unbound hair swirled around her head in the moonlight, and she caught at it with one hand, wondering what she must look like, wandering alone in these ruins.
She'd come hoping to slay Randal Morn and the handful of warriors loyal to him. They'd somehow eluded the best efforts of the Zhentarim to hunt them down. They slew encamped hireswords and Zhentilar troops in Daggerdale, striking here one night and there the next, slipping about like ghosts in the trees. They must have spell-cloaks to hide them from scrying, and they'd prevailed against some of the best blades the Zhentilar could whelm, leaving a trail of dead impressive even to an ambitious Zhentarim mage.
And here she was, alone, seeking to bring them down. Arashta smiled thinly. She had a wand, true. Its comforting weight, sheathed in her left boot, rubbed against her leg as she took a few steps out of the full moonlight, to make herself less easily seen by eyes in the trees nearby. The wand had little magic left in it, though, perhaps only a single strike. She also had herself, and men long without a woman might let a hard, wild beauty get closer to them than they'd suffer a peddler or pilgrim to venture. She had to find them first, though, before a brigand arrow or a hungry beast found her. Even if she prevailed against such foes, it would not do to let a watching Randal Morn know she commanded magic that could slay so effortlessly.
The wings of her fury had brought her here so easily: a spell that, without her spellbooks, she could not regain here to take her home again. She had another magic that could change her appearance, but it was a sham seeming only, not a true change in shape. If she used it to hide herself while she slept, she'd be without it when it might be needed in battle.
Sleep. She yawned. Again. Soon she'd be too weary to stay awake. How to sleep in safety, in these wild woods? Arashta sighed in exasperation. It had seemed so simple a mission when Thundyl-gods blast his arrogant smirk! — had charged her with it. All she'd have to do would be to avoid swaggering into Daggerdale with forty warriors or so, as her unsuccessful predecessors had done, and avoid being careless.
It struck her that she wasn't eluding carelessness all that well. Arashta shook her head, smiled ruefully, and took a few steps east, deeper into the dale, to where she could just see the glimmer of a small stream snaking across overgrown fields. Perhaps- She froze and then suddenly whirled around, robes flapping, to stare at the dark wall of trees. Someone, or something, was watching her. She could feel it. She raised a hand slowly, debating whether to cast her lone spell of revealing now or to save it for a more pressing moment.
In the trees, the man whose body looked like the dark trunk of a duskwood had grown tall enough to overtop most of the branches in his way. Steadying himself by grasping a nearby bough, he threw the stone in his hand high and hard, and dwindled again, sinking down as the stone was still in the air.
When it crashed down in the brush behind Arashta, making her whirl around again with a little gasp of alarm to face nothing in the night, the shapechanger had become a nine-foot-tall man with jet black skin and burning red eyes. As he stepped forward, his crooked smile changed and his features sharpened into those of a handsome man wearing spiked black armor and a superior smile.
'It would be best, Arashta Tharbrow, if you knelt to me.' The soft, pleasantly menacing voice made the Zhentarim sorceress stiffen and brought her whirling around once more, hands raised to hurl deadly magic.
The figure facing her stood unmoving except for his hands, which stroked and toyed endlessly with something smooth and white… a jawless human skull. Arashta's gaze came slowly, almost unwillingly up from the skull to meet the stranger's blazing ruby eyes, and though she feared she knew the answer, she had to gasp the question.
'Wh-who are you?' As the words came out, she was already dropping to her knees in the grass and stones. He smiled in cold approval. 'Most mortals know me as Bane.' He left a little silence for her gasp of involuntary awe, and it came. The name seemed to echo and roll away from him when he uttered it. Something flickered across his face for a moment, but he stepped forward with a widening smile. 'I've been watching you, lady sorceress, and have come to value you rather more highly than many of my mightier servants in the ranks of the Zhentarim. I have need of an agent who can serve me with true loyalty, and I believe you could be the one I'm seeking.'
Arashta's face was the white of sunspun clouds, and her eyes glittered. 'M-me, Lord?' she gasped.
'I can see you, in days soon to come,' that soft voice continued, as the red eyes seemed to bore into her own, 'as my highest servant in all Toril, a sorceress to overmatch the Witch-Queen of Aglarond, who rules more than one realm in my name and who need fear no man nor monster in this world.'
A jet black eyebrow lifted. 'Will you serve me with utmost loyalty, to the death?'
The sorceress stared at him for a moment, eyes huge and glistening in the moonlight, and whispered, 'Lord Bane, I will.'
'Speak my name seldom,' came the reply, a hint of iron in the melodious voice now. 'And hearken. If you'd become my most powerful and trusted servant, prove your worth now. Set aside pursuit of this Randal Morn-his fate is of no consequence, whatever certain Zhentarim believe-and slay for me instead the mage Elminster of Shadowdale and his three companions: the Lady Sharantyr of Shadowdale and two Harpers called Belkram and Itharr.' The jet black giant took a step away from her and thrust the skull into his chest, where it vanished without a sound. His hand was empty when he drew it out of himself again and asked, 'Will you essay this for me?'
Breathing as if she'd run a long way, Arashta licked her lips and replied, 'Lord, I will.'
He did not quite smile, but the sorceress, heart racing and excitement rising in her throat like leaping fire, knew that he was pleased. 'The four you must kill are not far from here, in a ruined keep beyond yonder hills.'
She looked southeast along the line of his pointing arm, marked a stony face on one slope she'd not forget or lose sight of, and quickly looked back to the god.
'You've heard of the magic of Elminster,' he said dryly. 'These days, my Zhentarim seem to talk of little else.' She nodded, too eager to be hesitant, and he added, 'Though he is always dangerous, the Art left to Elminster is greatly weakened. Right now even Morgil, Master of Magelings'-he allowed a smile to touch his lips- 'could match him in battle, spell for spell.' Bane waved a hand, and four life-sized figures were suddenly standing around her. Arashta almost hurled a spell at them before she was sure they were images and not the folk themselves, snatched here by the god's magic. 'Look well,' he said, 'from all sides, if you wish. Rise and be free, Arashta. Know these foes and slay them for me, and more power than you can dream of shall be yours.'
He hesitated, and then added softly, 'It is not often I take a consort.'
She was still reeling from that thought when he added, 'I shall be watching you do this for me. Know this: It is the end that I value, not the means. Use hirelings, tricks, whatever. Glory is a foolishness others value, not me.'
Sweat drenched Arashta in her excitement, and her body trembled unceasingly as she circled the four silent images as if in a dream, staring until she knew she'd never forget their looks.
Then she turned to Bane and went to her knees again. 'Lord,' she whispered, 'I am ready.'
'Good,' said the dark figure looming above her. With slow ease, one sable hand drew forth a dagger whose blade did not shine but was a deep black with stars swimming in it. Bane held one flat side of it out in front of her face.
Trembling, Arashta put her lips to the dagger and found it cold. After a moment Bane took it gently away, and one cold black hand-he had long, pointed black fingernails like talons, she noticed-took hold of her left wrist.
He drew the dagger down her forearm gently, slicing a short line so deftly that only a few drops welled out. A finger wiped them away, and finger and dagger both vanished into that black mouth, to emerge clean again.
He handed her the dagger. It tingled in her fingers, cold and deadly, and the sorceress felt the chill force racing through her. 'Always worship me thus,' he commanded. 'If I am not present to take the blood from you, consign it to a flame.'
Arashta swallowed. 'Y-yes, Lord,' she managed to say. 'Always.' One of his hands suddenly flowed, widened, and became a mirror that showed her the face of Arashta Tharbrow strangely changed. In her reflection, at least, her eyes glowed with black-and-purple fire. She gasped, and looked up at him in wonder.
Bane gave her a wintry smile. 'The mark of my power,' he said. 'It will soon fade.' He raised a staying hand, turned away, and strode toward the trees. 'Seek not to follow me,' his voice came back to her, as soft and as clear as if his lips were by her ear, 'but do as I have charged, without delay. The dagger you may keep.'
Arashta bowed her head. As she'd expected, when she straightened up again, he was gone.
She stared down at the wickedly curved dagger in her hands. It was one piece of polished obsidian, like no other she'd seen before, its edges razor sharp. Wonderingly, she brought it to her lips again, and then held it up to the moon, panting in excitement. 'Elminster shall die!' she told it fiercely, her vow echoing back from the ruins
