Hastening down the stairs to obey, the armsman met one of his fellows hastening the other way with a basin slopping in his hands. The first said, 'The lady's passion for bathing is crazed! Have they all washed their wits out of their heads in Cormyr? What's wrong with just going down to the millpond when your stink starts to drive the dogs away?'
The other shrugged. 'Overcrowding?' he jested innocently, and went on up the stairs, redoubling his speed as they heard the faint but imperious call:
'Where's that water?' Tower of Mortoth, Sembia, Flamerule 26
Bralatar and Lorgyn stepped back into the privy chamber of the Tower of Mortoth and exchanged coldly triumphant smiles. 'Worked perfectly,' Bralatar announced, setting down his chest. It clinked.
Lorgyn raised an eyebrow at the sound. 'I went back for my wand and some favorite food… I thought you were getting your best spells.'
Bralatar raised a decanter into view. 'And some real wine, to celebrate!'
Lorgyn chuckled and set down his own coffer to study the four spread-eagled, motionless figures hanging in the webwork of cold fire.
'Hmm… see? It drains the mage first,' he said, indicating the shrunken, nearly skeletal body of Mortoth the Mighty.
'Is that because we put him in it first, do you think, or because he wields the most magic?'
Lorgyn shrugged. 'We'll have to gather some more wizards to see… and we'll need more, anyway, to keep this open. If these apprentices here don't work properly or hold enough life-force, we could be stranded here after just one more back-and-forth trip.'
'Plenty of time to go mage-gathering after we've mastered a little more magic and had some fun,' Bralatar said, picking up the chest again and starting toward the door.
He stopped and turned, indicating the female apprentice with a jerk of his head. Irendue stared endlessly and sightlessly at the privy wall, her mouth agape. 'Shall we free her for a little dalliance tonight?'
'I don't know if that's such a wise idea,' Lorgyn said with a frown. 'I thought of that myself-she could show us the magic of this place, for one thing-but then I thought of the chance it would give her to turn some spell we don't know about against us. There're so many enchantments in this place, one overlaid atop another, that I can't see any way to keep clear of them all.'
'We still have to find a way out past those things in the moat,' Bralatar pointed out, 'and the stone golem, and the cat on the lawn, to say nothing of whatever servants he's got in the house, and any magic they can call on! I think we've no choice but to pull this one out of the thrall and question her.'
'What's to stop her hurling a dozen spells at us the moment her wits're her own?'
Bralatar frowned. 'Strip her to take away any magic she carries, tie her hands together to stop her casting spells, and with the same rope hang her down the privy shaft. Dangle her just above the water, where we can threaten her with the things in the moat. Then each of us stretch a tentacle down there with her; mine with an eye to watch her closely-so she knows we're seeing what she does-and yours to hold your wand trained right on her!'
Lorgyn thought about it, then began to smile slowly. He looked over at the unseeing female apprentice and said, 'First, we'll have to find some rope…' Shadowdale, Flamerule 27
'Shadowdale… a fitting name indeed,' Argast said, peering through the leaves of the last tree on the west bank of the river Ashaba. 'Where the Great Foe lived,' he mused, 'and so many of our kin died. We'll conquer this place first.'
'And rule it as a slave farm, anon,' Amdramnar agreed, looking across the water at the twisted spire of the Tower of Ashaba. 'Pretty, this… all these trees, and the water…'
Argast looked at him. 'That's not what you said when we were in the swamp.'
Amdramnar snarled. 'If I hadn't shifted fast enough, I'd be dead now. What was that?'
''Quicksand,' they call it. Didn't you hear the nice man who hauled me out?'
'Not until he screamed when you started to eat him,' Amdramnar replied archly. 'I was too busy washing the mud off… I can feel grit inside me, even now!'
'We only lost a day,' Argast said. 'Should we cross the river here?'
Amdramnar shook his head, putting an entire day of floundering through the mud-choked swamp west of them out of his mind… hopefully forever. 'Let's work our way around and come in from the east. That man I talked to most of the night-'
'Before you ate him,' Argast reminded, just as archly.
'— was from Hillsfar. I can talk as he did, and say the same things about Great Lord Maalthur and the cursed Zhents and all that. We have to talk our way past guards no matter how we get in.'
'Why not just turn to eels and swim down to the millpond? Up onto the bank, take human shape, and-'
'Get challenged by the first guards we meet, or a wench in the tavern, or a shopkeeper,' Amdramnar finished the sentence for him. 'I want to talk to someone, to confirm that Elminster's dead… and this Hillsfar place is east of here, so we'd best be coming from the east.'
'And doing what?'
'Going to ask Elminster-about some strange shapeshifting beings our master Dundifolus of the Sixteen Unlit Black Candles saw. He'd come himself, but they changed both his feet into fish fins, and he hasn't yet managed to reverse the strange enchantment!'
Argast smirked. 'You expect them to believe that?'
'I'll tone it down… but we should ask for Elminster, and say we've been sent by some mage. How will they know we aren't telling the truth? Their magics can't read the minds of any of the blood of Malaug!'
Argast nodded slowly. 'Your plans are sound. Lead on.'
And so it was, not long after, that two footsore wizard's servants from Hillsfar trudged into Shadowdale along the Voonlar road-and passed by three leather-armored folk who were quietly taking a woodcutter's trail out of the dale due east into Myth Drannor. The three rangers were refreshed and reprovisioned after a day-long sleep and a bath personally administered by Lady Shaerl of Shadowdale. With heavy packs on their backs, they were setting out on another patrol and wondering when they'd meet with lurking Malaugrym. By the humor of the gods, neither band saw the other. Tower of Mortoth, Sembia, Flamerule 27
'M-Mercy,' Irendue sobbed as they hauled her up through the privy hole she'd sat above so many times before, holding her bound wrists back behind her, over her head, so that she could barely keep her balance. 'Mercy!'
Bralatar smiled at her as his tentacles took her by the throat and around both elbows, holding her so tightly she could barely breathe through her aching throat. Her eyes were large and dark in terror as Lorgyn's tentacles untied the ropes that cut into her wrists. He thrust her back, back once more into the cold embrace of the flames that did not burn…
Irendue's body trembled as the spell energy raced through it, and she whimpered once before the surging energy drove away her wits once more. 'You see?' Bralatar told her as the light in her eyes slowly died, 'you are untouched. This is mercy.'
He chuckled coldly while Lorgyn arranged the apprentice's limbs apart as they had been earlier. The endless hum of the spell flames grew stable once more.
'The gate is unharmed,' he said at last. The two Malaugrym exchanged a smile and went to the study, snaking out tentacles ahead of them to uncork the wine and bring out some roast shadowbeast.
'Profitable, that,' Bralatar said, flopping down in an old armchair that until recently had been the exclusive preserve of Mortoth, and raising one of Mortoth's best glasses in salute to Lorgyn. 'The wench certainly knows how to talk with a wand nearly down her gullet.'
'More to the point, she's seen Faerun shrewdly, and knows what lies behind what can be readily seen,' Lorgyn replied, sipping at his own glass.
'Ah,' Bralatar said slyly, 'do I hear the tones of a Shadowmaster looking for a mate?'
Lorgyn looked at him levelly. 'No,' he replied, 'you do not. I merely meant that what she knows makes her too valuable for us to destroy. How else would we have found out all that about the Realms and the wizards in less than a day?'
Bralatar nodded, levity gone. 'You speak truth… she yielded much to us, and swiftly. Enough for me to conclude we'd best avoid Thay, the islands Lantan and Nimbral, and the slave keepers-Calimshan, that was the
