Cloak of Shadows

by Greenwood, Ed

  The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 16

  “Soulcages,” Bheloris said slowly. “I haven’t seen one of those—”

  “Since Albarat died,” the rolling voice of Dhalgrave put in from above, startling them all. Shadows shuddered and curled away into the corners of the Great Hall as they all stared at the scrying portal.

  “I dare not reopen the portal,” the Shadowmaster High went on, his voice raising echoes. “The witch-queen has spun an antimagic spell that someone foolishly cast at her across it. To strike at her or open a gate now would be to unleash that damaging magic here.” His voice gained strength, so his next words would carry down distant passages of the Castle of Shadows. “We have a new foe, blood of Malaug!”

  “I told you ’twould be a disaster,” one old Shadowmaster said to another, who shook his head and replied, “And I believed you. I expected deaths, aye, but not this!”

  “This is worse than Shimmerglade,” still another muttered.

  Neleyd leaned close to Bheloris. “Shimmerglade?”

  “A place in northern Faerûn—in Impiltur or Damara or somewhere around there—where six of our strongest elders trapped Elminster, and were all slain in spell-battle.” He sighed. “Once again, it seems that a trap intended to be the death of the Foe became a trap for us. Mushrooms! No mouth or limbs to work magic, no way to fly … and death before anything can be done. Worse than that, she has some spell that overmatches our shapechanging, to trap us in a form of her choosing.”

  “Perhaps now some of these flamebrains’ll think twice about sneering at human mages and strolling out to attack Elminster on any idle afternoon,” said a tired voice from the back of the hall.

  As his words ended, a green flame flickered in the shadows, pulsed once, and widened into a gate. Several Shadowmasters took a step toward it, prepared for the worst, but out of the pulsing portal stumbled a Malaugrym who trailed smoke, and several others panting on his heels. Another gate was opening now, and another. An alert elder banished the first one with a hissed spell that sent shadows swirling around it in a swift spiral. Disheveled survivors poured into the hall, stalking grimly past an elder who smirked as he drawled, “Hail, conquering heroes of Malaug!”

  Gates glimmered out of existence here and there, and the cursing Malaugrym who had come through them sought the comforts of their own chambers. As they hurried past, Kostil stared at the scrying portal and shook his head. “What did I say?” he offered. “Always we ignore the strengths and trickery of the folk of Faerûn.”

  “No more,” Bheloris promised softly, staring into the distance. “No longer.”

  Neleyd shivered at the elder’s tone, but infinitely worse was the look in Yabrant’s eyes as one of the last gates disgorged a weeping Huerbara, a silent Taernil, and Yabrant, who stopped by Bheloris and Kostil and said shortly, “Eldargh didn’t make it.”

  Then he strode away into the shadows, leaving them with Huerbara’s tears.

  * * * * *

  Daggerdale, Kythorn 16

  The light in the sky above faded to a soft purple glow, and the Queen of Aglarond rode it down to step lightly onto the smoldering turf in the heart of Irythkeep. She wrapped arms around the blackened form of Elminster with an exultant laugh. “Well met,” she said happily, bestowing an impulsive kiss on lips that were no longer fringed by hair.

  My thanks, Sister. Syluné’s mindtouch lasted for only a moment before the Simbul stepped back, surveyed the Old Mage critically, and frowned as she raised a hand and gestured deftly.

  White hair appeared on the scorched wizard’s chin and upper lip, and raced across the skin, growing with almost comical speed, until the Queen of Aglarond judged its length and appearance right. Then she did the same for the old wizard’s head. “There! Yourself again!” she said with a wink.

  “The others need your spells rather more than I do,” Elminster said dryly, waving a hand around the clearing. “And that Malaugrym”—he pointed—“may still live.”

  The Simbul nodded, mirth suddenly gone, and hastened to where Itharr lay sprawled amid ichor and many ribbons of slashed flesh. Belkram lay not far from him. The queen went to her knees amid the blood first. As the glow of her synostodweomer flared around the motionless Harper, she turned her head to watch Sharantyr rise stiffly among the trees, and said in amusement, “I notice you healed the pretty lady first.”

  Elminster’s head shook in denial. “Nay. I never reached her. Her ring did the work.”

  “No matter. This one will be fine. He has a handsome face, I’ll grant.” She pinched Itharr’s cheek, watched his eyes flutter open, and rose with a merry laugh to go to Belkram.

  It took longer this time, and her laughter was gone when she came back to Elminster. “Much in the way of repairs was needed yonder,” she said, “but he’ll live—this time. He’s been raised many times, that one.” She tapped her lips thoughtfully. “Perhaps he’s lost all fear of death.”

  “He’s not the only one,” Syluné said dryly, through the Old Mage’s lips. The Simbul turned to stare at her and then gave her a sudden smile. “My apologies. I sometimes forget. You are very good at this, you know.”

  Elminster gave her a sardonic little bow. She dimpled and replied with a certain unqueenly gesture, and the Old Mage waved his resignation from the lists and sat down on a stone.

  “The Malaugrym now have a new Great Foe, I daresay,” he observed gruffly. “Ye’d best watch thy backside.”

  She smirked. “As attentively as you do?”

  Elminster rolled his eyes and sighed. Her merry laughter was drowned out by a sudden thunder of hooves. He had half-risen in alarm before four lathered and familiar horses came into view around a blackened wall.

  “Your mounts. Some people are so careless with their horses,” the Simbul said with a flourish. El frowned at her.

  “It’s not as if we weren’t rather busy …”

  She waved his unspoken thanks away, looked around at the dazed lady Knight and the two Harpers coming slowly across the trampled turf toward the Old Mage, and said, “That was fun. Yet the Realms around await me, and there’s much to be done, what with avatars and lesser idiots running around stirring up trouble. I must go.” She turned eastward, took a step, and then turned back and pointed up at the fast-fading purple glow. “You need not fear attack from above for a time. Magic’s all too apt to go wild up there, now.”

  Then she was gone, without sound or drifting spell-smoke to show she’d been there. Elminster stared absently at where she’d been for a moment, scratched one of his bony arms, and thought on what paltry magic he had left. The wisest thing to do would be to return to Shadowdale, to stock up, if that wouldn’t be going into a worse trap than Irythkeep had turned out to be.

  “What a battle,” Shar said in a voice that was not entirely steady.

  Elminster gave her a wry smile. “Ye missed the best part, lass,” he said gruffly. “It was raining mushrooms.”

  “Mushrooms?” The chorus was bewildered, as Belkram and Itharr joined them, still peering critically at their weapons and looking around in apparent disbelief.

  “Malaugrym who’d unwillingly taken the shapes of mushrooms,” Elminster explained. “They burst quite thoroughly when they land on a rock. Or a tree.”

  Belkram frowned. “Did we … die?”

  “Nay, nearly, but the Queen of Aglarond thought ye had a pretty face … or no, ’twas him she considered handsome”—Itharr managed to raise an eyebrow and sketch a courtly bow at the same time—“and healed ye. Sorry to disappoint thy sense of glorious tragedy.”

  “So what do we do now?” Sharantyr asked softly, looking around at the smoking ruins and at their still-restless horses. “You can’t have much magic left.”

  “I was wondering if it would be best to return to the dale, or go looking for a Harper cache. There’s one not too far from here.”

  “What?” Belkram asked innocently. “When we’re having so much fun?”

  His companions answered
this observation with various rude sounds.

  “We can’t count on any more unexpected rescues, from the Simbul or anyone else,” Elminster warned. “Certain Harpers have been told to watch out for us and aid us if need be, but most of ’em hereabouts are fast swords and little more.”

  “We need a little more,” Sharantyr agreed softly, and shivered suddenly. “I did not think any of us would live to see these stars again,” she added as they looked at her.

  “You need not!” a voice spat, and from around the nearest tumbled wall came a woman in dark robes, running hard, her face contorted in hatred. A fey purple glow, tinged with black, blazed out of her furious eyes, and she held high a black dagger.

  “For the glory of Bane—die, Cursed One!”

  She flung the dagger as she came, and Shar couldn’t draw her sword in time to strike it aside. It wobbled—a bad throw—but struck Elminster’s cheek hilt first before spinning away into the night.

  * * * * *

  Behind another nearby wall, a tall black stone that stood by itself bent forward a little to peer at the fray with eyes that grew very bright. Then the stone hissed a soft word, and smiled a crooked smile.

  * * * * *

  As the dagger left it, Elminster’s cheek fell slack, looking suddenly lifeless. The glow around the pipe in his breast pocket faded, and the three rangers in their burnt leathers, blades drawn to face the running woman, looked back in sudden alarm.

  “A disjunction!” Belkram snarled, who had seen such things before.

  “Gods spit on all!” Itharr added angrily, and strode forward to meet their attacker. Elminster backed away from them, looking horrified.

  Behind the wall, the stone smiled wolfishly and grew an arm that gestured almost lazily behind him. “Perast aum izeebuldree,” he said conversationally, and Brammur, Randal Morn, Thaern, and all the men with them froze together, blades raised, in poses of cautious stealth.

  “Thank you,” the stone told them courteously as it melted into the shape of a man whose left arm ended in a sword blade instead of a hand. He peered at the motionless men for a moment to be sure he’d got them all, nodded in satisfaction, and dug his right hand into a pouch at his belt.

  From the other side of the wall came the ring of steel and a scream of rage. “Some sort of magic shields this place!” a man’s voice shouted.

  “Aye,” the man who had been a stone agreed pleasantly. “So it does.” Bringing forth a handful of pebbles, he cast them in a wide fan onto the ground and muttered something else.

  With terrifying speed, the stones began to grow. The dark forms rising from them had burly arms, tusked mouths, and were … hobgoblins!

  “Come,” he said simply, and jogged around the corner of the wall. Howling, the hobgoblins poured after him, jerking out brutal weapons and jostling each other to be first at the kill.

  * * * * *

  Spheres of vividly glowing air—of all colors, from a rather glorious ruby red to a putrid green—were drifting around them now, expanding from Elminster’s person and various minor enchantments worn or carried by his three companions. The disjunction was working all too well.

  The woman who’d hurled the dagger struck a pose just beyond the Harpers’ blades and laughed in triumph. “When Elminster lies slain,” she cried, eyes shining, “remember that it was I, Arashta Tharbrow, who struck his magic from him—for the greater glory of Bane, whose foremost servant I am!”

  “Oh?” Itharr asked curtly, as his blade cut a line of shrieking sparks from the invisible shield protecting the sorceress. “He’s reduced to hiring madwomen now, is he?”

  She howled at him like a dog in fury. “Blasphemy!” she spat when she found control enough to form words. Shaking in anger, she threw up her hands to smite the hard-faced ranger with magic—and then her face changed, one of her hands flew to her mouth, and she went pale.

  Her face contorted in frantic fear, and her hands flashed in the gestures Belkram knew would unleash a lightning bolt. Snarling against the pain he expected to come, he kept hacking at the unseen barrier that protected her, and suddenly realized it was giving way. Instead of ringing off something rock hard and unyielding, his blade was going a little way into something that rushed past it like floodwater, resisting but allowing the steel’s passage.

  And then he realized no lightning had come to snatch breath and life away from him.

  “Look!” Itharr said. “Her eyes!”

  All three of them peered past their hacking blades. The weird purple glow had faded away, and the green eyes behind it looked very young and very frightened as Sharantyr’s blade broke through the fading shield at last and slid into the woman’s breast with silken ease and speed.

  The sorceress went down, blood bubbling from her mouth in a last, soundless scream, her mouth moving to shape words that would never be heard. The disjunction swept away the last of her shield as it had robbed her of spells, and with shield and spells went a cloaking wall of shadows, revealing to the rangers a snarling, hooting group of hobgoblins racing toward them across a few paces of open grass.

  “ ’Ware!” Belkram shouted unnecessarily, and then battle was joined, the skirling clangor of steel on steel drowning out all coherent speech. The hobgoblins were reckless, snarling hackers of the sort skilled warriors disparagingly called “meat-choppers,” but they were big and coming in fast, and there were a lot of them. If one Harper caught his blade against a hostile weapon, the slashing steel of the next foe could well be into his ribs before he could recover. Wherefore the three ducked, dodged, and dove as they never had before, swords and daggers together weaving a deadly wall of darting death that took down their hulking attackers with a stab in the eye here and a thrust through the ear or throat there, never slowing to parry and hack at chests or flanks.

  Shar got a single glimpse of a tall black figure running easily at the fore when the charge began. Then the being thinned suddenly, like a wisp of smoke, and the hobgoblins thundered past and crashed into the three rangers without their dark companion.

  That seemed like an eternity ago now, as she twisted and strained and set her teeth against the numbing force of the hacking blows raining down on her deflecting blade. Shar’s lungs were burning with the effort of meeting those strikes, and sweat was running down her wrists and dripping from the end of her nose as she danced, leapt frantically out of reach of a roundhouse slash—which sank deep into the side of another hobgoblin, she noted with glee—and found herself spinning through the heart of the gathered hobgoblins.

  A startled face loomed up at her, and she slashed just beneath it, opening a throat with her whistling steel as she launched herself in the other direction, hoping to stay ahead of any direct pursuit. Rounding to the left, she found herself behind an unwitting foe and hamstrung him with a ruthless slash along the backs of his knees. With a grunt of surprise, the next hobgoblin turned his head from trying to gut Belkram, and Shar drove her dagger hilt deep into one staring eye.

  It lodged against the bone as she overbalanced, and she brought her sword up to protect her back as she jerked her arm back and forth wildly to haul her fang free.

  It came away at last, but by then hobgoblins were swinging at her from three sides. Shar flung herself down flat on her back, and as their blades crashed into each other overhead, kicked out hard against a massive hobgoblin foot and got the momentum she needed to roll away.

  She rolled right into Belkram, who leapt high to allow her passage under him. Sharantyr came to her feet in time to see a snarling Itharr take a slash along his ribs as he leaned to drive his sword into the tusked mouth of his assailant. The sword continued upward, pushing the hobgoblin’s helm off on the top of its head. Itharr let go of the blade at once and tore the hobgoblin’s own black-bladed scimitar from its failing fingers, bringing it back immediately in a swing that took two fingers off the sword hand of the next hobgoblin.

  As that one screamed, it reeled back into another, who slipped and got Belkram’s blade in its t
hroat. Shar fenced with another, gritting her teeth, until Belkram reached out and put his dagger into its armpit.

  Then it was over, and they still stood, three panting, sweating, bleeding humans among a confusion of groaning, writhing, or silently sprawled goblinkin. They sought each other, wiping sweat from their eyes, and then stiffened at a cruel laugh from beyond the battle.

  They whirled as one, in time to see Elminster’s body topple in a fountain of dark blood as a black blade scythed through his neck. The blade was held by—no, it seemed to actually be one arm of a tall black figure. The Old Mage’s eyes stared accusingly at them as his head dangled, long white hair firmly in the dark man’s grip.

  “Futile fools!” the figure sneered, and backed away from them into a whirling green light that was growing behind it.

  Heartsick, Shar took three running steps and hurled her blade. But as the weapon flashed end over end, the laughing figure faded away through the gate and made the portal wink out, so her steel bounced on dark turf in the night.

  She felt the tears beginning as she turned her head and saw Belkram and Itharr looking down at the headless body. Then they looked up at each other. Belkram licked dry and trembling lips twice before he managed to ask, “What do we do now?”

  8

  To Get a Head in This World

  The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 16

  The shadows swirled uneasily in the vast, gloomy Great Hall of the Throne as a shimmering occurred in their midst, a disturbance that—in light of recent events—was swiftly surrounded by a dozen grim-faced elder Shadowmasters, hands raised to deal magical death.

  The roiling shadows they eyed so narrowly parted into a green flame. The flame deepened swiftly into a man-high spindle and then widened into a tunnel. A breath later, Issaran of the blood of Malaug stepped proudly out of the spiraling emerald depths with a severed human head gripped in one fist, a staring man’s head with long white hair and a longer white beard.

  He waved his other hand, calling bloodfire down from the Shadow Throne to illuminate himself—an act of insolence for any lesser kin when a Shadowmaster High ruled in the castle. Murmurs in the shadows reminded him of that, but he cared not a whit. This was his moment of glory, and everyone must see it lest the Shadowmaster forget the reward he’d promised. The amber glow drove back the darker shadows, making the center of the hall a grand and glorious place.