All Shadows Fled

Prologue

Three living heroes and a ghost dared to take an enchanted blade out of the world, hunting shapeshifters in their ancient Castle of Shadows…

For centuries, the Malaugrym had been dark figures of legend, fey sorcerers who could take any shape they chose. They came to Faerun to impersonate kings and reavers and archmages, to entertain themselves with the havoc they could wreak-and to seize mortal women as breeding slaves, carrying them off across the planes to the place they called Shadowhome.

When the famous archmage Elminster of Shadowdale caught Malaugrym in Faerun, they paid with their lives. Twice he journeyed to the Castle of Shadows to humble the House of Malaug… but no mere mortal had ever made such a foray and returned to Faerun to tell of it.

Until Lady Sharantyr, Knight of Myth Drannor; Belkram and Itharr of the Harpers; and the ghostly remnant of Sylune, Witch of Shadowdale, went up against the shapeshifters armed with the Sword of Mystra. And with that sword, Sharantyr cut her way back from the brink of death and out of the Castle of Shadows, slaying many of the evil shapeshifters as she went.

Unfortunately, most of them still lived, and vowed revenge on four new foes. More entered Faerun with the returning heroes and escaped to wander the Realms at will.

Even worse, Faerun was much as they'd left it: in the throes of the magical chaos, bloodshed, and lawlessness of the Time of Troubles, when the gods themselves walked the Realms, no magic could be trusted, and fire and fury raged across the lands.

It was a time for heroes, and the four who'd escaped the Castle of Shadows found Elminster, the Old Mage, waiting for them, with orders to undertake still more perilous tasks in the desperate work of saving civilized Faerun.

And the Malaugrym were waiting for them, too…