Shadows of Doom

by Ed Greenwood

  A wine goblet was set down deliberately. Men stirred and shifted again.

  Stormcloak’s voice came again. “Kromm Kadar is the most recent addition to this table. Our blacksmith serves Zhentil Keep. His predecessor was a Sembian spy, whom we killed. Kromm serves the same master I do; his vote will be with mine.”

  Tense silence was the only reply. Stormcloak’s triumphant, almost taunting voice came again. “There is also Alazs. Am I not right?”

  “Yes, Lord,” came a new, thin voice.

  “Alazs breeds good horses and has sold many to Lord Longspear. I’m sure he’ll continue to put good mounts under our men. He has orders to, from the same source as I get my directives. Alazs has swung a sword for the Brotherhood in the Moonsea North for many a year. Perhaps you’ve heard of Alazs Ironwood, the Sword of Melvaunt?”

  Silence was the only reply. Stormcloak was moving about the room; his voice receded slightly. “Are you counting, Gulkin? Have I the votes yet? Not quite. Ah, but there’s another. Our physic, Cheth, is more than a man of potions, drugs, and herbs. He, too, serves the Brotherhood—and his healing seems most successful when applied to those we want healed.”

  “Is this wise,” a rasping voice came, “revealing us all, when you could have just voted this stump-head down?”

  “I believe so, Master Moonviper,” Stormcloak replied. “I think it’s important that we drop the pretenses with which Longspear wasted so much of our time.”

  The listeners on the stairs heard the glass stopper of a heavy decanter set down, liquid gurgling, and the thud of the decanter returning to the tabletop.

  “Sword, would you—?” The stopper was replaced and the decanter shifted again.

  “Thank you.” Stormcloak sipped, swallowed, and came closer. His voice was loud, very close under them, when he continued. “I have long had my suspicions, Councillor Gulkin, that some among us may well serve other masters, unknown to me. Perhaps you know something of this and can enlighten me? No? Well, feel free to unburden yourselves, any of you, should you learn of such misplaced loyalties among us. There have always been those who meddle—worshipers of dead dragons, the Harpers, and the Red Wizards, to name just three. I’ll be very surprised if at least one man here doesn’t know more of one such concern than he wants us to realize. Of course, we must always look to Cormyr on the one hand and Sembia on the other to take an interest in us, lying between them, the lightly patrolled backlands of both within our reach.”

  They heard him walking about almost lazily in the deep silence that followed.

  “That, Cheth,” Stormcloak added lightly, “is why I’d like everyone here to know just how matters stand. Besides, this will give traitors among us something to do—trying to report back to those who hold their secret loyalty, and not be discovered by us while doing so.”

  “Yes, Lord Stormcloak,” Cheth agreed.

  “Ah, but let us have the vote,” Stormcloak’s voice came again, almost purring now. “Or rather, to save time and thirsty throats, councillors, let us hear who would vote against me. Simply speak out and name the one you would have rule the dale in my stead.” He chuckled and added, “In view of the situation at present, please ensure that you choose someone you know to be still alive.”

  Elminster leaned over and murmured, his lips against Sharantyr’s ear, “I’d not seen this humor in the man before. It’s much worse than his cold, snarling side.”

  Sharantyr turned her head until her soft lips were at the Old Mage’s ear. “I take it, then, that you’re voting against him?”

  Elminster chuckled silently. It made his beard dance against her cheek.

  “I believe you’re right, Cheth,” Stormcloak’s voice came up to them. “It seems I am lord in the High Dale, after all. We’ll have to set a feast over this. Tonight, in the Great Hall. Give the orders, won’t you, Councillor Gulkin?”

  “Aye, Lord,” the deep voice muttered. “Is this meeting at an end?”

  “If the council agrees,” Stormcloak said silkily. There was a gruff, uneven answering chorus of assent, the sound of chairs scraping back, and the noise of booted feet moving about. The sounds receded until they died away entirely.

  “Follow the wine merchant,” Stormcloak’s voice came again. “He’s been entirely too quiet and agreeable these six rides past.”

  “Aye, Lord,” someone replied, and left.

  Stormcloak’s tread came closer until it was right beneath them. His hard, carefree voice said, “All right, Haragh, you can come down now. You’ve been crouching up there listening to all of it, haven’t you?”

  Sharantyr twisted out from under Elminster’s hand and launched herself down the stairs like a vengeful arrow. Her sword flashed as she came out into the light in a leap that brought her down on top of the startled wizard.

  Only the goblet in the Zhentarim’s hand saved him. Her landing drove his outstretched arms up, and the goblet with them in front of his throat. Her sword cut it to twisted ruin, but Stormcloak’s flesh beneath escaped, leaving him alive and able to shriek.

  Sharantyr’s training made her look up as they struck the floor together. Three fully armored, capable warriors were moving toward her, weapons grating out.

  Veterans, and not alone. Two swordsmen had been going out the door after the departing councillors. They were already turning startled faces to her.

  If she carved up this Zhent wizard, she’d have no time to hold back all the swords coming for her. And who would protect Elminster then?

  Sharantyr sprang up, too busy to curse, and leapt to meet the first warrior. From behind her, a magic missile streaked into one of the faces at the door, quelling the shout it was widening to utter. The other missile must have struck the new lord of the dale. Behind her she heard him gasp, curse, and roll frantically away.

  Then she was fighting for her life and had no time to watch Angruin Stormcloak frantically teleport away.

  Harpies curse the woman, whoever she was, were his parting thoughts. He’d snatched the time to take that spell back into his mind as battle raged at the very gates of the castle. Now it was used and gone, with dangerous fools still lurking about.

  Red butterflies suddenly swirled all around Sharantyr, and with them came a drift of snow.

  She heard Elminster sigh and murmur, “Wands!” in exasperation. Then the first warrior slipped on something and fell heavily at her feet, nearly taking her with him. She caught the second blade reaching for her life at the last possible instant.

  The first man was struggling and heaving beneath her, reaching for a dagger or trying for room enough to get his sword into her, no doubt. The second man was snarling and using all his strength to force into her face the broadsword she’d parried a finger or so in front of her nose. Sharantyr set her teeth and resisted, knowing he was stronger and that the struggles beneath her were forcing her up into the waiting blade.

  “Lady, aid me,” Sharantyr cried, calling on Mielikki, the goddess of the forest. “Tymora and Tempus, attend,” she added for good measure, seeing death very close to her and reaching dark fingers her way.

  Then the man above her grunted and was spitting blood and teeth as a tattered, dirty, and familiar boot took him in the face. Elminster had joined the fight. He stepped on her with a muttered, “Sorry, lass,” as he bent to drive his dagger into the neck of the man beneath her.

  Then he sprang up, robes swirling, to stamp on the sword hand of the man he’d kicked. There was a cracking sound and a roar of pain, and Elminster had the sword in his own hands and was bringing it up to parry the rushing attack of the third man.

  “Shar,” the Old Mage suggested calmly as a flurry of ringing blows drove him back across her toward the stair, “cut the legs out from under this fellow for me, will ye?”

  Sharantyr grinned savagely. “I’ll do better,” she replied, and snaked an arm out from under the tangle of limbs to drive her sword up into the breeches under his armor skirt.

  The man screamed, gave an awkward hop, and f
ell to the floor, writhing in agony. Elminster dropped the sword and went to the table.

  Men were thundering back up into the room, hastily donning helms and drawing swords. Elminster picked up the heaviest chair he could find, and with a sudden rippling of muscles threw it across the room to crash into the foremost man.

  The startled Wolf went down, and the man behind him tripped and went sprawling. Elminster hurled the iron sphere he was carrying at the next man and charged forward, snatching out his dagger again.

  He used it twice with brutal haste before he reached the pinioned man. With a bleak smile he struck the sword out of the man’s hand and shoved the man hard with his shoulder.

  The man was wrapped in metal bands, like a cage that has tightened around its prisoner until the bars press into the skin all around and movement is impossible. Elminster drove the helpless man backward into the door frame, where he lodged amid cracking noises of wood and bone, and a scream of pain.

  “Noisy, these Zhents,” he commented as the man screamed again. Men behind him in the corridor outside the room began to curse, trying and failing to push the pinioned Wolf out of their way. “How do ye, Shar?”

  Sharantyr came to join him, blade wiped clean. “I’m still alive,” she replied grimly, eyeing the man, “but I like little the thought of hacking my way through that lot. What say we go back up again and seek another way down?”

  Elminster frowned for a breath or two as unseen men shoved and cursed, doing something that made the caged man scream again. Then he nodded. “I don’t like to leave magic behind, with things as they are,” he said, eyeing the iron bands, “but there’s no easy way to get that back without fighting all of them. I suppose I should thank Mystra and Tymora both for it merely working when I needed it.”

  Sharantyr nodded and took his arm. “Come, El. Let’s be out of here before someone else finds magic that works and fills this room with fire—or worse.”

  Elminster looked again at the now-unconscious man, head bouncing and lolling from the force of blows he was taking from behind as impatient warriors tried to force their way into the room. He sighed, drew up his robes in both hands for faster climbing, and made for the stairs. Sharantyr glided just behind him, sword ready, watching their rear as they ascended. It was turning into a very long day.

  17

  Beware Ladies with Steel in Their Hands

  “Is the high constable still alive?” Sharantyr asked as they came cautiously out of the turret and looked around. A quiet had fallen over the High Castle as the afternoon sun lit up its every nook and crevice. In the courtyard below, a few dalefolk could be seen cautiously probing bodies and piles of rubble and tumbled gear. Doors were closed, and turret windows shuttered. Save for a thin wisp of smoke rising from the castle kitchens, the fortress seemed deserted, as if no one lurked within, plotting victory and gathering swords and magic.

  Elminster spread empty hands. “Mulmar? I barely recognized him, ye know, with the chains an’ all. He headed for the battlements by one stair while we ascended by the other. I lost sight of him after that. I seem to recall hearing him cry out when they were firing all those quarrels at us.” He winced. “If he fell there, in the forecourt, I may have sent him to the gods myself a little later when I hit the Zhent’s globes.”

  At the memory, he drew the wand from his belt, looked at it quizzically, and sighed. “I can’t remember what Art is left in this. It’s gone wild so many times now, who can tell?” He shrugged. “Let us seek Irreph, whate’er befalls now. Thy thought is a good one.”

  Sharantyr smiled at him. “Of course. They always are.” She handed her sword to him. “Here, hold this.”

  “The eternal saying of a woman to a man,” Elminster observed wryly. “But why to me, and now?”

  Sharantyr grunted under the dead, dangling weight of the corpse she’d picked up. “Because I need both hands … for this.” She staggered back along the walk, the dead man on her shoulders, and dumped the carrion through the turret window.

  “Drag a few over here, will you?” she called. “Before we look for the high constable, we’d best guard our rear.”

  Elminster dragged obediently. The lady ranger tossed the bodies down the stairs, Haragh first.

  “They’ll carve or crush their way past the one you trapped down there soon enough,” Sharantyr said. “If they have to get past all of these to come after us—well, at least they’ll be slowed down. Or if they use magic to shift them, we’ll be warned.” She puffed, heaved, and sweated until cold, heavy bodies choked the stair and covered the turret room floor. Then she squinted at Elminster, pulling hair out of her eyes, and said, “I’ll be glad when this day’s done, Old Mage. I’m beginning to feel old.”

  Elminster raised an eyebrow. “A thousand and more years old am I, and d’ye hear me groaning and limping and feebly protesting my age? Surely ye can manage the weight of a mere twenty-odd winters, lass!”

  He grinned at her expression and added innocently, “Or is it thirty-odd?”

  The Old Mage of Shadowdale then demonstrated the light weight of his years for all the Realms to see by running off as fast and nimbly as any naughty child at play. Sharantyr aided him by amply demonstrating his immediate need to do so.

  “He lives,” Elminster said tersely, kneeling by the sprawled, blackened body on the stair. Quarrels stood out from it like needles in a chatelaine’s pincushion. The high constable lay in his blood amid a litter of chains, fallen Wolves, and odd weapons. “He’ll want healing, even to see the moon this night.”

  “Then give it to him,” said Sharantyr in a voice that trembled with fresh rage. “While I do what he was trying to.”

  Elminster turned. “And that is?” he asked mildly.

  Sharantyr’s face was bleak. “Destroy every Zhent still in this dale.” Zhents had done this to a brave man who still wore their chains, just as Zhents had chained her, too, and … She thrust away those memories with a shudder, letting her rage build into the fire she’d need to slay as ruthlessly as she’d need to. As ruthlessly as they always did.

  She found she was trembling, and that Elminster had noticed it and had begun to frown, so she drew in a deep breath and tried to assume a nonchalant manner. Hefting her long sword, she surveyed the notches and scrapes in its steel critically and added, “One of them owes me a new sword, too.”

  “Still feeling old and worn out?” Elminster asked her pointedly, slipping the ring of regeneration onto one of Irreph Mulmar’s fingers and closing the limp, hairy hand of the high constable over it.

  Sharantyr laughed harshly. “No. Not anymore.” She turned away, whipped her sword through the air thrice, stretched like a great cat, and turned back to him. “Wish me luck, Old Mage,” she said in a voice like silk falling onto waiting steel. “I’ve Wolves to hunt.”

  Elminster smiled. “All of Tymora’s luck upon thee, and more. Take with thee all that Mystra and I have no need for.” He rose hastily, smile fading, and reached out his hand to her. Wondering, Sharantyr laid her hand in his.

  The Old Mage gently drew her to him. His lips were soft on her cheek.

  “Take care, lass,” he said roughly, “for I find more and more that I do not want to lose thee.”

  Sharantyr stared at him for a moment, openmouthed, then whirled about and raced away across the forecourt.

  Elminster watched her go, shook his head slightly, and sat down on the step above Irreph, wand in hand, to guard the high constable of the High Dale. There are less steady jobs.

  Sharantyr ran past the astonished women of the dale, who were clutching a variety of weapons and looking nervously at shuttered windows high above them, dark arrow-slit windows uncomfortably nearer, and closed doors. She gave them one hawklike, searching glance and ran on without breaking stride, drawn sword gleaming.

  Ylyndaera stared after her and said urgently, “All of you, follow her! Come!”

  Sharantyr ran hard, hair streaming, across the muddy courtyard toward a shadow in a back corne
r where the men had been earlier … men who were not there now. They must have found a way in. She would find it too.

  Behind straw heaped up for the horses, Sharantyr found a pile of fresh stones. Then she saw the hole their removal had opened in the wall. Here the others had gone in. Here, guarded or not, she would follow.

  She halted, breathing heavily from her run, and looked all around warily. Seeing no foe, she crouched to peer into the gloom, extended her blade, and followed it into darkness.

  Her throat was suddenly very dry. She’d climbed into unknown dark places a time or six, aye, but always in the company of others—usually the merry, mighty Knights of Myth Drannor. With them, as they hewed down dragons and wizards alike while trading jests and insults, it was all too easy to feel invulnerable. But now … She crept onward, hoping no enemy archer or mage waited at the other end of this tunnel.

  The strong smell of deep, damp earth rose around her with a faint, clinging odor of decay. Thankfully, there were no charnel or beast smells. This was no lair or bone pit, and the way ahead was short.

  The tunnel opened out into a small, round room. Smooth-sided chutes—smaller, tubelike tunnels—opened into it on all sides and from above. The higher they went, the narrower they became. This was familiar, somehow. It resembled something she’d—of course! This was a privy pit, and the tunnels above—disused, by the lack of strong smell or dung underfoot—led to garderobes or cruder jakes in the castle above. But where had those dalesmen gone?

  Two tunnels looked large enough to comfortably crawl in. The one to the left must lead toward the turret and the room they’d heard Stormcloak elect himself lord in. The one to the right went to the kitchens, great hall, guest rooms, and audience chambers.

  Near the great hall, there’d probably be too many people about, and it would be too large to furnish easy cover against a crossbow. Moreover, there were—or at least recently had been—Wolves in the other direction. Lots of them. She peered down both tunnels but could find nothing distinctive about either, and no marks to show which way the men had gone.