by Ed Greenwood
In moments, the crest of the hill was a shrieking, hacking mass of dying hobgoblins. One of them, who'd come up that hill running, just kept on going, flinging his captured Nose Bone blade away… and then his knife… and then his helm.
He seemed to dwindle as he ran, and by the time he reached the nearest tree, a trail of greaves and bracers and armor plate marked his route, and he stood almost naked, his unlovely hide dark with dirt. Then he grinned at the sky, scratched at his ribs, and became Elminster again for a moment before he shrank into a crow once more and leapt into the sky. He circled over the hilltop, cawing loudly to give any surviving hobgoblins an ill omen, and watched the Thentians hastily hitching up their beasts again and trying to move off in frantic, almost comical haste. Another caravan saved, another scrap of order salvaged from all this chaos.
Ao was going to owe him a lot, Elminster decided, before this Time of Troubles was through.
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19
"The time has come, Milhvar, for some explanations," Ahorga said coldly, and the row of candles in the Great Hall of the Throne flickered as if in agreement.
Milhvar smiled that slow smile of his and spread his hands. "The cloak of spells was a project ordered by Dhalgrave before his unfortunate passing. Obedience to the will of the Shadowmaster High is the cornerstone of order among those of the blood of Malaug, something recognized by all of the diligent participants in this work, not merely myself. Many of us labored long and hard to weave a web of enchantments that would shield users fully against the perceptions-and the launched magic-of any of Mystra's Chosen. Only with such a shield can we hope to bring doom to Elminster."
"Yes, yes," Ahorga growled, rising against the candlelit shadows like an angry giant. "We've heard this self-serving 'I am loyal' speech before! I'm-"
"Going to hear it again," Milhvar said, his voice suddenly steely. "Come, Shadowmaster Ahorga. That is the least you can do to honor the memory of your daughter Huerbara, who sacrificed her life testing this cloak. She fell in battle nobly, striving against the might of the defenders of Silverymoon. Let her sacrifice not be in vain."
"Strutting mage," Ahorga snarled, advancing menacingly, "I've heard enough! For the loss of her life, yours is forfeit!" He flung four Malaugrym out of the way as if they were dolls and mounted the steps to where Milhvar stood. "She was worth ten of you!" he roared in anguish, in a voice that shook that vast chamber. "She was the hope for the future of us all! I'll scream her name from every battlement of this castle as I break the bodies of those who wrought this wretched cloak, and every one of them shall die!"
Milhvar nodded to the cowled figure beside him. It stayed motionless for a long moment, as a trembling Ahorga hurled kin after kin out of the way, ascending the guarded steps of the stair, until Milhvar began to fear that a trick was being played on him, and that Ahorga was going to reach him after all while cool eyes watched slaughter through that cowl.
And then the robe fell away, and Huerbara stood revealed, nude in the candlelight so that her father could see the true, twisted form of her birthing and know her for his own. "Father!" she cried, delighted at his vow of revenge and his judgment of her worth. "Father!"
"Huerbara!" the giant Shadowmaster cried in a disbelieving shout of wonder that shook most of the castle. A gigantic tentacle swept her from her feet to his breast, under his searching gaze, and then he cried exultantly, "Yes! My daughter lives!"
Milhvar stood watching with a small smile on his face until a tentacle slithered out of the affectionate embrace of father and daughter, grew a small fanged mouth, and said to him in a soft, menacing rumble, "The cruelty of your tricks impresses even me, Milhvar. Watch your back hereafter, and spend no more Malaugrym lives on this fool's game of hunting down Elminster. Every one of us who dies is someone's son or daughter. You would trade all these lives for that of one old human wizard?
We should all be glad the House of Malaug is not a fruit stall, and you the vendor! How long would the stall survive?"
Milhvar stood very still as the tentacle withdrew, staring after it thoughtfully, and said nothing. When Huerbara looked back at where her mentor had stood with her atop the steps, exulting in the sure knowledge that her father loved her, Milhvar had faded away.
18
Shadows on the Castle Walls
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19
Shadows swirled around them, blue-green and laced with white, and even Belkram had to admit the spherical room was beautiful.
"I worked on this for years," Amdramnar said proudly, "after I-" Abruptly he fell silent, and his three guests looked at him curiously. Under their gazes, he continued with some embarrassment, "after I saw a similar room in a satrap's pleasure palace in Calimport. Ah, through my scrying stone, of course."
Belkram hooted. "In use, was it?"
The Shadowmaster nodded, the ghost of a smile on his face. "I've not yet found sixteen willing and tattooed ladies to share it with me-with little gold rings and bells set into their skin all over-as the satrap enjoyed, but…"
"Someday," Itharr agreed.
"You're working on it," Belkram offered.
The Malaugrym shook his head slightly and smiled in spite of himself. "I see what you mean," he said to Shar, who smiled ruefully in response.
"They're handy for soaping your back, though," she offered. Amdramnar shrugged. "A man with tentacles has no need…" he said almost sadly, and then added, "I always like to have music when I bathe, and wine. Will you join me?"
"Join you? Ah, in the water?" Itharr asked.
"No, on the ceiling!.. In the water, yes," the Shadow-master said with mock severity. Looking straight into Itharr's eyes, he added quietly, "If you're fearing I'll grow tentacles like an octopus and pull all of you under to drown, fear no more. You are my guests and, I hope, my friends."
"Of course," the Harper answered hastily. Why does this shapeshifter go on with all this? Belkram wondered. He'd forgotten that Sylune was with him, riding his thoughts, until she replied, He plays a deeper game, with patience. Some men do, you know. His derisive reply had no words to it. Sharantyr appeared to have come to a decision. "Is the water ready?" she asked. The Shadowmaster nodded, and waved a hand. "Warmer at this end, colder over there, and the floating pods hold soaps. Smell them until you find a favorite. I'll set out trays with some wines."
"Then let us begin," Sharantyr said, and held her sword up horizontally over her head. She whispered a word to it and let go-and it hummed a bright blue and hung motionless above her. Beneath its glittering edge the lady ranger bent over, put her hands to her leathers, and calmly began to disrobe.
The Shadowmaster looked at the hovering blade expressionlessly for a moment and then turned toward the door.
Itharr was out of his clothes and into the pool in a flash, coming up to rest his elbows on the edge and watch Sharantyr in frank and open admiration. She wrinkled her nose at him and flicked her fingers in a 'so?' expression she'd seen haughty Waterdhavian ladies use at feasts, but he went on staring, with a big grin on his face. She sighed, smiled, shook her head, and continued.
Belkram was also staring at her when a sudden thought struck him. What am I going to do with you? he asked Sylune.
Go to Sharantyr and bind me into her hair, came the reply, quick as a flash. Haste!
He made haste around the pool, and Sharantyr stiffened under his hands for only a moment before Sylune's mindtouch revealed all. A breath later, the deed was done.
Belkram stepped back smoothly and took her clothes as Amdramnar reappeared behind a small forest of floating bottles, but inside he felt suddenly alone-and afraid. Sylune's comforting voice was gone.
Stow it! she said in his mind then, as his fingers momentarily brushed Sharantyr's, came away with her chemise-and dropped it, distracted, as he saw what he was holding.
He made a snatch for it as it fell to the waiting waters, missed the grab, and saw a tentacle snake out over the pool to snatch it inches above immersion.
The tentacle held up the garment delicately. Belkram said, "My thanks," and took the garment as if he thanked tentacles every day.
Then he realized what he'd done, and wore a curious expression as he set Sharantyr's clothes neatly aside and straightened up to work on his own.
Shar plunged into the pool with a gasp of pleasure, feeling cool liquid wash away the stickiness that always plagued her under body leathers. When she rolled over onto her back to float and listen to the softly welling music — where had a Malaugrym heard hill flutes and harps together? — she found a wineglass full of smoking blue vintage under her nose. She smiled in thanks and pure pleasure, and asked in her mind, Must we kill them all?
No, Sharantyr. You can keep one or two for… entertainment… but choose carefully, came Sylune's wry and surprising response. Choose very carefully.
Faerun, The Misty Forest, Kythorn 19
Ramtharage, Keeper of the Fastness, almost whimpered in his seething rage and had to gasp out two long, shuddering breaths to calm himself enough to recall the words he'd need. These blasphemers must die!
It had been a day and a night since the Great Evil, and these men could not be allowed to live through this second day. For every moment that passed, the hurt to divine Eldath grew greater. Their sin must be purged before nightfall, that the cleansing of the Fastness could begin.
At about this time yestermorn, the Great Evil had occurred. The night sky had been wracked by the thunders and flashing evocations of mighty spells: showers of lightning lances, great cauldrons of skyfire, and near-blinding clashes of strange radiances. Surely gods had been contesting in the heavens, one with another. Such terrifying outpourings of magic had continued through the dawn. With full light, a smoking star had plunged from the heavens and crashed down like a hurled axe into the heart of the Fastness itself!
The clear, tranquil waters had been hurled skyward, the small sacred creatures who dwelt within them rudely slain, the carefully nurtured mosses and reverently placed stones of the banks flung about like handfuls of refuse and gravel. In one awful instant, the Fastness had been riven and despoiled.
The faithful of Eldath had not even finished tending to those of their number who'd been struck senseless or dashed and broken against the rocks and nearby trees when intruders had come through the woods-local rangers Ramtharage knew by sight, men who worshiped that other Lady of the Forest.
And these Mielikki worshipers hadn't even asked his permission for their intrusion, only arrived in grim haste with nets and long hooked poles and a shamelessly clad witch in their midst. And then these desecrators had dragged the pool! Profaned the ruined Fastness anew!
When their hooks and ropes and probings failed to bring up what they sought, the witch had summoned up a dark spell that lifted the tortured waters once more, only this time all of a piece, floating upward as if held in a vast, invisible bowl.
With the polluted sacred waters hanging dark and heavy over their heads, those rangers of Mielikki had torn the sky rock out of the muddy, naked depths of the Fastness and borne it away. The witch even had the temerity, the utter flaming gall, to complain about the weight of the waters, the sacred pool of the Goddess!
"A sign of the goddess," they'd called the man-high stone as they hauled it away, gouging a trail through the sacred earth that still cut away through the trees, raw and bright, like a wound made by a slashing sword.
There was only one goddess whom rangers could speak of so: Mielikki. Our Lady of the Forest.
Ramtharage's lips twisted in fresh anger at that name. He strode to stand beside the stone's trail and look along it, deliberately letting the anger build in him again, for he was not a violent man, and fury all too soon made him feel sick. But he must be strong; this desecration of Eldath's holy place must be avenged.
He'd begun the work he must do. Three of the blasphemers hung helpless across the pool, entangled in a web-work that Ramtharage in his fury had spun no less than seven trees into, and more vines than he'd bothered to count. He stared at their fearful, sweating faces stonily as his people gathered behind him, for priests of Eldath did no violence, and yet these men must die.
When the crowd was large enough, Ramtharage began the long walk around the torn edge of the pool. Behind him, someone began the Chant of the Fastness, and it swelled as he walked on, his bare feet plunging into mud that should not be there. Uncaring, he strode over sharp stones and tangled, broken branches alike, to bring doom to the desecrators.
When he stood below them, he held out one hand for the knife and raised the other. Around him, the gathered faithful of Eldath froze into utter stillness, and it was so quiet that a thin breeze could be heard rustling the leaves in distant trees.
"You have all seen the desecration of our holy Fastness, sacred place of Eldath," Ramtharage said, lifting his voice only a little. "Sacrifices of atonement cannot begin to make up the slight to our Lady. So evil an act can only be seen as the first blow in a war between two faiths that can no longer walk Faerun as friends. The Sundering has begun. Let it now proceed!"
He raised the smooth-polished knife so that it flashed back the sun, and tried not to notice how badly his hand trembled.
"Eldath calls upon her priests to refrain from slaying and the work of war," Ramtharage continued, "and so it may be that what I do now will cost me the favor of our blessed Lady… and my powers. Yet my duty is clear!"
He looked to the three rangers in their living bonds, and folded his arms, calling on that deep well of calm within him to quell his raging anger. He had to reach far deeper to find it than had ever been the case before.
But find it he did, and control with it, enough to work the spell and begin to rise from the tortured earth, a foot from the ground… and then another… ascending slowly until he was within striking distance of those he must sacrifice.
"This is not something I undertake lightly," he told them.
"Nor us," one of the helpless men told him grimly. "Nor us!"
The priest glared at the man who'd spoken. "Do not presume to profane this moment!"
"Ramthar," the eldest of the three asked him quietly, "why are you doing this?"
"Aye," the third ranger spoke. "What does shedding blood have to do with stones falling into pools?"
"Enough!" the priest spat at them. "Be still!" His hands were shaking again as he lifted the knife on high. "Your blood must be your payment for what you did here!" He whirled in the air to look down on the crowd and thundered, "Is this not right? Is this not just?"
"Aye" many voices thundered. But in the silence that followed that impressive shout, another voice spoke from the ranks of the faithful, a voice that was not raised, yet somehow carried easily to the ears of all present.
"Ramthar, I've never heard such idiotic raving in my life! What are ye, mad? Since when do priests of Eldath spill the blood of those who embrace other forest faiths? Does Eldath know what ye're about?"
"Blasphemer!" the priest thundered. "Who are you, to use Her name so lightly?"
The man who'd challenged him was rising now, rising into the air as Ramtharage had done, passing the shoulders of the staring worshipers. He was an old man with white hair and beard, who seemed familiar.
"Elminster of Shadowdale, I am," the old man told the assembly. "Perhaps ye've heard of me."
Ramtharage gulped and turned scarlet and gabbled, "Leave this place! This is not your affair! This is a just and fitting punishment for a wrong to holy-"
"Ahh, belt up and stow it," Elminster told him crisply. "It's murder, that's what it'll be, and I'll see that the swordcaptain hangs ye from yonder tree for it, if ye're foolish enough to go through with this nonsense!"
"Be still!" the Keeper of the Fastness thundered. "You have no right to speak here! Y-"
"Ye're wrong, Ramthar," Elminster said in a voice of cold iron. "All folk of Faerun should have the right to speak as they please, anywhere. 'Tis not the duty Eldath laid upon thee to forbid speech, or anything else. Thy task is to nurtu
re and aid, not to restrict or punish. Ye forget thy proper place."
"You dare-?" Ramtharage was purple now and struggling for words. "I-silence him!" Struck by this sudden thought, he leaned forward and told the faithful, "Silence him! Strike him down!"
Angry voices rose in agreement, and fists waved in the air, but no one near the archmage quite dared to leap up and lay a hand on his booted feet. They had all heard tales of the might of the Old Mage of Shadowdale.
"Bring him down with stones!" Ramtharage snarled, waving his fist in the air. "Strike him down with boughs! Strike for our sacred Lady's sal-"
This has gone far enough," Elminster said quietly, but his next words rolled around the Fastness with the force and volume of a thunderclap. "Let this madness be at an end!"
He waved one bony hand, and stillness came again to the clearing, the utter stillness of the magically bound. Elminster looked around at the crowd, frozen in midmovement, only their eyes and lungs free to move… and they looked helplessly back at him. Then he turned slowly, treading air, to squint at the priest who held the knife raised and ready. Elminster shook his head in disgust.
"Ye wouldn't listen to them," El told Ramtharage, "and ye wouldn't listen to me. Who would ye believe, if they told ye flat out in words even ye, Ramtharage Druin, can understand, that ye were wrong? Who would ye heed?" He touched the priest's lips with a finger. "Speak."
"The Goddess herself speaks to me," Ramtharage told him proudly, "and I will hear the counsel of no other."
"Right," Elminster said briskly. "Thankee." He stepped back and turned to face the crowd. "Ye all heard the solemn words of the Keeper of the Fastness, I trust?"
They struggled to reply, and could not. In their enforced silence, they stood and listened to the old wizard chant something long and low and full of words that echoed strangely and yet seemed to clang and slither upon the ear. And then Elminster stretched his arms wide and brought the chant to an end.
Two women appeared, one by each of his outstretched hands. One was tall and shapely yet robust, clad in leathers like the three pinioned rangers. Her garb was of muted green and brown, and her russet hair curled long and free. Her eyes were large and of the deepest brown, and when she moved, she drew the eye of every man there.