The Lost Library of Cormanthy - Mel Odom [62]
"Captain Closl and Lord Piergeiron are not going to be happy about Baylee's arrival there," Cordyan prophesied. "When I first heard the stories about him, I thought perhaps they were tall tales, made up because he walked for so long in Golsway's shadow. But now that I get the measure of the man, I don't think that is the case at all." She looked after the ranger, watching him disappear in the darkness between the campfires spread out across the forgathering.
"No," Calebaan agreed. "Baylee will bear watching even after he returns to Waterdeep. I don't think he will let-" Calebaan sat up, suddenly more straight. "Do you feel it?"
Cordyan looked at her friend. "Feel what?"
Calebaan pointed toward the east, in the direction Baylee had walked. "The cold breath of death itself."
Knowing her friend was sometimes given to poetic expression, Cordyan turned her head. Only darkness met her gaze. Then she felt the chill, like a high wind coming across Icewind Dale. The sensation came to her sharply, bringing with it the memory of two tendays the circus had spent playing Ten Towns when she'd been yet a girl, not then allowed to swing from the high wires with her brothers and sister.
But suddenly that dark space seemed to fold in on itself. Ruby light spilled from the corners of those folds in the next moment. Then the center of that fold collapsed, opening onto a hole.
Four figures stepped through that ruby hole into the midst of approaching rangers and a horde of animals.
"Something's wrong." Cordyan said. She stood and loosened her sword in its sheath. The copper and gold Shandaularan coin mounted in the hilt sparked a yellow light and felt warm to the touch. The sword was the watch lieutenant's as a reward from Khelben Arunsun for work she had done as a Harper while she was sixteen years old. The sword, Khelben had assured her, came from the renowned collection of Azoun, King of Cormyr for a bit of business the archmage had performed for the king.
The enchantment on the blade made it move lightly in her grasp, and it cleaved more surely through armor than any edged weapon she had ever owned. But the Shandaularan coin had an even further enchantment laid upon it. In the presence of drow, the coin would spark yellow.
Cordyan knew the enchantment was true because she'd seen it spark twice before. Both times, drow had been around. Once, the sword's warning had been enough to save her from a drow down in the warrens under the Waterdhavian docks.
The Shandaularan sparked again as she studied it. "Drow," she told Calebaan. She looked up at the glowing red hole to see the first of them step through. Her hand covered the Shandaularan coin as she bared her weapon.
12
"Hurry!" Krystarn Fellhammer ordered the three drow males hurtling through the dimension door behind her. She carried the staff in one hand and gestured with the other. Her magic swelled inside her for a moment, then burst out to roll over the line of approaching rangers.
A streak of flame leapt from her forefinger to arc across the sky above the forest. A few of the rangers managed to stop short, evidently having seen the spell before.
Krystarn narrowed her eyes as the fiery sphere took shape in the air, then burst with a low roar that spread flames in all directions. At least a handful of the rangers died in the immediate inferno, and others were dreadfully injured. Fires caught in the grasses and trees, driving the animals back in panic.
The advance of the rangers halted when they realized they faced a truly deadly foe. A number of arrows streaked toward the drow.
Krystarn loosed a second burst of magical energy. Thick strands materialized in the air, spanning the distance between the trees in front of her, becoming a mass of sticky gray webbing that ran twenty feet across, ten feet high, and forty feet deep.
The flying arrows didn't make it through the web, getting caught in the multilayered, sticky strands. Several of the rangers