It had been years since Storm had been the Bard of Shadowdale in anything more than legend; she farmed her land and mothered Harpers under her roof no more. The folk of the dale would think her a ghost or a shapeshifter or perhaps an accursed reminder of the Spellplague-and try to put an arrow through her or set their dogs on her, as likely as not.
And it had been years since such violence would have been a passing annoyance to her and no more. Increasingly she was more forlorn grim wisdom than mighty power. Alone, most of the time, too, though that bothered her less and less.
From the glade, it was a short way up through close-standing trunks and rising rocks to where a shoulder of rock reared out of the trees, moss-girt and dark with seeping moisture. Cracks and crevices aplenty gaped in its flank, some impressively large. Two were big enough to be termed “caves” to a passing man’s eye.
One, she knew, was a niche that went in no deeper than the length of a short man lying down. The other was her destination.
Or would be, after she’d turned at the last tree to look back and bide silent, listening long enough to make sure no one was following her.
Storm held still as gentle breezes stirred leaves above and around, until the birds started to call and flit about unconcernedly again, and she decided no one was on her trail. Whereupon she set the cloak down on the toes of her nondescript old boots, shrugged off her robe, undid the jerkin beneath it and doffed it, wrapped the cloak around herself, donned her clothing again over it-and strode straight to that deeper cavemouth.
Where she stopped, put her left foot carefully on a little ledge about shin-high up one side of the jagged opening, and kicked off, to leap forward into the darkness, taking care not to put her other foot down anywhere on the rocks by the lip.
As a result, the spring-spear mechanism remained still as she ducked past it, rather than slamming its long metal boar spear right through her body.
Several human skulls-that she’d helped gather, a lifetime ago-adorned the narrow and uneven floor of the natural cleft she was suddenly standing in, that ran deeper into the solid rock. Mere warnings.
She strode past them and into the
Harper mages had woven it long before, Elminster among them; a magical field to keep intruders out of this waystop hidehold in the forest. The Blue Fire had turned the ward into a roiling chaos that made living bodies shudder and terrified most who felt its touch, but the menaces it offered were meant to scare, not slay. If, that is, they still worked as intended and hadn’t become something worse.
First came the blistering heat that robbed her of breath and drenched her in sweat in two steps. Storm closed her eyes to keep her eyeballs from cooking, gasped for air through clenched teeth, and forced her way on.
On, as the inferno grew and all her garments hissed, the moisture baked and blasted out of them, into-in midstride-icy cold, a chill that froze the sweat on her skin and plunged her into helpless shivering. A cold that seared nostrils and lungs, stabbing at her like countless spikes-Storm had nearly died, too many years earlier, on hundreds of sharp-pointed metal needles, and knew what that felt like-then faded into the next part of the ward, the curtain she disliked the most.
Mouths formed in the air all around her, maws she didn’t bother to open her eyes to see, blind eel-like tentacles that saw her without eyes. Worms ending in jaws with great long fangs that struck at her like snakes, then bit and tore, savaging her as she hastened on, trying to get through them without losing overmuch blood. The maws hissed and roared or gloated wetly nigh her ears as they drooled
The manacles, lying discarded on the passage floor. She kicked them and plucked them up, through all the vicious biting, and clung to them as she fought her way on.
Then the biting mouths and their roaring were behind her, and she was walking in air that crackled and snapped as many small lightnings stabbed at her, raking their snarling forks across her skin, her muscles trembling in their grip, spasming and cramping painfully as she lurched on.
Out of that torment into another, a nightmare of half-formed, shadowy coils that tugged at Storm, tightening like so many ghostly yet solid snakes of titanic size, coils that
Alone and almost blind in near darkness, the only light coming from faint, fitful pulsings of the roiling ward behind her, Storm gasped and stretched and panted, seeking an end to her trembling as she tore off robe and jerkin again, to take off the war wizard cloak so she could wrap it firmly around the manacles and keep them from clinking.
After what seemed a very long time, she felt her body would obey her again. Not bothering to dress again, Storm caught up her clothes, the magics she’d brought, and the muffled manacles, and strode through the deepening darkness for a long way, across the level stone floor of a great cavern, until a faint glow became visible ahead.
She headed for it, and it became several glows, close together and down low and flickering feebly, at about the same time as the smooth stone under her boots started to slope down and the faint echoes of her progress changed, making it clear that the unseen ceiling of the cavern was descending as she went on, to hang close above her, the cave narrowing, descending, and getting damper.
And starting to stink, too. Not the smell of decay or earth or stone, but the musky stench of an unwashed and filthy human.
Then, at last, Storm reached the source of the glows and the reek.
Her sister Alassra, once queen of Aglarond and forever infamous in legend as the mad Witch-Queen and slaughterer of Red Wizards, the Simbul, was sitting alone, naked and filthy, with her feet in a pool. The water that fed it dripped down the cave walls in a dozen ceaseless flows.
Still shapely under the filth, still silver-haired, Alassra looked perhaps a lush and well-preserved forty-odd winters-but also, by the same scrutiny, seemed an utterly mad, keening wreck.
Gibbering and drooling wordlessly, she rocked and swayed back and forth, eyes staring wildly but seeing nothing.
A long, heavy chain that Storm knew ended in a shackle around her sister’s ankle rose out of the water past her, to end at a massive metal ring set deep into the rock. It had been forged by dwarves but enspelled by Elminster and all of Alassra’s sisters who could work magic powerful enough, its links bearing Alassra’s blood slaked in her silver fire, let out in wounds they’d gently made. It called to her across the world, a ceaseless whisper she could ignore when lucid, but that lured her slowly but irresistibly whenever her mind collapsed. A binding she could easily remove but would not want to; the only comfort and companion she would crave. When her mind was in ruins, it could make her feel wanted and not alone, as long as she embraced it.
It was doing that right now.
So Alassra wasn’t dying or under attack. She was just … more mindless than ever before.
Storm set down the magics and her discarded clothing, laid the manacles on the garments and unwrapped them with infinite care to avoid telltale rattlings, then left those shackles lying, draped the magical cloak around her neck, and went to her sister, embracing her wordlessly.
The Simbul stiffened in alarm and wonder then gasped in pleasure as she felt the cloak against her skin where it was pressed between them.
The cloak began to glow-the same eerie blue as the blue fire from the skies had been-as her body started to absorb its enchantments. Alassra clawed and clutched at it like a desperate, starving thing.
Her gasps became moans of pleasure then groans of release as her arms tightened around Storm, and she kissed her sister with dreadful hunger.
“El!” she cried, in a raw, rough-from-disuse voice. “El?”
“Sister,” Storm said gently between kisses, “ ’tis me: Astorma. Ethena.”
