Then they were slowing to round the turn onto the Moonsea Ride under the watchful bulk of the ancient Standing Stone. There was a brief confusion as mounted Zhentilar armsmen looked back expecting orders to halt, heard nothing, and rather tentatively continued, heading west toward Mistledale.
The rings on the spellmaster’s hands winked with sudden radiance, and the air all around was filled with humming arrows. Shafts leapt from the trees on their left, hissing into startled men and their mounts alike, easily piercing black Zhentilar armor.
“We’re under attack!” someone bellowed.
“Dismount! Into the trees there—charge!” Amglar shouted, pointing with his sword. “In at them!”
His orders made Spellmaster Thuldoum turn to him, and Amglar saw that the wizard was staring down at his rings in astonishment. As they looked at each other, the rings flashed again—and another volley of arrows came hissing out of the trees on the other side of the road.
Amglar’s eyes narrowed as he ducked low on his horse’s neck, but it was too late to stop the rush of furious armsmen into the trees, charging in as he’d ordered. Horses screamed and reared, and men toppled from saddles everywhere in the tangled intersection. The swordlord fought to stay in his saddle.
“Back, mages!” he bellowed, waving with his sword toward the Standing Stone itself. “Back!”
By some favor of the gods, neither Zhentarim had been hit; they spurred their horses after him, ruthlessly riding down armsmen in their haste. “Swordcaptains, to me!” Amglar roared as he reached the trees to the east, his eyes on the woods to the north. If his hunch was right, there’d be no more arrows from there—nor any other attack.
“Is this your doing, mage?” he snarled when a frightened-looking spellmaster rode up to him.
“No!” Thuldoum barked. “If these arrows are spell-borne, it’s not a magic I know! I—”
His rings flashed once more. He was staring down at them in horror when the trees on the eastern side of the road erupted in clothyard shafts! An arrow took Amglar through the shoulder, and another three thudded into his charger. Yelling in pain and fury, he flung himself free as it bucked and went down, crashing over backward atop an unfortunate armsman.
He hit the road hard and bounced in the dust, winded. Myarvuk slid from his saddle, half a dozen shafts standing out from his body and a glazed, lifeless stare in his eyes. Gods spit on it—the truly biddable mage down already!
As Amglar fought for his breath, arrows flared into flames and then nothingness around the spellmaster, who must have some sort of magical shield against them—of course, Amglar thought sourly. But the volley tore into the officers turning in answer to his call. The intersection was full of rolling, maddened horses and sprawled, trampled bodies … in just a few breaths half an army had been reduced to bloody chaos.
“Halt!” Amglar roared, struggling to his feet, arm and shoulder burning. He ran into the path of the second ‘lance,’ just as they came thundering up the road to see what had occurred. “Halt!”
He staggered hastily back—a thousand cantering horses can’t stop immediately—tripped on a body, and with a roar of pain fetched up against a tree.
“Sir?” A swordcaptain asked, beside him. Through red mists of pain, Amglar set his teeth and looked up. Blood was coursing down his arm, bright red on the black armor; he clutched at his arm and snarled, “Get a horn and call the rally and retreat to those I sent into the woods. They’ll not find a foe unless they run on all the way to the dale! Then relay the order to halt! On your way, send three or four more captains to me!”
The man nodded and hurried away, wasting no time on salutes or words. Amglar glared after him. Good. At least one Zhentilar knew how to be an officer; he’d have to remember that man’s face.
Feeling the spellmaster’s eyes on him but paying no attention, Amglar strode to meet the officers who were hurrying toward him. “Clear this place,” he ordered. “Drag everything up the north road, and set torches; we’ll strip the bodies later. Slay any horse that can’t stand on four good legs. Let no man touch the fallen mage—that task is for the spellmaster alone.” Without turning his head, he snapped, “Thuldoum! Be about it.”
The Zhentarim said nothing, but Amglar heard the creaking of leather as the wizard dismounted, and a snort of irritation from the man’s horse as someone else took the reins.
“I want you to know,” the spellmaster said in a low, fast voice, “that I had no part in this attack. It was not my doing—and nothing I carry has any power to hurl arrows anywhere!”
“I know, mage,” Amglar said shortly. “It was some sort of arrow spell—three spells, belike—set to go off when something enchanted passed by: your rings. They’re probably rolling around laughing in Mistledale right now. See to your dead comrade.”
He walked away without looking at the Zhentarim and headed to the front of the lance that had halted on the road. He would tell them to dismount and set a watch in the trees in case there were archers or rangers lurking out there.
Dead men lay heaped underfoot. Someone was groaning weakly under a pile of bodies off to the right. Amglar scowled. A swordlord’s lot is not a happy one.
* * * * *
Swords Creek, Mistledale, Flamerule 16
“Who goes?” The challenge came out of the night. The voice sounded young and eager, and its owner was probably holding a loaded crossbow. Jhessail sighed and spoke quickly before Illistyl or Merith could say anything smart. “Owls are blue tonight,” she told the darkness calmly. “Kuthe’s patrol, with three Knights of Myth Drannor. I am Jhessail of Shadowdale.”
“Pass, Lady,” the voice said, sounding suddenly respectful, even wistful.
An admirer, then, probably a Harper. Merith laid a hand on his lady’s thigh and squeezed. Leaning close, the elf whispered, “Men who lust after you are everywhere in the Realms, it seems. Truly I am fortunate to have arrived in your arms first, and—”
“Oh, do belt up, dear,” Jhessail said, grinning.
“Aye,” Illistyl’s sharp tones came out of the close darkness on Jhessail’s other side. “And forthwith, before I spew!”
“If ye can stand the company of the two blades she’s picked up, who both fancy themselves clever—Belkram and Itharr of the Harpers—Sharantyr’s left room and a warm fire for ye,” the gruff tones of Rathan came to them out of the night.
“Kind of her,” Jhessail said, “but we’re going right back out after we feed and hobble our horses. We’re going to be a little surprise in the Zhentarim backside on the morrow!”
“Ye’ll probably lift a few eyebrows hereabouts, too, if ye try charging on hobbled horses!” Rathan chuckled.
“We’re leaving the horses here, you dolt,” Jhessail told him affectionately. “Where’s Torm?”
“He felt restless, and wanted to go ‘exploring,’ as he put it,” the burly priest replied. “So I gave him a little too much wine and smote him one. He’ll wake before dawn, in just the right mood for a good battle.”
“I’m glad it’s you who shares a tent with him,” Illistyl said feelingly.
“I’ll be only too happy to surrender my sleeping furs to thee, gentle maid,” Rathan said eagerly, “and I’m sure Torm won’t object in the slightest!”
“Ah, ha!” Illistyl agreed flatly. “I doubt he’d mind, indeed.” She rode on, turning to add, “I’ll save my furious defenses for the fray tomorrow.”
“I rather think we all will, lass,” the elderly voice of a dale farmer came gruffly out of the nearby darkness.
“Or we’ll be dead before another night comes down on the Realms.”
* * * * *
The Standing Stone, the Dales, Flamerule 16
“Galath’s Roost is the only logical place to camp for the night—that’s the problem,” Swordlord Amglar said to the silent ring of officers around the map.
“What problem?” Spellmaster Thuldoum said sharply. For some hours now, he’d been trying to overcome his own fright and whisper
s of incompetence or disloyalty by playing the sharp-tongued aggressor. Everyone in earshot was tired of it.
“I mean, wizard,” Amglar explained in wearily patient tones that brought secret smiles to the lips of a few swordcaptains, “that it’s the place our foes expect us. Just as they knew we’d pass by this spot.”
He waved at the road behind them and the dark and silent bulk of the Standing Stone beyond. Three hundred armsmen and six score war horses lay dead along the north road, heaped cottage-high under the stars … and already the wolves were howling, nearer each time. Amglar tried not to think of the fallen. The dead were beyond his orders; it was the living he had to worry about.
“So?” the Zhentarim said coolly. “They hardly have enough blades to hold a ruin against us, even in the dark. And my spells can make it bright as day, so our archers can keep to the night and strike down well-lit targets as they please.”
“I’m thinking there’ll be traps there, not defenders,” Amglar said heavily. “I don’t suppose you can see into the place from here, can you? Or better: let our veteran swordcaptains look at things. They’ll know traps better than either of us.” To say anything else might make this spellmaster hurl spells in a fury, and after what had befallen so far, that would be all the Sword of the South needed.
The Zhentarim was shaking his head. “No, it’s much too far to send an eye. I’d have to have seen the hold before with my own eyes to scry it with any of the other magics I carry.”
“You’ve nothing that can help us?” One of the three lancecaptains said, not bothering to keep the contempt out of his voice. The spellmaster made a silent show of looking him up and down and committing his face to memory, but all of them knew any hostile move the wizard made in this gathering would result in his death. Not a few of the personal belt daggers around the map would be poisoned, too.
“You’re a brave man, sir of the lance,” Nentor Thuldoum said in silken tones, “if a foolhardy one. A wizard of the Network always has something that can be turned to use, and it’s always more than his foes—and others,” he added pointedly, staring around at the impassive soldiers’ faces, “expect. I have a spell ready that can create a beast to explore the ruins for us … but only I will be able to see through its eyes.”
“And if there’s an enemy wizard at the Roost?” Amglar asked quietly. “Will such a one be able to see you through it—and send any magic through you, to strike us here?”
“No,” the spellmaster said. “In fact, it’s unlikely that any wizard who meets my creature will escape alive.”
“Cast your spell, then,” Amglar ordered, his voice riding over a murmur of disbelief at the wizard’s words from the officers. “The sooner we know, the sooner we can act.”
“Stand back,” the wizard said curtly. “All of you.” He drew himself up and glared around at the black-armored men—and their sullen faces. “Let no man disturb my casting, on pain of death. Lord Manshoon’s standing orders apply here as in the Keep.”
By the time the last of those words left his mouth, Nentor Thuldoum stood alone in the center of an open space perhaps twelve paces across, ringed by a warily silent audience. He looked around at them and smiled. Good; the more who saw this, the better.
From the safe pouch at his belt, Thuldoum drew a small sphere of blown glass that held a veined, gelatinous mass trapped in its heart. He held it on his fingertips, and for the benefit of the assembled soldiers murmured an incantation that was far longer and more impressive than it needed to be.
Then he made a dramatic and totally unnecessary gesture, and blew the sphere gently out of his palm. It plunged to the hard-trodden earth in front of him and burst with a tiny singing sigh.
A drunken man’s nightmare boiled up from where it had been, growing with frightening speed, rearing up until it was larger than a horse. Men gasped and backed away in gratifying alarm; the spellmaster smiled tightly at them and pointed west and a little south, into the trees. His creation gathered itself up and drifted obediently off across the road, soldiers scrambling to get out of its way.
It was a shapeless bulk of translucent gray-white jelly that swam and flowed constantly. Countless staring eyes and silently snapping mouths slid across its changing outer surface, appearing and disappearing with bewildering speed.
“A mouther!” one of the veteran armsmen gasped. The drifting thing did look like the deadly gibbering mouther of yore … though no gibberer had ever risen man-high off the ground and flown about at a wizard’s bidding, so far as Thuldoum knew.
Then it was gone into the trees, and his world became a place of dark trunks and branches and shifting shadows, looming up before him, thick and tangled.…
“Bring me a seat,” he said, not breaking his vision from his creation, “and something safe to drink. Someone who knows traps and castles should stand by me, too—we’ll both have questions to ask each other when my creature reaches the Roost.”
* * * * *
Galath’s Roost, Mistledale, Flamerule 16
Galath’s Roost had been blasted apart four centuries ago by mages who knew their business. Since that day, the small keep atop its stony height had been swallowed by the forest. Massive duskwoods and cedars rent what was left of its walls and yet held them up, their trunks cupping chambers that were open to the sky and walls that ran to nowhere. Their leaves all but hid the riven keep from view … but if one stood a little way off and in just the right spot, the faint flicker of a fire glimmered through the trees.
The room whence the fire came had one wall open to the night—but the two pilgrims who’d built the fire and now huddled around it had good and prudent reasons for not choosing any of the better-preserved rooms in the Roost. They were discussing that now.
“A good job, they did,” the taller one said grudgingly.
“You’re certain they left this room safe?” asked the other, clutching his expensive talisman of the god under his chin. The gilded image of Tyr’s warhammer and scales shone back the firelight, serene and unchanging.
“All but that door,” the first one replied, pointing. “If you go out that, a very large crate of rubble will fall on you.”
“Ah,” said the other. “I’d best go water the gods’ gardens out the way we came in, then.” He sipped from a battered tin cup, making no move to get up, and added, “A good thing we found that cellar, or they’d have seen us, sure.”
“That was no cellar,” his tall, lean companion chuckled, scratching under his much-patched tunic. “That was the castle cesspit.”
“What?” the shorter pilgrim said, staring down at his boots and then at his elbows and his cloak—but finding no foulness. “Is my nose as bad as all that, then?”
“After four hundred years,” his companion told him kindly, “dung is just dust.”
“Huh,” the shorter pilgrim agreed, and launched into a dry chuckle that ended in a fit of coughing. “I guess the Realms’re covered deep in old dung, then. Urrrgh. Aiiuh.” These last two comments accompanied a grunting attempt to rise—an attempt that ended in a disgusted wave of one dirty hand, and a return to a more or less comfortable lounging position against a pile of moss-cloaked rubble.
In all the activity, neither devotee of Tyr noticed a dark, many-eyed bulk slithering silently out of the night, over the stones in the ruined end of the room. As they decided aloud that a prayer to the Lord of Justice might be prudent before they wandered off into the woods to relieve themselves, the thing of eyes and jaws crept unnoticed toward them.
“ ‘Tis your turn to begin the devotion,” the shorter pilgrim mumbled.
“Do it be in truth, Jarald? Or’ve you just forgotten the words to the Call of the Just again?”
“I’ve not! I remember them well!” the shorter pilgrim said heatedly. “Will you plague me with the misdeed of one night down all the years to come?” Behind him, unseen in the flickering confusion where the firelight played on a broken end of stone wall, something that swam with many eyes and hungry mouths rear
ed up, looming darker and larger, drifting tendrils of itself across the ceiling to hang above the two oblivious pilgrims.
“I don’t rightly know,” his taller companion said, with a slow grin. “How long did you plan to go on living?”
From the darkness above came a sudden swift movement.…
6
War Comes to Mistledale
The fire was dying down; he’d have to make this swift. The taller pilgrim cleared his throat, lurched forward from a seated position to his knees, and began. “Hear us, O Great Balance, as we hear thee! From our knees we cry to theeeee!”
His words ended in a surprised cry as he raised his eyes to the firelit ceiling—and found himself staring at an oozing, descending blob of jelly that swam with jaws and eyeballs! And all of those eyeballs were staring at him!
The horrid thing lunged at him, seven or more sets of fangs biting the air hungrily as they came. The pilgrim flung himself backward and to his feet, out of reach, and the thwarted reaching thing turned with fearsome speed and struck at the other pilgrim.
The shorter man was already on his feet, watching the monster with a surprisingly calm expression of curiosity on his face. He sidestepped the attacking tendril—and found a second questing arm reaching down, almost upon him. He was trapped between them. As they reached in, he shrugged and grimaced.
An instant later, the many-fanged mouths opened wide for their first savage strike—but the pilgrims were gone. Two clouds of dark, whirling globules stood for an instant where the men had been. And then the jaws bit down. On nothing.
The globules crashed to the floor in a red rain that spattered the stones and put the hissing fire out. Amid the sudden smoke of its dying, the floor ran with small puddles that moved together with purposeful speed.
The many-fanged monster peered suspiciously around the room and came slowly free of the ceiling to gather itself into a floating sphere of questing eyes and gnashing teeth. It echoed the dumbfounded astonishment of the distant Zhentarim who’d created it; he’d never seen anything of the like before. Was this a spell? Were the two pilgrims of Tyr doppelgangers who’d learned a new trick? Or … something else?
All Shadows Fled Page 8
