Mantimera held up a hand to stay their blades. The Lady Felmorel had fallen to the floor, her face a mask of despair and her eyes unseeing, dying wisps of smoke rising from her trembling limbs…limbs that withered before their eyes, then were restored to lush vitality, only to wither again in racing waves. All the while, as her body convulsed, rebuilt itself, and shriveled again, her screaming went on, rising and falling in a broken paean of pain and terror.
The guards stared down at her writhing body in shocked silence until the Mantimera spoke again.
'My lady will be abed for some days,' he said grimly. 'Leave me with her, all of you…but summon her maids- of-chamber hence to see to her needs. Azuth is merciful and shall be worshiped in this house henceforth.'
Somewhere a woman was twisting on a bare stone floor, with leveled swords all around her in a ring and her bare body withering in waves as she wailed … elsewhere motes of light, like stars in a night sky, were whirling in darkness with a cold chiming sound … there followed a confusing, falling instant of mages casting spells and becoming skeletons in their robes as they did so, before Elminster saw himself standing in darkness, moonlight falling around him. He was poised before a castle whose front gate was fashioned in the shape of a giant spiderweb. It was a place he knew he'd never been, or seen before. His hands were raised in the weaving of a spell that took shape an instant later and spell blasted apart the gate in a burst of brilliance. The light whirled away to become the teeth of a laughing mouth that whispered, 'Seek me in shadows.'
The words were mocking, the voice feminine, and Elminster found himself sitting bolt upright at the fool of his unused bed, cold sweat plastering his clothing to him.
'Mystra has guided me,' he murmured. 'I'll tarry no longer here, but go out to seek and challenge this Lady of Shadows.' He smiled and added, 'Or my name isn't Wanlorn.'
He'd never unpacked the worn saddlebag that carried his gear. It was the work of moments to make sure no helpful servant had removed anything for washing and he was out the door, striding briskly as if guests always went for late night walks around Castle Felmorel. Skulking is for thieves.
He nodded pleasantly to the one servant he did meet, but he never saw the impassive face of Barundryn Harbright watching him from the depths of a dark corner, with the faintest of satisfied nods. Nor did he see the moving shadow that slipped out from under the staircase he descended to follow him, bearing its own bundle of belongings.
Only a single aged servant was watching the closed castle gate. El peered all around to make sure guards weren't hiding anywhere. Seeing none, he hefted the doused brass lantern he'd borrowed from a hallway moments ago, swung it carefully, and let go.
The lamp plunged to the cobbles well behind the old man, with a crash like the landing of a toppling suit of armor. The man shouted in fear and banged his shin on a door frame trying to get to his pike.
When he reached the shattered lantern, limping and cursing, to menace it with a wobbling pike, El had slipped out the porter's door in the gate, just one more shadow in this wet spring night.
Another shadow followed, conjuring a drift of mist to roll before it in case this wandering Wanlorn looked bad for pursuit. The briefest of flashes marked the casting of the shadow's spell…but the servant with the pike was too far away to notice or to have identified the face so fleetingly illuminated. Thessamel Arunder, the Lord of Spells, had also felt the need to suddenly and quietly take his leave of Castle Felmorel in the middle of the night.
The lantern was a bewilderment, the limp painful, and the pike too long and heavy, old Bretchimus was some time getting back to his post. He never felt or heard the chill, chiming whirlwind that was more a wind than a body, more a shadow than a presence, and that, drifting purposefully, became the third shadow that evening to pass out the porter's door. Perhaps it was just as well. As he leaned the pike back against the wall, its head fell off. It was an old pike and had seen enough excitement for one evening.
Torntlar's Farm covered six hills and took a lot of hoeing. Dawn saw Habaertus Ilynker rubbing his aching back and digging into the stony soil of the last hill…the one that adjoined the wolf-prowled wood that stretched all the way to Felmorel. As he did every morning, Habaertus glanced toward Castle Felmorel, though it was too far away to really see, and nodded a greeting to his older brother Bretchimus.
'Yourn the lucky one,' he told his absent brother, as he did each morning. 'Dwellin' yon, with that vast wine cellar an' that slinking silkhips Lady orderin' y'about, an' all.'
He spat on his hands and picked up his hoe once more in time to see a few stray twinklings in the air that told him something strange was arriving. Or rather, passing him by. An unseen, chiming presence swept out of the trees and across the field, swirling like a mist or shadow, yet curiously elusive…for no shadow could be seen if one stared right at it.
Habaertus watched it start to snake past, pursed his lips, then, overcome by curiosity, took a swipe at it with his hoe.
The reaction was immediate. A sparkling occurred in the air where the blade of the hoe had passed through the wind, loud chiming sounded on all sides, then the shadowy wind overwhelmed Habaertus, howling around him like a hound closing on a kill. He hadn't even time for a grunt of astonishment.
As a wind-scoured skeleton collapsed into dust, the whirlwind roused itself with another little chorus of chimings and moved on across Torntlar's Farm. In its wake a battered hoe thumped to the earth beside two empty boots. One of them promptly fell over, and all that was left of Habaertus Ilynker fell out and drifted away.
Four: Stag Horns And Shadows
I wonder: do monsters look different from inside?
The farmer's eyes were dark with suspicion and sunken with weariness. The fork in his hands, however, pointed very steadily toward Wanlorn's eyes and moved whenever the lone traveler did, to keep that menace on target.
When the farmer finally broke the long, sharp silence that had followed the traveler's question, it was to say, 'Yuh can find the Lady of Shadows somewhere over the next hill,' a sentence the speaker ended by spitting pointedly into the dirt between them. 'Her lands begin there, leastways. I don't want to know why yuh'd
A feint with the fork underscored the man's words. Wanlorn raised an eyebrow, replied, 'Have my thanks,' in dry tones, and with neither haste nor delay got his boots yonder.
He did not have to look back to know the farmer was watching him all the way over the crest of the hill, he could feel the man's eyes drilling into his back like two drawn daggers. He made a point of not looking back as he went over the ridge…and in lawless country, no sensible traveler stands long atop any height, visible from afar. Eyes alert enough to be watching for strangers are seldom friendly ones.
As he trotted down the bracken-cloaked hillside that was his first taste of the Lands of the Lady, he briefly considered becoming a falcon or perhaps a prowling beast… but no, if this Lady of Shadows was alert and watchful, betraying his magical abilities at the outset would be the height of foolishness.
Not that the man who was Wanlorn, but who'd walked longer under the name of Elminster, cared over much about being thought a fool. It was a little late for that he thought wryly, considering the road he'd chosen in life… with his stealthy departure from Castle Felmorel not all that many steps behind him. Mystra was forging him into a weapon, or at least a tool.. and in all the forging he'd seen, those rains of hammer blows looked to be a little hard on the weapon.
And who was it long ago who'd said, 'The task forges the worker'?
It would be so much easier to just do as he pleased. using magic for personal gain and having no care for the consequences or the fates of others. He could have happily ruled the land of his birth, mouthing-as more than one mage he'd met with did…the occasion al empty prayer to a goddess of magic who meant nothing to him.
There was that one thing his choice had given him: long life. Long enough to outlive every last friend and neighbor of his youth, every colleague of his early adventure and magical workings and revelry in Myth
