The Siege (36 page)

Ruha ran up the wadi and joined Caladnei, who was busily spraying magic into the hillside shadows in an attempt to help her struggling companions. With her

attack magic all but exhausted, Ruha prepared a sand dragon spell, but held it in reserve in case Caladnei irritated the Shadovar enough to draw an attack.

Between the wizardess’s attacks, Ruha said, “Had Hhormun been waiting here with the rest of Sa’ar’s warriors, the Mahwa might have lost fewer lives.”

“Or we all might have lost more,” Caladnei said. “This way, it was the Shadovar who were surprised, not us.”

“And you had a chance to watch them fight.” Ruha did not bother to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

Caladnei sprayed a pair of Shadovar with some sort of green ray Ruha was not familiar with, reducing both warriors to smoky wisps and opening the way for Hhormun’s battered company to join them in the bottom of the wadi.

She cocked her brow and glanced at Ruha. “We had a chance to watch them fight, but it was their idea to steal the veserabs.”

“True—and you took advantage.” Ruha was fighting to keep from yelling. The story was an old one, the berrani from outside Anauroch entering the desert and using the nomads for their own purposes. “Sa’ar would never have attempted such a thing without Cormyrean magic.”

“It sounds to me like we took advantage of each other.” Caladnei shrugged and pointed up the wadi, where Sa’ar and his warriors were leading their new veserabs into the teleport circle that would carry them to safety—at least temporarily. “I don’t see the sheikh complaining.”

Hhormun and the rest of the Cormyrean scouts arrived, with half a dozen Shadovar close on their heels. Caladnei took out two with one of her green rays, then Hhormun and another wizard killed three more. The last warrior glanced over his shoulder and, finding the veserab company still too distant to aid him, began to

run for the nearest shadow. When no one else started a spell, Ruha scraped a handful of sand off the ground and started hers—only to be interrupted when Hhormun brought his arm down across her wrists.

“Let him go,” he said. “He’s not hurting anybody now.”

“Hurting anybody?” Ruha gasped. “He’s seen your wizard’s cloak. He’ll run straight to the Most High and confirm that we’re a scouting party from Cormyr.”

“Will he?” A faint smile came to Hhormun’s bearded lips, and he turned up the wadi. “Then we had better hurry to our next campsite, hadn’t we?”

Ruha’s jaw fell behind her veil. She stood there staring after the old wizard until Caladnei took her arm.

“Come along,” the Cormyrean woman said. “The point has been made. Vangerdahast wouldn’t be happy if you stayed behind to confirm it… not happy at all.”

Rivalen had battled three phaerimm at once, toe to thorn and with no chance to call for help. He had dallied with twin succubae and awakened to find them—well, he didn’t want to relive that again. He had fought demons— bare-handed, by Shadow—and been the one who flew away. And never, not in eight-hundred years—not even when he gave his spirit over to the shadowstuff—not once had he been frightened. Not like this.

“How?” the Most High asked. His voice was calm, gentle—even reasonable—in that terrible tone it assumed just before he condemned someone to an eternity of wandering the Barrens of Doom and Despair. “Can someone please explain this?”

They were looking down at the camp of the Harper witch and her Cormyrean scouts. Not scrying it through

the world-window, mind you, but looking straight down on it from the Most High’s personal observation balcony in the Palace Most High. Staring down through the shadow mists at an imminently defensible camp, located in a maze of canyons so narrow a veserab’s wings would touch both sides. A maze of canyons flooded by magic light with no particular source, where the few shadows that did exist were guarded by a squad of sentries armed with both magic and steel. A maze of canyons where the Shadovar would have to fight their way in like common ore foot soldiers, and a maze of canyons with plenty of room for more Cormyreans … and Sembians … and Dalesmen… and the Hidden One only knew who else, all determined to deny the lands of lost Netheril to the Shadovar.

The witch could not see them, of course. Certainly, her Bedine vassals had reported to her the stream of veserabs that constantly dropped into the lake there, and no doubt remarked on the dark storm cloud that never seemed to leave the area, but she could not see Shade Enclave. There were still the shadow mists and the thousands of feet above ground and, not least of all, the Most High’s magic, but Rivalen was not so sure.

“Rivalen?”

Rivalen felt the weight of the Most High’s gaze upon him. He did not bother to look up. There was nothing there to see anyway. He simply swallowed his fear, then addressed his father.

“There is a reason Ruha hides her face behind a veil, Most High,” he said. “Of all the races on Toril, the Shadovar have more reason than any to know the power of the hidden.”

“True, but that explains nothing.”

Rivalen swallowed—hard. “Most High, who can explain the will of the Hidden One? The witch is down

there; that is all that matters—save my own failure in stopping her in Cormyr.”

It was this last that saved him. The weight of the Most High’s scrutiny vanished at once, and the air grew still and cold as he came to Rivalen’s side.

“You did as you thought best, my son,” Telamont said, and Rivalen’s shoulder grew numb with cold. “I am sure you will make it up to us.”

“As am I,” Rivalen said.

“Good.” The Most High squeezed his shoulder until Rivalen thought it would break. “Now, we must concern ourselves with what to do next.”

“The answer is clear, Most High,” said Clariburnus. “We must kill the witch.”

The Most High was silent.

Clariburnus continued, the words spilling out of him like breath. “The magic of the Weave is impure and weak, no match for the Shadow Weave. All we need do is drop a shadow blanket—”

“And that will help us how?” the Most High asked, his voice alarmingly reasonable and calm. “By disposing of your mistake?”

“My mistake, Most High?”

“Was she not your guide, brother?” Rivalen asked. “Yours and Brennus’s?”

“She was,” Brennus answered, “and we controlled her.”

“Enough!” the Most High spat “There is no use in blaming each other. I am disappointed in all of you.”

The Most High remained silent.

Escanor was the first who dared to speak. “What does the witch matter? If she cannot enter the city, what does it matter if she camps below us for a century?”

“It only matters if you are wrong,” the Most High responded.

The question hung in the air as heavy as lead. None of the brothers dared answer.

Finally, the Most High said, “You have all failed me. All of you princes.” The shadow mists briefly obscured the tents of the Cormyrean camp, and when they cleared again, the princes were looking at a circle of white rocks. “Do you see that circle?”

“A teleportation circle,” Rivalen said.

His knees nearly buckled under the weight of the Most High’s question.

“For retreat, I believe,” Rivalen said.

More silence.

“But I could be wrong,” Rivalen admitted.

“If he is, there will be an army below us in hours,” Clariburnus said. “Laeral required less than three hours to transport her entire relief army to the Sharaedim.”

Rivalen glowered into Clariburnus’s lead-colored eyes. As the Eleventh Prince—and the youngest still surviving—he was an ambitious one, always eager to raise himself at his brothers’ expense.

“Do not blame your brother for your failures, Rivalen,” Clariburnus said. “In Cormyr, the Steel Regent bested you handily.”

Escanor, always Rivalen’s favorite brother, said, “We have all underestimated the enemy.”

“You certainly have,” Clariburnus said.

Escanor took a step toward the junior prince—only to find Hadrhune blocking his way.

“Dear princes, if we allow the enemy to divide us like this, we have lost already.” The seneschal—more ambitious than any of the princes and, in his own way, more dangerous—turned toward the Most High. “Mighty Telamont, if I may—”

“If you must”

Hadrhune continued, nonplussed, “If I may suggest a

more conservative strategy, perhaps we should call our armies home and defend the enclave.”

Telamont remained silent.

“Yes, Most High, I do believe the witch might know a way into the enclave,” the seneschal added, glancing in the direction of Clariburnus and Brennus. “We do not know what she learned when she was brought here. You are aware of where I found her.”

The Most High whirled away from the rail and stabbed an empty sleeve at Hadrhune’s face. “The Faerűnians are not being reasonable!” he stormed. “What do we want, but what was Netheril’s to begin with? By what right do they deny us?”

Rivalen breathed easier and settled in for the rant. Having not been born for seven hundred years after Shade left Faerűn, he did not feel the same sense of entitlement as the Most High, but he recognized the power it held over his father. The dream of reclaiming Anauroch and driving out the phaerimm was really all there was of Telamont Tanthul. At times, it made Rivalen wish he had been alive to see the glory that was Netheril, if only so he could understand his own phantom nature.

“Netheril was the most beautiful, the highest and mightiest, the worthiest civilization that Faerűn ever spawned!” Telamont complained. “And the Heartlands balk at a few decades of starvation! I would not hesitate—not hesitate at all, I tell you—to wipe them all from the face of the world if it meant the return of the floating cities. And the elves—I would give Evereska and Evermeet both to the phaerimm, for just the century of peace we need to restore Anauroch to its glory.”

Brennus stepped forward, head bowed and ceremonial fangs displayed. “If it pleases the Most High, I would be happy to go to the Sharaedim to open—”

“Negotiations?” The Most High cuffed him—actually

struck him—and sent the prince sprawling. “That I ought to allow.”

The Most High turned to Rivalen, platinum eyes burning with a question.

“The alliance could have their army here all too soon,” Rivalen reported. “Our agents in Tilverton report that it is already many thousands strong, and growing by the hour.”

The Most High turned to Clariburnus.

“Our army from the Sharaedim is passing south of the Shadow Sea as we speak,” Clariburnus said. “It will reach Tilverton by tomorrow evening.”

“How soon could it be here?” asked Hadrhune. As usual, the seneschal’s impudence was beyond belief. It was as though he believed that because he was not plane-spawned he had nothing to fear from the Most High’s wrath. “In time to stop the Cormyreans?”

Clariburnus inclined his head. “It is but an hour away.”

Hadrhune turned to the Most High. “Perhaps we could split the army. Recall enough to ensure against an assault.”

“That way lies defeat in both battles,” Rivalen said. “There are more than ten thousand enemy soldiers in Tilverton, many of them war wizards and clerics. If I am to defeat them, I will need our entire army.”

“Even the army in Myth Drannor?” Escanor asked.

In truth, Rivalen thought it would take that army as well, but he did not dare alienate his closest ally among the princes—and his only older brother.

He inclined his head to Escanor and said, “Any troops you were able to spare would certainly add to the victory.”

“Unfortunately, I fear it will be impossible to spare any,” Escanor said. “The Myth Drannor phaerimm are proving as obstinate—”

“I am sure you can spare half your troops,” the Most High said. “Our victory in Tilverton must be quick. We must return our largest army to the Sharaedim within the month, before the shadowshell fails. The phaerimm are our greatest threat.”

Escanor glanced at Rivalen, his coppery eyes burning with anger. “But if our losses are heavy—”

“We will be surrounded on all sides,” Hadrhune confirmed. “Surely, a conservative approach is wiser.”

The Most High considered this for a moment, then said, “You are half right. I will send princes to treat with polities more sympathetic to our cause. Lamorak, you will go to see the Red Wizards of Thay. Yder, you will seek out the true leaders of the Cult of the Dragon …”

The Most High continued on, outlining a strategy that would envelop the forces currently surrounding the Shadovar.

When he finally finished, Hadrhune tried again to assert his influence. “You have taken every wise precaution that can be taken, Most High … but what of my suggestion? Certainly, it is wisest to defend Shade Enclave first.”

“Wait.” The Most High turned to the Seraph of Lies, Malik. To the great credit of the little man’s willpower, he did not seem to feel the weight of any unspoken questions, and Telamont was forced to ask, “You know Ruha better than any of us. Do you think she knows a way into the city?”

Malik’s eyes grew as round as coins, and Rivalen thought he would have thrown himself over the balcony rail, had the prospect of a painful landing not been so great.

“In my experience, that witch can get into anywhere,” Malik said. “She has intruded upon me many times in many delicate moments—and sometimes when

I could have sworn she was a thousand miles away.”

The Most High considered this, then nodded. “I suppose it would be safer to assume that she knows a way into the enclave.” His platinum eyes flared in Clariburnus’s direction, then he looked back to Malik and asked, “So you would advise me to call Shade’s armies home?”

“Indeed.”

For a moment, Rivalen thought Malik would leave the matter at that, then the little man’s face contorted into a mask of displeasure, and he said, “Only, I think it would be wiser to advise you to give all your troops to Rivalen and order him to attack.”

The Most High’s hood turned in the little man’s direction.

“Because that is what you truly want to do, Most High,” Malik blurted, “and a wise advisor always tells his master what his master is eager to hear.”