Ed Greenwood - All Shadows Fled

"Die!" Belkram roared in fury, forgetting all thoughts of stealth and nearby wizards as he thrust his blade repeatedly into the shapeshifter's hairy, many-taloned bulk. If only it were still silver, he thought fiercely as he drove his steel home once more and struck something hard within, making the Malaugrym quiver.

It snarled and shrank away, and Belkram lunged after it, catching sight of Sharantyr's blade flashing on its far flank. The lady ranger's blade glistened as it rose and fell with a green-hued, translucent slime that must be the monster's blood.

"Right," Belkram snarled, "let's see all of your blood, beast! All of it!"

His blade thrust down to its hilt into the shifting bulk before him, and the Malaugrym recoiled, drawing flailing tentacles back into itself in struggling spasms of pain.

As it receded, it left Itharr behind, writhing weakly on the ground, his lifeblood drenching the moss and dead leaves around him. The Harper's mouth worked, and his eyes were blood-red; Belkram knew his friend was sorely wounded.

Delude yourself not, Belkram told himself sourly, he's dying.

Frantically he chopped and slashed at the shapeshifter, hearing Sharantyr's sobbing as she did the same thing. Her hair swirling around her, and she leapt high to throw all her weight behind her blade.

Something blazed with sudden fire behind her. A rolling wave of force, like a wave she'd once waded through on the beaches of Sembia, took her behind the knees and flung her forward onto the Shadowmaster.

Gray flesh opened up around her, seeking to suck her down in and smother her. Sharantyr screamed in fear and fury, clawed her way clear, and wriggled off the beasts's far side.

She came up wild-eyed, with blade in hand and breast heaving-and gaped in astonishment at a cold-eyed man in the robes of a Red Wizard, who stood over Itharr with staff in hand, glaring at a rainbow-hued radiance in the air around him.

"Must all spells go wild?" he snarled, leveling his staff in both hands as if it were a lance. Sparks raced down its length, and from its end burst brilliantly blue butterflies.

Belkram was still cutting at the heaving, roiling tentacled mass that was the Malaugrym, but trying at the same time to keep watch on this newcomer. The shapeshifter rose into a pillar of flesh, reached spade-shaped arms toward the Red Wizard, slimmed those arms into needlelike pincers…

The Red Wizard said something soft and brief-and fire seemed to be born within the Malaugrym, hurling its flesh and tentacles apart in an eruption of hissing steam.

The riven body fell back onto scorched moss, dwindling into something that was almost human. Something faceless and sprawled, which blazed with many small fires.

Shar faced the Red Wizard across their smoke and asked in a shaking voice, "Why… why did you aid us?"

The wizard's cold eyes met hers, and Sharantyr was suddenly aware of how easily he could destroy them. Even with magic fraying wild, he bore several wands at his belt, something longer and more impressive sheathed like a sword at his hip, and the staff. Lights winked here and there along its carved length, and were answered by glows from among the many rings on his fingers. The Knight swallowed and stepped back, raising her sword. Belkram moved to her side, his blade also ready.

The Red Wizard smiled thinly. "Another day we might be foes to the death," he said in a voice strong with confidence and power. "But against such a one as this…"

The sorcerer gestured down at the collapsing ashes that had been the Malaugrym, and went on, "Against such a one, all must stand together-or no man in Faerun will know freedom, in the end."

He did something to his staff, and a glass vial appeared in the air above Sharantyr's hand. As it came to rest gently in her palm, he bowed to them both and turned away.

The flash of his departure lit up the rune graven in the glass. "A healing potion of the utmost power," Sharantyr said wonderingly. She went to her knees beside Itharr.

Blood was bubbling at his lips with every breath. She unstoppered the vial with infinite care and tipped it deep within, feeling his teeth tighten on the glass as a sudden spasm racked him.

"May the gods ascend to their rightful places, so that we can pray to them once more," she said feelingly, holding the vial firmly in place as Itharr bucked and writhed in Belkram's arms.

"May these accursed shapeshifters return to their rightful places," Belkram said to her, "so that we don't have to!"

"Gnorlgh," Itharr agreed weakly, from beneath them. "Gut thlisgh out ou my-mouth!" He spat out the vial and struggled to sit up.

"Itharr!" Shar said joyfully, and embraced him, covering his lips with her own.

"Some men," Belkram said, watching her weep and meeting one of Itharr's eyes through her hair, "are far luckier than they have any right to be." Then he discovered something must have gotten into his own eye. The world suddenly glimmered and blurred and a sound large and raw rose in his throat… Tower of Mortoth, Sembia, early Midsummer Day

A crystal ball spun unheeded in a darkened room in the Tower of Mortoth. It flickered fitfully, then came to a sudden halt. As its inner glow died and it crashed to the privy chamber floor, a woman screamed nearby, high and despairing, and drowned out the sound of the crystal shattering… Tilverton, early Midsummer Day

A solitary lantern guttered outside the gates in the gray hour before dawn, but its light was enough to reveal the Purple Dragon emblazoned proudly on the wrinkled surcoat of a yawning sentry. The armsman came alert with a grunt and stepped back to lower the tip of his spear. Something small and sleek and dark slid around the gatepost.

He relaxed and gave it a grin. Surmalkin back from mousing… and irritated at a lack of success, by the look of him.

"How now, little one?" the armsman growled, bending over fondly. The cat gave him a warning, defiant look and minced past. The guard watched him go. Grinning, the man leaned on his spear. It must be a nice, soft life, being a cat…

Something that was strong and swift instead of nice and soft smashed him across the back of the head. He stumbled forward, dazed-and was still gathering wits and breath to shout for aid when the same something took him by the throat. It wrung his neck.

Blood ran from the armsman's nose and mouth as the Malaugrym propped him against the gatepost, hooking the shoulder straps of his armor upon the gate so he seemed to be leaning on it, lost in slumber.

After that, it was the work of a few breaths to scale the crumbling stone walls of the mansion that served the visiting high and mighty of Cormyr as home in Tilverton. From its high site, Lorgyn could see the lamps of the town winking below as his tentacles pulled him onto the balcony. He slid easily into human form… or at least, the appearance of an elegant old Cormyrean courtier he'd once seen, but with hands like large, flexible webbed paddles-akin to the hind feet of a beaver. He glided into the room.

The small blue glimmering of the lady's ward spun her awake in alarm.

But he was already bending low over the bed and whispering, "Good morning, my dear. Alambrara, isn't it?"

With one of those broad hands, he smothered whatever reply she might have made. His iron strength held her down until her sudden struggles subsided.

When she fell limp under him and the tiny lightnings of her collapsing ward had finished jittering through him, Lorgyn checked that she yet breathed. She was alive.

He nodded in satisfaction and set about stripping away the gems she wore at her ears, throat, and ankles. Who knew what sort of tracing magic could be linked to the jewelry of a powerful war wizard?

Her own bedclothes-soft samite sheets, no less-served admirably to gag and bind her, and he was gone from the room before the first light of dawn broke the eastern sky, low beyond the gray walls of Tilverton.