Elaine Cunningham: Elfshadow

The intruder casually pushed the body to the floor and sat down at the writing table. She picked up the smudged page, quickly scanning the still-damp writing by the light of a single, rapidly diminishing candle. Quiet as a shadow, she rose and carried the candle and several pages of parchment to the room's fireplace. The manuscript fluttered onto the hearth, and she stooped and held out the stub of burning candle. The edges of one page turned brown, then curled in upon itself as the flame caught and spread. The shadowy figure stood and watched as the final chapter of the old man's memoirs turned to ash.

The merchant caravan made camp for the night, but underlying the usual bustle of activity was a deep spirit of unease. On route from Waterdeep to Cormyr, the caravan was camping in the shadow of Darkhold.

It was not unheard of for lawful merchant trains to stop at the Zhentarim stronghold; after all, business was business. Openly trading with the Dark Network was vastly preferable to defending a caravan against it. Since raiding was a random business and supplies had to be maintained, the outpost fortress routinely traded for whatever items they could not steal.

The merchants had been given every assurance of safety and fair trade, but no one in the caravan would rest easily that night. Peace of mind was impossible; surrounded on all sides by sheer rock cliffs and a heavily fortified wall, they were effectively trapped inside the Vale of Darkhold with the thousand or so members of the Zhentarim-sponsored contingent. The caravan's watch had been tripled, but so apparently had the guard on the perimeter wall above them.

Members of the merchant caravan who did not draw watch also stayed awake long into the night. Tensions were channeled into games of chance, hard drinking punctuated by loudly told tales of bravado, and furtive, frantic trysts.

In a small tent at the very edge of the camp, a lone figure waited impatiently for the others to sleep. Hours of noisy revelry passed, and after a time she could delay no longer. Arilyn Moonblade gathered her supplies and slipped away into the night.

Years of practice and an innate elven grace enabled Arilyn to move without sound, and the moonless night cloaked her in darkness. The half-elf slowly made her way toward the fortress, using the route she had painstakingly mapped. Except for a few acres of trees, the valley floor had little natural cover. Arilyn used whatever was available, darting between heaps of boulders and crawling through scrubby brush. Finally she reached the copse of trees just west of the Postern Gate Tower. Before her lay a moat, and beyond that the massive outer wall of the fortress.

The old Zhentish informant had told her most emphatically that she should not attempt to swim the moat. It was full of dangerous creatures, including small fish with razor-sharp teeth. A school of these fish could strip the flesh from a horse in a matter of minutes. Across the deceptively still waters of the moat, the fortress loomed against the starless night, its black towers thrusting upward. Crouched in the shadow of the trees, Arilyn took several items from her bag and prepared to enter Darkhold.

Several weeks of hectic planning had gone into this assignment. By now Arilyn knew so much about the fortress that she felt somehow sullied by the knowledge. Built by evil giants centuries before, the castle had in turn housed dragons and an undead mage before being conquered and inhabited by the Zhentarim. Evil seemed to permeate the very structure, as if it had been mixed into the mortar.

Arilyn assembled a small crossbow, then fitted to it a most unusual arrow. Specially designed for this assignment, the arrow was very much like a child's toy, ending in a cup rather than a point. Filling the cup was spider-sap, a powerful adhesive alchemically derived from the coating of giant spider webs. She took careful aim at the Visitors' Tower. Her arrow flew, trailing behind it a length of gossamer rope, and found its mark just below the roof of the tower. Arilyn pulled hard on the rope, a lightweight but unbreakable cord spun from silk. Satisfied that it would hold, she swung over the moat, released the rope, and landed lightly at the base of the wall.

The Visitors' Tower was part of the outer wall and often was used, as it was tonight, to house guests considered too dangerous to allow in the castle proper. There were guards, of course, but they were stationed inside the fortress and were concerned with monitoring the visitors' passage between the tower and the courtyard. Arilyn again grasped the rope and began to climb the tower, hauling herself up hand over hand.

Near the third and top level of the tower was her goal: a window covered with rusted iron bars. Arilyn reached it, pulled herself up onto the stone sill, and took out a small flask. Working carefully, she daubed a bit of distilled black dragon venom on the tops and bottoms of two of the bars. A faint, corrosive hiss filled the air as the powerful acid ate away the rusted metal. Arilyn wiggled the bars free and carefully wiped the remaining acid from the edges, then she squeezed in through the window. She stuck a bit of acacia tree gum on each end of the bars and replaced them in the window.

As she had anticipated, she was in a narrow corridor that circled the entire tower. This level housed the dining quarters, and at this hour the only sounds were a few random clangs from the kitchen. With a shudder of distaste, Arilyn shrugged on her disguise: the dark purple clerical robes belonging to devotees of the evil god, Cyric. She pulled up the cowl of the robe to obscure her face and headed for the tower's spiral staircase that led down and out to the courtyard.

According to her maps, the floor below held the visitors' quarters. Arilyn made her way downward as swiftly as she dared, hoping to avoid confrontation with any of her "fellow clerics." Her luck held until she reached the lowest level. A short, stubby man stood at the foot of the stairs, scowling up at her. His purple cowl was thrown back, and on his forehead was painted a dark sun with a glowering skull in the center.

"Simeon! It's about time. Hurry up or we'll miss the procession," he snapped.

Arilyn only nodded, keeping her head low as she motioned for him to proceed her into the courtyard. The cleric's eyes narrowed.

"Simeon?" A note of suspicion had crept into his voice, and one hand inched toward the clerical symbol that rested over his heart. Arilyn recognized the beginning of a spell. She leaped down the last few steps, kicking out with one booted foot.

Her foot connected hard with the man's midsection, and they both fell to the floor in a tangle of purple robes. Arilyn rose to her feet, but the cleric stayed down, bent double and completely winded. She delivered a second well-placed kick to the side of his neck, and the cleric went completely limp.

With a sigh of frustration, Arilyn considered her situation. She could hardly leave the unconscious man there for others to trip over, yet, as he had said, she would be late for the procession if she tarried long. Three wooden doors led out of the stairwell; quickly she cracked one open. Beyond lay a storage chamber filled with large traveling chests. Arilyn slipped inside, and with the tip of a knife she broke open the lock on the nearest chest. It was full of robes, and she tossed some out to make room for the cleric. She returned to the stairwell and, grabbing the fallen man under the arms, dragged him into the storage room. She dumped him into the chest and lowered the heavy lid. Readjusting her cowl low over her face, she returned to the stairwell and opened the door to the courtyard.

The rhythm of a dark and unholy chant greeted her. Just beyond the door, a vast column of priests passed by the tower on their way to the castle's main entrance. Arilyn folded her hands into her sleeves and lowered her head, assuming the posture of a novitiate and falling in behind the chanting, swaying company.