Just Storm Silverhand, a lady with silver hair, a smart mouth, some skill with a sword, and a not-bad voice-against a shapeshifter. "How," she asked the night ruefully as she dragged herself back to the window, "do I get myself into these things?"
As if her words had been a cue, a griffon that was half-man swooped like a great bird into the courtyard. It struggled to grow human arms. Storm smiled grimly, let her hair hang down to cover her face as if she'd collapsed over the sill, and sent the fire flowing to seal up the last gaps in the sphere.
Merrily the murderous shapechanger circled the lamps, causing the guards there to cower down behind raised halberds. With a roar, he rose, sweeping up toward her.
He was going to circle the turret. This was it. Storm set her teeth and made the sphere of fire pulse, letting the surge roar painfully through her breast. It flowed freely; the sphere was complete.
The griffon's head became the laughing face of a man as he raced toward her. Through her hair, Storm watched his eyes widen with delight at her apparent helplessness. Then he veered up and to the left, racing around the turret, out of sight-and into her barrier.
Storm felt him strike the silver fire. The strain made flames sputter from her nose and mouth. She threw her head back and gasped as she felt the fire claw at him, and his clawing, slashing struggles to break through it.
She could hear it roaring, now, and see the glow of its blaze around the tower. Burn, then, murderer! Burn!
The Bard of Shadowdale dug long fingers into the window sill and snarled, her face a mask of sweat. She strove to sear the shapechanger to nothingness. From behind the tower came a tattered cry of pain.
Let there be no mercy.
NINE
Silver fire roared and raged, blinding him. He struggled to grow eyes on stalks before his own were burned away forever. That bitch of a bard was too near for him to be defenseless..
He thrashed against flame that seared and ate at him, melting flesh like bubbling wax from bones that slumped in their turn. Defeated, the shapechanger flapped the seared, blackened stumps of his wings frantically, hurling himself back over the courtyard.
Trailing fire, the griffon-man fell heavily onto a balcony on the turret next to where Storm clung to her window. He rose, reeled, smashed aside flimsy shutters, and fled into the keep.
The man snarled softly as he ran through dark rooms on unsteady cloven hooves. Throbbing pain danced through his shoulders. Whatever spell the Mystra-woman had used on him, he dared not taste it again.
When he tried to change shape, it felt as if he were sliding through soft mud. The world grew faint and dim. He could not tell where his limbs were, or how they'd obeyed his shaping. Yes, he dare not wade into one of those spells again.
With an arm that was partly a tentacle, he shouldered through a doorway, and found himself looking into the startled face of a guard. An old man with a mustache, who was opening his mouth to shout-
The shapechanger closed it for him forever, stabbing savagely with the crab-claw he'd managed to grow on what was left of his right wing. The guard wasn't expecting an extra arm to be there. With his face torn off, he wouldn't be expecting anything ever again.
The shapechanger slammed the body brutally and repeatedly into the wall, listening to bones shatter. He thought about where to go now. Someplace to rest. Someplace safe, to mend….
For what seemed a long time, he cowered in the darkness of the Haunted Tower. At last, his body obeyed him again, flesh flowing and shifting with its old ease. The stabbing pains were gone, but his feet and shoulders still ached. Damn that woman! She'd seemed such an overconfident, overkind idiot, too….
Not like that cold-as-a-blade dowager, who. . well, now: Pheirauze Summerstar! Well, why not?
He grew eyes that gleamed in the dark. He shrugged and became the black, sleek body of a panther. Looking around once, the great cat stretched, sniffed the air, and padded off into the keep, seeking a certain bedchamber.
"That will be all, Narlargus," the Dowager Lady Pheirauze murmured, the crack of command surfacing once more in her voice.
The old servant bent his lips to kiss her hand-a gesture he knew she loved. As he rose from the bed, he kept his eyes downcast. Daring to survey her as she lay at ease among the candles, with their light dancing over her jewelry, would earn him a whipping.
Catching up his robe from the floor, he bowed low and backed away from the bed. Surprisingly, she spoke again when his hand fell upon the door ring.
"My thanks, Narlargus."
He froze, but no more words came. After a moment, he turned. She'd never bothered to thank him before.
Still keeping his head down, the old servant knelt, touched his forehead to the floor, and then rose and withdrew, closing the door carefully-and very softly-behind him.
Pheirauze felt something like regret as she heard the door settle into place for what would undoubtedly be the last time. She would miss those long sessions with her loyal dresser-even if it had been years since they'd loved the night through to watch the sun come up, when she'd used a candle flame to burn her mark on his thigh.
But if there was one thing the cruel gods had taught her in her long life, it was that all things, however precious, must pass away.
She stretched among the candles, and raised her eyes to regard the cat-headed man who stood silently in the shadows. Narlargus had not even noticed him, but Pheirauze had felt the feline gaze upon her. The cat head turned swiftly to regard the now-closed door, and then back to meet her gaze once more.
"I know who you must be," she calmly told the silent shapechanger. "And what you've come for. If I promise I'll not scream, or plead, or fight, or raise any alarm, will you tell me what you hope to gain by my death?"
"I hope to learn from you where old gold lies hidden," the voice out of the shadows came smoothly. "The wealth of the Summerstars. Yet I confess that I am here now, when it seems that I face true battles ahead, to gain the wits and drive and cunning I see in Pheirauze Summerstar."
"It is almost all I have left," she replied calmly, watching those cat eyes roam up and down her still-beautiful body. "Almost."
He lifted an eyebrow that no cat would have possessed. "You do not fear me?"
She lifted her smooth shoulders in a shrug and said, "A little. But I fear a slow, lingering death more." She spread her hands in welcome, gestured up and down at herself, and added, "Come. I've been expecting you-and if I can't run from you, perhaps I can live on in you. My hips and shoulders pain me almost constantly, now, and my hearing on the left side is almost gone. I want to feel youth and vigor once more. So come to me now. Slay me-but let it be slow, so that I can teach you of what I wield before I'm gone. You won't be sorry you did."
"Can I trust you?" the cat-headed man asked, rough wonder in his voice.
"The bellpull is there," Pheirauze told him, her eyes very large and dark. "Loop it up out of my reach if you prefer. Behind yon hanging you'll find a bar to keep the door closed. There are two concealed ways into this room, and the doors to both are locked." With one finger, she lifted a swirl-shaped golden pendant from her breast. "Their keys-the only keys-are here."
Warily, the cat-headed man took a step forward, his eyes darting about the room. Slowly he grew a tentacle and reached for the bellpull, and two more to seek out the door bar; Pheirauze watched in fascination, swallowing once.