All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [101]
"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. Well 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 Maalthiir 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?"
" Ill 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 hacks, 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