Cloak of Shadows asota-2

by Ed Greenwood

  The cloak of interwoven spells was more complex than it needed to be, and far from stable. But then, no Malaugrym had ever worn invulnerable armor into battle, and these three arrogant younglings had no right to be the first.

  The shimmering and dark singing of the completed cloaks mounted into the air, and Milhvar was pleased to see that at least Taernil had the wits to look momentarily impressed.

  Folding his arms, Milhvar of the Malaugrym stepped forward and cast the "secret spell" thrice, linking each cloak to its wearer through the shed blood.

  "You are ready," he said calmly. "Stand together, so my next spell can take you all as one."

  "Take us where, exactly?" Taernil snapped, trying to assert mastery of the situation.

  "To a gate that links Blackstaff Tower with Evermeet, most likely," Milhvar replied gravely, "though there is some small chance that you'll be drawn to one of the other gates-we know of at least three-that open into Blackstaff Tower from other places in Faerun and elsewhere. Try not to get lost."

  "Don't patronize us, old one!" Jarthree snapped.

  "Oh, you'd be in far worse straits, were I ever to do that," Milhvar said softly, and was rewarded by seeing Balatar blanch and Jarthree looking just a little unsure of what insult she should hurl back at him.

  While she was still sorting through those she had ready, he brought his hands together with a smile, whispered the word that launched the gate-link spell, and said benevolently. "Go now. Bring glory to the Malaugrym."

  Daggerdale, Kythorn 19

  "I hope the horses'll fare all right," Itharr said anxiously, watching them trot purposefully away into the woods.

  "They'll be fine," Sylune assured him. "One of my woodland friends is watching over them."

  "Don't worry about them," Belkram said, shouldering the two largest saddlebags, the ones holding the food. "Spare some worry for us. We're the ones undertaking a madwoman's mission into the very fortress of our foes. It'd be crazy if these villains dwelt in Faerun, and didn't have mighty magic and the power to change shapes at will. As it is, it's sheer carve-our-tombstones insanity time!"

  Sharantyr sighed. "Was he always this cheerful?" she asked Itharr. "Before he fell on his head, I mean."

  Itharr blinked. "The first time, or the second?"

  "Bah!" Belkram said. "Dost thou respect my trenchant view of the whelming you've undertaken? Nay! Well, then. Ready? Away!"

  "That's more what he was famous for, back at Twilight Hall," Itharr said. "The bold rush into oblivion, I think they called it, in tactics lectures."

  Sharantyr looked at him, wrinkling her brow. "You had lectures at Twilight Hall?"

  "Just to separate the feasts," Belkram called back to her. "And the org-"

  "Ahem!" Itharr called loudly. "Hey, there! Brave companion-hoy! Come back here! The lady with the blade is here, remember?"

  " 'Twould be best, I think," Sylune said quietly from the handsome ranger's breast pocket, "if you calmed down, Belk, and did just that."

  Belkram looked down. "Thank you," he said quietly. "For the advice?"

  "No, for calling me 'Belk' instead of 'Harper boy' or the like. It's… good to hear."

  "My apologies, Belkram," the stone said. "Chide me as I chide thee, if I seem too high and mighty. It was the way of things in speech, when I was young. Elders spoke down, and others looked up." Her voice became dry. "It seems the world has changed."

  "As always, lady," he muttered as they rejoined Itharr and Sharantyr. The three stood looking at each other, bent under the weight of their saddlebags, and then down at the softly singing blade in the lady ranger's hand.

  "Ready?" she asked softly.

  "A moment, if you please," Sylune's voice came to them. "It would be best if you kept me a secret until I am most needed. So speak not to me, or of me, whenever possible." "Aye, good thought. Agreed. Yes," the living three said, voices mingling, and then Sharantyr asked again, "Ready?"

  "Away!" they shouted together, and the blue blade flashed. The tingling that had been rising around them took them all, and they were… gone.

  The lopsided bridge looked as lonely and forgotten as ever, for a time. And then dark shapes came loping down through the trees in some haste, golden slanted eyes looking balefully this way and that, and padded across the bridge, sniffing suspiciously.

  Abruptly one barked and headed along an unseen trail, shoulders hunched and moving fast. The others poured after it, picking up the scent themselves, only to circle to an uncertain halt and lift their heads in puzzlement. They cast around and then loped up the hill to the manor, only to come reluctantly back down the hill, following three scents, to the same spot.

  One wolf rose on its hind legs and then seemed to glow, gray furred and tall, rising into… a naked man. He peered around at the bright morning in Daggerdale and shrugged. The wolf next to him rose into the shape of a long-tressed woman and looked around in turn.

  "The horses ran free," she said in irritated tones. "I scryed them to be sure the humans weren't with them, cloaked in magic, but-nothing!"

  "I know that," the man said, growing wings. "We'd best take to the skies and look again. Trails can't just end like that. They must have flown away on something!"

  "What's that, over there?" one of the wolves asked, growing a human mouth and arm to speak and point with.

  "Maybe they're riding it!" said another, and there was a general flurry of feathers into falcon shape. The Malaugrym leapt into the sky, heading north to where the distant, sinuous shape was flying.

  It was unfortunate for some of the younger, weaker kin that the flying beast they'd seen was a wyvern, and a hungry one at that.

  But these were dark days in Faerun, and every shadow held danger.

  13

  Guests of the Blackstaff

  Blackstaff Tower, Waterdeep, Kythorn 19

  It was a dull morning outside the windows of Black-staff Tower. Storm clouds hung purple and heavy over Mount Waterdeep, and pearly gray sea mists rolled in under them from the harbor. The clop of hooves echoed up from the street below, but the usual cries, rumbles, and other incessant noises of the City of Splendors were muffled. It sounded as if the city were half-asleep.

  It was always quiet inside Blackstaff Tower, the velvety, waiting quiet of shielding magic that robbed footfalls of their echoes and shouts of their resonance, and gave to everything a heavy, unbroken hush. Many an apprentice had fallen asleep while studying in the tower, and many an experiment had ended explosively without disturbing the occupants of neighboring chambers.

  Laeral hoped this wouldn't be one of those experiments. With Khelben away in Elturel, sitting in spell-court over a long and entangled dispute between two feuding archmages, Blackstaff Tower felt empty, like a throne without its king. Laeral was acutely aware that no one but she was on hand to repair things if her two senior apprentices really botched their work.

  Tath was overly shy and almost as overly nervous, but his painstaking check-things-and-check-them-again safety precautions had probably prevented a dozen minor disasters thus far. Baerista, on the other hand, was the impulsive, even reckless, let's-try-it sort. Her occasional flashes of brilliance were the stuff of which real advances in Art were wrought. For the first time in decades, Laeral thought that apprentices might craft something of true worth in the tower, advancing what was known to all workers with magic, and not merely go over well-known ground one more laborious time.

  Wherefore the Lady Mage of Waterdeep was quite willing to work late at their sides, the night through if need be-and she just had.

  Laeral stifled a yawn as she saw the morning sun climb past the windows, and turned to peer again at the flickering, shadowy edges of the shields Baerista had devised and Tath was struggling to control.

  A strange, leaping… well, growth of sparks and bubbling spinsmoke was clawing and rebounding around a small sphere of swirling green-gold radiance in the open end of the laboratory, the limits of the wild magic area Laeral had called into being.
Normally, Khelben forbade such evocations anywhere in the city, let alone in the tower, but Art is not advanced without making exceptions. Laeral had swallowed once or twice and gone ahead with it.

  Now her apprentices, who'd not long ago been safely in the realm of excitedly discussing the possible, probable, and theoretical, were elbow deep in a very real, very dangerous, and possibly runaway experiment. Having created the wild magic field, Laeral could do nothing to control it. Had she not been one of Mystra's Chosen, but merely a mortal archmage of mighty powers, she would have stood no chance of reliably and safely banishing it. She stood watching silently, awaiting the disaster that might all too easily come.

  Soon, perhaps, for the wild magic was tirelessly trying to spread, and Baerista, teeth bared in a fierce grin of concentration, was trying to keep it enveloped in the shields she'd raised, without letting it get free or having the shields collapse. Tath was trying to keep Baerista's struggles to direct the lively shield-stuff here and there from tearing the shields asunder, and was just barely holding his own.

  The shield was an amorphous area in which bolts of magical force endlessly and chaotically whirled about, something like the blade barrier used by certain priests, wherein blades of all sorts whirl and flash about. The unique feature of the shield was the tight turns and collisions of the bolts along its edges, which caused a humming, crackling energy discharge that seemed to repel the chaos of wild magic. Laeral wasn't sure just how this worked, and she knew as well as any of the gods that neither Baerista or Tath had more than hazy theories to explain it, either.

  But that wasn't stopping the shield from working, after a fashion. "Steady!.. Steady…" Baerista was snapping, sweat standing out on her forehead as she stared at the shield, stretching it by redirecting individual forcebolts. She'd almost completed the englobement now, shaping the shield into a sphere that lacked only a small area of coverage to be complete, but Laeral had more than a hunch that the wild magic would explosively resist being completely surrounded, or the shield itself would collapse through ever-increasing instability.

  As if to confirm her fears, the hum of the shield began to climb in pitch, rising steadily into a scream. Tath blinked away sweat and hissed, "Slow down, Baera!" It was the first time he'd dared speak so, and betrayed just how nervous he was about the shield's survival. His arms were trembling as he conjured spell-hooks and murmured wardings, struggling to hold the flashing webwork of bolts together.

  Not good. Laeral looked to the ceiling to be sure the vent hatch to the roof was unlatched, so any explosion could roar skyward and not burst out sideways to hurl fragments of Blackstaff Tower into nearby buildings. Satisfied, she glanced again at the windows and murmured the word that brought plates of stone and of metal sliding across them, walling out the world. It was crucial that nothing disturb them now.

  A closet door swung noiselessly open somewhere in the cellars far beneath Blackstaff Tower, causing an alarm to flash. Ushard of Athkatla frowned at it in annoyance and passed a hand over the sphere, causing it to wink out. Elminster or one of the more restless wizards of the Alliance come visiting again, no doubt. He muttered a word and looked at the scrying stone in time to see Rylard of Neverwinter cross the chamber, waving merrily at Ushard, and vanish toward the stairs, followed by a pair of patrician, gray-bearded master mages of that city whom Ushard hadn't been introduced to. They nodded impassively in his direction and followed.

  Well, if they'd come to talk to Khelben, they were going to be right out of luck. Too tiggarty bad, and all that. Ushard shrugged and turned back to the forty-third volume of Pelmurt's diaries. In the long and yawn-inducing account of the eighth magefair, Ushard was sure crafty old Pelmurt had hidden some clue as to just how he had opened The Door Obler Had Forgotten and got into The Lost Library of Funderdelve, where Eltaran Earthshaker and six other powerful mages of Netheril had stored their spells.

  But where was the clue? Was it in the catalog of names given as winners of the illusion-Grafting contest, in which six names appeared, but only four prizes had been awarded? Or was it in the description of the victory feast that followed, with its wealth of attention to smells, colors, and shapes of the food served?

  Hmmm. "Blurturt," Ushard said rudely, uttering the ancient Sword Coast obscenity with crisp gusto, and drummed his fingers on the desk top. It was here on these few pages somewhere, he just knew it, but going from a certain inner feeling to finding and opening that fabled door was a journey that mages had failed to make long before Ushard had seen the route.

  Blurturt indeed. Ushard bent forward to read the all-too-familiar passages again, hoping that somehow what he was seeking would leap up and grab him by the throat.

  Of course, even lowly apprentices should be careful what they hope for.

  Had Ushard watched the image in the scrying stone an instant longer-as he was supposed to, for it dimmed only when the closet door that had activated it closed again-he'd have seen the spectral doomguard emerge from the door frame and follow the two master mages. And he'd have known that they weren't what they seemed to be.

  Had Ushard been attending to the scroll-copying he'd been assigned to do, he would have noticed the glowing globe over his desk bob and dim for the briefest of moments, and known that the dumbwaiter had been called down from beside the desk (where it was holding his evening snack of mulled cider, smoked oysters, and a melted-cheese-sliced-pickles-and-mustard bun-now cold because he'd forgotten them) to the nether regions.

  Had he cared about welcoming uninvited guests and summoning Laeral to receive them, as he was supposed to do, Ushard would have wondered why they hadn't come up the stairs, passing through any of the various detection fields and screening spells, and wondered about the eccentricities of six-foot-tall mages preferring to somehow fold themselves into a square box about two feet long on a side to ascend into the tower instead.

  And had he possessed half the brain he thought he did, Ushard would have slapped every alarm he could lay hands on when the dumbwaiter's door opened by itself to reveal a very squashed bun and a complete lack of both oysters and cider tankard. As it was, he glanced up, frowned, and said "Damned ghosts. Why can't they go bother the girls? At least they'll scream."

  He'd actually turned back to his book, whistling the melody of "She Was Only A Mermaid In Waterdeep Harbor" between his teeth-badly off-key-when it struck him that something odd might be going on.

  A moment later, he concluded that something most definitely was, as his book erupted into a pair of steely talons that shot up and grasped him by the throat, propelling him firmly backward away from the alarms.

  His back arched painfully, Ushard of Athkatla fought for breath, choking and flailing his arms futilely about, flapping hands that might one day hurl spells to humble all known Faerun… or might not. The gods weren't telling.

  An instant later, the chair and Ushard overbalanced and crashed to the floor together, but the talons merely closed, tearing out the apprentice's throat. His body bounced and flopped once as everything faded, and then his eyes brightened. All that rhapsodizing about frog salad! The name of the frog was really… But he had no throat to speak, and there was no one to hear, and he was sinking into darkness that rushed in from all sides, and-

  "I believe that melody, properly sung, goes like this," an icy voice told the unhearing apprentice. But a second voice interrupted the speaker with an urgent, " 'Ware, Taernil! Behind you!"

  Rylard of Neverwinter was rapidly ceasing to look like himself and more like Taernil of the Malaugrym, even before the intruder spun around to face the spectral guardian rising from the underside of the dumbwaiter. The box was rising up its shaft despite its open door.

  "Stop that thing!" Taernil snarled, meaning the box, but Balatar's arm grew into a spike that rushed across the study with impressive speed to pin the guardian to the wall.

  "Hah! Die, bone-bag!" Balatar laughed, enjoying himself immensely-and then his laughter twisted into something else.

  If the gu
ardian had been solid and tangible, it would have perished on the spot. Instead, it merely let the Malaugrym's arm pass through it and coalesced around that arm, eating away at the flesh with its chilling unlife as it extended its own ghostly arms into overlong scything blades and began to hack at Balatar.

  He howled and shrank back but couldn't get out of the guardian's reach without sacrificing the large part of his body that he'd poured into making the spike. Though he was retracting that spike as fast as he dared, the undead thing was riding on it, refusing to let go, and eating away at it steadily.

  Balatar son of Alcarga had never felt such agony before, nor had he felt the cold clutch of real fear. He collapsed, shaking, and Taernil looked at him in disgust. Then he met the gaze of the third cloaked Malaugrym and snarled, "Come on! If we tarry here to help him, the whole tower'll be roused and come down on us. Through this door!"

  Jarthree stared at him, then down at Balatar, and then lifted her head and nodded, shedding the last of the dignified white beard and stately dignity of a master mage of Neverwinter. She frowned as they went through the door together, leaving a sobbing Balatar to his fate. He began to shriek and curse them as they went, and Jarthree jerked her head back at the noise and complained, "I thought doomguards couldn't do that."

  "It's not a doomguard. More a watchghost, I think." Taernil frowned as the curses behind them died into incoherent moans, and then shrugged and grew two tentacled arms to probe ahead of him as he crossed a darkened parlor-where a trio of driftglobes helpfully brightened into soft life and then faded again as they hurried past-pulled open another door, and mounted a circular stone stair. "There're probably other strange things ahead of us," he added helpfully. "Besides Khelben, I mean."