The Wizardwar - Elaine Cunningham [39]
Moonlight filled the courtyard, lingering on the blackened, vine-covered ruins.
Akhlaur looked about in dismay. "What happened here? Pillage I could understand, had it been widely known that elves lived in this part of Halruaa! But this was a hidden city. Certainly a few learned wizards suspected its existence, but sages and looters seldom drink from the same bottle."
"Not looters, Lord Akhlaur, but time. Time and Halruaa herself conspired in this destruction."
"I am not one for riddles," he warned.
She took a moment to choose her words. "The destruction of Halruaa's elves could not have been accomplished by one wizard, not even one as powerful as you. During your rise to power, all of Halruaa looked the other way and pretended not to know."
The necromancer looked at her as if she'd stated that most of the trees were green. "You are just now discovering the nature of humankind? Even those who consider themselves virtuous see only what they wish to see. Especially those who consider themselves virtuous! After all, illusions, once created, must be maintained."
"Yes, my lord," she agreed, though his observation made little sense to her.
A strange silence hung over the city as they worked their way over piles of crystalline rubble toward the treasure Akhlaur had left here.
Kiva stopped at the door of the elven temple, staring in revulsion at the scene before her. What had once been a place of great beauty and serenity now resembled an abandoned charnel house.
Bones lay in tall heaps. Long, delicate elf bones were tumbled together with the thick, yellowed remnants of humans, swamp goblins, even such creatures as birds and crocodiles. Many of the bones had been blackened and broken, probably by the explosion the clever jordain Andris used to break the charge of the undead creatures. Kiva wondered how long it had taken for the shattered, scattered remains to gather themselves and return to this place.
She glanced at Akhlaur. He nodded, and she stepped over the threshold.
The intrusion triggered defensive wards. Shudders ran through the piles of bone. With a horrible clatter, the undead guardians rose.
Elven bones skittered across the floor, cast aside as the other creatures took shape. Kiva's eyes narrowed, as if to hold back the gleam of triumph they held. The elves whose bones these were had passed far beyond Akhlaur's power.
The others, however, had not. A skeleton of gray stone, the unmistakably squat and sturdy frame of a long-dead dwarf, lofted a giant's thighbone like a club and stalked forward. The floor around the undead dwarf writhed as hoards of giant snakes and crocodilian skeletons undulated forward, their naked fangs grinning wickedly. Other skeletons marshaled behind this undead vanguard, some of them entire, some partial creatures that limped or hobbled or crawled toward the intruders.
The necromancer chanted softly, gesturing toward the advancing army, directing them to go here and there, as if he were a master of dance. The advancing wall of undead creatures parted, moving to face each other in two long lines.
A sharp crack rang through the temple as every bipedal creature snapped off one of its arms and held it aloft with the other, forming an arch to honor and welcome their master.
Akhlaur swept through the grisly arch to the temple's most sacred and powerful place. The elf followed, suppressing her disgust with great difficulty.
So much magic, and for what? Would humans never learn that just because a thing could be done, it did not follow that it should be? For all their complacency, their careful laws and customs, Halruaans had not fallen far from the tree of their Netheril ancestors.
Akhlaur stopped abruptly. For a long moment he gazed in consternation at the empty altar.
This was the most dangerous moment. All Kiva's wiles would be tested here.
The necromancer turned furious eyes upon