“That’s a lie!” boomed Aris. “We were—”
Vangerdahast made a motion, and the giant’s lips continued to move without sound. Aris scowled and shook his head in angry denial. If Alusair noticed, she paid him no attention and kept her attention focused on Rivalen.
“Cormyr is grateful for your vigilance,” said the princess, “but the prisoners have not yet been returned to their cells.”
Ruha’s escorts started to return her to her cell. Rivalen snapped something at them in ancient Netherese that prompted them to stop in their tracks, then he turned to Alusair with a smile.
“It is nearing dawn, Princess. Given how close the prisoners have come to escaping already, surely we can steal a few hours from the night.”
Vangerdahast scowled and tottered forward. “That is not how the law works in Cormyr, Prince Rivalen.” He pointed an ancient and crooked finger through the bars behind Galaeron’s back. “Remove your bindings and return the prisoners to their cells—or take their place.”
Rivalen’s golden eyes glowed almost white at the threat. He sneered at the old wizard a moment, then turned to Alusair. “If that is the crown’s wish, then, of course, we will obey.”
Vangerdahast pointed a serpentine finger at Ruha’s guards and spoke a word of magic, and the two lords were hurled into the cell’s back wall with enough force to shatter their black armor and leave them slumped on the floor.
“The crown has already stated its wish,” Alusair said, motioning a squad of Purple Dragons forward to surround Rivalen and the others. “Will you unbind the prisoners, Prince?”
Rivalen hesitated, and Galaeron felt the cold magic of the Shadow Weave welling up as the prince prepared to carry him to the enclave.
“Go ahead, Rivalen,” he said. “Abduct me now, and all Faerûn will know I am telling the truth.”
The swell of cold magic faded, and Galaeron instantly regretted his words. Another second, and he would have been back in Shade Enclave, with no choice except to immerse himself in shadow. The restraints came free of Galaeron’s hands of their own accord, and Rivalen shoved him through the door of the cell with enough force to bounce him off the far wall and drop him to the floor.
“You will give the prisoners to us at dawn.” Though Rivalen attempted to phrase it as a command instead of a request, the mere fact that he said it made the question implicit. “The Most High would find it difficult to understand why a friend would harbor fugitives from his justice.”
“Would he?”
Alusair nodded, and Vangerdahast made a motion with his crooked finger. The doors slammed shut, locking Galaeron in his cell and the two Shadovar in the one adjacent. The Purple Dragons escorted Ruha away and placed themselves between Aris and the Shadovar who had been holding him prisoner.
Alusair watched Rivalen watch this, then said, “But he would understand allowing his friends to starve.” She gave him a cold grin, then echoed his earlier words. “After all, if the Faerûnian kingdoms are too weak to survive a few decades of hunger, they are not meant to last.”
Rivalen’s face turned so dark it almost vanished. “Majesty, to understand any comment, you must know the context.”
“I suppose that is true.” Alusair stepped toward the prince, her attitude more that of a warrior challenging another than a potentate delivering a message. “So the Shadovar are not melting the High Ice?”
Rivalen cast a disparaging look in Galaeron’s direction, then said, “The princess surely knows that every kingdom has its disaffected. A discontented elf saying a thing does not make it true.”
“That is not an answer,” Alusair pressed. “Are the Shadovar responsible for changing the weather of Faerûn or not?”
“Us, Majesty?” Rivalen gasped. “We are only one city.”
“A Netherese city—and Netherese cities have done worse,” Alusair said, no doubt referring to the hubris that had caused the fall of the goddess Mystryl and altered the Weave itself forever. She turned her head over her shoulder and called, “Myrmeen, have you seen enough?”
“I have, Majesty.”
Myrmeen Lhal stepped through the illusionary wall, bringing with her half a dozen Arabellan nobles bearing the shadow blanket confiscated from Galaeron and his companions. She directed the nobles to drop the blanket at the prince’s feet.
“There is Shade Enclave’s stolen property,” she said. “You and the rest of the Shadovar in Arabel may return it to your father with my compliments.”
“I don’t understand,” Rivalen said, stalling for time to think. “You are ordering us out of the city?”
“I am ordering you out of Arabel—and the entirety of Cormyr, you and all Shadovar,” Alusair clarified. “You won’t be welcome here until you stop the melting of the High Ice.”
“You would begrudge us our birthright?” Rivalen gasped, changing tactics the instant it grew apparent his lies had been discovered. “By what right do you dare?”
It was the wrong thing to say to Alusair Obarskyr. She stepped forward until she was standing nose to breastplate with the huge Shadovar.
“By the right of law—and of arms.” She shoved him back into Galaeron’s cage, then turned to Dauneth Marliir and waved at the two Shadovar locked in the cell that had been Ruha’s. “Are those the ones who killed our guards?”
Dauneth shrugged. “Perhaps, Majesty. These Shadovar are difficult to tell apart.”
“Well, it matters not,” she said. “They were at least party to the deaths of two of our guards. Execute them.”
“Of course, Majesty.”
Rivalen opened his mouth to object, but Dauneth was already dropping his arm. Two dozen crossbows clacked, peppering the two Shadovar inside with iron bolts. Both warriors fell without a scream, their faces and throats studded with expertly placed quarrels.
Alusair turned to Rivalen. “I believe that makes our position clear, does it not?”
Vala limped out of the Irithlium’s shadowed entrance-way to find Prince Escanor standing with a full company of Shadovar in the tree-choked courtyard. Their armor was fastened and their glassy swords held at battle ready. They were divided into squads of a dozen, each commanded by a fang-mouthed shadow lord. As Vala approached, an astonished—or perhaps relieved—murmur ran through their ranks, and the tips of their swords began to drift toward the ground. Raising her brow at the unexpected reception, she checked the ring Corineus had given her to make certain it was in the undetectable position, then removed the phaerimm tails from her belt and presented herself to Escanor.
“Come to keep your promise, Escanor?” she asked.
Escanor closed his gaping mouth. “My promise?”
“For killing the phaerimm beneath the Irithlium.” Vala slapped the tails into his hand. “There are six tails there. Count them.”
The prince glanced down at the tails and gave a wry smile. “Most impressive, but no. When I made that promise, I actually didn’t think you would be returning.”
“What you thought matters less than what you do about it,” Vala said. “Are the Princes of Shade men who honor their words?”
“Unfortunately, that won’t be possible,” Escanor said, smile vanishing. He returned the phaerimm tails, then caught Vala by the wrist. “I was just on my way to fetch you for the Most High. It seems he has finally located Galaeron.”
The prince turned away and dragging her after him, started to walk. Within two steps, his body had grown diaphanous and ghostly. Another two steps, and they were completely immersed in shadow, the ground beneath their feet as soft as water. Vala tried to pull away but stopped struggling when she experienced a strange sensation of falling and her captor’s arm stretched into a writhing rope of darkness. She turned her magic ring so that it would show affairs as they truly were.
The swirling darkness around her became a pearly, motionless void, more colorless than it was gray. Escanor was a black heart beating inside a cage of black ribs, with no limbs or skull, but two coppery flames where there would ha
ve been eyes and a sheaf of finger wisps wrapped around Vala’s arm.
The prince’s fiery eyes swung in her direction. She quickly thumbed her ring back to its concealed position, and he became the shadowy figure of a moment before.
“Walk,” he said.
The prince took a step and became solid again. Vala followed. The ground grew hard beneath her feet, and wisps of shadow started to coalesce in smoky ribbons. The voices of unseen whisperers rose and fell in the surrounding darkness. Gradually, a set of murmurs hardened into the fuller tones of normal speech, and Vala recognized the sibilant voice of Telamont Tanthul Most High. He was speaking harshly to someone—shouting, in fact—and there was an angry murmur in the air around him.
The figures of several shadow lords appeared in the murk surrounding Telamont’s throne. Standing closest to the dais were the princes Rivalen and Lamorak, with Hadrhune a quarter of the way up the stairs. To Vala’s astonishment, Malik was on a step between the seneschal and the princes, his cuckold’s horns no longer hidden by his customary turban. Galaeron was nowhere in sight. Escanor brushed past the lords and stopped at the base of the dais.
“… allow her to dictate terms to me?” the Most High was raging. “After all I have done to rebuild that wreck of a kingdom?”
“Most High, had the harlot dared utter a word against you, I would have stricken her down myself,” Rivalen said, cringing visibly in the heat of his father’s anger. “As her outrages were merely directed at me, I thought it best to endure them and return to consult.”
“Return without the elf?”
“It was impossible to bring him,” Rivalen said.
The Most High waited in expectant silence.
“When it remained possible, I still had hopes of salvaging our relationship with Arabel,” the prince continued. “I know the value you place on controlling the border cities.”
The Most High remained quiet, though the sense of expectation that had hung in the air was gone. Vala folded her hands in front of her, covering the gift from Corineus, and thumbed her ring around. The murk paled to the color of fog, thin enough for her to see that the throne room was really a vast courtyard surrounded in the distance by dark bands she took to be walls. Beyond the dais in front of her rose the shapes of many other platforms, their silhouettes growing progressively more indistinct with distance, but each surrounded by a crowd of shadow lords similar to those ringing Vala and the princes.
The shadow lords themselves were wrinkled, ghoul-like figures with sunken, red-rimmed eyes and leathery black skin often pocked by white sores. Rivalen and Lamorak appeared much the same as had Escanor when Vala looked at him during the journey from Myth Drannor, varying only in how much of their skeleton remained attached to the black ribs that enclosed their black hearts. Surprisingly, Hadrhune appeared the same as before Vala had turned the ring—as did Malik, save that he held himself more erectly and seemed far more wiry than Vala had grown accustomed to thinking of him.
Finally, Telamont sent Vala’s heart jumping into her throat by crying, “Betrayer!”
It was at first impossible to tell whom the Most High was addressing, for he was only two platinum eyes floating in a vaguely man-shaped pillar of darkness. The gray fog that filled the throne room seemed to be flowing through him, entering his “body” in the general area of the feet and leaving at the hands. In the area behind one of the eyes, in what should have been the temple area, there was something black and wrinkled, about half the size of Vala’s fist, pulsing in beat to the Most High’s words.
“This is your doing, ungrateful Vaasan!”
Vala spun the ring to its concealed position and found the Most High’s murk-filled cowl turned in her direction, his empty sleeve raised and pointing down the stairs at her.
Praying that Telamont had not sensed her magic ring, Vala raised her chin and forced herself to meet his angry glare. “Mine, Most High? I have not been anywhere near Cormyr.”
“You knew of his plans before he left, did you not?”
The last thing Vala wanted to do was admit her complicity in Galaeron’s escape, but Malik had almost certainly revealed her role already, and she knew better than to think the Most High would be swayed by any lie she could tell.
“I did,” she said.
The Most High remained silent, and she felt the weight of his next question as tangibly as that of a fallen comrade’s body.
“I wanted him to leave,” she said. “You were giving him over to his shadow, not teaching him to control it.”
“Yet you went to Myth Drannor with Escanor.”
“So you wouldn’t grow suspicious and stop him from leaving,” Vala said.
Again, the silence, heavy and demanding.
“He didn’t want to leave without me,” Vala admitted. “I had to convince him that he had vexed me and that I was enamored of Escanor. He left swearing vengeance on you, Escanor, and Shade in general.”
Telamont finally looked away and, shaking his head in disbelief, descended the dais to stand in front of Escanor.
“The blame in this lies in part with me,” the Most High said. “I had not thought his shadow so much in control, but you were blinded by a woman’s cajolery and allowed her to use you against the enclave—and for that, you should be executed as well.”
Vala’s knees grew instantly weak at the pronouncement, but Escanor only inclined his head. “If that—”
“Execute?” Malik interrupted, stepping to the Most High’s side. “You cannot execute Vala!”
Telamont’s platinum eyes grew as cold as winter hail. “You object, cuckold?”
“Of course not … only Vala is my friend, and it would break my wretched heart—whatever the One may still let me have of it—to see her killed.” Malik frowned at the curse that compelled him to keep speaking when it would have been so much wiser to let the matter drop after the first few words, then apparently saw that he had nothing to lose and plunged ahead. “And even more importantly, it would break Galaeron’s heart.”
“Why should the One care about that, little man?” asked Hadrhune, descending the dais to stare down over Telamont’s shoulder. “The elf is an ingrate and a traitor to all the enclave has given.”
“True,” Malik said, “but he is an ingrate and a traitor that Shade Enclave needs. If you slay Vala, you will make him an implacable enemy who will no doubt die in some foolish manner seeking vengeance against you.”
Telamont rolled an empty sleeve, gesturing for Malik to continue.
“On the other hand,” the little man said. “If you keep Vala here, holding her in some terrible manner certain to cause her great pain, letting it be known that she truly does love Galaeron and only went to Myth Drannor so he would leave and save himself, Galaeron is certainly the type of noble fool to return and try to rescue her.”
“The fault in your thinking is that his shadow has almost certainly taken him already,” Hadrhune pointed out. “If that is so, he will see through your plan and avoid us all the more.”
“He seemed well in control of himself in Arabel,” Rivalen said. “In point of fact, he seemed to be avoiding shadow magic altogether, even when he might have used it to free himself and escape us.”
“If that is so, then perhaps our plan will work,” Hadrhune said, as much the idea thief as ever. He stepped around to bring himself in line with Telamont’s gaze. “May I suggest the drop pits? Surely, no torture can be worse than keeping those clean and clear—at least no survivable torture.”
Vala had an unpleasant feeling that she knew what the drop pits were, but it hardly mattered. Any torture that kept her alive to return to her son was one she could endure.
Telamont considered Hadrhune’s proposal for a moment, then gave a thoughtful half-nod. “It would certainly give the elf cause to come for her quickly.” He turned his platinum eyes upon Malik and added, “What do you think, my short friend?”
Malik’s brow rose. “Me?”
“The plan is yours,” Telamont s
aid. “Do you think the drop pits the worst we can do?”
“Milord, I really do not know Shade Enclave well enough to name the worst torture it has to offer.”
Malik fell silent for a moment, then his face twisted itself into a familiar expression of distress, and Vala had a sinking feeling.
“Only, it occurs to me that the torture most likely to draw Galaeron back in a rush is to make Vala a scullery maid in Escanor’s palace and to let it be known that he is using her horribly at night.”
Vala swallowed. As terrible as was Malik’s suggestion, it was still something she could survive. To return to Sheldon, she could endure anything.
“And, of course, you must put her darksword away someplace where she cannot call it,” Malik added. “For Vala, the worst torture of all will be not looking in on her son at night.”
Until then, Vala had felt a debt of gratitude to the little man for saving her life. For telling them to take her visits, she could have killed him—in fact, she might have, had Escanor’s powerful hand not closed around her wrist and prevented her from drawing her sword.
“If you please,” Escanor said, “leave it in the scabbard when you pass it over.”
Telamont’s eyes sparkled with delight. “I think Malik is correct.” He turned his gaze on the little man. “You are proving yourself a surprisingly capable advisor.”
Malik beamed. “I am glad you are pleased with my humble services.”
“Yes, I would never have thought one of Mystra’s curses would be of such benefit to Shade Enclave.” Telamont left the dais and started across the throne room. “Come to the world-window with me, my friend. We must make an example of Cormyr and show Faerûn what it is to betray the generosity of Shade Enclave—and you will tell me how we are going to do it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
25 Mirtul, the Year of Wild Magic
Through the magic of the scrying ball, Galaeron felt as though he were an eagle on high, circling the walled city of Tilverton in search of some garbage-loving raccoon to feed the nestlings in its aerie. He had a view of the entire town and the four roads leading into it, yet he could still make out details as fine as shield insignia carried by the growing number of warriors encamped among the mansions and temples of the Knoll District. There were plenty of Cormyr’s Purple Dragons, of course, but also the Twisted Tower of Shadowdale, the White Horse of Mistledale, even the Raven and Silver of Sembia and dozens of other symbols Galaeron did not recognize.
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