'Trying to get her to disrobe you again?' Belkram asked, rolling his eyes. 'Haven't you given up on that yet?'
The laughter they shared then was a little wild, but the smiles that ended it were real ones that remained as Shar took a few tentative steps across the chamber. 'We might as well start looking around,' she said.
'Do we have to find this place again, to gate back home?' Itharr asked. Shar shrugged. 'I… don't know. I guess so.' She raised the blade, and they saw the air behind them wavering in confusion. After a moment she lowered it. 'It will show me gates, I think… even here.'
'So why isn't there a clear door, or oval, or whatever?' Belkram asked, waving at the spot where they'd appeared.
Shar frowned. 'I don't think that gate is there anymore,' she said reluctantly. The two men traded glances.
Then we'd better go exploring,' Itharr said, 'or we'll never find a way out of here. If we just stand here, either someone'll find us-and no doubt offer violence-or we'll die of starvation!'
'You may not want to wait for that,' Belkram told him. 'Have you looked at yourself?'
Itharr regarded him sourly. 'Now how could I do that?' Belkram shrugged. 'If your eyestalks grow a little longer, you should be able to swivel one around and get a good look at yourself.'
'I'd refrain from such talk if I were you,' Itharr responded. 'You may have started out more handsome than me, but I doubt Shar's going to be overly thrilled with a man whose back is growing a row of breasts, a moving row of breasts…'
Belkram tried to twist around to look at his back, but couldn't. He shot a look at Shar. 'Tell me he's bluffing,' he demanded. The lady ranger could only shake her head sadly.
'Why hasn't it affected you?' Itharr asked, frowning. As he did so, his eyes flickered a deep mauve and began to slide slowly toward red in hue. 'Could it be linked to sex?' Then he added quickly, 'No jokes, Belk.'
Belkram turned to him as the line along his back moved slowly up his neck and onto his scalp, lifting his hair in an odd-looking crest. 'I wasn't planning any,' he grunted, 'but I think it's more likely the sword. Without the shadow weaving being done around it, it'd be standing in a little gap in the mists, a place these shadows don't care to go.'
'They're alive, aren't they?' Itharr murmured.
'Yes,' Shar agreed briskly, 'and so are we.' She strode away into the curling mists, raising the blade like a prow before her.
'Well, for now, yes,' Belkram agreed mildly. He and Itharr looked at each other, shrugged, and moved tentatively after her. A slithering sound made them both freeze, until Itharr realized it was coming from the tail he'd begun to grow, whispering along the stone behind him. They traded grimmer glances and went on.
Elminster's Safehold, then the Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19
'I really must give the Shadowmasters something to think about besides laying waste to Faerun,' the Old Mage mused. And then he smiled suddenly and snapped his fingers.
Obediently, in a place of ever-shifting shadows distant indeed from the room where Elminster sat, above the unbroken black marble floor of a vast chamber that was never empty, a severed head that looked very much like Elminster's own faded back into view from its stay in otherwhere, winked at a startled Malaugrym striding importantly across the Great Hall, and was gone.
A breath later, in a passage where candles flickered and wavered but never went out, fed by always-circling shadows, Old Elminster's head suddenly appeared. Floating between two pillars, it politely said, 'Boo!' to a pair of startled Malaugrym conspirators, spat lightnings that left one shapeshifter rolling about in agony and the other a smoking heap, and was gone again.
In a chamber where several Malaugrym chanted and slithered, shifting shape in a ritual forbidden by Shadow-masters High for some centuries, a disembodied human head suddenly appeared, floating above the center of the sacred ring of flames, smiling down benevolently at the startled kin of Malaug.
'A sign!' one of them said excitedly, pointing with a flipper. 'A sign!'
'What should we read in it?' another asked, almost suspiciously, as they all gaped at the smiling head.
It winked. ' 'Abandon hope,' perhaps?' it suggested, as the blood dripping from its underside became a stream of silver lances that spun and erupted around the chamber, ricocheting energetically among Malaugrym blood and screams. By the time a Shadowmaster had lifted shaking hands to ward death away, the head was gone again.
' 'Twas Elminster,' he mumbled grimly to the gape-mouthed corpse beside him. 'He's back.'
Wisely, the corpse chose not to answer.
15
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19
Blue-black and sinuous the shadows coiled, rising thigh high around the three rangers as they moved warily down the hall. Soon the parting mists showed them an end wall, and in its center a door flanked by two spitting serpents of stone.
Sharantyr eyed these gape-fanged sentinels warily as she approached, and thrust her sword carefully between them, probing back and forth, but there was no response. They seemed to be no more than lifeless stone ornaments.
Which made a nice change.
'Where shall we head for?' Sharantyr asked her companions softly, turning before the closed door. 'Upward, or down? Head for large and grand rooms, or small and dark?' Two shrugs answered her, so she added, 'Is there something we should be looking for?'
'Food,' Itharr said brightly. Shar gave him a look, but Belkram held up a hand to halt them while he bent for a moment and listened to the stone he bore. Then he looked up. 'We will need water to drink, first, and food eventually,' he said, 'but I've been told we're not to put anything in our mouths that she hasn't touched-been immersed in, whatever-first. Try to avoid even touching Malaugrym; they know all about what's poisonous to us.'
'So no biting,' Itharr commented, and added slyly, 'Not like our last visit to Waterdeep.'
Even before Sharantyr could give him a disgustedly despairing look, he'd adopted graver tones, adding, 'Which brings to mind why we've come. Do we attack everyone-everything-we meet? Do we avoid battle if we can, and try to scout about? Do we try to befriend someone, to learn all we can or to earn a place here?'
'Perhaps next time,' Belkram added in a small voice, addressing the unseen ceiling, 'we could answer a few of these good questions before we leap into the heart of danger.'
Into the rueful little silence that followed, Itharr said, 'I like that. 'Leap into the heart of danger.' Quite impressive. There's a ballad in that…'
'Don't' both of his companions advised, in chorus. He spread teasingly apologetic hands in silence and then gestured at Shar, wordlessly bidding her speak.
Sharantyr eyed both men, seeing several horns growing out of one side of Belkram's head, and small eyes that should not have been there blinking at her from a cavity in Itharr's shoulder. She closed her eyes on these sights for a moment and took a deep breath. Letting it out slowly, she looked at them both and said, 'If we begin by fighting, we're sure to be slain as soon as we meet anyone too powerful, or a group. I don't even think we should be talking like this; they might be able to hear. Just act as arrogant as they did, back at the keep, but be casual… and mysterious.'
'When you don't know what you're doing,' Belkram agreed solemnly, hefting his saddlebag, 'that's not too hard.'
Sharantyr gave him a half-smile and a shrug in reply, and reached for the door. As her hand approached it, the door gave way silently, pivoting back into dim shadows beyond.
