As his hands came up to hurl blasting magic, the disturbance whirled and spun-and became a thin, wild-eyed woman in tattered black robes, her silver hair swirling around her as if it were made of lightnings.
It was the Simbul, Witch-Queen of Aglarond, who glared anxiously around the room, the red fires of an awakened slaying spell running up and down her arms, seeking the danger that had menaced her beloved.
Itharr tried not to shiver at the sight of her. Her gaze froze him on its way to where the Old Mage stood staring down at one smoking, shriveling tentacle as it shrank away from him in death.
"The Malaugrym?" she said in an awful whisper of fury and promised doom.
Elminster stroked his beard thoughtfully and nodded. "Again," he said as the door behind her swung wide. There was a startled gasp, and another platter of tankards crashed to the floor.
The sorceress whirled around, red fire blazing around one raised hand, in time to see a serving wench, face white in terror, moan and faint dead away, crumpling to the floor atop her spilled burden.
Behind the Simbul, the Old Mage's head came up, face brightening into a smile of welcome. "Will you take ale, love? It's richer, nuttier, and more warming in the chest, by my halidom, as a man I trust said not long ago!"
At the look on the Witch-Queen's face, Sharantyr burst into helpless laughter, followed by Belkram. It was a perilously long moment before the Simbul's dark gaze flickered. Then she too began to laugh, a low, raw, throaty chuckle that made both Belkram and Itharr think of leaping flames and hungry caresses and wilder things.
"Why is it," Elminster asked his pipe as it hung obecuently nearby, fragrant wisps of smoke still rising from it, "that folk always seem to feel the need to laugh at my converse?" Fresh gales of mirth rocked the ruined room around him at his words. The Old Mage looked around at his friends sourly and then readdressed himself to his pipe. "Is it my looks, d'ye think? My sensually musical voice, perhaps?"
Wisely, the pipe chose not to answer.
2
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 14
The oval of light flickered and faded. As the dark and ever-hungry shadows crept and slithered back to reclaim the heart of the Great Hall of the Throne, those who'd watched death and laughter in the back room of an inn turned away from the darkening scrying portal. Some were hissing in anger as they went, and some were grim and silent, as their natures governed them.
"Poor entertainment," rumbled one lord, gliding through the shifting shadows in the shape of a cone of many eyes. He grew several long, spiderlike legs, two of which reached out to select a glowing bottle from a forest of glass containers in the vast black marble chamber.
Other Malaugrym muttered agreement, but a single clear, cold voice said, "We did not gather for 'entertainment,' Uncle."
Eyes swam swiftly around the cone to look back at the one who'd spoken so, but the cone did not turn or cease its gliding passage. "I know better than some young and loose-lipped kin, Halastra, why we're here," came the chill reply. "Guard your tongue, if you'd live to an age approaching mine."
"Another lecture? Are such words all you know how to speak?" a third voice put in. It seemed to issue from a coiling, serpentine form gliding half-seen through the mists, bound for the same destination as the cone. A low rumble of anger followed in the cone's wake as it went, expelling an empty bottle, but the lord did not accompany the rumble or the bottle with any words of reply.
Smoothly the cone began to rise through the mists, drawn up by the magic of the lift-spiral. Several half-human forms followed the cone in the ascent — bipedal figures that changed height and girth in a continuous, uneasy shifting but always seemed to have tails, clawed limbs, and spines or barbs here and there. The serpentine creature-sporting a succession of small pairs of leathery wings along its entire length but having no head-joined them, rising to where the mists hung darker and shadows seemed to drift menacingly like cruising sharks.
"Who was it who dared-and died?" a voice asked in hushed tones. The ascent seemed to be bringing a certain caution, or fear, upon all.
"Does it matter? Those who die fools are best forgotten," the conical lord said sternly, but another voice said clearly, "Thalart, get of Galartyn and Chasra."
"Another of us slain by the wizard Elminster," a new voice snarled. "His doom grows heavier by one more death."
"What can be heavier than an eternity in torment?" someone else asked.
"Such a small imagination," an older voice observed, "Learn to think on such things first, and speak after."
"We're very open with judgments today, it seems," the serpentine Malaugrym observed.
"I'd remind you," still another voice said, "that light or heavy, an eternity in torment is a price this mortal wizard hasn't yet paid."
From ahead of them in the mists came a deep, rolling boom, as if a great bell had tolled. Its echoes brought an end to converse for a time as the shapeshifters ascended. Bubbles occurred here and there in the shadows around them, brightening as they rose swiftly past. Dark shapes drifted beneath them. One shape strayed too near the spiral, and a Malaugrym made an exasperated sound and lashed out with a hissed spell.
There was a bright flash of falling sparks, a brief squalling, and the half-seen bulk convulsed away into the roiling shadows. A large, hooked black claw whose cruel curves stretched as long as the cone-lord stood tall tumbled into the spiral in its wake, severed cleanly by the searing magic. Trailing a last burst of sparks, it fell past a pair of Malaugrym in tall, gaunt human form before the power of the spiral took up the claw and it began to drift slowly around and upward. Another Malaugrym kicked the appendage aside, growing a clawed foot to do so. Driven out of the spiral, the severed claw fell from view, dwindling into the concealing mists, and was gone.
The bell tolled again, shaking the shadows, and the cloaking mists fell away in tatters. "Come," a deep voice rolled out, seeming to chase away shadows before it. "My time is not so endless that I can waste it on watching the vain parades of laggards." The last wisps parted, revealing the assembly high above the Great Hall to those drifting up the final arc of the spiral.
Sixty shapes, perhaps more, stood around the Shadow Throne, a vast, soaring spindle that pulsed its customary amethyst of magic and amber of bloodfire, and held the ruler of them all-Dhalgrave, head of Clan Malaugrym. Pale blue fire encircled one of his wrists as he leaned forward to watch the newcomers join the crowd around the floating throne.
In the shape he now wore, he seemed human-a naked, sexless human whose feet ended in a lion's pads; whose ivory body ended in a long, delicate tail; and whose flesh swam with many small fanged mouths that opened, snapped, drooled, and chattered soundlessly. His eyes were two dark, glistening pits that seemed to see the innermost thoughts of those he watched. And his kin, the greater and the lesser, looked upon him and were afraid.
Yes, Dhalgrave was dying, as all knew. Yes, the fires of fury that had seen him victorious through vicious kin strife down the ages were fading, leaving him placidly calm, almost cowardly it seemed. Yet he wore this weak human form-albeit handsome, even as the elves of Faerun were comely, slender and fine boned-because doing so enabled him to control the greatest treasures of the clan. The very things that Malaug had crafted when he took the title Shadowmaster and strode from the strife of the dawn human kingdoms of Faerun to conquer the demiplane of Shadow and build this vast and everchanging Castle of Shadows. Or at least, the two items that had given Malaug and his ruling descendants mastery over the kin: the Shadowcrown and the Doomstars.