Shadowdale

by Scott Ciencin

  There was no movement from the creatures they had spied the previous night. “Perhaps they sleep by day,” Kelemvor said. The sounds of shattering glass and exploding ground had lessened, though the adventurers could still hear an occasional crash as a huge wall of glass slid off the mountains.

  “If the creatures sleep during the day,” Midnight said. “We’d best be in Shadowdale by night.”

  Kelemvor, Cyric, and the Company of Dawn all mumbled in agreement. Adon silently rode off into the woods.

  Throughout the day, the adventurers rode through the woods, starting at every sound, their swords always at the ready. Adon rode ahead of Kelemvor and Midnight, and Cyric rode with Brion, who had lost his horse to one of the ebon spears. As they got deeper into the forest, the flora grew thick and unmanageable, and soon Thurbrand signaled for everyone to stop and dismount. The horses would have to be lead.

  Adon ignored the signal, and Kelemvor ran to his side. “Have you lost your sight this time, Adon?” he said. When the cleric ignored him and continued to force his horse to plow through the undergrowth, the fighter slapped him on the arm to get his attention. Adon looked down at Kelemvor, nodded, and got off his horse.

  “There’s death in this place,” Adon said, no life in his voice. “We’ve walked into a charnel house.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Kelemvor said and returned to Midnight.

  Farther ahead, Cyric walked with Brion. Although he had been alternately amused and frustrated by the young thief, Cyric sensed an innocence in him that was refreshing. Surely Brion had not been an adventurer very long, although his proficiency with a dagger rivaled Cyric’s.

  After morningfeast, Brion had challenged Cyric to a test of skill with the dagger, and Cyric nearly lost to the albino. After the challenge was over, Cyric and Brion did a trick using six daggers each, which they first gathered from their friends, then tossed at each other with blinding speed. Each knife Cyric threw was deflected by one of Brion’s, then each one Brion threw was deflected in midair by one of Cyric’s tosses.

  Still, for all his skill with knives, the albino did not reek of blood and madness as so many adventurers did. Even Brion’s companions, like the girl who sat with Adon, reveled in the idea of taking a life. Cyric could see it in their eyes.

  Cyric could see, too, that the number of times Brion had willingly shed blood could be counted on a single one of his gloved hands, and that the albino had never taken a man’s life without regret.

  As the adventurers walked along, the woods themselves were misleadingly beautiful, at least at the start. The trees were thick and healthy, covered with rich green leaves. Bright sunlight pierced the openings in the ceiling of the forest, and warm shafts of light fell here and there, occasionally caressing the faces of the heroes who navigated through the thick foliage.

  Then, as they moved across a thick bed of gnarly roots, which covered the ground completely in many places, Kelemvor heard twigs snapping in the trees. He turned sharply and motioned to Zelanz and Welch, the mercenaries who brought up the rear, but they hadn’t heard the sounds. They looked at Kelemvor and shrugged. Kelemvor saw no hint of movement around the party, so he turned and walked on.

  The noises came again and again, and finally the entire company had been alerted. Weapons were drawn, but no one could spot any signs of the creatures in the trees. In the lead, Thurbrand carefully navigated through a small path in the woods. Rounding a tree, the bald man stopped quite suddenly, his body tensing as he prepared for an attack.

  A man wearing bone-white armor stood before Thurbrand, stuck to a tree by long, ropy strands of webbing. His helmet had been removed, and the bleached white skin of his face was marked with the symbol of Bane, black over his white features. Sword drawn, the assassin stared at Thurbrand, his face frozen in a wild-eyed grimace.

  A few yards away, Thurbrand saw five other men wearing the armor of Bane’s elite assassins, stuck to other trees in a large clearing.

  “They’re dead,” Thurbrand said. “But whatever killed them is close by.”

  The adventurers stood still for a moment as Kelemvor and Thurbrand examined a huge web that was strung in the trees around the assassins. The rest of the party, with the exception of Adon, gathered closer together and watched the trees. The Sunite, on the other hand, simply stood by his horse, staring up at the dark canopy of leaves that blotted out the sun.

  As the party stood, listening for something to move in the trees, they noticed that there was no sounds at all coming from the woods. The leaves didn’t rustle in the wind. No insects chirped. The woods were completely silent.

  Without a single word, Gillian handed the reigns of her mount to the cleric of Tymora, then took to the trees like a monkey. She made no sound as she rose to the highest branch, then surveyed the woods with her practiced eye. The adventurers waited for five minutes as she leaped from branch to branch, carefully taking in the area from every possible vantage, and finally she signaled all clear.

  The girl motioned for Thurbrand to come close, even before she leaped down to the ground. “Not even the strongest winds could move these branches. This place is dead, frozen in this state.” She made a motion with her fingers to indicate an odd texture. “There is a light film covering everything. That’s what causes the stillness.”

  Thurbrand nodded, and reached out to help her down. She frowned and leaped over and past him, landing in a graceful crouch. But as her feet struck the earth, directly in the center of a tangle of roots that radiated from the spot, there was a harsh, wet sound and the ground gave way just a bit. Before the girl could utter a word of warning, the roots burst from the ground in a shower of displaced earth.

  Eight limbs in all burst up to grab Gillian, all of them tall, spindly, and pitch-black. Each limb had four joints, and they culminated in a razor-sharp tip the size of a large sword. The vast underbelly of the creature that the girl stood upon moved from the earth, pitching her off balance before she could leap from the trap. Then the creature’s head burst from the ground, and she saw its blazing red eyes and four jagged pincers.

  The legs of the giant spider collapsed inward, impaling Gillian from eight different directions. Then the spider flipped over, and the woods came alive. All around the travelers, the knotted roots revealed themselves. Another man had been standing on the belly of one of the spiders and met the same fate as the girl.

  Cyric and Brion stood back to back, daggers drawn. One of the spiders attacked Cyric’s mount, injecting it with a poison from its mandibles that paralyzed the horse. The spider dropped the animal and waited for the poison to act before it carted the horse off to its web. Cyric cursed as he realized most of his supplies, including his hand axes, were on the horse, but he wasn’t about to try and rescue his clothes from the spider that stood guard over his dying mount.

  The spiders were everywhere, and the smallest of them was the size of a large dog. Cyric stared into the eyes of one of the creatures as it advanced. Its legs were a pale green, and its body was black with huge orange blotches on its side. The predatory gaze of the spider brought a smile to Cyric’s face as he launched a dagger into one of the creature’s unblinking eyes.

  Cyric’s blade found its mark and was enveloped in the quivering mass of the spider’s eye. The eye collapsed inward, following the blade, but the spider continued to advance.

  “Gods!” Cyric cried, and leaped to a low-hanging branch. The giant spider surged forward, snapping at the air where the thief had stood only moments before. As he climbed higher into the tree, Cyric heard a scream and looked down.

  The wounded spider had pierced Brion’s side with one of its legs; the daggers he held were little defense against the horror. The spider lifted a second leg, preparing to run its victim through again. Brion’s head fell back as he struggled, and he looked up at Cyric.

  Cyric could see that Brion’s lips were moving, begging him for help.

  Cyric hesitated, weighing his options. He knew the man was alread
y dying from the creature’s poisons. There was little he could do but die beside him.

  The spider struck with its second leg. Life faded from Brion’s eyes as Cyric watched.

  At the other end of the clearing, Midnight watched as three spiders charged. Kelemvor, Zelanz, and Welch stood beside her, and Adon stood motionless behind them, seemingly oblivious to the threat that was barreling down on them.

  Two of the spiders were huge and fat, with black and red bodies and bloated crimson legs. The third was completely black, with sleek sharp legs and a greater agility than the others. The narrow gaps between the trees did little to slow this one, as it pitched at an angle, climbing across the sides of the trees to get at its prey.

  The sleek spider jumped at the heroes, and Kelemvor snapped off three of its limbs with a single swing of his sword. The fighter struck again and cut a channel in the body of the beast, narrowly avoiding its pincers. Then Kelemvor turned, and the spider was directly over him, rising up on it back legs. He thrust his sword into its exposed underbelly and forced it up and back. The creature slashed at the fighter with a leg, and Kelemvor was knocked off his feet. His sword pulled free as he sailed through the air and crashed into a tree.

  Midnight watched as the remaining pair of spiders advanced on them. Looking down at her dagger, she realized that it was going to be useless against the monsters, so she tried to remember her decastave spell. Midnight grabbed a branch from a nearby tree and recited the incantation. Suddenly a glowing blue-white staff materialized in Midnight’s hands. As Midnight attacked the spider, she was startled to find that the staff took on the properties of a scythe. She slashed open the first spider she saw, but other went for easier prey.

  It pounced on Zelanz and Welch, who fought it side by side. Their sweeping swords dispatched it quickly, but others approached. The drip of a milky white substance was all that alerted them to the spider that had been busy forming a web above them. Zelanz looked up, just in time to see the reddish mass of the spider as it descended upon them.

  At the edge of the clearing, the cleric of Tymora moved forward. He touched the edge of a tree and saw Thurbrand fighting for his life against the spider that killed Gillian. He took another step and came face to face with Bohaim, a young mage from Suzail. He stumbled back to clear the way for Bohaim, but a spider’s leg burst through the mage’s chest. The man screamed as the spider pulled him up into the air and lowered him toward its hungry mandibles.

  The Company of Dawn is dying, the cleric of Tymora thought. There was a slight crunch behind him. He brought up his mace and turned to face a purple and white spider. One of the spider’s legs impaled the cleric with blinding speed. The cleric formed a silent prayer to Tymora, and the world became darkness.

  Not far from where the cleric fell, Thurbrand’s sword flashed and the head of the spider that killed Gillian was caved in, spilling its poisons even as the fighter turned away to avoid being soaked. Five more spiders advanced on the bald man. Just ahead of him, the other two living members of the Company of Dawn were fighting for their lives. Thurbrand ran toward the two men, ignoring the pack of spiders closing in behind him.

  High above in the trees, Cyric watched with a growing fascination as the spiders climbed in the woods around him and worked their intricate art. Cyric knew he should be revulsed or angered by the sight: the sole purpose of the spider’s work was to ensnare and kill him and his friends. But the patterns of this waiting death were quite lovely to Cyric. There was such simplicity and such order in its design.

  There was a sound beside him, and Cyric leaped from the tree even as a jagged set of pincers ground together in the air where he had been. The ground rushed up at him as he fell, and the thief twisted in midair, then rolled to absorb the fall’s impact as he struck the ground.

  Cyric heard the telltale snapping sound of a spider breaking from the earth just before its legs rose up, snaring him in its trap.

  Fifty yards away, Kelemvor rose to his feet. The sounds of the spiders engulfed his senses. Their limbs crackled, and the petrified trees shifted slightly beneath their weight. The monsters surrounded him, but they were not rushing in for the kill. Then, a huge white spider moved toward him very slowly, and all the other spiders cleared the way for its approach. It was the largest spider Kelemvor had ever seen.

  A small circle was formed around Kelemvor, so that the white spider might have room to maneuver. The fighter looked up and saw a host of spiders waiting in the trees above. There was no escape for him; the other were probably all dead. Then the huge white spider rushed forward, and Kelemvor severed one of its legs just as another pierced the air beside his face. Then a third leg moved along his armor, opening the tempered breastplate and making a shallow gash across his chest.

  With horrible clarity, Kelemvor saw the fourth leg sailing at him. In an instant, the leg would pierce his chest, and the spider would drag his twitching body to its hungry mandibles. Then, a piercing blue-white pain shot through the fighter’s head.

  As Cyric jumped from the tree and Kelemvor started his battle with the white spider, Midnight moved against a blood-red spider as Adon stood behind her, making no move to protect himself. Midnight ran between the grasping legs and planted her magical scythe in the creature’s eyes.

  As the blood-red spider lay twitching on the ground, Midnight looked around her and saw that both Cyric and Kelemvor were in terrible danger. Then, a white, milky substance struck her boot. She looked up just in time to see the huge, yellow underbelly of a spider as it plunged down at her, its legs working the air with hungry anticipation.

  Midnight cast a spell to create a shield in front of the spider. As she finished reciting the incantation, her pendant suddenly crackled with energy. Bolts of energy shot from the star and struck Adon, Kelemvor, Cyric, and the three remaining members of the Company of Dawn.

  Then, just at the white spider brought its leg down on Kelemvor, just as Cyric landed on the trap, just as Adon stared uncaring as a gray spider descended toward him, they all disappeared.

  Midnight felt as if the air were being ripped from her lungs. A brilliant flash of blue-white light blinded her for an instant, and when her vision cleared, she found herself standing on a long road. For a moment she thought she had gone mad, then the mage realized that she had teleported from the woods.

  Kelemvor lay on the ground in front of her, holding his head. “What did you do?” the fighter groaned, then he tried to stand up, but couldn’t. He looked down and saw that the cut on his chest was still bleeding slightly. “Not that I mind, whatever it was.”

  Cyric and Thurbrand helped the fighter to his feet. “Yes. Whatever you did, we owe you our lives,” the bald man said. “And that certainly fulfills your debt to me, fair daffodil.”

  Midnight opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t think of a thing to say. She just looked around, wide-eyed.

  “Gillian, Brion, they’re all gone,” one of the remaining members of the Company of Dawn said as he helped cover his friend’s wounds.

  “I’m sorry,” Midnight said at last. “I don’t even know how I got us here, even if I got us here.”

  “Wherever ‘here’ is,” Cyric said as he looked around.

  Adon, who was standing a few yards away, staring up the road to the north, turned around and said quietly, “We’re a half day’s ride south of Shadowdale.”

  * * * * *

  The doors leading to Bane’s throne room burst open wide and Tempus Blackthorne rushed inside to answer the call of his god. Bane gripped the edge of his throne, his talons scratching the surface.

  “Close the door.” Bane’s voice was cold and measured. Despite the latitude that Bane had granted his emissary, Blackthorne felt a momentary flicker of fear.

  “You wished to see me, Lord Bane?” Blackthorne said, his voice deceptively steady.

  The Black Lord rose from his throne and gestured for the mage to come closer. The taloned hand of the fallen god flashed before the eyes of the emissary. Blackt
horne made no move to defend himself as the God of Strife grabbed his shoulder roughly.

  “The time has come,” Bane said.

  Blackthorne’s heart skipped a beat as he saw that Bane’s lips were pulled back in what he could only call a smile. It was a horrible thing to see.

  “The time to unite the gods is upon us,” the Black Lord cried. “I want you to take a message to Loviatar, the Goddess of Pain. I believe she is in Waterdeep. Tell her I wish to see her … immediately.”

  Blackthorne’s body tensed. The taloned grip upon the emissary’s shoulder tightened as Bane registered the change in Blackthorne’s stance.

  “You have a problem with this order, emissary?” the God of Strife growled.

  “Waterdeep is halfway across the Realms, Lord Bane. By the time I return, your campaign against the Dales will be a part of history.”

  The Black Lord’s smile vanished. “Aye, if you travel as a normal man would travel,” Bane said. “But with the spell I’ve given you, you will be in Waterdeep within a few days.”

  Blackthorne lowered his eyes, and the Black Lord removed his hand from his shoulder. “What if the goddess does not wish to accompany me on the journey back to Zhentil Keep?”

  Bane turned his back on the emissary and folding his arms. “I will trust you to convince her otherwise. That is all.”

  “But—”

  “That is all!” Bane screamed as he whirled on his emissary, his dark eyes flashing.

  Blackthorne took a step back.

  The eyes of the Black Lord blazed as the seething anger Bane felt intensified. “You disappoint me,” Bane said, although his tone suggested disgust rather than anger. “Do as I say and win back my favor.”

  Bowing before his lord, Blackthorne murmured the first prayer he had ever learned—a prayer to Bane. Then the mage stood up and raised his arms as he began to chant the emissary spell. He visualized his destination, remembering a visit he had paid to Waterdeep in his youth. A moment later, Blackthorne’s body began to shimmer and change as he tried to assume his raven form. But something was wrong. His flesh was being pulled in every direction as it turned charcoal-black. The emissary’s clothing shredded and fell to the floor.