Go to Lady Amathree. If any guards try to stop you, tell them it's Harper business and order them to escort you. If you can't find Lady Amathree, ask for Alustriel herself. Say that there are Malaugrym in the palace! Got that? Malaugrym!'
The wardrobe door banged open, and Silder and Haerarn burst into the room. Silder's eyes were wide with amazement, and Haerarn's were wild with the awful realization that he probably wouldn't find Shantra alive.
It was worse than that. Her body was dancing between two laughing Malaugrym, suspended on tentacles that ran through the maid's corpse from one body opening to another. As they commented on how odd or delectable this feature or that organ looked, the Malaugrym were devouring her. Swooping tentacles that ended in eel-like jaws were tearing at her bared flesh, and blood was raining down on the dusty floor.
Weeping, Haerarn charged savagely into one shape-shifting monster, and Silder gulped and cautiously approached the other. Mistress Iraeyna strode forward and simply slashed a tentacle with her sword cane. The tentacle writhed and flopped in convulsions, slapping the floor, and she stepped past it and drove her cane deep into one flowing form. It stiffened, convulsed, and abruptly let go of the choking Haerarn. As he crashed to the floor, his face a dangerous purple, Iraeyna turned toward the other shapeshifter.
It slapped Silder into one wall with fearsome force-amid the crash, Iraeyna heard the sharp crack of ribs giving way-and then was gone. There one moment and vanished the next.
The Chief Dresser of the Ladies' Wardrobe frowned. With pursed lips she whirled back to the first Malaugrym and thrust her silver cane into it repeatedly until all sign of movement had ceased. Then she sat down on its gray- brown bulk and began to lace up her bodice.
When she saw Haerarn's eyes focus on her again, she said briskly, 'Well done, armsman. Now get up and unbar the door, will you? A lot of folk will be rushing in here shortly. Ring for service, too; Silder's hurt. Oh, and you'd better put away that leapknights board before your swordlord sees it, hadn't you?'
Haerarn hadn't managed to carry out more than one of these instructions before a dozen armed men boiled into the wardrobe, weapons drawn.
'Thank you, gentle sirs,' Mistress Iraeyna said serenely, 'but it's all over now. You'd best check along the back passage, though, in case there are more lurking about.'
'The day that Swords of the Guard take orders from ladies' dressers,' the oldest and burliest swordlord told her, his moustaches bristling, 'is-'
'Belt up and stow it, sirrah,' she told him sweetly, causing some of the men who were goggling at the dead tentacled thing under her to look up and grin. 'I give you orders by the High Lady's decree.'
'Oh, aye, and how did you manage that, with her at the other end o' the palace from here?'
With a sigh, Mistress Iraeyna began to unlace her bodice again.
12
Daggerdale, Kythorn 18
Sharantyr held up the blade admiringly. Its blue outshone the moonlight and turned the center of the meadow into a ring of eerie beauty. Sylune flew out of the tree-gloom toward her, and Shar smiled in welcome and said, 'Look what the Lady Mystra gave me!'
Sylune danced around her in the air-the first time Sharantyr had ever seen her do so, rather than drifting or walking along upright-and then smiled and said, 'I'm proud of you, Shar. Yet perhaps it'd better be sheathed instead of waved about, here in the wilds by night. What say you?'
Sharantyr sighed and shook her head. 'Foolish Shar. Back down to the everyday with a crash.'
Sylune chuckled. 'Be not so downfallen, Shar. Have I called you 'child' yet?'
'No.'
'Nor will I again,' the Witch of Shadowdale told her, 'now that you've faced a goddess and held your bladder.'
Shar grinned and shook her head but slid her new blade obediently into the scabbard at her side. Though it seemed far too large to fit there, it went in. Sylune shook her head.
'No. Better back in its own sheath. Don't forget your own blade, either. It's served you well for years, and will again.'
Shar looked back at the blade she'd driven into the turf, standing forgotten in the moonlight, and blushed. 'How could I-?'
'Relax, lass,' Sylune told her gently. 'You've faced divinity and are apt to be mazed in the wits for a while yet. Recover your blade and draw the new one again. There's something I want you to see.'
Shar did as she was bid, and as she held the blue blade up again, she became aware of a flickering white ring in the trees that she was sure hadn't been there before. She pointed at it with the blade, which immediately gave off a satisfied-sounding little hum. 'Is that what you wanted me to see?'
'It is,' Sylune said. 'Use the blade to work it. Don't fear, for it will not take you far.'
Wondering, Shar approached the ring. It flickered, and the blue radiance of her blade pulsed as if in reply. As she stepped into the ring, white motes of light circled her, making her skin tingle. The blade pulsed again, as if asking her if she wanted to call on it.
She willed the gate to take her wherever it went, and the sword flared a bright blue before her eyes.
When the light faded, Shar looked hastily around. It was warmer-much warmer-but she seemed to be standing under the same moon, at night in an open ruin. The manor!
She looked down and found herself standing in the midst of the campfire, which had been banked over with turf for the night. She sprang back hastily, boots scraping on the stone, and saw Sylune floating into view around a wall.
'Some folk,' Shar said sternly, waving her blade, 'have a very strange thing where / carry a sense of humor.'
Sylune's light laughter tinkled on a night breeze, and a sleepy male voice said, 'All day you have to gossip, and you must do it when honest men are trying to sleep?'
'Belkram,' Shar told him smugly, 'there are no honest men here, only you and-'
'What's that?' Belkram cried, pointing at her blade. 'You didn't have that when I went to sleep!'
'Fast, isn't he?' Sylune observed lightly.
'Not half so fast as he's going to have to be, if I find he's awakened me for no good reason,' a deeper, more sour voice said from another corner of the roofless room.
'Well met, Itharr!' Shar said gaily, waving her blade at him.
'Where'd she get that?' Itharr asked Belkram irritably. The Harpers, both propped up on their elbows in the moonlight, exchanged glances and shrugs.
'I haven't a scrap of an answer to that,' Belkram said testily. 'Tomb-robbing, probably. That's usually how such baubles turn up. But she's been waving it around like a young maid displaying a doll at her birthday feast since I woke up!'
'And still is,' Itharr said, tossing his blanket aside. 'Where'd you get it, Shar?'
'In a tomb,' Shar said lightly, tossing it from hand to hand. 'Like it?'
'Here,' he replied, coming toward her, 'let's have a look at it!'
She sprang back, fetching up against a stone wall suddenly enough to make one of the horses snort in its sleep, and told him, 'Looking is generally performed with the eyes, Itharr. Only thieves need to 'look' at things with their hands!'
Belkram chuckled. 'Right enough, Shar. Tell the man.'
Itharr halted, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. 'Seriously, Shar… where've you been?'
'In the Elven Court,' she told him quietly, meeting his incredulous gaze with level eyes, 'in a tomb somewhere dose to Myth Drannor.'
'And how did you find this tomb?' Belkram asked softly, disbelief heavy in his tone. Sharantyr saw his gaze dart to her empty blanket, to be sure he wasn't facing some apparition-or shapeshifter.
