Ed Greenwood - Cloak of Shadows

Sharantyr was as good as her word. She arrived back through the door, panting and with the sword pulsing sullenly in her hands, a scant instant before their host returned, his platter piled high with what looked like slabs of pork cooked in a variety of green herbs.

"Boar?" Belkram asked, sniffing the unfamiliar, faintly lemony scent.

"Ah, no," Amdramnar replied, looking a little uneasy. "Actually it's… roast shadowslug." He watched them draw back and added, "Er… from an earlier meal, too."

He took up a fork and speared a piece, saw them all watching, and muttered, "Excuse me," as one of his hands grew into a needle-sharp knife of bone. Sawing off a long strip of meat, he fed it delicately into his mouth, put forth a shockingly long tongue to lap some of the herbed sauce from his chin, and murmured in appreciation.

"It's very good," he said, "and it's not harmful to you… really. Try a little." He offered it to Itharr, who held up a warding hand wordlessly. Then he offered it to Belkram, who leaned forward with a smile, astonishing his companions, and said, "Yes, I think I'd like to try. It looks wonderful!"

The Shadowmaster gave him a genuine smile, and Belkram realized something. Taking the proffered small piece, he sat back, turning his head slightly so Amdramnar couldn't see the wink of reassurance he gave Shar, and bit into the shadowslug with gusto.

The stone that was Sylune vibrated soundlessly, telling him that-so far as she could tell-the meat was safe. He chewed, aware that their host was watching his face almost anxiously. It was good.

"Did you cook this?" Belkram asked him eagerly. "It's great!"

Amdramnar beamed, and Belkram knew he'd guessed right. "As a matter of fact," the Malaugrym said proudly, "I did, and-"

And then the door they'd come in by slid open by itself, and his face changed. Belkram's head swung around, and he suddenly wished he hadn't eaten a piece of shadowslug-or anything else.

The passage outside was full of Shadowmasters in human form, standing tall and grim and silent, their faces hard. One shouldered into the room and glared around at them all.

Amdramnar saw Shar's hands tighten on her sword and put out his hand in a quick quelling gesture.

The newcomer's eyes slid coldly over all of them, lingering for a moment on Sharantyr's sword, and came to rest, as if nailed there, on Amdramnar's face.

"I had heard," their Malaugrym visitor said coldly, "that you were entertaining humans in your chambers, but I hadn't thought even you to be quite so foolish. It appears that, sadly, I was wrong."

"And not for the first time," Amdramnar said coolly, "though this is the first time I've had an uninvited guest cross the threshold of my chambers."

"I don't like such dangers being harbored-even embraced-in our midst without all of us being informed," the newcomer said tightly, ignoring Amdramnar's words. "Such offal must be"-he raised a hand that slowly became a thick, powerful, sucker-studded tentacle-"destroyed!"

Somewhere in Faerun, Kythorn 19

The midmorning sun laid dappled patches of golden light and shadow across the forest trail. Elminster appeared out of empty air behind his favorite boulder. He sniffed, frowned, and looked critically at the nearby evidence that some wolf had been using it as a boundary marker. Ah, well. Life in Faerun was at least never dull.

He looked to one side, frowned again, and rubbed his nose. Small wonder the wolves had been about. Enough fresh-gnawed bones to make up at least a dozen folk lay strewn down the hillside in the lee of the rocks. Hmm. It had been his experience that feeding hungry wildlife wasn't usually the goal of so many kindhearted folk in one locale, during peacetime. He'd found the spot, right enough, so 'twas time to stow the 'prentice philosophy. To work!

Stepping out from behind the stone, the Old Mage strolled down to the path, hitching at his robes so that it might look to an observer as if he'd had urgent business in the bushes off the trail.

Reaching the cart ruts, he stepped up onto the worn grassy strip between them and trudged along. As he'd expected, one of the bushes beside the path ahead trembled slightly.

"Oh, a wizard may well find time for much fun (for much fun), but an old rogue's work is seldom ever done (ever done)!" Elminster warbled, taking up a tune he'd heard a world away from this one.

"Aghh! Do ye mind!" A deep voice growled from the bushes. "I was plannin' just to rob thee, but if ye don't'en belt up, I'll be happy to gut ye instead."

"Gut me?" Elminster looked properly terrified. As expected, he drew back and turned to run, only to find himself staring into the grinning, unshaven visage of a half-orc whose parentage was attested to by one broken-off tusk, flat, piglike features, and a cruel smile.

"Don't mind Glorym. He's not hungry today, so he probably won't nibble on ye, being as ye aren't a pretty maiden." The brigand leader stepped into view, guffawing loudly at his own jest and scratching himself with his free hand in an ongoing quest for fleas. The other hand held an axe that might have once served to chop down trees-young saplings, that is, and several hundred years ago.

Elminster looked from one outlaw to the other and suppressed a wild urge to hoot with laughter by quavering, "Wha-what will ye be doin' to me?"

"Well, minstrel boy," the brigand leader drawled, displaying teeth that might have made a boar envious-an old and very sick boar, mind-"the proud army of which I'm swordlord hasn't been paid in a goodly while, and-" "Pike," the half-orc rumbled from behind Elminster, "what army? There's just ye 'n me, near's I can tell-"

"Hush!" the brigand leader said severely, and favored Elminster with another crookedly reassuring smile. "Pay no attention to my friend behind ye. I-hem hem blaugh ahum-chose him for this duty because of his, ah, kindly ways toward donors we meet on the road. Donors, I say, because 'tis our habit to, at this time, ask ye for some small tokens for passage on our road… a toll it pains us to request, mind ye, but-"

Elminster forestalled more of this by scaling a gold piece into the man's grubby outstretched palm.

Pike's eyes widened as he looked down at it, and then narrowed. He scratched his nose and stepped forward.

"Well," he said jovially, " 'tis a beginning, right enough, an' I'm right grateful to see ye've got the idea of the th-"

Elminster added a second gold coin to the first and turned to face Glorym. "Would ye like the same? I'm in a hurry…"

"Aye," Glorym rumbled, but Pike's eyes had narrowed again. "In a hurry? That's an awful shame…"

Elminster smiled pleasantly at him and said, "So it is, friend Pike, because I perceive ye and Glorym here share the same fondest wish. Ye both want to die rich."

He gestured, and both brigands wriggled in midair, their faces telling the world of their sudden terror at discovering they could no longer move. As the white-bearded, gaunt old man between them crooked a finger, one of the gold coins in Pike's palm drifted smoothly through the air to settle into Glorym's grasp.

Elminster smiled at them both and steered their frozen, floating bodies together, gently arranging their hands on each other's throats, tossing away their weapons, and closing the fingers of their free hands firmly around the coins. Then he snapped his fingers. Magic made none-too-clean fingers tighten, and the trapped, frightened eyes began to bulge almost immediately.

"And so ye shall," he added brightly, and went off down the road whistling.

The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19

"Oh? They must be destroyed?" Amdramnar's tone was lazily unconcerned as he set aside the platter of shadowslug and rose from his chair, his form swelling visibly. "I think not."