Looking down the wall, Eli watched the aasimar approach the gnoll like a deadly dancer. Waves of fear emanated from Quin, a tide of terror that made her shiver. Quinsareth stepped forward, turning to his right as the gnoll's axe passed within a hand's breadth of his face. He continued to spin, pushing his shoulder into the gnoll's ribs and hooking his right leg behind his opponent. As the gnoll struggled to angle its axe at the aasimar, Quin grabbed the gnoll's right arm and pushed as he spun again. He slammed Bedlam's pommel between the beast's shoulder blades, then followed the strike with Bedlam's blade.
He severed the stumbling gnoll's right leg at the knee and left him to fall over the edge into the undead below. Elisandrya's sword arm was pinned, held down by the viselike grip of an undead woman who whispered nonsense as she dug her fingers into Eli's flesh. The bathor's touch sent arcs of pain down Eli's arm and across her chest.
She fumbled with her left hand, searching for anything to beat the ghoulish woman away, refusing to give up. The tortured moans of Eli's attacker suddenly turned to shrieks. More sizzling blood spattered across Eli's legs and face. Blue-green lightning flashed with each splash of putrid blood. A gloved hand seized her arm and suddenly she was being pulled across the wall. She watched as the woman, armless, squirmed and beat herself against the battlements before rolling into the masses at the wall's edge. Eli felt strong arms lifting her to her feet and she instinctively fought back. Flailing her fists, she tried to kick the legs out from under her captor. Turning, she raised a fist and saw Quinsareth's face, grim and covered in blood. She almost fainted in relief, but he held her steady and lifted her chin, brushing his hand across the red welts that formed where the bathor's blood had scalded her face. "Will you be all right?" he asked with concern in his voice. He backed them toward the guard tower. "I'll survive," she said, managing a smile as she met his gaze. She was stunned by the depth of feeling his presence suddenly stirred in her.
The battle was blocked from her senses for a few moments. Unspoken words hung in her mind, then fell to their deaths in the awkward silence between them. Eli's eyes said things her mouth and lips could not. In a daze, she stepped away from Quin and leaped up the steps into the guard tower. She retrieved the watchman's horn and glared down upon the gruesome army that assaulted her home. The devil-masked Gargauthans kept a safe distance along the flanks of the advancing throng. Taking a deep breath, she blew one long piercing note that carried across the whole of the city. Flaming arrows were fired high into the air from the north and south gates, signaling their receipt of the order. When Eli turned back, Quinsareth was gone. She caught sight of his shadow moving swiftly and with purpose along the north wall. Kneeling, she took Zakar's quiver of arrows and quietly promised him a warrior's funeral. With the quiver slung over her shoulder, she followed the aasimar.
The prized Shaaran warhorses stamped their hooves and shook their wild manes in the spacious stables reserved for the Hunters of the Hidden Circle. The warriors patted their mounts' necks and whispered encouraging words in their ears. The horses were uncharacteristically jittery. The smell of smoke and decay in the air had reached them, and tension grew as they waited for the call to charge. Armor and weapons had been readied before the first sounds of battle, and the fray was still several blocks away, growing louder as it neared the stable.
Some of the riders suspected that something horrible had happened, and the commanders were preparing to signal their own charge when the call came through the storm. The warriors' hearts jumped as the wide stable doors opened. They rode hard, the surefooted warhorses pounding effortlessly through the mud. The two groups of mounted archers split, heading north and south. Once outside the city gates, they angled west with bows drawn. Exposed to the cruel elements, they breathed the fouled air like a drug, becoming intoxicated with bloodlust for the enemy. They spat the cold rain back into the faces of the clouds, reveling in the downpour. Their expectations of the battle were quickly rewarded as devils roared in the sky and gnolls howled and barked savagely from the walls.
"Hush!" Sameska's voice startled everyone in the sanctuary, echoing in the silence as all paid wary attention to the broken woman.
Her head was cocked to one side, listening for something, her eyes closed against the light of the chamber's runes. A few of the priestesses edged closer to Sameska, concerned and frightened by her behavior. They listened with her. Moments passed and they heard nothing. Shaking their heads, they whispered prayers for the high oracle's broken mind. A slight gasp from the semicircle of oracles startled them again. Nerves were stretched taut as the evening wore on. Those present followed the oracle's stare to the far wall. Several lines of runes had faded, and some had winked out altogether. "It is coming. She is closer now," the high oracle muttered. Patches of the arcane architecture died before their eyes, dismantled and dispelled by unseen hands. An encroaching darkness crawled through the chamber little by little, leaving only a single light within the half-circle.
The altar, the rune circle, and the dais of the high oracle became islands of misty light stranded in the dark. "She is here to fulfill the words of Savras, girls. To drown us along with the forest in her wake." "Be quiet!" a young woman on her right said. Shaking, she searched the blackness outside the circle for movement. She held a dagger, the traditional weapon of Savrathans, close to her breast.
Sameska scowled and clenched her own hidden blade. "Heed what she says, child," Morgynn said as she stepped into the boundary of the circle's glow. "There is a certain wisdom in madness that should not be dismissed so readily." The oracles looked in horror upon the sorceress, her face like a portrait painted in blood on an ivory slate. Blood dripped from her fingertips, covering her arms up to her elbows. She noticed the oracles' attention to the mess dripping from her hands and held them forward, palms up. "Fear not," she said mockingly, "it's not mine."
Quinsareth sheathed Bedlam and ran, avoiding the clash of forces in the streets and making his way toward the temple. He jumped off the wall before the gnolls spotted him. He had no time to relive his battle in Targris, and he struggled to keep Logfell from his thoughts as suffering wails and keening moans erupted from the undead, only blocks behind him. He focused on the rain, imagining himself weaving between the drops. He dashed between buildings like the lightning, becoming part of the storm and not the battle. The battle itself was beyond him now, beyond the works of a single warrior, and would play itself out as such. "Their fates must be their own," he whispered under his breath. He slipped between darkened, undisturbed homes and past the smoldering, steaming remains of others. Inside himself, he could feel the lie even if he couldn't admit it, but it was familiar and necessary to his task. It was a half-truth he maintained to keep moving, to stay focused. Nobility, he thought, forges more martyrs than it does victories. The malebranche passed overhead, intent on destruction and reveling in their play. Their nearness called to his blood. He buried deep his instinct for battle and wars fought long before the elven nations were born. He'd felt the same call in the High Forest near Hellgate Keep, the forests of Cormanthor near Myth Drannor, and in the snows and tundra of Narfell. This, too, he buried, though he absorbed that primal bloodlust for his own use, bending his celestial nature to his own ends and means. Seeing his objective ahead, he entered the last stretch of flooded street and crouched behind an overturned merchant's chart, its single wheel turning lazily in the wind over loaves of sodden bread. The wide square before the Temple of the Hidden Circle was paved in cobblestones laid in concentric circles, their pattern highlighted by rivers of water that flowed between the cracks and reflected the lightning flashes. He needed no lightning to see the five figures standing in a line across the center of those circles of stones. All save one wore hunters' armor and weapons. They did not move or blink; no puffs of breath steamed from their open mouths. Their bodies rippled and shimmered like mirages. What wounds they bore had ceased bleeding, open and empty. Narrowing his eyes, Quinsareth strode from his hiding place, in full view and no longer concerned with stealth. The glazed and lifeless eyes of the sentries had found him with preternatural senses that reached beyond darkness, rain, and man-made obstacles. The very fact that he lived had given him away.