Lisa Smedman - Realms of Shadow

As the night wore on, weariness at last overtook Ajandor. He sat down with his back against the wall, and, gradually, his head drooped until his chin rested on his breast. A soft buzzing issued from his mouth.

Moving quietly, Kevin rose, unlaced one of the saddlebags, and took out a stick of chalk, which Ajandor had packed to sketch out battle plans, duty rosters, and the like. Wincing at

the faint scratching sound, the squire scrawled a message on the wall: I HEAR KING SHADOW CALLING ME, AND I MUST GO TO HIM. FAREWELL.

That accomplished, the youth tiptoed to the arched entrance to the city, thought of all the shadows presumably lurking in the darkness, took a deep breath, and forced himself out into the rain.

To his surprise, he didn't blunder into any phantoms, and after a few minutes, he reached the foot of the Cormyr Stairs. Halfway up, he came upon Helm's shrine. Reflecting that some kindly power certainly seemed to have protected him thus far, he silently apologized to the deity for his earlier irreverence and laid a copper piece atop the Altar of Shields.

He crept on to the top of the steps, peered through the wall, and surveyed Old Town. If any beauty remained to its burnt and battered houses, he couldn't see it under these conditions, nor did he care. He reckoned he'd come as far as required to give Ajandor a nice anxiety-ridden chase, and now he needed a place to wait for him-somewhere indoors, where no passing shadow would spot him. At the far end of a little plaza stood a cottage, its eaves encrusted with carved roses and its door standing ajar. He scurried to it, ducked inside, found a stool, and sat down behind a window that looked out at the head of the Cormyr Stairs.

Soon, he assured himself, Ajandor would come bustling to the top. The knight would probably be furious when he realized Kevin had tricked him, but it wouldn't matter. The shock of his fosterling's disappearance would still restore him to himself.

Suddenly, a wail of anguish broke into Kevin's imaginings. Unlike all the others he'd heard, this one sounded close by.

Looking in all directions, the squire peered out the window. After a few moments, the source of the noise stumbled into view.

Roped together to form a coffle, a matron with gray curls, two men, and a little girl trudged across the plaza, passing only a few feet from Kevin's vantage point. Slinking around them, shoving and prodding them on, were several of the man-shaped shadows he and Ajandor had fought before. The youth couldn't tell precisely how many. In the darkness, he was lucky to glimpse the shadows at all.

He wondered if the prisoners had still been living somewhere inside the city, or if the shadows had captured them out in the countryside. Not that it mattered. The only thing that did was helping them. But how?

Charge out and attack? Ajandor might have managed it, but he'd been honing a genius for swordplay for forty years. Kevin had been training a modest talent for five.

He doubted he could handle so many of the shadows all at once.

What he could do was follow the shadows and hope that an opportunity to free their captives would present itself. Not that he wanted to. Not only would it be risky, it would mean he likely wouldn't be in position to greet Ajandor if-no, when, curse it-the latter climbed the Cormyr Stairs, but Kevin couldn't see any alternative.

As he waited for the shadows to lengthen their lead, he prayed to Helm for aid and wished he'd given the god the sole silver piece in his purse instead of a measly copper.

It was time to go. He crept out onto the porch, and a plank groaned beneath his foot. He cringed, but the shadows didn't seem to hear, so he slunk on.

The stalking proved to be a nerve-racking business. Kevin was no woodsman or housebreaker, schooled in the art of sneaking soundlessly, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't avoid making little noises, each of which threatened to reveal his presence. Nor could he shake the nagging fear that as he concentrated his attention on the shadows ahead, some other phantom would spot him and take him unawares.

But none did, and eventually the shadows and their coffle led him to a drum-shaped keep notorious throughout Cormyr. When Kevin perceived that it was indeed their destination, he nearly laughed in dismay, because it figured, didn't it?

The ruin-now no more ruinous than the rest of Old Town-had once been the residence of the enchantress Tilvara. According to rumor, it was now home to strange beasts and the restless dead, and hellishly dangerous. Few would-be explorers ever even got past the "Medusa's Garden," the field of statuary in front of the entrance. The figures animated and attacked them.

Though many of the statues lay shattered on the ground, a goodly number remained intact. Still, the shadows and their prisoners passed them unmolested. Maybe they knew the trick of it, or perhaps the tides of battle magic washing through the city had somehow rendered the effigies inert.

The procession vanished through an arched door, and Kevin wondered whether or not to keep following. He was sorely tempted to go look for Ajandor, but what if he couldn't find the knight, who by now might already be wandering the city, either to find his errant squire or simply in search of his own destruction? Or what if he did locate Ajandor, and the knight just didn't care? Or what if the shadows slew the captives while Kevin was off searching?

No, curse it, he had to go in.

Kevin headed for the statues. He realized he was breathing hard, tried to control it as Ajandor had taught him, and couldn't quite. He started down the path.

Stone warriors, rocs, manticores, wolves, and double-headed ettins surrounded him on every side. If they all came to life at once, he wouldn't stand a chance, but only one of them even tried. A lion shuddered as he passed but could do no more. Some power had indeed rendered them harmless.

Kevin tiptoed up to the doorway and peeked beyond the threshold into a murky hall. As far as he could tell, no sentries waited there, just as none patrolled the battlements high above. Kevin found the shadows' want of caution peculiar, but perhaps they didn't think like human beings. Maybe they considered themselves so secure in their possession of Tilverton that an assault was inconceivable.

Not that Kevin contemplated anything so grand. Could he simply spirit the captives away, he would be well satisfied.

Onward he skulked, groping his way through stygian chambers that would have been entirely lightless save for the gaps in the ancient walls. Legend peopled these spaces with watchghosts and round, floating, many-eyed beholders, but he didn't encounter any of those. He wondered if the shadows had destroyed even them.

He did soon come to the conclusion that the keep was larger inside than out, but the paradox didn't particularly unsettle him. He'd heard that powerful mages could create such effects. At least the doorways weren't sealing themselves behind him. He'd heard that could happen, too.

A vague form moving on four legs, or perhaps six or eight, prowled out of an arched opening not twelve feet ahead of him. His heart pounding, he flattened himself against the wall. The phantom turned in the opposite direction and disappeared into the blackness.

When his nerves ceased their jangling, Kevin crept on, peeked into the archway, and finally saw the prisoners, those he had been tracking and maybe fifteen others as well.

Tilvara had probably maintained a perfectly good dungeon beneath her residence, but for some reason, the shadows had opted to hold their captives in a spacious chamber where eight or ten looms stood at regular intervals about the floor. Some still supported unfinished bits of weaving, the weft and woof rotting away and tingeing the air with the smell. The humans were still bound, but not with ropes, which lay in careless tangles on the floor. Instead, the prisoners stood enmeshed in strands of darkness, which, anchored to the back wall, floor, ceiling, and looms, were nearly invisible in the gloom.