"And you want to wed her. Have you thought this through?"
Kuervyn and Andraut smiled silkily at each other and turned toward the tapestries, hands going to the slim blades they wore at their belts.
Huerbara shot out two long, silent tentacles to wave them to startled stillness. She glared at them and gestured down the passage, beckoning them on. There'd be time for such amusements later, unless, of course, they had the whole palace after them by then.
Bringing two such flamebrains along on this mission could prove very dangerous to her, she reflected, following the passage through an archway and into the rear of what seemed to be a gigantic wardrobe.
And then a slim hand reached out in front of her and unhooked a dust-shroud-covered gown from its place on the crowded bar. Huerbara smiled tightly and shot a slim tentacle around that corner, high up. Eyes swam down the tentacle to see her quarry, and guide that appendage around its throat before it could utter a sound.
Huerbara stepped around the corner with a pleasant smile on her face, another tentacle snaking out to take the gown from suddenly desperate fingers. The maid whose throat was wrapped in her tentacle-a pretty wench with great dark eyes and a pert little lace-framed bosom-stared helplessly at her for a few moments in terrified bewilderment before Huerbara broke that pretty neck with a deft twist, and the light in the eyes faded away. Then she handed the body back out into the passage to amuse the two louts, felt them take it with low laughs of anticipation, and shifted to match the maid's form perfectly.
A moment later, Shantra the Underdresser stepped unconcernedly out of the wardrobe room, dust-bagged gown in hand, and looked up and down the corridor she found herself in. Two magnificently mustachioed guards in opulent uniforms were seated before a closed and barred door at one end of the passage, playing leap-knights at an ornate octagonal board. Light, soft voices spilled from two open doorways in the other direction.
The guards looked up, so she gave them a half-smile before she turned away. One guard looked back to his game immediately, but the other guard frowned. His eyes narrowed as he watched Shantra-his beloved, who'd never looked at him with such pleasant lack of recognition before-walk away and pass through one of the doors. She'd never walked like that, either, all sinuous glide and none of her happy bounce.
He got up, saying softly, "A moment, friend Silder. I'll be right back, but come with your sword if I bellow."
He left the other guard frowning up at him and went down the passage as quickly as stealth would allow, hand on the hilt of his blade.
In the room he was approaching, three ladies were looking up at the maid with surprise on their faces. "Why, Shantra, what's amiss?" one of them asked, gliding forward.
Huerbara looked at her as if bewildered. "L-lady?"
The dust bag… why've you brought the gown still in its dust bag?"
"Ohh," Huerbara said, trying to look confused-easy enough, she thought wryly-and bent her knees, sagging forward and clutching at her head. "I feel… not right… I…"
"What befalls?" The quick, anxious male voice came from behind her. One of the guards?
"Shantra's been taken ill," said a voice very near, as gentle hands took her forearm and elbow and guided her to a stool.
"That's not Shantra," the male voice said firmly. "Her walk is wrong, and she didn't recognize us."
"And she spoke differently," said one of the women slowly. Then the third woman said quietly, "Speak, Shantra. Name us."
Oh, shadows take them! Not three rooms into the palace! She shook her head. "I…" she said, trying to sound broken.
Then she heard the soft swish of a sword being drawn. Huerbara turned toward the guard with a snarl, extending her breasts into tentacles to hold his eyes, while a third shot out to take his feet from under him.
"Doppleganger!" he bellowed, fear and anger in his eyes as his sword slashed down. Huerbara struck it away with her tentacles, shifting her innards hastily to avoid a lucky blow, and then stiffened with a real shriek of pain as something slim and hard went through her from behind, burning…
She looked dully down at the sword tip protruding from her breast and saw that it was silver. Huerbara wept in agony and did what she had to do, let half her body fall away and be lost to her. With the only arm she had left, she firmly grasped the belt buckle embedded in her flesh and said, "Brathaera."
As the guard battled her writhing tentacles, she simply melted away. He crashed forward helplessly into the wall as Silder came charging around the corner to find three ladies staring down at an amorphous mass on the floor that had one human arm protruding from it- and a slim silver sword cane through it.
"A doppleganger, here?"
The double-chinned, haughty lady who held the handle of the sword cane shook her head. "No. Much worse than that."
"Oh?" Silder asked, raising his eyebrows. "And how would you know, Mistress Iraeyna? Fought many monsters in the nurseries of the palace, have we?"
Mistress Iraeyna, Chief Dresser of the Ladies' Wardrobe, fixed him with cool eyes as she calmly undid the front of her gown and pulled the fabric wide. The two ladies on either side of her gasped.
Both guardsmen gulped-not at the formidable bosom exposed to their gaze, but at the black silk waist-corset just beneath it. Its straining fabric held a too-large tummy firmly in check and sported a silver pin: a harp between the horns of a crescent moon, surrounded by four stars.
"You know this, Silder? Haerarn?" she asked crisply. Both guards nodded dumbly.
"Then follow my orders, as the High Lady's decree binds you to. Into that wardrobe! There may be others- and suspect everything of being a foe, from stool to garment. They're shapeshifters far more deadly than any dopplegangers! Strike to slay, and thrust a silver piece into any wound you make, if you can!"
She bent swiftly and retrieved her sword cane. As she strode forward, Mistress Iraeyna snapped back, "Dansila and Ormue, go straight out that door and lock it behind you. Take your keys and don't tarry for anything! Go to Lady Amathree. If any guards try to stop you, tell them it's Harper business and order them to escort you. If you can't find Lady Amathree, ask for Alustriel herself. Say that there are Malaugrym in the palace! Got that? Malaugrym!"
The wardrobe door banged open, and Silder and Haerarn burst into the room. Silder's eyes were wide with amazement, and Haerarn's were wild with the awful realization that he probably wouldn't find Shantra alive.
It was worse than that. Her body was dancing between two laughing Malaugrym, suspended on tentacles that ran through the maid's corpse from one body opening to another. As they commented on how odd or delectable this feature or that organ looked, the Malaugrym were devouring her. Swooping tentacles that ended in eel-like jaws were tearing at her bared flesh, and blood was raining down on the dusty floor.
Weeping, Haerarn charged savagely into one shape-shifting monster, and Silder gulped and cautiously approached the other. Mistress Iraeyna strode forward and simply slashed a tentacle with her sword cane. The tentacle writhed and flopped in convulsions, slapping the floor, and she stepped past it and drove her cane deep into one flowing form. It stiffened, convulsed, and abruptly let go of the choking Haerarn. As he crashed to the floor, his face a dangerous purple, Iraeyna turned toward the other shapeshifter.
It slapped Silder into one wall with fearsome force-amid the crash, Iraeyna heard the sharp crack of ribs giving way-and then was gone. There one moment and vanished the next.
The Chief Dresser of the Ladies' Wardrobe frowned. With pursed lips she whirled back to the first Malaugrym and thrust her silver cane into it repeatedly until all sign of movement had ceased. Then she sat down on its gray-brown bulk and began to lace up her bodice.