All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [118]
The Harper gaped. "But you're-you're Khelben!"
The archwizard sighed. "Has the disguise spell failed again? Oh, dear…" He rolled his eyes theatrically.
Laeral chimed in breathlessly, "We've tried everything…"
As she spread her hands in despair, Khelben touched the door in a certain spot-and it flared into a blinding glow. The Harper threw up his hand to shield his eyes, just in time to see the two mages fade away…
The Castle of Shadows, Shadowhome,
Midsummer Day
In a room where shadows were rarely still, two tenta-cled things met, exchanged grunts of recognition, and rose into manlike forms.
"It's even worse than I'd thought," Hulurran said without preamble or greeting. "Since Dhalgrave was slain and the intruders first came, over sixty of the kin have perished or disappeared… perhaps as many as seventy!"
"Seventy!" Gathran sighed gloomily. "Will we live to see the House of Malaug dwindle to nothing, and the shadowbeasts finally slither in to tear the last few of us apart?"
Hulurran shrugged. There's just one good thing," he said. "Milhvar was working on a cloak that shielded him from the prying magics of the mages of Faerun… a 'cloak of shadows,' he called it in his notes. If any-thing's befallen them, the secret of its making is gone with him."
"You saw his notes?" Gathran did not bother to hide his astonishment.
Hulurran smiled. "Milhvar was so old that he sometimes forgot that others of us have seen just as many years… He hid some of his notes-and the finished cloak; I saw him testing it-in a hideaway Anduthil created for safe storage. Since Anduthil's passing, I believe he thought only he remembered its existence." He turned slightly, and made a gesture. "It's right here," he added, "and-"
Hulurran fell abruptly silent. Gathran peered over his shoulder to see why. The hideaway was a small room with a cot, a chair, a desk, and a chamberpot. A few blank scraps of parchment were strewn on the desk, but the cot-where his companion was probing emptiness-was quite bare. " Twas right here," Hulurran said, frowning, "and he wasn't wearing it when he met his end-I saw him die."
"Then where is it?" Their eyes met and held in silence for a long while.
Hulurran sighed. "Let us hope one of us is wearing it in Faerun right now."
"A prudent one of us," Gathran agreed.
They both sighed then, and left that place.
When the world stopped whirling, they were sitting together on a bench in Shadowdale, with Elminster's Tower rising crookedly in front of them-and a startled guard scrambling up from where he'd been lounging on the bench beside them. He swung his gleaming pike down.
Khelben calmly struck it aside and twisted it out of the armsman's hands.
Laeral said mildly, "Perhaps it's the clothes we're wearing…"
"With all due respect, sir merchant," the guardcap-tain said firmly, "no one brings wagons into Shadow-dale without our looking inside them."
The paunchy, unshaven merchant glared at him. "Aye, I know your sort of searching. What's the point o' my coming all the way from fair Cormyr"-one of his men gave him a strange look, and the guardcaptain almost smiled-"if you steal half my stock, eh? Pendle's Fine Meats are known from Suzail to Selgaunt, and I'll be damned by all the gods if I let some uniformed thugs in a backwater dale rob me of what I've worked so hard for!"
"Then turn your wagons about, merchant, and go around Shadowdale," the guardcaptain said softly, his hand on his sword.
"This one's open, sir," one of the guards spoke out, pointing at the second wagon back. Without taking his eyes from the guardcaptain, Pendle grew a tentacle thirty feet long that snapped like a lash around the armsman's throat.
There was a collective gasp of horror and fear from men on both sides of the roadblock. The guardcaptain stared hard at Pendle as his sword flashed out. "What are you?" he asked, white to the lips.