All Shadows Fled asota-3

by Ed Greenwood

  All Shadows Fled

  ( A shadow of the Avatar - 3 )

  Ed Greenwood

  Ed Greenwood

  All Shadows Fled

  Away, Shadows, away!

  I grow tired of slaying thee… and presently

  I shall grow angry. Then you'll be sorry!

  The Simbul, Queen of Aglarond, Said in spell-battle before all her court, Year of Shadows

  Prologue

  Three living heroes and a ghost dared to take an enchanted blade out of the world, hunting shapeshifters in their ancient Castle of Shadows…

  For centuries, the Malaugrym had been dark figures of legend, fey sorcerers who could take any shape they chose. They came to Faerun to impersonate kings and reavers and archmages, to entertain themselves with the havoc they could wreak-and to seize mortal women as breeding slaves, carrying them off across the planes to the place they called Shadowhome.

  When the famous archmage Elminster of Shadowdale caught Malaugrym in Faerun, they paid with their lives. Twice he journeyed to the Castle of Shadows to humble the House of Malaug… but no mere mortal had ever made such a foray and returned to Faerun to tell of it.

  Until Lady Sharantyr, Knight of Myth Drannor; Belkram and Itharr of the Harpers; and the ghostly remnant of Sylune, Witch of Shadowdale, went up against the shapeshifters armed with the Sword of Mystra. And with that sword, Sharantyr cut her way back from the brink of death and out of the Castle of Shadows, slaying many of the evil shapeshifters as she went.

  Unfortunately, most of them still lived, and vowed revenge on four new foes. More entered Faerun with the returning heroes and escaped to wander the Realms at will.

  Even worse, Faerun was much as they'd left it: in the throes of the magical chaos, bloodshed, and lawlessness of the Time of Troubles, when the gods themselves walked the Realms, no magic could be trusted, and fire and fury raged across the lands.

  It was a time for heroes, and the four who'd escaped the Castle of Shadows found Elminster, the Old Mage, waiting for them, with orders to undertake still more perilous tasks in the desperate work of saving civilized Faerun.

  And the Malaugrym were waiting for them, too…

  1

  It Begins with a Flame Faerun, Daggerdale

  Kythorn 20, Year of Shadows

  The wind rose and whistled through the stones of a roofless, ruined manor house on a grassy hillside in Daggerdale. The trampled slope was strewn with tentacled, jellylike, eye-studded nightmare bodies.

  Three weary, wild-eyed rangers and a ghostly lady hastened up the hill from the monsters they'd slain, running like starving men to a banquet table. They hurried toward a man who sat in the ruins.

  The gaunt, white-bearded old man sat on what was left of a crumbling wall and serenely smoked a pipe. He looked at them all, smiled, and spat out this smoke belcher. It rose smoothly upward to float by his ear, spouting wisps of smoke that curled away to be lost in the quickening breeze. "Ye deserve congratulations for one thing, at least," he announced.

  After the silence had begun to stretch, Itharr sighed and asked in tones that were just respectful, "And what, Lord Elminster, would that be?"

  "Keeping thyselves alive," Elminster told him dryly.

  "I heard an 'at least' in there," Sylune put in. Her silvery tresses hung still around her eerily translucent face despite the gusting wind. Beside her, the blood-spattered lady ranger Shar shot her an amused look through her own wind-whipped hair.

  Elminster glared severely at the ghostly Witch of Shadowdale. "There is a little matter of bringing a trio or more of Malaugrym into Faerun, and allowing them to wander off untraced and untrammeled, to work their wanton wills across the land."

  " 'Work their wanton wills'… I like that; 'twould fit nicely into a purple Harper ballad," Sylune replied serenely. "My choice, Old Mage, was between the lives of these three heroes-nay, no wincing, now; they've more than earned the title-and those of a few shapeshifters. I think my decision was the right one… and if you disagree so strongly, why did you not take action yourself? You must have been here watching us."

  "Been here, aye. Watching, no," the Old Mage replied, eyes on the hillside below them-where, at his magical bidding, the horribly distorted bodies of the Malaugrym were rising into the air and catching fire. "I was tossing meteor swarms over the turrets of Telflamm, half a world away."

  "By the gods, the bardic phrases keep flowing, like…" The ghost sorceress paused meaningfully.

  "Nightsoil from a hurled bucket?" Belkram offered helpfully.

  Sylune rolled her eyes and continued, "And your reason for this… ah, fiery behavior?"

  El grinned. "I was feeding a wild magic area to make it grow into a shield against Red Wizards… so I could turn my attention closer to home."

  Belkram caught the first whiff of burning flesh and spun around, raising the gory daggers he held ready in both hands. Seeing the source of the smell, he relaxed. A certain grim satisfaction grew on his face as he watched the bodies of their foes burn. Sharantyr gave the midair cremation a single quick glance and turned her gaze back to the Old Mage.

  "I know you well enough, Elminster," she said levelly, "to know that such words always lead us to another of your 'little tasks'… and I'd appreciate knowing what this one is without a lot of clever tongue-fencing. Several Malaugrym-one in particular-have about used up my patience for today." As she stared challengingly at the Old Mage, Shar flexed her aching jaw. Her mouth, scorched by a Malaugrym tentacle whose foul taste she could still remember, was throbbing painfully, and her tongue was a thick, numb thing.

  As her companions looked at the usually merry Shar in surprise, Elminster inclined his head and said, "Plain speaking is wise in any case, Lady Knight. Know, then: thy swords and spells-and all of ye, with them-are urgently needed in the coming defense of Shadowdale. I'm here to send ye where ye're most needed in that fight."

  "The Zhentarim?" Sylune asked shortly. It was more statement than question.

  As if her words had been some sort of cue, the world around them was suddenly a cold place of endlessly streaming white flames, and her companions stood frozen amid the conflagration. The last thing the Witch of Shadowdale heard was Elminster's disgusted cry: "Ah, no! Not again!" And then his tattered words were whirled away from her, and all that was left was the ceaseless roaring…

  After what must have been a very long time, Sylune knew herself again. She was all that was left of the woman widely known as the Witch of Shadowdale…

  She was Sylune. Still a ghost… and still in Faerun. Hanging in the heart of the roaring.

  All around her, flames that did not burn streamed endlessly past her motionless friends and the crumbling stones of the manor. But she could move and think… though the cold white flames made her tremble uncontrollably as they roared through her.

  Sylune found she could move, if she bent her will hard to the doing. Let us be doing, then.

  With slow determination, she drifted nearer the Old Mage, sitting motionless on his bit of wall. His hands were uplifted and his lips open, wearing the disgusted frown of his realization that whatever it was had caught him again.

  So they were in some sort of trap. A magical trap, though its flames-which didn't seem to harm anything-had withstood the wildness of magic stalking Faerun for some time; it seemed. Some of the wildflowers growing amid the stones had bloomed and withered since the magic had begun. The companions had been here for days, then. Sylune wished she could sigh. I've not been a ghost long enough to learn patience for waits that may well take years.

  She looked at the Old Mage's pipe, still floating beside his head where he'd left it, and saw that the flames bent around it.

  They seemed to be avoiding
it! Sylune stared at the spell-flames narrowly for a time; they boiled up out of nowhere on one side of the ruins, arced over her frozen companions, and then returned in an endless rush to nowhere on the far side of the broken walls. It was some sort of stasis field that avoided Elminster's small, curved, ever-smoking pipe.

  So, the pipe yet radiated its own magic-and floated on its own, not frozen by the flames. She frowned. He'd once been able to teleport with it, hadn't he?

  She drifted nearer, noticing faint wisps of smoke curling up out of the pipe bowl ever so slowly and rising to mingle with the onrushing flames.

  She eyed it. This was probably going to hurt.

  Mystra, if any part of you is still around to hear, she thought firmly, aid me now. And with the resolve still strong in her, she surged forward, thinning a part of her essence into the pipe.

  Magics swirled and tore at her, defenses against tampering that bore Elminster's trademark spell-upon-spell interlacing. Gods, the pain!

  Whirling around in a silent scream, Sylune found that the pipe could teleport vapor in and away, in an endless cycle-giving her an escape whenever she wished-and could also transport anyone who touched it and willed it, thus, from place to place.

  Elminster sat frozen, but perhaps she could guide the pipe to him… yes! That very movement was a direction he'd given the pipe several times recently, so how to do it was displayed right in front of her!

  Sylune swirled around the pipe and moved it down toward the Old Mage's mouth. The flames bent away from her, and grim satisfaction rose within her as she made the slow, drifting journey. This was going to work!

  At last the pipe touched the Old Mage's lips, but he sat open-mouthed, unmoving, and she could feel no quickening of will within him, only the endless roaring. The magic was binding his wits, then. Of course it must be, or he'd have used spellfire to drink it down to nothingness long ago. Sylune wanted to sigh again.

  Perhaps she could force a teleport by-oh, gods, this might well be the last thing she ever did, the last moment she knew.

  Farewell, Faerun, Sylune thought, and flowed back into the pipe. She must will it to take the Old Mage away from here, to the meadow. The meadow where Sharantyr had danced about with a glowing sword in the depths of the night-a lifetime ago, it seemed-in the meadow just over there.

  And then white flames roared up between her ears and up her throat and the world exploded, whirling her away… Castle of Shadows, Shadowhome, Flamerule 15

  "I have seen enough shadow weaving and clearing away of dead kin and rubble to last me many an eon," the gigantic horned worm declared in a voice that echoed in the far corners of the cavernous room, "and Shadowhome is rebuilt sufficiently to set my gorge at ease-for now."

  With a rattle of huge chitin plates, he glided into the dim, shadowed chamber, and there dwindled into a bald, long-tailed, gray-scaled humanoid. Othortyn of the Malaugrym eyed his minions, a pair of tentacled lesser kin who peered into the flickering, floating light of a scrying portal at the center of the chamber. Othortyn shifted his tail and asked irritably, "So how've you two been wasting your time?"

  "Watching what befalls in the world of the humans," Inder said boldly, "as you commanded." His quiet companion, Hastrim, nodded but said nothing.

  "And what have you found?" Othortyn asked, settling himself on a crumbling stone throne that was almost as old as he.

  "The ambitious humans who dwell in Zhentil Keep, bolstered by their god-or one who claims to be Bane-have gone to war," Inder said in a voice swift and shrill with excitement. "They've sent four armies into adjacent lands, the largest by road into Shadowdale… where the Great Foe dwells."

  "And what befell this force sent against Elminster?" Othortyn asked quietly.

  "Some local human mage called down lightnings and cooked many in their armor… and then the Foe turned a few thousand into boulders while they were camped at a place called Voonlar. No doubt he planned to transform them all, but-"

  Othortyn blanched. "Mass transformation? You dare to tell me that the Great Foe can turn whole armies into toads? I've not heard that sort of nonsense since I was a youngling and pranksome elders tried to scare me with wild tales of human wizards!"

  Inder met his master's gaze steadily. "Didn't you believe those tales?" he asked quietly.

  Othortyn glowered. "So, just how many spells, oh wise apprentice, do these wizards hurl around that I don't know about?" he asked, voice heavy with sarcasm. As he eyed the younger Malaugrym, his tail curled out to open a door that had been secret for long years. He took out a dusty bottle from the dark niche beyond.

  Inder shrugged. "Several thousand, perhaps."

  "So, with all this magic to hurl about, reshaping worlds," Othortyn snarled, the end of his tail rearing back and lengthening into a hollow stinger, "why did oh-so-mighty Elminster stop making his rocks before the whole host was done?"

  Inder frowned as his master pierced the cork of the bottle and drank deeply. The apprentice said, "His spell-as would any mighty magic, we believe-created an area of wild magic… which is still spreading. A wizard would see such a thing as the greatest danger of all, and would do nothing to aid its spread-nor dare to risk himself in its vicinity."

  "So the Great Foe did not confront his own foes directly," Hastrim added, "fearing for his skin."

  "He turned instead to the other armies, where only lesser mages stood against him," Inder continued, "and-"

  "Speak no more of the Foe," the old Shadowmaster said sharply. "What has become of our kin who reached Faerun?"

  "Atari, Yinthrim, and Revered Elder Ahorga survived the battle with the three accursed humans who came here," Inder said in more sober tones, "and seem to be roaming Faerun in many shapes, learning its ways and uses."

  "Others of our house have found their own, separate ways into Faerun," Hastrim added. "We have scryed Bralatar and Lorgyn, and seen one other, whom we believe to be Lunquar, get of Byatra…" His voice trailed away, and there was a little silence.

  "Is that all?" Othortyn growled. "I thought Jaster had gathered a dozen or more eager younglings around him!"

  "He did," Inder said quickly, "but when Starner came to you with word that the Great Foe was caught in the loop trap you cast at their gate, you told him to gather all kin with spells to spare and make haste to-"

  "Blast all who defy me!" Othortyn roared, and lightning leapt from his eyes like two darting white flames, roaring across the chamber to swallow up Inder and the scrying portal with him.

  Hastrim staggered back with a startled sob as his companion and their spell vanished into wisps of curling smoke.

  "I did tell you, Inder, not to mention the Great Foe again," Othortyn said chidingly. Then he turned his head from the drifting smoke and said politely to Hastrim, "Please continue with the exposition of events that Inder so abruptly abandoned…"

  Hastrim stared at him in stunned silence, face pale. Muscles rippled around his mouth as he fought for calm.

  "Feel free to be as clever as you feel necessary," the old Shadowmaster said soothingly.

  Hastrim looked at Othortyn, and then his gaze fell again to regard the greasy curls of smoke that had been Inder. He swallowed.

  "Well," he said unhappily, "perhaps it would be best to begin when it was first noticed that three humans-bearing a magic sword-had somehow stepped from Faerun into the heart of Shadowhome… undetected."

  "Good, good," the old, bald Shadowmaster said encouragingly, opening another bottle. "Would you like something to drink?"

  "Er-" Hastrim began, and then added with sudden firmness, "Yes," and a long, snakelike tentacle put a dusty bottle in his hand.

  Faerun, Daggerdale, Flamerule 15

  "Easy, lass," a familiar voice rumbled as Sylune of Shadowdale slowly blinked her way back into awareness. " 'Twas well done, to be sure. Ye shattered a spell loop, a very nasty Malaugrym magic-and there were a dozen of them waiting with all the spells they could think of, for us to break out. It's probably best that Shar and the
lads were stunned when ye hurled me elsewhere. It saved them from about forty mind-rending attacks, and left me free to use the sort of Art that was really necessary."

  Elminster gestured down the hillside, and Sylune saw rainbow swirlings there, above torn earth and blasted stumps. The trees around the stream and the leaning bridge were no more… and no doubt the gate to the Shadowmasters' home plane was gone too.

  "A wild magic area?" she whispered.

  "I fear so," Elminster replied grimly, "but the gate is gone forever, and a score or so more Malaugrym with it."

  Sylune shuddered and drifted up out of his hands. Except for the few stones where the Old Mage was sitting-well west of where he had been-the ruined manor was now a crater of mud and gravel.

  She swirled back to face him. "How long has it been since we came back from the Castle of Shadows?"

  "Nigh on a month," Elminster said quietly.

  Sylune nodded grimly. "I thought so. Has Shadowdale fallen?"

  Elminster gave her a twisted grin. "Not yet." He got up and trudged west, into the trees. "Come to the meadow."

  Sylune drifted along beside him, suddenly reluctant to be alone. The old wizard had taken only a few paces before they emerged into a field of trodden grass where Belkram, Itharr, and Sharantyr sat, looking up with welcoming smiles.

  "Thankee, and all that," Itharr said, his broad shoulders shifting as he smiled.

  "All part of my orders," Sylune told him briskly, giving Elminster a meaningful look, "as enunciated by the tyrant mage here."

  "Ah, yes," Belkram said. "I believe I know just how you feel."

  "Yes," Sharantyr agreed crisply. "I think it's about time, Old Mage, that you told us what befell Faerun while we were all caught in this magic."

  "You might have revived us sooner," Itharr added darkly.

  Elminster looked at the burly ranger. "It took me days to repair and rebuild thy bodies, all three of ye. I had to use necromantic spells I haven't looked at in ages… and I do mean ages." He lifted an eyebrow. "Perhaps I didn't get thy head screwed on quite right."