Cloak of Shadows

by Greenwood, Ed

  Shar laughed, her unbound hair swirling about her as she leapt lightly around one corner of the tomb, fencing with an imaginary foe. The blade felt alive in her hands. Yes! With this, she could rule the world!

  At swordplay, at least. She turned to look at the will o’ wisp, and asked, “Will I see you again?”

  “No,” came the flat reply, and to Shar’s ears it sounded sad. But when the voice came again, it was calm. “No mortal shall ever see this aspect of me again in Faerûn. It is a fading thing I inherited, a shell of ghosts and shadows. I cannot wear it well.”

  The wisp drifted toward the stairs. “Go now, Sharantyr. Make us all proud of thee.”

  As she went up into the glade and saw the white glimmering ring that must be the gate to take her home, Shar thought she heard a familiar old voice, a mere whisper behind her. “Well said. Very well said. Ye’ll do fine.”

  Elminster? She was still frowning in excited puzzlement when she came out into the moonlight of Daggerdale and found Syluné waiting for her.

  * * * * *

  Silverymoon, Kythorn 18

  Milhvar’s spell tapped into existing gates—or so the sinister, smiling Shadowmaster had told them. Huerbara didn’t trust him one whit, but she had no choice but to place herself in his hands, and watch him like a hungry hawk for any sign of treachery.

  It would come. Oh, it would come.

  Hopefully not on this foray … probably not. The cold truth was that the three of them weren’t important enough to be rivals whom the Shadowmaster might want to eliminate. But enough speculation.

  Milhvar’s whirling magic had just taken them somewhere dark. As the spell-motes of the gate they’d linked into scattered around them, the three cloaked Malaugrym stared around, looking for any sign as to where they might be. Their mission was to find Alustriel, the High Lady of Silverymoon, and attack her. They were to slay her if possible, but the real test lay in finding out how much the cloaks concealed and protected them against her.

  First to find her.

  Ignoring the startled gasps and hissed warnings from behind her, Huerbara strode across the darkened chamber to the only door she could see. This had better be Alustriel’s palace, or Milhvar would soon be hearing about his overblown cleverness.

  The door was unlocked. Beyond stretched a short passage whose left-hand wall soon became a row of tapestries, implying a larger room in that direction. Huerbara walked forward without hesitation.

  Behind her, the two male Malaugrym exchanged glances, shrugged, and followed.

  Voices were coming from beyond the tapestries. Male voices, at ease.

  “She never seems to know what she wants to buy, but she always comes back with something. Or rather, a pile of somethings.” A glass clinked down on a table.

  There was a chuckle. “You can sell more to a woman who knows not what she wants to buy but is restless to have new things in her hands.”

  There was a snort. “You make her sound like a brothel cruiser, not the lady with the largest collection of once-worn gowns in Silverymoon.”

  “And you want to wed her. Have you thought this through?”

  Kuervyn and Andraut smiled silkily at each other and turned toward the tapestries, hands going to the slim blades they wore at their belts.

  Huerbara shot out two long, silent tentacles to wave them to startled stillness. She glared at them and gestured down the passage, beckoning them on. There’d be time for such amusements later, unless, of course, they had the whole palace after them by then.

  Bringing two such flamebrains along on this mission could prove very dangerous to her, she reflected, following the passage through an archway and into the rear of what seemed to be a gigantic wardrobe.

  And then a slim hand reached out in front of her and unhooked a dust-shroud-covered gown from its place on the crowded bar. Huerbara smiled tightly and shot a slim tentacle around that corner, high up. Eyes swam down the tentacle to see her quarry, and guide that appendage around its throat before it could utter a sound.

  Huerbara stepped around the corner with a pleasant smile on her face, another tentacle snaking out to take the gown from suddenly desperate fingers. The maid whose throat was wrapped in her tentacle—a pretty wench with great dark eyes and a pert little lace-framed bosom—stared helplessly at her for a few moments in terrified bewilderment before Huerbara broke that pretty neck with a deft twist, and the light in the eyes faded away. Then she handed the body back out into the passage to amuse the two louts, felt them take it with low laughs of anticipation, and shifted to match the maid’s form perfectly.

  A moment later, Shantra the Underdresser stepped unconcernedly out of the wardrobe room, dust-bagged gown in hand, and looked up and down the corridor she found herself in. Two magnificently mustachioed guards in opulent uniforms were seated before a closed and barred door at one end of the passage, playing leapknights at an ornate octagonal board. Light, soft voices spilled from two open doorways in the other direction.

  The guards looked up, so she gave them a half-smile before she turned away. One guard looked back to his game immediately, but the other guard frowned. His eyes narrowed as he watched Shantra—his beloved, who’d never looked at him with such pleasant lack of recognition before—walk away and pass through one of the doors. She’d never walked like that, either, all sinuous glide and none of her happy bounce.

  He got up, saying softly, “A moment, friend Silder. I’ll be right back, but come with your sword if I bellow.”

  He left the other guard frowning up at him and went down the passage as quickly as stealth would allow, hand on the hilt of his blade.

  In the room he was approaching, three ladies were looking up at the maid with surprise on their faces. “Why, Shantra, what’s amiss?” one of them asked, gliding forward.

  Huerbara looked at her as if bewildered. “L-lady?”

  “The dust bag … why’ve you brought the gown still in its dust bag?”

  “Ohh,” Huerbara said, trying to look confused—easy enough, she thought wryly—and bent her knees, sagging forward and clutching at her head. “I feel … not right … I …”

  “What befalls?” The quick, anxious male voice came from behind her. One of the guards?

  “Shantra’s been taken ill,” said a voice very near, as gentle hands took her forearm and elbow and guided her to a stool.

  “That’s not Shantra,” the male voice said firmly. “Her walk is wrong, and she didn’t recognize us.”

  “And she spoke differently,” said one of the women slowly. Then the third woman said quietly, “Speak, Shantra. Name us.”

  Oh, shadows take them! Not three rooms into the palace! She shook her head. “I …” she said, trying to sound broken.

  Then she heard the soft swish of a sword being drawn. Huerbara turned toward the guard with a snarl, extending her breasts into tentacles to hold his eyes, while a third shot out to take his feet from under him.

  “Doppleganger!” he bellowed, fear and anger in his eyes as his sword slashed down. Huerbara struck it away with her tentacles, shifting her innards hastily to avoid a lucky blow, and then stiffened with a real shriek of pain as something slim and hard went through her from behind, burning …

  She looked dully down at the sword tip protruding from her breast and saw that it was silver. Huerbara wept in agony and did what she had to do, let half her body fall away and be lost to her. With the only arm she had left, she firmly grasped the belt buckle embedded in her flesh and said, “Brathaera.”

  As the guard battled her writhing tentacles, she simply melted away. He crashed forward helplessly into the wall as Silder came charging around the corner to find three ladies staring down at an amorphous mass on the floor that had one human arm protruding from it—and a slim silver sword cane through it.

  “A doppleganger, here?”

  The double-chinned, haughty lady who held the handle of the sword cane shook her head. “No. Much worse than that.”

  “Oh?” Silder
asked, raising his eyebrows. “And how would you know, Mistress Iraeyna? Fought many monsters in the nurseries of the palace, have we?”

  Mistress Iraeyna, Chief Dresser of the Ladies’ Wardrobe, fixed him with cool eyes as she calmly undid the front of her gown and pulled the fabric wide. The two ladies on either side of her gasped.

  Both guardsmen gulped—not at the formidable bosom exposed to their gaze, but at the black silk waist-corset just beneath it. Its straining fabric held a too-large tummy firmly in check and sported a silver pin: a harp between the horns of a crescent moon, surrounded by four stars.

  “You know this, Silder? Haerarn?” she asked crisply. Both guards nodded dumbly.

  “Then follow my orders, as the High Lady’s decree binds you to. Into that wardrobe! There may be others—and suspect everything of being a foe, from stool to garment. They’re shapeshifters far more deadly than any dopplegangers! Strike to slay, and thrust a silver piece into any wound you make, if you can!”

  She bent swiftly and retrieved her sword cane. As she strode forward, Mistress Iraeyna snapped back, “Dansila and Ormue, go straight out that door and lock it behind you. Take your keys and don’t tarry for anything! Go to Lady Amathree. If any guards try to stop you, tell them it’s Harper business and order them to escort you. If you can’t find Lady Amathree, ask for Alustriel herself. Say that there are Malaugrym in the palace! Got that? Malaugrym!”

  The wardrobe door banged open, and Silder and Haerarn burst into the room. Silder’s eyes were wide with amazement, and Haerarn’s were wild with the awful realization that he probably wouldn’t find Shantra alive.

  It was worse than that. Her body was dancing between two laughing Malaugrym, suspended on tentacles that ran through the maid’s corpse from one body opening to another. As they commented on how odd or delectable this feature or that organ looked, the Malaugrym were devouring her. Swooping tentacles that ended in eel-like jaws were tearing at her bared flesh, and blood was raining down on the dusty floor.

  Weeping, Haerarn charged savagely into one shapeshifting monster, and Silder gulped and cautiously approached the other. Mistress Iraeyna strode forward and simply slashed a tentacle with her sword cane. The tentacle writhed and flopped in convulsions, slapping the floor, and she stepped past it and drove her cane deep into one flowing form. It stiffened, convulsed, and abruptly let go of the choking Haerarn. As he crashed to the floor, his face a dangerous purple, Iraeyna turned toward the other shapeshifter.

  It slapped Silder into one wall with fearsome force—amid the crash, Iraeyna heard the sharp crack of ribs giving way—and then was gone. There one moment and vanished the next.

  The Chief Dresser of the Ladies’ Wardrobe frowned. With pursed lips she whirled back to the first Malaugrym and thrust her silver cane into it repeatedly until all sign of movement had ceased. Then she sat down on its gray-brown bulk and began to lace up her bodice.

  When she saw Haerarn’s eyes focus on her again, she said briskly, “Well done, armsman. Now get up and unbar the door, will you? A lot of folk will be rushing in here shortly. Ring for service, too; Silder’s hurt. Oh, and you’d better put away that leapknights board before your swordlord sees it, hadn’t you?”

  Haerarn hadn’t managed to carry out more than one of these instructions before a dozen armed men boiled into the wardrobe, weapons drawn.

  “Thank you, gentle sirs,” Mistress Iraeyna said serenely, “but it’s all over now. You’d best check along the back passage, though, in case there are more lurking about.”

  “The day that Swords of the Guard take orders from ladies’ dressers,” the oldest and burliest swordlord told her, his moustaches bristling, “is—”

  “Belt up and stow it, sirrah,” she told him sweetly, causing some of the men who were goggling at the dead tentacled thing under her to look up and grin. “I give you orders by the High Lady’s decree.”

  “Oh, aye, and how did you manage that, with her at the other end o’ the palace from here?”

  With a sigh, Mistress Iraeyna began to unlace her bodice again.

  12

  Marshaling the Madfolk for Battle

  Daggerdale, Kythorn 18

  Sharantyr held up the blade admiringly. Its blue outshone the moonlight and turned the center of the meadow into a ring of eerie beauty. Syluné flew out of the tree-gloom toward her, and Shar smiled in welcome and said, “Look what the Lady Mystra gave me!”

  Syluné danced around her in the air—the first time Sharantyr had ever seen her do so, rather than drifting or walking along upright—and then smiled and said, “I’m proud of you, Shar. Yet perhaps it’d better be sheathed instead of waved about, here in the wilds by night. What say you?”

  Sharantyr sighed and shook her head. “Foolish Shar. Back down to the everyday with a crash.”

  Syluné chuckled. “Be not so downfallen, Shar. Have I called you ‘child’ yet?”

  “No.”

  “Nor will I again,” the Witch of Shadowdale told her, “now that you’ve faced a goddess and held your bladder.”

  Shar grinned and shook her head but slid her new blade obediently into the scabbard at her side. Though it seemed far too large to fit there, it went in. Syluné shook her head.

  “No. Better back in its own sheath. Don’t forget your own blade, either. It’s served you well for years, and will again.”

  Shar looked back at the blade she’d driven into the turf, standing forgotten in the moonlight, and blushed. “How could I—?”

  “Relax, lass,” Syluné told her gently. “You’ve faced divinity and are apt to be mazed in the wits for a while yet. Recover your blade and draw the new one again. There’s something I want you to see.”

  Shar did as she was bid, and as she held the blue blade up again, she became aware of a flickering white ring in the trees that she was sure hadn’t been there before. She pointed at it with the blade, which immediately gave off a satisfied-sounding little hum. “Is that what you wanted me to see?”

  “It is,” Syluné said. “Use the blade to work it. Don’t fear, for it will not take you far.”

  Wondering, Shar approached the ring. It flickered, and the blue radiance of her blade pulsed as if in reply. As she stepped into the ring, white motes of light circled her, making her skin tingle. The blade pulsed again, as if asking her if she wanted to call on it.

  She willed the gate to take her wherever it went, and the sword flared a bright blue before her eyes.

  When the light faded, Shar looked hastily around. It was warmer—much warmer—but she seemed to be standing under the same moon, at night in an open ruin. The manor!

  She looked down and found herself standing in the midst of the campfire, which had been banked over with turf for the night. She sprang back hastily, boots scraping on the stone, and saw Syluné floating into view around a wall.

  “Some folk,” Shar said sternly, waving her blade, “have a very strange thing where I carry a sense of humor.”

  Syluné’s light laughter tinkled on a night breeze, and a sleepy male voice said, “All day you have to gossip, and you must do it when honest men are trying to sleep?”

  “Belkram,” Shar told him smugly, “there are no honest men here, only you and—”

  “What’s that?” Belkram cried, pointing at her blade. “You didn’t have that when I went to sleep!”

  “Fast, isn’t he?” Syluné observed lightly.

  “Not half so fast as he’s going to have to be, if I find he’s awakened me for no good reason,” a deeper, more sour voice said from another corner of the roofless room.

  “Well met, Itharr!” Shar said gaily, waving her blade at him.

  “Where’d she get that?” Itharr asked Belkram irritably. The Harpers, both propped up on their elbows in the moonlight, exchanged glances and shrugs.

  “I haven’t a scrap of an answer to that,” Belkram said testily. “Tomb-robbing, probably. That’s usually how such baubles turn up. But she’s been waving it around like a young ma
id displaying a doll at her birthday feast since I woke up!”

  “And still is,” Itharr said, tossing his blanket aside. “Where’d you get it, Shar?”

  “In a tomb,” Shar said lightly, tossing it from hand to hand. “Like it?”

  “Here,” he replied, coming toward her, “let’s have a look at it!”

  She sprang back, fetching up against a stone wall suddenly enough to make one of the horses snort in its sleep, and told him, “Looking is generally performed with the eyes, Itharr. Only thieves need to ‘look’ at things with their hands!”

  Belkram chuckled. “Right enough, Shar. Tell the man.”

  Itharr halted, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Seriously, Shar … where’ve you been?”

  “In the Elven Court,” she told him quietly, meeting his incredulous gaze with level eyes, “in a tomb somewhere close to Myth Drannor.”

  “And how did you find this tomb?” Belkram asked softly, disbelief heavy in his tone. Sharantyr saw his gaze dart to her empty blanket, to be sure he wasn’t facing some apparition—or shapeshifter.

  “Mystra took me there,” Sharantyr told him, wonder in her eyes, “and gave the sword to me. A weapon against the Malaugrym, she called it, and charged me to use it against them. Are you with me?”

  “Shar,” Itharr said gently, “we’ve been with you since we met in a ruined castle by the desert, and watched a crazy old mage kissing a rotten old archlich. We’re still with you.” He tilted his head to regard her coolly. “But are you sure your wits are steady?”

  Sharantyr held up the blade. In response to her rising exultation, it blazed bright blue fire around her. “You think I’m imagining this?”

  “Well,” Belkram told the nearest wall brightly, “it’s certainly nice to share the same delusions as one’s closest friends …”

  Syluné chuckled. “She’s telling the truth, Harpers, and she’s not crazed. Excited, yes, but meeting Mystra does that to one … as you should both remember.”