All Shadows Fled

18

From the dungeons, old and dusty rat holes led up to the pantry. In the confusion of all the cooks and scullery maids working in frantic haste and doors everywhere propped open to keep the heat down, the rat was able to streak through the kitchens and outside. The yard behind the tower was crowded with youngsters peeling potatoes and carting away greens, but no one noticed a rodent scuttling around the corner, into the tall grass.

In a trice, the rat became a pigeon, and ascended in a flutter of wings to an open tower window.

The casement gave in to the end of a hall lined with tapestries, paintings, and closed doors. At the far end of the corridor, where it opened out into a meeting with other passages, daylight gleamed on the armor of a tower guard. The guard turned his head as the pigeon's wings blocked the sunlight, but Argast hastily landed on the windowsill. The guard gave the pigeon a glance, then looked away again.

It was sheer mischance that he yawned and looked back down the hall as the pigeon was rising up into a man.

"Hold!" the guard bellowed, leveling his spear as he broke into a charge.

Argast snarled in disgust and ducked behind the nearest tapestry, shifting shape as fast as he could.

All too soon a spear point thrust through the hanging, its point skittering along the stone wall-but the Malaugrym had shrunk down into a wadded mass by the floor to watch the spear strike sparks overhead. He surged upright as it withdrew. As he'd expected, it reappeared more cautiously, drawing the hanging aside. By then he was ready.

The guard found himself blinking at a buxom, very bare female… the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. He swallowed as she smiled at him, and blinked again as she held out her arms, beckoning…

An inconspicuous taloned tentacle that had snaked across the floor rose up behind his head, reached around, and tore his face off.

Argast stared down at the twisted, blood-spattered body, satisfied the death had made little noise. But what now? If he posed as the guard, he'd be attacked if he left his post and was seen listening at doors… and this body would be found soon enough. He positioned it against the wall behind the tapestry, using the spear as a prop, but anyone who even glanced into the passage was sure to see the bulge… and the blood all over the floor.

He shrugged then, and became a rat again. They were only humans, after all… Blackstaff Tower, Waterdeep, Midsummer Day

Khelben looked up from his work, startled, as Laeral stiffened and laid a hand on his arm. "Malaugrym!" she snapped, eyes closed, and clutched at her forehead, listening to an inner voice. "Jhessail's found a guard murdered in the tower and suspects Malaugrym did the killing. He was torn by talons on an upper floor, where no beast could reach unseen and no strong magic has been worked lately…"

The sending ended, and Laeral raised her head, her eyes grave.

"Aye, it would be in Shadowdale," Khelben said gloomily, reaching out to stroke her long, curly silver hair. "Have you never noticed: nothing much in Faerun happens anywhere else."

Laeral gave him a tight smile, but said nothing. She was already bustling about the room, gathering cloaks, wands, and boots.

Khelben stared down at his scribblings and litter of material components, and admitted to himself what they both already knew: his Malaugrym spell was going nowhere, right speedily. He pushed back from the table and sprang to his feet. "I'm not trusting teleporting in this, mind," the Blackstaff told his lady irritably.

"I know," she replied brightly. "That's why I'm rushing about gathering things instead of being there already." She held out a wand.

Khelben stared down at it for a long, silent breath. Then the corners of his mouth curled up slightly, and he took it from her. Stepping into the boots she was holding ready, he took both their cloaks over his arm, strode without pause to the door, and held it wide. Laeral gave him a twinkling smile and brushed his cheek with a kiss as she went out.

One of their younger, newer apprentices, Paershym Woodstoke of Neverwinter, was trotting excitedly along a passage, his head down and a precious spell tome clutched in his hands. Its covers, two polished plates of ever-bright silver, flashed suddenly as the lord and lady mage of Waterdeep stepped out of a side door, spilling light into the dim hallway. They leapt across the passage like a pair of pranksome apprentices. With a softly spoken password, they opened the door of a closet that had to be tiny, crunched between two flanking rooms, and crowded into it together, giggling.

Lady Laeral winked at Paershym just before the door closed behind her-leaving the apprentice, who'd halted to gape in astonishment, quite alone in the passage. He blushed a brilliant crimson and stared in disbelief at the closed door of the tiny closet. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he stole up to it and tried the handle. It was locked.

He turned away feeling almost relieved-and stiffened as the doorknob behind him emitted a faint, girlish giggle.

Clutching the book very firmly, he hurried away, wondering how his father would take the news if he wrote a letter home explaining that he'd changed his mind about becoming a wizard…

In a chamber deep within Twilight Hall, a lady laughed. "We've more than earned this, beloved," she purred to the person in the heart of the canopied bed. His reply was a wordless growl that left her giggling-until the closet door beside the bed burst open.

"Please excuse the intrusion," the lord mage of Waterdeep said gravely to the astonished Harper couple as he marched briskly across the room to the closed door of another closet.

Laeral mouthed, "Sorry," to the shocked faces above the covers, waved a farewell, and stepped into the closet behind Khelben.

There were a lot of dusty cloaks inside, and she sneezed more than once before Khelben found the catch on the secret door and led her on into a lightless passage that zigged, zagged, and opened into the back of yet another closet.

As the Blackstaff briskly opened the closet door, they saw a bored Harper guard sitting in the room beyond, sharpening his blade. No intruders ever got this far, after all, and…

The guard sprang up as the wizards strode into the room. He waved his sword menacingly. "Halt, by the silver Harp and the blood spilled for it!" he charged sternly-but the two mages were already past him, heading for one of the doors across the room.

The Harper gaped. "But you're-you're Khelben!"

The archwizard sighed. "Has the disguise spell failed again? Oh, dear…" He rolled his eyes theatrically.

Laeral chimed in breathlessly, "We've tried everything…"

As she spread her hands in despair, Khelben touched the door in a certain spot-and it flared into a blinding glow. The Harper threw up his hand to shield his eyes, just in time to see the two mages fade away… The Castle of Shadows, Shadowhome, Midsummer Day

In a room where shadows were rarely still, two tentacled things met, exchanged grunts of recognition, and rose into manlike forms.

"It's even worse than I'd thought," Hulurran said without preamble or greeting. "Since Dhalgrave was slain and the intruders first came, over sixty of the kin have perished or disappeared… perhaps as many as seventy!"

"Seventy!" Gathran sighed gloomily. "Will we live to see the House of Malaug dwindle to nothing, and the shadowbeasts finally slither in to tear the last few of us apart?"

Hulurran shrugged. "There's just one good thing," he said. "Milhvar was working on a cloak that shielded him from the prying magics of the mages of Faerun… a 'cloak of shadows,' he called it in his notes. If anything's befallen them, the secret of its making is gone with him."

"You saw his notes?" Gathran did not bother to hide his astonishment.

Hulurran smiled. "Milhvar was so old that he sometimes forgot that others of us have seen just as many years… He hid some of his notes-and the finished cloak; I saw him testing it-in a hideaway Anduthil created for safe storage. Since Anduthil's passing, I believe he thought only he remembered its existence." He turned slightly, and made a gesture. "It's right here," he added, "and-"

Hulurran fell abruptly silent. Gathran peered over his shoulder to see why. The hideaway was a small room with a cot, a chair, a desk, and a chamberpot. A few blank scraps of parchment were strewn on the desk, but the cot-where his companion was probing emptiness-was quite bare. " 'Twas right here," Hulurran said, frowning, "and he wasn't wearing it when he met his end-I saw him die."

"Then where is it?" Their eyes met and held in silence for a long while.

Hulurran sighed. "Let us hope one of us is wearing it in Faerun right now."

"A prudent one of us," Gathran agreed.

They both sighed then, and left that place.

When the world stopped whirling, they were sitting together on a bench in Shadowdale, with Elminster's Tower rising crookedly in front of them-and a startled guard scrambling up from where he'd been lounging on the bench beside them. He swung his gleaming pike down.

Khelben calmly struck it aside and twisted it out of the armsman's hands.

Laeral said mildly, "Perhaps it's the clothes we're wearing…"

"With all due respect, sir merchant," the guardcaptain said firmly, "no one brings wagons into Shadowdale without our looking inside them."

The paunchy, unshaven merchant glared at him. "Aye, I know your sort of searching. What's the point o' my coming all the way from fair Cormyr"-one of his men gave him a strange look, and the guardcaptain almost smiled-"if you steal half my stock, eh? Pendle's Fine Meats are known from Suzail to Selgaunt, and I'll be damned by all the gods if I let some uniformed thugs in a backwater dale rob me of what I've worked so hard for!"

"Then turn your wagons about, merchant, and go around Shadowdale," the guardcaptain said softly, his hand on his sword.

"This one's open, sir," one of the guards spoke out, pointing at the second wagon back. Without taking his eyes from the guardcaptain, Pendle grew a tentacle thirty feet long that snapped like a lash around the armsman's throat.

There was a collective gasp of horror and fear from men on both sides of the roadblock. The guardcaptain stared hard at Pendle as his sword flashed out. "What are you?" he asked, white to the lips.

Lorgyn smiled a wintry smile at him as two tentacles smashed the man's sword away, and a third rose with a bony spear to stab him in one eye. "I wondered when you'd get around to asking that," he said softly.

Men were screaming on all sides now. There was a general rush from the wagons into the woods. Pendle's outriders turned their horses and spurred westward as fast as the horses would go.

The Malaugrym reached out and calmly slew another man, and another, reaching always for those trying to flee or raising horns to arouse the dale. Some of the guards got their bows out, and arrows hissed and hummed. Lorgyn ignored them as he went on killing.

By the time all the guards were dead, lying twisted and broken in the road around him, the Malaugrym was feathered with many arrows. Heedless of the blood streaming from him in a dozen places, Lorgyn shifted to oxen form to drag the lead wagon aside; its draft horses had taken even more arrows than he had, and lay dead in the traces.

The wagon of wizards was all that mattered now. Lorgyn led the frightened horses past all the blood, into Shadowdale. The time for skulking was past… now, let all in Faerun beware the Malaugrym, and cringe in fear!

"There it is again," Belkram said, pointing at Sharantyr's pack. "You'd better see what it is!"

The lady ranger set down her pack with more haste than grace, and drew her sword.

"I'll open it," Belkram offered, "and you keep blade ready, right?"

She nodded, and Itharr stood back to keep watch on the woods around as Shar bent over her pack. Something had quivered in its depths… at least twice now. Belkram was cautiously turning out the kindling, her candles, her spare boots and undershift, her gloves… "There!"

Two blades flashed down-to hover above a small cloth bundle. "Lhaeo was holding that before we left," Shar said slowly. "What is it? And why would he put it in my pack?"

The tip of Belkram's blade touched it very cautiously. Then the ranger grinned, reached over, and unwrapped it, revealing-a stone.

A ghostly vapor swirled up from it as it said, "Finally! Draw together, all of you, and bide here until I return-I only hope we're not too late!"

Open-mouthed, the three rangers watched Sylune of Shadowdale fly off through the trees.

"She can leave her stone?"

"Storm or Lhaeo must have worked some magic," Belkram said, grunting as he reached beyond comfort's stretch to pluck up Shar's gloves. "Let's get you packed again," he said. "When a mage tells you to stay together, she usually means it's teleport time."

Itharr nodded agreement-then they all gaped again as the air shimmered. The Red Wizard was standing before them again, Sylune's head floating above his open palm. He gave the three a curt nod of greeting.

The Witch of Shadowdale asked crisply, "Have we a bargain, then?"

Orth Lantar nodded again. "We do."

"Right. Know then that the Lost Ring of Blaestarn lies beneath the third flagstone south of the unicorn fountain, in the house where you've been searching; the white dragon Glandananglar is no more, and her treasure lies under her bones in a cave on the east side of Mount Ahaeragh-its mouth is covered by an illusion, but lies below the tallest horn; and the ioun stones of Thavilar Halcontar are buried a long pace to the south of the duskwood tree in the northwestern corner of his garden. I'll tell you where the rest of the treasures lie after you've sent these three safely to Shadowdale."

The Red Wizard bowed. "It will be my pleasure to so serve." He raised his hands and began, and the three rangers saw a blue-white radiance stream from Sylune to surround his head and shoulders, steadying him against the magic twisting wild.

Soberly and carefully the Red Wizard worked a mass teleport spell, and the world began to whirl into blue-white mists.

"Holy Mystra, aid us," the three rangers heard Sylune say as the magic took effect.

Then the floating head of the Witch of Shadowdale gasped, and her ghostly eyes widened. "Wh-Who are you?"

"Midnight," came the reply, echoing in all their heads.

Sudden force flooded into Sylune; her fading spectral form flickered, and then grew strong and bright. "But you can call me Mystra-for so I am, henceforth."

Sylune gaped at a face only she could see-and beside her, the Red Wizard went to his knees, babbling a prayer.

He had not prayed to the Lady of All Mysteries since he'd been a young apprentice, and that had been very long ago.

The world danced, and the three rangers suddenly found themselves standing at the crossroads by the Old Skull Inn in Shadowdale, with startled armsmen and villagers staring at them from all sides.

They peered around, wondering why Sylune had been so suddenly adamant that they be here, now.

"Is that the Blackstaff?" Itharr asked, eyes wide. He pointed toward Elminster's Tower.

Belkram peered. "Aye-I spoke to him once, and to Laeral several times; that's her, too, beside him."

Khelben Arunsun was casting a spell-or rather, miscasting it. A shower of blue furry jungle plants abruptly rained down around him. He cursed loudly, like any merchant who's made a mistake, and strode toward the road. Two laborers, who were walking along it with heavy hods on their shoulders, looked back.

They let the hods fall, and boiled up into things out of nightmare.

A small forest of tentacles reached for folk all around, and the street became a chaos of screaming, fleeing people, with armsmen trying to wade through them. Tentacles grew many-fanged mouths and bit down mercilessly.

"Malaugrym," the three rangers shouted, breaking into a run.

Laeral hurled a spell-and the two monsters were girt with an amber radiance, out of which darted dozens of butterflies.

Laeral stared in disgust at the clouds of insects, unbelted her robe, and let it fall to the turf behind her. Beneath it she wore a short kirtle bristling with daggers. Drawing one in either hand, she raced across the meadow toward the road, Khelben lumbering along beside her.

Horns were ringing out from the Tower of Ashaba, and armored men were streaming from its gates-men who wore the Purple Dragon of Cormyr.

The Malaugrym were undulating along the road toward the three rangers. As the three hefted their blades and eyed reaching tentacles, they heard the deep, bubbling voice of one tentacled monster ask, "Argast, what's that?"

They all stared at what was rising up from the road in front of the tower-a gigantic black dragon, clutching a wagon in its claws!

"By all the blinded, crawling gods…" Shar cursed in disbelief, watching the dragon spread its great wings. One beat sent it over the meadow, where it set the wagon down as tenderly as a newly laid egg. It banked and roared down at the crossroads, jaws gaping…

Jhessail looked up sharply as a roar split the air outside. "What was that?" she snapped.

Illistyl beat her to the window. "Gods!" she gasped. "A dragon!"

Jhessail thrust her head past her apprentice's shoulder and glared out. "Out of nowhere? Impossible!"

She snatched something out of her bodice and tugged. A fine gold chain parted, and Jhessail held up a pendant that was shaped like a sphere, with windows enclosing a smaller windowed sphere-and another, and yet another.

Illistyl stared at it. Elminster had given her that, and she'd never said what it was for…

Jhessail thrust it out the window and whispered a single word-and the pendant was gone in a flash of spreading light that all but blinded them both.

The swooping dragon flashed with that same light, and was suddenly no huge black scaled wyrm at all, but a small, manlike thing trailing tentacles as it fell from the sky.

Laeral leapt desperately out of the way as the twisting, changing thing crashed to earth.

Both Malaugrym hissed, "Lorgyn!"

Around the cursing lord mage of Waterdeep, spells were going awry in a continuous swirl of radiances and odd manifestations. Laeral scrambled through a shower of green lizards, the snapping fangs of Malaugrym tentacles close behind her.

"Gods," Sharantyr said, her face paling as the three rangers charged together, pounding along the road toward the two gigantic snake-things that were writhing and snapping in earnest now, crushing guards and sweeping horses and men into the air with their lashing tails, "Are we really going into that"?"

"Of course," Belkram shouted merrily. "We're reckless, crazed heroes, remember?"

"More than that," Itharr bellowed, "we're the Rangers Three!"

"The Rangers Three!" they shouted in chorus as their blades struck home.

The world rapidly became a place of constant slashing and hacking, with Malaugrym tentacles smashing and slapping from everywhere as armsmen shouted and died.

The lady mage of Waterdeep was stabbing with silver-bladed daggers, and Malaugrym tentacles were shriveling at their touch or cringing away before her. To avoid the bite of silver blades, the monsters began to hurl hapless armsmen and villagers at her, seeking to crush or suffocate her beneath broken bodies. Khelben stood over Laeral, the broken haft of a pike in his hands, trying to protect his lady against too many stabbing tentacles.

An armsman was flung through the air, his broken limbs flailing like smashed twigs. Sharantyr ducked under him, slashed aside one last tentacle, and drew back her blade to plunge it deep into one gigantic yellow Malaugrym eye.

Out of the eye burst Amdramnar's face, pleading: "Stay your blade, Sharantyr! Know that I love you-"

Shar gazed at the Malaugrym in astonished horror, blade raised. She never saw the scorpionlike tail that rose behind her, lifting from a broken thing that had once been a dragon.

The bony spur stabbed down-and burst out through the lady ranger's breast in a rain of blood.

Itharr and Belkram shrieked in horror and went mad with their blades, screaming and stabbing in all directions.

The lady ranger stiffened, and blood sprayed from her sagging lips.

A great roar of anguish rose over the fray as the monster that was Amdramnar cried, "No! Lorgyn, you fool! She was to be my mate! Sharantyr!"

Storm Silverhand was almost home from patrol now, and contentment welled up within her. The familiar woods rose green and deep around her. She did not hurry. Her boots followed trails she hadn't walked in a while, and chances to relax were few enough, these days.

A roaring sound rose into the air ahead, muffled by the trees. Storm frowned and stopped to listen. Were those shouts? Yes!

Shadowdale must be under attack! With a soft curse, the Bard of Shadowdale drew her blade and broke into a trot, weaving through the trees as quickly as she could.

Laeral darted through a dancing chaos of tentacles, desperately stammering a healing spell. Too late.

The rearing tail of the Malaugrym thrust the limp lady ranger high into the air, then smashed her into the dust of the road. Again it rose, Sharantyr dangling, and again flung her down.

Itharr and Belkram all but clawed their way through a forest of writhing tentacles to get at that tail.

A tentacle struck Laeral. She rolled in the dust herself, slashing her way free and scrambling up-to find the air in front of her shimmering! She drew back her hand to hurl a spell of searing destruction…

But two white-faced women in robes appeared-Knights of Myth Drannor. They raised their hands and snapped out incantations. Their magic twisted wild as they hurled it, and the tentacles swept down at them, too…

"Here!" Laeral called. She tossed two of her silver-bladed daggers to the Knights-who fielded them expertly, waved in thanks, and set to work.

The Malaugrym Amdramnar was writhing under the blades of the two furious Harper rangers, and the other one-the one he'd called Argast-was shrinking into a xornlike beast with many massive clawed arms instead of tentacles. The shifting body of Argast was flickering with strange magics as Khelben Blackstaff struggled to control spell after spell hurled at the shapeshifter.

Itharr was weeping incoherently now. He stood hip-deep in a gory hole he'd hacked in Amdramnar, and stabbed down endlessly.

None of the armsmen of Cormyr saw Storm Silverhand burst out of the trees, running hard, but they all saw her swarm up the scorpionlike third Malaugrym and plunge her sword deep into one of its eyes. It shuddered and convulsed madly under her, and she grimly clung to it as she tumbled to the ground, one arm around Sharantyr's broken body.

"Burn it! Burn the things with oil!" she bellowed at the armsmen. She found her feet amid writhing ropes of shapeshifting flesh-ropes that rose to fling Khelben and Belkram together in a helpless tangle into the gathered armsmen.

The soldiers stared at Storm; who was this woman? An old woman staring at the fray from the door of the Old Skull suddenly tossed away her tankard, plucked down one of the lanterns from beside the inn door, and flung it.

It shattered, spilling oil down the tentacled bulk of Amdramnar-and Illistyl murmured the simplest fire spell she knew.

Flames flared. The oil caught, boiling up with a roar. The Malaugrym convulsed and reared, shrieking, and the air was suddenly full of oil as every armsman scrambled to find and fling any lamps they could.

The Malaugrym shrieked as flames rose around them, and through the growing roar of the flames, Belkram cried, "Khelben! Can't you do something for Shar?"

He practically dragged the lord mage of Waterdeep to his feet. Khelben blinked at him, then said grimly, "Er-eh-well, I'll try."

The archwizard looked at Sharantyr's sprawled body and raised his hands to cast a spell-only to pitch forward, falling on his face in the dirt.

Belkram stared at the man whose pike had struck Khelben down from behind: a warrior of Cormyr, who smiled coldly, shivered slightly for an instant… and became someone else.

Someone who wore doomstars at his wrist, and answered to the name of Dhalgrave.