Amid the trees stretching out below were a few slender spires of towers, and nearer jutted up three separate keeps that looked like the turreted gate towers of Suzail.
In a great ring around these buildings were the tents, campfires, and glittering weapons of a vast besieging army.
“Behold,” Storm announced, in a voice that had a clear bitter edge to it, “Myth Drannor! A jewel ruined and rebuilt and ruined anew more times than it should have been. That now bids fair to fall once more. Because to some fools, a city so fair must be made to fall.”
“I–I-am hurt!” Helgore gasped. “W-where am I, exactly?”
“Right here, Lady Duemethyl. In the Promenade of the Fallen. A place I am charged to guard, where you should not be.”
“Oh,” Helgore murmured, feigning injury and dazedness, swaying as he staggered nearer to the imperious elf. “Oh, dear …”
He put one hand to his head, moaned as if in despairing pain, and felt blindly for the elf barring his way, or the nearest wall, or something solid to cling to.
Shaking his head and murmuring wordlessly to himself, he sensed rather than saw the elf smoothly step out of the way to avoid being touched, and raise a hand festooned with rings that winked and glowed as he called on the magic within them.
So he’d have to strike now, and this was as close as he was going to get.
His back to the imperious elf, Helgore made the forearm and fingers of the hand that were most hidden from the guardian grow longer, and slipped the incantation of the vampiric spell Telamont had taught him into his mumblings.
It tingled down his lengthened arm, and he spun around and lunged, willing his arm longer still.
The guardian shouted and flung up both hands, bright magic lashing out-but the tips of Helgore’s longest two fingers brushed the recoiling elf’s elbow for an instant.
And that was all that was needed.
The roiling radiances of the spell lashed out, red and purple and edged with black, washing over the shouting guardian, whose shout had time only to soar in fear into a sort of startled mew before it abruptly ended.
The guardian staggered back, and Helgore cast one swift glance down the promenade to make sure there were no witnesses. Seeing only empty darkness, he looked back at his victim, the tingling in his arm becoming a numbing explosion of silent spasms, and watched as the spell raged up the elf’s body, draining the guardian of vitality, blood, and moisture, the eyes becoming two dark pits above a vainly gasping mouth.
The doomed elf sagged as his life-force poured into Helgore, who stood over him watching in satisfaction.
Well, now. Drain enough elves, and one could live forever, yes?
The guardian collapsed into a puddle on the floor, mere shriveled skin over bones.
Helgore broke off his spell before it was entirely done in his haste to shape himself into an exact likeness of this imperious elf as Helgore had first seen him, hale and frowningly alert, before he forgot any details of the guardian’s appearance.
He thought he’d succeeded well enough, but truncating a spell has consequences. When he turned away, the puddle on the floor stirred, tugged eerily as if connected to him by invisible cords, and then … the skin of his victim flowed away from its bones.
Helgore looked down at it with interest, then regarded the sprawled bones. Anyone walking down the passage could hardly miss them. Which might raise an alarm and hamper him, before he was done with his work here. So these bones should go, or at least be put somewhere a trifle less in the way.
He looked up and down the promenade, seeking handy hiding places. Every doorway along the way was set into its own alcove, and there were scores of them, a long curving row of closed stone doors graven with House sigils, each of them its own dark byway. He kicked the bones into the darkest corner of the nearest, and turned away.
In his wake, the skin of the elf he’d just slain slithered after him like an obedient dog.
CHAPTER 6
Well, Lord Delcastle?”
Arclath looked his ladylove up and down. Not that it was easy in the dimness of the deep forest all around them and through the darkness that now clung to her. Her face was entirely hidden; he could just make out the gleam of her eyes through what seemed a roiling cloud of smoke.
“I prefer to see what I want to kiss,” he told Storm. “Just to avoid broken noses and chipped teeth, you understand. Yet I won’t deny this shadowy look has a certain exotic allure.” He looked at Rune. “Tell me, does it tickle?”
“No,” she replied with a chuckle, “and that’s a good thing, being as she’s started on you already.”
“What, and didn’t even buy me a drink first?”
“My, but what passes for humor among nobles is … interesting,” Storm commented darkly as she strolled around Arclath, studying him critically as her illusory darkness built around his shins like swirling smoke, and started to drift higher. “Seldom amusing, but interesting.”
“We learn from the very best,” Arclath assured her affably. “Jesters, bards, and Elminsters.”
Storm’s reply to that was a snort. Ere she stepped back, looked him up and down, and pronounced, “You’ll do. We look like three Shadovar arcanists showing our true selves so the motley mercenaries we’ve hired from all around the Sea of Fallen Stars and beyond will recognize us, and not put swords or crossbow bolts through us.”
“By accident,” Arclath amended dryly.
“By accident,” Storm agreed. “Now let’s get going. It’s a fair hike through yon army. One piece of advice, if I may: Lord Arclath Delcastle of Cormyr, try to keep your mouth shut. You don’t sound Netherese enough to fool anyone. Let me talk, as the two of you do the murmur, mumble, and ‘stare silently’ routine.”
“By your command, Marchioness,” Arclath agreed with sardonic formality, falling into step behind Rune. Rune chuckled again.
Ahead of them both, Storm was already striding purposefully onto the little path that led to the latrines and on down into the encampment below.
As they passed the expected aroma, Arclath wondered for the fourscore and second time why soldiers always seemed to dig their latrines uphill from where they’d be sleeping-but keeping in mind Storm’s command, he wondered it silently. Crossing Storm was best done for very good reasons, and as seldom as possible.
The camp was the usual confusion of men trotting in various directions all at once, laden with firewood and weapons and grimly important looks, but it was quieter than most. No officers were shouting urgent orders.
Not that any were needed. The siege had settled into a daily grind of fighting in the trees, slowly wearing down vastly outnumbered defenders who couldn’t replenish their losses.
The three false Shadovar walked straight through it all unchallenged, heading for the clang of sword on sword, the occasional brief flashes of spells, and the smoke drifting from where fiery spells had set trees aflame.
Arclath set himself to wondering again. This time as to why exactly this age-old, merry woman with octopus-like living hair the hue of polished silver was taking them straight into the heart of the thickest choking smoke.
Rune was coughing already. Storm turned, murmured something, and touched her throat, then kept right on turning until her long fingers tapped Arclath under the chin.
He blinked. There was still smoke all around them, so thick it was getting hard to see, and he could smell the sharp, acrid burning in his nose-gods, up his nose-but the tickle in his throat, the searing that threatened to set him choking, was just … gone.