Cloak of Shadows

by Greenwood, Ed

  He stiffened with a grunt of pain as she embraced his injured shoulder, but as their lips met Syluné said through them, Well done. Now I can speak to you both at once. Be very careful. Beyond this door is one of the most powerful Shadow masters, waiting for you to come through. He’s too strong to fight but will leave you alone as tools to be used later, if you impress him. Act fearless and mysterious … and no clowning, Belkram. If you do this, you just might live. Leave the secret door open behind you—wedge it with that table leg over there—so Amdramnar can come to the rescue if you need rescuing.

  “If he tries what he intends with me,” Shar told her darkly, letting go of Belkram, “he’ll need the rescuing.”

  “Come back, lass,” Belkram said pleadingly, and puckered his lips. “I was getting used to it!”

  “Later,” Sharantyr told him briskly, taking up her blade and cutting the air with it a few times. “We’ve got a castle full of Malaugrym to deal with first!”

  “Couldn’t I just buy you a nice meal,” Belkram offered, “and a little too much wine? No?” He looked mournful. “It used to work,” he told Itharr wearily. “What went wrong?”

  Itharr started to laugh, then clutched at his temples in pain, wincing. A few breaths later, the ring’s magic had repaired him enough to sigh, swing himself off the table, and hand the ring to Belkram.

  “Heal thyself, dolt,” he said, “and hurry, or we’ll have a lust-crazed Malaugrym all over her, and that’ll sure slow her down when we start running through this place trying to escape.”

  Belkram put on the ring and looked at Shar. “Ready?”

  She lifted her sword in response, and the two Harpers drew their blades again. Shar stepped between them and did as Syluné directed. A part of the wall that looked as solid as the rest grated suddenly aside. Belkram was ready with the table leg.

  The room beyond was crowded with ornate bookshelves. The narrow aisle between them ran to the right, and the three rangers followed it cautiously, peering around a corner to look straight into the politely smiling face of a handsome man in a maroon monk’s cassock, who sat at a table with several books open in front of him.

  “Please be seated and take your ease,” the man said, closing a book. It immediately lifted itself off the table and drifted over his shoulder, heading for a gap on one shelf. “No danger awaits you here.”

  A book floated out of the smooth ranks of tomes in another bookcase, heading for the table. As the volume opened itself for the Malaugrym’s scrutiny, the three Faerûnians saw that another book was also on the way. All over the library, volumes were drifting unhurriedly about in a continuous, graceful dance.

  “And your name, sir, would be?” Sharantyr asked softly, sitting down. The sword in her hand flashed once.

  With smooth effort, the man avoided looking at the blade—beware, this one is very dangerous, Sharantyr told herself—and said, “Milhvar of the Malaugrym. And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

  “Sharantyr of Shadowdale, in Faerûn,” Shar told him, “and these are my … companions, Belkram and Itharr.”

  “Adventurers come to explore the demiplane of Shadow?” Milhvar asked. “Or do you pursue a private purpose?”

  “We came here by accident.” Belkram replied, “but have become friends of Amdramnar. Others in this castle have not been so friendly.”

  “I’ve just heard talk of a duel or some such unpleasantness in the Hall of Stars,” Milhvar said, briefly glancing at the contents of the tome in three places and then sending the book on its way again, “and you do seem to travel with cutting edges in plenty, ready for use. Have you any plans here in Shadowhome that I can help you with?”

  “To get home again,” Itharr offered. Milhvar raised his eyebrows.

  “That’s all? Just to leave, before you’ve seen more than a handful of rooms and a few warring kin? It seems a poor return for the dangers you’ve faced, surely?”

  “I—” Shar began, but broke off, half-rising from her seat, when two other Malaugrym came hastily around a bookshelf.

  Milhvar looked at her raised sword, then over his shoulder at the approaching pair, and said to her, “You can safely put that down. We rarely brawl on sight here in the castle, and never in the library. There is too much of lasting value here.” He closed another book and let it rise gently over his shoulder.

  “Oh,” he added, “be known, Sharantyr, Belkram, and Itharr of Shadowdale—a most favorably named place, I must say—to Indyl and Thaune of the blood of Malaug. Have you business with our guests, you two?”

  “We do,” Thaune said excitedly. “Or at least, we hope so.” He sat down on a corner of the table, ignoring Milhvar’s pained look. “Olorn’s got it in for you. He’s raging around the Great Hall vowing revenge and trying to whelm armies of us against you right now. Would you be willing to use that sword on him, if a couple of us cornered him and held his magic in check?”

  “It’s the only way you’ll be safe from him,” Indyl put in, lifting burning eyes from a steady scrutiny of the sword to fix Shar with disconcertingly bright golden irises. As if aware of how menacing his blazing gaze seemed, he hastily muted his eye color to a milky brown. “We’ve been waiting a long time for a chance to deal with him.”

  “How,” Milhvar asked smoothly, before any of the rangers could reply, “will that sword be of any particular use against Olorn? Is it some sort of special blade?”

  “It cut through every spell Olorn threw at them,” Thaune said.

  “Bheloris said it held them both up, when they triggered a trap-chute in the Red Chamber,” Indyl added, news that made Milhvar’s eyebrows leap upward. He turned his head to watch a third Malaugrym come around the bookshelf.

  “Ah, Drelorr,” Milhvar greeted him, “we have visitors from Toril.”

  “Aye,” the newcomer said, leaning a leonine body forward to regard the sword Sharantyr was holding. Its tip pulsed with sudden radiance as he drew near. “This is the blade that burns flesh and makes wounds that won’t heal.”

  “Won’t heal?” The other two young Malaugrym drew back from the table with almost comical haste.

  “Not at all?” Milhvar asked calmly.

  Drelorr shrugged. “They can be spell-healed, right enough, but won’t knit of themselves just by shifting shape.” He looked at Sharantyr. “You wouldn’t want to sell this sword to me, would you?”

  Sharantyr shook her head.

  “Could we borrow it, then? Or rent it for half a day?”

  “Sorry,” Shar said. “No.”

  “Or will you work with us,” Thaune suggested, “as we suggested before Drelorr arrived? We don’t want to part you from your weapon, just bring its powers against Olorn.”

  “We’ve no interest in becoming any more entangled in the feuds of the House of Malaug than we have already become,” Shar said carefully, “and so I must decline.”

  She stiffened as the blade flashed, then she relaxed. “Nor will spells dupe or force me into relinquishing it,” she added dryly. The next probe was more intense, and she felt the faint vibrations of Syluné working spells of her own.

  Sharantyr rose smoothly to her feet, and the Harpers rose with her. “If you’re all through trying spells on me as if I were some sort of passing beetle, we’d like to pass on out of the library …”

  Behind her, Belkram snarled, “Shar!”

  She whirled around to see his sword inches from her, his face twisted with strain as he fought against the magic compelling him.

  And then she felt the terrible cold of Itharr’s blade sliding into her flank.

  “Mystra!” she cried, and slashed out behind her blindly. One of the Malaugrym screamed, and she saw fingers flying as she kept turning, striking Itharr’s blade out of his hand as she came.

  Fire was spreading from the ice in her side, and Shar wondered if this was to be her dying day. Easy, lass, Syluné said inside her, and she felt the pain suddenly lessen.

  Milhvar was watching her calmly as she stagg
ered, put all the contempt and disgust she felt into the look she gave him, lurched around, and went back through the door into the dusty room full of tables.

  Belkram and a weeping Itharr came after her. The Malaugrym were right behind them, flinging out tentacles that Syluné smashed aside with a spell Shar never saw.

  The next spell sent a ball of fire crashing through the door into Milhvar’s precious library, and they heard his startled shout.

  He must have raised some sort of hasty spell-barrier, because the fiery blast came back into the dusty little room, flinging three tortured young Malaugrym with it. Their ashen bodies thudded off the walls amid blazing tables as the three rangers staggered out into the room of casks.

  The pain in her side had subsided into a dull ache, now, but Shar didn’t resist when Belkram seized her hand and thrust a ring onto one of her fingers. “Your turn,” he grunted, and shook Itharr like a frilly lounge cushion. “Stop wailing—she’s fine!”

  Itharr sobbed, blinked, hiccuped, and fell silent.

  And deep within her Sharantyr heard Syluné say, Trust me, and felt the sword twitched from her fingers.

  There was a momentary flicker of blue light. Then the sword was back, humming and glowing as before but with a subtly different weight to it. Shar cut at the air experimentally as they crossed the room, heading for the door through which Amdramnar had brought them here. No, the sword was somehow different.

  And then fire snatched it from her fingers, and shadows howled around her wrist. She grabbed for it in vain and saw it spinning away from her, globed in shadows, to hang near the ceiling.

  Light was growing all around them now as Olorn stepped out from behind a cask and waved his hand. Belkram and Itharr froze in midcurse, immobile. Sharantyr grabbed at her belt dagger, but shadows were sliding around her wrists and ankles, thrusting them inexorably apart.

  Olorn laughed again and strolled toward her. Behind him, many Malaugrym were entering the room, cruel excitement in their faces.

  “I’ve stood more than enough insolence from mortal wenches in the past,” he said to Shar, “and you’re just one more. I had breeding plans for you, but you’re not good enough to sully myself with.” His right hand wriggled then, becoming a tentacle—a long, thin, dark tentacle with eel-like jaws. “So instead,” he announced brightly, “I’ve decided to make a meal of you!” The tentacle rose, like a swaying cobra, then bent and came straight across the room at her, gliding horizontally through the air.

  Shar was spread-eagled on thin air by then, floating off the floor in the grip of shadows that had become as hard as iron. Her face was closest to the tentacle, and as it approached her, snakelike, she felt shadows tugging at her lips and the corners of her mouth.

  She fought against the steely strength of the shadows, teeth clenched, but the tentacle slid lazily closer and her jaws were being forced apart. No!

  A long moment passed, the eager Malaugrym audience silently watching her struggle. She fought in vain. In the end, her mouth was open wide and held that way, jaw quivering with the strain.

  The tentacle slid between her teeth, probing ahead with a tip to hold her tongue down. Then it expanded, filling her mouth with its foulness … and began to get warmer.

  “A little roast tongue to start with,” Olorn said jovially, and the Malaugrym laughed in cruel chorus. As the pain began to build, Sharantyr discovered that she could still breathe—but she could no longer scream.

  21

  Shadows Cloak, but Make a Better Shroud

  The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 20

  Tears of helpless rage welled up in Sharantyr’s throat, and she struggled frantically against the shadow-bonds that manacled her. They shifted a little … and a little more. She could move!

  Then she saw that the Malaugrym were laughing at her, enjoying her futile midair squirmings and swayings, and Olorn was sending another tentacle her way with taunting slowness.

  “What part of her shall we play with now?” he asked the other Shadowmasters. The tentacle twitched as an eager chorus of suggestions rang out. Sharantyr closed her eyes. She’d never dreamed that dying could be this bad, or this slow. By the sounds of it, midair surgery could go on for days, if they kept her—parts of her—alive with their spells. Mystra and Tymora hear me, she prayed fervently, if you can’t deliver me from this, at least make it quick!

  And then the tentacle in her mouth quivered—no, shuddered—and she heard Olorn scream. Her eyes snapped open in sudden wild hope.

  A blue blade was glowing in the air, flashing in ghostly hands, flashing through Olorn again and again, transfixing him. Blue flames licked around his body as he struggled to change shape. His tentacle abruptly receded from Shar’s mouth but failed to escape the blade that was chopping him apart.

  Pieces of the Malaugrym, great writhing lumps, rained down onto the floor in flames. The room was full of wriggling shapes as the Malaugrym shouted and shifted shape and hurled spells at the ghostly swordswoman—Syluné, her hair flying free behind her as she flew about the room, hacking and slashing. The flashing blue blade turned back all the spells sent against her … back upon those who’d sent them.

  Olorn must have died, because Shar found herself falling abruptly to the floor. As she landed painfully on knees and elbows, she saw the two Harpers stagger out of their immobility. High overhead, the shadow globe fell apart, and the false blue blade it had held began to fade slowly out of existence.

  The room was slaughterhouse chaos now, as Syluné dealt death to the Malaugrym. She rose up out of the heart of them for a moment and calmly cast a transmutation spell; the dagger in Shar’s hand quivered.

  She looked down at it. The good steel now shone with a glossy silver plating, and she could see Belkram’s sword and Itharr’s dagger were the same. With a shout, Sharantyr raced across the room and buried her tiny fang in the nearest Malaugrym.

  He screamed. Sharantyr matched it with a shriek of her own, a shout of anger and disgust as she poured out all she’d held in check since seeing Old Elminster’s dripping head snatched away from them in Daggerdale. She waded into shifting arms and tentacles and beaks, snapping fanged jaws and swimming thousands of eyes, hacking at rubbery flesh that smoked and shriveled where her blade touched it.

  The room rocked again. She spun around to face the spell-flash.

  “This has gone far enough,” Milhvar said coldly from where he’d just appeared in the center of the room. At his last word, his prepared spell struck, hurling everyone back against the walls with bruising force.

  Everyone except a certain flying ghostly form, who smiled a crooked smile at him and hurled a glowing blue blade through the air.

  Point-first it slashed across the room, humming as it went, and Shar saw Milhvar’s lips working in frantic haste.

  Abruptly he was gone in a cloud of sweat, and another body was in his place. The Malaugrym mage Iyritar screamed as the sword of Mystra tore into him.

  Impaled on the blade, Iyritar flailed his hands about vainly, clawing at the air in his agony.

  From the wall where Iyritar had been, Milhvar stepped forth, weaving another spell as the three rangers tore free of his fading bindings and launched themselves from the walls with silver blades raised.

  Syluné abruptly winked out. Shar stared up at where she’d been in astonished horror, slowing in her run. Itharr’s shout of alarm dragged her eyes down to see what Milhvar’s magic had wrought.

  Iyritar’s gore was on fire, blazing with scarlet flames as it sprayed from the dying Malaugrym’s body and spread out to form a sphere of blood around the sorcerer’s limp form, with the blade of Mystra lodged in it. In seconds the sphere was complete. Milhvar wiped sweat from his brow with one hand and visibly relaxed.

  A smile crept slowly onto his face as he stepped forward and held up a hand to slow the charging Harpers with a magical wall. From behind its invisible safety he told them, “Without your precious blade, you’re trapped here, to become our playthings or slaves—or
carrion, if you prefer. Like all humans, your fates will befall you swiftly.”

  Behind Milhvar, a faint ghostly form faded into view, lit by the red radiance of the blood-sphere. Syluné was frowning in concentration as she thrust a hand into the red flames.

  The three rangers saw her spectral body arch in agony, but it was the sphere that moaned.

  “Stop trying to get at the blade, Argast,” Milhvar said sharply, without turning to look. “You’ll get badly hurt if you persist. The blood-sphere works against Malaugrym just as well as mortals.”

  The Shadowmaster elder strode toward the rangers, and the invisible wall moved with him, forcing them back. The sphere moaned again as Syluné, her face twisted in pain, thrust herself through it and held herself there. The sword burst free, trailing blood in a long arc of droplets as it soared high into the air.

  The ghostly Witch of Shadowdale fell away from the blood-sphere, face pinched with pain, but managed to raise one trembling arm to point at Milhvar.

  In silent obedience the blade leapt across the chamber and burst through the heart of Milhvar of the Malaugrym.

  “No! No! Not … when I have … the cloak …” he sobbed, doubling over and flickering in and out of visibility. Syluné’s eyes narrowed, and she whispered a soft word of power.

  Blue flames rolled out of the blade from end to end, licking swiftly up the Shadowmaster’s body. He faded from view, but the flames could still be seen. He faded back into visibility, bent over and staggering, trying vainly to reach something only he could see across the chamber, but moving only inches.

  He faded from view once more, so that only the blue flames could be seen—flames that rose and rose hungrily, outlining an upright human form at the last as they roared up into a hungry pillar that parted the shadows and ate through the ceiling and kept on burning away shadows, like mist parting before the hot sun.

  * * * * *

  In a place of chiming shadows, a stream of white fire that gave off no heat faltered, flickered—and ended, leaving a disembodied, white-bearded head floating alone.