The Shadowsil struggled to fend off Shandril’s blows, clawing at the stone, trying to shape a spell with one blood-drenched hand.… until she sagged down to lie full-length on the rocks, bloody and unmoving.
Shuddering and trembling, Shandril threw her head back and moaned. She stared at the body beneath her. The rock fell from her bloody fingers—and she burst into tears.
Narm swept her into his arms, hardly daring to take his eyes off the sprawled form. Neither her spell nor his had taken effect. Perhaps Shandril’s rock had spoiled the Shadowsil’s magic … but nothing had spoiled his casting.
A twinkling cloud of light motes lit the darkness. Narm frowned. Where had they come from, the Shadowsil?
Symgharyl Maruel lay still and silent. Was it that easy to kill so strong a wielder of the Art?
Shandril mastered her sobs and held tightly to Narm. The twinkling mist surrounded them both. As they stood together, there came the distinct scrape and tumble of stones moving beyond the rockfall. Hope leaped in them both.
Shandril looked at Narm. “Do we shout to tell them we’re here?”
The apprentice wizard frowned. “I think not. We may not want to meet the diggers. Let’s shout only if they stop.”
Shandril nodded. “That’s well enough, if you stay with me.”
Narm held her. “Think you, fair lady, I’m a vile rake?”
“A lady cannot be too careful.”
He grinned. “Please make known to me, Lady, when this carefulness of yours begins.”
Shandril wrinkled her nose, blushing. The cloud swirled about them both, and she frowned. “What is this?”
“I don’t know!” The young man tried to brush the glowing mist away, but it clung close. “Strange …”
The rocks grated again, and this time the sounds of shifting stones went on and on. Someone was digging into their prison.
Shandril and Narm stood and watched warily. Soon there came a louder, rumbling clatter. A man’s voice rose in a surprised oath. Yellow torchlight glimmered between two rocks—a flickering light that grew swiftly as more stones were lifted away.
“We should hide!” Shandril whispered, dragging Narm down into a crouch among the stones.
Torchlight blazed. “Narm?” a voice called from behind it. “Lady?”
“Florin?” Narm replied eagerly, rising and drawing Shandril up with him.
“Well met!” came the hearty reply. An armored man strode toward them over tumbled stones. It was the kingly warrior who’d walked with Elminster between the battling companies. “I heard screaming,” Florin said, hefting his faintly glowing sword. “Is all well with you?”
“We’re fine,” Narm replied, “but she who screamed—the witch-mage—is not. She’ll work her Art no more!”
“Aye? So be it.” Florin’s face was impassive. “Danger sought, danger found. You did well.” He waved a hand back over his shoulder, and added, “The bone dragon lies buried, but may yet rise!” He took another step toward them, but froze, crouching to peer at Narm. “Hold, what’s that?” He drew back in alarm. “A balhiir!”
He was too late. The swirling, sparkling cloud around Narm boiled up like a campfire drawn into fury by a rising wind. It struck the ranger’s blade.
“A balhiir!” Florin shouted back over his shoulder in warning, swinging his sword wildly. The twinkling mist was already swirled around it. The weapon grew heavier in his grasp. The blue light of its enchantment flared once and then dwindled away. The twinkling mist encircled him, seeming a little brighter as it glided along in cold silence.
“Whence came this balhiir?” the ranger asked tersely, watching it spiral around him.
“I struck the wizardess with a crystal sphere,” Shandril told him. “It shattered—and yon mist came out!”
The ranger gazed at his blade, shook his head ruefully, and then gave Shandril a sudden smile. It lit up his face like a flame. “Greetings, good lady. I am Florin Falconhand of Shadowdale and the Knights of Myth Drannor. Might I know you?”
Smiling back, she said, “Shandril Shessair, until recently of Deepingdale and the Company of the Bright Spear, though I fear that fellowship is no more.”
“Your servant, Lady,” Florin said with a bow. “You’ve unwittingly loosed an ill thing on the world. This creature feeds on magic, and only the one who loosed a balhiir can destroy it. Will you aid me in this task, Lady?”
“Will it be dangerous?” Narm snapped angrily.
“Your lives both bid fair to be filled with danger,” Florin replied gently, “whether you slay this creature or not. Striving for something of worth ere—or even as—you die is better than drifting in cowardice to your graves, is it not?”
“Fair speech,” Shandril replied. “I will aid you,” she added firmly, putting a calming hand on Narm’s arm. “But tell me more of this balhee … this mist-thing.”
“In truth,” the ranger told her calmly, “I know little more. Lore holds that the releaser of a balhiir is the only one who can destroy it. Elminster of Shadowdale knows how to deal with such creatures, but like all who use the Art, he dare not come near something that drains magic. Items of power fare poorly against the creature. It foils spells, too!”
Shandril frowned. “Why should it be destroyed? Doesn’t it serve as a leash to dangerous Art?”
“Fair question,” Florin replied. “Others might answer you differently, but I say we need Art. There’re prices to be paid for it, but shrewd use of magic helps a great many people. The threat of Art rising, unlooked for, keeps many a tyrant sword sheathed.”
Shandril met his level gray gaze and decided she could trust this tall, battered man.
Beside her, Narm asked in a rush, “The balhiir was about me for some time—it drained my spells, and those of the witch-mage! Will I be able to work Art again?”
“So long as the balhiir is not present. It’ll move to absorb unleashed magic if it can.” Even as Florin spoke, the twinkling cloud stirred about his blade, spiraled up, and left him. In a long, snakelike mist of lights, the balhiir drifted back the way the ranger had come. Florin started after it. “Follow me, if you will. If not, I’ll leave the torch.”
The two hurried after him. Shandril glanced back once at the Shadowsil, but all she could see was one boot jutting from the rocks. As they clambered through the hole Florin had dug, that foot seemed to move in the dancing torchlight. Shandril shivered.
Rauglothgor’s lair was much changed. The ceiling had broken away and fallen. The gleam of treasure was gone beneath rubble and drifting dust. There was a mighty rumble and clatter of stones to their right, as the eternal dracolich rose slowly from under a castle’s worth of fallen rock. Far across the chamber, the longhaired lady mage of the Knights faced that tumbling tumult and prepared a spell.
Bright pulses of magic burst from her hands, streaked across the chamber, and struck the dracolich—outracing the winking, hungrily descending cloud of mist.
Rauglothgor roared anew in pain and fury, his deep bellows echoing about the cavern. “Death to you all! Drink this!”
There was a flicker of Art, but nothing more. The balhiir had reached Rauglothgor. The dracolich roared in surprise and rage. Its great claws raked huge boulders aside as effortlessly as a cat scrapes loose sand.
“What, by all the gods—?” it raged. Its hollow neck arched, its jaws parted, and flames gouted forth in a great arc.
Fire rolled out with terrifying speed and washed over the lady on the far slope. The air was filled with the stench of burning.
As the flames died the Knight mage stood seemingly untouched, her hands weaving another spell.
The sparkling mist danced about her—the balhiir had ridden the fire across the cavern.
“Jhessail,” Florin called, “a balhiir—the Art is useless!”
“So I see,” Jhessail replied calmly, ignoring Rauglothgor’s roars. “Well fought, Narm. Come down here! How fares your companion? She looks worth our trouble.”
Shand
ril found herself smiling. “Well met, Lady Jhessail.”
Jhessail sprang to meet them, peering at Shandril. “You show a good eye, Narm.” She smiled before glancing across the cavern at Rauglothgor. Florin and the elf, Merith, stood with drawn blades facing the dracolich. “Let’s proceed elsewhere, lest none of us see another meal to get acquainted over.” The mist swirled away from Jhessail, heading for the elf’s steel.
“Your blade!” Florin warned.
“If drained it shall be, then drained ’twill be,” Merith’s merry voice floated back up to them. The two warrior Knights charged the bone dragon together.
“Gods be with them both,” Narm said, shaking his head in admiration. The words had scarcely left his lips when there was a great crash and roar of moving rock. The world was falling on them again.
“Orders have changed, I tell you. Let us pass!”
The mage’s dark eyes narrowed. “Orders from whom? And why came they not to me?” He waved his hand at the mountains around. “Nothing passes the Gates of Doom without my say-so. And my orders come from Naergoth Bladelord himself!”
“Stand aside, wizard—or Malark’ll soon be hunting among his magelings for your replacement,” the warrior at the head of the mule train said menacingly, his hand going to the hilt of his sword.
The mage gave him a brittle smile and lifted one hand almost idly. From the rocks all around, men in dark harness sprouted, javelins ready in their hands. The wizard said softly, “You’re not passing the Gates of Doom.”
The warrior looked back over his shoulder to the two men standing there. “Just as I told you, Ruld—so where’s the ‘telling argument’ you promised?”
“Here,” one of the men said. His arms shot up high into the air, darkening into glistening black, impossibly long tentacles that arced above them all to plunge down at the gaping wizard.
Javelins flew, but through their storm tentacles came down like rain—gods, there were two men sprouting tentacles!—and curled almost lovingly around the wizard. He had time to shout before he was plucked off his feet. A casual twist of rippling black tendrils tore his head from his body in a spray of gore.
Javelin hurlers screamed—those who weren’t strangling on tendrils or falling silent among the snap and crunch of bones.
The warriors in the mule train stared open-mouthed at the slaughter. Not a few backed away from their tentacle-sprouting fellows.
Two javelin hurlers did not give ground. Instead, they sprouted tentacles of their own. Black serpentine arms streaked out, sent screaming mules bolting in all directions, and worked their own slaughter among tangled reins and scrambling men.
Soon, nothing lived in that narrow pass except four tentacled figures—two pairs of them, staring warily at each other.
One peered across the bloody, twitching bodies and asked, “Magusta?”
Tentacles stiffened. “You know me?” Magusta drew in a deep breath. “You’re of the Blood of Malaug!”
“We are.” The voice was as silky as it was cold. Dark tentacles wavered … a warning? A signal?
“And your names might be …?”
“Our own business.”
There was a little silence. Magusta observed idly, “You know the decree of the Shadowmaster High forbids what we’re doing.”
“Dhalgrave’s decrees don’t apply to us.” The reply was a sneer.
“You’re not of House Malaugrym?”
Bright magic burst forth at her without warning—no muttered incantation, no powders or gestures, just flame and fury and searing, darting bolts.
Beside her, Stralane grunted in pain, and Magusta shuddered as the same agony clawed through her. Another spell flared, and she frantically reshaped herself, gaining wings and almost hurling herself into the sky while they were still forming. “Brother! To me!”
Stralane’s wordless roar told her he was close behind. Magusta raced up the vale to the gate she’d found earlier—the reason that dead wizard had really been here, a ruined doorway that led to the other side of Faerûn—and plunged through it. If they were swift enough to reach the second gate before their attackers caught up to them …
Magusta raced as she’d never raced before.
“Who were they?” Magusta panted. “Their Art outstrips any of the House I know of!”
Stralane shrugged. “Elders covertly defying Great Dhalgrave … or exiles … or bastards reared here rather than in Shadowhome.”
“But they know of his decrees,” Magusta said, frowning.
Stralane laughed bitterly. “You think we’re the only ones of the Blood to break the rules? The only Malaugrym to intrigue?”
Magusta gave him a scornful look. All-too-familiar sudden fury rose almost to choke her. “Brother, let me remind you just how far you’d have gotten without my schemes!”
A whirlwind of memories exploded into Stralane’s mind and broke over his struggling will. He roared, overwhelmed in a sea of reveries and shouting mental voices. None of them was quite loud enough to drown out Magusta’s cold laughter.
“We’ve lost them,” he said bitterly. The last of his tentacles dwindled away to human arms again. “Now we’ll have to watch behind us, every last living moment!”
“Haven’t you been already, Brother?” his companion asked. “Surely Dhalgrave keeps watch over Faerûn as if it’s his own personal garden. What one cannot have, one covets hard. Those two must be his spies!”
“Mother talked more to you than she ever did to me, Sintre. Does Shadowhome know of us?”
“This was not a topic Mother spoke of, or encouraged questions about … but I did learn some things. Mother so hated Dhalgrave—something personal between them left her fearing his attentions and feeling wronged—that she faked her own death and fled here. Most of House Malaugrym believe Amarune died childless … and so know nothing of us. When—posing as another—I mentioned the name ‘Architrave’ to some elders, they assumed I was speaking of Malaug’s long-ago human servant; there was no hint that they suspected one of the Blood bore that name.”
“So Dhalgrave must be our sire,” her brother murmured.
Sintre sighed. “Perhaps, Architrave, perhaps. What does it matter? She’s too dead now to tell us!”
In a high tower in Waterdeep, a scrying globe floated above a table. A voice hissed, “Oh, that I dared walk with you, children! How can you be so foolish, as to stand in the open talking of us and Shadowhome and the Shadowmaster High! Your recklessness will bring his regard down on you … so I must remain dead to you, too. Have my curses, ungrateful spawn. Amarune must bide lonely here for years—perhaps centuries—with no company but these idiot humans!”
Pale, shapely fingers closed around the edge of an iron-bound door and tightened in sudden fury. Eyes flashed like two golden flames. The hand clenched into a fist, scooping a piece out of the massive iron plates as if they were but crumbling mud.
“ ‘Too dead now,’ indeed!”
“Do as you please, Brother,” Magusta said coldly. “Go and get yourself killed. I shall hunt those two Malaugrym. I’d sent covert magic to pry at the mind of that wizard, but it yielded also a glimpse of the male’s thoughts. They’re up to something—something involving spellfire, and using it as a weapon against the Blood.”
Stralane shrugged. “That only confirms that they’re kin to us and love wild schemes, not that they’ve any real hope of smiting House Malaugrym with some new spell … how many of those have you seen brandished about? ‘Sure to sear the shadows,’ every one of them—yet still Great Dhalgrave sits on his throne and sneers decrees that forbid us this playground.”
“Forbid us, yes, but stop us, no,” Magusta said. Her smile was part wolf and part snake. “Unless you think those two were his agents.”
“Truly,” Stralane replied, “I care not. Play with your schemes and speculations. Leave me to my hunting and slaying and wenching and devouring.” Halfway into taking wyvern shape, he turned his long neck and looked back at her. “We have the power.
Why not take the shape of every last lusty ruler and conquering warlord and sinister spellhound in the world? Who’s to stop us?”
“The two we fled from,” Magusta told him. “The Doom of the Shadowkin, this Elminster, other wizards, the gods—”
“Bah! Sister, you waste my life with your talk! Always, talk talk talk! Find your own amusements—this world sports more conspiracies than you can choke a wizard with; take part in some! Or find another Blood-she and scheme together—but let me be!”
A wyvern bounded into the sky and raced away northward like a brown bolt of lightning, snorting with its frenzied wingbeats.
“So be it,” Magusta murmured, watching him go. “Yet I fear I’ll be ‘letting you be’ buried, ere long. Stralane, you always were a willful fool.”
Shandril hurt all over. Why did tales of adventure omit the constant pain and discomfort? Shandril rolled over, feeling aches and twinges. Stones must have fallen on her. Nothing seemed broken, thank the gods.
It was dark, but the cold flash of beljurils told her she was still in the dracolich’s grotto.
“Narm?” She was alone again. “Narm!” she shouted. Her cry echoed back, her only reply. She drew a deep breath. Where to go? What to do?
The faintest of scraping sounds came to her left. Someone was moving quietly over the stones.
“Who’s that?” Shandril demanded, feeling for her dagger. “What do you want?” Finding her blade, she stabbed out wildly.
“A less pointed greeting would do, for a start,” a voice growled at her elbow.
Shandril jumped, startled.
The voice took on a gentler tone. “Well met. I’m Torm, of the Knights of Myth Drannor. No more noise now. It’s best no one think you still live. I’ll be your eyes and ears and hands; wait here.”
Hope leaped in Shandril. She reached out—but her fingers brushed only rapidly receding cloth. “My thanks, Torm,” she hissed quickly, “but why aid me, a stranger?”
The answer was faint as it moved away. “I’ve a weakness for fair ladies who reach for daggers and face the unknown unafraid. Now hush, and wait.”
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