Cloak of Shadows

11

The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 18

The three Malaugrym stood waiting like patient statues as Milhvar said, "The Shadowmaster High had great hopes for this project. Try not to let him down. But above all else, we want you back safely. If anything goes wrong — anything — use the power of your belt buckles to get back to us. Even if the foe is under your blade or in your hands, break off rather than be taken — or slain. There will be other forays, and other chances."

The three kin nodded, and one of them added a visibly nervous swallow. Milhvar did not smile or shrug. If they lived through this, perhaps they'd grow into Shadow-masters of some use. Huerbara almost was already, only her inability to bridle a too-oft-blazing temper holding her back. But Kuervyn and Andraut were nothings, all swagger and undisciplined thrill-seeking. They still found nightly fun in shapeshifting their ways through Faerunian brothels, and took their greatest satisfaction in leaving without paying!

Dead growth, the pair of them. Milhvar let nothing of this judgment show as he told them all to willingly draw at least a drop of their own blood with a talon, claw, body spur, or other part of their own shape, and signaled the team of Shadowmaster mages to begin weaving the cloaks.

He'd deliberately woven the chain of interlocked spells to be more complex than it need be, take longer — and require more mages — than it needed to, and to be more than a little unstable. He'd no wish to unleash an army of unbeatable flamebrains like Kuervyn and Andraut on Faerun or anywhere else.

When the long chanting and gesturing was done, and a shimmering and dark singing in the air above the three told him the spell-cloaks were done, he stepped forward and added the "secret spell" that linked each magical construct to its wearer, through the drop of blood. This false enchantment added nothing useful to the process, but kept Milhvar essential to the Grafting of every spell-cloak of the Malaugrym. A useful, if dangerous, status to hold.

But then, there were no safe positions to hold in the ranks of the blood of Malaug. Milhvar lifted his lip in a mirthless grin at the thought-and seeing this, Kuervyn toppled over, fainting dead away.

Milhvar laughed aloud as he strode toward the fallen Malaugrym, ignoring the smoking glare Huerbara gave him. There were still amusements to be found, if one waited patiently for them. It would be funnier still if these three went into Faerun and found Elminster waiting for them. Perhaps he could arrange it sometime.

Daggerdale, then Myth Drannor, Kythorn 18

The face bending over her was a ghostly mask. "Shar," the familiar voice said kindly in her mind. "Shar, awaken. Quietly, lass. There is a deed you alone must do."

"Sylune?" she whispered.

"As always." The voice was warm and reassuring. Shar sat up and looked around at the blue, moonlit dimness. One of the horses shifted slightly, but the two Harpers lay still, breathing softly, a blanket thrown over each of them. Sylune stood beside her, a pale wisp of shifting nothingness in the night, like the memory of a white flame. Something called in the woods off to the north, something small and mournful that she didn't recognize. Shar laid aside her blanket, took up her blade-its grip cold and hard, bringing her fully awake-and got up as quietly as she could.

The ghostly figure beside her reached out, offering something to her. A ring. "Put this on."

Shar did so, her fingers tingling as they touched what was left of the Witch of Shadowdale. Sylune smiled at her reassuringly. "Come."

"I don't know why I do these things," Shar breathed as they walked west into the woods. "I get into more trouble…"

Sylune, her bare feet walking in utter silence an inch or so off the ground, turned and smiled at her reassuringly. Shar rolled her eyes in response but followed, blade at the ready.

Far, far away ahead of her, a wolf howled. It was answered, from somewhere much nearer, off to the left. Shar shivered and cast another look all around her at moonlit Daggerdale. She must be crazy, to follow a ghost into the woods, away from their camp. She looked back at it searchingly, half-expecting to see another ghostly form standing guard over it while some false shade led her to a horrible, lonely doom.

"Be not afraid," Sylune said softly, as if reading her mind. "Just go well out into that meadow, there, and touch the ring with your free hand."

Sharantyr looked ahead at the moonlit clearing and then back at the ghostly face beside her. "Will I see you- and Belk and Itharr-again?" she asked.

Sylune smiled. "Of course. We all need to get a lot more work out of you yet."

Shar made a face. "Of course," she replied, a grin playing about her lips. "Silly of me…"

" 'Twas, yes."

Shar shook her head at that, lifted her hand in salute-Sylune returned it-and walked away into the meadow. The moonlight was bright on the grass, and the night was very beautiful. Shar looked around at it, drew a deep breath, and smiled. Some folk never get to see this.

Sylune's voice came to her, as if borne on an unseen wind. "Plant your blade in the ground before you touch the ring. Don't take it with you."

She found a spot she liked and stopped, planting her booted feet firmly. Then she looked back over her shoulder.

Sylune was still standing there, a frozen flame floating in the nightdark under the trees.

Shar took another deep breath, thrust her sword upright into the turf, watched moonlight gleam down its length-and laid her fingers over the ring.

There was a wink, and the world changed. She was standing in a smaller, darker glade, dim blue moonlight filtering down to her through the tangles and mossy boughs of huge, gnarled trees much older than the woods she'd left in Daggerdale. It smelled… like the Elven Court woods, near Myth Drannor.

She looked around, not moving. Mosses glowed eerily here and there, and the trees stretched away into utter darkness all around. She was in the heart of a large forest.

Something winked, softly, between two trees. She stared at it, shifting slightly to get a better view, and obligingly it drifted nearer, sparkling as it came.

A will o' wisp, beautiful but deadly. Her hand went to her empty scabbard and then drew back. She hadn't a hope, even with her sword. Scrabbling after daggers and boot-knives just didn't seem worthwhile. She hoped Sylune hadn't made a mistake, and that her awakener had been Sylune. Could a Malaugrym take a ghost shape?

Why not?

Too late to wonder now. The will o' wisp, blue-white and awesomely beautiful, shone like a little star in front of her. "Take out thy dagger," it said, in soft, feminine tones.

Shar stared at it for a moment and then did so, never taking her eyes from the floating sphere of light.

"Follow," it said softly, and retreated across the clearing the way it had come. Shar did so, casting a quick glance around as she crossed the damp, fern-studded ground. There was no sign of other life.

The wisp was hovering above a tangle of brambles. "Cut away enough to pass," it told her, "and go down."

"Go down?" Shar asked, but there was no reply. She went to her knees and sawed at the thorny branches obediently, laying them aside in a neat pile as she cut herself a tunnel. Beyond, there seemed to be an emptiness in the gloom. Before Shar could will her enchanted dagger to glow and give her light to see by, the wisp drifted silently over her shoulder. Its radiance showed her a hole in the ground, half-covered with fern root creepers. She drew them aside and stared at worn stone steps and darkness beyond.

Shar wiped her dagger on her thigh and sheathed it- the wisp bobbed approvingly-and put her legs forward, onto the steps.

Then, cautiously, she shifted forward, holding on to the edges of the hole, and began to descend. The wisp drifted past to hang just in front of her, lighting her way down those old stone steps… down a dozen feet and more, then turning to the right-to avoid the roots of a huge duskwood she'd seen, Shar judged-and plunging down more steeply, another eight steps, before opening out into a damp, stone-floored chamber.

A tomb. A stone coffin stood on a bier before her, almost filling the room. Around it, the walls were of cracked and fallen tiles, unadorned squares that bore no inscriptions, scenes, or heraldry to tell her who was buried here. Their smooth run was broken by the roots that had dislodged some of them.

Bones littered the floor beyond her boots, scattered human bones. She could see at least three skulls, and there were probably more around the back of the coffin. Adventurers had come here to plunder, and met some sort of doom.

Shar drew back onto the lowest step. The will o' wisp winked sharply beside her. "Lift the lid and take the sword within."

Shar tilted her head to look obliquely up at the beautiful sphere. "It's not a good thing, to disturb the dead."

She shivered suddenly, her words taking her back to someone else speaking that same phrase-a cold, cruel voice offering a mocking warning not to try to flee through a crypt in the Underdark.

And suddenly, as the memories so often took her, she found herself back in that glow-cavern with the barbed lash curling fire about her bare thighs, trying not to scream as she heard the dreadful promises spoken so softly and lovingly by the priestesses who wielded such whips, the loving daughters of Lolth with their crazed plans.

The plans that had kept her alive. Long after they'd broken her, making her crawl to kiss their booted feet at a gesture or command, posing herself to accept the lash automatically when they appeared, they kept her alive. Kept her alive for their darkest plan after they'd slain men who could give them greater pleasure-slain them by flogging the skin right off them and then exchanging their whips for long flails with barbed iron bars, or whips with hissing, hungry living serpent heads, to work on the fleshless, moaning shapes that remained.

She was to be bred to a spider. A giant, hairy spider whose limbs bore barbs and saw-edges, whose bulk almost crushed her when they'd experimented, lashing its mandibles together with their whips to keep it from beheading or slashing open the pale-skinned victim chained beneath it, slick with sweat and fear, writhing helplessly.

A spider whose spell-twisted brood would have hatched in her paralyzed body and eaten her from within to nourish themselves into life as manspiders-"biddable driders," as one priestess had called them, her face alight with excitement at the thought. Manspiders who could serve as loyal, intelligent fighting steeds for drow warriors paired with them, in a war against rival drow cities deep in the lightless Underdark.

Sharantyr shivered again, recalling days of pain and humiliation, and nights of eerie terror, as the glowing, gelatinous fungi had crept slowly down the stone walls where she lay chained by the throat to a huge ring in the wall, bedded on hard, sharp human skulls, and flowed over her, their translucent pseudopods covering her with glistening slime as they lapped at her wounds and body openings, healing and cleansing her, absorbing her wastes and blood and energy alike, leaving her too weak to work toward any escape.

The touch of jelly or jam on her skin still left her drenched with sweat, and quivering with fear-and excitement.

"Trust me in this, and do as I bid." The voice was musical and assured, almost amused. Shar closed her eyes. "Trust me" had been one of the taunts used by the priestess with the strongest liking for her pale-skinned human prisoner. Trust me.

Shar opened her eyes deliberately, swallowed, and stared at the winking globe of light. "Who are you," she asked softly, "that I should trust you?"

"Mystra," came the soft reply, and it seemed that an echo arose from that softly spoken name and rolled across the chamber to recede into vast distances, as if they stood in an immense void and not a small tomb smelling of damp earth and the roots of the forest above.

Shar shuddered. Sylune, she complained in her mind, what have you gotten me into now?

The wisp drifted closer, and the echoes seemed to roll and thunder again in the distance. "Well?" it asked, its voice a sudden challenge. "This is no drow trick."

Shar shuddered; it must be reading her mind. Oh. A goddess. Of course it could. She could. Shar shook herself, smiled, and stepped forward. "Why didn't you say so?" she asked almost petulantly, as she laid her hands on the cold, crumbling lid and shifted it aside.

Stone grated, and Shar peered cautiously into the darkness within, but the wisp flashed across the chamber to hang where she needed light. The coffin held heaped dust and a wild-weave of cobwebs, but no body that she could see. A scabbarded blade lay in front of her, shrouded in dusty gray webs. Without hesitation she reached in and took it.

A cold tingling ran up her arm, and fear awoke to accompany it. What if the blade turned her into some sort of monster or visited a curse on her? What if- Enough, she told herself firmly, stowing the blade under her arm to free her hands for replacing the lid.

The wisp seemed to bob approvingly again, but as she turned toward the stairs, it flashed through the air to block her path. "Draw the blade," it told her.

Shar nodded and held the scabbard out horizontally before her, drawing the sword slowly. It was a magnificent, gleaming long sword, curved more than was the fashion in the Dragonreach lands. The hilt, grip, and blade seemed to be all of one piece, polished mirror bright and glossy smooth. As it came free of the scabbard, the sword awakened with its own blue radiance, a light that grew and grew until it blazed.

"This is yours to bear, Lady Knight," the wisp told her. Shar turned it slowly, feeling its weight, and replied feelingly, "An honor."

"Indeed." The wisp sounded a little amused. "You may not always feel so. You hold a weapon against the Malaugrym. Return to your camp, and in the morning go down to the bridge that Itharr mistrusted so. There draw this blade, and it will show you a gate that will transport you to the plane of shadows where the Malaugrym dwell. When drawn, this sword will show you all gates nearby, and work them for you if you will it so. Take your companions and go and slay Malaugrym for me."

Shar took a pace away from the wisp to gain room, and swung the blade experimentally. It hummed as it cut the air, and a delighted smile came to her face. What a magnificent weapon! It matched her as if made for her, and its rippling weight made her feel like a dashing young hero, the excited girl she'd once been when she first sought adventure, long before she'd ever seen the endless Underdark… or drow.

Shar laughed, her unbound hair swirling about her as she leapt lightly around one corner of the tomb, fencing with an imaginary foe. The blade felt alive in her hands. Yes! With this, she could rule the world!

At swordplay, at least. She turned to look at the will o' wisp, and asked, "Will I see you again?"

"No," came the flat reply, and to Shar's ears it sounded sad. But when the voice came again, it was calm. "No mortal shall ever see this aspect of me again in Faerun. It is a fading thing I inherited, a shell of ghosts and shadows. I cannot wear it well."

The wisp drifted toward the stairs. "Go now, Sharantyr. Make us all proud of thee."

As she went up into the glade and saw the white glimmering ring that must be the gate to take her home, Shar thought she heard a familiar old voice, a mere whisper behind her. "Well said. Very well said. Ye'll do fine."

Elminster? She was still frowning in excited puzzlement when she came out into the moonlight of Daggerdale and found Sylune waiting for her.

Silverymoon, Kythorn 18

Milhvar's spell tapped into existing gates-or so the sinister, smiling Shadowmaster had told them. Huerbara didn't trust him one whit, but she had no choice but to place herself in his hands, and watch him like a hungry hawk for any sign of treachery.

It would come. Oh, it would come.

Hopefully not on this foray… probably not. The cold truth was that the three of them weren't important enough to be rivals whom the Shadowmaster might want to eliminate. But enough speculation.

Milhvar's whirling magic had just taken them somewhere dark. As the spell-motes of the gate they'd linked into scattered around them, the three cloaked Malaugrym stared around, looking for any sign as to where they might be. Their mission was to find Alustriel, the High Lady of Silverymoon, and attack her. They were to slay her if possible, but the real test lay in finding out how much the cloaks concealed and protected them against her.

First to find her.

Ignoring the startled gasps and hissed warnings from behind her, Huerbara strode across the darkened chamber to the only door she could see. This had better be Alustriel's palace, or Milhvar would soon be hearing about his overblown cleverness.

The door was unlocked. Beyond stretched a short passage whose left-hand wall soon became a row of tapestries, implying a larger room in that direction, Huerbara walked forward without hesitation.

Behind her, the two male Malaugrym exchanged glances, shrugged, and followed.

Voices were coming from beyond the tapestries. Male voices, at ease.

"She never seems to know what she wants to buy, but she always comes back with something. Or rather, a pile of somethings." A glass clinked down on a table.

There was a chuckle. "You can sell more to a woman who knows not what she wants to buy but is restless to have new things in her hands."

There was a snort. "You make her sound like a brothel cruiser, not the lady with the largest collection of once-worn gowns in Silverymoon."

"And you want to wed her. Have you thought this through?"

Kuervyn and Andraut smiled silkily at each other and turned toward the tapestries, hands going to the slim blades they wore at their belts.

Huerbara shot out two long, silent tentacles to wave them to startled stillness. She glared at them and gestured down the passage, beckoning them on. There'd be time for such amusements later, unless, of course, they had the whole palace after them by then.

Bringing two such flamebrains along on this mission could prove very dangerous to her, she reflected, following the passage through an archway and into the rear of what seemed to be a gigantic wardrobe.

And then a slim hand reached out in front of her and unhooked a dust-shroud-covered gown from its place on the crowded bar. Huerbara smiled tightly and shot a slim tentacle around that corner, high up. Eyes swam down the tentacle to see her quarry, and guide that appendage around its throat before it could utter a sound.

Huerbara stepped around the corner with a pleasant smile on her face, another tentacle snaking out to take the gown from suddenly desperate fingers. The maid whose throat was wrapped in her tentacle-a pretty wench with great dark eyes and a pert little lace-framed bosom-stared helplessly at her for a few moments in terrified bewilderment before Huerbara broke that pretty neck with a deft twist, and the light in the eyes faded away. Then she handed the body back out into the passage to amuse the two louts, felt them take it with low laughs of anticipation, and shifted to match the maid's form perfectly.

A moment later, Shantra the Underdresser stepped unconcernedly out of the wardrobe room, dust-bagged gown in hand, and looked up and down the corridor she found herself in. Two magnificently mustachioed guards in opulent uniforms were seated before a closed and barred door at one end of the passage, playing leap-knights at an ornate octagonal board. Light, soft voices spilled from two open doorways in the other direction.

The guards looked up, so she gave them a half-smile before she turned away. One guard looked back to his game immediately, but the other guard frowned. His eyes narrowed as he watched Shantra-his beloved, who'd never looked at him with such pleasant lack of recognition before-walk away and pass through one of the doors. She'd never walked like that, either, all sinuous glide and none of her happy bounce.

He got up, saying softly, "A moment, friend Silder. I'll be right back, but come with your sword if I bellow."

He left the other guard frowning up at him and went down the passage as quickly as stealth would allow, hand on the hilt of his blade.

In the room he was approaching, three ladies were looking up at the maid with surprise on their faces. "Why, Shantra, what's amiss?" one of them asked, gliding forward.

Huerbara looked at her as if bewildered. "L-lady?"

The dust bag… why've you brought the gown still in its dust bag?"

"Ohh," Huerbara said, trying to look confused-easy enough, she thought wryly-and bent her knees, sagging forward and clutching at her head. "I feel… not right… I…"

"What befalls?" The quick, anxious male voice came from behind her. One of the guards?

"Shantra's been taken ill," said a voice very near, as gentle hands took her forearm and elbow and guided her to a stool.

"That's not Shantra," the male voice said firmly. "Her walk is wrong, and she didn't recognize us."

"And she spoke differently," said one of the women slowly. Then the third woman said quietly, "Speak, Shantra. Name us."

Oh, shadows take them! Not three rooms into the palace! She shook her head. "I…" she said, trying to sound broken.

Then she heard the soft swish of a sword being drawn. Huerbara turned toward the guard with a snarl, extending her breasts into tentacles to hold his eyes, while a third shot out to take his feet from under him.

"Doppleganger!" he bellowed, fear and anger in his eyes as his sword slashed down. Huerbara struck it away with her tentacles, shifting her innards hastily to avoid a lucky blow, and then stiffened with a real shriek of pain as something slim and hard went through her from behind, burning…

She looked dully down at the sword tip protruding from her breast and saw that it was silver. Huerbara wept in agony and did what she had to do, let half her body fall away and be lost to her. With the only arm she had left, she firmly grasped the belt buckle embedded in her flesh and said, "Brathaera."

As the guard battled her writhing tentacles, she simply melted away. He crashed forward helplessly into the wall as Silder came charging around the corner to find three ladies staring down at an amorphous mass on the floor that had one human arm protruding from it- and a slim silver sword cane through it.

"A doppleganger, here?"

The double-chinned, haughty lady who held the handle of the sword cane shook her head. "No. Much worse than that."

"Oh?" Silder asked, raising his eyebrows. "And how would you know, Mistress Iraeyna? Fought many monsters in the nurseries of the palace, have we?"

Mistress Iraeyna, Chief Dresser of the Ladies' Wardrobe, fixed him with cool eyes as she calmly undid the front of her gown and pulled the fabric wide. The two ladies on either side of her gasped.

Both guardsmen gulped-not at the formidable bosom exposed to their gaze, but at the black silk waist-corset just beneath it. Its straining fabric held a too-large tummy firmly in check and sported a silver pin: a harp between the horns of a crescent moon, surrounded by four stars.

"You know this, Silder? Haerarn?" she asked crisply. Both guards nodded dumbly.

"Then follow my orders, as the High Lady's decree binds you to. Into that wardrobe! There may be others- and suspect everything of being a foe, from stool to garment. They're shapeshifters far more deadly than any dopplegangers! Strike to slay, and thrust a silver piece into any wound you make, if you can!"

She bent swiftly and retrieved her sword cane. As she strode forward, Mistress Iraeyna snapped back, "Dansila and Ormue, go straight out that door and lock it behind you. Take your keys and don't tarry for anything! Go to Lady Amathree. If any guards try to stop you, tell them it's Harper business and order them to escort you. If you can't find Lady Amathree, ask for Alustriel herself. Say that there are Malaugrym in the palace! Got that? Malaugrym!"

The wardrobe door banged open, and Silder and Haerarn burst into the room. Silder's eyes were wide with amazement, and Haerarn's were wild with the awful realization that he probably wouldn't find Shantra alive.

It was worse than that. Her body was dancing between two laughing Malaugrym, suspended on tentacles that ran through the maid's corpse from one body opening to another. As they commented on how odd or delectable this feature or that organ looked, the Malaugrym were devouring her. Swooping tentacles that ended in eel-like jaws were tearing at her bared flesh, and blood was raining down on the dusty floor.

Weeping, Haerarn charged savagely into one shape-shifting monster, and Silder gulped and cautiously approached the other. Mistress Iraeyna strode forward and simply slashed a tentacle with her sword cane. The tentacle writhed and flopped in convulsions, slapping the floor, and she stepped past it and drove her cane deep into one flowing form. It stiffened, convulsed, and abruptly let go of the choking Haerarn. As he crashed to the floor, his face a dangerous purple, Iraeyna turned toward the other shapeshifter.

It slapped Silder into one wall with fearsome force-amid the crash, Iraeyna heard the sharp crack of ribs giving way-and then was gone. There one moment and vanished the next.

The Chief Dresser of the Ladies' Wardrobe frowned. With pursed lips she whirled back to the first Malaugrym and thrust her silver cane into it repeatedly until all sign of movement had ceased. Then she sat down on its gray-brown bulk and began to lace up her bodice.

When she saw Haerarn's eyes focus on her again, she said briskly, "Well done, armsman. Now get up and unbar the door, will you? A lot of folk will be rushing in here shortly. Ring for service, too; Silder's hurt. Oh, and you'd better put away that leapknights board before your swordlord sees it, hadn't you?"

Haerarn hadn't managed to carry out more than one of these instructions before a dozen armed men boiled into the wardrobe, weapons drawn.

"Thank you, gentle sirs," Mistress Iraeyna said serenely, "but it's all over now. You'd best check along the back passage, though, in case there are more lurking about."

"The day that Swords of the Guard take orders from ladies' dressers," the oldest and burliest swordlord told her, his moustaches bristling, "is-"

"Belt up and stow it, sirrah," she told him sweetly, causing some of the men who were goggling at the dead tentacled thing under her to look up and grin. "I give you orders by the High Lady's decree."

"Oh, aye, and how did you manage that, with her at the other end o' the palace from here?"

With a sigh, Mistress Iraeyna began to unlace her bodice again.