Shadowkeep

by Alan Dean Foster

  Hargrod saw his distress and added, “I too am ssaddened.”

  Maryld held off joining in the terse chorus of despair. She was thinking. “There may yet be a way. May yet, may yet.”

  “What are you talking about, female?” said Hargrod. “He iss dead. One doessn’t have to be a sscholar to ssee that.”

  “I know he’s dead,” she admitted, “but so was Gorwyther. Yet he talked to us and helped us.”

  “Gorwyther was a great wizard.” Hargrod glanced down at his dead friend. “Sranul wass only a roo.”

  Her gaze shifted from Zhis’ta to man. “Both of you forget where we are. This is Shadowkeep, the fortress of wonders. Both of its masters, good and evil, have fled from here, but the wonders remain.”

  Praetor stared at her. “What are you getting at, Maryld?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe foolishness. But we owe it to Sranul and to ourselves to find out. Bring him.” She turned and started across the floor. Man and Zhis’ta exchanged a glance. Then the reptile shrugged and easily hoisted the body onto his shoulders. Together they followed the thaladar across the pile of demon corpses.

  A familiar object awaited them in a distant corner. To anyone else it would have looked like a broken section of wall, but Praetor recognized the central depression and soon located the silver wheel.

  “Gorwyther told me how to make use of these,” she explained. “If only we’d known when we’d first entered Shadowkeep.”

  “What good doess it do Ssranul?” Hargrod asked her.

  “Of itself, nothing. Do not condemn my efforts until I have failed, good Zhis’ta. Come and join hands around the pillar, as we did before.”

  They did as she requested, watched as she placed another fragment of broken crystal in the central hollow and spun the wheel. Once more Praetor felt himself spinning helplessly, swaying as though the ground beneath him had given way. Once more the firm grasp of his friend’s hands assured him he wasn’t being whirled off into oblivion.

  The tower was gone. They were in a torchlit corridor. Praetor staggered a moment, then recognized their surroundings. “We’ve been here before.”

  “I remember it alsso.” Hargrod readjusted the weight on his shoulders.

  They had returned to the hall of silver bas-reliefs. Saintly faces and flowers shone all around them.

  “What do we here?” Hargrod asked her.

  “Remember that I told you these were representations of Sildra, patroness of the Brothers of Aid. The Brothers are a very ancient and powerful order, not completely understood.” She started down the corridor. “We must find a certain one.”

  They followed, wondering what the thaladar had in mind, until she halted before a particularly fine sculpture. It was almost a full figure instead of the more common portrait.

  “Now we must make a proper offering. Something that would appeal to Sildra herself.” She searched the floor until she found a silver flower that had been callously jarred loose from its location, perhaps by passing trolls. This she placed in the cupped hands of the patroness.

  “Now what?” Praetor wondered why he was whispering.

  “Now—we will see,” she told him, taking a step back.

  As they stared, the cupped hands of the statue began to glow. It was not a cold, distant light this time. They could feel the gentle warmth emanating from the bright metal.

  The voice that sounded in their minds was equally warming. “You have done well. Your offering pleases me. May I in turn please you?”

  The pleasant soothing sensation faded from Praetor’s thoughts just as the silver lost its glow. He blinked, turned to Maryld.

  “That’s it? That’s all?”

  “I don’t know.” She was chewing her lower lip. “Maybe the books were wrong. Perhaps I didn’t study the right passages.” She slumped. “It was worth trying, anyway.”

  “What was worth trying?” said a new voice. “Hey, what’s going on here? Put me down, you great scaly assassin!”

  A startled Hargrod dropped Sranul. The roo struck the floor hard, bounced once, and rolled into a standing position. He rubbed his forehead. “What’s the big idea?” He looked around. “This isn’t the tower where we were fighting. What happened, anyway? Did I miss something?”

  Praetor tried not to laugh. It wasn’t hard. He was too tired. “Not much. Just the fight to the death with Dal’brad himself. We won, by the way.”

  “Dal’brad? You mean the oversized human-looking thing with the funny eyes and the badly tailored suit?”

  “No, that was just the demon prince. He was supposed to kill us. We were never supposed to see Dal’brad himself.”

  “Do you remember the statue behind the throne?” Maryld asked him. “That was the real Dal’brad. That was what we had to deal with after you were killed.”

  Sranul eyed her uncertainly. “You had to fight that stone mountain?” She nodded. “And I missed it? I missed it because…” he hesitated, “I was killed? I was—dead?”

  “Very dead, my friend.” Hargrod gave him a hearty clap on the back. “Run through by the demon prince’ss ssword. You hipped when you sshould have hopped.”

  “Now that you mention it…” Sranul rubbed his chest and gazed down at himself. “I do have this uncomfortable memory. It was like fighting an evil cloud.”

  Maryld nodded again. “Hargrod paralyzed reality with the staff, and Praetor slew him. Then he finished Dal’brad himself with the demon gem which Gorwyther had given to him.”

  “The gem,” Sranul murmured, “I remember that. But nothing else. And if I was dead…”

  She indicated the silent statue before them. “Sildra brought you back. The evil of Shadowkeep has gone, but its wonders remain. Though we should still beware of trolls and Brollachians and their ilk. They still haunt these halls.”

  “For some reason they don’t worry me much anymore.” Praetor was grinning at her. He looked both ways, then nodded to his left. “If I remember right, this will be the way out.”

  Maryld put a hand on his arm. “Wait. Isn’t there something you’re forgetting, my good Praetor?”

  “Forgetting?” He frowned at her. “What could I be forgetting? We’ve done what we came to do. The Spinner should be pleased, wherever he is. I don’t think mere’s anything left undone.”

  “Just one thing, perhaps.”

  She led them into a room and over to the by-now familiar pillar with its tiny wheel. For the third time she placed a bit of carefully selected crystal in its center. Disorientation, spinning, and then he was reminded of what they’d left unfinished.

  Rysancy, he thought. Rysancy, you’re going to be a queen. I’m going to buy you a kingdom. Hargrod will have his bay and Sranul a lifetime of fun. Maryld will build her school for children of all the races.

  The transport pillar had returned them to another familiar part of Shadowkeep, another room where they’d been before. In the flush of victory over Dal’brad he’d forgotten all about it. Now they could enjoy it and no one could stop them.

  How had he managed to forget the treasure, the wealth of the eons? It seemed impossible for anyone to do so, but that was the kind of person Praetor Fime was.

  He’d had his mind set on more important things.

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