Ed Greenwood - All Shadows Fled

"Master?" an anxious male voice called. "Master?"

At the lack of reply, its owner was emboldened enough to part the tent with the rod that bore the hand of a dead man, and peer within. In eerie silence, four human skulls rose to face him. Radiances deep within the rod on the table and the crystal ball atop its staff winked in unison, faster, and faster…

Prudently, the apprentice withdrew, letting the hangings fall.

"Craven dullard," one of the skulls murmured as it sank down to the carpets again. Thuruthein Tlar had been busy in the idle time he'd had earlier this day, when the tent was up and his master was busy setting the wards around the camp. Now his time was all gone.

The crystal sphere flashed a sudden scarlet, and another of the skulls began to moan.

"Where, by the beard of Elminster, are we running to, anyway?" Belkram gasped as they topped a rise and headed down a fern-choked gully. "What makes one part of this old forest any safer than another?"

"Ask her," Itharr grunted as, side by side, they rounded a riven stump. He jerked his hand back at Sharantyr, who was watching their rear, ready blade in hand. "She's t-"

The rest of his words were lost in a sudden rush from the side of the gully, a plunging fury of flashing talons and dark hairy bulk and gleaming fangs.

Belkram was thrown off his feet to crash heavily through thorns and dead branches, and heard Sharantyr scream as she charged. He snatched at his blade as something large and dark and hairy clawed him… something that was crouched atop Itharr, raking its talons and surging forward to bite down at the ranger beneath it with a horrible wet crunching sound that made Belkram wince as his blade finally grated free of its scabbard. Too late.

Tower of Mortoth, Sembia, Flamerule 30

The fire was so cold, so utterly… cold. Its chill made her limbs tremble, helplessly and endlessly, as it rushed through her and on around the web. Irendue gasped at its icy searing, feeling her teeth chatter uncontrollably as she stared at the all-too-familiar walls and ceiling of the privy chamber… and wished she could die.

The one called Bralatar had promised her death… after he and his companion were finished with her. She could still feel the cold slime of his tentacles slithering into her ear and out her nose, and the casual way in which he'd pointed out, as she gagged and wept, that simply expanding his tentacle at this moment would cause her head to explode like a rotten fruit, giving him his most favorite of meals… still-warm human.

Irendue swallowed, sick at the thought, and almost let her head sink back into the endless white fire. It would be so easy to just surrender…

Aye, surrender and die in slow, screaming agony while the two shapeshifting monsters gloated over her…

Irendue swallowed again, and looked beside her at the master, hanging slack-jawed and unseeing, virtually a skeleton, his hair falling out in clumps from a shriveled scalp. Mortoth had been vigorous and strong, brusque even, but when he took her to his bed, he'd shaken with passion long pent up… She looked again at his shriveled ruin and shuddered at what he'd become.

It was the first time she'd been free to see or think about anything without one of the shapeshifters ordering her about. The one called Bralatar had been careless in his haste, so confident of her trembling fear that he'd thrust her back into the web of fire and simply pushed at her face as he turned away. But her head had passed between two strands of the enchanted everfire, and so remained free.

His eagerness to be ahunting had let Irendue Nuentar, most favored but least powerful of the apprentices of Mortoth the Mighty, keep her wits, but she could take no advantage of that while she trembled in the grip of the spell. She was caught in some sort of gate that took the two monsters to and from their home. Even more chilling than the thoughts that her life-and that of the master and Turnold and Lareth-kept the gate open, that it sucked energy out of them to do its work, was the thought of how many more shapeshifters might dwell at the other end of that gate… free to spill into Faerun at any time, to take the shapes of kings and merchant princes and wizards alike, and ruthlessly rise to rule all.

And what if they disagreed, as men always seem to, and fell to war? They could change shapes like flitting leaves to suit their purposes. The men, so helpless by comparison, would fall in their thousands and stain all Toril dark crimson with their spilled blood… She had to get free.

So much depended on her. She simply must win free of this evil spell, but how?

Even now, one shapeshifter must be tiring of the hangings and statues and little carved things Mortoth had gathered in his long life of sorcery and be turning back through the labyrinthine ring-shaped house, toward this tower. The other must be hunting down the three grim rangers she'd seen him watching on their cautious creepings through an ancient forest.

The ball! The master's scrying crystal! She'd never dared do this for fear of Mortoth's wrath, but… She looked at the thing of bones beside her, then looked away again.

Slowly and carefully, Irendue lifted her head and called, "Buldimer! To me!"

There was a thrumming sound from the unseen doorway behind her, and Irendue's heart leapt. It pleased Mortoth to give names to the items he'd personally enchanted, that he might summon them in need. With this evil spell linking her to the master, it seemed the items would answer her call!

"To me!" she called again, putting all her will behind it this time. The sphere of crystal sailed into view around the fiery web, flying smoothly through the air to come scudding to a stop in the air before her, a little to one side-the master's side.

She could see into its depths, where there was a forest and tiny running figures, and the flash of swords, and… a bear that grew a human face and hands. One of those hands rose from a fold of pelt holding something she knew well: the master's wand of pain.

She'd seen him use it on the cat that prowled the garden, and on Lareth once. She'd even felt its peculiar burning sting herself when she'd disagreed with Mortoth on what beast shape he'd change her into, and what use of her he'd make then. She'd never forgotten its lash, or the softly spoken word the master had used to make it hurt her so.

She spoke that word now. "Anamauthree," she said, softly but clearly, staring into the crystal, and feeling a sudden surge in the white fire around her as the crystal flickered.

The only flesh the wand was touching as she spoke was the grasping hand of the creature called Bralatar-and so, of course, its magic was visited upon him. She saw him stiffen and stagger. From out of the forest beyond, something came roaring. Something blue-white and deadly, which washed across the crystal with blinding fury, sending out a lance of light through the web beside her.

The endless fire faltered for a moment-and with a sob of desperation, Irendue flung herself forward through a moment of twisting, churning agony… and fell free.

She'd never thought falling on her face on the cold, hard privy chamber floor would be such a welcome thing… even with the sick, weak feeling in her right arm. She looked at it, shuddered, and bit her lip as fresh tears came.

Her once smooth, shapely arm was now wrinkles of skin over bones, from forearm to shoulder… a thing of death. She lifted it, and watched it move normally. She flexed the fingers of her unblemished hand, beyond the ruin, and watched them respond as usual. She touched the floor with one… and felt nothing.

Irendue swallowed and looked back up at the web of fire, a thing of stars through the tears on her lashes. The master hung there more dead than alive, and Turnold and Lareth, too.