Shar gave her companions a raised-eyebrows look of wary, impressed-despite-myself surprise and peered into the chamber beyond.
It seemed empty of life, though it held shadows that flickered and clawed at each other in a fitful semblance of life. Blade first, Sharantyr advanced, looking this way and that, and saw that this smaller chamber had two doors to their right and one ahead. A massive metal fish bolted to the far wall spilled out light from its mouth, like a tap that flowed radiant air rather than water. They peered at it suspiciously and then advanced across the room. Something echoed in the mists, far ahead beyond the single door… a tapping sound. It came to their ears once but was not repeated.
'They're here, all right,' Itharr murmured, trying to ignore the eel-like thing his left arm had just become. 'I don't know just where, but they're here.'
The other Harper looked at him and sighed. 'Act like we belong here,' Belkram suggested firmly, 'not as if we're creeping around an enemy stronghold.'
Itharr looked innocent. 'But what if we are creeping around an enemy stronghold?'
Shar chuckled despite herself. The mist swallowed the sound as if it were hungry, and she stopped short and looked around once more. 'I feel like I did in the Under-dark,' she said softly, 'creeping around, hoping I'd not be found…'
The two Harpers exchanged glances. Belkram laid a kindly flipper on her shoulder and said, 'Shield high, Shar. We're-'
He broke off at the rather nauseated look she was giving her shoulder, or rather, at the part of him that was wiggling obscenely there, well on its way to changing into something else.
Her look was so comical that both men chuckled-long, deep chuckles that built into shaking mirth. Sharantyr gave them both a hurt look.
'Do you two giggling idiots mind?' she asked indignantly.
And the door in front of them swung open.
They hadn't even time to look apprehensive before an apelike, shambling thing with the head of a handsome young man and one hand that ended in a cluster of tentacles moved through the door and headed past them, over toward one of the doors on the right. He gave them a cold glance and then stiffened, turned, and looked Sharantyr up and down.
'Shapes of Faerunians? Are you practicing for a foray after this Elminster mortal, or just having'-his gaze traveled back and forth between them, and his grin acquired a few needlelike teeth-'a little fun?'
Sharantyr gave him an easy shrug. 'A little fun,' she drawled in soft, lazily menacing tones. The Malaugrym seemed to hesitate, and she added pointedly, brushing one arm along Itharr's now-pustuled flank, 'Private fun.'
The Malaugrym seemed about to say something more but merely nodded and went on. As the door opened, he looked back and was favored with a trio of faintly mocking, faintly challenging half-grins, just the look Belkram had seen on the lips of Elaith Craulnobur, the notorious elven adventurer, in a spell-scene shown to him by a Harper in Waterdeep. Itharr remembered that look from a lady brothel-keeper he'd arrested in Elturel, just before half her girls returned to their true doppleganger forms and she'd started to scream. And Sharantyr would always see the almost-smiles on the faces of drow bending over her, whips in their hands.
Seeming satisfied with what he saw, the Shadow-master vanished through the door.
'It almost seems as if we know what we're doing,' Belkram commented, flexing his right arm, which was lengthening steadily into what looked like a gigantic crab claw.
Itharr nodded. 'Just behave as if you know what you're about and have every right to be doing it, and most folk will accept you.' He looked critically at his own arms, one of which was a deep red in hue. 'A fairly simple deception at heart,' he observed. 'I suppose that's why so many kings have managed it down the years.'
Elminster's Safehold, Kythorn 19
Elminster paced back and forth in the bookshelf-lined Safehold, frowning and stroking his beard. From time to time he lifted his head to stare at one of the room's four doors, noting absently that Ao had shuffled through the spell-stored animated scenes he displayed as hangings on those doors, and put on display the most alluring of each. He gave one of them-a lady who had been dust for almost eight hundred summers-a half-smile as he banished her, shaking his head. 'Distracting,' he muttered, and returned to his pacing, striding up and down the room, face dark with thought.
'This is ridiculous,' he muttered after a time, coming to a halt by the table. 'I must know.'
He waved a hand. The chamber darkened obediently except for a small point of whirling light above the table, which grew and grew until it became as large as his face… whereupon it spun a book out of itself and vanished with a satisfied sound.
Elminster took the floating book and stepped on the floor tile that would whisk him at will onto the seat of his private privy. 'Twas time for some serious reading, before some bespectacled twit at Candlekeep noticed this tome was missing, and called on magic to trace it. Oh, he had his own copies of Alaundo's predictions, but the Commentaries of Iyrauthar, the book in his hands, was the only text to gather related records, rumors, legends, and testimonials about the Mad Sage's thunderings. Moreover, Candlekeep's copy had been annotated by First Reader Taltro some six hundred years ago, collecting even more useful lore on the Endless Chant and its various fulfillments-much of it errant nonsense, but one can't have everything.
'Oho,' he said softly, after a while. 'Oh ho ho, indeed.' He summoned his pipe with a crook of one finger and sent the book back to its rightful home with a wave of his other hand, rising up through the floor from jakes to study in slow, stately majesty. Tablets of Fate, my wrinkled old behind, he thought sourly. Did even the divine lack taste and inspiration these days?
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 19
The door through which the Malaugrym had come proved to open into a long gallery, with pillars and a railing on their right. The view over the railing looked down into a shadow-shrouded hall where various robed folk- Malaugrym, presumably, in largely human form-strode back and forth from door to door. A smell wafted up that could only be described as something fishlike being fried. They did not tarry to watch, for fear of attracting attention. At the end of the gallery, a door opened into a room dominated by a deep, echoing well. They dared not confer in that room, in case the well took their voices to unseen ears far away. So they chose one of the other three doors leading out of the room and found themselves in a little closetlike space lined with benches. A hole in the floor made them suspect this was a Malaugrym garderobe, and useless to them for the same reason as the well room. Retracing their steps, they chose a different door and entered a room with a stair descending in front of them, curving off to the right as it did so.
'What did you make of that cooking smell?' Belkram murmured from at the head of the stairs. 'My stomach just growled.'
'Is that what I heard?' Itharr asked, eyebrows dancing.
'Belt up and stow it,' Shar murmured with menacing softness. 'The question is a good one.' As if in agreement, her stomach turned over with an audible sound of protest.
The look she gave them both just dared them to comment, but at that moment someone began to ascend the stairs. Itharr propelled his two companions downward with gentle pressures on their backs, muttering as he did so, 'Well, to my nose it seemed like someone frying a gigantic oyster or mussel in herbed butter, and I can hardly wait to sink teeth into it. Seeing what it looks like, mind, stands not so high on my list of dreamy desires.'
The Malaugrym reached the large midstair landing a pace before they did and halted to watch them, his eyes glinting in suspicion.
'Who are you?' he asked coldly. 'What shapes are these?' And then his eyes fastened on the shadow- shrouded blade in Sharantyr's grip and he hissed and raised his hands in gestures that could mean only spell- casting.
Elminster's Safehold, Kythorn 19
Selune sailed serenely among the stars outside the window in the ceiling of the Safehold, and cast her cool light down on the table where, after many long hours, the Mage of Shadowdale still sat slumped in thought. Elminster stirred as the full glory of the moon cast ivory fire around him, and stroked one of the knots in the richly
