All Shadows Fled

5

Tower of Ashaba, Shadowdale, Flamerule 16

"Snug, my lord?" Shaerl asked, tightening the straps that held the plates around Mourngrym's upper thighs.

"Keep your fingers on the buckles," the lord of Shadowdale told his wife with an affectionate grin, reaching down to tousle her hair. They were alone in their bedchamber in the Tower of Ashaba, hiding Mourngrym's wounds from the wagging tongues of rumor. He didn't want half of Shadowdale fleeing because they'd heard he was dead.

It had been a very near thing. Without Elminster, Storm, or Sylune to hand, with the temples already crammed to the rafters with wounded, and with Lhaeo busy ransacking the heavily trapped cellars of Elminster's Tower in search of healing potions and weapons, there were few people left in the dale who could deal with wounds caused by poisoned blades. A white-faced Shaerl had spent a long evening cutting open her lord, tears and his blood mingling together on her face as she brushed errant locks of hair out of her eyes and bent repeatedly to her grisly task.

Mourngrym winced as she forced a sideplate over the quilted undertunic on his ribs, which bulged where they shouldn't because of the bandages beneath. "Sorry, Mourn," she muttered, feeling his muscles tighten under her hands.

The lord of Shadowdale let out a sigh. "Don't be. Without you I'd be dead right now, and the dale fallen."

Shaerl made a rude noise. "Such dramatics! Do you think I'd flee or put a dagger in my heart if you died, when your killers and those who sent them will come marching into my reach in a few days?"

Mourngrym smiled and put out a hand-the one without the gauntlet-to the side of her face, tilting her jaw up so that he could kiss her.

His wife, the fiery temper of her noble Rowanmantle upbringing lurking not far behind her eyes, kissed him with ardent passion, locking her fingers in his hair to ensure that this wouldn't be a brief brush of lips.

"Try not to get carved up this time," she chided him when she released him at last. "I don't want to spend another night like yestereve."

"As the dancer said to the high priest," Mourngrym murmured. Shaerl sighed at this, her lord's habit of lame Waterdhavian humor, and handed him his helm, sword, and remaining gauntlet.

Nodding in acknowledgment, the lord of Shadowdale said, "Now I really must get to horse." He strode away-but before he'd taken three paces, she'd slipped around to bar his path, a slim but imperious hand slapped hard against the Amcathra arms emblazoned on his breastplate.

"Sword and gauntlet on and in place before you go out that door-and the helm before you set foot outside the tower. I don't want to be married to a headless man. They're not quite talkative enough."

Mourngrym sighed, smiled, and did as he was bid. It was easiest to comply, as always, and his sharp-tongued mate was right-as always. Who was to say a Zhent agent, or merely someone in need of the coins they'd pay, wasn't lurking a bowshot away from the tower, or in a balcony above the courtyard, awaiting his chance?

These past two rides Zhent raiders had kept Shadowdale's defenders busy fighting off several attempts to burn the dale's smithy and granaries. There had also been the setting of several fires along the roads into the dale, no doubt to widen them and rob defenders of any cover; the attempt to taint the River Ashaba upstream by dumping carrion into it; and the poison dumped into the well of the Old Skull Inn-which had forced Lhaeo to call on the Simbul and endure her acidic lecture on placing a guard over basic necessities. The problem was that Mourngrym had too few competent guards to do that, let alone hold Shadowdale against thousands of well-equipped Zhentilar troops led by gods-knew-how-many Zhent priests and mages.

"Wouldn't it be nice," he asked Shaerl as he settled the sword on his hip and she surveyed the result critically, "if some mad god or other would just crush Zhentil Keep to rubble for us?"

"I'll see to it," she told him briskly, "but I'd take it more kindly if they'd settle for simply crushing the hosts on their way here to slaughter us… and if I knew where Elminster was just now."

"Boo!" breathed an all-too-familiar voice on the back of her neck.

Shaerl shrieked as she leapt forward into Mourngrym's arms. The lord of Shadowdale began to laugh helplessly, shaking his lady-and she broke free and spun like a dancer on one small bare foot to confront the Old Mage, her eyes snapping with anger.

"Must you always creep up on folks invisibly and then try to startle them with grand entrances?"

"Everyone needs a hobby, look ye," Elminster said, regarding her with eyes that sparkled in amusement, "and that's one of mine."

"Well, find another! Gods! My heart's still-feel it! It's-"

"No, love," Mourngrym said hastily as the gleam in Elminster's eye grew brighter, "you don't want to make that sort of offer! Not with Elminster!"

Shaerl turned on him. "And you! Laughing at my discomfort, like a boy playing in the street! You ought to be-"

"Somewhere quieter," Mourngrym said sarcastically, striding past her, "like the heart of a battle with the entire Zhent army!"

Shaerl made a gesture in his direction. Mourngrym waggled one steel-clad finger at her in mock admonishment, and went out.

The lady of Shadowdale sighed away her exasperation and turned back to Elminster. "Be welcome, Old Mage," she said softly. "I'd appreciate a chance to talk about what lies ahead for us, if you've the time."

"'Tis why I came," Elminster rumbled, "now that my work at the Standing Stone is done: three arrow swarms, and a little something extra." He went straight to Mourngrym's most comfortable chair and sat down with a grunt of pleasure, swinging his feet up over one of its massive arms.

Shaerl smiled at that and started toward the sideboard where the decanters of wine awaited-but she'd taken only a few steps before a full goblet of her favorite vintage came gliding up to hang in the air in front of her. She took it, turned, and saw Elminster raising an identical drink in salute. "To a lady who does not take serious contributions from idiots," he announced.

Shaerl grinned, shook her head slightly, and returned his toast. "To a wizard who takes more delight in misbehaving than does a small child-and is all the more welcome here for it."

They both drank. Shaerl discovered the bottom of her glass, shrugged, and continued to the sideboard to take up the decanter. She had a feeling she was going to want a lot more of this before they were done… The Standing Stone, the Dales, Flamerule 16

"Dusk comes swiftly," Swordlord Amglar told the two wizards, pointing at the red sun glimmering low in the west.

"We press on," Nentor Thuldoum told him coldly. "If we try to camp at the Standing Stone, we'll be in the trees or strung out along three roads-and we can be attacked along each one."

"So much is common knowledge," Amglar agreed calmly. "I merely wish to point out that if we press on to Mistledale, it'll be dark by the time we ride out of the trees-ideal conditions for our foes to ambush us."

The spellmaster turned on him with menacing slowness. "Are you trying to tell me what to do?"

"Yes," Amglar said evenly, locking eyes with him. "That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Manshoon does expect you to take orders from me; his description of you, as I recall, was 'a fool, but a biddable fool.' Shall I report to him that he was wrong?"

Thuldoum held his eyes for a long, cold moment as their saddles creaked under them. Myarvuk, riding just ahead, hummed a tune, trying to pretend he could hear nothing of this. Thuldoum said softly, "I'm watching you, Swordlord. Watching and waiting for the slightest slip, the smallest excuse… be careful. Be very, very careful."

Amglar raised his eyebrows, but his face remained expressionless. "I always am," he said, and the spellmaster could have sworn that the warrior's eyes held a glint of mocking laughter.

Then they were slowing to round the turn onto the Moonsea Ride under the watchful bulk of the ancient Standing Stone. There was a brief confusion as mounted Zhentilar armsmen looked back expecting orders to halt, heard nothing, and rather tentatively continued, heading west toward Mistledale.

The rings on the spellmaster's hands winked with sudden radiance, and the air all around was filled with humming arrows. Shafts leapt from the trees on their left, hissing into startled men and their mounts alike, easily piercing black Zhentilar armor.

"We're under attack!" someone bellowed.

"Dismount! Into the trees there-charge!" Amglar shouted, pointing with his sword. "In at them!"

His orders made Spellmaster Thuldoum turn to him, and Amglar saw that the wizard was staring down at his rings in astonishment. As they looked at each other, the rings flashed again-and another volley of arrows came hissing out of the trees on the other side of the road.

Amglar's eyes narrowed as he ducked low on his horse's neck, but it was too late to stop the rush of furious armsmen into the trees, charging in as he'd ordered. Horses screamed and reared, and men toppled from saddles everywhere in the tangled intersection. The swordlord fought to stay in his saddle.

"Back, mages!" he bellowed, waving with his sword toward the Standing Stone itself. "Back!"

By some favor of the gods, neither Zhentarim had been hit; they spurred their horses after him, ruthlessly riding down armsmen in their haste. "Swordcaptains, to me!" Amglar roared as he reached the trees to the east, his eyes on the woods to the north. If his hunch was right, there'd be no more arrows from there-nor any other attack.

"Is this your doing, mage?" he snarled when a frightened-looking spellmaster rode up to him.

"No!" Thuldoum barked. "If these arrows are spell-borne, it's not a magic I know! I-"

His rings flashed once more. He was staring down at them in horror when the trees on the eastern side of the road erupted in clothyard shafts! An arrow took Amglar through the shoulder, and another three thudded into his charger. Yelling in pain and fury, he flung himself free as it bucked and went down, crashing over backward atop an unfortunate armsman.

He hit the road hard and bounced in the dust, winded. Myarvuk slid from his saddle, half a dozen shafts standing out from his body and a glazed, lifeless stare in his eyes. Gods spit on it-the truly biddable mage down already!

As Amglar fought for his breath, arrows flared into flames and then nothingness around the spellmaster, who must have some sort of magical shield against them-of course, Amglar thought sourly. But the volley tore into the officers turning in answer to his call. The intersection was full of rolling, maddened horses and sprawled, trampled bodies… in just a few breaths half an army had been reduced to bloody chaos.

"Halt!" Amglar roared, struggling to his feet, arm and shoulder burning. He ran into the path of the second 'lance,' just as they came thundering up the road to see what had occurred. "Halt!"

He staggered hastily back-a thousand cantering horses can't stop immediately-tripped on a body, and with a roar of pain fetched up against a tree.

"Sir?" A swordcaptain asked, beside him. Through red mists of pain, Amglar set his teeth and looked up. Blood was coursing down his arm, bright red on the black armor; he clutched at his arm and snarled, "Get a horn and call the rally and retreat to those I sent into the woods. They'll not find a foe unless they run on all the way to the dale! Then relay the order to halt! On your way, send three or four more captains to me!"

The man nodded and hurried away, wasting no time on salutes or words. Amglar glared after him. Good. At least one Zhentilar knew how to be an officer; he'd have to remember that man's face.

Feeling the spellmaster's eyes on him but paying no attention, Amglar strode to meet the officers who were hurrying toward him. "Clear this place," he ordered.

"Drag everything up the north road, and set torches; we'll strip the bodies later. Slay any horse that can't stand on four good legs. Let no man touch the fallen mage-that task is for the spellmaster alone." Without turning his head, he snapped, "Thuldoum! Be about it."

The Zhentarim said nothing, but Amglar heard the creaking of leather as the wizard dismounted, and a snort of irritation from the man's horse as someone else took the reins.

"I want you to know," the spellmaster said in a low, fast voice, "that I had no part in this attack. It was not my doing-and nothing I carry has any power to hurl arrows anywhere!"

"I know, mage," Amglar said shortly. "It was some sort of arrow spell-three spells, belike-set to go off when something enchanted passed by: your rings. They're probably rolling around laughing in Mistledale right now. See to your dead comrade."

He walked away without looking at the Zhentarim and headed to the front of the 'lance that had halted on the road. He would tell them to dismount and set a watch in the trees in case there were archers or rangers lurking out there.

Dead men lay heaped underfoot. Someone was groaning weakly under a pile of bodies off to the right. Amglar scowled. A swordlord's lot is not a happy one. Swords Creek, Mistledale, Flamerule 16

"Who goes?" The challenge came out of the night. The voice sounded young and eager, and its owner was probably holding a loaded crossbow. Jhessail sighed and spoke quickly before Illistyl or Merith could say anything smart. "Owls are blue tonight," she told the darkness calmly. "Kuthe's patrol, with three Knights of Myth Drannor. I am Jhessail of Shadowdale."

"Pass, Lady," the voice said, sounding suddenly respectful, even wistful.

An admirer, then, probably a Harper. Merith laid a hand on his lady's thigh and squeezed. Leaning close, the elf whispered, "Men who lust after you are everywhere in the Realms, it seems. Truly I am fortunate to have arrived in your arms first, and-"

"Oh, do belt up, dear," Jhessail said, grinning.

"Aye," Illistyl's sharp tones came out of the close darkness on Jhessail's other side. "And forthwith, before I spew!"

"If ye can stand the company of the two blades she's picked up, who both fancy themselves clever-Belkram and Itharr of the Harpers-Sharantyr's left room and a warm fire for ye," the gruff tones of Rathan came to them out of the night.

"Kind of her," Jhessail said, "but we're going right back out after we feed and hobble our horses. We're going to be a little surprise in the Zhentarim backside on the morrow!"

"Ye'll probably lift a few eyebrows hereabouts, too, if ye try charging on hobbled horses!" Rathan chuckled.

"We're leaving the horses here, you dolt," Jhessail told him affectionately. "Where's Torm?"

"He felt restless, and wanted to go 'exploring,' as he put it," the burly priest replied. "So I gave him a little too much wine and smote him one. He'll wake before dawn, in just the right mood for a good battle."

"I'm glad it's you who shares a tent with him," Illistyl said feelingly.

"I'll be only too happy to surrender my sleeping furs to thee, gentle maid," Rathan said eagerly, "and I'm sure Torm won't object in the slightest!"

"Ah, ha!" Illistyl agreed flatly. "I doubt he'd mind, indeed." She rode on, turning to add, "I'll save my furious defenses for the fray tomorrow."

"I rather think we all will, lass," the elderly voice of a dale farmer came gruffly out of the nearby darkness.

"Or we'll be dead before another night comes down on the Realms."

The Standing Stone, the Dales, Flamerule 16

"Galath's Roost is the only logical place to camp for the night-that's the problem," Swordlord Amglar said to the silent ring of officers around the map.

"What problem?" Spellmaster Thuldoum said sharply. For some hours now, he'd been trying to overcome his own fright and whispers of incompetence or disloyalty by playing the sharp-tongued aggressor. Everyone in earshot was tired of it.

"I mean, wizard," Amglar explained in wearily patient tones that brought secret smiles to the lips of a few swordcaptains, "that it's the place our foes expect us. Just as they knew we'd pass by this spot."

He waved at the road behind them and the dark and silent bulk of the Standing Stone beyond. Three hundred armsmen and six score war horses lay dead along the north road, heaped cottage-high under the stars… and already the wolves were howling, nearer each time. Amglar tried not to think of the fallen. The dead were beyond his orders; it was the living he had to worry about.

"So?" the Zhentarim said coolly. "They hardly have enough blades to hold a ruin against us, even in the dark. And my spells can make it bright as day, so our archers can keep to the night and strike down well-lit targets as they please."

"I'm thinking there'll be traps there, not defenders," Amglar said heavily. "I don't suppose you can see into the place from here, can you? Or better: let our veteran swordcaptains look at things. They'll know traps better than either of us." To say anything else might make this Spellmaster hurl spells in a fury, and after what had befallen so far, that would be all the Sword of the South needed.

The Zhentarim was shaking his head. "No, it's much too far to send an eye. I'd have to have seen the hold before with my own eyes to scry it with any of the other magics I carry."

"You've nothing that can help us?" One of the three lancecaptains said, not bothering to keep the contempt out of his voice. The spellmaster made a silent show of looking him up and down and committing his face to memory, but all of them knew any hostile move the wizard made in this gathering would result in his death. Not a few of the personal belt daggers around the map would be poisoned, too.

"You're a brave man, sir of the lance," Nentor Thuldoum said in silken tones, "if a foolhardy one. A wizard of the Network always has something that can be turned to use, and it's always more than his foes-and others," he added pointedly, staring around at the impassive soldiers' faces, "expect. I have a spell ready that can create a beast to explore the ruins for us… but only I will be able to see through its eyes."

"And if there's an enemy wizard at the Roost?" Amglar asked quietly. "Will such a one be able to see you through it-and send any magic through you, to strike us here?"

"No," the spellmaster said. "In fact, it's unlikely that any wizard who meets my creature will escape alive."

"Cast your spell, then," Amglar ordered, his voice riding over a murmur of disbelief at the wizard's words from the officers. "The sooner we know, the sooner we can act."

"Stand back," the wizard said curtly. "All of you." He drew himself up and glared around at the black-armored men-and their sullen faces. "Let no man disturb my casting, on pain of death. Lord Manshoon's standing orders apply here as in the Keep."

By the time the last of those words left his mouth, Nentor Thuldoum stood alone in the center of an open space perhaps twelve paces across, ringed by a warily silent audience. He looked around at them and smiled. Good; the more who saw this, the better.

From the safe pouch at his belt, Thuldoum drew a small sphere of blown glass that held a veined, gelatinous mass trapped in its heart. He held it on his fingertips, and for the benefit of the assembled soldiers murmured an incantation that was far longer and more impressive than it needed to be.

Then he made a dramatic and totally unnecessary gesture, and blew the sphere gently out of his palm. It plunged to the hard-trodden earth in front of him and burst with a tiny singing sigh.

A drunken man's nightmare boiled up from where it had been, growing with frightening speed, rearing up until it was larger than a horse. Men gasped and backed away in gratifying alarm; the spellmaster smiled tightly at them and pointed west and a little south, into the trees. His creation gathered itself up and drifted obediently off across the road, soldiers scrambling to get out of its way.

It was a shapeless bulk of translucent gray-white jelly that swam and flowed constantly. Countless staring eyes and silently snapping mouths slid across its changing outer surface, appearing and disappearing with bewildering speed.

"A mouther!" one of the veteran armsmen gasped. The drifting thing did look like the deadly gibbering mouther of yore… though no gibberer had ever risen man-high off the ground and flown about at a wizard's bidding, so far as Thuldoum knew.

Then it was gone into the trees, and his world became a place of dark trunks and branches and shifting shadows, looming up before him, thick and tangled…

"Bring me a seat," he said, not breaking his vision from his creation, "and something safe to drink. Someone who knows traps and castles should stand by me, too-we'll both have questions to ask each other when my creature reaches the Roost." Galath's Roost, Mistledale, Flamerule 16

Galath's Roost had been blasted apart four centuries ago by mages who knew their business. Since that day, the small keep atop its stony height had been swallowed by the forest. Massive duskwoods and cedars rent what was left of its walls and yet held them up, their trunks cupping chambers that were open to the sky and walls that ran to nowhere. Their leaves all but hid the riven keep from view… but if one stood a little way off and in just the right spot, the faint flicker of a fire glimmered through the trees.

The room whence the fire came had one wall open to the night-but the two pilgrims who'd built the fire and now huddled around it had good and prudent reasons for not choosing any of the better-preserved rooms in the Roost. They were discussing that now.

"A good job, they did," the taller one said grudgingly.

"You're certain they left this room safe?" asked the other, clutching his expensive talisman of the god under his chin. The gilded image of Tyr's warhammer and scales shone back the firelight, serene and unchanging.

"All but that door," the first one replied, pointing. "If you go out that, a very large crate of rubble will fall on you."

"Ah," said the other. "I'd best go water the gods' gardens out the way we came in, then." He sipped from a battered tin cup, making no move to get up, and added, "A good thing we found that cellar, or they'd have seen us, sure."

"That was no cellar," his tall, lean companion chuckled, scratching under his much-patched tunic. "That was the castle cesspit."

"What?" the shorter pilgrim said, staring down at his boots and then at his elbows and his cloak-but finding no foulness. "Is my nose as bad as all that, then?"

"After four hundred years," his companion told him kindly, "dung is just dust."

"Huh," the shorter pilgrim agreed, and launched into a dry chuckle that ended in a fit of coughing. "I guess the Realms're covered deep in old dung, then. Urrrgh. Auuh." These last two comments accompanied a grunting attempt to rise-an attempt that ended in a disgusted wave of one dirty hand, and a return to a more or less comfortable lounging position against a pile of moss-cloaked rubble.

In all the activity, neither devotee of Tyr noticed a dark, many-eyed bulk slithering silently out of the night, over the stones in the ruined end of the room. As they decided aloud that a prayer to the Lord of Justice might be prudent before they wandered off into the woods to relieve themselves, the thing of eyes and jaws crept unnoticed toward them.

"'Tis your turn to begin the devotion," the shorter pilgrim mumbled.

"Do it be in truth, Jarald? Or've you just forgotten the words to the Call of the Just again?"

"I've not! I remember them well!" the shorter pilgrim said heatedly. "Will you plague me with the misdeed of one night down all the years to come?" Behind him, unseen in the flickering confusion where the firelight played on a broken end of stone wall, something that swam with many eyes and hungry mouths reared up, looming darker and larger, drifting tendrils of itself across the ceiling to hang above the two oblivious pilgrims.

"I don't rightly know," his taller companion said, with a slow grin. "How long did you plan to go on living?"

From the darkness above came a sudden swift movement…