All Shadows Fled

by Greenwood, Ed

  “So with him gone …”

  “Chasing may no longer be necessary. They’ll probably find us soon enough,” Sharantyr observed.

  “Is there any way—short of magic that may go wild, and blow this tower apart, or cover us all in cow dung—of knowing they’re not here in this room, right now, taking the shape of one of us?” Torm asked sharply.

  “No,” Storm and Dove said in quiet unison.

  “Well,” Rathan joked, “You did come in late, Torm.…”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Torm said warningly. “No one’s opening me up to see if I’m really a scaly monster!” There was suddenly a dagger in his fingertips, and he waved it meaningfully.

  “You’re safe, Torm,” Jhessail said with a smile. “No one could impersonate that debonair manner, that outrageous tongue, that—”

  “Utter stupidity,” Illistyl told the ceiling.

  “As to the internal defense of the dale, and helping our folk set things to rights,” Storm added, “journeyman Harpers will shortly gather in Shadowdale from all directions. To prevent the Zhents and … others from sneaking agents in among them, they all will report to Dove, who will cast a spell that marks them with a visible badge, a spell that contains nasty surprises for anyone trying to duplicate it. To get such a badge, of course, the Harpers will submit to mind-reading magic, allowing us to weed out ambitious Malaugrym.”

  “So this band of confirmed Harpers helps rebuild the dale,” Torm said, “freeing us to do—what?”

  “Ride patrol through the Elven Court woods, southeastern Daggerdale, and the other lands around Shadowdale, scouring it of brigands and monsters, giving us warning of attack from Zhentil Keep, Daggerdale, or Hillsfar. I’ve heard rumors of fell beasts leaving the ruins of Myth Drannor to roam the woods, and even talk of some wealthy merchants in Sembia hiring small armies in hopes of seizing a dale or two as private estates.”

  “What?” Torm laughed. “Armies, yes … but ambitious Sembian merchants? Show me the fool who’d dare challenge the famous Knights of Myth Drannor!”

  “Look in yon mirror,” Jhessail advised him in dry tones, pointing across the morning room. “You challenge us all too often.”

  “Vile slander!” Torm said severely, waving a finger at her. “May the gods look down and—”

  “Gift thee with an egg, valiant Torm,” Shaerl said. She swept a peppered plover egg up from Mourngrym’s plate and thrust it whole into Torm’s mouth.

  “Nnnmumph,” he protested.

  “I agree completely,” Rathan replied earnestly, patting the thief’s hand (the one without the dagger). “Thy every word is as a pearl of wisdom, glistening among the dull pebbles of other oratory!”

  “Oh, please,” Illistyl said. “You’re as bad as he is!”

  Rathan gave her a hard look. “I prefer to say ‘as good as,’ young miss—’tis more charitable, far.”

  “If the free entertainment could subside for a moment,” Merith said patiently, “perhaps we can hear the rest of Storm’s plans.”

  Storm grinned at him. “We’ll send two patrols equipped for long forays. The Knights will ride to Daggerdale; the Rangers Three with Syluné will circle Voonlar, the woods near Myth Drannor, and Mistledale. Both bands should make sure the Zhents haven’t rallied anyone else in the south and deal with any trouble before it reaches our battle-riven dale. The dalefolk are too exhausted to deal with even sneak thieves.”

  “Fine, sounds sensible. Let’s be doing it,” Illistyl said, rising from the table. “I weary of talk. Merith, have you found me a horse?”

  “What’s wrong with your palfrey?” Mourngrym asked.

  “Killed in the battle,” Storm informed him curtly. Illistyl nodded, her eyes bright with sudden tears, but said nothing.

  Across the table, Torm was in full flight again, leaning around Belkram to smile at Sharantyr.

  “Good, my lady,” the thief said with a leer, his eyes bright, “I could see my way clear to ably guard so beautiful a flower of the dale! Wouldst thou permit me to accompany thee on patrol?”

  Sharantyr almost smiled. “I’ve grown used to Belkram and Itharr, thanks,” she said crisply, taking the arms of the two Harper rangers seated on either side of her.

  “I did not mean merely myself, Lady,” Torm said, his manner suddenly serious. “Three blades and a disembodied voice isn’t enough battle might for what you might well run into.”

  “I’ll be going with them, Torm,” Storm said quietly.

  Heads turned in surprise all around the table, but the Bard of Shadowdale was looking at the three rangers. “If you’ll have me?” she asked quietly.

  “Right gladly, Lady,” Belkram said, glancing quickly at his companions for confirmation, and receiving it.

  A frown had come onto Mourngrym’s face. “Torm may have a point about strength of arms. I was thinking of sending you Knights out on the first patrol east; there’s word of a Zhent mageling rallying forty or more Zhentilar in the woods.”

  “I’ll look forward to meeting them,” Storm said in silken tones. More than one person around that council table shivered at the sound of the bard’s voice.

  “Are we agreed?” Mourngrym asked, standing up and looking down the table. There was a general affirmative chorus, and he said briskly, “Good—now get gone, all of you, so I can bathe and get dressed and have some food that clever Knights don’t snatch off my plate!”

  Chuckles and mocking salutes answered him.

  Mourngrym made for his bedchamber, shook his head, and reflected—not for the first time—how untenable a position he held, the junior member of a band of adventurers who handed him the lordship of a dale after they were finished with it, but stayed around to drive him witless!

  Growling faintly at the thought, he pushed back through the curtains, Shaerl in his wake.

  The morning room cleared quickly. When it was quite empty, something moved under the table—something that looked like old and dark wood, but flowed downward to the floor, peeling itself free of the table’s underside. It stretched like a hungry snake, slithered out from under the furniture, and rose swiftly, taking on the shape and appearance of one of the tower servants.

  The Malaugrym glanced quickly around, but no one was in sight. The servant who was not a servant paused for a long moment to survey the table admiringly. Ahorga had always liked maps.

  * * * * *

  Elven Court woods, Flamerule 22

  The embers crackled and glowed ruby red. The two women sat with their backs to it, facing outward on watch, listening to the faint scuttlings and hootings that mark any forest by night. They were in the Elven Court woods, well south of Voonlar, most of the way through their first night on patrol.

  Itharr and Belkram had turned over watch duties to them not long ago, and were well and truly asleep, snoring faintly into their cloaks.

  “How many nights have you spent thus?” Sharantyr asked quietly.

  Behind her, Storm laughed softly. “Hundreds.”

  The ghostly tresses of Syluné turned, from where her disembodied head floated at Sharantyr’s shoulder. “Thousands, Sister,” she corrected.

  “That’s right—emphasize how old we are,” Storm said, amused. “I try not to make people feel uncomfortable or lessened in any way.”

  “I was the Witch of Shadowdale, remember? Making people wary of me was the best way to hold power over them without ever harming anyone,” Syluné replied.

  Sharantyr sighed. “You seem so carefree,” she said, shifting the naked long sword that lay across her thighs so that moonlight caught it at one end, and a faint red glow from the fire touched the other. She flicked it idly, watching the play of light on the steel. “Is it because you’ve both seen it all before?”

  “Partly, Shar,” Storm replied, “and partly because we’ve learned to try to enjoy everything, from being whipped in chains as a slave to being wooed by well-endowed princes.”

  “To clinging to the spar of a ship breaking apart in a storm,�
� Syluné put in, sounding amused. “To lying paralyzed under the probes of a drow mage trying to determine if your powers lie in organs he can remove, or if you’ll have to be bred to drow to give them your abilities.”

  Sharantyr shivered. “Don’t speak of drow, please …”

  “My apologies, Shar,” the ghostly head beside her said quickly. “We both spoke of moments from our own experiences—I forgot that you’d been a captive of the drow, too.”

  Sharantyr turned her head. “You were a slave?”

  “For years,” the Bard of Shadowdale told her. “Not entirely bad years, either … though I never did develop any enjoyment for being whipped.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not entirely bad years’?” Shar asked incredulously. “How can you enjoy anything about being a slave?”

  “That’s what we were trying to say, you see,” Syluné said softly. “It’s not what the gods hand you in life that matters so much, nor what your strivings achieve or fail in the attempt. Whatever befalls, the best way to view life is to savor every moment of it, no matter how sordid or unpleasant … for one thing, the gods give us all only a certain span of time, and time wasted—in misery, despair, drunkenness, or casual inattention—is time gone forever.”

  “I see what you’re saying,” Sharantyr said slowly, “but you’ll forgive me if I take some time getting to enjoy fighting in great battles, or falling into cesspits, or listening to Torm.”

  Trying not to laugh aloud, Storm shook with deep, bubbling laughter for a long time before she found breath enough to speak again. “Well said,” were her first words. “Do you feel like talking about what befell in the Castle of Shadows?”

  Shar chuckled helplessly. “I-I suppose so. What do you want to know?”

  “Do you recall Elminster’s burning the bodies of the Malaugrym you slew, back at the ruined manor in Daggerdale?” Syluné asked.

  Shar nodded, but realized they couldn’t see the gesture in the dark, and said cautiously, “Yes.”

  “He wasn’t simply being tidy,” the ghostly figure told her. “He was using a spell that destroys the bodies of the recently dead even as it yields up their last few moments of thought. In one of the Malaugrym was a strong desire to slay you—because another Malaugrym, who did not enter Faerûn at the time, wanted you as his mate. Another of the dead Malaugrym was reluctant to attack you for the same reason; the Malaugrym who favored you was his ally.”

  Sharantyr drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I see. You’re wondering if I pine after some Malaugrym lord, or perhaps even carry a little shapeshifter-to-be within.”

  “No,” Storm said sharply. “Even if either or both of those conditions were true, they are your affairs. We merely meant that it’s apparent to us all that some adventures befell all three of you that went beyond ‘See Malaugrym, slay Malaugrym, run run run.’ ”

  Shar giggled. “That sounds elegant.”

  “Indeed,” Syluné agreed dryly. “So give, Lady Sharantyr. What did you learn in the Castle of Shadows? And I don’t mean about Malaugrym, or shapeshifting, or the nature of ever-shifting Shadowhome. I mean about yourself.”

  “About myself?”

  “About Belkram and Itharr, then,” Storm said gently. “How are my two half-trained Harpers?”

  “Very good companions and able protectors. Belkram has a touch of Torm in him, I think.”

  Shar heard Storm’s silent amusement at that observation, and went on, “Itharr is quieter, and there’s a darkness in him. H-He needs to kill, sometimes.”

  “And how would you look upon spending several years adventuring with them both?” the lady bard asked. “Just the three of you, not a part of the Harpers or part of the Knights of Myth Drannor.”

  “I’d enjoy it, I hope,” Shar replied, then added quickly, “but I fear the Shadowmasters will soon strike back, and—”

  “And?” Syluné asked quietly.

  “And I’ll lose one or both of them,” Sharantyr said. Her voice sank almost to a whisper.

  “You are fond of them both, then?” Storm asked quietly.

  “Aye, I—” Sharantyr’s voice sharpened. “Why are you asking me this? Do you want me to shout from the tower turrets that I love them?”

  “No, Shar,” Syluné said softly. “We want you to admit it to yourself.”

  In the little silence that followed, Belkram snorted softly in his sleep, and at the comical sound something inside Sharantyr suddenly rose into her throat, and she wept as quietly as she could.

  The radiance of Syluné was suddenly all around her, and she felt a gentle, chill touch on her forehead. The ghostly kiss left a tingling behind, and her somehow calmer.

  She sniffed away the last of her tears, and said in a small voice, “I’m so afraid of losing them.”

  “That’s why I came along,” Storm said softly, “to lend one more sword to the fray and make all of your chances for survival that much better.”

  “Malaugrym are everywhere!” Syluné intoned in tones of mock horror.

  “Don’t say that!” Sharantyr told her fiercely, turning her head to stare into eyes that were two serene white wraith fires.

  “Why not? Face your fears as you should face everything else in life—openly. Name them, and they become things you can handle, after a fashion.”

  Sharantyr laughed, a little ruefully. “I didn’t expect to spend my time staring into the night talking about my loves and fears,” she told the two age-old sisters.

  “Why not, Shar? What could we possibly talk about—in all our lives—that’s more important than what we love and fear?”

  * * * * *

  Sembia, Flamerule 22

  “I love to smell their fear,” the man with the head of a panther said, raising bloody jaws from a villager who would never again flee screaming from anything.

  “Now how could I tell that?” replied the man whose arms split into tentacles. A choking merchant struggled in the coils of two of those tentacles.

  The Malaugrym shook the merchant, much as a hunting cat shakes a rat in its jaws, and tightened his tentacles with lazy strength, tearing the man’s head off. Blood sprayed in all directions as the corpse convulsed, wriggling in its final agony.

  “Well? Are you going to eat this one?” Bralatar asked, his hands lengthening into talons to tear the man’s body apart. He licked his lips in anticipation of the feast.

  Lorgyn took one bite, then tossed the headless body aside. “No. I’ll find something a little more succulent.” He looked across the night-shrouded garden where they stood, at a building whose distinctive red lanterns marked it as a brothel. “In there.”

  “No wonder old Elminster wanted Faerûn for himself!” Bralatar said, watching his comrade reach up with a small forest of tentacles and swarm up the side of the building. “It’s a neverending love-feast and brawl!”

  “Aye,” Lorgyn called down, heedless of whose attention they might alert, “only better!”

  A man’s head suddenly appeared out of one window. “Hoy!” he snarled, “what’re—doppelgangers! Call the Watc—”

  A tentacle descended in a slap that carried the weight of falling stone, breaking the man’s neck as a child snaps a twig. He fell onto the sill, and said no more.

  The Malaugrym’s tentacles were busy at a higher window. He reached in to a bed where a fat merchant was rolling among slippery silk sheets, pretending he couldn’t find the giggling owner of the bed, wriggling around beneath them.

  “Not here!” the merchant hollered, clutching at a pillow. “Where’s she gone? Oh, sweet merciful gods, help me … my partner’ll be furious when he learns how much I spent for an hour of pleasure, and then couldn’t find the wench for the size and opulence of her bed! Are there other men lost under here, I wonder? That wagon of mine that went missing last moon, perhaps? I’ll just have to see! May—”

  “Oh, be silent!” Lorgyn snarled in exasperation, snapping out a tentacle to wrap around the man’s jaws.

  The fat merchant sudden
ly grew a mouth as wide as a horse and caught the tentacle; an extra mouth appeared in his forehead and hissed, “Get your own plaything!”

  Lorgyn recoiled in amazement. “Who—?”

  The grotesque mouth spat the tentacle back at Lorgyn and shrank away to nothingness, dwindling into features the Malaugrym at the window recognized. “Lunquar!”

  “The same,” the older Shadowmaster replied, ignoring the sudden terrified scream from the bedclothes beneath him. He pinned the woman down without sparing her a glance, and said, “I’ve been watching you two break necks and hurl bodies about for days now; why such a bold rampage?”

  “Fun, Lunquar, fun!” Lorgyn said exultantly, using one long tentacle to snatch up the man whose neck he’d just broken and shake him as a trophy. “See?” There was a scream from the window below.

  “That’s just what I mean,” the Shadowmaster on the bed said. “You left that one dangling half out of a window! Hear the screaming now!”

  “So?”

  “So why rouse half of Faerûn when a little subtlety could win you thrones?”

  “What fun is that?” the voice of Bralatar came floating up to them. “You can rule just as well through fear … in fact, whenever we’ve the time to spare, we should spread a little more fear!”

  “Your style, perhaps; not mine,” the older Shadowmaster replied. “I’m saving my fury for when I meet up with one of Mystra’s Chosen!”

  “Aye,” Lorgyn agreed, his voice menacingly soft. His eyes glowed a sudden emerald green in the gloom. “If you want reasons for rampaging, there’s always … revenge.”

  12

  Whistling, the Wizard Met His End

  Sembia, Flamerule 23

  Birds called and fluttered in a wood where moss grew green on old, proud trees, untouched by a woodsman’s axe for three hundred years. A stone wall as high as six men kept errant axes out, for the wood was part of a private estate in the fair uplands of Sembia—an estate that saw few visitors, and even fewer uninvited ones.