by Troy Denning
The towers were scattered among the great mines that had been the reason for Dekanter's existence in the days of Netheril. Now long played out, all that remained of the ancient workings were snowy dumps of waste rock and the yawning portals and abysmal shafts of the holes themselves. Even Melegaunt seemed to sense the melancholy insanity of the place. He walked among the ruins silently, inspecting each warped spire like a wandering son returned home to find his house occupied by another family.
When the bottom curve of the sun finally touched the distant saddle of Bleached Bones Pass, he kneeled in the shadow of the door tower and pressed his brow to the dark ground. He spoke a few syllables in some tongue Galaeron did not understand, then lifted his body and shook his head slowly. "The folly," he said. "The unbelievable folly."
When the tears began to roll down his cheeks, Vala went to his side and slipped a hand under his arm. "Is there time to try another tower?" she asked. "Every story can't be the same."
The thought seemed to cheer Melegaunt. He allowed her to pull him up, then started along a boulder-lined trail toward the window tower. "Yes, another tower would be good."
They had taken no more than a dozen steps when Galaeron noticed a trio of crows circling overhead. Instead of calling to each other in their usual raucous voices, the birds were unusually silent, like anglers afraid their voices might frighten the fish. "Stop."
Galaeron had barely spoken the word before Vala had her darksword in hand and Melegaunt behind her. "Where?" "I don't know," Galaeron said. "Here."
A half dozen paces up the trail, a pair of pointed ears appeared over the top of a horse-sized boulder. Vala spotted them instantly and gestured silently with her sword. Grousing under his breath, Melegaunt fetched something from his robe pocket, and Galaeron realized the emergence of the ears had been too convenient. Bugbears rarely made such foolish mistakes. "Melegaunt, wa-" He was too late. The wizard pointed a finger and spoke a single word, and a shadowy bolt of darkness drilled straight through the boulder. There was no thud or anguished roar or any other sound to suggest the attack had hit anything living. Rather, a slimy mauve face with a snout of tentacles rose up behind the adjacent snow bank, fixing Melegaunt with a white-eyed stare.
The wizard screamed once, then clutched at his eyes and crumpled to the ground.
"An illithid?" Even as Vala shrieked the question, she was flinging her darksword at the creature in a backhand flip. "Melegaunt said nothing about illithids!"
The blade pirouetted through the air and took the illithid's head off cleanly.
In the next instant, a dozen bugbears sprang from behind boulders, rock dumps, and snowdrifts to both sides of the trail. Galaeron pulled his sword from its scabbard with one hand and reached into his cloak pocket with the other. "Vala," the elf shouted, "sword!"
He tossed the sword toward her hilt-first, then pulled his other hand from his pocket and flung a pair of green leaves in the direction of the nearest bugbears. The brutes were huge, a full head taller than Vala's burly men and far broader across the shoulders, but with ugly batlike snouts and gleaming red eyes. Vala caught Galaeron's sword with her off hand and whirled the blade around to point at the charging beasts.
Galaeron uttered his incantation, but instead of feeling the magic flow into his body from the all-encompassing Weave, it surged up through his legs in a cold bolt. With a dozen screaming bugbears on the way, there was no time to be shocked. He simply waved his hand across the hillside, and a cloud of putrid brown miasma filled the air around the bugbears' heads. Four out of the first five creatures collapsed gagging. The fifth perished when Vala dived at its feet, then somersaulted between its legs and slashed Galaeron's magic blade across the front of its belly. Galaeron slowed the remaining beasts with a pinch of sand and a quick word of magic, sending two into a deep slumber. Vala toppled another with a knee slash, then caught a heavy axe swing against the flat of Galaeron's blade. The bugbear continued to push, confident its strength would simply collapse Vala's guard.
She thrust a hand out in the direction of the dead illithid, and her darksword came flying back into her grasp. She brought the black blade beneath her attacker's big belly, driving the point clear to its heart. Galaeron pointed at the bugbear nearest Vala. Again, the magic shot into him from the cold ground, and the shaft that leaped from his finger to tear open the bugbear's chest was as black as night.
Seeing they were still three paces away from Vala and unlikely to get any closer, the last two beasts turned to flee. There was no question of letting them escape, for their illithid companion made plain the identity of their masters. Galaeron blasted one down from behind with another magic bolt. Vala sprang after the other as it bounded over the edge of the hill, and a strangled howl echoed up the slope.
Galaeron used a pair of lightning bolts and a fireball to finish the bugbears he had incapacitated with his earlier spells. He felt the same surge of cold magic when he cast the first lightning bolt, but found that by concentrating on the living Weave all around him, he could create spells normally Still, Vala returned from her trip down the hill to find him shivering with cold; it seemed to be welling up inside him, as though the marrow in his bones had turned to shadow.
"Something wrong?" She returned his sword. "You look like that's the first time you ever killed anything."
"Would that it were." Galaeron pulled his cloak more tightly around him. He turned to face Melegaunt, who was lying glassy eyed and drooling on the ground. "I'm fine, but what about him?"
Vala considered him for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, at least he saw his towers."
CHAPTER TEN
25 Nightal, the Year of the Unstrung Harp
When Galaeron climbed down into the rocky basin where they had made camp the previous night, he found Vala lying next to her unsheathed sword, staring into its glassy blade with a vacant expression. On an elf s visage, her arched brow and wistful smile would have suggested a not-altogether-unhappy loneliness, but he was not sure what the look signified on a human face. His first reaction was one of envy, as he himself had again passed the entire night without a moment of reverie. Then he remembered: humans did not have the Reverie. "Vala?" Galaeron reached out to shake her.
Her hand came up and caught his wrist in a lightning-fast trap block. He barely managed to pull free and fling himself backward before her dark-sword cleaved the air where he had been kneeling. Galaeron somersaulted over a shoulder and pulled his own sword to block. Vala rolled to her hip, her pale eyes vacant and dangerous. "Vala!" Galaeron called. "It's me-the elf…" Her brow knitted, then reason returned to her eyes. She scowled at the weapon in Galaeron's hand.
"What's that for?" If Vala noticed that she was pointing with her own sword, her face showed no sign, 'Trying to kill me in my sleep?" "You weren't sleeping. Your eyes were open." This seemed to stir her memory. "That's right… I was visiting." Now she scowled. "And you interrupted me?" "Visiting?"
"The Granite Tower." She jammed the darksword into its scabbard. "Dream walking. You know." Galaeron shook his head. "Is this like the Reverie?"
"Not really." Vala glanced eastward, where a brightening band of gray horizon foretold the coming dawn. "You didn't wake me for my watch."
Galaeron shrugged. "I couldn't rest. 1 thought you might as well."
"Thanks, but you should have tried. You look like hell." More gently, she explained," "Visiting" is my word for it. Over the years, every darksword seems to inherit a few foibles from its family Burlen's hums in combat, Dexon's talks in its sleep." "And yours Visits'?"
"Spying might be a better term." Vala's cheeks darkened. "It likes to, uh, show me what's happening in the bedchambers of the Granite Tower." Galaeron raised his brow. "It's not something I like."
"Of course not," Galaeron said, enjoying a rare opportunity to bait her. "Though you did seem to be smiling."
"I was watching Sheldon sleep." Though there was no indignation in Vala's voice, her tone grew solemn enough that Galaeron regretted chiding her
. "He's my son."
"Can you two not be quiet?" rumbled Melegaunt. The wizard sat up, palms pressed to his eyes. "What happened to my head?" "Illithid," Vala said. "With the bugbears."
Melegaunt pulled his hands away. "Then the phaerimm are a step ahead." He ran his fingers through his dusky hair and hefted himself to his feet. "Well leave as soon as I've read the day"
They gathered their gear, then climbed to the rim of their campsite and stood in the light of the rising sun. Melegaunt kneeled between Vala and Galaeron as before.
"A day of meetings," he announced, "but nothing to fear. So long as we are cautious." "How cautious?" asked Galaeron.
"Bad things in the mountains." Melegaunt gestured westward toward Bleached Bones Pass. "But the shadow way looked clear to the north. Good news, is it not?"
Vala and Galaeron eyed each other with looks of dread, then Vala asked, "How bad were the things in the pass?"
"Shadow dragons are fearsome creatures, even in a world of light," said Melegaunt. "More importantly, though, there is speed to consider. The phaerimm will not find it easy to breach Evereska's mythal, but if we give them too long, they will discover a way." Galaeron gestured the wizard forward.
Melegaunt cast a last, wistful look at the twisted towers of Dekanter, then spoke the words of his shadow walking spell. The world around them grew dull and featureless, with a jagged ridge of purple mountain shapes to the left and a subdued morning glare to the right Galaeron felt instantly cold and isolated, and saw by the disquiet in Vala's eyes she felt the same.
Melegaunt donned the cold gloom like a favored cloak, letting out a sigh of satisfaction and setting off at a near dash. Vala motioned Galaeron to follow, then fell into position behind him.
"How did you two manage the battle without my help?" Melegaunt's voice was overly innocent. "With a mind flayer present, I imagine the fight was a difficult one."
"Not particularly," said Vala. "I killed it first. Galaeron took care of the rest with his magic."
'Truly?" Melegaunt peered back over his shoulder. "And all your spells worked well?"
"I'm hardly a magic-user of your caliber," he answered carefully. The wizard's interest seemed to suggest certain expectations, and Galaeron found himself less than eager to confirm them. "They worked as well as usual."
"They did the job." Melegaunt looked forward again, his brow lowered in disappointment. "That's what counts."
Galaeron resisted the urge to keep from demanding an explanation of exactly what the wizard had done to him. The question would give away more than he cared to, and he had already seen that Melegaunt was not someone who yielded his own secrets easily. They traveled onward in silence, twisting and winding their way through a maze of hill shapes. The jagged silhouettes of the mountains always remained to their left, but otherwise Galaeron saw no rhyme or reason to their route. Melegaunt turned into the light as often as he turned away, followed shadow troughs as often as he walked through hill shapes, went down as often as up. As the day passed-or what passed for day in the Fringe-the band of radiance to the right rose higher in the sky, then divided into irregular shapes and scattered itself across the landscape.
When mountain shapes started to rise on all sides, Galaeron realized they were climbing into the Greypeaks. He quickly lost all sense of direction. In the Fringe, everything felt flat beneath his feet. When he thought they were ascending, they were descending, and when he thought they were going around, they were going through.
Soon, the shapes turned ghostly and blue, and Melegaunt began to hesitate before picking directions. When the silhouettes grew transparent and gray; Melegaunt started to mumble and backtrack. Finally, the shadows vanished altogether, and Melegaunt stopped and began to turn in circles. "What's wrong?" Galaeron asked. "Are we lost?"
"Lost?" Melegaunt spun in a slow circle, his eyes scanning the featureless gray fog around them. "I'm afraid so." Galaeron groaned. "And you can't cancel the spell."
"It wouldn't be wise," said Melegaunt. "We'd probably return to our own Faerun, but if I took a wrong turn somewhere…" "What if we just went toward that campfire?" asked Vala. "Fire?" Melegaunt asked. "Where?"
She pointed into the gray distance, but Galaeron could see no sign of fire.
Melegaunt slipped past him and peered over her shoulder, then smiled and clapped her back. "Well done."
Galaeron retreated two steps and peered over Vala's shoulder, then saw two tiny ribbons of yellow and white flickering around each other. "You're sure that's fire?"
"That's what it looks like from the Fringe," said Melegaunt.
Within half a dozen steps, the ribbons expanded into a small circle of flames surrounded by a whirling gray haze. Melegaunt motioned for Vala and Galaeron to ready their swords, then led them into the radiance of the campfire.
The flames turned instantly to their proper orange, and a mewling voice cried out in surprise.
"By the One!" On the other side of the fire rose a pudgy little man in a snow-blanketed cloak and hood, his pink hands held high to demonstrate they held no weapons. "Cause me no harm, and you shall have all I own… little as that may be!"
Melegaunt motioned the fellow to lower his hands. "You have nothing to fear from us, so long as we have nothing to fear from you."
The little man glanced from the husky wizard to his two well-armored companions and did not lower his hands. "Why would three so mighty need fear a humble beggar like myself?"
Though the man's cloak was travel worn and his beard disheveled, he hardly looked the part of a beggar. His face was round and soft, his belly ample, his eyes shifty. He had made his camp in a small side gulch high in the Greypeaks, where a tangled thicket of black spruce offered at least some protection from a driving snowstorm blowing in from the east-the cause, Galaeron suspected, of the strange paling that had forced Melegaunt to abandon the shadow way. A single sad-eyed mount stood tied behind a lean-to of dead logs, its saddle and bags tossed carelessly inside the shelter. The horse's expression seemed as down-trodden as that of its master, but its coat gleamed from daily currycombing, and- if anything-it looked overfed. Melegaunt studied the camp, his eye running from the fire to the lean-to to the horse as though everything were exactly where he expected.
Continuing to hold his hands over his head, the little man gestured to the log he had been sitting on. "You are more than welcome to share my fire." He started to close his mouth as though he were finished speaking, then suddenly looked surprised and added, "I couldn't stop you anyway"
"We wouldn't want to impose on you." Melegaunt looked around. "I'm a little turned around in this snow. If you'll point the way to Thousand Faces, well be on our way."
"Over the pass?" The little man shook his head vigorously. "You can't, not here." This drew a scowl from Vala. "You think to stop us?"
The little man's eyes widened. "I d-don't-but even you three are no match for so many b-beholders."
"Beholders?" Melegaunt sounded less surprised than disappointed. "How many?"
"Enough." The little man shook his hooded head in despair. "My luck has been a curse all my life. First it was the mind flayers at Bleached Bones, then the Zhentarim at Dawn Pass, and now it is the beholders. Who knows what it will be at the High Gap? I tell you, we are not going to find a safe place to cross until we are past the Far Forest!"
"Perhaps not," said Melegaunt. "Let me have a look at these beholders. I sometimes have a way with them."
The little man raised his brow 'Truly? If you can get us across these accursed mountains, I would be forever in your debt-no doubt because I seldom repay a favor." A frown of dismay flashed across his face, but he cautiously lowered his hands and bowed to the companions. "Malik el Sami yn Nasser at your service."
Khelben paced at the foot of Imesfor's bed, two steps then turn, two steps then look, two steps then turn. To the mage's eye, the elf looked no better than the day he had arrived, save that he no longer had an illithid tentacle probing the hole in his skull. The lord's ga
ze was glassy and vacant, with a raccoon's mask of purple bruises ringing his eyes, and his sunken cheeks were as pallid as ivory. An inert tongue lolled out of his mouth with no indication it would ever speak again, much less soon.
Khelben took two impatient steps, turned, stopped, then looked to the aradoness leaning over the stricken lord. "You've been with him for nearly two days. When will he speak?"
The elf priestess fixed Khelben with a black-eyed glare. "Your concern for your friend is touching. Bear in mind that it is just that concern that will keep his spirit in his body."
"Lord Imesfor and I have been friends nearly five centuries," growled Khelben. "He knows how I feel about him- and I know how he feels about Evereska. If he knew what was happening there-
"He does know," said the priestess, Angharradh Odaeyns. "Isn't that why you're trying to wake him?"
Khelben gave her a black look. "You know what I mean. If he knew we couldn't get near the place…" He let the sentence trail off, then ran his palm into the canopy post so hard he shook the whole bed. "Cloudblast!" Laeral slipped a hand through the crook of his arm. "Perhaps we should try another tact, Khelben." She pulled him to the side of the bed opposite Angharradh, then used a cantrip to pull a chair across the room for him. "It was you Gervas came to see. Perhaps if you-"
"Lady Blackstaff, I don't think that wise." Angharradh started around the bed. "A human touch is not the same. There is no emotional tie."
"Really?" Laeral fixed the elf with an icy stare. "Then why did he come to Khelben instead of Queen Amlaruil?"
