Cloak of Shadows asota-2

by Ed Greenwood

  Its heel was empty and received the contents of her first pile. She put that boot back on and knelt for a moment in thought, selecting what would best serve from the small heap of fresh items.

  There was so little magic here, and the lives of her companions-her friends-depended on it. So, to a lesser but not dismissable extent, did the freedom of much of Faerun. Even so, conflicts of Art prevented her from wearing and wielding all of this at once. She made a few careful selections and put the rest away again.

  Booted once more, she donned the various items, settled herself, and sat in stillness for a time, awakening things that had to be activated. Lines of force blazed through the lifeless body at her direction, linking this with that, building a web of interwoven magic as swiftly as she could. Now she could call up power after power without speech or gesture. This body didn't even need to breathe. The fire that animated it looped through the lifeless flesh, weaving tightly around enchanted items and muscles that moved limbs and gave expression to the now-slack face, and returned along a thousand channels to the stone nestled low between two ribs on the right flank. A stone from her hut, the anchor around which her spectral form could coalesce, the only thing that allowed her to animate this false Elminster. She felt for the stone with the body's fingers. When she could not feel it from the outside, she nodded in satisfaction and got up. The longer she stayed shielded, the more danger her companions were in.

  Worse, the moment this imposture was discovered, they were walking dead. Sylune sighed experimentally, nodded again in satisfaction, and set her shoulders.

  "Elminster once more," she murmured, raising a hand. The shield fell away, and she was gazing across moonlit space to the anxious eyes of Sharantyr, hand on the well-worn grip of her sword.

  Being Elminster, Sylune did not smile reassuringly, but merely raised a gently mocking eyebrow and said, "Enthralled by the spectacle of my manly beauty, lass?"

  Shar's face melted into a grin. "All the time, Old Mage," she replied happily. "All the time."

  "Hmmph. Great advantage ye take of it, I must say." Elminster strode past her to peer hawklike into the night, locating the two Harpers. Belkram was curled up asleep in his cloak, drawn sword laid ready on its spare folds by his hand. Itharr was standing watch, looking around alertly. He raised a hand in salute to Elminster, who returned it and seated himself on the most comfortable-looking rock.

  "All's well?" Shar asked, shifting her legs into a more comfortable position. Moonlight flashed on her blade as she moved. El watched it glimmer down the steel as an owl hooted somewhere not far off in the trees behind them.

  "Aye. Should it not be?" Sylune made the words a testy challenge.

  Shar gave her a quick smile of admiration for capturing the Old Mage's manner and said mildly, "Well, given that we've just seen the skies open and Toril wracked by forces that beggar even your mighty magic…"

  Elminster snorted. "Be not so sure. Gods seem to feel the need to impress."

  Sharantyr wrinkled her lips in wry disbelief. "Indubitably," she replied in cultured, courtly tones, "and yet the earth did shake, and magic is either failing us or going wild. Forgive me if, as a mere mortal, I find myself somewhat anxious as to what the future holds. Say, tonight and the morrow."

  Elminster sighed. "The world has been falling apart for a long, long time. I know-I've been watching it. What particular part of this ongoing devolution concerns thee most, just now?"

  Belkram rolled over and eyed them both. "Sleep fails me, amid all this chatter. Is this another version of his 'I'm older than the earth beneath ye, and have seen a thing or three' speech?"

  "It is," Sharantyr said gravely. Belkram yawned.

  "Ah, 'twas well I woke, then… wouldn't have wanted to miss this…"

  "A little less biting sarcasm, ranger, if ye please," Elminster responded, looking around them at the night.

  Tattered wisps of cloud were racing across the sky now, as if hurrying to a meeting they'd missed with all those divine falling meteors. When the clouds touched the moon, Daggerdale was bathed in a bright light of a violet hue that none of them had ever seen before. A little way distant, Itharr stared up at it in wonder, shook his head, and returned to peering into the dark trees around.

  "What a sky," Shar murmured. Belkram gave her a look.

  "It's all those Shadowmasters circling up there, interfering with the moonlight. Stop staring at it and get some sleep; I'll take over watch. If we start falling asleep where we stand, we won't even give the shapeshifters a moment's entertainment in battle."

  "Cheerful, isn't he?" Elminster said to Shar, and added indignantly. "And what am I, suet pudding? Why must he take over watching from ye? Are my eyes so old and wandering?"

  "Wandering, yes," Sharantyr mock-growled, and added sweetly, "besides, you're the one we're watching over, because you're the bad-tempered, witless wizard in this band."

  And with that, she rolled herself in Belkram's cloak and sought slumber. The ranger and the wizard watched her in silence until they heard the faint rattle that served Sharantyr as a snore. Then Belkram leaned forward and whispered, "Old Mage, what's to stop these shapeshifters scrying us from afar and simply attacking when we fall asleep?"

  "The Fall of the Gods. Magic will fail the Malaugrym as it fails us, in this e'er-growing chaos of Art."

  "Aye, but without any magic of our own, how can we hope to stay alive against foes who can take any shape to elude our notice, escape us, or defeat us?"

  "There is a way to make magic more reliable, if the need is strong enough," Elminster growled, and sat back as if dismissing the subject.

  "How?" the ranger asked softly.

  The Old Mage glared at him, but Belkram waited in unblinking patience.

  Elminster made no move, but the singing of a quick cloaking spell was suddenly around them. "Spells ye cast can be steadied by feeding thine own life-energy into them, giving of thyself to make the magic as steady as it should be."

  "Has a spectral one enough to spare, to so give?" Belkram asked, eyes steady.

  "I shall do this when necessary, but only then," Elminster replied firmly, and let the cloaking magic fall away. The owl hooted again, and somewhere far off over the moonlit hills to the northeast a wolf howled.

  They listened to the mournful sound until the wolf was done, and then Elminster stirred and spoke again. "Be more worried about attacks when relieving thyself is of paramount importance, or when you're hungry and downing weapons and wariness to eat."

  "The monster who disturbs my meal," Belkram said darkly, "is liable to become my dessert."

  "I shall devote myself," Elminster offered serenely, "to recalling the most superb sauces to accompany a platter of whole roast shapeshifter with apple in mouth."

  "You could use the same sauce Lhaeo drenched those frogs with, a few nights back," Sharantyr murmured.

  They both stared at her, but she was fast asleep, even through the sputters and chuckles of their suppressed mirth that followed.

  Overhead, one last flaming star burst out of the night and flashed across the sky, heading west. It passed the waning "slaying moon" without pause or herald, and they did not see it fall.

  5

  Fallen the Flames

  Daggerdale, Kythorn 15

  When first it came, the violet moonlight made Arashta Tharbrow look up from her bitter reverie in alarmed wonder. What now, after a night in which she'd already seen stars falling from the sky and felt Toril shake around her? A night in which the small radiance she'd conjured to see what she was doing in the dark depths of these endless woods had twisted into a ball of worms and fallen to the earth beside her. A night in which the spell she'd hurled in disbelief to scorch those worms had produced a sprayed handful of ice pebbles instead.

  "The gods are against me," she whispered despairingly, sitting down on what was left of a stone wall. She'd been a fool to come here alone, to wild, ruined Daggerdale. And if she couldn't rely on her spells, she'd very soon be a dead fool. />
  Who knew what beasts or brigands might be lurking near, watching her now?

  She pushed down cold rising fear with firm anger and stood up, her robes swishing back to cover her high-booted legs. She was a sorceress of the Zhentarim, and folk feared her. Even veteran warriors deferred to her in the streets of Zhentil Keep-and sometimes in her bed. She took what she desired and did as she wanted, within the orders given by her superiors.

  Those serpents! The mocking laughter of Thundyl echoed around her head one more time, and she saw again his amused face-and those of Rhaglar and Morgil, Master of Magelings, standing at his shoulder on the night of her humiliation, wearing smiles that vied with each other in open cruelty.

  Arashta ground her teeth and banished those hated visions with a furious wave of her hand. Her long, unbound hair swirled around her head in the moonlight, and she caught at it with one hand, wondering what she must look like, wandering alone in these ruins.

  She'd come hoping to slay Randal Morn and the handful of warriors loyal to him. They'd somehow eluded the best efforts of the Zhentarim to hunt them down. They slew encamped hireswords and Zhentilar troops in Daggerdale, striking here one night and there the next, slipping about like ghosts in the trees. They must have spell-cloaks to hide them from scrying, and they'd prevailed against some of the best blades the Zhentilar could whelm, leaving a trail of dead impressive even to an ambitious Zhentarim mage.

  And here she was, alone, seeking to bring them down. Arashta smiled thinly. She had a wand, true. Its comforting weight, sheathed in her left boot, rubbed against her leg as she took a few steps out of the full moonlight, to make herself less easily seen by eyes in the trees nearby. The wand had little magic left in it, though, perhaps only a single strike. She also had herself, and men long without a woman might let a hard, wild beauty get closer to them than they'd suffer a peddler or pilgrim to venture. She had to find them first, though, before a brigand arrow or a hungry beast found her. Even if she prevailed against such foes, it would not do to let a watching Randal Morn know she commanded magic that could slay so effortlessly.

  The wings of her fury had brought her here so easily: a spell that, without her spellbooks, she could not regain here to take her home again. She had another magic that could change her appearance, but it was a sham seeming only, not a true change in shape. If she used it to hide herself while she slept, she'd be without it when it might be needed in battle.

  Sleep. She yawned. Again. Soon she'd be too weary to stay awake. How to sleep in safety, in these wild woods? Arashta sighed in exasperation. It had seemed so simple a mission when Thundyl-gods blast his arrogant smirk! — had charged her with it. All she'd have to do would be to avoid swaggering into Daggerdale with forty warriors or so, as her unsuccessful predecessors had done, and avoid being careless.

  It struck her that she wasn't eluding carelessness all that well. Arashta shook her head, smiled ruefully, and took a few steps east, deeper into the dale, to where she could just see the glimmer of a small stream snaking across overgrown fields. Perhaps- She froze and then suddenly whirled around, robes flapping, to stare at the dark wall of trees. Someone, or something, was watching her. She could feel it. She raised a hand slowly, debating whether to cast her lone spell of revealing now or to save it for a more pressing moment.

  In the trees, the man whose body looked like the dark trunk of a duskwood had grown tall enough to overtop most of the branches in his way. Steadying himself by grasping a nearby bough, he threw the stone in his hand high and hard, and dwindled again, sinking down as the stone was still in the air.

  When it crashed down in the brush behind Arashta, making her whirl around again with a little gasp of alarm to face nothing in the night, the shapechanger had become a nine-foot-tall man with jet black skin and burning red eyes. As he stepped forward, his crooked smile changed and his features sharpened into those of a handsome man wearing spiked black armor and a superior smile.

  "It would be best, Arashta Tharbrow, if you knelt to me." The soft, pleasantly menacing voice made the Zhentarim sorceress stiffen and brought her whirling around once more, hands raised to hurl deadly magic.

  The figure facing her stood unmoving except for his hands, which stroked and toyed endlessly with something smooth and white… a jawless human skull. Arashta's gaze came slowly, almost unwillingly up from the skull to meet the stranger's blazing ruby eyes, and though she feared she knew the answer, she had to gasp the question.

  "Wh-who are you?" As the words came out, she was already dropping to her knees in the grass and stones. He smiled in cold approval. "Most mortals know me as Bane." He left a little silence for her gasp of involuntary awe, and it came. The name seemed to echo and roll away from him when he uttered it. Something flickered across his face for a moment, but he stepped forward with a widening smile. "I've been watching you, lady sorceress, and have come to value you rather more highly than many of my mightier servants in the ranks of the Zhentarim. I have need of an agent who can serve me with true loyalty, and I believe you could be the one I'm seeking."

  Arashta's face was the white of sunspun clouds, and her eyes glittered. "M-me, Lord?" she gasped.

  "I can see you, in days soon to come," that soft voice continued, as the red eyes seemed to bore into her own, "as my highest servant in all Toril, a sorceress to overmatch the Witch-Queen of Aglarond, who rules more than one realm in my name and who need fear no man nor monster in this world."

  A jet black eyebrow lifted. "Will you serve me with utmost loyalty, to the death?"

  The sorceress stared at him for a moment, eyes huge and glistening in the moonlight, and whispered, "Lord Bane, I will."

  "Speak my name seldom," came the reply, a hint of iron in the melodious voice now. "And hearken. If you'd become my most powerful and trusted servant, prove your worth now. Set aside pursuit of this Randal Morn-his fate is of no consequence, whatever certain Zhentarim believe-and slay for me instead the mage Elminster of Shadowdale and his three companions: the Lady Sharantyr of Shadowdale and two Harpers called Belkram and Itharr." The jet black giant took a step away from her and thrust the skull into his chest, where it vanished without a sound. His hand was empty when he drew it out of himself again and asked, "Will you essay this for me?"

  Breathing as if she'd run a long way, Arashta licked her lips and replied, "Lord, I will."

  He did not quite smile, but the sorceress, heart racing and excitement rising in her throat like leaping fire, knew that he was pleased. "The four you must kill are not far from here, in a ruined keep beyond yonder hills."

  She looked southeast along the line of his pointing arm, marked a stony face on one slope she'd not forget or lose sight of, and quickly looked back to the god.

  "You've heard of the magic of Elminster," he said dryly. "These days, my Zhentarim seem to talk of little else." She nodded, too eager to be hesitant, and he added, "Though he is always dangerous, the Art left to Elminster is greatly weakened. Right now even Morgil, Master of Magelings"-he allowed a smile to touch his lips- "could match him in battle, spell for spell." Bane waved a hand, and four life-sized figures were suddenly standing around her. Arashta almost hurled a spell at them before she was sure they were images and not the folk themselves, snatched here by the god's magic. "Look well," he said, "from all sides, if you wish. Rise and be free, Arashta. Know these foes and slay them for me, and more power than you can dream of shall be yours."

  He hesitated, and then added softly, "It is not often I take a consort."

  She was still reeling from that thought when he added, "I shall be watching you do this for me. Know this: It is the end that I value, not the means. Use hirelings, tricks, whatever. Glory is a foolishness others value, not me."

  Sweat drenched Arashta in her excitement, and her body trembled unceasingly as she circled the four silent images as if in a dream, staring until she knew she'd never forget their looks.

  Then she turned to Bane and went to her knees again. "Lord," she whispered, "
I am ready."

  "Good," said the dark figure looming above her. With slow ease, one sable hand drew forth a dagger whose blade did not shine but was a deep black with stars swimming in it. Bane held one flat side of it out in front of her face.

  Trembling, Arashta put her lips to the dagger and found it cold. After a moment Bane took it gently away, and one cold black hand-he had long, pointed black fingernails like talons, she noticed-took hold of her left wrist.

  He drew the dagger down her forearm gently, slicing a short line so deftly that only a few drops welled out. A finger wiped them away, and finger and dagger both vanished into that black mouth, to emerge clean again.

  He handed her the dagger. It tingled in her fingers, cold and deadly, and the sorceress felt the chill force racing through her. "Always worship me thus," he commanded. "If I am not present to take the blood from you, consign it to a flame."

  Arashta swallowed. "Y-yes, Lord," she managed to say. "Always." One of his hands suddenly flowed, widened, and became a mirror that showed her the face of Arashta Tharbrow strangely changed. In her reflection, at least, her eyes glowed with black-and-purple fire. She gasped, and looked up at him in wonder.

  Bane gave her a wintry smile. "The mark of my power," he said. "It will soon fade." He raised a staying hand, turned away, and strode toward the trees. "Seek not to follow me," his voice came back to her, as soft and as clear as if his lips were by her ear, "but do as I have charged, without delay. The dagger you may keep."

  Arashta bowed her head. As she'd expected, when she straightened up again, he was gone.

  She stared down at the wickedly curved dagger in her hands. It was one piece of polished obsidian, like no other she'd seen before, its edges razor sharp. Wonderingly, she brought it to her lips again, and then held it up to the moon, panting in excitement. "Elminster shall die!" she told it fiercely, her vow echoing back from the ruins around her.