Cloak of Shadows

by Greenwood, Ed

  An onlooker would have judged Belkram more handsome than his fellow Harper, but like Itharr and the lithe Knight of Myth Drannor across the table, he wore the nondescript harness of a working ranger. They looked, Belkram was sure, like three weary hireswords at ease, not champions of good just back from saving the world from disaster and magical chaos.

  The lady ranger lifted her slim shoulders and let them fall in a shrug, noticing a lock of gray hair at Belkram’s temple—gray that had not been there a few days ago. “That vision was brought to me by a linking spell known to some elves and elf-friends. Flambarra linked to me when she cast it, so she could show me things of import, should it be necessary. It shows the caster in her last nine breaths before the spell is ended.”

  “In this case, by her death and not her choice,” Itharr murmured, taking up his tankard again. “When do we ride to avenge her?”

  Sharantyr shook her head. “That was a brigand’s arrow, and a quiverful to match it were found on a man who chose to defy the wrong patrol, three days ago.” She took up her wine and stared through it. “We live in dark times, friends.”

  Silence fell in that dim back room of the Old Skull Inn, and the fire in the grate sent fingers of light and shadow dancing across their faces. A roar of laughter came faintly to their ears from the distant taproom. Belkram stirred, grinned at Sharantyr, and said, “But not all is gloom, or should be. We’re the great heroes who rescued Elminster, remember?”

  “That sounds perilously like a cue for an impressive entrance,” an all-too-familiar voice said from beside the Harper. They all started, whirling to look at the still-closed door of the room. A mist was coiling lazily in front of it. As they watched, the tendrils of mist grew suddenly darker, then seemed to drop and change in a whirl of colors and flashing movement. Elminster of Shadowdale stood regarding them, a twinkle in his eye.

  The three companions at the table sighed—in Itharr’s case, it was almost a groan—as the Old Mage shuffled unconcernedly forward. His pipe appeared out of thin air behind him with a pop and floated along in his wake as he came to the table, lowering himself with a grunt onto the bench beside Belkram.

  The taller and more ruggedly handsome of the two young Harpers looked into the mage’s old, bearded face with something approaching fond amusement. “How long have you been here listening?”

  Belkram’s tankard rose stealthily from the table and darted toward Elminster’s waiting hand as the wizard of Shadowdale said mildly, “Long enough to tell this lass here—”

  He gestured with a glance, and Belkram’s eyes, following the wizard’s gaze across the table to where Sharantyr sat with a dangerous look growing on her face, saw his tankard flying past. He made a grab for it, missed as it impudently shot straight upward, and overbalanced heavily onto the table.

  Sharantyr’s wine danced, and Itharr chuckled as she made her own—successful—grab for drinkables. As the lady Knight swept her goblet away from disaster, Elminster continued unconcernedly, “—that Flambarra was found by Elion of Talltrees, and by the grace of Tymora lives again.”

  Sharantyr stared at him for a moment in astonished silence. Then tears of joy rained from her, and she erupted across the table, crushing the stolen tankard against Elminster’s cheek as she embraced the Old Mage. Around her tearful thanks he said gruffly, “Agh! Urgghh! I—The deed was not mine, lass, but if ye’re bent on thanking me, well, my mouth is over here, and—”

  Obedient lips found his enthusiastically, and his words trailed away in a confusion of frantic murmurs. One of the Old Mage’s hands waved vainly above the lady ranger’s smooth shoulders, gesturing frantically but not too frantically.

  Itharr took in the sight with one bright eye. Turning deliberately to his Harper colleague, he remarked casually, “All in Faerûn is not dark these days, indeed. Why, I could not help but notice, as we came here to partake of this excellent beer tonight, that the price of potatoes has fallen a full two coppers the wagonload, heralding a goodly harvest without doubt.”

  Belkram nodded his head and replied heartily, “This is true, good Itharr, and yet surpassed by even more heartening news! Our internal ablutions cannot help but be aided by a similar drop in the price of ale, a drop that by the all-surpassing favor of the gods bids fair to coincide with a rise in the quality of the brew. Richer, nuttier, and more warming in the chest, by my halidom, and—”

  “You can belt up now,” Sharantyr told them both in dry tones. “I had to release him, to draw breath.”

  “And yet,” Elminster put in merrily, in perfect mimicry of Itharr’s conversational tone, “I find the surpassing memory of her kiss is a fiery balm upon the hitherto-cooling flames of my old heart! I could not help but notice, moreover, that her tears taste like the finest salt wine of Tashluta, and her eyes are like two dark and welcoming stars in th—”

  Sharantyr plucked the gently smoking pipe deftly from where it floated in the air by the Old Mage’s shoulder and thrust it into his mouth. “Glup,” he added intelligently, ere smoke began to leak from his ears and nose.

  The two young Harpers shouted their laughter at Elminster’s slightly disbelieving expression … and then at the dangerous calm with which he spat the pipe out, watched it scud away trailing smoke across the room, and turned to regard Sharantyr.

  The Lady of Shadowdale shrank back a little and brushed her long hair out of her face with one impatient hand as if preparing for battle, but met Elminster’s gaze with a bold, silent calmness of her own.

  Elminster’s eyes blazed at her for a long, tense moment. Then the Old Mage turned his head and said lightly, as if nothing had occurred, “I observed the newborn pricing of potatoes too, and wondered in passing if it meant other goodly harvests, and a general time of plenty across the Dragonreach!”

  “Well,” Belkram said in a voice as dry as the bottom of the empty tankard he had retrieved, “if magic everywhere continues to fail and go wild, farmers’ll certainly have less interference in taking their crops in, and we’ll see fewer armies on the march to devour it all.”

  Itharr sighed. “You would have to drag things back to that.”

  Belkram spread his hands. “And is this chaos of magic not the true driving force of the times? And do we not share a victory, born of this very matter? A victory that bears celebration?”

  “I’ll ring for more beer,” Itharr replied, pulling on the stout cord that hung by the wall near his corner seat.

  “The simple solution to ill tidings,” Elminster informed the ceiling. “Have more to drink.”

  Belkram shrugged. “With thirsty wizards at the table, I’m in little danger of getting more to drink, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Elminster’s reply was a snort that seemed as eloquent as several speeches. They were still chuckling when there was a rap on the door. “Ale,” came the voice of a server from outside.

  “Ride in!” Itharr called in reply as Sharantyr took another sip of her wine and Belkram made an innocent grab for the floating pipe.

  The door swung wide, and they had a momentary glimpse of a young boy’s face, set in concentration over a tray laden with tankards, before he hurled tray and all at them.

  Blue-white fire roared out of the heart of the tumbling pitchers and steins, thrusting into the face of the Old Mage like a bright, unstoppable lance.

  Blue radiance flashed around the calm wizard, and the roaring shaft of devouring fire rebounded from him, snarling back at its source while the surprised and shouting Harpers and lady ranger were still hurling themselves back from the table and snatching at their sword hilts.

  One tardy tankard melted away in the path of the fiery bolt and was hurled aside in the form of hissing droplets of molten metal. Beyond them there was a thin scream as the white light found its source and winked out.

  Sharantyr and the Harpers were leaping forward by then, blades drawn, as the staggering, hunched thing that had been a serving boy a moment before sprouted long, snakelike tentacles in all directions. Coiling like
a forest of serpents, the tentacles lengthened with terrifying speed, growing sharp edges and points like blades. Without pause they slashed and stabbed at the charging Harpers, slithering and looping around them.

  Amid this sudden chaos, Elminster calmly pulled the bell rope for beer again, even as a single tentacle leapt past the shoulders of his three embattled companions, growing to an impossible stretch over the entire length of the table as it raced toward him. Its skin seemed to split and shrivel away as it came, revealing a needlelike, flashing sword. Elminster calmly murmured an incantation as the slim steel stabbed at him.

  As he completed the spell, the Old Mage heard the tentacled creature grunt in pain as someone’s blade struck home. Sharantyr gasped as a tentacle tightened around her, and then the sword that sought Elminster’s life passed through his arm as if it were made of smoke and plunged deep into him!

  He felt nothing as the blade plunged, probed, slashed, and was driven home again, cleaving the air freely as if he weren’t standing there. El looked at his three friends, hacking at growing forests of tentacles around them, saw Belkram look back apprehensively, and snapped, “Drive your blades deep, all of you!”

  An instant later his spell took effect. Blue lightning crackled from Itharr’s blade to Sharantyr’s, then from hers to Belkram’s steel as the three swords quivered amid rubbery, shapeshifting flesh and hot, rushing blood. The creature they fought shuddered as smoke rose from it. Then it collapsed suddenly away from around their blades like the contents of a fresh-broken egg, flowing to the floor in an untidy heap.

  “You’re protected by an ironguard spell?” Belkram asked Elminster, watching the released sword pass down through the wizard’s body to clang and bounce on the floor.

  “Always,” Elminster said, his eyes fixed on a disturbance in the air that had just sent his floating pipe tumbling aside.

  As his hands came up to hurl blasting magic, the disturbance whirled and spun—and became a thin, wild-eyed woman in tattered black robes, her silver hair swirling around her as if it were made of lightnings.

  It was the Simbul, Witch-Queen of Aglarond, who glared anxiously around the room, the red fires of an awakened slaying spell running up and down her arms, seeking the danger that had menaced her beloved.

  Itharr tried not to shiver at the sight of her. Her gaze froze him on its way to where the Old Mage stood staring down at one smoking, shriveling tentacle as it shrank away from him in death.

  “The Malaugrym?” she said in an awful whisper of fury and promised doom.

  Elminster stroked his beard thoughtfully and nodded. “Again,” he said as the door behind her swung wide. There was a startled gasp, and another platter of tankards crashed to the floor.

  The sorceress whirled around, red fire blazing around one raised hand, in time to see a serving wench, face white in terror, moan and faint dead away, crumpling to the floor atop her spilled burden.

  Behind the Simbul, the Old Mage’s head came up, face brightening into a smile of welcome. “Will you take ale, love? It’s richer, nuttier, and more warming in the chest, by my halidom, as a man I trust said not long ago!”

  At the look on the Witch-Queen’s face, Sharantyr burst into helpless laughter, followed by Belkram. It was a perilously long moment before the Simbul’s dark gaze flickered. Then she too began to laugh, a low, raw, throaty chuckle that made both Belkram and Itharr think of leaping flames and hungry caresses and wilder things.

  “Why is it,” Elminster asked his pipe as it hung obediently nearby, fragrant wisps of smoke still rising from it, “that folk always seem to feel the need to laugh at my converse?” Fresh gales of mirth rocked the ruined room around him at his words. The Old Mage looked around at his friends sourly and then readdressed himself to his pipe. “Is it my looks, d’ye think? My sensually musical voice, perhaps?”

  Wisely, the pipe chose not to answer.

  2

  This Wizard

  Must Be Destroyed

  The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 14

  The oval of light flickered and faded. As the dark and ever-hungry shadows crept and slithered back to reclaim the heart of the Great Hall of the Throne, those who’d watched death and laughter in the back room of an inn turned away from the darkening scrying portal. Some were hissing in anger as they went, and some were grim and silent, as their natures governed them.

  “Poor entertainment,” rumbled one lord, gliding through the shifting shadows in the shape of a cone of many eyes. He grew several long, spiderlike legs, two of which reached out to select a glowing bottle from a forest of glass containers in the vast black marble chamber.

  Other Malaugrym muttered agreement, but a single clear, cold voice said, “We did not gather for ‘entertainment,’ Uncle.”

  Eyes swam swiftly around the cone to look back at the one who’d spoken so, but the cone did not turn or cease its gliding passage. “I know better than some young and loose-lipped kin, Halastra, why we’re here,” came the chill reply. “Guard your tongue, if you’d live to an age approaching mine.”

  “Another lecture? Are such words all you know how to speak?” a third voice put in. It seemed to issue from a coiling, serpentine form gliding half-seen through the mists, bound for the same destination as the cone. A low rumble of anger followed in the cone’s wake as it went, expelling an empty bottle, but the lord did not accompany the rumble or the bottle with any words of reply.

  Smoothly the cone began to rise through the mists, drawn up by the magic of the lift-spiral. Several half-human forms followed the cone in the ascent—bipedal figures that changed height and girth in a continuous, uneasy shifting but always seemed to have tails, clawed limbs, and spines or barbs here and there. The serpentine creature—sporting a succession of small pairs of leathery wings along its entire length but having no head—joined them, rising to where the mists hung darker and shadows seemed to drift menacingly like cruising sharks.

  “Who was it who dared—and died?” a voice asked in hushed tones. The ascent seemed to be bringing a certain caution, or fear, upon all.

  “Does it matter? Those who die fools are best forgotten,” the conical lord said sternly, but another voice said clearly, “Thalart, get of Galartyn and Chasra.”

  “Another of us slain by the wizard Elminster,” a new voice snarled. “His doom grows heavier by one more death.”

  “What can be heavier than an eternity in torment?” someone else asked.

  “Such a small imagination,” an older voice observed. “Learn to think on such things first, and speak after.”

  “We’re very open with judgments today, it seems,” the serpentine Malaugrym observed.

  “I’d remind you,” still another voice said, “that light or heavy, an eternity in torment is a price this mortal wizard hasn’t yet paid.”

  From ahead of them in the mists came a deep, rolling boom, as if a great bell had tolled. Its echoes brought an end to converse for a time as the shapeshifters ascended. Bubbles occurred here and there in the shadows around them, brightening as they rose swiftly past. Dark shapes drifted beneath them. One shape strayed too near the spiral, and a Malaugrym made an exasperated sound and lashed out with a hissed spell.

  There was a bright flash of falling sparks, a brief squalling, and the half-seen bulk convulsed away into the roiling shadows. A large, hooked black claw whose cruel curves stretched as long as the cone-lord stood tall tumbled into the spiral in its wake, severed cleanly by the searing magic. Trailing a last burst of sparks, it fell past a pair of Malaugrym in tall, gaunt human form before the power of the spiral took up the claw and it began to drift slowly around and upward. Another Malaugrym kicked the appendage aside, growing a clawed foot to do so. Driven out of the spiral, the severed claw fell from view, dwindling into the concealing mists, and was gone.

  The bell tolled again, shaking the shadows, and the cloaking mists fell away in tatters. “Come,” a deep voice rolled out, seeming to chase away shadows before it. “My time is not so endless
that I can waste it on watching the vain parades of laggards.” The last wisps parted, revealing the assembly high above the Great Hall to those drifting up the final arc of the spiral.

  Sixty shapes, perhaps more, stood around the Shadow Throne, a vast, soaring spindle that pulsed its customary amethyst of magic and amber of bloodfire, and held the ruler of them all—Dhalgrave, head of Clan Malaugrym. Pale blue fire encircled one of his wrists as he leaned forward to watch the newcomers join the crowd around the floating throne.

  In the shape he now wore, he seemed human—a naked, sexless human whose feet ended in a lion’s pads; whose ivory body ended in a long, delicate tail; and whose flesh swam with many small fanged mouths that opened, snapped, drooled, and chattered soundlessly. His eyes were two dark, glistening pits that seemed to see the innermost thoughts of those he watched. And his kin, the greater and the lesser, looked upon him and were afraid.

  Yes, Dhalgrave was dying, as all knew. Yes, the fires of fury that had seen him victorious through vicious kin strife down the ages were fading, leaving him placidly calm, almost cowardly it seemed. Yet he wore this weak human form—albeit handsome, even as the elves of Faerûn were comely, slender and fine boned—because doing so enabled him to control the greatest treasures of the clan. The very things that Malaug had crafted when he took the title Shadowmaster and strode from the strife of the dawn human kingdoms of Faerûn to conquer the demiplane of Shadow and build this vast and ever-changing Castle of Shadows. Or at least, the two items that had given Malaug and his ruling descendants mastery over the kin: the Shadowcrown and the Doomstars.

  The first pulsed and winked on Dhalgrave’s brow, darkness glimmering and sparkling in an endless, deadly chaos as it let him read the thoughts of any of the blood of Malaug he locked gazes with. More than that, it was the center of a web of spells and counterspells that waited to defend Dhalgrave against attack, or were set to howl through the castle at his death; and it gave him other powers whose secrets were much rumored but little known.