All Shadows Fled asota-3

by Ed Greenwood

  "That's why I came along," Storm said softly, "to lend one more sword to the fray and make all of your chances for survival that much better."

  "Malaugrym are everywhere!" Sylune intoned in tones of mock horror.

  "Don't say that!" Sharantyr told her fiercely, turning her head to stare into eyes that were two serene white wraith fires.

  "Why not? Face your fears as you should face everything else in life-openly. Name them, and they become things you can handle, after a fashion."

  Sharantyr laughed, a little ruefully. "I didn't expect to spend my time staring into the night talking about my loves and fears," she told the two age-old sisters.

  "Why not, Shar? What could we possibly talk about-in all our lives-that's more important than what we love and fear?" Sembia, Flamerule 22

  "I love to smell their fear," the man with the head of a panther said, raising bloody jaws from a villager who would never again flee screaming from anything.

  "Now how could I tell that?" replied the man whose arms split into tentacles. A choking merchant struggled in the coils of two of those tentacles.

  The Malaugrym shook the merchant, much as a hunting cat shakes a rat in its jaws, and tightened his tentacles with lazy strength, tearing the man's head off. Blood sprayed in all directions as the corpse convulsed, wriggling in its final agony.

  "Well? Are you going to eat this one?" Bralatar asked, his hands lengthening into talons to tear the man's body apart. He licked his lips in anticipation of the feast.

  Lorgyn took one bite, then tossed the headless body aside. "No. I'll find something a little more succulent," He looked across the night-shrouded garden where they stood, at a building whose distinctive red lanterns marked it as a brothel. "In there."

  "No wonder old Elminster wanted Faerun for himself!" Bralatar said, watching his comrade reach up with a small forest of tentacles and swarm up the side of the building. "It's a neverending love-feast and brawl!"

  "Aye," Lorgyn called down, heedless of whose attention they might alert, "only better!"

  A man's head suddenly appeared out of one window. "Hoy!" he snarled, "what're-doppelgangers! Call the Watc-"

  A tentacle descended in a slap that carried the weight of falling stone, breaking the man's neck as a child snaps a twig. He fell onto the sill, and said no more.

  The Malaugrym's tentacles were busy at a higher window. He reached in to a bed where a fat merchant was rolling among slippery silk sheets, pretending he couldn't find the giggling owner of the bed, wriggling around beneath them.

  "Not here!" the merchant hollered, clutching at a pillow. "Where's she gone? Oh, sweet merciful gods, help me… my partner'll be furious when he learns how much I spent for an hour of pleasure, and then couldn't find the wench for the size and opulence of her bed! Are there other men lost under here, I wonder? That wagon of mine that went missing last moon, perhaps? I'll just have to see! May-"

  "Oh, be silent!" Lorgyn snarled in exasperation, snapping out a tentacle to wrap around the man's jaws.

  The fat merchant suddenly grew a mouth as wide as a horse and caught the tentacle; an extra mouth appeared in his forehead and hissed, "Get your own plaything!"

  Lorgyn recoiled in amazement. "Who-?"

  The grotesque mouth spat the tentacle back at Lorgyn and shrank away to nothingness, dwindling into features the Malaugrym at the window recognized. "Lunquar!"

  "The same," the older Shadowmaster replied, ignoring the sudden terrified scream from the bedclothes beneath him. He pinned the woman down without sparing her a glance, and said, "I've been watching you two break necks and hurl bodies about for days now; why such a bold rampage?"

  "Fun, Lunquar, fun!" Lorgyn said exultantly, using one long tentacle to snatch up the man whose neck he'd just broken and shake him as a trophy. "See?" There was a scream from the window below.

  "That's just what I mean," the Shadowmaster on the bed said. "You left that one dangling half out of a window! Hear the screaming now!"

  "So?"

  "So why rouse half of Faerun when a little subtlety could win you thrones?"

  "What fun is that?" the voice of Bralatar came floating up to them. "You can rule just as well through fear… in fact, whenever we've the time to spare, we should spread a little more fear!"

  "Your style, perhaps; not mine," the older Shadowmaster replied. "I'm saving my fury for when I meet up with one of Mystra's Chosen!"

  "Aye," Lorgyn agreed, his voice menacingly soft. His eyes glowed a sudden emerald green in the gloom. "If you want reasons for rampaging, there's always… revenge."

  12

  Whistling, the Wizard Met His End

  Sembia, Flamerule 23

  Birds called and fluttered in a wood where moss grew green on old, proud trees, untouched by a woodsman's axe for three hundred years. A stone wall as high as six men kept errant axes out, for the wood was part of a private estate in the fair uplands of Sembia-an estate that saw few visitors, and even fewer uninvited ones.

  Yet one can never be too careful, and trolls may lurk anywhere. So it was that the war dogs Warhorn and Bolder wandered the grounds diligently, carrying two hundred pounds of taut muscle each behind their spiked war collars. Their jaws closed often on squirrels, and they suffered nothing larger than that to live-except men they knew.

  No man they knew smelled quite like the peculiar odor now in Warhorn's nostrils. The mighty war dog growled a deep warning to Bolder and advanced cautiously toward the smell, questing from side to side like a soldier.

  Bolder caught up to him, stiffened, and rubbed his flank alongside Warhorn to signify he'd smelled the scent, too. They went forward soundlessly together on stiff, alert legs, lips drawn back to bare huge teeth.

  The smell grew strong indeed, prickling in their throats. Of a sudden, they broke apart and rushed around either side of a great shadowtop tree, a forest giant big enough to hide four dogs behind. They went with eyes aflame and jaws agape, feet scrabbling on the mossy turf-and vanished.

  All that the listening birds heard was two wet snapping sounds, then a brief thudding, and shortly afterward, a rustling of leaves as something large climbed the forest giant.

  "Never fear, never fear,

  For my smiles are all for thee."

  A man in a bloodied apron sang ere he struck the brass gong that hung by the door.

  "So come away, lady fair, And we will married be!"

  He set down the metal basin of meat scraps, wiped his hands on his hips, and waited-but the expected hungry canines did not come.

  The man struck the gong again. "Warhorn? Bolder? Gone deaf, have ye?"

  The words had just left his lips when the two war dogs raced into view, running hard… and yet without their usual fluid grace… almost as if they weren't used to loping. The man stared hard at them for a moment. He crouched down and asked merrily, "So what have ye been into, my hearties? Highsummer mushrooms again?"

  He leaned forward to pat Warhorn, and barely had time to notice a strange golden fire in the old dog's eyes before the tentacles took him. Snakelike they coiled up his patting arm and shook him, and he was still struggling for breath to shout when they broadened and slapped over his nose and mouth.

  His frantic struggles were brief. His slayer rose slowly to an impossible height for a dog and held the dangling corpse upright. The other dog cocked its head for a moment, surveying the limp body. The canine form began to melt and flow, shifting slowly into an exact duplicate of the unfortunate servant.

  Delicate tentacles undid the apron and held it out while Bralatar continued surveying the dead man critically, noting tiny scars, pimples, and precisely where hair grew. He shifted himself to match. He took the apron, careful to knot it as the man had worn it, and announced, "Done."

  Lorgyn nodded and passed over the man's belt and ring of keys as he sank back down into dog shape atop the dead man. His tentacles coiled and squeezed, trembling with sudden effort.

  When he was done, a bloody, boneless mass was a
ll that was left of the servant. Tentacles dragged the gory thing behind the nearest tree and became digging claws. Soon all trace of the murder was gone.

  Bralatar hummed the tune the man had been singing as he went to a wrought and fluted metal gate. One faithful war dog trotted at his heels.

  In the small garden beyond, svelte nymphs and winged women of weathered stone posed in frozen wantonness among fountains and pools and floating lilies… and Dorgan Sundyl strode through them unseeing, bored to the depths of his being.

  His muscles gleamed with oil and the vigor of this morning's workout, and his uniform shone back the sun. A bejewelled sword swung at his hip, and his movements had a lazy grace as one long-booted foot glided forward, followed-as always-by the other, taking him around a grassy path that he'd walked a thousand thousand times before. He would dearly love something to fight.

  Dorgan sometimes prayed to the gods to bring an intruder into the garden-a man that he could bait a while before engaging him in furious swordplay, and subsequently slaying him and presenting him to the master. Even a little man would do.

  He would have been surprised indeed to learn that the gods-the thoughtful gods-were finally, this morn, about to grant his wish.

  It took three keys before Bralatar found the one that opened the gate-and by then, the magnificent-looking guard in the garden beyond was suspicious.

  "How, now? What ails Areld?" Dorgan mused aloud as he strode toward the gate, hand going to sword and eyes flicking watchfully about to be sure that only one man stood there, not a concealed band of brigands.

  Another thing… the dogs were never allowed in the garden! What was old Warhorn playing at?

  "Areld?" he challenged, sword grating. "What befalls?"

  Areld swayed, one hand on the opened gate-but fell, toppling forward into the grass without a sound. Dorgan raced to stand over him, blocking passage through the gate, looking warily around for an archer or anyone waiting to rush in… but the woods beyond were empty of all but birds. Warhorn stood, patiently watching him.

  Dorgan held the sword up between him and the dog, point out, just in case, and bent over Areld. "Are you sick, man? D-"

  Those were the last words he ever spoke. Something slammed into the small of his back and drove him into a sprawling fall onto the servant. Arms of flesh curved up to envelop his head, smothering him with ruthless efficiency.

  Soon after, Dorgan and Areld carried a limp, pulped mass back out into the grounds, to the base of a certain tree where the turf was torn as if by a recent upheaval. "You should have dug a large pit," Areld said with dark humor. "I'm sure we'll be able to fill it if this mage is as suspicious minded as most. There'll be beasts and human guards every few paces ahead of us now to keep intruders from ever breathing the same air as Lord Magnificent the Spell-Hurler."

  Retracing their steps, the guard and the servant passed through the garden, coming at last to the only way they could see into the castle: a stone door carved into the shape of a snarling human face, with two outstretched hands beneath it to serve as handles.

  "Warded, or I'm a war dog," the man who was not Dorgan muttered. "I don't like the look of those hands."

  "So we slide past," the one who was not Areld murmured, extending a ribbon-thin tentacle to point. "Here-see?"

  It took some time to flatten themselves out into creeping things thin enough to slip through a tiny gap between the crumbling stone and the old, slowly warping doorframe, with its carvings of satyrs and bunches of grapes and flirtatious sprites, but they passed through without incident, and without being seen.

  They stood in a high, vaulted hall whose open bronze doors showed another, loftier hall, with a gallery at its far end, and many doors opening off it here, there, and everywhere. To the left, and nearby (by the smell) was the kitchen; the location of other features they could only guess at.

  Wherefore the two men dwindled hurriedly back into the shapes of the two war dogs and padded into the hall with apparent aimlessness, sniffing as they roamed. The doors they passed were closed, but a broad, red-carpeted spiral stair ascended at the far end of the hall, and up this they went-on the theory that most wizards like to look out loftily over the lands around.

  Partway up its ascent, the stair paused at a sunny landing, and Bolder slunk over to the small forest of ferny plants there. He peered through, uttering a short whuf to signal Warhorn that he'd found something of interest.

  The two Malaugrym had retained their own eyes, far keener than those of a dog, and could readily see a small, slender, rather plain stone tower outside.

  The tower was ringed by a moat over which tiny lightnings of amethyst hue flickered from time to time-some warding magic, no doubt. The moat in turn was surrounded by a strip of lawn. Flagstone paths led to the edge of the moat, but there was no sign of any drawbridge, and the paths also ran in a great arc in both directions, around the tower and out of view, flanking the walls of a gigantic building… the one in which they stood.

  "Rich indeed, this wizard," Bolder growled. "Look: this house goes all the way around."

  Warhorn growled a wordless reply of exasperation. How long was it going to take to find a safe way out of this vast house, into the inner garden with the tower?

  Not long at all, as it turned out. A two-headed panther, black and deadly, stalked into view on the circular lawn, and a door swung open as if it were expected. They saw a man, a goad in his hand, standing in the open door, and the great cat moved fluidly toward him.

  "Feeding time for everyone," Bolder grunted. They turned away from the window to hurry down the stairs.

  A little distance along the passage they saw two women carrying bundles of linen. The maids frowned at them but did nothing beyond exchanging the question: "What are the dogs doing in here, I wonder?"

  Wagging their tails, the dogs passed on by, proceeding to a place where a momentary shift of a paw into a human hand opened doors that were not locked, skirted a strong smell of cat (they heard a questioning growl from the other side of a door they left closed), and found their way to the inner garden. No one shouted an alarm as the dogs pawed the door open and stepped out onto the lawn.

  Strong magic tingled around them, and they looked this way and that in some haste. The lawn seemed deserted.

  A huge, curved stone bench adorned the edge of the moat, and beyond it Bralatar saw what he was looking for: the top arc of an old, massive grating in the tower wall, moat water lapping into it. A privy chute.

  "Come," he said. He headed straight across the lawn. On the edge of the moat he shifted shape to grow flippers and tentacles, and heard Lorgyn's snort of alarm behind him as the stone bench suddenly shuddered and rose, stretching out hammerlike arms. A golem!

  By then Bralatar was in the inky water, and too busy to worry about guardians on land: what felt like large hungry eels with teeth like daggers were savaging him. He grew tentacles, thrust one down an unseen gullet, and expanded, tossing bony spines out and through his foe until the water turned a dull red and the biting went away. He served another eel with same tactic, and another. By then, massive stone arms were crashing down into the water, and Lorgyn was splashing frantically to keep clear of their strength.

  Bralatar made an eel-thing of himself and wriggled through the grating, ignoring a few nips from another unseen moat dweller. The stone chute ahead of him was as slimy and noisome as he'd expected, but rose clear of the water straight away. He wormed up it hastily, becoming a snakelike ribbon as he went in case the wizard was thorough-or crazed-enough to have traps partway up a dung chute.

  Behind him, Lorgyn splashed around for a breath or two more before he was clear of the water. Bralatar spared him no attention, but spiraled steadily up the shaft, sending feelers ahead to probe for traps. Somewhere above them, someone was cheerfully whistling a very old bawdy tune.

  He found nothing, but as his most cautiously questing tentacle rose a trifle up out of the privy seat to peer into the dark chamber beyond, a calm, soulless femal
e voice said: "Turn back," and a radiance began to grow around the top of the shaft. The whistling broke off abruptly.

  "Hurry!" Bralatar snapped, placing suckers on the stone around him and heaving hard. He catapulted up out of the shaft like some sort of flying squid, and thumped to the floor; he'd not yet begun to grow when a second thump heralded Lorgyn's arrival.

  "Now who can that be?" an annoyed voice came to their ears through the chamber door. It sounded very near, and approaching. The mage was almost upon them!

  Lorgyn laid a tentacle on Bralatar's shoulder and hissed, "Distract him-those two women in the green tapestry room at the brothel; unclad, holding hands, and amazed at somehow ending up here…"

  They shifted shapes with lightning speed, twisting, writhing, and arching like maddened things-and were done, linking their slim fingers together and adopting amazed and fearful expressions just as the door opened by itself, and a balding, beak-nosed man peered in at them over a leveled wand.

  "By the Seven Mysteries, who are you?" he gasped.

  "Please, sir," the blonde woman breathed, entreaty in her green eyes, "where are we? What place is this?"

  The wizard dragged his eyes up from the ivory curves of her bare body, swallowed, and blinked.

  "You're in my tower-the Tower of Mortoth," he said gruffly. "Er, that's me." He took a step into the room. "Perhaps you've heard of me?"

  The taller of the two women parted her raven tresses to display a figure fully as spectacular as her companion's, and husked, "Nay, Lord… but pray, tell us about yourself. Pleasing great men is our business-and our pleasure."

  And as Mortoth goggled at her in astonishment, two tentacles appeared over the shoulder of the blonde maid and shot out with terrifying speed. One grasped the wand, twisted, and snatched-and it flew from the stumbling wizard's bruised fingers.

  "Rivals!" the wizard snarled as he caught his balance. Blue-white bolts of force were already streaking from his fingers in a hasty burst of magic missiles.

  Those missiles curved home, and he saw the two intruders flinch, but one had grown fleshy wings, and the other had dropped into catlike form, and they sprang at him before he could do anything else.