Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [107]
No, Sharantyr. You can keep one or two for… entertainment… but choose carefully, came Sylune's wry and surprising response. Choose very carefully.
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Faerun, The Misty Forest, Kythorn 19
Ramtharage, Keeper of the Fastness, almost whimpered in his seething rage and had to gasp out two long, shuddering breaths to calm himself enough to recall the words he'd need. These blasphemers must die!
It had been a day and a night since the Great Evil, and these men could not be allowed to live through this second day. For every moment that passed, the hurt to divine Eldath grew greater. Their sin must be purged before nightfall, that the cleansing of the Fastness could begin.
At about this time yestermorn, the Great Evil had occurred. The night sky had been wracked by the thunders and flashing evocations of mighty spells: showers of lightning lances, great cauldrons of skyfire, and near-blinding clashes of strange radiances. Surely gods had been contesting in the heavens, one with another. Such terrifying outpourings of magic had continued through the dawn. With full light, a smoking star had plunged from the heavens and crashed down like a hurled axe into the heart of the Fastness itself!
The clear, tranquil waters had been hurled skyward, the small sacred creatures who dwelt within them rudely slain, the carefully nurtured mosses and reverently placed stones of the banks flung about like handfuls of refuse and gravel. In one awful instant, the Fastness had been riven and despoiled.
The faithful of Eldath had not even finished tending to those of their number who'd been struck senseless or dashed and broken against the rocks and nearby trees when intruders had come through the woods-local rangers Ramtharage knew by sight, men who worshiped that other Lady of the Forest.
And these Mielikki worshipers hadn't even asked his permission for their intrusion, only arrived in grim haste with nets and long hooked poles and a shamelessly clad witch in their midst. And then these desecrators had dragged the pool! Profaned the ruined Fastness anew!
When their hooks and ropes and probings failed to bring up what they sought, the witch had summoned up a dark spell that lifted the tortured waters once more, only this time all of a piece, floating upward as if held in a vast, invisible bowl.
With the polluted sacred waters hanging dark and heavy over their heads, those rangers of Mielikki had torn the sky rock out of the muddy, naked depths of the Fastness and borne it away. The witch even had the temerity, the utter flaming gall, to complain about the weight of the waters, the sacred pool of the Goddess!
"A sign of the goddess," they'd called the man-high stone as they hauled it away, gouging a trail through the sacred earth that still cut away through the trees, raw and bright, like a wound made by a slashing sword.
There was only one goddess whom rangers could speak of so: Mielikki. Our Lady of the Forest.
Ramtharage's lips twisted in fresh anger at that name. He strode to stand beside the stone's trail and look along it, deliberately letting the anger build in him again, for he was not a violent man, and fury all too soon made him feel sick. But he must be strong; this desecration of Eldath's holy place must be avenged.
He'd begun the work he must do. Three of the blasphemers hung helpless across the pool, entangled in a web-work that Ramtharage in his fury had spun no less than seven trees into, and more vines than he'd bothered to count. He stared at their fearful, sweating faces stonily as his people gathered behind him, for priests of Eldath did no violence, and yet these men must die.
When the crowd was large enough, Ramtharage began the long walk around the torn edge of the pool. Behind him, someone began the Chant of the Fastness, and it swelled as he walked on, his bare feet plunging into mud that should