A Good Day to Butcher Elves

IN THE THIRD OF STORM'S KITCHEN CUPBOARDS HE ROOTED through, Arclath made a discovery. He drew the square, human-head-sized wooden box out into the light, set it on the kitchen table, and used his dagger to warily undo the latches and flip the lid, then peered in.

Rune watched him tensely from across the room, where she was washing radishes in one of the sinks.

Arclath relaxed with a pleased little crow of satisfaction.

"Well?" Rune asked, daring to relax a little.

Triumphantly, Lord Delcastle lifted something large and round out of the box, drew aside the soft black cloth swaddling it, and held it up. A crystal ball.

"We shouldn't," Rune told him, though she knew she was looking at it longingly.

"You need to know what's happening," her man replied. "It's eating you, not knowing. I can see that. Hells, anyone could see that."

"Put it back in the box," Rune told him firmly. "For now. But leave the box out."

"While I scour all the rest of the cupboards?"

"Lord Delcastle," Amarune replied, assuming the manner of a mildly peeved noble Cormyrean matron, "do you really think it prudent to plunder the secrets, if nothing more, of so gracious-and powerful-a host? I hardly do."

Arclath shrugged. "Prudence, my good lady, has never been one of my strengths. If the Dragon Throne values me at all, it is this well-known lack of prudence that they cherish. So ..." He advanced on the next bank of cupboards, but couldn't resist glancing over his shoulder to see Rune's reaction.

In doing so, his gaze fell upon the pantry door. Or rather, upon its frame. Where his thoughts seemed to linger.

"I wonder ...," he said thoughtfully.

"What?" Rune asked, finishing with the radishes and reaching for a hand cloth to dry her hands.

His only reply was to open the pantry door, stand back, and peer at the revealed lintel, threshold, and standing frame. Then he reached out warily, wrapped his fingertips around the lines of the molding, and tugged gently.

And with the softest of sighs, the door frame swung open on hidden hinges, to reveal a hidden cupboard behind. The narrowest of cupboards, within the thickness of the stone wall, its door only a finger's width or two wider than the palm of his hand. It was full of bone tubes with carved end caps.

Cautiously, he drew one out. There was a word graven on the nearest end cap, and repeated on the side.

"Teleport," Rune read aloud, over his shoulder, thankful she could move with swift silence when she wanted to. She snaked her arm under his and deftly snatched the tube out of Arclath's fingers. "We'll be needing this."

Arclath grinned, but also crooked an eyebrow. "Can you pull off a spell like that?"

Amarune gave him her best cold glare. Under its weight, he added hastily and falteringly, "I mean-so powerful, need practice, wizards of much experience, usually ..."

"I am Elminster's heir. His new Chosen One," Rune reminded him icily. "I can do anything."

Her man decided it was his turn to tender a withering look.

Rune smiled wryly, but didn't blush. "Magically, that is," she admitted, "and in all this spell chaos, perhaps as well as any caster can."

She lifted her chin in determination. "If I have to, I have to. There is no 'fail,' or we all fail."

Arclath shook his head, smiling at her in obvious admiration.

"Stop mooning over me and hand me that crystal ball," Rune snapped. "And don't drop it."

Arclath put it into her hands with exaggerated care. "You've used one before, of course?" he asked, as gently as any deferential servant.

"You know I haven't," she flared. "Stop trying to be helpful and-and eat some radishes!"

And she set the sphere-gods, but it was heavy, far heavier than she'd expected-on the table on its swaddling cloth that she tugged into a ring around it.

That did nothing at all to stop the crystal rolling. The hand-carved and well-worn tabletop was a little less than level. She put out a hand to pin the sphere in place, but sighed. She couldn't use it while holding it, could she?

Without a word, Arclath reached into the box, brought out a thick slab of wood with a bowl-shaped depression sculpted into it, and set the sphere into this rest that had obviously been made for it.

Amarune thanked him with a grimace, flung her arms wide to clear her head, and leaned forward to peer into the empty, colorless depths of the crystal.

Not empty, no, there was something there after all ... stirring ...

She had to focus on people-well, Storm, of course-or places. That is, memorable fixtures that sat in one spot unmoving, like trees. The problem with people, she half remembered something Elminster had mentioned in passing, was that they moved, and had thoughts of their own, and so were hard to "settle on."

So it was with Storm. To call to her to mind was to see Rune's own memories, of Storm turning to smile, Storm speaking sharply, Storm looking impish as her hair reared up like a snake about to strike, Storm ... Rune sighed. She could call Storm to mind vividly enough, but her parade of memories did nothing at all to the crystal.

So, then, places, or rather, things in places. That distinctive rotten stump, the one the size of a large oval dining table that Arclath had scrambled over to ...

She could remember it, all right, and something stirred in the crystal, its heart going milk white, but then her sharpening concentration veered, as if she was on a racing horse that decided on its own to turn sharply to the right.

Well, then, that sapling she'd put her hand on, to catch her breath, after ... no, the same thing was happening. Veering to the left this time, mind, but ...

Something was blocking her.

Oh.

The mythal.

Of course.

So, focus on something outside the mythal. Downdragon Tor.

And the milky hue in the depths of the crystal spun, winked, flashed, and Rune was seeing the same view she and Arclath had enjoyed upon their arrival there. Just like that.

Not by night and moonlit, this time, but the same vast carpet of green treetops, spread out before her and stretching into the misty distance.

A bird flew past, startling her. This was no still picture; she was seeing Downdragon as it was right now.

Nice, but she needed something nearer the siege. If the mythal was weakening as badly as she'd feared it was, she might be able to use trees and ridges she'd glimpsed while they were fighting in the forest. Wait, that dead, leafless duskwood, silhouetted against the bit of sky that had gone orange from the Shadovar spell ... yes ...

Yes! There it was, in the crystal! With drifting smoke from some campfires beyond it, the scene in the crystal moving and alive ... which should mean she could look at something-those two dark, entwined trees-at the far left of what she was seeing, make them the center of her view, then look left again, and so face Myth Drannor.

Or what was left of it.

She'd half expected to see a milky shroud blocking any clear view of the city, but there was nothing like that. Just scorched towers and splintered and smoldering trees and a few still-beautiful, leaping bridges arcing between them, cascading gardens of flowing water and lush, spreading plants-and corpses. Everywhere the dead, heaped and strewn and being trodden underfoot by hurrying still-alive elves in blood-besmirched armor, and inexorably tramping mercenaries. Some bridges were broken, abrupt jagged ends thrusting out into empty air, and others trailed what had seemed at first glance to be creeping vines, but that Rune now saw were dangling bodies.

The besieging Shadovar forces were tightening their grip, the exhausted elf defenders ceding more and more of their city-which was being hurled down by the spells of arcanists, tower by tower and bridge by bridge crashing to the forest floor.

And just there, Rune saw, was the lashing tail of an angry dragon that was crawling around, seemingly unable to fly and obviously seething with rage!

"We have to be there," she told Arclath. "Every last sword and spell is needed. If I could somehow snatch up all the Purple Dragons on duty in Cormyr right now and set them down in the heart of that siege, I'd do it." She turned to give her beloved a hard look. "But I can't, so you'll have to be all of them."

"Lady," her lord replied, eyes bright with unshed tears, "command me."

"We go back to Myth Drannor. Now."

Arclath nodded, and then spoke like an imperious noble. "Use the jakes first," he ordered briskly. "Both of us. Then finish this soup. We don't know when we'll next-"

"Now I know how the endlessly annoying nobles of Cormyr continue to lord it over the Forest Kingdom," Amarune snapped, smiling despite herself. "They always finish their soup."

Arclath bowed low, indicating the garderobe door with a courtly flourish. Then he held it open for her.

She lifted her chin, for all the world as if she'd been born noble, and in one of the haughtiest houses at that, and went in, reading the teleport scroll to herself.

He closed the door behind her, regarded its dark and polished wood, and murmured, "All gods bear witness, I love you, Rune. Was ever a man so fortunate as I?"

"Yes," a ghostly voice answered him, from somewhere behind him in the room.

Arclath spun around, sword half out, staring everywhere, shocked into silence.

The voice-gentle and low, coming out of nowhere, a woman's tones-added, "Yet lovers are so easily lost. Treasure every moment you have left together."

"Who-who are you?" he asked, sword out as he peered around, trying to see where the voice was coming from.

"Once, I was Sylune. Eldest of the Seven. They called me the Witch of Shadowdale. Now I am but an echo in the Weave. Your Amarune is doing the right thing, young lord of Cormyr. May victory be yours." The voice faded steadily as it spoke, and by that last victory wish, Arclath could hear it no more.

The garderobe door swung open. Amarune peered out, frowning. "Who were you talking to?"

"A-a ghost," Arclath replied, as he rushed to embrace her.

Their kiss was fierce and deep, but brief-as Rune broke free and whirled away from him, to point at the door and command, "Hurry!"

It was dimly blue wherever they looked, and everywhere they beheld blue leaves and green glowing softly against the dark brown of old dead leaves and the brown-black of forest soil. On all sides the great dark pillars of duskwoods and blueleaf trees soared up to an almost unbroken blue-green canopy. In every direction, over gentle hills cloaked in endless trees, the vista looked much the same.

"Where by Shar's howling holy darkness are we?" Mattick snapped. "These tluining trees!"

He slashed at the nearest leaves in his temper, sending them spiraling down to the moss-girt fallen trunks underfoot.

"Still in the forest," Vattick offered, mock-helpfully.

They'd been fleeing wildly through the seemingly endless deep woods around Myth Drannor for some time now, just the two of them. Both were scorched, breathless, and bedraggled.

They'd escaped death by the proverbial hair-slicing thickness of a sharp sword blade's edge, by both desperately working the same last-moment spell to forcibly swap places with Shadovar arcanists elsewhere in the siege.

So two bewildered unfortunates had almost certainly died in the spells hurled by the coronal and her four high mages, while Mattick and Vattick, wounded and more frightened than they'd been in battle for a long time, had found themselves out in the forest surrounded by startled mercenaries.

Whom they'd departed from the company of immediately, for they were interested now only in getting away. To Shar's never-seen rump with their father's grand plans, and with butchering their ways through this old and overgrown elf city they'd never seen before and didn't care one whit if they ever saw again! It was time to get gone, far and fast, and-and seek their own lives, for as long as they could.

Oh, the Most High would find them soon enough, and that meeting would be less than pleasant, but in the meantime they were still alive, and- "I," Mattick vowed, crashing through some dead branches and seeking a little open ground to stride through, "am going to get me some folk I can lord it over, for once. I'm done with all of this conquer worlds upon worlds for the greater glory of Shar!"

"And the greater satisfaction of Telamont Tanthul," Vattick agreed, before he came to a frowning stop.

"Brother," he added, "I thought we were leaving Myth Drannor behind, but look."

He pointed with his sword through the trees ahead.

Mattick peered and swore.

"Elves! More bloody elves! Everywhere we go, it's rutting, fluting-voiced, tree-swinging elves!"

The twin princes strengthened their wards and strode to meet these new foes, who likewise stalked through the trees to meet them.

As they got closer, both princes could see bodies, both human and elf, strewn here and there, and some shattered walls and towers that were now mostly heaps of rubble.

"We must have got turned around, somehow," Vattick mused. "That, or Myth Drannor spreads through the forest farther than I'd thought, with far-flung clusters of buildings and wild forest between them."

"I," declared Mattick, "am beyond caring about elf architecture or settlement patterns. I just want to hew me some longears! Yeeeeeearrrgh!"

And with that sudden bellow, he launched himself into a wildly swinging charge. Vattick planted his sword in the soft forest mold beside him and worked magic instead-and as the elf warriors closed in, limp bodies and blocks of rubble rose into the air behind them, to whirl forward in silent haste and dash the elves to the ground.

Preparing to hack his way into half a dozen foes, Mattick found them all writhing helplessly at his feet, so it was ease itself to ruthlessly stab through the backs of their necks, one by one.

Only one determined elf reached him upright, and that was after four elf corpses had slammed into that elf from behind. Off-balance and winded, the elf could only parry desperately as Mattick slashed at his face. Which left him vulnerable to the prince's hearty crotch kick.

As the elf was propelled into the air, mewing in shocked pain, Mattick moved to where he could hack the falling body viciously-and did so. The elf's neck broke at his second blow, and its owner slammed heavily into the ground, loose limbed and dead or dying.

Mattick regarded his work with some satisfaction, but Vattick slapped his arm on the way past and hissed, "Come on. There'll be plenty more showing up if we tarry!"

Mattick sighed, nodded, and followed his brother over a heavily wooded ridge, and down into a little dell ringed by the smooth-curved walls of elf buildings that looked more like gigantic garden plantings than dwellings. Fearful-faced elf children and wrinkled elders emerged from the arched doorways of some of the buildings, all heading off to the princes' left.

A lot of children, but only a few withered elders-and no other sort of elves at all.

The two princes looked at each other, then nodded in unison, hefted their swords, and started forward.

"It's always a good day to butcher elves," Vattick hissed, as they began their charge.

Storm was fighting hard in the teeth of the fray.