Марк Энтони: Crypt of the Shadowking

Moments later a shadow separated itself from the blackness of a doorway to slip away through the darkened city. The street was silent for a time. Then the first of the rats came upon the corpses and squealed over its grisly discovery.

“Play us another one, Anja!”

The cluttered little cottage was filled with golden candlelight and the sound of laughter. Anja, a plump woman with bright black eyes and ruddy cheeks, smiled at the small audience of coarsely clad farmers gathered about her.

“All right. One more, Garl, and then it’s home with you louts.” She lifted the wooden flute to her lips. It was a simple instrument, worn with long years of playing. Anja had made it herself when she was barely more than a lass, and it had been her truest companion through three husbands and a half-dozen droughts. Life was hard here on the sun-parched plains so close to the vast desert of Anauroch, but it was not without its pleasures, and music was one of them.

Though her hands were toughened and calloused from years of toil, Anja’s fingers moved nimbly over the flute. She played a carefree, lilting air, and the farmers stamped their dirty boots and clapped their hands in time to the music. But it wasn’t the music alone that had brought her friends to her cottage.

Even as Anja played, the shadows cast by the candles began to dance upon the whitewashed walls.

The shadows seemed almost to bow and whirl to the music of the flute, their outlines suggesting dancers at a fancy ball. A slender shadow, hinting at a young maiden, flickered and seemed to spurn the advances of a decidedly rotund shadow. The men laughed as they watched the shadowplay.

Anja didn’t quite know how she made the shadows do her bidding with the music of her flute. She had always been able to do it, even as a child. Some had told her it was magic, and while Anja didn’t know about that—magic was more for wizards in their towers than for farm girls on the dusty plains—she did know she could shape the shadows on the wall however she wished with the notes of her music.

She finished the song with a flourish, and the shadows all seemed to take a bow. Garl and the others thundered their applause as Anja lowered her flute. “One more song, Anja! Just one more!” they called out.

She never had the chance to say no.

The cottage’s wooden door burst apart in a spray of splinters. All turned in shock to see the figure of a man standing in the doorway. At least they assumed it was a man. The form was tall and clad from head to toe in a heavy black robe.

“Hey, now!” Garl growled in protest, advancing on the stranger. “You can’t—”

With eerie speed the stranger reached out with a black-gloved hand, snapping Garl’s neck with an almost casual motion. The farmer slumped lifelessly to the floor as Anja watched in frozen horror. Shouting and swearing in outrage, the other men leaped into action, but to little avail. The black-robed stranger batted aside a glowing poker with an easy gesture and threw a burly farmer through the sod wall. He smashed one young man’s skull against the stones of the chimney and with a quick blow crushed another’s windpipe. In moments only Anja was left standing, shaking her head in terror. The stranger walked slowly toward the one he had come for.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t.” The stranger lifted a gloved hand, and Anja’s scream was lost in a gurgle of hot blood. The wooden flute slipped from her hand to the dirt floor. It would never make the shadows dance again.

The black-robed stranger left the cottage then, slipping into the night. His mission had been accomplished. The woman with the shadow magic was dead. Now there were but two more left in all the Realms. Soon there would be none at all. The stranger turned to the wind, testing the cool air. The trail led southward.

The wind hissed through the dry grass, and suddenly the night was empty.

Caledan rose early the next morning. He retrieved Mista from the stable of the Wandering Wyvern and rode off through the cheerless streets. Even with the coming of dawn Iriaebor seemed wrapped in gloom. Many of the city’s once-proud towers slumped precariously above the narrow avenues, the bridges that spanned the distance between them crumbling and treacherous where passable at all. The light of the sun was dull and tired by the time it managed to filter its way down past the ancient spires, and even as the sullen light filled the streets so did the people, pouring out of countless peeling, weathered doors to pursue the day’s affairs, their faces grim and wearied. Caledan could only shake his head. Perhaps that drunken dockhand had been right. Maybe he should never have come back at all.

Why had he returned? Did he really think he could find some sort of peace here after all this time? If so, he was a bigger fool than he thought. There were too many memories here, he now realized. Every street, every tower, every stone reminded him of a time when he had been happy, when he hadn’t been alone.

Absently he twirled the braided copper bracelet he wore on his left wrist. That happiness had died seven years ago. He had laid it cold and dead in the earth alongside a woman with summer-gold hair. All he had now were ghosts. Maybe no amount of wandering would be enough to leave such memories behind.

He supposed an old friend or two might still live in Iriaebor, but he feared his one-time companions would be as changed as the city was. Besides, he had grown used to loneliness these last years, and he could live without friends.

“Anyway, I have you, Mista,” he said, slapping the pale mare’s neck with a friendly hand. She tossed her head and pranced haughtily, her hooves ringing against the cobbles. “Vain beast,” he said with a laugh.

It was time to leave this forsaken place, Caledan decided. He had heard there was good pay to be had guarding caravans on the roads north of Waterdeep. He was as handy with a sword as any man, and he could use the gold. He guided Mista onto a wide avenue that led down the Tor and out of the city.

The avenue widened as it made its way past the tower of the city lord. The tower stood atop the very highest part of the Tor, soaring above all the city’s thousand spires. Its walls were wrought of dark stone quarried from the very hill upon which Iriaebor rested.

Much blood had been shed in the tower’s construction, and those who had laid its foundations were long dead by the time the last stone of the turret was set in place. One could still see the faint line a third of the way up the tower’s height where the color of the stone changed slightly. Every child in Iriaebor knew the tale of how the wall of the first quarry had collapsed, killing a score of workmen as well as the first city lord, Eradabus, who often labored beside them as a symbol of good will. After that a new quarry was begun by the second city lord, Melsar, but it was the third city lord, the Lady Saresia, who saw the tower completed and first held Argument in its vast great hall.

Guards patrolled the battlements atop the wall that surrounded the tower, and a full dozen stood before the great iron-banded gates. At least a dozen among them had the battle-hardened look of Zhentarim warriors. Caledan kept his distance from them. He was a Harper no longer and doubted anyone would recognize him, but the Zhentarim’s hatred for the Harpers was no secret. There was no sense in taking chances.

He veered Mista onto a less-traveled side street, then brought her up short. A band of mounted city guards rode toward him down the street, waving their swords and barking at the cityfolk to make way. Hurriedly, their eyes wide with fear, the citizens of Iriaebor complied, pressing against the buildings that lined the street.

“That way doesn’t look so good after all, Mista,” Caledan noted drily. He spun the mare around and headed back for the broad avenue. A similar scene greeted him there, only this time with about three times the number of guards. Quickly the throng of people crowded along the gutters, keeping the center of the avenue clear. Caledan tried to nudge Mista out of their way, but in moments he found himself trapped in the middle of a tight knot of people, livestock, ramshackle carts, and horse-drawn wagons. There was no way to escape without causing a scene.