Cormyr_ a novel - Ed Greenwood [128]
Emthrara the Harper, who with Laspeera had unlocked the secrets of the abraxus, unclenched her right fist. In her hand was a white chess piece: the queen she'd been. She set it on the proper square of the board, murmured, "Check indeed, good sirs," and glided to one wall of the antechamber, where her deft fingers probed, pushed, and finally opened a hitherto hidden door in the paneling. Without a backward look, she slipped into the darkness beyond and was gone. The door shut behind her with the faintest of clicks, leaving the room dark and empty. Once more this part of the palace felt like a tomb.
Chapter 20: Battle of the Witch
Lords
Year of the Thirsty Sword
(900 DR)
It was not a meeting they had time for, thought Aosinin Truesilver, but then it was not a meeting they could afford to miss, either. By rights, King Galaghard, his noble court, and High Wizard Thanderahast should be seeing to the last details of the planned assault in the morning. But these were elves, and these elves demanded immediate attention.
Their appearance was both ominous and telling. For the past three months, the Glory of Cormyr, the army of the king, had met and routed the Witch Lords' armies time and time again. At the fords of Wheloon, at the forgotten temple, at Juniril and again at the Manticore's Crossing, each time overrunning the Witch Lords' position and trampling their undead troops beneath the hooves of good Cormyrean steeds. Yet their foe had risen from the dead again and again-literally.
From each battle, the most powerful Witch Lord necromancers slipped away, to regroup with forces of moldering fighting men freshly disinterred. Now the Glory of Cormyr had ridden to the limits of their supplies and trapped the remaining human mercenaries and levies of the Witch Lords flat against the western verges of the Vast Swamp. A victory here would break their power in Cormyr forever and free the eastern half of the realm from their threat.
Yet on the eve of the assault, a rider arrived, with the news that a great pavilion had suddenly appeared behind the king's forces. Its green and yellow spires rose like new mountains in the darkness, lit from within by their own radiance.
These were not simply elves of the woods, who had always passed through the kingdom, moreso since the fall of their greatest city. They were noble elves, the first to arrive in Cormyr since the fall of Myth Drannor. Noble elves who demanded a reception.
"They couldn't have picked a worse time," muttered Thanderahast as they drew near the entrance. Save for the wizard, everyone in the small party of Cormyreans approaching the pavilion was in full battle armor, including the king, the High Priest of Helm, and several nobles, among them Aosinin Truesilver, the king's cousin.
"You would snub them, then, and risk seeing their forces arrayed alongside those of the Witch Lords?" asked the king in a low voice.
"We may see them there yet, Sire," said one of the Dauntinghorns. "The elves have always been treacherous. Not fifteen winters ago, they repelled the Sembians and their Chondathan mercenaries in the Battle of the Singing Arrows despite the fall of Myth Drannor."
"Don't speak nonsense," snapped the wizard. "The Sembians were logging elven lands heavily, thinking that with their cities gone, the elves would be weak. The power of the elves has never been in cities but in the forest itself. Now, hold your tongue, for the ears of the elves are as sharp as their skin is thin."
One of the Illances made a joke about the sharp, pointed nature of elven ears, but he was shushed by his fellows. The party entered the pavilion.
Its interior had a ghostly, ethereal quality. There were elves on all sides, lounging on broad pillows. They sipped fluted glasses of glowing fluids, regarding the passing humans as if they were mongrel dogs who had wandered into a dinner party. Then the elves turned their attention