Cloak of Shadows

7

Daggerdale, Kythorn 16

"This is the great Elminster?" The Shadowmasters were laughing openly now, and quite a group was gathering in the air above the last tower. Forty or more looked down into the smoldering clearing where the blackened shell of Irythkeep more or less still stood, and watched the spindly ashen figure that had once sported robes and a beard stumbling toward the trees. Far too many of the blood of Malaug lay sprawled and lifeless or barely alive about the clearing, but no matter. The Great Foe was going to die!

And when the gods tired of playing in Faerun, there'd be no one left to stand against the might of the Malaugrym… and at last Toril would be theirs. Gates winked in the air, and more kin arrived, swarming out across the air to stand above the clearing and look down.

"If we blast his body away from the knees up, will the feet keep walking?" one amused youngling asked, but another said, "No, no. Move what he seeks away just as he's about to grasp it, and keep moving it so it's always just ahead of him and he never gets it!"

"Don't toy with him!" an elder's voice roared out of empty air. Someone without magic, using the scrying portal's powers to speak through it. "Slay him now, or he'll win free somehow, and we'll have won nothing!"

The youngling who'd suggested blasting all but the Old Mage's feet turned to laugh at the voice, a sneer on his face. But then his form changed, his features holding a moment of shocked disbelief before they melted away into rubbery dun-purple nothingness and he fell away, tumbling helplessly toward the stones far below.

He was followed by another, and another. By now, the Malaugrym were looking puzzled and alarmed. "What-?" one barked intelligently.

"Mushrooms," another said, watching them smash into the ruins and shatter into pulpy looseness. "Giant mushrooms!"

"But who-?"

Bewildered, angry Shadowmaster mages stared all around, seeking a foe. More of them fell away, helpless to cast spells or fly in fungoid form, to die below, while others snarled, "Some sort of spell to enforce a single shape? Blasphemous! Who would devise such a thing?" and still others warned, "Get back! Away from this place! It must be some spell of the Foe. It can't have a large range!"

More mushrooms fell, and suddenly a Shadowmaster snarled, "You! You're doing it!" and launched a rain of spell-lances at another Malaugrym standing on air not far away. A frantically conjured spell-cloak didn't form in time, and the accused one tumbled backward, transfixed by at least three lances, to spin slowly through the air, lifeless.

Mushrooms continued to fall, and one of the other Malaugrym raised his hands and pointed at the lance hurler. "No, it's you!"

The attack was struck aside by a shielding spell, but on all sides terrified and furious shapeshifters lashed out at each other. Spells flashed and burst all across the sky in sudden boiling fury until a great voice roared out of thin air, echoing all around them. "Cease! Hear me, blood of Malaug!"

Sudden silence fell. All Malaugrym knew the voice of the Shadowmaster High. "Attend me!" the deep voice boomed on, as a few more Malaugrym melted into mushrooms and fell away.

A mighty magic boiled in the air, and the blood of Malaug were swept through the sky as leaves tumble in a gale, flung aside until they found themselves in two ragged groups of a dozen or more on either side of an open space where a lone figure floated, a young Malaugrym sorceress known to some as Dralarca.

"There is the traitor!" Dhalgrave thundered. "Destroy her! She's-"

Dralarca smiled and waved cheerily-and Dhalgrave's booming voice was gone in midword, cut off as if by a knife.

The Malaugrym stared at her, and one more of them dwindled into a mushroom and fell.

After a moment more of shocked silence, all of the mages standing on air spat out incantations at once, waving their arms like a forest of crawling spiders. The air seemed to shatter under the force of so many cleaving, blazing, bubbling, and roaring magics.

Blue-black and vivid purple flashes leapt from where they met, and an instant later all of the spells came flashing back at their casters in a gale of tortured air that flung Shadowmasters across the sky for miles.

When the stars could be seen again, and the last ruined tower of Irythkeep had stopped rocking, the false daylight Dhalgrave had conjured above the clearing remained. In it, the awed Shadowmasters could see the small figure of Dralarca standing calmly, waiting for them. She waved a casual hand, and the nearest Shadowmaster became a mushroom.

As the fungus fell to earth, Eldargh turned to Huerbara, whose teeth were chattering in fear as she clutched Taernil, and rumbled calmly, "Is your magic good enough to hurl antimagic that far?"

She nodded once, white-faced and mute. The old giant turned to the Shadowmaster standing on his other side. "Yabrant?"

"Yes. Count us in together. And Taernil, if you have any sort of attacking spell, hurl it her way first, to mask us. Useless, mind. I'm sure it'll be coming back at us soon."

Eldargh counted them in. Three antimagic fields rolled out in the wake of a stinging cloud of red fire-mites, as another two mushrooms fell away from on high.

Other Shadowmasters had launched attacks, too. A scarlet flash, fading to pink, cut the sky before their own spells hit home, and for a moment there was a confusion of whirling bones in the air around Dralarca as someone's spell went wild. Yabrant paled at the sight. "Magic's starting to twist, here. This may be our only chance."

Then an explosion rocked them as old Halar was blown apart by his own returning spell, not far away. One of his hands tumbled past, trailing flames, and Huerbara buried her face in Taernil's chest with a little scream, shuddering uncontrollably.

A multitude of small flashes lit the air near Dralarca, and Taernil's cloud came drifting back at them, fading away before it reached the spot where they stood. At that moment a gasp of fear and hatred from many throats heralded their work. The false seeming of Dralarca was gone, and in its place stood a wild-eyed woman whose silver hair danced around her like silver flames. She wore black robes that were more tatters than garments, and she laughed, hand on hip, and bowed to Eldargh. "Well spun, sir!"

"The Simbul! It's the Queen of Aglarond!" someone shouted, and the woman smiled and nodded.

Then she threw her arms up, her eyes flashed, and two rings of crimson light burst from her palms to run slowly down her arms and fade away around her torso. Something was growing there, a web of pulsing red beams of light encircling her-no, encaging her!

"What's that?" Yabrant whispered slowly. "Has someone caged her?"

"No," said Eldargh in a deep, despairing voice. "Oh, no."

From that web of light they saw a beam stab out, and then another. One leapt across the sky and struck Eldargh before Yabrant or Taernil could move or speak, and a cage of red beams sprang into being around the old Shadowmaster.

Yabrant frowned and quickly wove a shearing force-blade, but when he swept it across the humming, thickening cage, there was a flash and he was hurled back, minus his sword arm.

After a moment, looking both shaken and thoughtful, he grew himself a new arm. By then the cage had begun to shrink and darken.

"Farewell, old friend," he heard Eldargh rumble, and the giant's head turned toward him.

"You will be remembered," Yabrant hissed quickly, straining to see and meet Eldargh's eyes as the giant darkened and shrank within the dimming cage. There were other cages now, he knew, but this web of spells held one of the few kin he cared about, and he could do nothing to save Eldargh.

The cage was shrinking swiftly now, as Huerbara whimpered, draining Eldargh's life essence as it dwindled. It shrank to a thumb-sized globe of light and then winked out, leaving of Eldargh only a little drifting dust.

Yabrant turned to Taernil. "We must leave this place. Help me spin a gate!"

As they worked magic in feverish haste, they heard the Simbul's merry laugh followed by the call, "A little fire, Malaugrym?"

They tried to ignore the roar and crackle of flame- adorned with screams-that followed, though Taernil stammered an incantation that almost ruined their whole effort.

And then a green flame seemed to grow in the air before them, rising swiftly into a spindle. Taernil almost leapt for it before it was fully formed. Yabrant held him back with a hastily grown and ungentle tentacle, and snarled, "Take Huerbara through before you!"

Taernil snarled back at him in wordless fear, eyes wide and staring, but did as he had been ordered. Yabrant looked back once as he followed, and saw a handful of other gates opening in the sky. One of them suddenly blossomed into an explosion that sent Shadowmaster bodies tumbling through the air as the Simbul laughed wildly.

Yabrant shivered and let the gate take him. It was not a time to tarry, or he'd be just one more of the kin who would die this day-and just how many was that by now? — before that human witch was finished.

"Ye gods!" Thaern gasped to his left, face paling, but Randal Morn looked quickly to his right, alerted by an unfamiliar sound. After a moment, he realized it was Brammur, on his knees and praying to all the gods he could name.

He started to chuckle and then decided that prayer might not be such a bad idea. Before he could go to his knees, however, the world exploded in thundering voices and rolling balls of fire, and he froze with the dozen men around him and stared up into the sky, at the many dancing, spell-hurling figures that stood high above the ground in a drift of daylight that should not be there.

It was a long while later when Brammur got to his feet, slapped his dazed lord's arm, and asked matter-of-factly, "Use caution, did you say, m'lord?"

The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 16

"Soulcages," Bheloris said slowly. "I haven't seen one of those- "

"Since Albarat died," the rolling voice of Dhalgrave put in from above, startling them all. Shadows shuddered and curled away into the corners of the Great Hall as they all stared at the scrying portal.

"I dare not reopen the portal," the Shadowmaster High went on, his voice raising echoes. "The witch-queen has spun an antimagic spell that someone foolishly cast at her across it. To strike at her or open a gate now would be to unleash that damaging magic here." His voice gained strength, so his next words would carry down distant passages of the Castle of Shadows. "We have a new foe, blood of Malaug!"

"I told you 'twould be a disaster," one old Shadow-master said to another, who shook his head and replied, "And I believed you. I expected deaths, aye, but not this!"

"This is worse than Shimmerglade," still another muttered.

Neleyd leaned close to Bheloris. "Shimmerglade?"

"A place in northern Faerun-in Impiltur or Damara or somewhere around there-where six of our strongest elders trapped Elminster, and were all slain in spell-battle." He sighed. "Once again, it seems that a trap intended to be the death of the Foe became a trap for us. Mushrooms! No mouth or limbs to work magic, no way to fly… and death before anything can be done. Worse than that, she has some spell that overmatches our shapechanging, to trap us in a form of her choosing."

"Perhaps now some of these flamebrains'll think twice about sneering at human mages and strolling out to attack Elminster on any idle afternoon," said a tired voice from the back of the hall.

As his words ended, a green flame flickered in the shadows, pulsed once, and widened into a gate. Several Shadowmasters took a step toward it, prepared for the worst, but out of the pulsing portal stumbled a Malaugrym who trailed smoke, and several others panting on his heels. Another gate was opening now, and another. An alert elder banished the first one with a hissed spell that sent shadows swirling around it in a swift spiral. Disheveled survivors poured into the hall, stalking grimly past an elder who smirked as he drawled, "Hail, conquering heroes of Malaug!"

Gates glimmered out of existence here and there, and the cursing Malaugrym who had come through them sought the comforts of their own chambers. As they hurried past, Kostil stared at the scrying portal and shook his head. "What did I say?" he offered. "Always we ignore the strengths and trickery of the folk of Faerun."

"No more," Bheloris promised softly, staring into the distance. "No longer."

Neleyd shivered at the elder's tone, but infinitely worse was the look in Yabrant's eyes as one of the last gates disgorged a weeping Huerbara, a silent Taernil, and Yabrant, who stopped by Bheloris and Kostil and said shortly, "Eldargh didn't make it."

Then he strode away into the shadows, leaving them with Huerbara's tears.

Daggerdale, Kythorn 16

The light in the sky above faded to a soft purple glow, and the Queen of Aglarond rode it down to step lightly onto the smoldering turf in the heart of Irythkeep. She wrapped arms around the blackened form of Elminster with an exultant laugh. "Well met," she said happily, bestowing an impulsive kiss on lips that were no longer fringed by hair.

My thanks, Sister. Sylune's mindtouch lasted for only a moment before the Simbul stepped back, surveyed the Old Mage critically, and frowned as she raised a hand and gestured deftly.

White hair appeared on the scorched wizard's chin and upper lip, and raced across the skin, growing with almost comical speed, until the Queen of Aglarond judged its length and appearance right. Then she did the same for the old wizard's head. "There! Yourself again!" she said with a wink.

"The others need your spells rather more than I do," Elminster said dryly, waving a hand around the clearing. "And that Malaugrym"-he pointed-"may still live."

The Simbul nodded, mirth suddenly gone, and hastened to where Itharr lay sprawled amid ichor and many ribbons of slashed flesh. Belkram lay not far from him. The queen went to her knees amid the blood first. As the glow of her synostodweomer flared around the motionless Harper, she turned her head to watch Sharantyr rise stiffly among the trees, and said in amusement, "I notice you healed the pretty lady first."

Elminster's head shook in denial. "Nay. I never reached her. Her ring did the work."

"No matter. This one will be fine. He has a handsome face, I'll grant." She pinched Itharr's cheek, watched his eyes flutter open, and rose with a merry laugh to go to Belkram.

It took longer this time, and her laughter was gone when she came back to Elminster. "Much in the way of repairs was needed yonder," she said, "but he'll live-this time. He's been raised many times, that one." She tapped her lips thoughtfully. "Perhaps he's lost all fear of death."

"He's not the only one," Sylune said dryly, through the Old Mage's lips. The Simbul turned to stare at her and then gave her a sudden smile. "My apologies. I sometimes forget. You are very good at this, you know."

Elminster gave her a sardonic little bow. She dimpled and replied with a certain unqueenly gesture, and the Old Mage waved his resignation from the lists and sat down on a stone.

"The Malaugrym now have a new Great Foe, I daresay," he observed gruffly. "Ye'd best watch thy backside."

She smirked. "As attentively as you do?"

Elminster rolled his eyes and sighed. Her merry laughter was drowned out by a sudden thunder of hooves. He had half-risen in alarm before four lathered and familiar horses came into view around a blackened wall.

"Your mounts. Some people are so careless with their horses," the Simbul said with a flourish. El frowned at her.

"It's not as if we weren't rather busy…"

She waved his unspoken thanks away, looked around at the dazed lady Knight and the two Harpers coming slowly across the trampled turf toward the Old Mage, and said, "That was fun. Yet the Realms around await me, and there's much to be done, what with avatars and lesser idiots running around stirring up trouble. I must go." She turned eastward, took a step, and then turned back and pointed up at the fast-fading purple glow. "You need not fear attack from above for a time. Magic's all too apt to go wild up there, now."

Then she was gone, without sound or drifting spell-smoke to show she'd been there. Elminster stared absently at where she'd been for a moment, scratched one of his bony arms, and thought on what paltry magic he had left. The wisest thing to do would be to return to Shadowdale, to stock up, if that wouldn't be going into a worse trap than Irythkeep had turned out to be.

"What a battle," Shar said in a voice that was not entirely steady.

Elminster gave her a wry smile. "Ye missed the best part, lass," he said gruffly. "It was raining mushrooms."

"Mushrooms?" The chorus was bewildered, as Belkram and Itharr joined them, still peering critically at their weapons and looking around in apparent disbelief.

"Malaugrym who'd unwillingly taken the shapes of mushrooms," Elminster explained. "They burst quite thoroughly when they land on a rock. Or a tree."

Belkram frowned. "Did we… die?"

"Nay, nearly, but the Queen of Aglarond thought ye had a pretty face… or no, 'twas him she considered handsome"-Itharr managed to raise an eyebrow and sketch a courtly bow at the same time-"and healed ye. Sorry to disappoint thy sense of glorious tragedy."

"So what do we do now?" Sharantyr asked softly, looking around at the smoking ruins and at their still-restless horses. "You can't have much magic left."

"I was wondering if it would be best to return to the dale, or go looking for a Harper cache. There's one not too far from here."

"What?" Belkram asked innocently. "When we're having so much fun?"

His companions answered this observation with various rude sounds.

"We can't count on any more unexpected rescues, from the Simbul or anyone else," Elminster warned. "Certain Harpers have been told to watch out for us and aid us if need be, but most of 'em hereabouts are fast swords and little more."

"We need a little more," Sharantyr agreed softly, and shivered suddenly. "I did not think any of us would live to see these stars again," she added as they looked at her.

"You need not!" a voice spat, and from around the nearest tumbled wall came a woman in dark robes, running hard, her face contorted in hatred. A fey purple glow, tinged with black, blazed out of her furious eyes, and she held high a black dagger.

"For the glory of Bane-die, Cursed One!"

She flung the dagger as she came, and Shar couldn't draw her sword in time to strike it aside. It wobbled-a bad throw-but struck Elminster's cheek hilt first before spinning away into the night.

Behind another nearby wall, a tall black stone that stood by itself bent forward a little to peer at the fray with eyes that grew very bright. Then the stone hissed a soft word, and smiled a crooked smile.

As the dagger left it, Elminster's cheek fell slack, looking suddenly lifeless. The glow around the pipe in his breast pocket faded, and the three rangers in their burnt leathers, blades drawn to face the running woman, looked back in sudden alarm.

"A disjunction!" Belkram snarled, who had seen such things before.

"Gods spit on all!" Itharr added angrily, and strode forward to meet their attacker. Elminster backed away from them, looking horrified.

Behind the wall, the stone smiled wolfishly and grew an arm that gestured almost lazily behind him. "Perast aum izeebuldree," he said conversationally, and Brammur, Randal Morn, Thaern, and all the men with them froze together, blades raised, in poses of cautious stealth.

"Thank you," the stone told them courteously as it melted into the shape of a man whose left arm ended in a sword blade instead of a hand. He peered at the motionless men for a moment to be sure he'd got them all, nodded in satisfaction, and dug his right hand into a pouch at his belt.

From the other side of the wall came the ring of steel and a scream of rage. "Some sort of magic shields this place!" a man's voice shouted.

"Aye," the man who had been a stone agreed pleasantly. "So it does." Bringing forth a handful of pebbles, he cast them in a wide fan onto the ground and muttered something else.

With terrifying speed, the stones began to grow. The dark forms rising from them had burly arms, tusked mouths, and were… hobgoblins!

"Come," he said simply, and jogged around the corner of the wall. Howling, the hobgoblins poured after him, jerking out brutal weapons and jostling each other to be first at the kill.

Spheres of vividly glowing air-of all colors, from a rather glorious ruby red to a putrid green-were drifting around them now, expanding from Elminster's person and various minor enchantments worn or carried by his three companions. The disjunction was working all too well.

The woman who'd hurled the dagger struck a pose just beyond the Harpers' blades and laughed in triumph. "When Elminster lies slain," she cried, eyes shining, "remember that it was I, Arashta Tharbrow, who struck his magic from him-for the greater glory of Bane, whose foremost servant I am!"

"Oh?" Itharr asked curtly, as his blade cut a line of shrieking sparks from the invisible shield protecting the sorceress. "He's reduced to hiring madwomen now, is he?"

She howled at him like a dog in fury. "Blasphemy!" she spat when she found control enough to form words. Shaking in anger, she threw up her hands to smite the hard-faced ranger with magic-and then her face changed, one of her hands flew to her mouth, and she went pale.

Her face contorted in frantic fear, and her hands flashed in the gestures Belkram knew would unleash a lightning bolt. Snarling against the pain he expected to come, he kept hacking at the unseen barrier that protected her, and suddenly realized it was giving way. Instead of ringing off something rock hard and unyielding, his blade was going a little way into something that rushed past it like floodwater, resisting but allowing the steel's passage.

And then he realized no lightning had come to snatch breath and life away from him.

"Look!" Itharr said. "Her eyes!"

All three of them peered past their hacking blades. The weird purple glow had faded away, and the green eyes behind it looked very young and very frightened as Sharantyr's blade broke through the fading shield at last and slid into the woman's breast with silken ease and speed.

The sorceress went down, blood bubbling from her mouth in a last, soundless scream, her mouth moving to shape words that would never be heard. The disjunction swept away the last of her shield as it had robbed her of spells, and with shield and spells went a cloaking wall of shadows, revealing to the rangers a snarling, hooting group of hobgoblins racing toward them across a few paces of open grass.

" 'Ware!" Belkram shouted unnecessarily, and then battle was joined, the skirling clangor of steel on steel drowning out all coherent speech. The hobgoblins were reckless, snarling hackers of the sort skilled warriors disparagingly called "meat-choppers," but they were big and coming in fast, and there were a lot of them. If one Harper caught his blade against a hostile weapon, the slashing steel of the next foe could well be into his ribs before he could recover. Wherefore the three ducked, dodged, and dove as they never had before, swords and daggers together weaving a deadly wall of darting death that took down their hulking attackers with a stab in the eye here and a thrust through the ear or throat there, never slowing to parry and hack at chests or flanks.

Shar got a single glimpse of a tall black figure running easily at the fore when the charge began. Then the being thinned suddenly, like a wisp of smoke, and the hobgoblins thundered past and crashed into the three rangers without their dark companion.

That seemed like an eternity ago now, as she twisted and strained and set her teeth against the numbing force of the hacking blows raining down on her deflecting blade. Shar's lungs were burning with the effort of meeting those strikes, and sweat was running down her wrists and dripping from the end of her nose as she danced, leapt frantically out of reach of a roundhouse slash-which sank deep into the side of another hobgoblin, she noted with glee-and found herself spinning through the heart of the gathered hobgoblins.

A startled face loomed up at her, and she slashed just beneath it, opening a throat with her whistling steel as she launched herself in the other direction, hoping to stay ahead of any direct pursuit. Rounding to the left, she found herself behind an unwitting foe and hamstrung him with a ruthless slash along the backs of his knees. With a grunt of surprise, the next hobgoblin turned his head from trying to gut Belkram, and Shar drove her dagger hilt deep into one staring eye.

It lodged against the bone as she overbalanced, and she brought her sword up to protect her back as she jerked her arm back and forth wildly to haul her fang free.

It came away at last, but by then hobgoblins were swinging at her from three sides. Shar flung herself down flat on her back, and as their blades crashed into each other overhead, kicked out hard against a massive hobgoblin foot and got the momentum she needed to roll away.

She rolled right into Belkram, who leapt high to allow her passage under him. Sharantyr came to her feet in time to see a snarling Itharr take a slash along his ribs as he leaned to drive his sword into the tusked mouth of his assailant. The sword continued upward, pushing the hobgoblin's helm off on the top of its head. Itharr let go of the blade at once and tore the hobgoblin's own black-bladed scimitar from its failing fingers, bringing it back immediately in a swing that took two fingers off the sword hand of the next hobgoblin.

As that one screamed, it reeled back into another, who slipped and got Belkram's blade in its throat. Shar fenced with another, gritting her teeth, until Belkram reached out and put his dagger into its armpit.

Then it was over, and they still stood, three panting, sweating, bleeding humans among a confusion of groaning, writhing, or silently sprawled goblinkin. They sought each other, wiping sweat from their eyes, and then stiffened at a cruel laugh from beyond the battle.

They whirled as one, in time to see Elminster's body topple in a fountain of dark blood as a black blade scythed through his neck. The blade was held by-no, it seemed to actually be one arm of a tall black figure. The Old Mage's eyes stared accusingly at them as his head dangled, long white hair firmly in the dark man's grip.

"Futile fools!" the figure sneered, and backed away from them into a whirling green light that was growing behind it.

Heartsick, Shar took three running steps and hurled her blade. But as the weapon flashed end over end, the laughing figure faded away through the gate and made the portal wink out, so her steel bounced on dark turf in the night.

She felt the tears beginning as she turned her head and saw Belkram and Itharr looking down at the headless body. Then they looked up at each other. Belkram licked dry and trembling lips twice before he managed to ask, "What do we do now?"