Free Forsaken House by Richard Baker Page B

Faerun, thinking. Finally he turned away, shaking his head. “I thought that I felt a tremor in the Weave. Almost as if someone had plucked the string of a great harp a long distance away.”
    “I thought I felt something too,” Ilsevele said. “It came from the east.”
    “I’ve felt that before,” Araevin said. “The last was two years past when the city of Shade was called back from the Plane of Shadow. Someone has worked mighty magic indeed. I would not be surprised if half the mages in Faerun just started from their beds.”
    “The Gatekeeper’s Crystal?”
    Araevin looked sharply at Ilsevele. She had named his fear before he had himself.
    “It could be,” he said. “My Circle noticed a similar disturbance about five years ago. That would have been in the Year of the Gauntlet, around the time when the crystal was used to shatter Hellgate Keep. Corellon grant that we’re wrong about this.”
    Ilsevele shrugged and said, “We’ll know soon enough.”
    She picked up her pack and slung it across her back, carefully arranging it so that the rucksack did not interfere with the bow and quiver she wore across her shoulders. Beneath her cloak she wore the arms of a captain of the spellarchers, an embroidered doublet of leather sewn with fine steel rings, strongly enchanted to ward its wearer from harm. A pair of fine elven short swords graced her hips.
    “I’m ready,” she said.
    Araevin nodded and picked up his own pack. He was also dressed for travel in dangerous lands, wearing his shirt of mithral mail beneath a dove-gray tunic, and his scarlet cloak with its magic of warding and protection over all. His bandolier of spell reagents crossed his chest from left hip to right shoulder, and three wands were holstered at his side—the disruption wand he’d used in the fight at Tower Reilloch, plus a pair of additional wands he thought he might find a use for. At his hip he wore the blade of House Teshurr, an enchanted long sword named Moonrill. Spell and wand were his chosen weapons, but he knew how to wield a sword, and long ago an ancestor of his had imbued Moonrill with magic that a mage might find useful at times.
    He joined Ilsevele in front of a simple stone marker in the center of the glade. Faded old runes, half-filled with moss, were graven into its surface. Most of Evermeet’s old elfgates had been dismantled in the past few decades, as the elves of the isle had come to see the magical portals as weaknesses in their defenses, places from which resourceful enemies could attack the island. But a few had been left standing, secured by powerful defensive spells. Only those who knew the secret of their activation could make use of the elfgates, and with every year the folk of Evermeet grew more careful of that knowledge.
    “Where in Faerun will this gate take us?” Ilsevele asked.
    “The Ardeep Forest, not far from the House of Long Silences. Many old portals meet there, and it’s close to Waterdeep, where many less magical roads meet.”
    Araevin hummed an arcane incantation beneath his breath, and passed his hand over the top of the stone marker.
    At first nothing happened, but then the stone began to glow with a soft, golden light. Slowly it brightened enough to fill the glade with its pale glow, dancing motes of magic drifting in the air.
    “Say farewell to Evermeet,” Araevin told Ilsevele. “We’ll be in Faerun in just a moment.”
    Ilsevele glanced around at the wooded clearing, the sunset sky above, the deep green forest all around. A tear trickled down her cheek. No elf could leave Evermeet easily, especially not for the first time. She whispered a farewell, and they were gone.

CHAPTER 4
    19 Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms
     
    Gaerradh trotted swiftly through the endless tree-gloom of the High Forest, little more than a shadow herself. She wore her long russet hair tied behind her in a single braid, and carried her longbow easily in one hand. Even though she wore a jerkin of studded