Shadowdale at-1

by Richard Awlinson

  Midnight shook her head.

  "I suppose I'll have wait for an answer to that question," the magic-user said sorrowfully. There would be answers, in time. She was certain of that. Whether or not she would care for them was another matter.

  Midnight was anxious to examine her new surroundings, so she quickly finished gathering her belongings. As she bent over her pack, stuffing her spell book in with her clothes, a slight rush of air warned her that she was not alone in the unfamiliar bedchambers; an instant later she felt hands at her back.

  "Milady," a soft voice said, and Midnight turned to face the source of the gentle summoning. A young girl dressed in a pink and white gown stood before her, looking for all the world like a delicate rose blossoming with every movement. Her face was framed with shoulder-length hair, and the expression worn upon her attractive features was that of a frightened child.

  "Milady," the girl began again. "Are you well?"

  "Yes, I'm fine. Quite a storm last night," Midnight said, attempting to allay the girl's fears with pleasantries.

  "Storm?" the girl said, her voice barely a whisper.

  "Aye," Midnight said. "Surely you're aware of the storm this land suffered last night?" Midnight's tone was stern. She did not wish to stoke the furnace of the child's fears, but neither would she be mocked by feigned ignorance.

  The girl drew a breath. "There was no storm last night."

  Midnight looked at the girl, shocked to find the truth in her eyes. The magic-user looked back to the window and hung her head, her waist-length raven-black hair falling forward, obscuring her face. "What is this place?" Midnight said at last.

  "This is our home. My father and I live here, milady, and you are our guest."

  Midnight sighed. At least she didn't seem to be in any danger. "I am Midnight of Deepingdale. I woke to find myself dressed as a fine lady, yet I am merely a traveler, and I do not remember coming to your home," Midnight said. "What is your name?"

  "Annalee!" a voice cried from behind Midnight. The girl shuddered and drew into herself as she turned to the doorway, where stood a tall, wiry man with thin brown locks and a rough growth of beard. He was dressed in what appeared to be a soft brown frock, belted with thick leather. Gold lace adorned the open folds of his collar and the wide expanses of his cuffs.

  Annalee floated past Midnight and left the room, the scent of some exotic perfume gracing the air with her sudden passing.

  "Perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me what this place is and how I came to be here. All I remember is the wicked storm we suffered last night," Midnight said.

  The man's eyes shot open wide and his hands flew to his mouth; he could not mask his surprise.

  "Oh, how extraordinary," he said as he sank to the edge of the bed. "What is your name, beautiful wayfarer?"

  Midnight suddenly wished she understood the proper etiquette to accept a compliment gracefully. Because she did not, she merely looked away and studied the floor as she dutifully recited her name and place of origin.

  "And your name?" Midnight said. The weakness she had felt earlier was returning, and she was forced to sit on the edge of the bed.

  "I am Brehnan Mueller. I am a widower, as you might have guessed. My daughter and I live in this cottage, here in the forest to the west of Calanter's Way." Brehnan looked about the room with sadness in his eyes. "My wife became ill. She was brought to this, our guest room, where she died. You were the very first person to lay upon this bed in almost a decade."

  "How did I get here?"

  "First, how do you feel?" Brehnan said.

  "Sore. Tired. Almost… dazed."

  Brehnan nodded. "You say there was a storm last night?"

  "Aye."

  "A great storm did shake the Realms," Brehnan said. "Meteors split the sky and laid waste to temples all across the Realms. Did you know this?"

  Midnight shook her head. "I knew of the storm, but not the destruction."

  The magic-user felt the skin of her face grow tight. She looked toward the window once more. Suddenly the images before her came sharply into focus. "But the ground is dry. There are no traces of such a storm."

  "The storm was two weeks ago, Midnight. Annalee's prize stallion had become frightened by the storm, and bolted. I caught up with the horse past the woods, near the road, and it was there I found you, your skin glowing with a luminescence that all but blinded me. Your hands clutched at the pendant that hung from your neck. Even when I brought you here, it was all I could do to pry your fingers from the object. And I could not remove the pendant.

  "At first I worried that the bed we sit upon now would be your final place of rest, but gradually your strength returned, and I could sense the process of healing as it transpired, day by day. Now you are well."

  "Why did you help me?" Midnight said, absently. The weakness she felt was passing, but she still felt dizzy.

  "I am a cleric of Tymora, Goddess of Luck. I have seen miracles. Miracles such as the one that surely touched you, fair lady."

  Midnight turned to look at the cleric, hardly prepared for his next words, or for the fervor with which his words were delivered.

  "The gods walk the Realms, dear Midnight! Tymora herself can be seen between highsunfeast and eveningfeast in fair Arabel. Of course, there is a slight donation to the church that must be made for the privilege. Still, isn't the sight of a god worth a few gold pieces? And her temple must be rebuilt, you see."

  "Of course," Midnight said. "Gods… and gold… and two weeks gone…" She saw that the room had started spinning again.

  Suddenly there was a noise from outside the window. Midnight looked out and saw that Annalee was leading a horse across the clearing. The horse looked to the window, and Midnight gasped. The creature in Annalee's care had two heads.

  "Of course, there have been a few changes since the gods came to the Realms," Brehnan said. Then his tone became reproachful. "You haven't tried to use any magic yet, have you?"

  "Why?"

  "Magic has become… unstable, since the gods came to the Realms. You'd best not throw any spells unless your life depends on it."

  Midnight heard Annalee call each of the horse's heads by a different name, and almost laughed. The room was spinning wildly now, and the magic-user knew why — it was the spell she had thrown. She tried to stand, and fell back onto the bed. Startled, Brehnan called Midnight's name and tried to grab her arm.

  "Wait. You aren't well enough to go anywhere. Besides, the roads aren't safe."

  But Midnight had already stumbled to her feet and was heading for the door. "I'm sorry. I have to get to Arabel," the magic-user said as she rushed out of the room. "Perhaps someone there can tell me what's been going on in Faerun these past few days!"

  Brehnan watched as Midnight headed toward the road and shook his head. "No, milady, I doubt that anyone — short of perhaps the great sage Elminster himself — could explain the happenings in the Realms to you these days."

  II

  The Summoning

  Kelemvor walked through the streets of Arabel, the great walls that protected it from invasions time and again somehow always in view. Although he would never admit it, the walls made him edgy, their vaunted promise of security little more than the bars of a cage to the warrior.

  The sounds of the hustle and bustle of a typical day in the merchant city as highsun approached filled his ears, and Kelemvor studied the faces of those he passed. The people had survived recent hardships, but survival was not enough if the spirit of a people had been shattered.

  Kelemvor heard the sounds of a brawl, though he could not see the fight. The warrior could hear shouting and the sound of blows falling against mail — a common enough occurrence these days. Yet perhaps the display was nothing more than a carefully laid trap to gain the attention of a lone traveler for the purpose of laying open his head and taking his purse.

  Such occurrences were also common these days.

  The sounds died down, as presumably did their makers
. Kelemvor surveyed the street and saw that no one else was responding to the brawl. It seemed that he was the only one who heard it. That meant the sounds could have come from anywhere. Kelemvor's senses were marvelously acute, and this was not always for the best.

  Still, the robbery, if it had been that at all, was nothing unusual. In some ways, Kelemvor was relieved by the fact that the fight was only a mundane occurrence, for little in Arabel — or the entire Realms — seemed commonplace anymore. Everything was unusual, and even magic was untrustworthy since the time of Arrival, as that day was becoming known. Kelemvor thought of the changes to the Realms he had personally witnessed in the past two weeks.

  On the night the gods entered the Realms, a close ally of Kelemvor lay wounded in his quarters after a skirmish with a wandering band of goblins. The soldier — and the cleric who attended the soldier — perished in the flames of a fireball that erupted from nowhere when the cleric attempted to ply his healing magic. Kelemvor and the other onlookers were shocked; never before had they seen such a bizarre occurrence. Days later, after the survivors of the destruction of Tymora's temple regrouped, the goddess herself leading them, the church officially disavowed any responsibility for the actions of the cleric, and branded him a heretic for bringing forth the wrath of the gods.

  Yet this incident was only the first of many strange happenings that would plague Arabel.

  The local butcher had run screaming from his shop one morning, as the carcasses he had kept on ice were now suddenly alive, and hungry for revenge against their slayers.

  Kelemvor himself stood by as a mage, attempting a simple spell of levitation, found that the spell was no longer under his control. His assent went unchecked, and the fighter watched as the dwindling form of the screaming magic-user vanished into the clouds. The mage was never seen again.

  Over a week ago, Kelemvor and two other members of the guard had been summoned to attempt to free a magic-user who had called a blinding sphere of light into existence and then found himself trapped within the globe. Whether he had summoned the sphere by accident or design was not known. The incident took place in front of the Black Mask Tavern, and the members of the guard had been called to control the crowds of people who had gathered to watch as yet another pair of magic-users attempted to help their brother. The sphere did not falter until a week later, when the trapped mage died of thirst.

  Kelemvor noted sourly that business at the Black Mask Tavern had never been better than it was for that week. And, from all Kelemvor had heard from the travelers who sought the great walled city for protection, it seemed that all the Realms — not just Arabel — were in chaos. He turned his thoughts away from that path and set his sights instead on the here and now.

  The warrior's right shoulder ached, and despite the ointments and salves that had been applied to his wounds, the pain had not lessened in days. Usually, his condition could have been cured by a few healing spells, but Kelemvor did not trust any magic after what he had seen. Still, despite the common mistrust of magic, many prophets, clerics, and sages proclaimed a new age, a time of miracles. Many would-be prophets suddenly climbed out from beneath an avalanche of well-deserved anonymity, all claiming personal contact with the gods who walked the Realms.

  A particularly fervent old man had sworn that Oghma, God of Knowledge and Invention, had assumed the form of Pretti, his cat, and spoke with him on matters of the greatest urgency.

  And while no one believed the old man, it was commonly accepted that the woman who had walked out of flames left in the wake of the destruction of Arabel's own Temple of Tymora was indeed the goddess in human form. Standing in the midst of the flames, the woman had displayed the power to unite the minds of hundreds of her followers for the briefest of instants, allowing them to share insights only a god could have witnessed.

  Kelemvor had paid the price of admission to look upon the face of the goddess, and had seen nothing remarkable. As he was not a follower of Tymora, he did not bother to ask the goddess to heal his wound. He was fairly certain she would have charged extra if he had.

  Besides, the pain would make it difficult for Kelemvor to forget that Ronglath Knightsbridge had wounded his pride more than his body when he buried a spiked mace deep in his flesh. They had battled high atop the main lookout tower, where Knightsbridge had been posted. During the battle, Kelemvor had been sent hurtling over the walls of the city toward certain death.

  But he did not die.

  Kelemvor was not even seriously injured by the fall.

  The warrior paused in his contemplations and caught his reflection in the glass of the House of Gelzunduth, a merchant of questionable repute. Kelemvor looked past his image, to the odd collection of items displayed in the window. It was rumored that behind the carefully maintained facade of buying and selling hand-crafted jewelry, costume weapons, and rare volumes of forgotten lore, Gelzunduth trafficked in forged charters and other false documents, as well as information concerning the movements of the guard throughout the city. Numerous attempts by unmarked agents of the guard to entrap the sly Gelzunduth in any of these practices had failed.

  Just before Kelemvor turned away from the window, the sight of his own reflection once again caught his gaze. The warrior studied his face: piercing, almost luminescent green eyes, set deep against a darkly tanned face consisting of a strong brow, straight nose, and practically square jaw. His face was framed by a wild mane of ebon hair with only a few streaks of gray to reveal that he had walked the Realms for over thirty summers. In the places where his bare skin was not protected by his clothing, it was plain that his chest and arms were covered by thick black hair. He wore chain mail and leathers, and carried a sword half the length of his body in a sheath slung behind his back.

  "Ho, guardsman!"

  Kelemvor turned and regarded the slip of a girl who had challenged him. She was no more than fifteen, and her delicate features appeared to have paid the price for the hardships and worries she had obviously recently undertaken. Her hair was blond and cut short in a boyish style, the strands matted to her scalp by her sweat. The clothes worn by the girl were somewhat better than rags, and she could have easily been mistaken for a beggar. The girl seemed weak, although she smiled bravely and attempted to move with a confidence her body no longer seemed ready to indulge.

  "What business have you with me, child?" Kelemvor said.

  "My name is Caitlan Moonsong," the girl said, her voice cracking slightly. "And I've traveled a long way to find you."

  "Go on."

  "I have need of a swordsman," she said. "For a quest of the utmost urgency."

  "There will be a reward for my efforts?" Kelemvor said.

  "A great reward," Caitlan promised.

  The warrior scowled. The girl looked as if she might die from starvation at any moment. Less than a city street away was the Hungry Man Inn, so Kelemvor took the girl by the shoulder and guided her toward the inn.

  "Where are we going?" Caitlan said.

  "You need a hearty meal in your gut, do you not? Surely you already knew that Zehla of the Hungry Man Inn provides to those in need." Kelemvor stopped, a touch of worry moving across his hard-set features. When he spoke, his words were measured, his tone cold and harsh. "Tell me you did not need me to inform you of this."

  "Certainly not," the girl said. Kelemvor did not move. His worry did not ebb. "I did not need you to tell me of this. You did me no favor."

  "That's right," he said, and resumed the journey to the inn.

  Caitlan allowed herself to be led, puzzled by the odd exchange that had just taken place. "You seem troubled."

  "These are troubling times," Kelemvor said.

  "Perhaps if you were to discuss…"

  But then they were before the Hungry Man, and Kelemvor was ushering the girl inside. It was a quiet time of the day, and few patrons had arrived for highsunfeast. Those who were foolish enough to stare at Kelemvor and the girl were given a look that froze the blood in their veins and caused them to lo
ok away instantly.

  "A bit young for your tastes, Kel," a familiar voice said. "But I suspect you have honorable intentions."

  Coming from anyone else the remark would have brought violence, but coming from the elderly woman who now approached, it caused a thin smile to etch its way across Kelemvor's lips. "I fear the waif may collapse at any second."

  The woman, Zehla, touched Kelemvor on the shoulder and looked at the girl. "A scrawny thing indeed," she said. "I have just the thing to put some meat back on those paltry bones. A moment and all will be ready."

  Caitlan Moonsong watched as the old woman left, then looked back to Kelemvor. The fighter's attentions seemed to have drifted once more to the thoughts that had been troubling him. Caitlan knew it was important that she choose her champion well, and so she dug into her pocket and removed a blood-red gem she had been saving. She hid the gem in the palm of her hand as she reached over and covered Kelemvor's hand with hers. There was a flash of pure red light and Caitlan felt the gem cut into her flesh at the same moment it scratched the hand of the fighter.

  Kelemvor leaped up from the table, drawing back and away from the girl. His sword had left its scabbard and was poised over his head when the voice of Zehla rang out.

  "Kelemvor, stay your hand! She means you no harm!" The old woman stood a few tables away, Caitlan's meal in her hands.

  "Your past is open to me," Caitlan said softly, and Kelemvor looked down at the girl, shocked from his rage by her words. Caitlan held the glowing red stone in her open palms, and she spoke as if she had been possessed. Slowly Kelemvor lowered his sword. "You were on a mission filled with endless days and nights of waiting and deception. Myrmeen Lhal, ruler of Arabel, feared that a traitor lay in her midst. She assigned Evon Stralana, the minister of defense, the task of soliciting mercenaries to infiltrate the city's guard and attempt to ferret out the traitor."

  Zehla set the tray down before Caitlan, but the girl didn't even glance at the food. It was as if her voice had been consumed by the words she'd spoken.