All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [0]
Shadows of the Avatar 03 -
All Shadows Fled
Ed Greenwood
Away, Shadows, away! I grow tired of slaying thee…
and presently I shall grow angry. Then you'll be sorry!
The Simbul, Queen of Aglarond
Said in spell-battle before all her court
Year of Shadows
Prologue
Three living heroes and a ghost dared to take an enchanted blade out of the world, hunting shapeshifters in their ancient Castle of Shadows…
For centuries, the Malaugrym had been dark figures of legend, fey sorcerers who could take any shape they chose. They came to Faerun to impersonate kings and reavers and archmages, to entertain themselves with the havoc they could wreak-and to seize mortal women as breeding slaves, carrying them off across the planes to the place they called Shadowhome.
When the famous archmage Elminster of Shadow-dale caught Malaugrym in Faerun, they paid with their lives. Twice he journeyed to the Castle of Shadows to humble the House of Malaug… but no mere mortal had ever made such a foray and returned to Faerun to tell of it.
Until Lady Sharantyr, Knight of Myth Drannor; Bel-kram and Itharr of the Harpers; and the ghostly remnant of Sylune, Witch of Shadowdale, went up against the shapeshifters armed with the Sword of Mystra. And with that sword, Sharantyr cut her way back from the brink of death and out of the Castle of Shadows, slaying many of the evil shapeshifters as she went.
Unfortunately, most of them still lived, and vowed revenge on four new foes. More entered Faerun with the returning heroes and escaped to wander the realms at will.
Even worse, Faerun was much as they'd left it: in the throes of the magical chaos, bloodshed, and lawlessness of the Time of Troubles, when the gods themselves walked the Realms, no magic could be trusted, and fire and fury raged across the lands.
It was a time for heroes, and the four who'd escaped the Castle of Shadows found Elminster, the Old Mage, waiting for them, with orders to undertake still more perilous tasks in the desperate work of saving civilized Faerun.
And the Malaugrym were waiting for them, too…
If Begins with a Flame
Faerun, Daggerdale, Kythorn 20, Year
of Shadows
The wind rose and whistled through the stones of a roofless, ruined manor house on a grassy hillside in Daggerdale. The trampled slope was strewn with tenta-cled, jellylike, eye-studded nightmare bodies.
Three weary, wild-eyed rangers and a ghostly lady hastened up the hill from the monsters they'd slain, running like starving men to a banquet table. They hurried toward a man who sat in the ruins.
The gaunt, white-bearded old man sat on what was left of a crumbling wall and serenely smoked a pipe. He looked at them all, smiled, and spat out this smoke belcher. It rose smoothly upward to float by his ear, spouting wisps of smoke that curled away to be lost in the quickening breeze. “He deserve congratulations for one thing, at least," he announced.
After the silence had begun to stretch, Itharr sighed and asked in tones that were just respectful, "And what, Lord Elminster, would that be?"
"Keeping thyselves alive," Elminster told him dryly.
"I heard an 'at least' in there," Sylune put in. Her silvery tresses hung still around her eerily translucent face despite the gusting wind. Beside her, the blood-spattered lady ranger Shar shot her an amused look through her own wind-whipped hair.
Elminster glared severely at the ghostly Witch of Shadowdale. "There is a little matter of bringing a trio or more of Malaugrym into Faenin, and allowing'them to wander off untraced and untrammeled, to work their wanton wills across the land."
"Work their wanton wills'… I like that; 'twould fit nicely into a purple Harper ballad," Sylune replied serenely. "My choice, Old Mage, was between the lives of these three heroes-nay, no wincing, now; they've more than earned the title-and those of a few shapeshifters. / think my decision was the right one… and if you disagree so strongly, why did you not take action yourself? You must have been here watching us."
"Been here, aye. Watching, no,"