in their midst, small snarling bolts of lightning leaping around his body and scattering bright sparks where they touched.
He howled in agony, arching his torso, limbs splayed. Sharantyr stared, fascinated, as his arms grew, darkening and broadening into batlike wings.
Elminster uttered a satisfied hum and followed it with four quick, sliding words. The struggling figure of their foe spun end over end as the lightnings faded and fell away from it. The young mage seemed frozen, half-in and half-out of bat shape, bright eyes staring at them and brighter fangs gaping, as Elminster's magic whirled the attacker's body around and around. 'Aye, I like thee better in half-shape,' Elminster told the creature serenely, making a plucking motion with one hand.
The bat-thing abruptly broke out of its tumbling and seemed to leap across the air between them, directly at the Old Mage.
Sharantyr swallowed and rose up into its path, face set and blade extended. The bat-thing rushed forward as she held out her bright sword firmly in both hands. With a helpless, howling whimper, it impaled itself on her steel.
Shar staggered at the impact, icy blood drenching her hands, and stared in sudden alarm as the darkness and weight faded away from around her blade, taken to some other place by magic that flickered and tore at her, leaving her with a confused impression of shadows, watching malevolence, and a cold, dark somewhere filled with strange monstrous beings.
Someone said coldly, 'Now do you see, Taernil?' but the reply, if there was one, was whirled away in a rising whistling, the noise of mournful, misty shadows streaming around and past her.
Sharantyr felt the magic that had taken the bat-thing trembling through her. She stared at her bare blade and unmarked hands for a dazed moment before a firm hand encircled her arm above the elbow and an all-too-familiar voice rasped, 'Did ye or did ye not hear me to tell thee to put thy blade away, lass?'
Sharantyr shook her head to clear the whirling shadows from it and gasped, 'Who… what was that?'
' What' is right, Shar. A Malaugrym mage, young and careless with his power.' Then the voice sharpened. 'A fine useful pair the two of ye are! Puffing up here just a breath or six too late, as usual.'
Belkram and Itharr plunged to a halt, breathing hard, and exchanged an exasperated look. 'That's… our job,' Itharr gasped. 'Rushing in… we're Harpers, remember?'
Elminster snorted once more. 'So am I, young and brainless one,' he reminded them all none too gently. 'And d'ye see me running about the landscape like a scared hare, trampling the crops and looking generally ridiculous?'
'No,' Belkram replied bravely, 'but I'm sure if we were a thousand years or so older than we are, we'd have seen you doing just that… probably with a maid or two fleeing in front of you and an angry father or two in hot pursuit at your heels.'
The snorts of suppressed laughter that answered this sally didn't come from Elminster, who looked dangerously around at them all but spoke not a word.
None of them saw a figure watching from atop one of the ruined towers, a crooked smile on its face. 'Laugh while you can,' Issaran told the four standing far below him, and faded away.
A moment later, an oak leaf spun lazily down from that height, which was odd, for there were no oak trees near.
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 15
'Issaran goes to ground, would you say?' A goat-headed Shadowmaster chuckled, looking into the scrying portal.
'At least he's wiser than this flamebrain,' rumbled a giant whose head resembled a warrior's helm, rising from his shoulders without pause for a neck. He was looking down at the smoking form of Taernil, shifting in slow pain from a puddle of black leather to something that had lizardlike legs. 'By the Doomstars!' they heard him gasp. 'It hurts!'
'I can send you back there, if you'd prefer,' Kostil said calmly, watching the young Malaugrym shuddering at his feet.
'If any of you truly cared, you'd do something about this pain! Gods on their thrones!' Taernil spat, shifting slowly into something that had teeth to clench and eyes to glare around.
'Care, youngling?' The goat-headed Malaugrym sounded amused. 'We do take care, which is why we watch and think before we rush in, trusting to a few spells that our foe learned to cast an age ago!'
'Clever, Yabrant… you're so clever, all of you,' Taernil gasped, swaying upright and seeing Huerbara watching him mutely from the shadows not far away. He redoubled his efforts to quell the trembling in his limbs and look grim, calm, and strong.
The goat-headed Shadowmaster bowed his head sardonically. 'At least you have progressed far enough to recognize cleverness, youngling. Keep at it, and perhaps in a century or so you'll have progressed far enough to be able to converse civilly with me for a moment. Add another century or so on top of that, and spending that moment with you might start to be worth my time.'
'Well said, Yabrant,' Kostil commented politely, taking a glass from the grasp of a paralyzed slave creature as it drifted past. He sipped delicately at the bubbling mint-green contents, his eyes shifting to match the hue of the drink, and turned to stroll away.
'You think so?' Taernil hissed, face white with fury, al-most spitting the words in his rising rage. 'You agree with him?'
'Why not? He's right,' Kostil said serenely, walking unhurriedly off across the marble floor.
The helm-headed giant guffawed, and the recovering Malaugrym mage stiffened, turned, and snarled, 'You too, Eldargh?'
The giant sighed and rose up to the full height of his snakelike lower body. He looked down at the young mage expressionlessly for a moment before he muttered, 'Mature a little, Taernil. You're overdue for it,' and slithered away into the shadows.
'All is not lost, lad,' Bheloris said suddenly, stepping from behind a nearby leaning pillar shrouded in spiraling shadows. 'You've learned something of value to us all.'
'Oh?' Taernil asked bitterly, wary of more sarcastic criticism, his eyes on the grave admiring face of Huerbara as she approached.
'The spells he used against you told us all that you faced Elminster.' He inclined his head toward the scrying portal. 'Yonder is no false image or impostor, but a servant of Mystra.'
Taernil's eyes narrowed.
Bheloris smiled ruefully. 'Don't believe me?' He swept a hand at the shadows around. 'They believe. See them go to work on their spells and schemes, now they know truly who they face?' Taernil turned to look at the misty gloom where the far reaches of the Great Hall of the Throne faded away to limits unseen, and saw his kin walking away, some drawn together in excited groups, others striding briskly.
The young Malaugrym drew himself up with something like pride in his eyes. 'They are, aren't they?' His eyes flashed. 'I traded spells with Elminster-and lived,' he said quietly.
'Well, I wouldn't preen overmuch about that,' Bheloris said mildly. 'I've done that myself, as have most of us who style ourselves Shadowmaster. It's one of the ways we measured ourselves, when the kin were more rash… and more numerous.' He turned to look at the scrying portal. 'Why, I reca-'
The scrying portal flashed blindingly and burst into bubbling motes of light. There came a rumbling that shook every Malaugrym there, and the floor of the Great Hall-the very castle itself-heaved, shook, and tilted slowly and ponderously to one side for a moment. Abruptly, a score or more scrying portals burst into bright being here and there around the hall as an ancient web of spells responded wildly. The awed Taernil and Huerbara clutched each other instinctively, staring around, and were shocked to see naked fear on the faces of elder Shadowmasters as the legion of serenely floating portals showed them all the bright flash of something huge and fiery slashing through the sky of distant Faerun. The shadows all around them rocked again, to the sound of many thunders, and someone screamed, 'Elminster! The Doom is upon us!'
Someone else shouted, 'Flee! Flee, or the House of Malaug is lost!'
'Not So!' roared a voice that echoed and re-echoed from every stone, goblet, and pillar of that vast chamber. Dhalgrave's voice shook with fury, and Malaugrym all over the hall cowered at the sound.
