Cloak of Shadows asota-2
Page 29
Then she sank down onto Belkram's shoulder, crossed her legs gracefully, and closed her eyes. Driven by her will, the sword of Mystra spun about and shot to the wall, in the direction of the Hall of Stars.
It struck the wall and hung quivering there, and the shadows around it began to melt and run, flowing away from it.
When the wall was gone, the blade leapt on to the next barrier.
"Gods!" Itharr swore suddenly. "She's burning away the castle!"
They scrambled up, and a look of annoyance crossed Sylune's ghostly face. "Don't let me fall, you great lout," she told Belkram, opening her eyes. "I may weigh nothing, but I don't appreciate being bounced on my head on floors made of shadow. To me, they seem very solid."
"It's all right if we move about, then?" the Harper asked her.
She frowned. "Yes, it's better if you do, I suppose. Follow the sword. If any Malaugrym show up to do battle, it can drink their spells and shield you."
And that is what befell. As the Hall of Stars boiled away into the black emptiness of distant shifting shadows that is Shadowhome, the three rangers saw a tower beyond it topple soundlessly down into the Well of Shadows.
"Don't destroy it all," Shar said to the ghostly form riding on Belkram's shoulder.
"I haven't the time to do so if I wanted to," Sylune told her. "I am going to ruin the Great Hall of the Throne, though, and carve up the Shadow Throne. I want the Malaugrym to know they were defeated this day, not just that some lucky humans got loose and managed to do a bit of damage while escaping."
There were a lot of walls between the Well and the Great Hall, and the adventurers soon caught up to the blue blade. It melted away one last wall and then flew down a long corridor into the Chamber of the Veils, the last antechamber before the Great Hall.
As the veils blazed up around the sword, Malaugrym melted out of invisibility all over the chamber. Ahorga, Bheloris, and several others faced them, Malaugrym the rangers knew by sight if not by name. They saw grim determination, and fear, on the shapeshifters' faces.
Sylune spread her hands an instant before forty or more spells crashed down upon them. The room rang with her high, wild laugh of exultation as the spells all flashed back against those who'd hurled them.
The chamber rocked; balconies broke off and crashed to the tiles below. All over the chamber, Malaugrym bodies collapsed, slain by their own spells, or sagged back in pain and flickered out of sight as contingencies and rings took them elsewhere.
Amid the veils, the blue blade began a sudden spiral. Sylune looked up at it and said a very unladylike word.
As they all looked up at her in amazement-and Belkram almost dropped her-the entire chamber shook, pulsed under their feet, and grated into life, joining the spiral. The shadows moved slowly at first, then faster and faster, a whistling drone around them rising slowly toward a scream.
"Sylune! What's happening?" Itharr shouted.
"The blade struck a gate and is taking us all with it in a vortex," the Witch of Shadowdale announced calmly. "Watch this closely… you'll probably never be in one again. They're often fatal."
"Thanks," Belkram told her feelingly as they began to whirl around faster and faster. "Are you going to do something about it?"
"I am doing something about it, overly muscled one," Sylune told him crisply. "I'm calling on the sword's powers to make sure the vortex takes us to Faerun and not into the fires of Dis, say, or a plane of endless fire or antimatter."
"What part of Faerun?" Belkram called back over the mounting shriek of the vortex. She turned blazing eyes on him until she saw his teasing grin, then she punched him instead.
And the world fell apart.
Daggerdale, Kythorn 20
The blue blade sizzled deep into the turf of a familiar-looking hillside with a ruined manor house at its top and a decrepit bridge across a stream at the bottom.
As they tumbled to the grass in a last slow spiral, the blade exploded in blue radiant shards that went spinning past them, soft blue shards that dissolved into the shimmering air in moments. The sword of Mystra was gone as if it had never been. As Mystra no longer was.
Three rangers and a spectral sorceress sat up and blinked. Around them, seven other figures rose too, beings who had tails and spike-studded arms and angrily curling tentacles.
"Oh, blast!" Belkram cursed, and several Malaugrym flinched, expecting a spell to explode over them at his words.
When nothing befell, they acquired cruel smiles and flexed their tentacles and barbed tails and pincer claws. Then they began the slow climb up the hillside toward the rangers in tattered leathers. The ghostly woman who'd been with them had disappeared.
"To come all this way…" Shar said, close to tears, as she saw sure death coming up the hill toward her.
"See the world! Have daring adventures! Join the Harpers!" Belkram and Itharr chorused, in the deepest, most stirring and cultured town crier voices they could manage. And they waved their weapons.
"Hey, breeding maiden!" Belkram called. "Catch!"
His sword-still silver-came flashing through the air to her. Sharantyr caught it, tears in her eyes at his gesture, as she saw him draw a boot dagger, salute her with it, and stand beside Itharr. Each them held two drawn daggers to use against seven ever-changing monsters.
"Mystra and Tymora," Shar said between her teeth, "this is not fair!"
She raised the sword wearily, resolved to die well-and white light broke over the hillside, fire that raged briefly across the Malaugrym.
The shapeshifters danced in agony. When the fire subsided, all stood in human form. There were gasps of horror from the Malaugrym, and frantic cries as they tried to shift shape and could not.
Ahorga, face streaming sweat with the effort, finally managed to produce wings. He sprang back, retreating down the hill, and cried, "I go now, cowards! Know that you've made a foe forever this day! I'll be back!"
"Don't hurry," Belkram called to him as the shape-shifter flapped his wings and climbed heavily into the sky. As Ahorga turned into the wind, to rise, Belkram thought he saw that great shaggy head bare its teeth in a cold answering grin. Then the Malaugrym mounted the winds and soared aloft.
Two more shapeshifters, panting and groaning with the effort, overcame Sylune's magic and managed the same trick. They wasted no breath on proud exit lines because by then their audience was gone.
Men and women were rolling over and over in the grass, tearing at each other in desperate fury, one side trying to snatch weapons and the other, smaller side trying to use them.
While the two Malaugrym flew frantically away from any place where that ghostly sorceress might be able to see them, Sylune used her last forcebolt to blow apart the head of a Shadowmaster who was throttling Belkram.
As the smoking, headless body toppled sideways, Belkram rolled to his feet to find Itharr and a blood-drenched but unhurt Sharantyr doing the same thing.
They stood looking soberly at each other across the corpses.
"Well," Itharr said with a sigh, "we're back."
From out of the ruins of the manor atop the hill, something small and dark came flying. Belkram snatched up a fallen dagger to make a throw, but the object banked smoothly past him and he saw that it was a pipe. A curved, familiar-looking pipe that trailed wisps of smoke and drifted to a halt in their midst.
"Back, are ye?" The voice that issued from it was even more familiar, and as testy as ever. "A fine mess ye leapt into, and stirred up further, to be sure!"
"That wouldn't be who I think it is, would it?" Belkram asked wearily as Sharantyr groaned and covered her eyes.
"Aye," Itharr replied. "It would be."
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Document ID: fbd-8f4bd1-6768-3347-82b5-4718-e9c4-1c9b95
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Document creation date: 05.02.2012
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