Cloak of Shadows

18

The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19

Shadows swirled around them, blue-green and laced with white, and even Belkram had to admit the spherical room was beautiful.

"I worked on this for years," Amdramnar said proudly, "after I-" Abruptly he fell silent, and his three guests looked at him curiously. Under their gazes, he continued with some embarrassment, "after I saw a similar room in a satrap's pleasure palace in Calimport. Ah, through my scrying stone, of course."

Belkram hooted. "In use, was it?"

The Shadowmaster nodded, the ghost of a smile on his face. "I've not yet found sixteen willing and tattooed ladies to share it with me-with little gold rings and bells set into their skin all over-as the satrap enjoyed, but…"

"Someday," Itharr agreed.

"You're working on it," Belkram offered.

The Malaugrym shook his head slightly and smiled in spite of himself. "I see what you mean," he said to Shar, who smiled ruefully in response.

"They're handy for soaping your back, though," she offered. Amdramnar shrugged. "A man with tentacles has no need…" he said almost sadly, and then added, "I always like to have music when I bathe, and wine. Will you join me?"

"Join you? Ah, in the water?" Itharr asked.

"No, on the ceiling!.. In the water, yes," the Shadow-master said with mock severity. Looking straight into Itharr's eyes, he added quietly, "If you're fearing I'll grow tentacles like an octopus and pull all of you under to drown, fear no more. You are my guests and, I hope, my friends."

"Of course," the Harper answered hastily. Why does this shapeshifter go on with all this? Belkram wondered. He'd forgotten that Sylune was with him, riding his thoughts, until she replied, He plays a deeper game, with patience. Some men do, you know. His derisive reply had no words to it. Sharantyr appeared to have come to a decision. "Is the water ready?" she asked. The Shadowmaster nodded, and waved a hand. "Warmer at this end, colder over there, and the floating pods hold soaps. Smell them until you find a favorite. I'll set out trays with some wines."

"Then let us begin," Sharantyr said, and held her sword up horizontally over her head. She whispered a word to it and let go-and it hummed a bright blue and hung motionless above her. Beneath its glittering edge the lady ranger bent over, put her hands to her leathers, and calmly began to disrobe.

The Shadowmaster looked at the hovering blade expressionlessly for a moment and then turned toward the door.

Itharr was out of his clothes and into the pool in a flash, coming up to rest his elbows on the edge and watch Sharantyr in frank and open admiration. She wrinkled her nose at him and flicked her fingers in a 'so?' expression she'd seen haughty Waterdhavian ladies use at feasts, but he went on staring, with a big grin on his face. She sighed, smiled, shook her head, and continued.

Belkram was also staring at her when a sudden thought struck him. What am I going to do with you? he asked Sylune.

Go to Sharantyr and bind me into her hair, came the reply, quick as a flash. Haste!

He made haste around the pool, and Sharantyr stiffened under his hands for only a moment before Sylune's mindtouch revealed all. A breath later, the deed was done.

Belkram stepped back smoothly and took her clothes as Amdramnar reappeared behind a small forest of floating bottles, but inside he felt suddenly alone-and afraid. Sylune's comforting voice was gone.

Stow it! she said in his mind then, as his fingers momentarily brushed Sharantyr's, came away with her chemise-and dropped it, distracted, as he saw what he was holding.

He made a snatch for it as it fell to the waiting waters, missed the grab, and saw a tentacle snake out over the pool to snatch it inches above immersion. The tentacle held up the garment delicately. Belkram said, "My thanks," and took the garment as if he thanked tentacles every day.

Then he realized what he'd done, and wore a curious expression as he set Sharantyr's clothes neatly aside and straightened up to work on his own.

Shar plunged into the pool with a gasp of pleasure, feeling cool liquid wash away the stickiness that always plagued her under body leathers. When she rolled over onto her back to float and listen to the softly welling music — where had a Malaugrym heard hill flutes and harps together? — she found a wineglass full of smoking blue vintage under her nose. She smiled in thanks and pure pleasure, and asked in her mind, Must we kill them all?

No, Sharantyr. You can keep one or two for… entertainment… but choose carefully, came Sylune's wry and surprising response. Choose very carefully.

Faerun, The Misty Forest, Kythorn 19

Ramtharage, Keeper of the Fastness, almost whimpered in his seething rage and had to gasp out two long, shuddering breaths to calm himself enough to recall the words he'd need. These blasphemers must die!

It had been a day and a night since the Great Evil, and these men could not be allowed to live through this second day. For every moment that passed, the hurt to divine Eldath grew greater. Their sin must be purged before nightfall, that the cleansing of the Fastness could begin.

At about this time yestermorn, the Great Evil had occurred. The night sky had been wracked by the thunders and flashing evocations of mighty spells: showers of lightning lances, great cauldrons of skyfire, and near-blinding clashes of strange radiances. Surely gods had been contesting in the heavens, one with another. Such terrifying outpourings of magic had continued through the dawn. With full light, a smoking star had plunged from the heavens and crashed down like a hurled axe into the heart of the Fastness itself!

The clear, tranquil waters had been hurled skyward, the small sacred creatures who dwelt within them rudely slain, the carefully nurtured mosses and reverently placed stones of the banks flung about like handfuls of refuse and gravel. In one awful instant, the Fastness had been riven and despoiled.

The faithful of Eldath had not even finished tending to those of their number who'd been struck senseless or dashed and broken against the rocks and nearby trees when intruders had come through the woods-local rangers Ramtharage knew by sight, men who worshiped that other Lady of the Forest.

And these Mielikki worshipers hadn't even asked his permission for their intrusion, only arrived in grim haste with nets and long hooked poles and a shamelessly clad witch in their midst. And then these desecrators had dragged the pool! Profaned the ruined Fastness anew!

When their hooks and ropes and probings failed to bring up what they sought, the witch had summoned up a dark spell that lifted the tortured waters once more, only this time all of a piece, floating upward as if held in a vast, invisible bowl.

With the polluted sacred waters hanging dark and heavy over their heads, those rangers of Mielikki had torn the sky rock out of the muddy, naked depths of the Fastness and borne it away. The witch even had the temerity, the utter flaming gall, to complain about the weight of the waters, the sacred pool of the Goddess!

"A sign of the goddess," they'd called the man-high stone as they hauled it away, gouging a trail through the sacred earth that still cut away through the trees, raw and bright, like a wound made by a slashing sword.

There was only one goddess whom rangers could speak of so: Mielikki. Our Lady of the Forest.

Ramtharage's lips twisted in fresh anger at that name. He strode to stand beside the stone's trail and look along it, deliberately letting the anger build in him again, for he was not a violent man, and fury all too soon made him feel sick. But he must be strong; this desecration of Eldath's holy place must be avenged.

He'd begun the work he must do. Three of the blasphemers hung helpless across the pool, entangled in a web-work that Ramtharage in his fury had spun no less than seven trees into, and more vines than he'd bothered to count. He stared at their fearful, sweating faces stonily as his people gathered behind him, for priests of Eldath did no violence, and yet these men must die.

When the crowd was large enough, Ramtharage began the long walk around the torn edge of the pool. Behind him, someone began the Chant of the Fastness, and it swelled as he walked on, his bare feet plunging into mud that should not be there. Uncaring, he strode over sharp stones and tangled, broken branches alike, to bring doom to the desecrators.

When he stood below them, he held out one hand for the knife and raised the other. Around him, the gathered faithful of Eldath froze into utter stillness, and it was so quiet that a thin breeze could be heard rustling the leaves in distant trees.

"You have all seen the desecration of our holy Fastness, sacred place of Eldath," Ramtharage said, lifting his voice only a little. "Sacrifices of atonement cannot begin to make up the slight to our Lady. So evil an act can only be seen as the first blow in a war between two faiths that can no longer walk Faerun as friends. The Sundering has begun. Let it now proceed!"

He raised the smooth-polished knife so that it flashed back the sun, and tried not to notice how badly his hand trembled.

"Eldath calls upon her priests to refrain from slaying and the work of war," Ramtharage continued, "and so it may be that what I do now will cost me the favor of our blessed Lady… and my powers. Yet my duty is clear!"

He looked to the three rangers in their living bonds, and folded his arms, calling on that deep well of calm within him to quell his raging anger. He had to reach far deeper to find it than had ever been the case before.

But find it he did, and control with it, enough to work the spell and begin to rise from the tortured earth, a foot from the ground… and then another… ascending slowly until he was within striking distance of those he must sacrifice.

"This is not something I undertake lightly," he told them.

"Nor us," one of the helpless men told him grimly. "Nor us!"

The priest glared at the man who'd spoken. "Do not presume to profane this moment!"

"Ramthar," the eldest of the three asked him quietly, "why are you doing this?"

"Aye," the third ranger spoke. "What does shedding blood have to do with stones falling into pools?"

"Enough!" the priest spat at them. "Be still!" His hands were shaking again as he lifted the knife on high. "Your blood must be your payment for what you did here!" He whirled in the air to look down on the crowd and thundered, "Is this not right? Is this not just?"

"Aye" many voices thundered. But in the silence that followed that impressive shout, another voice spoke from the ranks of the faithful, a voice that was not raised, yet somehow carried easily to the ears of all present.

"Ramthar, I've never heard such idiotic raving in my life! What are ye, mad? Since when do priests of Eldath spill the blood of those who embrace other forest faiths? Does Eldath know what ye're about?"

"Blasphemer!" the priest thundered. "Who are you, to use Her name so lightly?"

The man who'd challenged him was rising now, rising into the air as Ramtharage had done, passing the shoulders of the staring worshipers. He was an old man with white hair and beard, who seemed familiar.

"Elminster of Shadowdale, I am," the old man told the assembly. "Perhaps ye've heard of me."

Ramtharage gulped and turned scarlet and gabbled, "Leave this place! This is not your affair! This is a just and fitting punishment for a wrong to holy-"

"Ahh, belt up and stow it," Elminster told him crisply. "It's murder, that's what it'll be, and I'll see that the swordcaptain hangs ye from yonder tree for it, if ye're foolish enough to go through with this nonsense!"

"Be still!" the Keeper of the Fastness thundered. "You have no right to speak here! Y-"

"Ye're wrong, Ramthar," Elminster said in a voice of cold iron. "All folk of Faerun should have the right to speak as they please, anywhere. 'Tis not the duty Eldath laid upon thee to forbid speech, or anything else. Thy task is to nurture and aid, not to restrict or punish. Ye forget thy proper place."

"You dare-?" Ramtharage was purple now and struggling for words. "I-silence him!" Struck by this sudden thought, he leaned forward and told the faithful, "Silence him! Strike him down!"

Angry voices rose in agreement, and fists waved in the air, but no one near the archmage quite dared to leap up and lay a hand on his booted feet. They had all heard tales of the might of the Old Mage of Shadowdale.

"Bring him down with stones!" Ramtharage snarled, waving his fist in the air. "Strike him down with boughs! Strike for our sacred Lady's sal-"

This has gone far enough," Elminster said quietly, but his next words rolled around the Fastness with the force and volume of a thunderclap. "Let this madness be at an end!"

He waved one bony hand, and stillness came again to the clearing, the utter stillness of the magically bound. Elminster looked around at the crowd, frozen in midmovement, only their eyes and lungs free to move… and they looked helplessly back at him. Then he turned slowly, treading air, to squint at the priest who held the knife raised and ready. Elminster shook his head in disgust.

"Ye wouldn't listen to them," El told Ramtharage, "and ye wouldn't listen to me. Who would ye believe, if they told ye flat out in words even ye, Ramtharage Druin, can understand, that ye were wrong? Who would ye heed?" He touched the priest's lips with a finger. "Speak."

"The Goddess herself speaks to me," Ramtharage told him proudly, "and I will hear the counsel of no other."

"Right," Elminster said briskly. "Thankee." He stepped back and turned to face the crowd. "Ye all heard the solemn words of the Keeper of the Fastness, I trust?"

They struggled to reply, and could not. In their enforced silence, they stood and listened to the old wizard chant something long and low and full of words that echoed strangely and yet seemed to clang and slither upon the ear. And then Elminster stretched his arms wide and brought the chant to an end.

Two women appeared, one by each of his outstretched hands. One was tall and shapely yet robust, clad in leathers like the three pinioned rangers. Her garb was of muted green and brown, and her russet hair curled long and free. Her eyes were large and of the deepest brown, and when she moved, she drew the eye of every man there.

The other woman was as tall and as shapely, but thin, and her hair seemed like spun glass or flowing ice-the tresses of a ghost, that one could see through. She stood still and at peace. Her eyes were of the deepest green, and she wore green silks that did not hide what lay beneath them, yet she brought awe and stillness upon those who looked at her.

She nodded gravely to Elminster and then to the other lady, who smiled back at her. Then the lady in leathers walked on air to where Ramtharage stood frozen. When she moved, it was with the surge of the leaping buck and the casual grace of the prowling panther.

"Do you know me, Ramthar?" The voice was low, even purring. The priest trembled, sighed, and spoke. "N-no, Lady," he husked, and licked dry lips. She stretched forth a long finger and touched him.

Sweat broke out upon his brow in a flood and washed down his cheeks. "I am Mielikki, and I tell you truly, diligent priest, that you err in this. I call upon you to free the men you have thought to sacrifice."

"Uh… ah… I do not worship thee, Lady," the Keeper of the Fastness managed to say, almost gabbling in terror. Then he whimpered at the flash of her eyes, and flung up his hands as if to ward off a blow.

The Lady merely curled her lip and drew back from him, turning her head. "Datha?"

The other apparition nodded and stepped forward. "But you do worship me, Ramtharage Druin… do you not?"

"M-myLady?"

"I am Eldath," she said gently, "and you have done me much honor down the years. Will you deny me now?"

"No! Ah, no, divine Lady…"

"Then do as I bid. Free those men and apologize to them for what you intended. Then go forth in the world and tell all who care that Eldath and Mielikki are friends and sisters, now and forevermore." She looked deep into his eyes and touched him with a finger. "Will you do this?"

Ramtharage shuddered and closed his eyes for an instant, then seemed to see the knife in his hand for the first time. He flung it away in disgust and went to his knees in the air. "Oh, Lady, I will!"

Eldath smiled almost impishly. "Good. That's settled, then." She turned briskly and embraced Mielikki, and they both turned and shook hands with Elminster before Ramtharage's dumbfounded eyes.

"This was well done, mage," Eldath said, and Mielikki reached out and tousled the wizard's long but thinning white hair.

"Thanks," Elminster said dryly, bowing his head to hide his grin. He was still doing that when the air swirled like stars around him, and the sudden hubbub of movement and sound told him that the goddesses had gone, and banished all bindings in the Fastness in their going.

The Old Mage and the Keeper thumped unceremoniously to the ground in unison and looked at each other. Around them shouts and sobs and excited talk rose and swelled.

"Well," Elminster asked wearily. "Do ye believe now?"

"I… I do," Ramthar told him, and there were tears in the priest's eyes. "I came so close… to such a grievous mis-"

"But ye see that, and didn't do the thing," Elminster told him briskly. "Good. About time. Now stop pontificating, free these very patient men"-he grinned up at the three pinioned rangers, who grinned happily back-"and go do something useful." The Old Mage whirled around to point at the pool. "Ye can clean up Eldath's Water, for a start."

"The Fastness, you mean," Ramtharage corrected him, almost happily.

"Lad, 'twas Eldath's Water nigh a century ago, when I first bathed in it," Elminster told him gruffly. As the priest stiffened in dawning indignation, the Old Mage waved a cheery hand and vanished, leaving them all staring at the empty air where he'd been.

"Gods!" the youngest ranger gasped. "He summoned Our Lady-two goddesses, no less-just for us!"

"That, lad," said the grimy, sweat-soaked ranger beside him, "is why all Faerun needs Elminster of Shadowdale. He aids us, great and small, one at a time. All the gods keep him from harm, I say."

The third ranger chuckled. "By some of the things I hear he's pulled, down the years, I don't doubt they do. More'n that-I'll bet you the task keeps them right busy, some nights!"

The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19

The shadows seemed to drift more slowly at night, sliding with stately grace around the three sleeping Harpers. They lay sprawled on the floating silks and cushions Amdramnar had provided, outflung hands and feet just touching each other for reassurance. By the frowns on their faces and their shifting movements and murmurs, it seemed that such reassurance was very much needed.

Over them all hung the blue blade, humming its quiet, endless song, and the questing shadows parted around it as they came. Otherwise, all was quiet.

Until the wall not far from Itharr's feet melted away with the faintest of sighs to reveal a dark figure beyond.

It stood motionless, watching, for a long, patient time before it stepped into the chamber. Catlike, long tailed, tentacled, and with broad, soundless soft pads for feet, yet it was somehow recognizably Amdramnar.

It did not go far, and eyed the sword warily as it padded forward to stand by Itharr's head. There it halted, looking down.

And then, with infinite slowness, its shape began to shift. The tail and tentacles drew in, reabsorbed by the body, whose catlike bulk grew lighter in hue and less furry before straightening toward an upright stance. With each passing moment it grew more and more like Itharr's sprawled, hairy, comfortably naked form.

Soon all that could be deemed different in the standing, silently shifting figure were eyes that gleamed opaque in the gloom, and those broad pads of feet. And then the figure reached down.

That's just about enough, Sylune thought crisply, as she floated over Sharantyr on silent, unseen watch. Sharply, she brought down a hand that none but she could see, and her spell snapped out.

The Malaugrym recoiled as if he'd been stung, as a wall of black, seeking tentacles suddenly appeared under his ringers, spanning the entire chamber and sealing him off from Itharr and everything beyond.

He stared at the black barrier, shaking his head in disbelief as its eager tentacles probed for him, reaching out seeking tendrils until he batted one away in annoyance- and then, of course, discovered his hand was caught.

Another tentacle came cruising up like a hungry shark, and the Shadowmaster hissed a spell in sudden fear and tore free. Wild-eyed, he stumbled quickly back through the wall and restored it to solidity in panting haste.

Sylune laughed soundlessly as she floated above the three Harpers, and thought again about just how much fun it was to go adventuring.

Ancient, deep shadows shifted out of the way with uncaring slowness, drifting in this hidden place like proud old ghosts. They ignored the black-bladed, gleaming new weapons that hung watchfully among them-weapons waiting to flash to the attack and deal death to an intruder who never came.

In an old and ancient chamber that few knew existed, inside that ring of vigilant death, stood the four beings who'd set the enchanted blades to their silent task. One was a black, glistening globule as large as a house, whose only distinctive features were a pair of green-and-black bat wings large enough to have lifted a dragon. It answered to a terse greeting of, "Bheloris." The second was a swift, many-legged lizard whose bulbous head was a thing of a thousand staring eyes, bulging in as many directions. This grotesque cluster was surrounded by a ring of starfish arms ending in snapping mouths, like the maws of snapping turtles, and was greeted as "Yabrant."

The last two Malaugrym, Milhvar and Kostil, stood in their human shapes and confronted each other with soft menace in politely cultured tones.

"Though the cloak seems technically flawless," Kostil commented, "the inexperience of the test subjects and the protection surrounding the Chosen at the locales selected for forays has not only proved fatal to most of the test subjects, it has brought jeopardy on both the secrete of the cloak and on the security of the Malaugrym themselves "

"Oh?" Milhvar asked coolly. "How so?"

"What if one of these Chosen sets up a killing brew of linked-by-contingencies spells, or even memorizes a goodly array of ready combat spells, and uses those belt buckles to trace us? I don't want spell-bombs raging through the castle twice or thrice a day!"

"Yes," Yabrant rumbled. "This foolishness must end."

Milhvar spread his hands smoothly. "But we are so close to achieving our aim and striking down one of the Chosen, a victory we need right now, as a people, to hold up our heads in confidence as we prepare to choose a new Shadowmaster High!"

"Pretty speech," Bheloris said mildly, shifting smoothly toward human appearance and size. "Are you planning to seek the Shadow Throne?"

Milhvar shook his head. All of the Malaugrym in the room knew he wielded greater influence right now than any Shadowmaster High.

Or had wielded it-until now. The thousand-eyed lizard who was Yabrant pressed on. "No, Milhvar, the blood of Malaug aren't close to grasping any victory of consequence. I have watched much and said little these last few months, and I believe it's you who stand close to achieving some personal goal." His voice changed, thinning to the cold clarity of a stabbing knife. "And just what, your elders gathered here would like to know, would that goal be?"

Milhvar shook his head again. "You are mistaken. My aims lie in perfecting ever-more-powerful shadow magic, and my progress in this is a very slow thing, not something whose achievements are near or within my-or any being's-grasp."

"So you have pretended, these last ten years," Yabrant went on, his body slowly shifting in shape toward a human build and size, "as you've played the role of studious but dangerously capable mage, but I know you to be more than that. Much more than that. What, for instance, befell that priest of Mystra you captured? You slew him, didn't you? To work one of the forbidden magics, no doubt. What is it, Milhvar? Human shape or dragon shape at will? Breeding with baatezu? The ability to control the minds of our young, and to expel the minds of the old from their bodies, leaving the husks for your allies to seize and control?"

Milhvar's face changed subtly, and Yabrant pressed him. "That's it, isn't it? You're trying to take over our family by the bodysnatch method!"

"And that," Bheloris said grimly, "is punishable by death." A barbed strangling wire suddenly appeared in his hands; it flashed as he brought it down…

… around a throat that wasn't there. Milhvar had called on the most precious garment he wore-the real cloak of shadows-and silently faded away.

The three elders looked at each other.

"Right now, he's the true Shadowmaster High," Yabrant said angrily.

"He always was," Kostil replied quietly. "He always was."

The cloak spun him through shadows with swift ease, to a place he had chosen beforehand. It had gone badly, as badly as he'd anticipated… but not as badly as he'd feared and prepared for.

Milhvar stiffened as a chime sounded behind him, and whirled around. Then he smiled slowly. Hanging in the stasis field he'd set to catch intruders was an unlikely looking visitor: the floating, disembodied head of Old Elminster. The head was watching him.

"Ah, yes," he said pleasantly, "I should have expected you, once your young rabble showed up just walking around our castle. You've been watching all along, haven't you? Laughing at us, to boot. Well, that'll end right now."

He whispered a word, and white fires suddenly streamed around the head, beginning nowhere in the air before it and dying away nowhere in the air behind it. Milhvar leaned forward to grin through the silent, cool, rushing flames at the unseeing eyes.

"Yes," he said softly, knowing a certain distant wizard could hear him. "It's a spell loop. I suspect even the great Elminster won't be able to break free for quite some time. And by then," he said archly, knowing what a cliche it was, " 'twill be too late. Much too late."