Ed Greenwood - Cloak of Shadows

The Harpers made as if to rise, but Sharantyr laid a quick restraining hand on Belkram's arm, her eyes on the motionless Malaugrym out in the corridor, and Belkram froze. The three of them stared out at the watchers in the passage, who stared right back, faces impassive.

Between them, in the small open space encircled by the velvet-shrouded seats of Amdramnar's forechamber, tentacles and surging rubbery pseudopods and knots of muscled bulk were boiling and trembling in a tight mass. Sparks and brief sprays of radiance burst around them but seemed constrained by an invisible cylinder surrounding the entangled Malaugrym. A continuous din of snarls, barks, roars, and hisses came from a score of dripping maws that both combatants had grown- eyeless mouths on the ends of wormlike stalks that bit at each other in mindless savagery, rising and falling like surf around the heaving bodies.

Shar and the Harpers had never seen such savage energy sustained for so long and contested in so small a space. The foes began to grow within the cylinder as one found a strangling grip on the other. The trapped one-the three Faerunians could no longer tell them apart-tried to reach air by throwing out breathing tubes, and the other sought to overtop and ensnare these. Entwined, they soared up inside the cylindrical shield, growing quickly toward the mist-shrouded ceiling of the chamber, and all the while, the stone-faced Malaugrym stood silent and unmoving in the corridor, just watching.

And then, suddenly, it was done. In a cascade of abruptly freed sparks, the cylinder collapsed and fell away from around the two gasping, heaving tentacled forms, to be followed, blurring instants later, by the dwindling of the two Malaugrym into human forms once more. The panting men glared at each other until the newcomer found breath enough to snarl a stream of curses that the listening humans could barely understand.

Then he whirled suddenly, lashing out with talons that shot to long-sword length in a trice, stabbing at Sharantyr's eyes.

She flung herself back in the seat and brought her blade up sharply, and the black, seeking talons melted away before the sword's quickening blue glow as suddenly as they had come. Shar stared over them into the Malaugrym's eyes and saw her death in the look of cold promise he gave her.

She replied with a wintry, silent smile that seemed to amuse him. He lifted his lip in a sneering answering grin as he backed toward the door.

"My thanks for the invigorating exchange of views, Olorn," Amdramnar said in a voice that sounded like a sword blade softly sliding through a stomach, "but I'll expect a request to enter next time."

The other Malaugrym started to hiss a reply, but Amdramnar waved a hand and the door boomed closed with lightning speed, no doubt coming close to striking Olorn's face.

Their host held up his hand and muttered a quick incantation, then quickly touched the door that had just closed and the one Sharantyr had used earlier.

Then he turned, bowed to them, and sat down again. "My apologies, friends-if I may be so bold as to call you so, now that I've fought in your honor-but it appears that you're now enmeshed in our family disputes, like it or not. As you might have heard, that was Olorn, and he's an even more charming individual than Phenanjar. Was."

He gave them a little smile and added, "He's a tireless foe, I'm afraid. If you see him again, strike first-and to kill-or he'll slay you. It is also important that you know one thing more: Olorn's strong allies are two similarly young and ambitious Shadowmasters, Iyritar and Argast, though they try to keep their affiliation hidden from most of the kin. Both are good at sorcery-by your standards, very good-and you'd better consider yourselves at war with them both, as they'll no doubt behave as if you are, the moment Olorn tells them of what just occurred."

"What about you?" Itharr asked, eyeing the platter of shadowslug. "Are we a danger to you, now that others know we're here?"

Amdramnar shrugged. "Not really. I am thought odd by many of the kin, but so are many others, and tolerance must needs be the order of things in many family dealings. You saw how they watched but made no move? They were telling me of their neutrality in this, by that very action. It is how things are done in the castle."

Somewhere in Faerun, then the Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19

No one was around to see, so Elminster stepped behind a tree, became a bedraggled-looking crow, and leapt lightly to a leaf-shrouded branch. There he nestled up against the trunk and grew still.

And far away, in a corridor where shadows drifted idly in the ever-present gloom, a pale, grisly object that trailed white hair and a long white beard behind it like a tail faded slowly into solidity, flew purposefully forward through the shadows to a certain spot, and then rose up into the concealing gloom and waited.

A breath or so later, figures came into view down the passage. One was a man whose fingers were a nest of small eels wrapped securely about a scepter whose pale red glow parted the shadows like a slicing sword. The other was a loping, shambling thing of many snouts and protruding ears and eyestalks, a creature that whuffled and tapped the stones of the passage floor and walls with long, spidery fingers as it came.

"So have any of these idiots survived?" it asked sourly.

"I don't believe so," was the curt reply. "Well, perhaps one from the first foray, but no one's talking about it. Milhvar goes about grinning and saying arch things, almost as if he intended them to fail!"

"Why wouldn't he? If he kills off all the most rebellious or hopeless younglings, he won't be the only one who'll be going about grinning, either! Believe you me, there's parents in this castle who'd be relieved to see their own young gone…"

The two figures waved very different hands in front of a certain section of wall and it split in twain, drawing back to reveal an opening. The moment they'd passed through it, the humanlike Malaugrym turned around to survey the passage behind suspiciously but did not see the head floating above him, in the heart of a concealing drift of shadow.

The door whispered closed, and for some moments the head stared down thoughtfully at where the Shadow-master had been. Then it faded away.

The moment the Shadowmaster stepped back through the door that led to his larder, Belkram stretched and brought his hand down over the stone in his pocket. Sylune, he thought at it, concentrating hard.

Gently! The silent voice in his mind sounded reproachful.

Sorry, he told the Witch of Shadowdale, but we've some urgency. Can we trust the food and drink here? Thanks for reassuring me about the shadowslug, but he's bringing a lot more. How will we know?

I've told Shar to plead a delicate stomach, and Itharr to eat slowly, she replied, so you're it, Harper bold. I'll vibrate or even sting you, like this, if something's dangerous. Belkram nearly jumped out of his seat at the jolt he felt then, and favored her with a silent growl, which earned him a giggle in return. And don't talk when he's out of the room. This lad leaves more spying spells lying around than a castle full of Zhentarim! Her mind voice changed. Whoops-'ware!

Belkram just had time to bring his hand down and look casual before Amdramnar reappeared, several steaming platters balanced in his arms. "Feast is served, friends," he said, extending several arms out as if they were expandable poles to set platters down on side tables all over the room. Sharantyr grinned despite herself at the sight.

Itharr looked at the platter beside him and drew back. "Thanks, Amdramnar," he said steadily, "but… what is this? It looks… alive."

The platter held a bed of rice, and on it some sort of chopped and seared green vegetable rather like peppers. Among those deep green shells were brown, fried things that looked like worms in sauce… squirming worms.