Cloak of Shadows

by Greenwood, Ed

  He lifted her off the tree limb as gently as he could, flinching as a swarm of fireballs drifted through the now-blackened stones of the keep and exploded together, sending fresh tongues of flame roaring into the trees. He turned her over.

  She was breathing. In his arms she coughed weakly, spat blood—she’d bitten through her lip, Belkram saw—and murmured, not opening her eyes, “Tempus … have you come to take me?”

  Touched, Belkram knelt amid the tangled and smashed trees and laid her on the ground. Finding her sword, he put it into her hand, kissed her forehead, and said, “It’s me, Shar—Belkram the Bold! I’ll be back for you, Lady Knight. Lie still here … I’ll be back!”

  “Belk … ram?” she breathed, head lolling back. The Harper glanced back at her once, sudden moisture in his eyes, as he ran out into the clearing. Something that looked like a griffon or a giant eagle—but had three long tentacles curling out from each shoulder instead of wings—was writhing around on the ground, obviously hurt. Beyond it, something like an owlbear with a snake’s body was hugging Itharr and trying its best to bite his face off at the same time. Farther off still, amid the stones of the keep, several men were blinking in and out of existence, hurling spells from time to time at foes who didn’t seem to be there. One of these men looked like Elminster.

  Darting magic missiles and flickering, slow-drifting motes of light from some other spell were streaming around the clearing, around them all, like a swirling school of fish. Belkram shook his head as he sprinted toward Itharr.

  A bolt flashed down to the ground in front of him, splitting a stone block twice his size with a crack that left his ears ringing. Belkram fell sideways, rolled, and found himself coming up face-to-face with a robed man who had long fangs, rich-looking robes, and flickering globes of radiance around both hands. The man’s startled face twisted into a sneer, and he raised one hand threateningly—so Belkram thrust his blade through that mouth. A moment later he was hanging on through a squalling, bruising battering of blood and frantically shifting flesh. It melted away from his blade, ichor gushing out in all directions, and flowed around his legs, looking like the putty Belkram had once mixed to set glass in an Athkatlan window. Cold fear rose inside the Harper, and he stabbed down frantically with his blade, carving at the thick, unyielding, slowly tightening stuff.

  The mutating flesh shuddered and spasmed suddenly, then undulated away from him in snakelike coils. Belkram snarled, snatched out his belt dagger, and went after it, slashing wildly with both his weapons.

  He was still slashing and hewing ribbons of the stuff away in all directions when a bright swarm of magical bolts swam down into the clearing and raced at him.

  Once, Belkram had taken a dagger through the palm of his hand. The attacking bolts felt like seven such daggers in swift succession. The pain smashed the breath out of him as the force of the striking magic missiles drove him back into an untidy heap on the ground. It was like being struck in the short ribs over and over again, Belkram thought, struggling to get his breath. Through swimming eyes he saw some of those glowing mages still standing on the air above the keep. Itharr … he’d been going to help Itharr …

  * * * * *

  Rage burned in Itharr Jathram all the time. Slow and buried deep, but there all the time, like coals glowing under turf for the night. Once in a while—not often, but eventually—that building rage rose and warmed and boiled up … and the burly, quiet Harper slew things.

  He’d said as much to Storm, that first day at her farm, sitting on two stumps in the forest behind her house. “Lady,” Itharr had told her softly, “you must know this. I’d not be the best citizen in a land at peace. From time to time, I find … I must kill.”

  Storm had merely nodded, sober eyed, and said as gently, “I can see it in you. Yet know this, Itharr. You are welcome in my house, now and to the end of your days.”

  And for that, Itharr would love her forever. Her face then, and her words, came back to him now as he stood struggling in a grip much stronger than his own and felt the white heat of his rage blinding him. Those jaws snapped just shy of his cheek once more, as he twisted his neck desperately aside and snarled his defiance. His arms—and the weapons he thought he still held, though numbness was creeping over him, and he could no longer be sure—were pinned to his sides in an ever-tighter rope of flowing flesh. These shapeshifters could kill merely by wrapping part of themselves around you and crushing!

  He tried to throw himself sideways, but the Malaugrym held him, swaying like a tree in a high wind, and he knew he struggled in vain. “Tymora, aid me now,” he hissed, ribs aching under the increasing pressure, and the shapeshifter laughed out loud. Eyes dark with fury, Itharr tried again to overbalance the thing and bring them both to the ground, but the Malaugrym held him upright with easy strength and tightened its grip still more.

  He was fighting for breath now, a far-off and faint roaring rising in his ears. Soon it would overwhelm him, Itharr Jathram knew, and he’d go down, raging still, into the darkness that waited for everyone.

  * * * * *

  The pipe winked more slowly this time. Syluné wondered if it would work once more if need be. Well, she’d best make sure she didn’t need it.

  The Malaugrym were learning. Instead of hurling more than enough magic at their foe and having it all go to waste when the pipe teleported Old Elminster away, they’d split up—a few blade barriers had taught them the wisdom of that—and were sniping at him from here and there around the ruins now, hoping to force him to transport himself away from one attack and right into another.

  It had almost worked twice now. Syluné took quick stock of the spells left in the various devices that festooned the body she’d taken to calling “Old Elminster”—not a hard task, as so little was left—and decided to use invisibility.

  She ducked through an arch, making sure one of the shapeshifters saw her, became invisible—the nice thing about these rings was their speed and silence—and darted right back through the archway again. She saw the shapeshifter confidently weaving a spell that would hurl a swarm of fireballs through the archway, to burst on the other side of the wall, and grinned. Two other Malaugrym were creeping through the ruins and should arrive at the other side of the wall at just about the right time.

  Now to find Shar’s blade. Belkram had laid it in her hand; he’d need her healing ring, too.

  It might have to serve both Belkram and Itharr, if she could get this body where it had to go in time. Syluné was sprinting across the clearing, slipping on the dew driven out of everything around by all the fire spells, when a beam of flame swept across her path, too close to miss.

  Someone could see Old Elminster. That was it, then, she thought, as the body plunged into roaring flames with hands clasped over its eyes to try to keep some sight. Old Elminster staggered and almost went down; Syluné kept the shuddering limbs going, trailing smoke, toward the trees.

  Doom would be on them all soon now. She heard fresh laughter and the delighted exclamations of newcomers overhead but did not bother to look up. Of course the more craven Malaugrym would wait until the kill was certain and then come to watch.

  The body’s eyes were still swimming with tears. She could not see whatever it was that burst nearby on her left, flinging Old Elminster to the right like a rag doll. The body struck something—flesh—and she realized that it must be Itharr and the shapeshifter, still straining together. She snatched at the belt the body wore, found the burning-hot dagger as the burnt leather crumbled away and fell into ashes, and slashed at the ropy flesh she could not see, again and again, cutting at one spot, trying to make it release its hold on the trapped Harper.

  Then the ground came up and struck the body’s forehead. Bouncing helplessly on the turf, Syluné saw a fading flash and knew that a ruthless Malaugrym mage had decided his kinsman was expendable, and struck them all with a corrosive bolt. Would this body’s limbs hold together? At least she felt no pain and could drive the body to do things when
injured that no living man could have managed—but was getting up and reaching that sword and ring one of them?

  7

  Mushrooms and Revelations

  Daggerdale, Kythorn 16

  “This is the great Elminster?” The Shadowmasters were laughing openly now, and quite a group was gathering in the air above the last tower. Forty or more looked down into the smoldering clearing where the blackened shell of Irythkeep more or less still stood, and watched the spindly ashen figure that had once sported robes and a beard stumbling toward the trees. Far too many of the blood of Malaug lay sprawled and lifeless or barely alive about the clearing, but no matter. The Great Foe was going to die!

  And when the gods tired of playing in Faerûn, there’d be no one left to stand against the might of the Malaugrym … and at last Toril would be theirs. Gates winked in the air, and more kin arrived, swarming out across the air to stand above the clearing and look down.

  “If we blast his body away from the knees up, will the feet keep walking?” one amused youngling asked, but another said, “No, no. Move what he seeks away just as he’s about to grasp it, and keep moving it so it’s always just ahead of him and he never gets it!”

  “Don’t toy with him!” an elder’s voice roared out of empty air. Someone without magic, using the scrying portal’s powers to speak through it. “Slay him now, or he’ll win free somehow, and well have won nothing!”

  The youngling who’d suggested blasting all but the Old Mage’s feet turned to laugh at the voice, a sneer on his face. But then his form changed, his features holding a moment of shocked disbelief before they melted away into rubbery dun-purple nothingness and he fell away, tumbling helplessly toward the stones far below.

  He was followed by another, and another. By now, the Malaugrym were looking puzzled and alarmed. “What—?” one barked intelligently.

  “Mushrooms,” another said, watching them smash into the ruins and shatter into pulpy looseness. “Giant mushrooms!”

  “But who—?”

  Bewildered, angry Shadowmaster mages stared all around, seeking a foe. More of them fell away, helpless to cast spells or fly in fungoid form, to die below, while others snarled, “Some sort of spell to enforce a single shape? Blasphemous! Who would devise such a thing?” and still others warned, “Get back! Away from this place! It must be some spell of the Foe. It can’t have a large range!”

  More mushrooms fell, and suddenly a Shadowmaster snarled, “You! You’re doing it!” and launched a rain of spell-lances at another Malaugrym standing on air not far away. A frantically conjured spell-cloak didn’t form in time, and the accused one tumbled backward, transfixed by at least three lances, to spin slowly through the air, lifeless.

  Mushrooms continued to fall, and one of the other Malaugrym raised his hands and pointed at the lance hurler. “No, it’s you!”

  The attack was struck aside by a shielding spell, but on all sides terrified and furious shapeshifters lashed out at each other. Spells flashed and burst all across the sky in sudden boiling fury until a great voice roared out of thin air, echoing all around them. “Cease! Hear me, blood of Malaug!”

  Sudden silence fell. All Malaugrym knew the voice of the Shadowmaster High. “Attend me!” the deep voice boomed on, as a few more Malaugrym melted into mushrooms and fell away.

  A mighty magic boiled in the air, and the blood of Malaug were swept through the sky as leaves tumble in a gale, flung aside until they found themselves in two ragged groups of a dozen or more on either side of an open space where a lone figure floated, a young Malaugrym sorceress known to some as Dralarca.

  “There is the traitor!” Dhalgrave thundered. “Destroy her! She’s—”

  Dralarca smiled and waved cheerily—and Dhalgrave’s booming voice was gone in midword, cut off as if by a knife.

  The Malaugrym stared at her, and one more of them dwindled into a mushroom and fell.

  After a moment more of shocked silence, all of the mages standing on air spat out incantations at once, waving their arms like a forest of crawling spiders. The air seemed to shatter under the force of so many cleaving, blazing, bubbling, and roaring magics.

  Blue-black and vivid purple flashes leapt from where they met, and an instant later all of the spells came flashing back at their casters in a gale of tortured air that flung Shadowmasters across the sky for miles.

  When the stars could be seen again, and the last ruined tower of Irythkeep had stopped rocking, the false daylight Dhalgrave had conjured above the clearing remained. In it, the awed Shadowmasters could see the small figure of Dralarca standing calmly, waiting for them. She waved a casual hand, and the nearest Shadowmaster became a mushroom.

  As the fungus fell to earth, Eldargh turned to Huerbara, whose teeth were chattering in fear as she clutched Taernil, and rumbled calmly, “Is your magic good enough to hurl antimagic that far?”

  She nodded once, white-faced and mute. The old giant turned to the Shadowmaster standing on his other side. “Yabrant?”

  “Yes. Count us in together. And Taernil, if you have any sort of attacking spell, hurl it her way first, to mask us. Useless, mind. I’m sure it’ll be coming back at us soon.”

  Eldargh counted them in. Three antimagic fields rolled out in the wake of a stinging cloud of red fire-mites, as another two mushrooms fell away from on high.

  Other Shadowmasters had launched attacks, too. A scarlet flash, fading to pink, cut the sky before their own spells hit home, and for a moment there was a confusion of whirling bones in the air around Dralarca as someone’s spell went wild. Yabrant paled at the sight. “Magic’s starting to twist, here. This may be our only chance.”

  Then an explosion rocked them as old Halar was blown apart by his own returning spell, not far away. One of his hands tumbled past, trailing flames, and Huerbara buried her face in Taernil’s chest with a little scream, shuddering uncontrollably.

  A multitude of small flashes lit the air near Dralarca, and Taernil’s cloud came drifting back at them, fading away before it reached the spot where they stood. At that moment a gasp of fear and hatred from many throats heralded their work. The false seeming of Dralarca was gone, and in its place stood a wild-eyed woman whose silver hair danced around her like silver flames. She wore black robes that were more tatters than garments, and she laughed, hand on hip, and bowed to Eldargh. “Well spun, sir!”

  “The Simbul! It’s the Queen of Aglarond!” someone shouted, and the woman smiled and nodded.

  Then she threw her arms up, her eyes flashed, and two rings of crimson light burst from her palms to run slowly down her arms and fade away around her torso. Something was growing there, a web of pulsing red beams of light encircling her—no, encaging her!

  “What’s that?” Yabrant whispered slowly. “Has someone caged her?”

  “No,” said Eldargh in a deep, despairing voice. “Oh, no.”

  From that web of light they saw a beam stab out, and then another. One leapt across the sky and struck Eldargh before Yabrant or Taernil could move or speak, and a cage of red beams sprang into being around the old Shadowmaster.

  Yabrant frowned and quickly wove a shearing force-blade, but when he swept it across the humming, thickening cage, there was a flash and he was hurled back, minus his sword arm.

  After a moment, looking both shaken and thoughtful, he grew himself a new arm. By then the cage had begun to shrink and darken.

  “Farewell, old friend,” he heard Eldargh rumble, and the giant’s head turned toward him.

  “You will be remembered,” Yabrant hissed quickly, straining to see and meet Eldargh’s eyes as the giant darkened and shrank within the dimming cage. There were other cages now, he knew, but this web of spells held one of the few kin he cared about, and he could do nothing to save Eldargh.

  The cage was shrinking swiftly now, as Huerbara whimpered, draining Eldargh’s life essence as it dwindled. It shrank to a thumb-sized globe of light and then winked out, leaving of Eldargh only a little drifting dust
.

  Yabrant turned to Taernil. “We must leave this place. Help me spin a gate!”

  As they worked magic in feverish haste, they heard the Simbul’s merry laugh followed by the call, “A little fire, Malaugrym?”

  They tried to ignore the roar and crackle of flame—adorned with screams—that followed, though Taernil stammered an incantation that almost ruined their whole effort.

  And then a green flame seemed to grow in the air before them, rising swiftly into a spindle. Taernil almost leapt for it before it was fully formed. Yabrant held him back with a hastily grown and ungentle tentacle, and snarled, “Take Huerbara through before you!”

  Taernil snarled back at him in wordless fear, eyes wide and staring, but did as he had been ordered. Yabrant looked back once as he followed, and saw a handful of other gates opening in the sky. One of them suddenly blossomed into an explosion that sent Shadowmaster bodies tumbling through the air as the Simbul laughed wildly.

  Yabrant shivered and let the gate take him. It was not a time to tarry, or he’d be just one more of the kin who would die this day—and just how many was that by now?—before that human witch was finished.

  * * * * *

  “Ye gods!” Thaern gasped to his left, face paling, but Randal Morn looked quickly to his right, alerted by an unfamiliar sound. After a moment, he realized it was Brammur, on his knees and praying to all the gods he could name.

  He started to chuckle and then decided that prayer might not be such a bad idea. Before he could go to his knees, however, the world exploded in thundering voices and rolling balls of fire, and he froze with the dozen men around him and stared up into the sky, at the many dancing, spell-hurling figures that stood high above the ground in a drift of daylight that should not be there.

  It was a long while later when Brammur got to his feet, slapped his dazed lord’s arm, and asked matter-of-factly, “Use caution, did you say, m’lord?”

  * * * * *