Leaving Helgore smirking at Thurauvyn Nathalanorn, Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn.

Time for a little goading. Fun, but more importantly, this baelnorn might be made to reveal useful things ere he destroyed it.

He could see the arch-topped stone double doors it guarded beyond it-through it, actually-and could just make out the House symbol sculpted in relief upon them. A salamander wreathed in flames, entwined around a great fish with long, whiplike barbels and a jutting, many-toothed lower jaw. All wreathed and overlaid with sinuous vines whose many tiny leaves looked like ivy. So, fire and water? Pah, it could signify anything.

"So tell me, unworthy guardian," Helgore drawled, "why the world should remember House Nathalanorn? A few forgotten elves who comported themselves with great pride, no doubt, as all elves do. But had House Nathalanorn any real grounds for such hauteur? Who were they, and what did they achieve?"

"Nothing one who comes to destroy and despoil cares about," the baelnorn replied coldly. "I'll tell you nothing that will aid you in finding other crypts or making any good use of anything you find here. I am sworn, beyond death itself. So much is, I grant, obvious, but I am speaking with a human."

"And we hairy, grasping, reeking barbarians are beneath you oh-so-superior Tel'Quess, is that it?"

"Race is not the major part of this. Youth and ignorance are. Grasping thieves and vandals of all shapes and natures are beneath the regard of House Nathalanorn," said the baelnorn, drifting a little nearer.

Helgore retreated a step in the face of its chill.

"There is no more House Nathalanorn, old fool," he told the undead guardian harshly. "You and your kin were forgotten an age ago, before the elves abandoned Myth Drannor to the forest, the roving beasts, and fell fiends. They remain forgotten now. I doubt if the precious coronal could name your family or recognize your blazon, if they were put before her now. You are not even memories-outside these few feet of passage and your own failing wits."

"I have little doubt we are as nothing in your regard, creature of Telamont. Nothing more than a stronger arcanist of your own benighted city is-and your interest is spent on such powerful beings as targets to be undermined and thrown down in time, to your own advancement. If that is a life you find worthy, revel in it. You will not find much company of worth, however, swimming with you in those waters."

Helgore shrugged. "I have no need of the adulation of others, dead elf. I know my place and my powers."

"Knowledge born of a self-delusion so mighty is sure and certain indeed," the baelnorn agreed caustically, drifting forward again.

This time, Helgore did not retreat, but took a deliberate step forward into the chill, his wards crackling and flaring purple in warning.

"It is past time I shattered your grating superiority, ancient fool," he said, showing his teeth to the translucent skull face. "So let it begin between us."

He drew back one arm as if to free it from sticky mud-and thrust it forward with crackling lines of purple-white lightning snarling from its fingertips.

The baelnorn regarded him expressionlessly from mere inches away, unmoving-and as unaffected as if his spell hadn't existed at all.

"So, have you begun?" it asked mockingly, after Helgore's lightning had died away. "Telamont is sure to be impressed by the swift and easy victory of his most capable agent."

"Still your tongue," Helgore replied venomously. "The tongue you no longer truly possess, yes? Just as you have lost all else of worth in your existence. Lovers, a body to love them with, kin, reputation ... all gone. You chose to become nothing, and have achieved it. Congratulations."

"Your biting scorn is wasted, Shadovar; your understanding is so imperfect as to render your taunts laughable emptiness. I had hoped you'd furnish me some entertainment, but you are such a sad and hollow excuse for a Thultanthan arcanist-even among that wretched company-as to be merely a waste of time. Time that's precious only to you, for I have stepped beyond the demands of racing age."

"Undead thing," Helgore snapped, nettled despite himself, "be still. Your prattle is the wind of the tomb."

"Well, at least you know the poets," the Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn said archly. "There may be some hope for you yet. However, you really should read more closely, being as you work with the Art. The proper words are: 'is but as wind from a tomb.' "

"Do you actually presume to toy with me, talking gatepost?"

The baelnorn chuckled. "Nay, nay, nay! There's an art to delivering an insult! This stiff, pompous snapping out of half-remembered barbed phrases wastes their cleverness and merely makes you seem more ridiculous!"

"Oh, burn you!" Helgore roared, and he lashed out with his most powerful spell.

He was rewarded by seeing Thurauvyn Nathalanorn reel back, red flames like dragonfire momentarily licking up one undead arm, as the baelnorn's barrier spell shattered like a great pane of glass, falling to crash silently to the floor in many thousand fading shards.

And then, as Helgore laughed in glee, the counterstrike came, and the world became an icy inferno of frigid needles piercing him in a score of places. Snatching Helgore's breath away, and all movement, and for one agonizing and seemingly endless movement, the beat of his heart.

Slow agony spread through Helgore like some sort of blind, bumbling caterpillar, and then-his heart fell back to beating with a sullen thud, the world rushed back to him as a place of eerie shrieking-his own, he realized dazedly-and he was falling, fingers writhing spasmodically, tongue undulating out of the side of his mouth as if flutteringly eager to be elsewhere ...

He landed on his back with a crash, and bounced, arching in helpless agony and kicking up at the sky uncontrollably. The aftershocks of both spells rolled away along the passage floor in a shared sigh of fading, racing radiances, and then ... silence fell.

A stretching quiet that was broken by both Helgore and the baelnorn saying, in almost-perfect unison, "Is that the best you can do?"

A moment later, horribly, they both started to laugh at the same moment. Dry mirth from the baelnorn, and wild hysteria from the living man.

Helgore found unfunniness first.

The forest was acrawl with bands of mercenaries hastening into the fray or trudging back to their camps to rest, and it hadn't taken Storm, Amarune, and Arclath long to trot straight into a collision with one.

In a trice, swords had been out among the trees, and Storm's long silver hair whirling startled hireswords into brutal thudding collisions with various handy blueleaf and duskwood trunks.

And then it was steel against steel, blades clanging and shrieking with the fury of the hacking.

"You're no elf!" the burly mercenary snarled into Arclath's face as they strained for supremacy in a clinch of steel, blades locked together and noses not all that far apart. "What in the Nine blazing Hells are you doing here?"

"Defending Myth Drannor from the likes of you," Lord Delcastle replied levelly, the veins standing out on his neck in his effort, as they shoved and set their teeth-and the arms of both men started to tremble.

"Oh, stop toying with your mercenaries, dear!" Rune muttered as she ducked past in the fray, hamstringing Arclath's foe in an instant as she went.

The man lurched sideways with a shriek that ended abruptly as Arclath's dagger flashed into his throat. As he collapsed like a load of dumped fish on the Suzailan docks, his slayer frowned at his lady's slender back, now plunging into a knot of mercenaries battling a lone bladesinger. "Hoy, now, was that sporting? Honorable?"

"I'm not here for sport, Lord Delcastle," she called back, driving the pommel of her dagger into the back of a mercenary helm so fiercely that it rang like a bell and spun half around on its wearer's head, blinding him. "And I think we've long agreed that I lack honor. I'm here to win."

"Hah!" a tusk-helmed mercenary jeered as he came crashing through the trees at the head of a fresh band of hireswords. "Then you're fighting on the wrong side! You and all these long-ears are doomed!"

"Doomed! Doomed!" various hireswords chorused, sounding like so many lowing sheep.

"Do you mind?" Storm complained, flinging the body of her most recent assailant away and moving to intercept this new force. Alone. " 'Doom' was my battle cry, I'll have you know. A good seven centuries ago, I'll grant, but still ..."

"Pah! Seven years ago, mayhap!" the tusk-helmed warrior spat. "Seven centuries, my left haunch!"

"That can be arranged," Storm told him sweetly, her tresses lashing out to hook around his elbows and ankles as their blades clashed, whisking him up and into the path of his charging fellows.

The tusk-helmed warrior's startled shout became a raw roar of pain as the glaive of a hard-charging hiresword thrust into his behind and tore on through. The glaive wielder was coming too fast to halt his charge or sidestep, and slammed right into the wound he'd just created, blood spraying in all directions.

As the stricken tusk-helmed warrior shrieked, the glaive wielder slipped in gore, slid right under the man he'd just wounded-and straight into Storm.

Or rather, into where she'd been. She'd sprung into the air, to come down hard with both feet on the sliding man, crotch and throat. Pinned, he managed a high-pitched strangling gurgle and a beached-fishlike thrashing ere a running bladesinger disgustedly drove a sword point in under his jaw.

By then, the mercenary charge had become a wary, scattered advance, hampered by the trees and Storm's fury. Myth Drannan bladesingers rushed to reinforce her, forming a formidable line that had more than one mercenary backing away.

When Amarune Whitewave arose from a tangle of three large and well-armored mercenaries, covered with blood but smiling, with her three foes lolling lifeless, and Arclath Delcastle came sprinting to her side with blood on his own sword and dagger, the mercenaries had tasted enough.

They broke and ran, leaving the human handful of Myth Drannan defenders unopposed. And trading weary smiles with the bladesingers who'd stood with them.

"A small victory," one elf muttered, "but victory nonetheless."

"Well said," Storm agreed. " 'Savor victories whatever their size, and whenever they come-they are the little lights that brighten our days.' "

"Thaeruld Hraumendor," Arclath said approvingly. "From his A Life Lived Adequately. One of the better philosophers in my father's library. Very old book; I'm surprised you know it."

Storm gave him a dangerous look. "I knew the man, Lord Delcastle. When he was younger than you are, to boot."

"Ah," Arclath said, wincing. "Pray accept my apologies-bad manners to openly remind a lady of her age, very bad. In my defense, let it be said that my slight was entirely unwitting and unintentional."

Storm's look turned sly. " 'Too many of our nobles, young and old, are headstrong self-centered louts, their every act unwitting of consquences, and uncaring of unintentional side effects.' To quote Baerauble, writing back in the reign of Tharyann the Elder. And yes, Lord Delcastle, that was before my time."

But Arclath was staring past her, through the trees, keeping his usual watch over the nearest mercenaries. And instead of replying to her sally, he frowned and scrambled a few steps sideways, over a softly rotten stump as large around as a good-sized oval dining table, to where he could see better.

"Well, Arclath," Storm asked gently as Rune joined her man, and he gave her an almost absent-minded hug, "what're the foe up to?"

"Much discussion," he replied. "Some of them are waving torches. Unlit, but by the way they're pointing them, I think they're debating trying to start a large forest fire."

"Much good may that do them. If there's one thing even young elves can master, it's firequench magic. Still, we should alert the best archers who can be spared from the lines. Fire setters have to tarry in one spot long enough to make superb targets-and if they try to use fire arrows, we can take down their archers. I-"

The faintest of rumbles arose, and the ground under their feet rocked. Out of a nearby hollow tree burst brief tongues of red flame, amid some ghostly shards of glowing light that faded to nothingness as they started to drift away into the air.

"What was that?" Arclath hissed. "Are the besiegers down below, blasting tunnels to get past our lines?"

Storm shook her head. "Impossible, with all the roots-see you the size of these trees around us?-that'd be in their way. Moreover, we humans and elves aren't the only things dwelling in this forest; the very badgers would be bolting up out of their burrows all around us, if any sustained tunneling was going on. No, that was something else."

She frowned. "Probably something ancient."

"Share," Rune suggested sharply. "I'm beyond tired of the 'I'm so old and wisely mysterious' act. Thanks to Elminster."

Storm gave her a wry smile. "Well, then, I'll turn to handing out sayings so hoary you'll roll your eyes: this is going to grow far worse, I fear, before it's over."

Rune obligingly rolled her eyes. Then gave Storm a glare and flared her nostrils like an angry horse.

The bard's sudden grin made her look like a young girl. "Oh, that's good," she said admiringly. "Wish I could do that."

Arclath sighed. "Ladies, ladies."

Storm and Amarune turned in perfect unison to give him the same flatly withering look. "Well," Storm remarked, "that's not your first slip of the tongue this day, and I suppose it'll be far from your last."

"Ah, the joys of growing up noble," Lord Delcastle observed. "Surrounded by spitfires. I'm quite used to it. And before you ask, know this: my mother could surround someone all by herself."

The agent of Thultanthar faced the baelnorn before the doors of the crypt it was charged to guard, and it was not the undead guardian who was the angriest of the two.

Helgore snarled wordlessly. This was taking too long, and he certainly hadn't expected the baelnorn to have managed to hurt him this much.

And he had so many more of them to find and destroy.

He'd just have to-but wait, the tiresome dead elf was declaiming his defiance again.

"I am Thurauvyn Nathalanorn, Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn, and so long as any of me still exists, you shall neither pass nor prevail, human vandal." The hiss sounded fierce-and desperate.

"Well, then, baelnorn, we shall have to see about that continued existence of yours," Helgore taunted, with a heartiness he was far from feeling. There had better be powerful magic in the Nathalanorn crypt, because he might soon be in sore need of it. "You've proven to be little more than feeble bluster thus far, so it should not take me long, nor much effort ..."

They both knew that was a lie, but his words at least made him feel better. This had not gone at all as he'd envisaged it, proud and confident that what Telamont had given him would allow him to sweep baelnorn to dust with a casual gesture, shattering their own baleful battle magics in an instant.

His most powerful swift spells for a fray were gone, spent in a duel that was taking far too long, and this damned undead elf was still standing, still defying him, still preventing him from taking one step nearer the door it guarded-and for that matter, down the passage beyond, seeing as this oh-so-annoying Guardian Undying of House Nathalanorn had decided it was guarding not just the crypt of its family, but the corridor outside the crypt doorway, from wall to root-laced wall.

So he couldn't even rush past it to blast other baelnorn he might catch unawares, and then return later to deal with this one. It was blocking his path like a castle portcullis. Damn it.

"Shar take you and rend you," Helgore muttered in the baelnorn's direction, though latest barrier magic swirled between them like smoke, hiding it from him except for two blue eyes that blazed through the gloom at him with crimson anger flaring around their edges.

If looks could kill ... but they couldn't. Not the gaze of this ancient undead thing, at least.

And he would destroy it, would prevail here, if he just took care enough not to put a foot wrong ...

He'd been impatient thus far, irked and letting his rising anger fuel overly swift and reckless attacks.

So it was more than time to try a little patience. First, another rash strike that the baelnorn would easily counter and sneer at-and in its wake, while its effects were still blossoming, three slower attacks: spell-serpents, those agonizingly slow lances of force that undulated through the air like swimming snakes toward a foe. Three, all coming at the undead elf from slightly different directions, while he kept it distracted and busy with swifter, more spectacular spells.

Yes.

He launched his rash strike-a spectacular spell that brought into being streamers of flaming acid, that he arced around to come at the baelnorn from all directions-and then, as the guardian's smoky barrier lit up under the assault to become a brightly flaring chaos Nathalanorn shouldn't be able to see through, Helgore created his three serpents, one after another in swift succession, and watched them begin their porpoise-like charges toward their target.

Whom he had to keep very busy, so the baelnorn wouldn't see its doom coming for it until too late.

He hurled a swarm of magic missiles. Puny darts that the guardian's barrier would almost certainly intercept and quell-but they were that many more twisting, racing, wheeling perils for the guardian to have to keep track of amid all the long, reaching tentacles of fiery acid homing in on it, in a tightening net that- The magical blast that thrust at Helgore then was as sudden and powerful as it was unexpected, a speeding helix of force that tore through the barrier and snared the nearest acid streamers as it came, clawing them into itself and bringing them along as it- Stabbed into Helgore's shoulder, laying open his chin to the bone as he frantically twisted his head away to avoid losing his face and likely his life as it hurled him off his feet and away.

Unfortunately, the far side of the passage was so close that he crashed into its unyielding stone with force enough to shake even his cocoon of warding magics.

The raw agony of it was worse than any pain he'd ever felt in his life before, and only his wards kept him from blacking out.

Which might mean he would manage to defend himself in the moments ahead and so cling to life, but certainly meant he felt it all. Every last raging flare of pain, as he bounced off the wall and rolled to a gasping, blood-drenched stop. His left arm hung limp and useless, his shoulder was just gone, and- He could collapse his innermost ward into healing force, and he had to, no matter what the danger. If he got away from the baelnorn ...

Helgore kicked feebly at the floor, trying to scoot himself away as he sat huddled and clutching his arm, rocking from side to side and moaning.

What was the baelnorn up to, anyway? Why hadn't it-?

Through streaming tears, as the dissolving ward flooded through him, sending relief enough that his shuddering body began to obey him again, Helgore saw ...

That his serpents had reached the baelnorn and were searing into it, wriggling like hungry eels as they burned its undeath, boring in and up and through.

Translucent flesh sagged, seeming to melt, the baelnorn's mouth yawned open in a long and soundless scream, and it spent itself, falling from a thing with limbs and a head into a racing streak of glowing undeath, howling at him through its own fading barrier, racing at him in what expanded into a ghostly fanged maw fringed with many reaching taloned arms, talons that grew impossibly long- And then faded away against his last, feebly flickering ward, and tore it down.

Baelnorn and ward vanished together, in small writhing snarls of nothingness that fell from him, to roll away, and fade as they rolled ... across the suddenly dark and quiet stone passage.

He was alone. The Guardian Undying was no more.

Helgore lay there panting and staring into the darkness for what seemed a long time before he mastered the pain enough to work a restorative spell on his shoulder, sacrificing three lesser battle spells to fuel that healing.