Shadows of Doom

by Ed Greenwood

  “Easy, lass, easy,” Elminster rumbled. “Didn’t we rid them of enough Zhent mages to rule a small dale, between us? While ye were so busy glaring at Xanther—the weak-willed one who wanted my wand; unless my nose has lost all smell, he’s a Zhent sneak—at the table this even, I gave both Gedaern and Irreph identical lists of what cause each councillor serves, at least so far as I knew. Gedaern read it then and there, I know. I saw him go out, and later he came back and told me a name.”

  Sharantyr frowned. “I remember that. ‘Blakkal’ or something, he said to you, just when the Zhent councillor got up to leave. I didn’t know what he meant.”

  “Aye,” Elminster said to her in the darkness. “The leather worker. He served the Cult of the Dragon until Gedaern saw to him.” He sighed again. “I doubt Gedaern will let Xanther live to see another sunrise, even if Mulmar leaves reading my note until then.”

  “Why wouldn’t he read it?”

  Elminster gave her a look that she could not see, but felt. “Everyone of the dale wanting to talk to him, his daughter clinging to him and in tears every second breath, and the first proper meal he’s had for a long time—with too much to drink, I don’t doubt. It would also come as no surprise to me to learn he’s abed with Ireavyn right now.”

  It was Sharantyr’s time to sigh. “True enough. I don’t suppose the Zhent councillors will amount to much. With all the wizards Manshoon already had strutting around the dale to back up their usurper, he wouldn’t have needed great warriors or mages, only good spies. And I can’t think agents of Cormyr and Sembia are much to be feared, given that each country will counter any moves to gain control that the other makes. But you spoke of Thay. You’re going to leave a Red Wizard running loose here?”

  “Hardly that,” Elminster told her. “He’s a wizard, aye, but rather a decent sort and much too careful to reveal himself. When they come for him, of course, it’ll be too late for him to do more than run. He’s the local weaver, a fat, kindly little man by the name of Jatham Villore. I feel somewhat in his debt. Someone cloaked the Zhents’ searching spells as we and the two Harper lads were gallivanting around the dale, and I rather think it was him.”

  “Why?”

  “Will ye never run out of questions, girl? To shake the rule of the Zhentarim here, of course.” Elminster cleared his throat. “We looked into each other’s eyes, in the great hall just now, and if hundreds of years of measuring folk with my eyes has taught me anything, he’s not quick to slay with his Art, that one.”

  Sharantyr reached out in the darkness, found his beard—it felt like the soft bristles at the base of a horse’s tail—and patted his cheek. “Well enough,” she said. “You’ve done what you could for the dale. So tell me, where are we going?”

  She heard the grin in Elminster’s voice. “By Mystra, lass, but ye’re a keen, feisty blade! Well, then, this gate should take us to another castle—much grander than this one, but in ruins—in the Fallen Lands.”

  “Clear across Anauroch? How will we get back?”

  “One disaster at a time, lass. Come.” The Old Mage tugged at her hand, and Sharantyr allowed him to pull her to her feet. The stinking darkness swirled around them like soiled velvet, disturbed by their movement. Sharantyr nearly choked.

  “What castle?” she managed to ask, feeling for the hilt of her sword.

  “Spellgard they call it now. Long ago, when it belonged to a friend of mine, it had another name.”

  “What happened?” Sharantyr asked, but Elminster towed her forward with surprising strength, and the words that began above the cesspool of the High Castle ended in a cold, shadowed hall lit by glowing mosses.

  Dark archways gaped in the walls around them, and more moss hung from stone balconies above. The floor was an uneven tumble of disturbed marble, its smooth paving broken upward as if a giant had punched it repeatedly from beneath.

  Cold breezes blew around their ankles, coming from somewhere unseen, and there was no sign of life. Dust hung thick in the air, and there were no furnishings to be seen except stone seats carved into the walls in little curl-ornamented niches.

  Elminster was nodding in recognition. “Spellgard?” Sharantyr asked, to hear more about it rather than to confirm where they were.

  “Aye,” Elminster said, striding forward. “As to what happened, well … it’s a very long story and happened a long, long time ago. Let’s just say that the realm of Netheril fell, and the friend I spoke of—the sorceress Saharel—lived on here. But mages had very few ways of stretching their years, then.” He fell silent, looking around at the moss and the tumbled stone.

  “Except being chosen by Mystra,” Sharantyr said softly beside him.

  Elminster nodded slowly. “Save for the grace of Mystra,” he echoed. He stood looking at nothing for a long, sad moment, then lifted his head and said almost defiantly, “Best we look about. Ye never know … some Zhent wizard might find the gate behind us.”

  Sharantyr’s sword slid out as she spun around to see only dust and empty air. “Not yet,” she said, turning back. “Lead, El. You know this place.”

  Elminster strode toward an archway. “Saharelgard it was called, when I knew it. I’ve been here once since, but I was too busy running then to look around.”

  “Too busy running?”

  “Running from, and fighting, a family of mages who’d learned how to turn themselves into dragons.”

  “Oh.”

  Elminster waited, and her expected question came: “What happened?”

  “I’m with ye today, eh, lass? What else would ye know?”

  In a room that was deep and dark and spherical, a figure stirred on a round bed. Dark robes rustled, tatters falling away into dust, as the thing on the bed sat up and leaned forward as if sniffing the air.

  It had been awakened by an intrusion, the sudden presence of more magic than it had ever felt in one being before. Awesome magic. What befell in the Realms above now? The figure rose in a sudden, smooth movement and spread its hands.

  A door that had been closed and sealed for centuries suddenly ceased to be, exploding into dust. The figure strode forward in uncanny silence.

  22

  Magemoot at Spellgard

  One instant saw a high-ceilinged hall empty of all but glowing moss and tumbled stone. In the next breath, a young man in robes stood in its midst, crouching as if facing a foe—but his hand held a wand, not a sword. He darted hurriedly four steps to one side and looked all around. No sign of anyone. Where was he?

  Silence hung heavy in Spellgard. Avaerl of Sembresh peered around in the weird, dim light of the glowing mosses and muttered a quick spell.

  Abruptly he disappeared. Invisibility cloaked him as he stepped carefully to another spot and murmured his next spell.

  Unseen, he rose slowly and silently to the uppermost balcony, glancing into archways and along passages as he passed them. In some, cold radiances pulsed and flickered, but Avaerl had seen the mushrooms called glow-caps before and knew them for what they were.

  He’d learned of Elminster’s woman companion from his informant in the High Castle, but of those two or the route they had taken, he saw no sign. Avaerl breathed out a soundless sigh, then shrugged and set foot on the stones of the highest balcony. Let the hunt begin.

  “Itharr,” said a voice from the darkness at the foot of the bed, “I hate to do this, really I do, but we’ve got a problem.”

  “The Zhentarim have sent an army? Well, defeat them, and tell me about it in the morning,” Itharr said sleepily.

  “Not as simple as that,” Belkram said kindly. “Get up, and bring your sword. Elminster’s gone.”

  “Oh, dung,” Itharr said, coming all the way awake, little chilly feet of foreboding racing down his spine. “When?” As he asked the useless question, he gently slipped a warm but very heavy head from his shoulder. Its owner murmured something, slid a caressing hand along his thigh, settled into a new position, and began to snore.

  “Mine did that, too
,” Belkram said in amused tones, handing Itharr his scabbarded sword. The buckle hit the younger Harper in the face.

  Itharr spat it away and snarled, “Clothes first, you dolt. I don’t consider them optional.”

  “Here. Hurry.”

  Itharr hurried, grumbling all the while in low, muttered whispers. “He’s probably just gone to relieve himself, or look at the stars, or find a wench who’ll have him.”

  Belkram tried to hand him his sword again. This time, Itharr was ready.

  “Remember what Storm told us,” Belkram said. “Even if he is just out on the nearest battlement, his safety is too important to risk. Besides, Sharantyr’s gone too, and their clothes and weapons.”

  “Tymora aid us,” Itharr groaned, leaping up. Together they ran to the door. Itharr winced as a lonely and bewildered voice called his name softly and sleepily from the bed behind him, but he did not answer or slow down.

  Belkram clapped him on the shoulder as they hurried down the passage. “Gedaern woke me up, and he did it by running into the room bellowing at the top of his lungs. He smashed straight into the bed and fell on top of us. I thought you’d appreciate a gentler awakening.”

  “My thanks,” Itharr said dryly. “Has he left it just to us, or have we a band of willing idiots to help us scour the dale in the dark?”

  “We have such a band, and now they have two willing idiots to lead them,” Belkram replied brightly.

  Itharr grunted something that his companion didn’t quite catch.

  Zalarth Bloodbrow smiled grimly at the startled shout and the splash. A fitting reward for disobedience, he thought, watching the thief thrashing and spluttering in the cesspool. There were only two others left. The rest of his men had walked exactly as he’d directed, and the gate had taken them elsewhere already. He motioned those two forward as if to aid the one in the pool. The moment they were in front of him, he moved his fingers in the quick movements of a spell.

  The limbs of the thrashing man abruptly froze, and he stared at the wizard in wide-eyed, openmouthed, silent horror as he sank slowly into the thick brown ooze. The soundless mouth slid from view, then the unmoving, staring eyes. The hair coiled momentarily amid bubbles … and then there was nothing.

  The two Brotherhood thieves turned to look at Zalarth, their throwing knives leaping into their hands as if they commanded their own magic.

  The cruel-faced Zhentarim shook his head and sighed. “His heart? A seizure, perhaps? Better it happened here, I suppose, than in the midst of whatever we’ll find through there.” He nodded at the empty air where the gate must be.

  “Mind you step off the edge there, between the two bumps, and not try to jump in from one side as Lesker did.” He shook his head again, frowning, thin-lipped. “He didn’t have seizures, did he? Or anything of the sort?”

  The two men shook their heads silently. The knives did not leave their hands.

  Zalarth frowned down at the now-placid surface of the cesspool. “Unless,” he said slowly, “there’s something alive in there, feeding on Lesker now.”

  He looked up and said briskly, “We’d best be gone from here before it sends up tentacles or the like.”

  He’d scared them sufficiently. Without further demur the thieves stepped forward into the gate—and were gone. Zalarth hastily advanced to position himself between the two stone knobs before the torch went with them.

  In the sudden darkness, he conjured up an invisible protective shield of force around himself, just in case one of his men had second thoughts and decided to greet him with a thrown knife.

  Then Zalarth of the Zhentarim stepped forward in the darkness and went to war.

  “I think I know where he might be, or might have gone, at least,” Itharr said suddenly as they stared wildly around at empty battlements.

  “Well?” one of the dalemen demanded. “Speak!”

  “Where we caught up to him earlier,” Itharr said, turning to Belkram, “and he called us nursemaids. Remember?”

  Belkram nodded. “You think he’s down there? At the cesspool?”

  Itharr shrugged. “He was after something there, amid the stink, and we interrupted him. He’ll have gone back to it when he thought everyone was too drunk or to asleep to see him.”

  “Treasure?” Belkram asked, raising a puzzled eyebrow.

  “No,” Itharr said very quietly. “Another gate, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Belkram stared at him and swallowed. Then they were both sprinting through dark, empty passages, seeking stairs that led down and taking turns cursing and panting for breath.

  The men of the dale thundered after them. “The only folk crazier than these Harpers,” one grunted, rounding a stair post at breakneck speed in the darkness, “is wizards.”

  “Thank the gods for that,” said the man behind him. “If they weren’t, we’d still be kissing Longspear’s feet—and another part of that Stormcloak’s body, too.”

  They’d bounded down another flight of stairs before the first daleman replied dryly, “I’d wondered what you were about, those long evenings.”

  He was answered in turn by a ruder suggestion. Then they were nearing the cellars, and Gedaern hissed them to silence.

  Xanther waited and waited, but there came no further sound. He’d heard the wizard—one of Manshoon’s killers, if his memory held right—muttering, and then the faint scrape of a boot on stone. Then, only silence.

  Xanther carefully emptied one scroll tube into his lap and felt about until his fingers closed on the cold hardness of the gem. He knew what it must be, given the three words written on the inside of the scroll tube’s cap that he’d read earlier, and closed his eyes as he spoke the first of those words.

  The prism-shaped gem gave forth a cone of pale light. Good; he’d chosen the right word. By its light, he saw that the cesspool and its surroundings were empty of all people.

  Hmm. “Between the two bumps,” the wizard had said, and intimated that passage between them was critical to avoid falling into the cesspool. Xanther put away the tube’s contents again, except for the handy gem, and got up. Two bumps, on the edge of the cesspool …

  There was a sudden sound behind him. A muffled thud—no, a flurry of such sounds. The thudding of booted feet coming quickly down stone steps and along the echoing passage. Dalefolk!

  Xanther hurried toward the stinking pool, eyes searching frantically. Ah—there! Two bumps!

  He eyed the reeking pool and sighed. He’d have preferred time to make sure of the route before stepping out over that.

  The sounds grew louder, and he heard the unmistakable voice of one of the men in leathers who’d fought Stormcloak in the great hall.

  Xanther sighed again, and stepped out from the edge. The light in the cavern abruptly went out.

  “A light!”

  “Where?”

  “Gone now, sir, but there was light here a moment ago, I tell thee!”

  “Throw your torch forward,” Belkram ordered. “Those with bows to the fore, but no one advances until I give word.”

  He and Itharr looked each other over quickly. “Got a dagger or two, besides your blade?”

  Itharr nodded. “As usual.” He grinned as he added, “I think it’s your turn to go first.”

  “My thanks,” Belkram told him in dry tones and darted forward, keeping low. He crouched near the guttering torch, peering around intently, then beckoned them with a wave.

  What could be seen of the dark, foul-smelling cavern was empty. In the center of the cracked, uneven stone floor was the cesspool, its surface still. Itharr waved the men with torches toward the far reaches of the place, to light up every niche and corner.

  He and Belkram exchanged glances and nodded. “A gate, without doubt. We have to enter it in exactly the right way, or well never find it.”

  “That could take days,” Belkram sighed.

  “It could,” came a voice from behind them. “But if you’ll allow me to show you the way, it can take you but a moment.”


  They all turned. In the passage behind them, the fat weaver, Jatham, stood in his night robe, holding a hand lamp and regarding them calmly.

  Gedaern’s eyes narrowed. “You—”

  “Serve Thay? Aye. I thought Elminster might tell you.” The weaver watched the frowning daleman come toward him and added, “I’d like to make a deal with you, Gedaern.”

  “Oh, aye? And what sort of deal could you and I come to?”

  “You let me live, to leave the dale peacefully with my possessions on the morrow. In return, I tell you all I know of the other councillors’ loyalties and doings, and show these two Harpers the gate they seek.”

  “Just let you go, after all you’ve done? Why—”

  “Or you could thank me. Most of what I’ve done, this last year or so, is work against the spells and schemes of the Zhentarim as much as I could. My efforts have kept many in the dale alive, even some here in this cellar now.”

  “How could you save lives and trick wizards? Aye? Tell me that!”

  Jatham spread his hands. In the gesture, his left hand let go of the oil lamp, and it hung motionless in the air in front of him, its flame flickering slightly. “With my own magic, of course,” he said mildly. “It’s not much, but it’s enough to make any thoughts of slaying me or driving me out of the dale very, very foolish indeed.”

  Gedaern eyed the weaver suspiciously. He darted a glance to the two Harpers. They looked back at him expressionlessly and spread their hands to signal their indecision.

  Gedaern frowned. “What’s to keep you from blasting us all with your magic the moment we go to bed, then?”

  “I am,” said another voice from behind the weaver.

  Jatham turned quickly. “You should not have come down, love. This is not safe.”

  “It was necessary,” Ulraea told him crisply. Her eyes were lined with sleep, and her unbound hair hung in wild tangles about her, but she drew herself up in her tattered nightdress proudly and regarded Gedaern with what seemed almost like a challenge in her eyes. “Jatham is mine, Ged. I know him as no other in this dale, and I tell you he has not worked against us of the dale while Longspear lorded it over us, and will not do so this night. If you must, set a guard in our room tonight.”