She was drenched with blood not her own, and despite subsuming the spark of silver fire she'd swallowed in her kitchen-the spark that had once belonged to her fallen sister Sylune-she was more than tired. She kept her matted silver tresses plucking up fallen daggers whenever she saw them and hurling them at the hireswords she couldn't reach, the ones crowding to get at her from behind the men she was busy killing at the moment.

And those men seemed endless. The Myth Drannor still in elf hands was down to just a few buildings, the battered and weary defenders dwindling to mere hand counts-and still the Shadovar hirelings came pouring out of the trees, a forest of moving helmed heads that outnumbered the trees within sight.

There could be only one end to this, and it might well come very soon.

Slashing open a warrior's throat and kicking his body down off the high stump he'd joined her atop won her a few moments to draw breath and twirl for a proper scan all around.

That whirlwind of dying mercenaries was Fflar and three or four elf knights fighting with him, and- There. That was the coronal. Fighting hard, too, with none too many knights and not a single high mage left to stand with her in battle.

"Sorry, saers-must run!" Storm called merrily to the besiegers warily approaching her stump, and she sprang down to hit the ground sprinting. She might as well get as close to the coronal as she could before she had to stop and hack and hew the rest of the way.

Storm could still run like the wind when she had to, and got surprisingly far, but her reward for that was to have a score of silver-plate-armored armsmen converge on her. Obviously all stalwarts hailing from the same elite mercenary company.

All that gleaming armor gave her an idea, but she would have to time things just right. When the foremost trio of the shiny helms reached her, Storm backed away hastily, looking scared.

And as she'd hoped, one of them fell for her ruse, sneering at her and swaggering forward, drawing back a great war axe for a cleaving blow.

Storm sprang at him like a panther, reversing her sword and dagger so two hard pommels slammed into the axeman's nearest elbow, driving his swing farther back than he'd intended. He overbalanced with a profanely startled yell-and crashed back into the knees of his fellow full-plate mercenaries, driving them back in turn. One crashed back into the hurrying man behind him, and the other fell unopposed to the ground but bounced and flailed, tripping another mercenary who was at a full run, charging to get at Storm.

Which meant all these stalwarts were in clanging contact, so it was time.

Storm spent a tiny spurt of silver fire-as chain lightning.

And saw it leap and crack from man to man, back along the colliding stream of them.

Grunts became screams, but she hadn't time to watch the fun; she needed all the time their disablement and brief careers as spasming, helplessly convulsing armored barriers would buy her to get to the coronal.

As it happened, Ilsevele Miritar was no fool in battle, and between foes, she constantly snatched moments to glance around her. So she saw Storm while the blood-drenched Chosen was still far off, but sprinting her way, and turned to slash her own route to meet Storm.

She hewed her way through five besiegers-then six-the last one a tall hulk of a man in bright armor that didn't fit him, sobbing his way down into death. Falling to reveal another dying, sagging mercenary beyond him, dying in the arms of ... Storm Silverhand.

"Well met!" Ilsevele greeted her, and they traded wry smiles. Both knew things were far from well for the defenders, and would rapidly get very worse.

"You must get all the Tel'Quess out you can, now!" Storm panted. "The city is lost!"

"I know," the coronal agreed grimly. "We're doing that already. The youngest ones first, with the weakest of our elders-to guide and teach them, should the rest of us fall. You know Iymurr's Gate?"

Storm nodded.

"Find the door in its tallest tower adorned with a diagonal line of four star gems. Pluck them out, reverse each one and put it back in, and a portal will form, right there-if the mythal is too weak to prevent it." And with a sigh, the coronal added, "And I've been feeling the mythal weakening more and more, as the day draws on."

Storm nodded again, but said not a word. This must be heartbreaking for Ilsevele; she wasn't going to say anything to make it worse.

"That way leads to Semberholme," the coronal went on. "But if the portal won't open, then any who gather to take it will be trapped there and doomed if these Shadovar-serving slaycoins take that end of the city. There'll be no other way out."

Storm shrugged and hefted her sword. "With this I'll make one, if I have to. May we all live to see another dawn."

They embraced, kissed, then whirled and rushed their separate ways, back into the hard-fought slaughter.

Some of the arcanists were reluctant to leave their towers. Thultanthar was now close enough to Myth Drannor that nine or more rising pillars of smoke, where some of the mercenaries had set fires, could clearly be seen from high windows and balconies of their city-and they wanted to miss nothing.

"Accursed spectators," Gwelt muttered darkly. "They'd sit and watch the world get devoured, and never lift a hand to defend it, for fear of spoiling the spectacle."

Aglarel gave Gwelt a grim half smile as he nodded, but he said not a word. His attention was on the arcanists hastening to obey the summons of the Most High and assemble in the great courtyard below. There would be few better moments for treachery than this one, with the High Prince of Thultanthar walking among most of the city's arcanists, arranging them to stand in the best places for the spell-linkage.

So the great mythal-draining magic could begin.

It would take the services of most of the arcanists of the city, and they were streaming into the courtyard, converging on the Most High. Telamont was warded and mantled, of course, but such defenses do little against a spellcaster standing so close as to be within all wards and mantles. Wherefore Prince Aglarel was worried and intent on seeing every person, at every last moment.

"I'll happily attend you later, Gwelt," he muttered almost absently, moving to a better vantage point. "When I have rather fewer duties to perform all at once."

"Of course," Gwelt agreed quickly, backing away.

He took great care to step behind several hurrying arcanists, so Aglarel-and the prince's father too, for that matter-wouldn't see him slip away from the swiftly growing assembly.

Not that he need have bothered. Aglarel had already spotted something that alarmed him-the patiently inexorable way another arcanist was stalking toward the Most High-and was hurrying to deal with it.

The commander of the Most High's personal bodyguard was fast, and imposing enough with his height and manner and well-known obsidian armor that arcanists hastily got out of his way, yet even so he was almost too late.

The suspicious arcanist threw up both hands and sent a shrapnel-star spell rushing across the heads of his fellows. A magic that would have sent jagged blades of steel thrusting in all directions among the assembled Thultanthans.

Even before Aglarel's hasty counterspell sent the shrapnel star veering away, its creator had started to bellow.

"Fellow citizens of Thultanthar! I call on you to refrain from what is contemplated here, to not assist in this draining of great magic! For this is madness, madness I tell you, and imperils our city! If we do this, our own Thultanthar will in turn be destroyed! I-eyyyurkkh!"

Aglarel's sword met the shouting man's skull hard but cleanly.

It was like cleaving a large and wet melon, but Aglarel cared not how much he got splattered, or how many fellow Thultanthans got covered in blood. He went right on brutally beheading the man from behind.

The body reeled, spurting blood in all directions, and Aglarel sprang atop it and bore it bloodily to the flagstones, holding it down as its writhing became sluggish ... and then stopped altogether.

He looked up, drenched in blood, and beheld his father, regarding him down a long open path that had almost magically opened in the jostling ranks of the arcanists.

Telamont looked calm, but impatient, as if expecting an explanation.

"Order," Aglarel told him, "has been restored."

His father nodded gravely, something that might have been thanks and might merely have been satisfaction in his eyes, and worked the swift and simple spell that would take his words to every ear.

Then he lifted his chin, looked at the arcanists all around him, and raised both arms.

"This," the Most High of Thultanthar announced calmly, "is how we shall begin ..."

There were only six Moonstars still standing beside Dove, and they were as bloody, weary, and wounded as she was.

And they'd retreated, step by hard-fought step, until they could retreat no more. The central buildings of Myth Drannor stood on all sides, and not far behind their backs were the backs of the thin line of elf defenders facing the other way-who were somehow holding back besiegers still numerous enough to stretch back through the trees as far as the eye could see.

Dove suspected that "somehow" had a name, and it was Fflar. He'd been everywhere, smiting swiftly and moving on, blunting every mercenary charge.

She couldn't hope to match him. Her handful knew they were doomed, and were grimly leaning on their grounded blades and gasping for breath as they watched a fresh wave of mercenaries coming for them out of the forest.

Scores of them, hundreds ... their slayers, and soon now. They had no hope at all of withstanding so many. The Shadovar coffers had been deep, and- Something hissed horribly, off to the left, much nearer than the oncoming mercenaries.

Then it came into view around a many-towered elven mansion, writhing and struggling, and Dove gaped at it along with all the surviving Moonstars.

It was a black dragon of great size, an elder wyrm. It had been so badly-and recently-hacked at that it had no wings left, and limped heavily, one foot missing and the stump weeping blood, and the other legs crisscrossed by deep cuts. It moved more like a serpent, on its belly, than a great cat, whose gaits most of the dragons Dove had met resembled.

Its attention was bent on the mercenaries, and it struggled to meet them, hissing again in agonized rage.

Spears and glaives and shouts were all raised-and then it was among them, snarling a challenge, biting with its great jaws, and rolling to crush men by the score.

And after it, through the air, came a creature that made more than one Moonstar moan in dismay.

A floating sphere the size of a small wagon, from which projected a moving, serpentine forest of eyestalks. It was emitting horrible, hissing laughter.

"Free!" it exulted, fairly dancing in the air. "Free again at last! Blast me with all the spells you want, elves, if that's the result! Hahahahaha!"

"A beholder?" one Moonstar gasped. "Ye gods, what next?"

The eye tyrant glided to where it could hang above the lunging, rolling, biting dragon, and from that vantage point above the fray sent its eyebeams lancing down into the mercenaries. Who started to shriek in terror, and tried to flee-right through the gathered ranks of their fellows.

Turmoil spread.

Dove allowed herself one mirthless smile at that, before she turned to look in other directions. She half expected another menace to come creeping up while she and the Moonstars watched these two monsters who shouldn't be anywhere near here maraud through the foe.

The elf knights defending in the other direction were still holding, a fresh fire billowed up from somewhere beyond buildings to her right, and just a little way to the left of them she could see ... the heads of running elves! The rest of the fleeing Tel'Quess were hidden from her, down in a dell.

Dove trotted to the nearest tree and scaled it until she was high enough to see who was running, and why.

She beheld ancient, wizened elves, elders, shooing and shepherding elf children in some haste from her right to her left. Beyond them, farther off but getting closer fast, were two shades with drawn swords in their hands. They were rushing at the elves, with clearly fell intent.

Dove flung herself from the tree and landed sprinting, heading for the dell as fast as she could. If anything could be salvaged from this dark day, it must be those children, the future of the Tel'Quess of this part of Faern ...

"To me!" she shouted to the Moonstars, but didn't slow for a moment to see if they'd heeded or were following.

Down the long years, her way had not been that of the spell. Daughter of Mystra or not, the sword and a skilled tongue and the making and keeping of friendships had always served her better. Yet she'd studied her share of dusty tomes, even in the dim chambers of Candlekeep a time or two, and remembered some things.

Badly, for the most part, and never really thinking she'd need them. But now, as she sprinted over tree roots and through wet leaves and over slippery moss, Dove Falconhand gasped out what snatches she could remember of an ancient spell she'd read in one of Candlekeep's inner rooms, more than a few centuries ago.

It was a last resort magic of the elves, to be used when doom was imminent.

A spell that would summon baelnorn.

Lord and Lady Delcastle faced each other across the pleasant farmhouse kitchen of Storm Silverhand, their faces grim.

"Lady mine," Arclath said gravely, "please misunderstand me not. I don't wish to dissuade you in what you attempt, nor mar what we have between us or your needed concentration. Yet I must ask: Are you ready for this? Do you know what you are doing?"

Amarune sighed gustily, neither in anger nor resignation, but to steady and calm herself, and told her beloved, "Yes. Yes, I think I do."

She gave him a little grin, then pointed at a particular flagstone in front of her and added sharply, "Now go and stand just there and belt up while I read the scroll through once more, and then read it aloud. We have to be touching, but mind, Lord Delcastle, this is no time for tickling me or otherwise amusing yourself."

"I understand that," Arclath told her dryly, moving to the indicated spot. "Yet I do have another question: How are you going to keep the scroll from rolling itself up?"

"I-" Rune ran out of answers, and stared at him helplessly.

"And we're going to rescue besieged Myth Drannor," Arclath told the ceiling. Then met her eyes, grinned, and suggested, "Why not have me stand on two corners of the scroll, unroll it, then you stand on the other two corners? Then you can look down between us, and read."

His lady nodded slowly. "That'll work," she said-and just managed not to sound surprised.

And so it was that Arclath Delcastle was grinning fondly at his ladylove when Storm's kitchen went away in sudden blue mists, and they fell out of that eerie sapphire place into ... a forest where the dead and the flies were everywhere, and an army was tightening in a ring around the tall spires of a few buildings, and monsters of nightmare and legend were harrying that army ...

And a spired stone city floated in the sky, vast and dark and blotting out the sunlight as it came scudding menacingly overhead.

CHAPTER 18.

Low Cunning Prevails

DOVE SHOOK HER HEAD. IT WAS NO USE. SHE'D REMEMBERED the entire spell, she was sure-but nothing had happened. Whatever baelnorn still guarded their crypts somewhere beneath her would remain there. She'd have to do this alone.

As usual.

And her luck was turning for the worse. Also as usual.

She'd cast a look back to see if any of the Moonstars were following her-they weren't, only gawping in bewilderment at her sudden sprint across the landscape-and had seen that someone else was following her.

The big beholder who'd been hovering above the wounded black dragon happily slaying Shadovar mercenaries was drifting in her direction, eyestalks writhing menacingly.

And though she couldn't place from where, the creature seemed somehow familiar.

"Stars and spells, Mother!" Dove cursed aloud, "why now? How is it that monsters are here-here in the farruking mythal-guarded heart of Myth Drannor-to settle old scores, right in the midst of the elves' latest last stand?"

And with those words, running as hard as ever, she plunged over the edge.

Down into the dell, a green and pleasant place. There were the elves, the youngest sobbing in fear, and- There they were, the pursuers. Wearing broad and arrogant grins as they came, striding unhurriedly, enjoying this. Two tall and muscular shades, twins-and Tanthuls, by the looks of them!

"Well, now," she panted aloud. "Princes of Shade! I'm honored. I think."