Shadows of Amn

Stripes of muddy brown faded into sharp contrast along the thing's hunched pale-gray back. It opened its eyes, staring blindly at first up into the indigo sky as a red light grew in their pits. When the light reached its brightest, the monster convulsed once in a final jerking spasm, and the slime and blood and fluid were drawn into its hardening, chitinous skin like water into a sponge.

It exhaled in a ragged growl, then drew in a long, sucking breath. Its breathing steadied quickly, and it turned its enormous saurian head toward Irenicus.

The necromancer's knees began to shake, but he managed to stand.

"Obey me," he whispered.

The monster stood all at once and towered over Irenicus. Its hunched shoulders rose easily ten yards above the gravel of the statue court. It reached out one hand as if to steady itself and wrapped its fanlike fingers around one of the ancient statues. It tensed only slightly, and the stone figure burst into a cloud of dust and pebbles, the largest no bigger than Irenicus's hand.

"Obey me!" Irenicus barked at the thing, and its inhuman eyes burned into him. There was nothing of Imoen left—nothing human at all.

"Suldanessellar!" Irenicus shrieked. "Ellesime! The Tree!"

The Ravager roared into the dead morning air of Myth Rhy

He felt it and watched it go on its way to Suldanessellar, on its way to Ellesime, on its way to his own immortality, and Jon Irenicus began to cry.

Abdel burst into the forest of Tethir in a blue flash and just let himself collapse on the ground. The pieces of the artifact slipped out of his hands, and he made no effort to hold them, or retrieve them.

He heard Jaheira call his name, and he put one hand down on the ground, intending to lift himself up to look at her. He heard her ru

"The Ry

"I've done it," Abdel whispered, his throat tight and painful.

Jaheira's warm, soft hands touched him, and he rolled over to look at her, unashamed by the tears streaming down his face. The tears mixed with traces of Bodhi's blood.

"Oh," Jaheira breathed, "by the Lady …"

"Gather them up!" Elhan shouted, then barked another series of orders in a language Abdel didn't understand—Elvish, no doubt.

He crawled away, Jaheira holding him, as a dozen pairs of hands quickly, deliberately sifted through the dead leaves, snatching up the jagged pieces of metal that were worth Bodhi's life.

"Candlekeep," Abdel said, turning his face to Jaheira's. "I'm taking Imoen back to Candlekeep."

Jaheira sobbed once, then gathered her wits quickly.

"Where is she?" Abdel asked.

Elhan stood at the edge of the Swanmay's Glade, the tall trees of Suldanessellar in front of him.

"Do it," he told the mages in Elvish. "Open it."

Elhan was ringed by several of Tethir's most powerful mages, and several of her weakest. Elves as young as twenty years stood side by side with elves who'd seen two thousand summers pass. Though some could wield power others couldn't even imagine, they were all equal now, in both power and purpose. They had but to hold—one each of them—a fragment of the fabled Ry

"Suldanessellar must be open to us once more," Elhan said.

He looked up at the typically fair morning sky and saw clouds of deep black roiling against a bruise-purple overcast. Irenicus had sealed them off from Suldanessellar in preparation for this new assault on the Tree of Life, but they'd finally—thanks to a most unlikely ally—managed to gather enough of the fragments of the Ry

Elhan sca

The elf prince drew his moonblade and stepped forward. He reached up and touched the tingling, cold barrier. It was a palpable, if invisible thing, and the feel of it, even now mere moments before its destruction, sent waves of nauseous hatred through him.

"Bring it down, loyal ones," Elhan said. "Bring it down!"

The fragments came together in the righteous hands of the elf mages, and a rumbling vibration rippled the ground under Elhan's feet. Some of the mages fell over, a couple of them even dropped their parts of the lanthorn, but it didn't matter.

A wind blasted down from above, and Elhan had to close his eyes against the force of it. He was driven down to one knee.

It'll be over soon enough, sister, he thought, letting his mind touch Ellesime's.

One of the mages screamed, and another shouted, "The lanthorn!"

Elhan opened his eyes and saw that the pieces of the artifact had come together and fused into a still incomplete whole. One of the mages reached out to touch it, and a bolt of green lightning arced out from it, bridging the three paces between it and the mage's hand. The mage was thrown back with a shower of sparks, and there was another louder, stronger rumble that knocked Elhan to the ground.

It's open, Ellesime's voice sounded in his head, but it's not over.

Abdel could feel the vibration in the bottom of his feet, could feel the dizzying aftereffects of the teleportation, could feel his friends falling far behind him, could feel an old anger rising in him, could feel that yellow haze that always came before he spilled someone's blood, but none of those things managed to spill through into his conscious mind. He was ru

Irenicus had his back to him, but Abdel was making no effort to quiet his pounding footsteps and gasping, exhausted breathing. The necromancer spun, turning a wild, wide-eyed visage in Abdel's direction. The necromancer smiled, spread his arms wide as if he meant to embrace the charging sellsword. Abdel almost ran him through, then ran him over, but Jon Irenicus blinked out of existence only to reappear a few yards to one side. The necromancer had the nerve to laugh at him.

Abdel fell face first and skidded in the rough gravel, coming to rest against a tilted slab of marble. He stood quickly, ignoring the bleeding abrasions on his forearms. He spun on Irenicus, who stopped laughing and offered up an impatient snarl.

"She dies!" the necromancer screamed. "I will be an elf again. I will win. I will send her to the hells before you join her yourself, and you'll burn there together. Your father's blood can't stop it, your pitiful friends can't stop it, all the elves of Tethir can't stop it!"

"Where is she?" Abdel shouted, his voice low, hard, and commanding. "What have you done with Imoen?"

"Your sister," Irenicus laughed, "has achieved her true purpose. She walks Faerun in the guise of your father's avatar. Bhaal is dead, but his blood lives on, his power lives on, and I have twisted it, turned it to my will to kill Ellesime of Suldanessellar and rip from that damn tree what I need to live forever."

Abdel, sword in hand, continued his charge at Irenicus.

The necromancer held up a hand and said, "Don't you want to see? Don't you want to see it?" His voice descended into incoherent babbling.

Abdel pulled his sword back, determined to see if the necromancer could live without a head, when something hit him in the chest. It was as if he'd run into a stone wall, and the wall kicked back. Abdel flew backward through the air some immeasurable distance. Wind whistled through the sellsword's ears, then Irenicus's voice: "Don't you want to see your father's face?"