Authors: Richard Baker
“One moment. Theleda isn’t?”
“Theleda was murdered last summer,” Maresa said. “One of her business rivals had her assassinated.”
Araevin sat back, his heart aching. First Belmora, then Theleda too? She had always been abrasive, arrogant, armed with too sharp a wit, perhaps. But they had shared many dangers together.
“Our company is growing smaller by the day, Grayth,”
he said softly.
The cleric replied, “I am sorry to hear it, but the news does not surprise me. Such things happen in Theleda’s line of work.” He looked over to Maresa. “I am sorry for your loss. Are you well? I mean, are you in any danger from those who killed Theleda? We may be able to help.”
Maresa smiled thinly and answered, “No, I am not in any danger. I found the assassin who murdered my mother and killed him. And I found out who had hired him, and killed his employer as well. I went back to Waterdeep after I saw to that.”
Araevin was not sure if one should congratulate a young humanwell, half-humanwoman on having successfully killed the murderers of a parent.
“I see,” he managed, and decided to change the subject. “How did you receive my summons?”
Maresa reached into her tunic and drew out a small pendant in a star-shaped design.
“This little keepsake of my mother’s,” she said. “I wear it to remember her by.”
Araevin nodded. He had given the tokens to his companions when they parted in order to serve as conduits for his call, if he should ever need them again.
“So what business did you think you had with my mother?” the genasi asked.
“I have just returned to Faerun after a long time in Evermeet,” Araevin answered, “and I find that I have need of some trustworthy comrades to assist me in the recovery of some relics of my people. Theleda was an expert at traps and locks and such things, and I had hoped I might persuade her to travel with us again. But it seems we will have to do without her.”
“I might be able to help you. Mother taught me everything she knew.”
“It might be dangerous, and there may be little reward in it,” Araevin said.
“I have reasons to leave Waterdeep anyway, and as long as I get an equal share of the profitsor am reasonably compensated for my time, if there are noneI might be interested.”
“Maresa, I don’t think you understand,” Grayth said. “You may not have much regard for whether you yourself are in danger, but we may have to trust our companions with our lives. You are young, and we don’t know you.”
“I told you that I dealt with my mother’s murderers myself,” Maresa said flatly.
“Which we only have your word on,” Grayth replied.
“Fine. Allow me to. demonstrate,” Maresa snapped. She stood up quickly and rested one hand conspicuously on the hilt of a rapier at her belt, a graceful weapon with a guard of gleaming silver. A slender wand of dark wood rested in a small holster next to the blade. “Who’s the best swordsman among the four of you?”
Grayth folded his thick arms across his chest and said, “I don’t know if that would”
“Afraid to try your luck, priest?”
The Lathanderite stopped in mid-sentence, his face expressionless. He leaned back in his seat.
“She’s her mother’s daughter, all right,” said the priest. “If my eyes were closed, I would swear that was Theleda speaking. And the gods know Theleda never had a good eye for picking a fight.”
Maresa bridled, but Ilsevele set a hand on her arm and said, “In all seriousness, you know something about traps, and glyphs, and such things?”
“I already said so!”
“All right, then. Open this.”
Ilsevele reached into her pack for her spellbook. As a spellarcher, she studied wizardry in order to enchant her arrows. She had nothing like Araevin’s skill in the Art, but she was no novice either, and as many wizards did, she had protected her spellbook with abjurations designed to prevent anyone from pilfering her spells. It was a small, slender volume bound between thin sheets of laspar wood, with clasps of silver.
“There’s nothing deadly here,” Ilsevele explained, “but you definitely won’t like it if you open the book without passing my signs safely.”
Maresa bristled.
“An audition? Fine!” she muttered under her breath. She sat down again, peering at Ilsevele’s spellbook without touching it.
Araevin sat up straight and looked to Ilsevele. He knew what sort of protections Ilsevele had on her spellbook, and they were formidable even if they weren’t deadly.
He said in Elvish, “Ilsevele, do you think this is wise? If she fails, she will be shamed, and if she succeeds, she is likely to insist on going.”
Ilsevele shook her copper hair, met his eyes with her sharp gaze, and answered in Elvish, “She came in her mother’s place. I have a feeling about her, Araevin. I am willing to give the girl a chance, if you are.”
Araevin acceded. He returned his attention to Maresa, who had finished looking over the book. The genasi whispered the words of a seeing spell, and the spellbook began to glow with a soft azure radiance. She carefully studied the book again for a few moments, examining the spells that lay over it.
“All right, then,” Maresa said as she reached into a vest pocket in her doublet and retrieved a small leather folio, opening it on the table by the book. “Your glyph will be damaged.”
“We will see,” said Ilsevele. “Do what you need to, as long as you don’t damage the book itself.”
“It’s your book,” Maresa replied.
She found a small paper packet in the leather case and opened it, shaking out a purple-colored powder over the spellbook. Then she laid a thin piece of parchment over the powdered book. With a stick of charcoal she carefully colored the parchment, making a rubbing or etching of the spellbook’s cover.
On the parchment, a string of mystic symbols appeared in her rubbing. No such symbols had been visible on the book’s cover beforehand. Maresa left the parchment in place and fished a strange styluslike instrument from her case. Muttering the words of a counter charm, she picked out the symbols on her charcoal rubbing one by one and pressed each out with the stylus, changing it to a different symbol by erasing one stroke. Carefully she negated or altered each symbol in the arcane phrase, then straightened up and shook her flowing white hair. Araevin noticed that she still had not broken a sweat. With a smug smile, she removed the parchment, picked up the book and shook off her powder, and promptly opened it.
“Satisfied?” she asked.
“Damn. That was nicely done,” Grayth said. “All right, so you’re better than I thought.”
“You can come,” said Ilsevele. She took her spellbook back from Maresa with a rueful look. “I suppose I need better runes to protect my book.”
Araevin set down his mug and looked up at Maresa.
“There is a little more to this than striking out spell traps,” he said. “It’s not wise to seek out dangerous places in the company of people you don’t trust implicitly, and to put it plainly, you don’t know us very well, nor do we know you.”
“You knew my mother, didn’t you?” Maresa riposted. “She carried your pendant until the day she died, elf. She would have answered your call, so I am here in her pl ace.”
Neither Araevin nor Grayth replied.
“I thought so,” Maresa said. “In that case, where are we going, and when do we leave?”
Gaerradh knelt easily in a well-disguised tree stand overlooking the village of Rheitheillaethor. The moon was hidden behind the overcast, leaving little more than a silver patch in the darkness overhead, but an elf’s eyes needed little light. She could clearly make out the simple shelters and fieldstone storehouses on the ground below, with the gleaming patches of white snow lingering around the boles of the broad weirwoods and shadowtops sheltering the village.
Rheitheillaethor was home to nearly five hundred of the wood elves, but few of them lived in the buildings and shelters on the ground. Instead their homes were hidden high in the branches’ above the forest floor, a cunning arrangement of disguised platforms and narrow catwalks that was nearly invisible to anyone below. Even knowing they were there, Gaerradh had a hard time picking out other stands and platforms at any distance, but here and there she caught glimpses of resolute wood elf warriors crouching in stands like hers, waiting for the enemy to appear.
She shifted her position, craning her head for a better look. Her platform was near the center of the village, away from the pickets where she would have liked to be, and she was impatient to get a look at her foes. Three days before she had brought news of the breaking of Nar Kerymhoarth to the elders of Rheitheillaethor. The next day news had followed of orc bands on the move in the forest, accompanied by winged elves, cruel and proud, armed for war. Gaerradh had no idea who the elfkin might be, but the fact that they marched in the company of orcs spoke for their intentions. Wood elf scouts had shadowed the invaders since sunrise. There could be no doubt that they were coming to Rheitheillaethor.
“The waiting is not easy, is it?” whispered a voice behind her.
The Lady Morgwais, sometimes known as the Lady of the Wood, shared the large platform with her. She was beautiful and graceful, with long auburn hair and a copper-red complexion that made her seem half a dryad. She had asked Gaerradh to stay close by her in the large tree near the village’s center, along with half a dozen more sharpshooters and mages. In better times their perch served as the hall of the village elders, the largest structure in Rheitheillaethor’s canopy, but the wood elves had fitted new screens and camouflaging panels to make the hall into a hidden redoubt high above the forest floor.
Gaerradh did not take her eyes from the woodlands to the northeast.
“I don’t like meeting them in the village, Lady Morgwais,” she replied. “I do not mean to question your judgment, but I can’t help but think we would be better off in the open forest, where we could ambush and melt away from pursuit. I fear being trapped.”
Morgwais frowned and said, “I think you might have found these orcs and their bat-winged allies more difficult to ambush than you think. They have held to their course and kept on toward the village, despite our illusions, enchantments, and our scouts’ efforts to decoy them away. I suspect that they have some skilled wizards among them, someone who can dispel our defenses and divine a path to our village.”
Gaerradh glanced around at that and said, “If they are using magic to sniff us out, then maybe we shouldn’t be here at all!”
“Rheitheillaethor is no more or less significant than any other place in the forest,” the noblewoman replied, “but it’s as good a place as any to try our enemies’ strength. And it might not hurt to teach these new foes that searching out our homes and marching on them will not be as easy as they think.”
A soft owl’s cry came from the night beyond the village, answered by another.
“They’re here,” Gaerradh whispered.
Other elves nearby repeated the warning. Gaerradh crouched back down in her chosen spot and unlimbered her bow.
She heard the orcs before she saw them. The brutish creatures were holding their tongues, but their armor clinked and jingled softly, and their sandaled feet crunched and scuffled in the thin snow and leafy debris of the forest floor. She spied the leaders, a handful of scouts and skirmishers trotting warily before their fellows, crouching and stooping as they moved from cover to cover. Behind them came a ragged line of berserkers, the champions of the tribepowerful warriors who disdained armor, wearing little other than broad leather belts and dirty breeches, huge axes gripped in their hairy hands. After the berserkers came long, dark files of orc warriors creeping through the shadows. It was a large warband, bigger than any raiding party Gaerradh had ever seen before.
They know enough to be wary of the trees, she thought, watching the gleam of their yellow eyes as they peered into the dark branches of the weirwoods, shields held high by their heads. But where are the others, the demons with elves’ faces?
Almost directly below their tree, a pair of the scouts halted, looking up into the darkness. The rest of the orcs continued forward, but from below Gaerradh heard a wet snuffling sound.
They smell us, she realized.
She started to signal to Morgwais, but the Lady of the Wood simply said, “Now.”
Five dozen wood elf archers fired as one, sending arrow after arrow plunging down into the orc company below. orcs screamed and bellowed, some roaring in rage, others gurgling out awful death cries as they spun or sagged into the snow. Gaerradh shifted her position and fired straight down the bole of her tree at the scouts below, taking the first one in the throat as he looked up at her, and the
second high between the shoulders as he scrambled back looking for cover.
The first volleys were devastating, scything through the orc ranks with merciless efficiency. The elf archers above did not speak or shout, but bowstrings thrummed like harps and arrows hissed in the air like angry serpents. Orc after orc fell, plucking at arrows buried in chests and necks. Others quickly covered down beneath their shields, forming turtle-like knots of a dozen or more warriors crowding together to make their shields into an impenetrable wall. Even as she plied her bow with deadly skill, Gaerradh saw one of the orc shield-knots blown apart by the lightning spell of an elf mage hidden overhead. Thunder boomed in the village clearing.
“Beware the war priests!” Morgwais called to the elves in the redoubt.
Gaerradh caught the guttural sound of orc shamans chanting spells. She held her fire, searching quickly for the spellcasters. Few orcs ever studied wizardly magic, but priests devoted to the dark and savage gods of their race often accompanied the warbands. She spotted one fellow, a chanting war priest with the ceremonial eye patch worn by the servants of one-eyed Gruumsh. She
aimed carefully and shot him through his remaining eye, cutting off his chant in mid-syllable.
Other chanting voices shrieked and fell off as priests fell wounded or dead. But enough of the clerics lived long enough to cast their spells together. Barking out
the last words of the chant, the priests gestured and shouted.