Cloak of Shadows

21

The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 20

Tears of helpless rage welled up in Sharantyr's throat, and she struggled frantically against the shadow-bonds that manacled her. They shifted a little… and a little more. She could move!

Then she saw that the Malaugrym were laughing at her, enjoying her futile midair squirmings and swayings, and Olorn was sending another tentacle her way with taunting slowness.

"What part of her shall we play with now?" he asked the other Shadowmasters. The tentacle twitched as an eager chorus of suggestions rang out. Sharantyr closed her eyes. She'd never dreamed that dying could be this bad, or this slow. By the sounds of it, midair surgery could go on for days, if they kept her — parts of her — alive with their spells. Mystra and Tymora hear me, she prayed fervently, if you can't deliver me from this, at least make it quick!

And then the tentacle in her mouth quivered — no, shuddered — and she heard Olorn scream. Her eyes snapped open in sudden wild hope.

A blue blade was glowing in the air, flashing in ghostly hands, flashing through Olorn again and again, transfixing him. Blue flames licked around his body as he struggled to change shape. His tentacle abruptly receded from Shar's mouth but failed to escape the blade that was chopping him apart.

Pieces of the Malaugrym, great writhing lumps, rained down onto the floor in flames. The room was full of wriggling shapes as the Malaugrym shouted and shifted shape and hurled spells at the ghostly swordswoman — Sylune, her hair flying free behind her as she flew about the room, hacking and slashing. The flashing blue blade turned back all the spells sent against her… back upon those who'd sent them.

Olorn must have died, because Shar found herself falling abruptly to the floor. As she landed painfully on knees and elbows, she saw the two Harpers stagger out of their immobility. High overhead, the shadow globe fell apart, and the false blue blade it had held began to fade slowly out of existence.

The room was slaughterhouse chaos now, as Sylune dealt death to the Malaugrym. She rose up out of the heart of them for a moment and calmly cast a transmutation spell; the dagger in Shar's hand quivered.

She looked down at it. The good steel now shone with a glossy silver plating, and she could see Belkram's sword and Itharr's dagger were the same. With a shout, Sharantyr raced across the room and buried her tiny fang in the nearest Malaugrym.

He screamed. Sharantyr matched it with a shriek of her own, a shout of anger and disgust as she poured out all she'd held in check since seeing Old Elminster's dripping head snatched away from them in Daggerdale. She waded into shifting arms and tentacles and beaks, snapping fanged jaws and swimming thousands of eyes, hacking at rubbery flesh that smoked and shriveled where her blade touched it.

The room rocked again. She spun around to face the spell-flash.

"This has gone far enough," Milhvar said coldly from where he'd just appeared in the center of the room. At his last word, his prepared spell struck, hurling everyone back against the walls with bruising force.

Everyone except a certain flying ghostly form, who smiled a crooked smile at him and hurled a glowing blue blade through the air.

Point-first it slashed across the room, humming as it went, and Shar saw Milhvar's lips working in frantic haste.

Abruptly he was gone in a cloud of sweat, and another body was in his place. The Malaugrym mage Iyritar screamed as the sword of Mystra tore into him.

Impaled on the blade, Iyritar flailed his hands about vainly, clawing at the air in his agony.

From the wall where Iyritar had been, Milhvar stepped forth, weaving another spell as the three rangers tore free of his fading bindings and launched themselves from the walls with silver blades raised.

Sylune abruptly winked out. Shar stared up at where she'd been in astonished horror, slowing in her run. Itharr's shout of alarm dragged her eyes down to see what Milhvar's magic had wrought.

Iyritar's gore was on fire, blazing with scarlet flames as it sprayed from the dying Malaugrym's body and spread out to form a sphere of blood around the sorcerer's limp form, with the blade of Mystra lodged in it. In seconds the sphere was complete. Milhvar wiped sweat from his brow with one hand and visibly relaxed.

A smile crept slowly onto his face as he stepped forward and held up a hand to slow the charging Harpers with a magical wall. From behind its invisible safety he told them, "Without your precious blade, you're trapped here, to become our playthings or slaves-or carrion, if you prefer. Like all humans, your fates will befall you swiftly."

Behind Milhvar, a faint ghostly form faded into view, lit by the red radiance of the blood-sphere. Sylune was frowning in concentration as she thrust a hand into the red flames.

The three rangers saw her spectral body arch in agony, but it was the sphere that moaned.

"Stop trying to get at the blade, Argast," Milhvar said sharply, without turning to look. "You'll get badly hurt if you persist. The blood-sphere works against Malaugrym just as well as mortals."

The Shadowmaster elder strode toward the rangers, and the invisible wall moved with him, forcing them back. The sphere moaned again as Sylune, her face twisted in pain, thrust herself through it and held herself there. The sword burst free, trailing blood in a long arc of droplets as it soared high into the air.

The ghostly Witch of Shadowdale fell away from the blood-sphere, face pinched with pain, but managed to raise one trembling arm to point at Milhvar.

In silent obedience the blade leapt across the chamber and burst through the heart of Milhvar of the Malaugrym.

"No! No! Not… when I have… the cloak…" he sobbed, doubling over and flickering in and out of visibility. Sylune's eyes narrowed, and she whispered a soft word of power.

Blue flames rolled out of the blade from end to end, licking swiftly up the Shadowmaster's body. He faded from view, but the flames could still be seen. He faded back into visibility, bent over and staggering, trying vainly to reach something only he could see across the chamber, but moving only inches.

He faded from view once more, so that only the blue flames could be seen-flames that rose and rose hungrily, outlining an upright human form at the last as they roared up into a hungry pillar that parted the shadows and ate through the ceiling and kept on burning away shadows, like mist parting before the hot sun.

In a place of chiming shadows, a stream of white fire that gave off no heat faltered, flickered-and ended, leaving a disembodied, white-bearded head floating alone.

The head chuckled and said, "Done, then? Well done, I should say!" and faded slowly away.

"Are you whole?" Sylune asked softly, standing barefoot in the air before them.

Belkram grinned up at her. "I could ask you the same question," he replied. "I can see through you!"

She put her hands on her hips and said tartly, "But I am the lady of us two, and I asked first… so answer, sirrah!"

Shar and Itharr chuckled at that, and fell into each other's arms weak with relief. "Yes… we're whole," Shar gasped, "I think…"

"Good," Sylune said crisply. "Then have the sense for once to sit still. I've work to do yet."

She raised her hands and cast a spell they'd all seen worked before: a simple telekinesis magic. The blade thrummed happily as it took the spell, and again when the ghostly witch cast an extension spell on top of her first magic.

Then she sank down onto Belkram's shoulder, crossed her legs gracefully, and closed her eyes. Driven by her will, the sword of Mystra spun about and shot to the wall, in the direction of the Hall of Stars.

It struck the wall and hung quivering there, and the shadows around it began to melt and run, flowing away from it.

When the wall was gone, the blade leapt on to the next barrier.

"Gods!" Itharr swore suddenly. "She's burning away the castle!"

They scrambled up, and a look of annoyance crossed Sylune's ghostly face. "Don't let me fall, you great lout," she told Belkram, opening her eyes. "I may weigh nothing, but I don't appreciate being bounced on my head on floors made of shadow. To me, they seem very solid."

"It's all right if we move about, then?" the Harper asked her.

She frowned. "Yes, it's better if you do, I suppose. Follow the sword. If any Malaugrym show up to do battle, it can drink their spells and shield you."

And that is what befell. As the Hall of Stars boiled away into the black emptiness of distant shifting shadows that is Shadowhome, the three rangers saw a tower beyond it topple soundlessly down into the Well of Shadows.

"Don't destroy it all," Shar said to the ghostly form riding on Belkram's shoulder.

"I haven't the time to do so if I wanted to," Sylune told her. "I am going to ruin the Great Hall of the Throne, though, and carve up the Shadow Throne. I want the Malaugrym to know they were defeated this day, not just that some lucky humans got loose and managed to do a bit of damage while escaping."

There were a lot of walls between the Well and the Great Hall, and the adventurers soon caught up to the blue blade. It melted away one last wall and then flew down a long corridor into the Chamber of the Veils, the last antechamber before the Great Hall.

As the veils blazed up around the sword, Malaugrym melted out of invisibility all over the chamber. Ahorga, Bheloris, and several others faced them, Malaugrym the rangers knew by sight if not by name. They saw grim determination, and fear, on the shapeshifters' faces.

Sylune spread her hands an instant before forty or more spells crashed down upon them. The room rang with her high, wild laugh of exultation as the spells all flashed back against those who'd hurled them.

The chamber rocked; balconies broke off and crashed to the tiles below. All over the chamber, Malaugrym bodies collapsed, slain by their own spells, or sagged back in pain and flickered out of sight as contingencies and rings took them elsewhere.

Amid the veils, the blue blade began a sudden spiral. Sylune looked up at it and said a very unladylike word.

As they all looked up at her in amazement-and Belkram almost dropped her-the entire chamber shook, pulsed under their feet, and grated into life, joining the spiral. The shadows moved slowly at first, then faster and faster, a whistling drone around them rising slowly toward a scream.

"Sylune! What's happening?" Itharr shouted.

"The blade struck a gate and is taking us all with it in a vortex," the Witch of Shadowdale announced calmly. "Watch this closely… you'll probably never be in one again. They're often fatal."

"Thanks," Belkram told her feelingly as they began to whirl around faster and faster. "Are you going to do something about it?"

"I am doing something about it, overly muscled one," Sylune told him crisply. "I'm calling on the sword's powers to make sure the vortex takes us to Faerun and not into the fires of Dis, say, or a plane of endless fire or antimatter."

"What part of Faerun?" Belkram called back over the mounting shriek of the vortex. She turned blazing eyes on him until she saw his teasing grin, then she punched him instead.

And the world fell apart.

Daggerdale, Kythorn 20

The blue blade sizzled deep into the turf of a familiar-looking hillside with a ruined manor house at its top and a decrepit bridge across a stream at the bottom.

As they tumbled to the grass in a last slow spiral, the blade exploded in blue radiant shards that went spinning past them, soft blue shards that dissolved into the shimmering air in moments. The sword of Mystra was gone as if it had never been. As Mystra no longer was.

Three rangers and a spectral sorceress sat up and blinked. Around them, seven other figures rose too, beings who had tails and spike-studded arms and angrily curling tentacles.

"Oh, blast!" Belkram cursed, and several Malaugrym flinched, expecting a spell to explode over them at his words.

When nothing befell, they acquired cruel smiles and flexed their tentacles and barbed tails and pincer claws. Then they began the slow climb up the hillside toward the rangers in tattered leathers. The ghostly woman who'd been with them had disappeared.

"To come all this way…" Shar said, close to tears, as she saw sure death coming up the hill toward her.

"See the world! Have daring adventures! Join the Harpers!" Belkram and Itharr chorused, in the deepest, most stirring and cultured town crier voices they could manage. And they waved their weapons.

"Hey, breeding maiden!" Belkram called. "Catch!"

His sword-still silver-came flashing through the air to her. Sharantyr caught it, tears in her eyes at his gesture, as she saw him draw a boot dagger, salute her with it, and stand beside Itharr. Each them held two drawn daggers to use against seven ever-changing monsters.

"Mystra and Tymora," Shar said between her teeth, "this is not fair!"

She raised the sword wearily, resolved to die well-and white light broke over the hillside, fire that raged briefly across the Malaugrym.

The shapeshifters danced in agony. When the fire subsided, all stood in human form. There were gasps of horror from the Malaugrym, and frantic cries as they tried to shift shape and could not.

Ahorga, face streaming sweat with the effort, finally managed to produce wings. He sprang back, retreating down the hill, and cried, "I go now, cowards! Know that you've made a foe forever this day! I'll be back!"

"Don't hurry," Belkram called to him as the shape-shifter flapped his wings and climbed heavily into the sky. As Ahorga turned into the wind, to rise, Belkram thought he saw that great shaggy head bare its teeth in a cold answering grin. Then the Malaugrym mounted the winds and soared aloft.

Two more shapeshifters, panting and groaning with the effort, overcame Sylune's magic and managed the same trick. They wasted no breath on proud exit lines because by then their audience was gone.

Men and women were rolling over and over in the grass, tearing at each other in desperate fury, one side trying to snatch weapons and the other, smaller side trying to use them.

While the two Malaugrym flew frantically away from any place where that ghostly sorceress might be able to see them, Sylune used her last forcebolt to blow apart the head of a Shadowmaster who was throttling Belkram.

As the smoking, headless body toppled sideways, Belkram rolled to his feet to find Itharr and a blood-drenched but unhurt Sharantyr doing the same thing.

They stood looking soberly at each other across the corpses.

"Well," Itharr said with a sigh, "we're back."

From out of the ruins of the manor atop the hill, something small and dark came flying. Belkram snatched up a fallen dagger to make a throw, but the object banked smoothly past him and he saw that it was a pipe. A curved, familiar-looking pipe that trailed wisps of smoke and drifted to a halt in their midst.

"Back, are ye?" The voice that issued from it was even more familiar, and as testy as ever. "A fine mess ye leapt into, and stirred up further, to be sure!"

"That wouldn't be who I think it is, would it?" Belkram asked wearily as Sharantyr groaned and covered her eyes.

"Aye," Itharr replied. "It would be."