The voices grew steadily louder and more distinct,until the hazy outline of the road ahead abruptly dissolved into nothingness.Strewn along a narrow band at the end of the road were a handful of head-shapedspheres, some perched atop a set of human shoulders with arms splayed wide tospread their weight. Farther back, two sets of nebulous oxen horns rose out ofthe peat, the blocky silhouette of a fog-shrouded cargo wagon sitting on thesurface behind them.
Melegaunt pulled his heavy rucksack off his back andcontinued up the road, already fishing for the line with which he strung hisrain tarp at night. As he drew nearer, the head-shaped blobs seemed to sproutbeards and wild manes of unkempt hair. He began to make out hooked noses anddeep-set eyes, then one of the heads shouted out, and with a terrible slurpingsound, sank beneath the peat. The cry was echoed by a chorus of frightenedwails deeper in the fog, prompting the nearest of the remaining heads to cranearound and bark something in the guttural Vaasan dialect. The voices fellimmediately silent, and the head turned back toward Melegaunt.
"T-traveler, you would do well to s-stopthere," the Vaasan said, the frigid bog mud causing him to stutter andslur his words. "The 1-logs here are rotted through."
"My thanks for the warning," Melegauntreplied. Still fifteen paces from the end of the road, he stopped and held upthe small coil of line he had pulled from his rucksack. "My rope won'treach so far. I fear you have spoiled your own rescue."
The Vaasan tipped his head a little to the side andsaid, "I think our chances b-better with you out there, instead of in herewith us."
"Perhaps so," Melegaunt allowed.
He peered into the fog beyond the Vaasan's tribe,trying in vain to see where the road started again. As annoying as it was inthe first place not to know where he was going, the possibility of being forcedto turn back before he found out absolutely vexed him.
"Where does this road lead? To Delhalls orMoors-town?"
"Where d-does the road lead?" the Vaasanstammered, his voice sharp with disbelief and anger. "What about mypeople? After I saved you, y-you are not going to help us?"
"Of course I'm going to help you. I'll doeverything I can," Melegaunt said. Somewhere deeper in the fog, anotherVaasan screamed, and sank beneath the bog with a cold slurp. "You might,uh, disappear before I pull you free. If that happens, I'd still like to knowwhere this road leads."
"If that happens, the knowledge w-will do you nogood," the Vaasan growled. "Your only hope of reaching yourd-destination is to rescue my clan, so that we can guide you wherever you aregoing."
"Something is dragging your tribe underone-by-one and you are trifling over details?" Melegaunt demanded. Hepulled his black dagger, then dropped to his hands and knees and began to probethe logs ahead for rot. "This is no time to negotiate. I won't abandonyou."
"Then your patience will be rewarded," theVaasan said firmly.
Melegaunt looked up, his brow furrowed into a deliberatescowl. "Am I to understand you don't trust me?"
"I trust you to try harder if you have n-need ofus."
"An answer as slippery as the bog in which youare mired," Melegaunt snapped. "If I am successful, you will have noneed of me. How can I trust you to guide me then?"
"You have the word of Bodvar, leader of the MoorEagle Clan," the Vaasan said. "That is all the trust you need."
"Trust has different meaning for outsiders thanfor Vaasans, I see," Melegaunt grumbled, "but I warn you, if you goback on your promise…."
"You have nothing to fear on that account,"Bodvar said. "You have but to keep yours, and I will keep mine."
"I have heard that before," Melegauntmuttered. "Far too many times."
Despite his complaint, Melegaunt continued to advanceup the road, probing ahead for rotten logs. By all accounts, the Vaasans hadbeen a harsh but honest people until the fabled bloodstone mines of Delhallsand Talagbar were rediscovered and the outside world intruded to teach themthe value of duplicity and fraud. Since then, save for a few villages likeMoortown where a man's word was rumored to be more precious than his life, theywere saidto be as corrupt and sly as everyone else in a world of liars and cheats.
Melegaunt was beginning to doubt Bodvar's story aboutthe rot when his dagger finally found soft wood. He pressed harder, and theentire log disintegrated, crumbling into red dust before his eyes. Then theone beneath his hands grew spongy, prompting him to push back onto hishaunches. The log beneath his knees began to soften as well, and a muddy domeof peat welled up not three feet in front of him, a long line of dorsal barbsbreaking the surface as the spine of some huge, eel-shaped creature rolledpast.
Melegaunt dropped onto his seat and pushed away,scrambling backward as fast as he could crawl. By the time the wood ceasedgrowing soft, he was five paces farther from Bodvar, distant enough that hecould no longer make out even the shape of the Vaasans' heads.
Another clansman screamed, then slipped beneath thebog with a muffled slurp.
"Traveler, are you still there?" Bodvarcalled.
"For now," Melegaunt replied. He stood andbacked away another couple of paces. "Something came after me."
"One of the bog people," Bodvar said."They are attracted by vibration."
"Vibration?" Melegaunt echoed. "Liketalking?"
"Like talking," Bodvar confirmed. "Butdo not worry about me. My armor muffles the sound-it is made of dragonscales."
"All the same, rest quiet for a while."Melegaunt's opinion of the Vaasan was rising-and more because of the risk hewas taking for his tribe than because he wore dragon-scale armor. "I'llget you out. I promise."
"A man should not promise what he cannot becertain of delivering, Traveler," Bodvar said, "but I do trust you todo your utmost."
Melegaunt assured the Vaasan he would, then retreateda few more paces up the road and held his hand out over the road edge. Therewas not even a hint of shadow. Melegaunt's magic would be at its weakest, andhe had already seen enough of his foe's power to know it would be follyto duel him less than full strength-even in a world of decay and rebirth, woodsimply did not rot as fast as had those logs.
Doing his best to ignore the occasional screams thatrolled out of the fog, Melegaunt removed a handful of strands of shadowsilkfrom his cloak pocket and twisted them into a tightly-wound skein. In acentury-and-a-half of reconnoitering Toril, he had yet to risk revealing himselfby using such powerful shadow magic where others might see-but never before hadhe been given reason to think his long quest might be nearing its culmination.Bodvar was a brave one, and that was the first quality. He was also wary,neither giving oaths nor taking them lightly, and that was the second. Whetherhe was also the third remained to be seen-and it soon would, if matters went asexpected.
Once Melegaunt had twisted the shadowsilk into atightly wound skein, he uttered a few words in ancient Netherese and felt asurge of cold energy rising through his feet into his body. Unlike most wizardsin Faerûn, who extracted their magic from the goddess Mystra's all-encompassingWeave, Melegaunt drew his magic from the enigmatic Shadow Weave. As universalas the Weave itself, the Shadow Weave was less known and far more powerful, ifonly because the cloaked goddess-she who must never be named-kept ituncompromisingly secret and maddened anyone who revealed its existence.
When he was sufficiently imbued with the ShadowWeave's cold magic, Melegaunt tossed the skein of shadowsilk out over the bogand made a twirling motion with his fingers. The cord began to unwind, but sankinto the peat before it finished and continued to spin, drawing long tendrilsof fog after it.
An oxen bellowed in alarm, then there was a hugeglugging sound followed by the crackle of splintering wood and the shrieks ofterrified women and children.