Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [2]
The dragon managed a curving cartwheel across the sky, the wind whistling through its scales, and Mystra leapt to meet it, trailing bright silver stars in her wake. The wordless song rose with her, soaring, exultant-and was suddenly shattered.
In the air, the goddess of magic faltered, and her silvery light flickered. With little cries of unease, the cavorting creatures broke off their dancing to watch. Mystra drifted on until she touched the dragon and clung to it, but her face wore a frown, and her eyes gazed on something far off.
Suddenly she shivered. "Evil Art," she whispered sadly, waving her arms as if she could brush the moment away. Returning from wherever her sight had taken her, she shook herself and looked around the waiting sphere of gravely watching creatures.
"A great and dark Art has been worked," she told them calmly. "Not in Toril, but by someone who watches this world and thinks of it even now."
"We must be vigilant," the dragon said then, the deep, melodious rumble of its voice startling them all.
"Aye, that we must," Mystra agreed gravely, and swept her hands up. From between her long, graceful fingers streamed a bright shower of silver stars that made the watching creatures gasp and murmur in awe.
The music sang forth again. "I will not have the spell-dance ended," the goddess said with sudden fire, "by every evil deed of Art… or we should never dance together at all!"
Warily the pegasi, faerie dragons, sprites, swanmays, and the great form of the gigantic copper dragon circled her and began to move in time to the music again. Stars dove and spun around them as the music swelled, but there was a darkness among them now, a shadow of Mystra's mood that even the most spirited of her leaps did not dispel. "Bad times ahead," said one faerie dragon to another, and there was reluctant agreement. A note of proud defiance crept into Mystra's music as the dance went on. More than one troubled creature fell away from it and made for home, and safe lairs, and places where seeking-magic was stored. Bad times are better faced on the crumbling pages of tomes that relate histories of long, long ago-not as deadly events that tomorrow may bring.
* * * * *
The Castle of Shadows, Kythorn 6
Milhvar grew a long, tentacled arm that flattened into a leathery wing, and flapped it once. The power of his wing beat plucked him from his feet and took him a good way across the chamber. He noted approvingly that the cloak's gray and hard-to-see substance shifted shape along with him. His cloak of spells was truly a cloak of shadows, as suited to shifting as any of the blood of Malaug. Now to test it against the Chosen of Mystra, to see if the enchantments he'd devised truly held. The cloak must foil all magic wielded or cast by any sworn minion of Mystra, from her mortal Chosen to Azuth himself! If it proved able, the Chosen wouldn't be able to sense the approach of the Malaugrym… and perhaps his kin would have their revenge upon the hated Elminster at last!
Milhvar made a certain gesture. The cloak shrank away from him, rolled itself into a ball, and dwindled into a thing of wisps and tatters. Smiling faintly, he took it in his hand and headed for his favorite hiding place. His cloak of shadows was best kept secret until it had served him in winning far greater power in the ranks of the clan than he commanded now.
Power he deserved. What, after all, had the Malaugrym done under the command of Dhalgrave? Elminster yet lived, and none who walked in the shadows dared set foot on Faerun without great preparation-and greater stealth. All we do these days, Milhvar thought sourly, is watch from afar and brood. And the time for that is fast running out. Something was building among the gods, something that could be turned to advantage by those who knew how to bend both magic and shadows to their will.
"And then," Milhvar told the darkness politely, "things will change-rather violently, as they deserve to." He thought he heard an answering whimper, and stiffened for an instant before he recalled