Oh, no! He had to ... had to ...

Return to himself enough to perceive what was happening in the chamber.

He did that, just in time to see what was left of the Guide's body-a head and limbs loosely attached to what had become a great hole of gore and burned robes and wet flesh-toppling from the gallery to splatter on the floor right in front of ... himself.

El realized his neck was stiff, and his arms and shoulders felt numb. When he moved, to break off staring up at the gallery, he discovered why. He had been standing like a statue all this time, and now- Now the room was full of angry Moonstars, different Moonstars than he had flung the Shadovar at, with Alustriel and Laeral at their head.

Their spells had slain the Guide, though their target had been Larloch, and the unfortunate Prefect merely the archlich's helpless shield. More spells were crashing into the gallery, shattering it as the gallery above it had been blasted. This was no safe place to stand, when all that stone came hurtling down.

And other spells were leaping at him!

El dashed them aside with the wards in an instant, but even as he did so, felt that there was something not quite right.

Something clawed at him, commanding his attention-ah! The ward flow he'd harvested, small rill by small rill, was a vigorous stream when it reached Larloch, and rushed through the Shadow King into the Weave. Yet after that- El felt through the Weave to try to see what it was from another vantage than his own place along the flow, and saw what was amiss.

He'd been duped.

And Luse and Laer might have come too late.

The ward flow was reaching the Weave, but invigorating and brightening just this local bit of it-because Larloch controlled the entry of the ward energies, and their path, too-which was to circle in this fringe of the Weave and depart it right back into ... Larloch!

The Shadow King had played him for a fool.

And won.

Larloch gave Elminster that soft, knowing smile, and with a spell, sent all the Prefects hurtling down out of the gallery. Then he released the spell that held up the shattered gallery, so its shards tumbled after the screaming monks.

Standing unconcernedly on empty air, the archlich gave El back some of the ward energies-in the form of a great, rolling wave of thrumming force that plummeted from the gallery to crash onto the floor where the Guide had landed, hurling Prefects through the air like dolls to smash down into Elminster, Alustriel, Laeral, and all the Moonstars, before dashing them all back against the far wall.

El slammed into a layer of several Prefects, and felt broken bones grating under the force of his solid arrival. Where the ward energies continued to pin him, the Moonstars, and the Prefects, holding them all helpless against the wall.

"I must thank you, all of you," Larloch told them mockingly, "for your assistance in giving me most of the power I need to remake the Weave as I see fit. I'll collect the rest in Myth Drannor. Farewell, fools."

And the tall, dark figure standing in midair abruptly vanished.

Leaving Elminster, Alustriel, and Laeral to stumble away from the wall caked in dead and dying Moonstars and Prefects, in a swiftly darkening room.

They all knew why the light was failing.

They could feel it.

The great wards of Candlekeep were gone.

CHAPTER 14.

Seeking the Next Crypt

THE MOST HIGH LOOKED AS IMPRESSIVE AS EVER. SO CALM AND casual he was frightening. Behind him, the cavernous audience chamber looked as nigh empty as usual. Huge expanses of empty marble, around ...

The great throne, of course, flanked by that bare metal table and the tammaneth rod, floating in its corner, its black spheres as empty and dark as always.

Gwelt had never seen anything on the table, nor any radiances of risen magic in the rod's spheres.

But then, he'd only been in the room a handful of times, and always when preoccupied by matters that frightened him and ensnared his attention far more than mere furniture.

He was deeply preoccupied right now. With trying to keep his own temper-and life-and yet make the High Prince of Thultanthar see that what had been done and decided thus far amounted to ... sheer folly.

Why by the untasted delights of Shar were such things always left to him?

"Most High," Gwelt heard himself saying carefully, "it is with the utmost respect that I say this, but say it I must, however unwelcome. You must be told of it, for the good of the city, and for our best hope of success and victory! We are on the wrong road!"

"Convince me, arcanist," Telamont Tanthul said coldly. "Persuade me how I and all the senior arcanists and she whom we all serve are mistaken, while just you are correct. It is in your own interest, I must warn you, to persuade me both well and swiftly."

"Forgive me, Most High, but I decry not the goals the Divine Mistress of the Night desires us to achieve, but the means-and only the means-by which we are attempting to reach them. Specifically, this siege of Myth Drannor."

"Be more specific, Gwelt."

"We seek the might of its mythal. As I see it, no host of unwashed mercenaries can master the Art to achieve this, so they must be mere distraction, occupying the elves so that those who can drain the mythal's power can work unhampered. Yet the siege itself will inevitably destroy much of the magic that is-yes?-our only reward for winning the city. After all, who but elves would want a good handful of old, poorly repaired buildings plus rather fewer new ones, in the heart of a deep and overgrown forest? It is so remote as to have no great strategic value, and hurling it down or capturing it is far less impressive to others than, say, the taking of Candlekeep or Athkatla would be. Why-"

Sudden black light flashed in the empty air to their left, and Gwelt's argument faltered. Black light? He turned in time to see a star of leaping rays that faded and dwindled as swiftly as they had appeared, to leave behind something floating upright in midair.

Something grisly. A dead, scorched man in what was left of the cassock of a lowly monk, his head lolling on a broken neck. The blackened head had lost all its hair, but the face was still clear enough.

It was Relvrak, a Shadovar arcanist of no small accomplishment, who had been Gwelt's tutor for a time, and was still his friend.

Until now. Relvrak's eyes were melted, as if by a fire that had raged within his skull. Even as Gwelt stared up at the ruined shell of his friend, one of those eyes slid out of its socket and began a slow slide down the blackened face, like the most bulbous of tears.

"Where was-?" Gwelt gasped.

"Candlekeep," came Telamont's calm reply.

"But-but-surely that's impossible! Do not the wards there prevent translocation magics from ..."

Gwelt ran out of words, awed at the implication.

Telamont nodded expressionlessly. "Exactly. The wards must be gone." He turned to look at the great black rod floating in its corner, and saw that its globes remained empty and dark.

He added coldly, "And their might has not flowed into my hands."

He turned back to Gwelt. "Begone now. I have work to do. You can rant later, when I've time to pretend to care about it. Go."

"But-"

"Go."

Gwelt took one look at Telamont's face, then hastily bowed low and backed away. By the time he was passing out through the audience chamber doors, he was almost running.

The baelnorn did not bother to glow. There was no one to impress or frighten away from that which he guarded.

The passage around him was as deep and dark as ever, the air stale and undisturbed. Which was good.

The baelnorn was content, not bored. He had so much to contemplate, so many matters to weigh and speculate upon. When an intruder did come-and they always did come, in the end-he hoped to plumb their knowledge and memories of what the world now was, to compare his conjured possibilities of what might befall with what had actually occurred, so he could contemplate anew. Such thinking he greatly enjoyed, and had lacked time enough to indulge in, back in the busy, crowded, emotionally ruled days of his life.

Deep in these oldest crypts of Myth Drannor, there was no converse that was not with other baelnorns, and talk among baelnorns was rare and tended to be dry, for they shared the same ignorance of what had happened since the last interment in the halls they guarded.

Which had been long ago, even as tireless baelnorn judged passing time. So far as he knew-as everyone alive in Myth Drannor at the time of Aumarthra's passing had known-House Iluanmaurrel was extinct. There would be no new arrivals to come and rest behind the double doors sculpted with the two-headed dove whose wings were maple leaves, no new- The baelnorn of House Iluanmaurrel faltered in his thoughts and flared a bright blue, startled as he had never been startled before.

The sealed double doors he had been sadly contemplating had started to open.

Dust swirled as the seals broke and crumbled. The doors were opening from within, one faster than the other, which meant they were being moved by unseen hands, rather than a spell.

Bewilderment giving way to rage, the baelnorn swooped toward the widening gap between the two doors, and darted between them, ready to- Come to an abrupt and strangling halt, as bony hands that could somehow grasp the incorporeal undead as if they bore solid flesh took him by the throat. And tightened ruthlessly.

He did not know the owner of those hands, smiling into his fading face as he was throttled and drained, but Larloch gave the baelnorn of House Iluanmaurrel an almost merry smile and announced, "I'm discovering I quite like the taste of elven magic. Elegant craftings. Most elegant."

There was a horribly long groan from overhead, a groan that sank into a swift series of sharp cracks like the lashes of lightning strikes.

Elminster didn't waste time looking up, at a ceiling that had just shattered and would be starting to fall-in great chunks the size of wagons, by the sounds of things. He just rushed at Laeral and Alustriel with his arms spread wide to sweep them into his grasp-and rushed them out of the room, running hard.

They slammed through the doorway just in time. Behind them, the domed ceiling of the chamber crashed down with a mighty thunder that jarred teeth and shook the walls all around. The floor sprang up beneath their hurrying feet so hard and fast that they had fallen and bounced before they could even draw a breath.

The thunderous echoes died away swiftly, leaving them lying in a panting heap among eddying dust and gravel.

Elminster cleared his throat, and rolled off Alustriel's pleasantly soft chest. " 'Tis not often," he growled, "that I must needs beg ye two, but now is very much one of those times. I beg ye to forgive my foolheadedness. I've been roundly duped. Luse-Laer-ye were right, and I was wrong. So wrong."

"Heh," Laeral coughed, rolling over. "Have I waited a long time to hear that. Yet I'll not gloat, Old Mage, but merely ask: So, what now? Wrong, duped, and how to mend it? Just so we know if we must fight you to the death again to stop you, or not, what will you seek to do now?"

She conjured gentle handfire. Enough dust had swirled away that they could see each other's faces.

"Myth Drannor's mythal now must be destroyed," Elminster said grimly, "to keep Larloch or Telamont from gaining its energies. No matter what the cost to the Weave-or the world-from the flood of released magic."

"The things gods and villains must do to make this man see sense!" Alustriel joked, and the three of them laughed together in sheer relief at being able to be full friends and make common cause again.

Laeral stopped laughing first. "How do we stop him, El? Without the Lady, we are poor champions-and the Shadow King was powerful an age ago, and has built his power while we've been spending ours."

"He didn't help raise the mythal, nor repair it," El reminded them. "I did."

And he scrambled to his feet, slipping on loose rubble, and hastened along a passage he could barely see, through the drifting dust. The silver-haired sisters hastened to follow.

El looked back at them and growled, "Nor can he drain a mythal so swiftly and easily, alone, as he could the wards with my help. In the midst of a siege and in the presence of elves who'll fight fiercely to defend it, even if doing so dooms them. Come!"

"Certainly," Alustriel replied as they hastened along the passage, conjuring her own handfire to use like a lantern, "but come where? We can't teleport through the mythal!"

"No, but we can use a portal to get inside it."

"But the mythal now prevents ...," Laerel began, and then she started to chuckle. "Trust you. Didn't even tell the elves, did you?"

"Myth Drannor has fallen before. I knew they'd need a way out sometime," El replied. "If the coronal has looked in the right places, she'll have found my warning notes about it. So be prepared to face down guards, or some such."

Alustriel rolled her eyes. "The story of my life ..."

"The other Moonstars-" Laeral said urgently, plucking at his arm.

"No time," El snarled. "I'll not be too late this time!"

He rushed down a stair, and they pelted after him. Through a door and- Into a jakes.

Alustriel rolled her eyes. "Your sense of humor, El, needs work. Serious work."

The Old Mage snorted, by way of reply. As he clambered up to stand on the garderobe seat.

Where he bent his knees, and jumped high into the air.

He waved one arm wildly as he leaped-and a sudden blue-white glow enshrouded them all.

When he landed, El's boots were on quite different stones, with Alustriel and Laeral right behind him.

They seemed to be in quite a different privy. As deep and disused as the one they'd just left, but smelling more of forest earth, and less of the salty sea.

This one had many stalls, and great tree roots running overhead and plunging like pillars down between the stalls, into the tiled floor. Sea-blue tiles, as beautiful as- "We're in Myth Drannor," Laeral observed.

"Aye, indeed, and come this way!" Elminster replied over his shoulder, hastening.

He led the two sisters to the entrance of the room, an archway that opened into a fork of two tunnel-like passages, both smelling even more strongly of damp forest earth and green growing things than the garderobe, and both veiled behind rich tapestries of royal blue inset with sparkling silver stars.

Stars that moved seemingly by themselves, and gave off the faintest of musical chimings.

"Well, that's different," Alustriel murmured. "I wouldn't mind having the likes of those in my-"

Stars boiled up from the tapestries and into a racing tangle of winking silver lights, hanging in midair and framed in that empty archway.

Then they coalesced into someone they'd not seen for some time, and the archway was empty no longer.

A diminutive, shapely female elf floated, facing them, surrounded by a nimbus of purple-white light.

"The Srinshee!" Laeral murmured in surprise.