All Shadows Fled - Ed Greenwood [63]
"I feel its attraction more strongly as the years pass and we visit it not," Argast replied. "I begin to understand why so many of our elders defied the Great Foe even when they knew death awaited them."
"Shadowhome and the planes we can readily reach never felt limiting in any way before," Amdramnar said quietly. "Faerun seemed to be no more than some sort of fanciful land of beasts where the restless of our house went to play, and when careless got hurt there. But now…"
"Let us prepare," Argast said, eyes shining. "I want to be in Faerun without delay!"
The shadow glided to the place it always did, and they stepped off it and went on up a dusty stair choked with the skeletal remains of dead and forgotten servants, into an undercrypt several stairs beneath the Hall of Griffons. There they parted, ascending into the castle proper by different ways so as not to be seen together by interested eyes.
The gigantic shadow that had been their steed drifted on to a place the two Malaugrym did not know. There it rose into a different form and called forth four spherical stones of winking blue fire to orbit one of its wrists endlessly.
"And so two more of the restless of our house go to play," it said in amused tones, "one at least formally welcoming the prospect! Interesting times in old Shadowhome, indeed!"
And as it chuckled, it did something else in the darkness, and vanished to other, deeper places. There were many locales in Shadowhome that neither Argast nor Amdramnar had ever visited, or known about. That lack of knowledge, though, didn't seem likely to prove fatal to either of them. Yet.
*****
Faerun, Shadowdale, Flamerule 18
The serene radiance of Selune fell upon ravaged Shadowdale as it did on all the rest of Faerun this night. Bright moonlight gleamed on both the armor of weary dale sentries and the bloodied gear of the dead. There was no sound but the howling of wolves and the bawling of cattle whose dead masters would never return to milk them. The two women who stood in a lonely place of scorched stones were as silent as the night breezes.
One was the Bard of Shadowdale, Storm Silverhand, her face grim and smudged with dirt and old, dried blood that was not her own. She still wore her armor, and leaned on a sword that had seen much use this day. Had she not recently drunk of a certain well-hidden decanter in her kitchen, she would be trembling with weariness now.
The other woman had no body left to tire-she was a thing of ghostly radiance, a softly curved bright shadow in the night. She floated upright above the stones of her long-burned hut, face lifted to the stars, and began an invocation to Mystra more ancient than she was… and that was old indeed. No one disturbed them, or came near; such doings at the ruined hut were why the folk of the dale still called her the Witch of Shadowdale, and shunned this place.
"Great Lady of Mysteries, hear me," the ghostly lady said into the night, picturing the dark, star-filled eyes of the goddess. "Your servant Sylune entreats."
She and Storm both knew well that Mystra was no more, but perhaps the one who had taken her place would hear… or steadfast Azuth, the Hand of Sorcery.
Her call fell into silence, and she stood there in the moonlight feeling more lonely than she had for years. "Mystra, hear me," she said at last. "Azuth, hear me."
From out of the darkness of vast distances, a voice echoed. A voice she knew. "Azuth hears, little sister."
"Lord of Spellcraft," Sylun6 breathed, almost shuddering in relief, "does Elminster live?"
There came a twinkling of lights in the air above her, soft green and blue radiances that sparkled as they spun slowly about each other. From out of the heart of this occurrence came the deep, confident voice of the god Azuth. "I did not feel him pass… but I cannot feel his mind now, either. Much is in chaos; I cannot