Cloak of Shadows

17

Somewhere in Faerun, Kythorn 19

The midmorning sun laid dappled patches of golden light and shadow across the forest trail. Elminster appeared out of empty air behind his favorite boulder. He sniffed, frowned, and looked critically at the nearby evidence that some wolf had been using it as a boundary marker. Ah, well. Life in Faerun was at least never dull.

He looked to one side, frowned again, and rubbed his nose. Small wonder the wolves had been about. Enough fresh-gnawed bones to make up at least a dozen folk lay strewn down the hillside in the lee of the rocks. Hmm. It had been his experience that feeding hungry wildlife wasn't usually the goal of so many kindhearted folk in one locale, during peacetime. He'd found the spot, right enough, so 'twas time to stow the 'prentice philosophy. To work!

Stepping out from behind the stone, the Old Mage strolled down to the path, hitching at his robes so that it might look to an observer as if he'd had urgent business in the bushes off the trail.

Reaching the cart ruts, he stepped up onto the worn grassy strip between them and trudged along. As he'd expected, one of the bushes beside the path ahead trembled slightly.

"Oh, a wizard may well find time for much fun (for much fun), but an old rogue's work is seldom ever done (ever done)!" Elminster warbled, taking up a tune he'd heard a world away from this one.

"Aghh! Do ye mind!" A deep voice growled from the bushes. "I was plannin' just to rob thee, but if ye don't'en belt up, I'll be happy to gut ye instead."

"Gut me?" Elminster looked properly terrified. As expected, he drew back and turned to run, only to find himself staring into the grinning, unshaven visage of a half-orc whose parentage was attested to by one broken-off tusk, flat, piglike features, and a cruel smile.

"Don't mind Glorym. He's not hungry today, so he probably won't nibble on ye, being as ye aren't a pretty maiden." The brigand leader stepped into view, guffawing loudly at his own jest and scratching himself with his free hand in an ongoing quest for fleas. The other hand held an axe that might have once served to chop down trees-young saplings, that is, and several hundred years ago.

Elminster looked from one outlaw to the other and suppressed a wild urge to hoot with laughter by quavering, "Wha-what will ye be doin' to me?"

"Well, minstrel boy," the brigand leader drawled, displaying teeth that might have made a boar envious-an old and very sick boar, mind-"the proud army of which I'm swordlord hasn't been paid in a goodly while, and-" "Pike," the half-orc rumbled from behind Elminster, "what army? There's just ye 'n me, near's I can tell-"

"Hush!" the brigand leader said severely, and favored Elminster with another crookedly reassuring smile. "Pay no attention to my friend behind ye. I-hem hem blaugh ahum-chose him for this duty because of his, ah, kindly ways toward donors we meet on the road. Donors, I say, because 'tis our habit to, at this time, ask ye for some small tokens for passage on our road… a toll it pains us to request, mind ye, but-"

Elminster forestalled more of this by scaling a gold piece into the man's grubby outstretched palm.

Pike's eyes widened as he looked down at it, and then narrowed. He scratched his nose and stepped forward.

"Well," he said jovially, " 'tis a beginning, right enough, an' I'm right grateful to see ye've got the idea of the th-"

Elminster added a second gold coin to the first and turned to face Glorym. "Would ye like the same? I'm in a hurry…"

"Aye," Glorym rumbled, but Pike's eyes had narrowed again. "In a hurry? That's an awful shame…"

Elminster smiled pleasantly at him and said, "So it is, friend Pike, because I perceive ye and Glorym here share the same fondest wish. Ye both want to die rich."

He gestured, and both brigands wriggled in midair, their faces telling the world of their sudden terror at discovering they could no longer move. As the white-bearded, gaunt old man between them crooked a finger, one of the gold coins in Pike's palm drifted smoothly through the air to settle into Glorym's grasp.

Elminster smiled at them both and steered their frozen, floating bodies together, gently arranging their hands on each other's throats, tossing away their weapons, and closing the fingers of their free hands firmly around the coins. Then he snapped his fingers. Magic made none-too-clean fingers tighten, and the trapped, frightened eyes began to bulge almost immediately.

"And so ye shall," he added brightly, and went off down the road whistling.

The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19

"Oh? They must be destroyed?" Amdramnar's tone was lazily unconcerned as he set aside the platter of shadowslug and rose from his chair, his form swelling visibly. "I think not."

The Harpers made as if to rise, but Sharantyr laid a quick restraining hand on Belkram's arm, her eyes on the motionless Malaugrym out in the corridor, and Belkram froze. The three of them stared out at the watchers in the passage, who stared right back, faces impassive.

Between them, in the small open space encircled by the velvet-shrouded seats of Amdramnar's forechamber, tentacles and surging rubbery pseudopods and knots of muscled bulk were boiling and trembling in a tight mass. Sparks and brief sprays of radiance burst around them but seemed constrained by an invisible cylinder surrounding the entangled Malaugrym. A continuous din of snarls, barks, roars, and hisses came from a score of dripping maws that both combatants had grown- eyeless mouths on the ends of wormlike stalks that bit at each other in mindless savagery, rising and falling like surf around the heaving bodies.

Shar and the Harpers had never seen such savage energy sustained for so long and contested in so small a space. The foes began to grow within the cylinder as one found a strangling grip on the other. The trapped one-the three Faerunians could no longer tell them apart-tried to reach air by throwing out breathing tubes, and the other sought to overtop and ensnare these. Entwined, they soared up inside the cylindrical shield, growing quickly toward the mist-shrouded ceiling of the chamber, and all the while, the stone-faced Malaugrym stood silent and unmoving in the corridor, just watching.

And then, suddenly, it was done. In a cascade of abruptly freed sparks, the cylinder collapsed and fell away from around the two gasping, heaving tentacled forms, to be followed, blurring instants later, by the dwindling of the two Malaugrym into human forms once more. The panting men glared at each other until the newcomer found breath enough to snarl a stream of curses that the listening humans could barely understand.

Then he whirled suddenly, lashing out with talons that shot to long-sword length in a trice, stabbing at Sharantyr's eyes.

She flung herself back in the seat and brought her blade up sharply, and the black, seeking talons melted away before the sword's quickening blue glow as suddenly as they had come. Shar stared over them into the Malaugrym's eyes and saw her death in the look of cold promise he gave her.

She replied with a wintry, silent smile that seemed to amuse him. He lifted his lip in a sneering answering grin as he backed toward the door.

"My thanks for the invigorating exchange of views, Olorn," Amdramnar said in a voice that sounded like a sword blade softly sliding through a stomach, "but I'll expect a request to enter next time."

The other Malaugrym started to hiss a reply, but Amdramnar waved a hand and the door boomed closed with lightning speed, no doubt coming close to striking Olorn's face.

Their host held up his hand and muttered a quick incantation, then quickly touched the door that had just closed and the one Sharantyr had used earlier.

Then he turned, bowed to them, and sat down again. "My apologies, friends-if I may be so bold as to call you so, now that I've fought in your honor-but it appears that you're now enmeshed in our family disputes, like it or not. As you might have heard, that was Olorn, and he's an even more charming individual than Phenanjar. Was."

He gave them a little smile and added, "He's a tireless foe, I'm afraid. If you see him again, strike first-and to kill-or he'll slay you. It is also important that you know one thing more: Olorn's strong allies are two similarly young and ambitious Shadowmasters, Iyritar and Argast, though they try to keep their affiliation hidden from most of the kin. Both are good at sorcery-by your standards, very good-and you'd better consider yourselves at war with them both, as they'll no doubt behave as if you are, the moment Olorn tells them of what just occurred."

"What about you?" Itharr asked, eyeing the platter of shadowslug. "Are we a danger to you, now that others know we're here?"

Amdramnar shrugged. "Not really. I am thought odd by many of the kin, but so are many others, and tolerance must needs be the order of things in many family dealings. You saw how they watched but made no move? They were telling me of their neutrality in this, by that very action. It is how things are done in the castle."

Somewhere in Faerun, then the Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19

No one was around to see, so Elminster stepped behind a tree, became a bedraggled-looking crow, and leapt lightly to a leaf-shrouded branch. There he nestled up against the trunk and grew still.

And far away, in a corridor where shadows drifted idly in the ever-present gloom, a pale, grisly object that trailed white hair and a long white beard behind it like a tail faded slowly into solidity, flew purposefully forward through the shadows to a certain spot, and then rose up into the concealing gloom and waited.

A breath or so later, figures came into view down the passage. One was a man whose fingers were a nest of small eels wrapped securely about a scepter whose pale red glow parted the shadows like a slicing sword. The other was a loping, shambling thing of many snouts and protruding ears and eyestalks, a creature that whuffled and tapped the stones of the passage floor and walls with long, spidery fingers as it came.

"So have any of these idiots survived?" it asked sourly.

"I don't believe so," was the curt reply. "Well, perhaps one from the first foray, but no one's talking about it. Milhvar goes about grinning and saying arch things, almost as if he intended them to fail!"

"Why wouldn't he? If he kills off all the most rebellious or hopeless younglings, he won't be the only one who'll be going about grinning, either! Believe you me, there's parents in this castle who'd be relieved to see their own young gone…"

The two figures waved very different hands in front of a certain section of wall and it split in twain, drawing back to reveal an opening. The moment they'd passed through it, the humanlike Malaugrym turned around to survey the passage behind suspiciously but did not see the head floating above him, in the heart of a concealing drift of shadow.

The door whispered closed, and for some moments the head stared down thoughtfully at where the Shadow-master had been. Then it faded away.

The moment the Shadowmaster stepped back through the door that led to his larder, Belkram stretched and brought his hand down over the stone in his pocket. Sylune, he thought at it, concentrating hard.

Gently! The silent voice in his mind sounded reproachful.

Sorry, he told the Witch of Shadowdale, but we've some urgency. Can we trust the food and drink here? Thanks for reassuring me about the shadowslug, but he's bringing a lot more. How will we know?

I've told Shar to plead a delicate stomach, and Itharr to eat slowly, she replied, so you're it, Harper bold. I'll vibrate or even sting you, like this, if something's dangerous. Belkram nearly jumped out of his seat at the jolt he felt then, and favored her with a silent growl, which earned him a giggle in return. And don't talk when he's out of the room. This lad leaves more spying spells lying around than a castle full of Zhentarim! Her mind voice changed. Whoops-'ware!

Belkram just had time to bring his hand down and look casual before Amdramnar reappeared, several steaming platters balanced in his arms. "Feast is served, friends," he said, extending several arms out as if they were expandable poles to set platters down on side tables all over the room. Sharantyr grinned despite herself at the sight.

Itharr looked at the platter beside him and drew back. "Thanks, Amdramnar," he said steadily, "but… what is this? It looks… alive."

The platter held a bed of rice, and on it some sort of chopped and seared green vegetable rather like peppers. Among those deep green shells were brown, fried things that looked like worms in sauce… squirming worms.

Amdramnar leaned over. "Worms in sauce," he explained eagerly. "Tombworms, they're called. They live in the castle foundations. Taste like roast almonds, only better. You'll love them!"

The look Itharr gave him then almost made Shar choke forth all the wine she'd just sipped, but it was obvious that the Shadowmaster wasn't jesting with them. He genuinely loved good food and wanted to share his enthusiasms with someone. Three someones… even if they were rather wary guests.

If we live through this, Belkram thought silently, I'm going to get you for this, Elminster, I really am!

Sylune laughed lightly in his mind. Do you know how many folk have said that, down the years'?

No, and I care not, Belkram told her sourly. With what I'm planning to do to him, only one of us has to succeed. "… And this," Amdramnar was saying enthusiastically, waving a platter, "is a special delicacy. Netherbird brains in shadowdark wine!"

Remember, Belkram reminded her darkly, it takes only one.

Sharantyr shuddered delicately, but when she looked to Belkram, he gave her a very slight reassuring nod. He'd better not be enjoying this, she thought to herself, and gingerly took a spoonful.

It was good, and Shar told herself, for perhaps the hundredth time that night, to relax. Her ribs and shoulders ached with tension, and yet the smiling young Malaugrym that she knew they could not trust was being a charming host, plying them with food and wine, and partaking just as heavily himself as he kept up a smooth and witty flow of conversation, deftly slipping in sly digs when talking to Belkram and Itharr until he had them insulting each other with the easy grace of yore. The seat was comfortable, the room warm, and…suddenly Shar stiffened and sat up once more, slapping a hand to the comforting hard length of Mystra's sword, where she'd propped it against the inside of her right thigh. Had that been a stealthy tug on the blade? She leaned forward to look, but found no tendril or tentacle. When she looked up sharply at Amdramnar, she found herself looking at the Shadowmaster's back, as he pointed out to Itharr a particular scene etched on the wall.

Not Amdramnar, then. What could have jolted her so? Did the Castle of Shadows have… shadow rats? Shar sighed and set down her glass. Stop doing this to yourself, lass, she told herself sternly, hunching forward in her seat and laying a hand on the hilt of her blade.

And then she felt it again, a gentle probing near her ankle. She kicked back sharply and got up, whirling to see what could have touched her, and bumped Amdramnar solidly, thigh to thigh.

Their Malaugrym host looked at her, startled, and Sharantyr had to catch her breath. Gods, but he's beautiful, she thought. And then a tiny voice within her replied: Of course. He can make himself look like whatever you most want. It's how they catch their prey.

"What's wrong, Lady Sharantyr?" Amdramnar asked, real concern in his stormy gray eyes.

They hadn't been that hue before. They'd been blazing red when he fought Olorn. Enough of this! Sharantyr shook herself mentally, wondering if she was falling under some sort of spell, and said firmly, "I'm sorry. I was startled. The seat… it started… to touch my leg."

"Wise seat," Belkram told his plate, and Itharr chuckled.

The Malaugrym shook his head at them. "Are they always like this?" he asked, mild amusement in his eyes.

Sharantyr nodded serenely. "Yes," she said. "I pay them no mind. They're my swordbrothers."

The Shadowmaster seemed to freeze for a moment, then said, "You'll have to explain that to me sometime, after we deal with your seat." He leaned forward and pushed on the fabric. "All of this is shadowstuff," he explained to them, "and it responds to magic. Some shadows flee strong magic, and others try to merge with it. This seat is of the latter sort. Your blade is powerful magic indeed. May I ask where you got it?"

He straightened, holding her eyes with his own, his deep and somehow hungry gaze locked with hers. So this was it, at last, Sharantyr thought, heart suddenly racing. Belkram and Itharr watched her, their faces expressionless.

And then she thought: He has spoken truth to us since we met. Lied with truth perhaps, but cleaved to truth. Very well. I shall do the same.

"This blade was given to me by the goddess Mystra," she said. "I am here under her protection, and she watches what we do even now."

The Shadowmaster stood as if frozen, and she wanted — suddenly wanted desperately-to see him show just the smallest amount of shock. Or surprise. Anything but that smooth, almost mocking confidence.

His mouth did not fall open, but he did lick his lips and hesitate before choosing his next words, almost whispering, "And your true mission here, Lady Sharantyr?"

"Is not something I can reveal to you," Sharantyr told him gently, "if you would live." She saw his eyes flicker and added almost pleadingly, "It is not something that should bring doom upon you, if you behave well toward us."

Amdramnar bowed then, and they saw his mocking confidence return. "Then I shall strive to be the perfect host, Lady," he murmured, bending over her hand.

Smoothly she took her hand from his grasp, pretending not to see the little barbs that were showing just above the skin of his fingers, and smiled at him. "I have no complaints at all about your behavior," she told him softly.

"Uh-oh!" Belkram told the ceiling loudly. "We know what those words mean, don't we, Itharr?"

Itharr nodded. "We get to sleep in the passage tonight," he said forlornly. "I hope it's softer than the last hallway was."

Sharantyr gave them both murderous looks and tried to keep all hints of the laughter welling up within her off her face. These two Harpers! What a pair! Catching sight of the Shadowmaster's quizzical expression, she lurched a dangerous step closer to open laughter.

And then she saw the first glint of what might have been fear in Amdramnar's eyes, and her heart surged in triumph. They'd just won the respect they might need to stay alive this night.

Of course, it was also the respect that might drive him to betray them on the morrow.

Somewhere in Faerun, Kythorn 19

"Warriors of the Nose Bone obey no coward's orders!" The hobgoblin askarr almost spat the words. "We run only to hunt down those who flee from us! We do not run-ever-to flee from battle!"

"Then warriors of the Nose Bone are fools," growled the other hobgoblin, "and are better off dead fools, leaving the fields of Thar to those more worthy."

"More worthy?" The askarr followed that last snarled word by swinging his rusty-spiked morningstar with all his strength.

It whistled past its target's shoulder with a rattle of chain and crashed to the stones underfoot as its wielder fell forward, the blood-drenched point of a broadsword protruding from his back.

"Aye," its wielder said, snatching a replacement blade from the fallen askarr's scabbard. "More worthy, I said. Are yuh deaf, too?" He laughed harshly, made a rude gesture with his new sword-and with the long, dirty knife in his other hand-at the ranks of the Nose Bone, and trotted away.

And with a ragged roar, the hobgoblins of the Nose Bone turned from the cowering warriors of the Thentian caravan they'd attacked, and charged after the running hobgoblin who'd slain their leader.

The battlegar of the Splintered Sword, he was, and if they had their way, he'd soon be shattered bones on a cookfire, with all his band on side platters!

In moments, the crest of the hill was a shrieking, hacking mass of dying hobgoblins. One of them, who'd come up that hill running, just kept on going, flinging his captured Nose Bone blade away… and then his knife… and then his helm.

He seemed to dwindle as he ran, and by the time he reached the nearest tree, a trail of greaves and bracers and armor plate marked his route, and he stood almost naked, his unlovely hide dark with dirt. Then he grinned at the sky, scratched at his ribs, and became Elminster again for a moment before he shrank into a crow once more and leapt into the sky. He circled over the hilltop, cawing loudly to give any surviving hobgoblins an ill omen, and watched the Thentians hastily hitching up their beasts again and trying to move off in frantic, almost comical haste. Another caravan saved, another scrap of order salvaged from all this chaos.

Ao was going to owe him a lot, Elminster decided, before this Time of Troubles was through.

The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19

"The time has come, Milhvar, for some explanations," Ahorga said coldly, and the row of candles in the Great Hall of the Throne flickered as if in agreement.

Milhvar smiled that slow smile of his and spread his hands. "The cloak of spells was a project ordered by Dhalgrave before his unfortunate passing. Obedience to the will of the Shadowmaster High is the cornerstone of order among those of the blood of Malaug, something recognized by all of the diligent participants in this work, not merely myself. Many of us labored long and hard to weave a web of enchantments that would shield users fully against the perceptions-and the launched magic-of any of Mystra's Chosen. Only with such a shield can we hope to bring doom to Elminster."

"Yes, yes," Ahorga growled, rising against the candlelit shadows like an angry giant. "We've heard this self-serving 'I am loyal' speech before! I'm-"

"Going to hear it again," Milhvar said, his voice suddenly steely. "Come, Shadowmaster Ahorga. That is the least you can do to honor the memory of your daughter Huerbara, who sacrificed her life testing this cloak. She fell in battle nobly, striving against the might of the defenders of Silverymoon. Let her sacrifice not be in vain."

"Strutting mage," Ahorga snarled, advancing menacingly, "I've heard enough! For the loss of her life, yours is forfeit!" He flung four Malaugrym out of the way as if they were dolls and mounted the steps to where Milhvar stood. "She was worth ten of you!" he roared in anguish, in a voice that shook that vast chamber. "She was the hope for the future of us all! I'll scream her name from every battlement of this castle as I break the bodies of those who wrought this wretched cloak, and every one of them shall die!"

Milhvar nodded to the cowled figure beside him. It stayed motionless for a long moment, as a trembling Ahorga hurled kin after kin out of the way, ascending the guarded steps of the stair, until Milhvar began to fear that a trick was being played on him, and that Ahorga was going to reach him after all while cool eyes watched slaughter through that cowl.

And then the robe fell away, and Huerbara stood revealed, nude in the candlelight so that her father could see the true, twisted form of her birthing and know her for his own. "Father!" she cried, delighted at his vow of revenge and his judgment of her worth. "Father!"

"Huerbara!" the giant Shadowmaster cried in a disbelieving shout of wonder that shook most of the castle. A gigantic tentacle swept her from her feet to his breast, under his searching gaze, and then he cried exultantly, "Yes! My daughter lives!"

Milhvar stood watching with a small smile on his face until a tentacle slithered out of the affectionate embrace of father and daughter, grew a small fanged mouth, and said to him in a soft, menacing rumble, "The cruelty of your tricks impresses even me, Milhvar. Watch your back hereafter, and spend no more Malaugrym lives on this fool's game of hunting down Elminster. Every one of us who dies is someone's son or daughter. You would trade all these lives for that of one old human wizard?

We should all be glad the House of Malaug is not a fruit stall, and you the vendor! How long would the stall survive?"

Milhvar stood very still as the tentacle withdrew, staring after it thoughtfully, and said nothing. When Huerbara looked back at where her mentor had stood with her atop the steps, exulting in the sure knowledge that her father loved her, Milhvar had faded away.