finished with it, but stayed around to drive him witless!
Growling faintly at the thought, he pushed back through the curtains, Shaerl in his wake.
The morning room cleared quickly. When it was quite empty, something moved under the table-something that looked like old and dark wood, but flowed downward to the floor, peeling itself free of the table's underside. It stretched like a hungry snake, slithered out from under the furniture, and rose swiftly, taking on the shape and appearance of one of the tower servants.
The Malaugrym glanced quickly around, but no one was in sight. The servant who was not a servant paused for a long moment to survey the table admiringly. Ahorga had always liked maps. Elven Court woods, Flamerule 22
The embers crackled and glowed ruby red. The two women sat with their backs to it, facing outward on watch, listening to the faint scuttlings and hootings that mark any forest by night. They were in the Elven Court woods, well south of Voonlar, most of the way through their first night on patrol.
Itharr and Belkram had turned over watch duties to them not long ago, and were well and truly asleep, snoring faintly into their cloaks.
'How many nights have you spent thus?' Sharantyr asked quietly.
Behind her, Storm laughed softly. 'Hundreds.'
The ghostly tresses of Sylune turned, from where her disembodied head floated at Sharantyr's shoulder. 'Thousands, Sister,' she corrected.
'That's right-emphasize how old we are,' Storm said, amused. 'I try not to make people feel uncomfortable or lessened in any way.'
'I was the Witch of Shadowdale, remember? Making people wary of me was the best way to hold power over them without ever harming anyone,' Sylune replied.
Sharantyr sighed. 'You seem so carefree,' she said, shifting the naked long sword that lay across her thighs so that moonlight caught it at one end, and a faint red glow from the fire touched the other. She flicked it idly, watching the play of light on the steel. 'Is it because you've both seen it all before?'
'Partly, Shar,' Storm replied, 'and partly because we've learned to try to enjoy everything, from being whipped in chains as a slave to being wooed by well-endowed princes.'
'To clinging to the spar of a ship breaking apart in a storm,' Sylune put in, sounding amused. 'To lying paralyzed under the probes of a drow mage trying to determine if your powers lie in organs he can remove, or if you'll have to be bred to drow to give them your abilities.'
Sharantyr shivered. 'Don't speak of drow, please…'
'My apologies, Shar,' the ghostly head beside her said quickly. 'We both spoke of moments from our own experiences-I forgot that you'd been a captive of the drow, too.'
Sharantyr turned her head. 'You were a slave?'
'For years,' the Bard of Shadowdale told her. 'Not entirely bad years, either… though I never did develop any enjoyment for being whipped.'
'What do you mean, 'not entirely bad years'?' Shar asked incredulously. 'How can you enjoy anything about being a slave?'
'That's what we were trying to say, you see,' Sylune said softly. 'It's not what the gods hand you in life that matters so much, nor what your strivings achieve or fail in the attempt. Whatever befalls, the best way to view life is to savor every moment of it, no matter how sordid or unpleasant… for one thing, the gods give us all only a certain span of time, and time wasted-in misery, despair, drunkenness, or casual inattention-is time gone forever.'
'I see what you're saying,' Sharantyr said slowly, 'but you'll forgive me if I take some time getting to enjoy fighting in great battles, or falling into cesspits, or listening to Torm.'
Trying not to laugh aloud, Storm shook with deep, bubbling laughter for a long time before she found breath enough to speak again. 'Well said,' were her first words. 'Do you feel like talking about what befell in the Castle of Shadows?'
Shar chuckled helplessly. 'I–I suppose so. What do you want to know?'
'Do you recall Elminster's burning the bodies of the Malaugrym you slew, back at the ruined manor in Daggerdale?' Sylune asked.
Shar nodded, but realized they couldn't see the gesture in the dark, and said cautiously, 'Yes.'
'He wasn't simply being tidy,' the ghostly figure told her. 'He was using a spell that destroys the bodies of the recently dead even as it yields up their last few moments of thought. In one of the Malaugrym was a strong desire to slay you-because another Malaugrym, who did not enter Faerun at the time, wanted you as his mate. Another of the dead Malaugrym was reluctant to attack you for the same reason; the Malaugrym who favored you was his ally.'
Sharantyr drew a deep, shuddering breath. 'I see. You're wondering if I pine after some Malaugrym lord, or perhaps even carry a little shapeshifter-to-be within.'
'No,' Storm said sharply. 'Even if either or both of those conditions were true, they are your affairs. We merely meant that it's apparent to us all that some adventures befell all three of you that went beyond 'See Malaugrym, slay Malaugrym, run run run'.'
Shar giggled. 'That sounds elegant.'
'Indeed,' Sylune agreed dryly. 'So give, Lady Sharantyr. What did you learn in the Castle of Shadows? And I don't mean about Malaugrym, or shapeshifting, or the nature of ever-shifting Shadowhome. I mean about yourself.'
'About myself?'
'About Belkram and Itharr, then,' Storm said gently. 'How are my two half-trained Harpers?'
'Very good companions and able protectors. Belkram has a touch of Torm in him, I think.'
Shar heard Storm's silent amusement at that observation, and went on, 'Itharr is quieter, and there's a darkness in him. H-He needs to kill, sometimes.'
'And how would you look upon spending several years adventuring with them both?' the lady bard asked. 'Just the three of you, not a part of the Harpers or part of the Knights of Myth Drannor.'
'I'd enjoy it, I hope,' Shar replied, then added quickly, 'but I fear the Shadowmasters will soon strike back, and-'
'And?' Sylune asked quietly.
'And I'll lose one or both of them,' Sharantyr said. Her voice sank almost to a whisper.
'You are fond of them both, then?' Storm asked quietly.
'Aye, I-' Sharantyr's voice sharpened. 'Why are you asking me this? Do you want me to shout from the tower turrets that I love them?'
'No, Shar,' Sylune said softly. 'We want you to admit it to yourself.'
In the little silence that followed, Belkram snorted softly in his sleep, and at the comical sound something inside Sharantyr suddenly rose into her throat, and she wept as quietly as she could.
The radiance of Sylune was suddenly all around her, and she felt a gentle, chill touch on her forehead. The ghostly kiss left a tingling behind, and her somehow calmer.
She sniffed away the last of her tears, and said in a small voice, 'I'm so afraid of losing them.'
'That's why I came along,' Storm said softly, 'to lend one more sword to the fray and make all of your chances for survival that much better.'
'Malaugrym are everywhere!' Sylune intoned in tones of mock horror.
'Don't say that!' Sharantyr told her fiercely, turning her head to stare into eyes that were two serene white wraith fires.
'Why not? Face your fears as you should face everything else in life-openly. Name them, and they become things you can handle, after a fashion.'
Sharantyr laughed, a little ruefully. 'I didn't expect to spend my time staring into the night talking about my loves and fears,' she told the two age-old sisters.
'Why not, Shar? What could we possibly talk about-in all our lives-that's more important than what we love and fear?' Sembia, Flamerule 22
'I love to smell their fear,' the man with the head of a panther said, raising bloody jaws from a villager who would never again flee screaming from anything.
