of it for days.
“We should join up with Gaerth and the companies we left here soon,” Starbrow offered. “That’s almost two thousand bows, plus many of our best champions. Even Sarya’s demons will be deterred by that.”
Seiveril suspected that the moon elf was speaking simply to set Seiveril’s mind on something other than the horror back in the clearing, but he allowed his friend to pull his thoughts to a new course.
“Vesilde has had an easier time of things than we have,” he admitted.
The knight-commander had done as Seiveril had asked, giving ground instead of fighting. His footsoldiers had retired south and west down the Dale, covering the flight of the Dalesfolk and surrendering Ashabenford to the oncoming Sembians. Had the Sembians wanted to, they might have overrun the whole Dale with the help of the Red Plumes, and forced Gaerth to fight, but they had not moved farther into the Dale in days, and Seiveril could not fathom why.
Seiveril rode closer to Starbrow and lowered his voice. “There is something I need to know,” he asked. “In the last days of Myth Drannor, when the Army of Darkness roamed Cormanthor… Was it like this?”
Starbrow did not look at him. He kept his eyes fixed ahead, gazing on the smoke from the burnings in the distance. “Yes,” he said with a sigh. “Yes, it was like this. The orcs, ogres, and gnolls outnumbered us badly, yet we could have defeated them regardless of numbers. But not while legions of demons fought against us too.”
“I was afraid you would say that.”
Starbrow shrugged. He had always been reluctant to speak of his long-ago life in the days of Myth Drannor. “It’s harder than you might think to pick your wars. The ones you least wish are the ones you often have to fight.”
“I picked this one, didn’t I?”
Starbrow halted and set a hand on Seiveril’s reins, pulling the elflord around to face him. Seiveril’s horse nickered in protest but turned.
“Sarya Dlardrageth picked this war, Seiveril. If you hadn’t decided to stand up to her, she would have sacked Evereska and burned half of the North in her wrath. You answered the call to arms, yes. But that does not mean that you chose this fight.” The moon elf looked into Seiveril’s face, and after a moment he released the elflord’s reins. “If it’s any comfort to you, Sarya is not happy with her choice of enemies. She thought she was making war on a scattering of isolated wood elf settlements and a city weakened by a war against the phaerimm. She did not plan on you, my friend, and that is a cause for hope.”
Seiveril considered that as they rejoined the column of weary elf soldiers who marched across Mistledale’s open fields like a river of dusty steel.
“So what do I do now?” he asked Starbrow.
“Withdraw,” the moon elf said. “We don’t have the strength to move on Myth Drannor, and there’s no point in staying here. The folk from Mistledale have fled to the southern parts of the Dale. We’d be defending empty farmland.”
“I can’t bear to turn my back on Myth Drannor, not when we’re this close.”
“What do your auguries tell you?”
Seiveril looked sharply at Starbrow. He hadn’t realized that his friend knew the extent to which he had relied on his prayers and spells of guidance during the campaign.
He sighed and said, “This is not the hour to march against Myth Drannor, and disaster awaits us if we stay here. But I can’t see what follows from this, Starbrow. If we retreat, what must change for the better before we can take the fight to Sarya again?”
“If we don’t retreat, will any of our army be left to draw sword against her in the first place?” Starbrow asked. “There will be another day, Seiveril. The Seldarine did not bring you to this place-or me to this place, for that matter-without a purpose.”
Seiveril nodded. He, of all people, was not likely to forget that. “Call the captains, Starbrow. We must plan a fighting retreat.”
Starbrow clapped him once on the shoulder, and rode off, calling for the captains of the Crusade. The elflord watched him ride off, and looked again to the east. The thunderheads gathered there, moving lazily against the wind. Ominous rumbles rolled across the dry fields.
The storm is upon us, he thought. In more ways than one.
Araevin plummeted through darkness, an infinite abyss in which the vast power of Saelethil’s will threatened to swallow him completely. Grimly, he resolved to endure as long as he could. Even if he was to be extinguished in Saelethil’s black hate, he would not go gently.
“You are not real!” he shouted into the endless night. “You are a ghost, a reflection, an echo of a mage who died five thousand years ago! You are not Saelethil Dlardrageth!”
He felt his fall begin to slow, and he turned his will toward arresting his plunge.
“You are nothing, Saelethil! A ghost!”
Saelethil’s face appeared before him in the darkness, a titanic apparition that dwarfed Araevin.
“I am substantial enough to destroy you!” the Dlardrageth thundered. “And in your body I will be as real and alive as I ever was. You do not know my strength!”
“You do not know mine,” Araevin replied.
He curled into a ball and closed his eyes, blocking out the maddening plunge and terrible vistas of purple towers and bottomless violet wells surrounding him. He envisioned himself as a shining white light smothered in darkness, a diamond glittering under the blow of a terrible black hammer, and he threw his full will into resisting Saelethil as long as he could.
“That will not avail you,” Saelethil laughed.
He gathered up the force of his will, and hurled himself down on Araevin’s last resistance with the force of a thunderbolt. Araevin screamed with the power of the attack, and darkness welled up to fill his being… but somehow he survived the blow.
Saelethil roared in frustration and attacked again, clutching at him, stabbing into his mind with dark blades that seared and cut Araevin’s very soul, but Araevin battled on, repelling the blows. Saelethil’s voice became the hissing of a demon, great and terrible, and black fires roared up out of the night to incinerate Araevin where he huddled, alone in the dark.
“Yield, curse you! You cannot endure me,” Saelethil demanded. “Yield!”
“No!” Araevin cried. Saelethil redoubled his assault, but still Araevin refused to let himself be extinguished… and with that came the realization that Saelethil might not be able to crush him, not unless he allowed it to happen.
I am stronger than I was when I first encountered the Nightstar. I have completed the telmiirkara neshyrr and I have shaped high magic. Saelethil’s selukiira could have destroyed me a few months ago, but no longer.
Saelethil’s terrible will lashed Araevin again and again, but Araevin pushed the assaults to one part of his mind, and concentrated on gathering his own counterstroke. In his heart he conceived a white sword, a blade of purpose and perfection. He poured his determination, his hope, his love into the sword. He shaped its point with his pride and ambition, and he envisioned himself gripping the hilt with his hands and drawing back for the blow.
“I will not be extinguished!” he cried back at Saelethil, and with all the force of his will and mind he burst against the darkness, lunging out with his white sword.
In a single great cut he slashed a white gap across the encompassing darkness, and Saelethil screamed a high and horrible scream. The Nightstar trembled and thundered. Araevin lashed out again, and the white-hot fury of his wrath against Saelethil and Sarya, and all the evil the Dlardrageths had wreaked against him, drove him onward. He struck and struck again, until the great violet abyss within the Nightstar blazed with jagged lines of white lightning, and the purple ramparts crumpled in white fire.
The Nightstar’s interior filled with an awful flash of white light, and Araevin found himself standing in the courtyard of Saelethil’s garden, his sword in his hand. He wheeled about, searching for an adversary, but the horrid
