Cloak of Shadows

14

Thay, Kythorn 18

Elminster caught only glimpses of the stars over Thay as shadowy death loomed around him, blotting them out. The smoky clouds of dense gloom were alive and reaching for him. As he frowned and willed his magical undergarments to let him descend at a slightly less precipitous rate, he wondered just what this giant was, who'd created it… and why.

Just once, 'twould be nice to know.

Thay, Kythorn 19

It is hard to become a Zulkir of Thay. Someone always holds such a title already and must be willing to give it up voluntarily-or be made to die. A final death, that is, admitting of no resurrections, clones, or death-cheating contingencies. As most of the present Zulkirs enjoy the powers their titles bring (if not always the responsibilities) and have honed their magical powers-and accumulated allies and magical safeguards, traps, and useful items-for centuries, bringing final doom to one is no easy task.

It is quite possible to become a very powerful Red Wizard without ever seeking the mantle of Zulkir, and indeed many "Bloodcowls" (as certain mages of other lands derisively call Red Wizards) have no interest in the exposure-not to say danger-of the position.

It is not easily possible, however, to reshape the teachings, habits, and direction of an entire school of magic without either being its Zulkir or having his full support.

Consider, then, the plight of a man who feels he must accomplish such an end, and is neither Zulkir nor has much chance of gaining the support of the incumbent-centuries-old Szass Tam, Zulkir of the School of Necromancy-or unseating that infamous and awesomely powerful lich, archmage, and master of undead. According to most observers, Szass Tam hasn't sunk into the decadent ennui of many lichnee. He still enjoys besting rival Zulkirs and Red Wizards, and remains driven by an elusive goal: the destruction of Rashemen. This makes both his resignation and destruction unlikely-his death is irrelevant-and leaves a Thayan necromancer who'd like to change the interests of the School of Necromancy in an untenable position, the more so when his tentative approaches to colleagues in the craft are received with cold rebuffs and open suspicion of being an outlander agent or spy.

So he withdraws into apparent bitterness (real) and aimless researches (for show), and behind this mask sets about accomplishing an almost impossible goal: gaining power enough to destroy Szass Tam and anyone else who stands in his way, and force Thay to follow the road he sees for it. He stages an apparent disaster in his spell laboratory, that reportedly weakens him and leaves him disfigured, and becomes The Masked One. Colleagues foolish enough to try to take advantage of his apparently failing powers fall victim to his one real accomplishment, the magical ability to dissolve the person-and subsume the powers of-anyone his most secret spell can envelop. A few Red Wizards vanish, and The Masked One grows in power until he can craft a giant to ensnare wizards. Then he must wait, for he dare not use it openly and invite attack from all sides by terrified Bloodcowls. He must wait until a time of chaos, when wizards can be trapped alone… or avatars, falling from the sky!

When the Fall of the Gods becomes living truth, no longer empty prophecy, the Masked One exults in a hidden place and raises his giant to stalk the avatar he's detected roaming Thay, the mortal who holds the lessened powers of Hoar the Doombringer, Hurler of Thunders. The avatar is very near, and even the lessened power he wields shames the vaunted might of the greatest Red Wizards.

The giant rises and stretches forth his hand, attracting the attention of the One Who Is Hidden (and therefore unknown to The Masked One and his calculations). Ao deems the giant a creation of evil far more dangerous than the status quo in cruel Thay, and looks for something to foil such a dark scheme. Something that always seems to drop into the midst of troubles in Faerun… something called Elminster.

The Old Mage waved a hand to direct his pipe smoke out of his eyes and grunted, "So here's a hearty thankee to thee, Ao, for dropping Elminster into the midst o' things again! Bah!"

As these kindly words left Elminster's lips, the giant seemed to see him, turning a head as large as a good-sized castle to regard the falling wizard, and emitting a thunderous rumble. A distinctly unfriendly sound, Elminster thought, his fingers already weaving a complex pattern in the air. At a certain point, he murmured an incantation that left his pipe behind. As he beckoned the still-smoking item to follow, silver spheres began to coalesce and grow in the air around, like a stream of gigantic bubbles falling to earth with him.

His suspicions were soon confirmed. From the outstretched hands of the dark, menacing mass streamed fire, two lines of eight spinning balls of flame per hand. They loomed up at him very quickly, howling and crackling as they came, and El sent two of his spheres drifting out to meet them. He'd best intercept the fireballs before they could burst. The days when he could serenely survive the fiery blasts of two meteor swarms at once were long gone.

He spun another spell thoughtfully but left it hanging, lacking but a final word to call it into being and send it on its way. Best to wait a bit and let this titanic construct exhaust a few spells more before battle began in earnest. Above and around him, balls of fire met silvery spheres and winked out of existence together in velvet silence.

The giant destroyed the last few fireballs itself, banishing them to spreading steam by the touch of gray-white rays of conjured cold. They hissed out from its hands like angry drifts of cloud, and Elminster's eyes narrowed. Lesser strikes, so soon?

Those must be one of the forms of a freezing sphere spell. Did the thing hurl only duplicates of the same spell? Perhaps it was some sort of projected image raised by an over-clever Red Wizard, and merely aped spells-in duplicate that the Thayan was casting, somewhere far below.

As silver spheres spun and darkened before him, drinking in drifting cold, Elminster let loose his hanging spell. The ruby ray stabbed down, right between the two whirlpools of darkness that served the giant for eyes. Wisps of cloud blocked his view of its striking, but an instant later, when El tumbled out of the pale, clinging cloudy drift, the giant stood unchanged.

It stepped forward, shaking the earth far below, as if goaded by his spell, or as if it now knew just where he was and intended to finish him. Elminster sighed, gathering silver spheres around him in a falling wedge, and pulled them all to one side with him, to see if the giant would hurl its spells at where he should have been.

It did not. From one hand flashed a spreading arc of lightning, leaping from cloud to cloud in a blinding needle to spear a sphere that Elminster hurriedly thrust its way. The sphere lit up blue-white for a moment, then slowly faded into darkness, flickering once, and was gone.

Elminster barely saw it. His eyes were on the giant's other hand, which had made a throwing motion but seemed empty. What could-? Then his eyes narrowed, and he shifted spheres into a line, out from himself toward the giant.

One sphere flared almost immediately, lit from within by tongues of fire, and was gone. A delayed blast fireball.

"So we think ourselves clever, do we?" Elminster asked the night almost absently, and launched his response.

The spell was one he'd always thought unfair, one called "disintegrate" that devoured matter as if it had never been, wiping out struggling creatures and things of beauty alike, visiting such prompt oblivion that El thought it something no mage should habitually use. Ah, high principles. The Old Mage shrugged, and used it now.

One vast arm was his target, to see if an overbalanced giant would fall, or if a one-armed giant could hurl only one spell at a time. He peered into the falling night, and obligingly, the arm that had hurled the stealthy fireball vanished.

Not far away, The Masked One lifted a sweating face and gasped out a heartfelt curse on Mystra and Tymora both-fickle women, to turn their faces away in the moment of his triumph. Now the old man falling from the sky had a chance, when his memories and mastery should already have been flowing into an impatient Thayan necromancer. The Masked One snarled and raised his hands to cast a spell he hadn't expected to have to use.

And in a place of shifting shadows, Milhvar of the Malaugrym stared into his scrying globe and smiled, stroking the shimmering stuff of the cloak of shadows in his ringers. Soon would come the time to use it. Soon.

Thay, Kythorn 19

To a warm and scented pool where several pairs of soft hands stroked a bored Zulkir with oil, there came a sudden commotion. The cause of this commotion rose up, alarm on his face, spilling silent slaves away from him, and said aloud, "My cloak and towels to the Turret of Stars, at once!" Not waiting to hear their murmured replies, he uttered the word that took him there. Someone was hurling around more magic than any man should be able to harness, out there in the night, in the very heart of Thay! Even if this was no attack or act of treachery, thousands of bindings could be broken! Why had no one informed him? Why was he always the last to learn of such things?

As the stars over Thay glittered and swam, the giant lurched and turned ponderously, raising its remaining arm in silence to point at the Old Mage, who shrugged and began the casting of a firestorm.

The weaving he was attempting was a slow and complex thing, denying it much use on battlefields or in sorcerous duels, but this strange drifting struggle was unlike most duels. This might well be the fire spell's best chosen time.

The giant struck first. A fiery comet streaked skyward, well above the Old Mage, and burst, raining down fiery death from above. El finished his casting with a flourish and looked up to enjoy the show. He'd not seen a Rain of Fire light up the darkness since three magefairs ago.

And then he saw the spreading rainbow that was his foe's other sally, and muttered a curse of old Myth Drannor.

Thay, Kythorn 19

In a tower whose spires stroked the stars, a tall robed figure turned sharply away from the battle he'd been watching-the wrestlings of a captured couatl and a winged devourer he'd conjured into existence not long be-fore-and said aloud, "Something's amiss!"

He turned to the west, in time to feel the surge again. Greater magic than he'd ever felt on the move before, even in the battles where massed Red Wizards had together hurled storms at the witches of Rashemen. Greater magic than any mortal should be able to control.

Perhaps it was out of all control, or perhaps a god had come to Thay. The robed archwizard shuddered and tapped a crystal sphere, awakening it to floating life. He must know what doom might be hurtling toward them all.

El willed his undergarments to take him to one side again and thrust himself backward, twisting his fall into an eddy in the air that gave him time enough to cast a spell he'd used before. Bringing the spell up one word short of its close, Elminster fell through the night-more quickly now, as he willed it-and watched the giant's disjunction suck in the spheres of his epuration spell, drinking them one by one.

He glanced up. The spheres had absorbed the entire rain of fire before being destroyed, and he should be out of range of the disjunction by now. He spoke that last word, and silver spheres bubbled out around him once more. Now he had no more epuration spells left.

He turned in the air, his clout and undervest tugging at him in response to his direction, and sent himself on a long glide toward the giant, trailing silver spheres. He had to get a better look at things.

It was the work of but a moment to send a flaring eye away from him, whistling away like a tiny tear of flame. He watched it dwindle speedily toward the giant as the titan's next attack came.

Roiling purple beams that would have wracked and forcibly transformed his body lanced past. Elminster rolled aside to be well clear of them and watched the flight of his probe.

It plunged into magical shadow and lit up the smoky form of the giant from within. In the spreading glow, Elminster saw the tendrils of conjured matter expanding, moving slowly to re-form the missing arm, and also saw the flashes of moving energy that sustained and animated the shadowy titan. Flashes emanating not from a man, but from… an item, a small bar or baton that hung in the giant's heart, winking and turning as it strove to move the giant to grasp at Elminster again.

Aha. So this giant was being directed from elsewhere, That-scepter, was it? — might be worth a look, if he could ever get to it.

Elminster summoned up his mage-sight as he plunged ever closer to his gigantic foe. "Far be it from me to cast aspersions on your origins, mighty Ao," he murmured, "or even to inquire too closely about such things, notions of blasphemy being what they are, but… Ao, you bastard!"

He screamed those last words as he saw silver spheres crumbling close around him under the assault of an attack meant to transform his body to stone, and a second attack, breaths behind the first, intended to shatter his petrified form.

This was enough, and more than enough. Folk were dying in the Realms while wild magic raged and avatars walked, as he wasted time playing with this ungainly wizard's nightmare. Well, at least there'd be no more spells of open rending sent his way-not now.

At that thought he plunged into the giant's smoky body, spheres close around him. Sudden lightnings raged, but the spheres bought his life with their own, one after another, and held breathable air between them, and he went on.

Down, down, spiraling in the lightning-lashed gloom toward the quickening, rushing lights that marked the consternation of whoever was making the giant move. Silver spheres were falling away like mist before an open flame now, but he was close, very close… and falling like a flung stone, hands outstretched.

Then a sphere flashed into being around his goal, a shimmering, rainbow-hued sphere of light right in front of him, banishing the shadowy heart of the giant like tattered smoke with its power, pulsing as it promised his death.

A prismatic sphere. Thanks again, Ao.

Elminster put his hands back and then swept them together sharply before him, and silver spheres flashed willingly past him to their doom, flaring into vivid flashes of red, orange, and yellow as they bored through the deadly multilayered barrier in his path.

The fourth sphere spun past him, expiring in a vivid green flare, and Elminster called on his underthings one last time, bidding them slow his fall. Fabric sawed at all his joints, protesting with raw pullings and tearings that were more felt than heard, and the fifth sphere died in front of him, the blue flash of its passing making his eyes flood with tears.

The deeper flashes that followed shook him soundlessly. Then, through swimming eyes, Elminster saw the crackling scepter turning in front of him.

He put forth a hand and grasped it firmly, saying calmly, "Thaele."

And the world seemed to stop. There was a frozen white instant of pain as he hung motionless in the air, feeling lightings surge through him; then he felt the giant begin to collapse. Abruptly the night sky was gone, and he was standing in a familiar, cozy room more than a world away.

Thay, Kythorn 19

The Masked One shook as the last lightnings roiled through him, and the shadows that had been his titan tumbled and rolled away. Gods curse the Mage of Shadowdale! The scepter was gone, and without it…

The door behind him split from top to bottom with a thunderous crack. The necromancer whirled, snatching at the serpent-headed rod that was his last and most secret defense.

"What're you playing at, traitor?" came the cold question from the light beyond. The glowing head that drifted into the room was as tall as a man, but its features were those of the Zulkir Lauzoril.

The Masked One opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he might have said was lost forever in the crash of raining acids and bursting forcebolts that came through his scrying stone and his secret gate respectively, and crashed together with him at their heart. The chamber rocked, and the necromancer's struggling figure vanished.

As smoke rose from what had been a room of splendor only moments before, the floating head said irritably, "Stay out of this, both of you. I'll deal with affairs that occur on my own lands!"

"We await your starting to do so," came a reply. "All of Thay awaits."

The head raised an eyebrow. "Does it? And how comes your perfect knowledge of this?"

"Lauzoril," another voice said carefully, "has it occurred to you that being Zulkir might occasionally involve other talents than the ability to make clever remarks?"

"We're waiting," the first voice agreed, almost smugly.

The conflagration that followed hurled stony fragments for miles, but Zulkir Lauzoril suspected that The Masked One was long gone. He wondered briefly just what Szass Tam was going to say about this, and decided he really didn't want to approach that dark tower in Del-humide and ask. Whatever the necromancer had tried was done, a failure that had cost him his abode and much of his power. A fitting punishment could wait for later-a decade or two, perhaps.

Elminster's Safehold, Kythorn 19

The softly glowing globe that usually hung above the table in the center of the octagonal room had drifted over to one side, to hang helpfully over the shoulder of the white-bearded man lounging in Elminster's best chair, his feet up on the edge of one of the many crammed bookshelves that lined the room. A small array of wine bottles and half-empty tallglasses hung in the air around him, his rarest and best wines.

Elminster hated uninvited guests, but his expression did not change as his eyes flickered over the scene. He stepped forward with a twinkle in the depths of his old blue-gray eyes.

"You wanted this dealt with, sir?" the Old Mage asked in the calm, cultured tones of a servant as he set the scepter in his hand gently on the table in front of the Overgod. His tone was innocent, but the words hung in the air as firmly as any challenge.

Ao raised calm eyes to meet his but said nothing. Challenge answered.

Elminster met those dark, star-filled eyes steadily and laid the torn remnants of his undervest and clout beside the scepter. "See? Clean," he announced calmly, and waved a hand.

A second chair melted out of the air in silent obedience, and El sat down, swinging his own feet up to the table.

Ao glanced at the scepter, and it disappeared. His eyes flickered for a moment as he considered the implications of the powers he'd just absorbed. Then he raised his eyebrows and his glass together. "Perhaps you should be the god of all magic in Faerun."

El put his hands behind his head and frowned. "What? Would ye ruin my life and my usefulness both at once?"

Ao regarded him thoughtfully for a moment and then nodded. "You're right… all too often, Elminster Aumar. Try to stay out of the grievous sort of trouble that beset the gods of your world. I'd not want to have to return here to destroy you."

He held out a hand, and after a long moment Elminster took it-to find himself shaking only empty air.

The Old Mage collapsed into a chair, noticing his wines were all back on their shelf, stoppered and arranged as he'd last left them. "Foosh!" he said in shocked tones. "A 'be a good boy' lecture and half my wine gone! I don't think I can afford to entertain Overgods!"

The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19

Deep green and serpentine were the shadows coiling around them as three rangers in leather blinked at each other and at their surroundings. It was cool and damp and smelled… strange, as if the smells of an old and deep forest were mingled with sharp scents of burning. It was some sort of high-ceilinged chamber or hall, longer than it was wide and built of stone, the massive blocks smooth with age and unadorned.

They were alone, though small things seemed to be alive in the ever-swirling shadows. A sudden flurry of fogs made Sharantyr look down quickly at the blade she held, to find it cloaked in a quickening spiral of concealing shadows. An attack?

"Gentle sirs," she said warningly, "we may have a problem. I-"

Belkram leaned in close. "Sylune's doing it, to hide the blade. Ah, don't put it away."

Shar nodded and looked around again.

"Well," she said, wriggling her shoulder blades to loosen some of the tension, "it certainly feels… strange.

Whither now?"

"My arm," Itharr said quietly. "It's… changing." Shar heard the tightly chained fear in his voice. His left arm seemed to be growing a row of barbs and shifting from patched and seamed leathers to a bluish fur, rising over bones that should not be there.

"Is it happening to any other part of you?" Shar asked, glancing involuntarily down at herself. Nothing looked or felt strange, but…

"It's-I'm changing, too," Belkram said grimly, and they all saw that the booted foot he thrust forward had become a taloned, curling claw. He scratched his shoulder with an arm that had begun to sport scales here and there, and muttered, "Can your blade take us home again, if need be?"

"I don't think I want to see a guard's face at the bridge in Shadowdale when he looks at this"-Itharr thrust his arm forward, and Shar saw that the barbs had become a row of curling, questing tentacles-"especially not a guard I know."

Sharantyr grimaced. "Does it… hurt?" she asked, looking from one man to the other and wondering if she'd soon have to strike one or both of them down. As if reading her thoughts, the blade in her hands lifted a little.

Shar shivered and took a pace away, to get out from between the two Harpers. They gave her hurt looks. "Sylune's not doing this to you, is she?" she asked Belkram. This isn't some sort of disguise."

"No," he said grimly, shuffling forward. "It's this place, working on our bodies. I guess this is how the Malaugrym became shapeshifters."

"Can you… manage?"

Belkram gave her a rueful smile. "Have to," he said briefly.

"I'm trying to tell my body what to shift into," Itharr said quietly, "but it doesn't seem to be working. Am I turning blue?"

Shar peered at him. "Not any part of you I can see," she observed carefully, "but-"

"Trying to get her to disrobe you again?" Belkram asked, rolling his eyes. "Haven't you given up on that yet?"

The laughter they shared then was a little wild, but the smiles that ended it were real ones that remained as Shar took a few tentative steps across the chamber. "We might as well start looking around," she said.

"Do we have to find this place again, to gate back home?" Itharr asked. Shar shrugged. "I… don't know. I guess so." She raised the blade, and they saw the air behind them wavering in confusion. After a moment she lowered it. "It will show me gates, I think… even here."

"So why isn't there a clear door, or oval, or whatever?" Belkram asked, waving at the spot where they'd appeared.

Shar frowned. "I don't think that gate is there anymore," she said reluctantly. The two men traded glances.

Then we'd better go exploring," Itharr said, "or we'll never find a way out of here. If we just stand here, either someone'll find us-and no doubt offer violence-or we'll die of starvation!"

"You may not want to wait for that," Belkram told him. "Have you looked at yourself?"

Itharr regarded him sourly. "Now how could I do that?" Belkram shrugged. "If your eyestalks grow a little longer, you should be able to swivel one around and get a good look at yourself."

"I'd refrain from such talk if I were you," Itharr responded. "You may have started out more handsome than me, but I doubt Shar's going to be overly thrilled with a man whose back is growing a row of breasts, a moving row of breasts…"

Belkram tried to twist around to look at his back, but couldn't. He shot a look at Shar. "Tell me he's bluffing," he demanded. The lady ranger could only shake her head sadly.

"Why hasn't it affected you?" Itharr asked, frowning. As he did so, his eyes flickered a deep mauve and began to slide slowly toward red in hue. "Could it be linked to sex?" Then he added quickly, "No jokes, Belk."

Belkram turned to him as the line along his back moved slowly up his neck and onto his scalp, lifting his hair in an odd-looking crest. "I wasn't planning any," he grunted, "but I think it's more likely the sword. Without the shadow weaving being done around it, it'd be standing in a little gap in the mists, a place these shadows don't care to go."

"They're alive, aren't they?" Itharr murmured.

"Yes," Shar agreed briskly, "and so are we." She strode away into the curling mists, raising the blade like a prow before her.

"Well, for now, yes," Belkram agreed mildly. He and Itharr looked at each other, shrugged, and moved tentatively after her. A slithering sound made them both freeze, until Itharr realized it was coming from the tail he'd begun to grow, whispering along the stone behind him. They traded grimmer glances and went on.

Elminster's Safehold, then the Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19

"I really must give the Shadowmasters something to think about besides laying waste to Faerun," the Old Mage mused. And then he smiled suddenly and snapped his fingers.

Obediently, in a place of ever-shifting shadows distant indeed from the room where Elminster sat, above the unbroken black marble floor of a vast chamber that was never empty, a severed head that looked very much like Elminster's own faded back into view from its stay in otherwhere, winked at a startled Malaugrym striding importantly across the Great Hall, and was gone.

A breath later, in a passage where candles flickered and wavered but never went out, fed by always-circling shadows, Old Elminster's head suddenly appeared. Floating between two pillars, it politely said, "Boo!" to a pair of startled Malaugrym conspirators, spat lightnings that left one shapeshifter rolling about in agony and the other a smoking heap, and was gone again.

In a chamber where several Malaugrym chanted and slithered, shifting shape in a ritual forbidden by Shadow-masters High for some centuries, a disembodied human head suddenly appeared, floating above the center of the sacred ring of flames, smiling down benevolently at the startled kin of Malaug.

"A sign!" one of them said excitedly, pointing with a flipper. "A sign!"

"What should we read in it?" another asked, almost suspiciously, as they all gaped at the smiling head.

It winked. " 'Abandon hope,' perhaps?" it suggested, as the blood dripping from its underside became a stream of silver lances that spun and erupted around the chamber, ricocheting energetically among Malaugrym blood and screams. By the time a Shadowmaster had lifted shaking hands to ward death away, the head was gone again.

" 'Twas Elminster," he mumbled grimly to the gape-mouthed corpse beside him. "He's back."

Wisely, the corpse chose not to answer.