by Ed Greenwood
"I-" Itharr began, but Belkram interrupted him.
"If that's so, sir-why do I feel weary, and in pain?"
"Aye!" Itharr agreed.
"The only way I could save ye at all," Elminster muttered, "was to restore ye to exactly as ye were before the trap took us. As it was, I nearly lost ye more than once-ye in particular, Belkram, five times! The gods know I've grown used to never receiving the slightest thanks when I help folk, but betimes I think certain beneficiaries of my arts close enough to me-and perceptive enough, to-ah, ne'er mind…" He glared at the handsome Harper.
Belkram returned his look of anger.
"All right," Sharantyr said, looking from one to the other. "Enough. Tell us about the Realms, El."
Elminster's face grew calm as he nodded and said briskly, "Zhentilar armies march on Shadowdale from all sides-and the avatar of the god Bane rides with them, leading the main body himself."
"Faerun's flying dung," Sylune said crisply. The unaccustomed oath drew startled gazes her way. "Even if the dale can withstand such an assault," she said bitterly, "it'll be torn into smoking ruins in the doing." She turned to look south. "And after all these years, I'll see it destroyed after all."
"Be not so quick to surrender our home to the Black Gauntlet," Elminster said firmly. "I shall be there, fighting to the last… and I've sent Zhentilar troops running bootless away from Shadowdale more times than I care to recall."
"If three swords can make a difference in this, sir," Belkram said heavily, "things must be bad. Tell us in truth what's befallen thus far… where are the Zhents now?"
Elminster nodded. "Four armies are on the march," he said, all trace of testiness gone. "The one coming down through Voonlar is the largest, though my friend Perendra took care of a goodly number of the fools by calling up a lightning storm. Fancy marching through a downpour in full armor; some of these warriors must have cold iron between their ears, not just over them! Meanwhile, I dealt with a few thousand more."
"Oh? How do you 'deal with' a few thousand Zhent troops?" Belkram asked, shifting into a more comfortable slouch in the grass. The more he dealt with archmages, the more it was becoming obvious that their shared concept of 'haste' allowed time for thorough discussions of everything.
"Carefully, lad," Elminster told him predictably. "Carefully."
The two Harpers sighed together… and had many other opportunities to sigh as the wizard rambled on. At one point Belkram muttered despairingly, "Get on with it!" under his breath.
He'd spoken a trifle too loudly. The Old Mage's eyebrows rose, and Belkram gulped.
"Patience certainly seems to be the provision ye used up most in the shadows," El observed mildly as his pipe glided in to find its way to his lips. He blew a slow, spreading smoke ring and then banished his pipe again. "Teleportation is one thing that still seems reliable among all this chaos of Art, so I spent the better part of the highsun hours yesterday transporting a dozen monsters-hydras, firedrakes, wyverns, behirs, death kisses, and the like-into the camp of the second, central force, north of the Flaming Tower."
Belkram chuckled, but Shar looked troubled. "What's to stop their using spells to drive those beasts before them, south into the heart of Shadowdale?"
"Me," the Old Mage told her impishly. "I took care of their mages first." He watched another smoke ring drift away on the wind and added, "Some of the beasts I sent into their midst were rather hungry, too."
"Can't Bane teleport just as easily as you can?" Itharr asked quietly.
Elminster nodded his approval at such tactical thought. "Of course. He'll have to come to the aid of his Central Blade or lose the lot of them… but the doing will keep him occupied for a time, too busy to work other mischief." He ran fingers through his beard. "The same consideration governed my treatment of the smallest force. Fzoul's leading four hundred or so mounted men-at-arms past us right now, through Daggerdale."
"Four hundred Zhentilar?" Belkram asked, holding up his daggers. "You want us to take down four hundred warriors? Shouldn't we get horses to ride on, just to make it a little fairer?"
Shar and Itharr snorted together. Sylune reclined gracefully on thin air, as if sprawled on a couch, and awaited Elminster's answer.
The Old Mage shook his head and asked softly, "Bold today, aren't we, friend Harper?"
Lesser men might have quailed before that tone, but Belkram merely shrugged, smiled, and waved at Elminster to continue.
Inclining his head in a mock bow of thanks, Elminster said, "That task is not yours." He lifted his lips in a mirthless grin. "I suspect a few orcs can do it better."
"A few orcs?" Sharantyr roared, her voice rising from deep and ragged tones, for all the world as if she were a burly male and not a lithe lady. "Elminster!" That last squeaked word of reproach sounded more like a lady's pique, and goaded Sylune into peals of tinkling laughter.
"Yestereve," Elminster told them in tones of injured innocence, "I approached several orc bands foraging in Daggerdale, and undertook to alert them that a well-provisioned Zhent force was entering the territory. That should make things a little warmer for Fzoul than he anticipated, and rob him of most opportunities to reach Shadowdale ahead of the other Zhent forces, hole up in the woods around Grimstead, and amuse himself by using his spells to harass the good folk of the dale."
"All right, El. You've been both clever and busy," Sylune reassured him, her voice soothing. Her next words, however, came out as sharp as the crack of a whip: "But so have we. My friends here grow stiff and tired and hungry. Armies march on Shadowdale from all sides, you said, and have told us of three, so what attack is coming from the south-and what is our duty in dealing with it?"
Elminster bowed his head again to hide a grin, cleared his throat in apparent embarrassment, and said, "I need ye four to deal with the fourth Zhent attack: the Sword of the South. It's a band of Sembian mercenaries and the covert Zhentarim agents who hired them. They've been assembling in Battledale for a month and more, drawn from all over Sembia and the eastern dales."
"They're going to try to march through the Elven Court woods?" Shar asked, one shapely eyebrow raised. "That's not a wise tactic for any armed band."
The Old Mage shook his head. "Their orders are to take and subdue Mistledale, and without pause press on up the Mistle Trail, to drive into Shadowdale from the south." He smiled gently. "You will stop them."
"I thought we were going to defend Shadowdale," Belkram said. "You may be able to dance around the Realms with a thought and a wiggle of your hips, but we have to walk… and I don't feel like running back and forth between two dales, sword in hand, through gods know how many Zhent blackhelms!"
Elminster held up a quelling hand. "I said I'd come to send ye where ye are most needed. Right now Shadowdale is crowded with frightened troops bustling about. I don't want them to relax because the heroes have come to town, and I don't want them in thy way, or ye in theirs. Mistledale is thy battlefield. The defense of Mistledale will be the southern defense of Shadowdale."
"How strong is this fourth host?" Belkram asked suspiciously.
Elminster shrugged. "About seven thousand, when last I counted."
"Seven thousand!" Itharr burst out as jaws dropped all round.
Shar shook her head. "You love us, don't you?" she murmured.
El chuckled. "Oh, ye'll have help. All of Shar's battle companions, the Knights of Myth Drannor, are in Mistledale already, mustering the Riders."
"There are only thirty Riders, perhaps six more if the graybeards who can still walk and breathe at the same time come out of retirement, and another dozen if their sword apprentices ride with them, too," Sylune said softly, "and barely a dozen Knights, even if all who've retired or strayed off come running to Mistledale."
El frowned. "And ye, of course… isn't that battle might enough?"
"Ah, Old Mage," Sylune said gently, "you may not have noticed, being old and terribly important and even busier than usual… but I'm not… er, the woman I used t
o be."
El chuckled. "I've been spreading stories of the Ghost Witch of Shadowdale these last few months… I think ye'll find, on a battlefield, that ye're rather more than ye used to be."
Sylune glared at him, her eyes two white flames dancing in the air. "And just what does that mean?"
"I've had half Twilight Hall modifying their best battle spells since the seasons turned," the old wizard told her. "If it all works, they can cast them simultaneously through ye, so a dozen or more battle magics-which ye can aim-lash out from ye at once."
"And the catch?"
"The power involved will burn ye out from within, leaving thy body only ashes… killing ye."
"El, I don't have-oh. I see. As I'm dead already, I should survive the destruction of whatever body you're going to give me."
El nodded. "It's waiting for ye in Mistledale," he said quietly. "Not the last one I'll give ye if-gods willing-I survive this Time of Troubles."
Tears welled up in her phantom eyes, and he added quickly, "Ye'd best get down there speedily. Torm's been dressing the body-ye-in all sorts of black leather, red evening lace, and fishnet gauze apparel, most evenings, and seating ye in the porch window of the Six Shields to entertain the locals."
"Oh he has, has he?" Ghostly eyes flashed. "I think I'll just slip into this body of mine at an opportune moment and give him the fright of his life!"
Shar grinned broadly. "May I watch?"
"No, that's 'may we watch?'" Belkram corrected her.
"Of course," Sylune told them grandly. "This Six Shields place is unfamiliar to me, though…"
"A cheap rooming house east of Lhuin's tannery," El told her in the manner of a pompous guide, "opened recently to house field workers, drovers, and others too cheap to stay at the Hart or the Arms."
Shar and the Witch of Shadowdale sniffed in unison. "It sounds like the sort of place where Torm would stay, tight-pockets that he is."
"Much as I'd like to watch ye roast Torm on a spit, just to see him wriggle for once, there is some haste," the Old Mage added. "By sundown, the scouts of the Sword of the South may well reach Galath's Roost."
"How can we possibly reach Mistledale in time, then?" Itharr asked-unwisely, as it turned out.
Sharantyr gave him a weary look. "He's going to mass teleport us," she said grimly. "It always makes me feel sick for hours afterward." She sighed and put one arm across her bosom and the other over her stomach, bracing herself. "Get on with it, then."
"Wait," Belkram said, brow wrinkling. "We haven't even-"
The last, fading thing the Harper saw as he struggled to finish his sentence was Elminster's cheery grin. Around him the world flashed and changed-into blue, swirling misty emptiness. Next came a sense of falling, for just one wrenching moment, and then they were standing on a bare board floor in a loft lit by two barrel-sized lamps that hung down on dusty chains from the roof beam. Frowning men in armor stood staring down at large maps whose corners were held down by daggers and gauntlets-or looking up at the newcomers in startled consternation, hands going to hilts.
Belkram and Itharr stood a little behind Sharantyr. Right in front of her was a tall, broad-shouldered and hard-faced man whose steely eyes raked both Harpers for a moment before he took a catlike step forward and crushed her into an embrace.
"Shar, by the grace of all the gods!"
The lady ranger's shoulders shook for a moment as she clung to him, her drawn sword forgotten, and she knew tears would be bright on her face when she turned to introduce them. Florin Falconhand did not give her the chance.
"I've missed you, little one," he growled, and as Shar reached up to tousle his unruly hair, he added, "but you've found companions on the trail, I see. Who are these two gentlemen you've brought?"
Eyeing the drawn blades crowding in around them, Belkram deemed the moment right. He bent his knee, parted the leathers at his throat to show his silver harp pin, and said, "Belkram and Itharr of the Harpers to fight alongside you, Lord Florin. Elminster sent us."
A good-natured grin split the famous ranger's face, and he reached one long arm around Sharantyr to clasp their forearms. "Be welcome! We have need of swords, good men to wield them… and adventurers brave enough to stand up to Elminster, too!"
"Pardon, Lord," Itharr said smoothly, "but shouldn't that be 'foolish enough'?"
There were chuckles from all around the room, and other men thrust forward their hands in welcome. They were accepted.
Shar tossed her silver blade under the table and put her freed hand on Florin's cheek to guide him down into a kiss. As their lips touched, she was overheard to be murmuring, "Well, here we go again…"
2
Bodies, Fresh and Otherwise
Mistledale, Flamerule 15
It was horribly dark and somehow dusty, followed by a whirling moment of wrenching pain that became a red agony in her chest, rising up to choke her. Threads of pain rolled down limbs stiff from disuse to an aching forest of fingertips… and then light and sound suddenly burst and swam all around her. The Witch of Shadowdale found herself blinking back tears.
She had a body again!
Fighting an urge to shriek in triumph, Sylune clung to that thought: she had a body again! A body Torm had obviously just finished dressing in a black lace cutaway gown that left her bare there and there and there… He stood with his back to her, humming a contented ditty as he held up a red silk garter before the lamp and surveyed it critically.
It did look rather splendid, but Sylune bent all her attention to making the still unfamiliar body move-pushing against the bed with utmost care to sit up silently, and then leaning forward into a quick barefoot step, slipping her arms around him. Her lips went straight to his ear, and before she kissed its hairy lobe, she murmured into it, "Torm… I've come for you! Torm…"
With a gratifying shriek, Torm leapt into the air, red silk flying. Sylune clung to his trembling limbs and made the leap with him, but the Knight twisted in the air to fling her free and grabbed at his belt dagger. The Witch of Shadowdale put one leg behind her, bounced on it, and lifted her other knee smartly between his, ere she bounded backward onto the bed.
Lord Torm of Shadowdale, Knight of Myth Drannor and thief of some skill, rose into the air once more, sobbing. His darkening eyes met hers for just a moment-with a look of mingled pain, terror, and disbelief-before he crashed face first to the floor.
Some minutes later, the figure sprawled on the furs beside the bed stopped moaning and writhing, and asked hesitantly, "Sylune? Is it you, truly?"
She stood up and walked slowly around the room, kicking experimentally to limber up stiff legs and toes. "It is, Torm… which is why you still live, I suppose."
Weakly, the thief on the floor began to chuckle. "Bits of me do. Others I'm not so sure about. I'm sorry, Lady."
"Apology accepted, lecherous scum."
He laughed openly this time, his whooping breaking off with a catch as the shaking brought him fresh pain. "Ohhh, gods," he said at last, rolling over. "I've not felt this much pain since… well, never mind."
"I hope she was worth it," Sylune said teasingly, and then asked curiously, "Why weren't you wearing one of your usual flamboyant codpieces?"
Torm looked hurt. "I wasn't dressed yet! Can you see me going downstairs in this?" He held his arms wide to fully display the patched and stained cotton undersuit that went under his fighting leathers. "Ladies first," he added, gesturing at her.
Sylune put her hands on her hips and gave him a level stare as she gestured, up and down, at herself. "This is your idea of 'dressed,' I take it?"
Torm gave her a sly look from the floor, and rolled up to a sitting position, wincing once. "Well, you hadn't complained before tonight," he said, feigning innocence.
"Yet-as you may just have noticed-I'm doing so now," Sylune told him calmly. Then she snapped, "Take this frippery off me-at once!"
Torm bounded to his feet with an alacrity that belied the severity of his injury. "My pleasure,
Lady Sylune!"
"I'll bet," she said dryly. "Try to keep your hands on the buckles and thongs, now, and when you're done, I'll need a neck rub. Hmm-my calves, too. This body is as stiff as old wood!" She struck a pose, pirouetted experimentally, admired herself in the burnished metal looking glass, and rubbed her nose. "You've taken some care with my hair," she said in tones of pleased surprise. "Diligent brushing, at the least. My thanks, Torm."
"Lady," Torm said seriously, reaching out a finger to stroke the silvery fall of her hair, "in all my life I'd never dared touch your hair, or Storm's, but I always wanted to. It's… truly beautiful… like spun silver."
Sylune laughed lightly and laid a hand on his cheek. "Why, thank you, Torm-this, from the maid-chaser of Shadowdale?"
"Lady, I meant it," the thief replied, and bowed. " 'Twas an honor caring for your body." A twinkle crept into his eye. "In fact, if you weren't so many years my senior…"
Sylune glared at him, and gestured again at herself. "You were hard at work removing all this saucy stuff, remember?"
Torm's jaw dropped-and he discovered the fallen garter. Plucking it up from the floor, he offered it to her mutely. Sylune gave him a withering look, so he shrugged and tossed it over his shoulder. Then he undid her sash, put his hands on her shoulders and spun her around lightly. He stripped her with a speed and expertise that told her he'd done this a time or two before.
"This bit's much easier when you're standing up and-er, with us," he commented. "Oh, by the way…the stone that lets you occupy this body is implanted here." He touched the inside of her left arm, just above the elbow. Sylune probed cautiously, and thought she felt the magic stone deep within, alongside the bone.
"Mystra bless you and keep you, Old Mage," she breathed, "wherever she is."
"What about prayers for me?" Torm asked teasingly, fingers busy undoing the black silk choker he'd put around her throat earlier.