Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [69]
"It is," Sylune said. "Use the blade to work it. Don't fear, for it will not take you far."
Wondering, Shar approached the ring. It flickered, and the blue radiance of her blade pulsed as if in reply. As she stepped into the ring, white motes of light circled her, making her skin tingle. The blade pulsed again, as if asking her if she wanted to call on it.
She willed the gate to take her wherever it went, and the sword flared a bright blue before her eyes.
When the light faded, Shar looked hastily around. It was warmer-much warmer-but she seemed to be standing under the same moon, at night in an open ruin. The manor!
She looked down and found herself standing in the midst of the campfire, which had been banked over with turf for the night. She sprang back hastily, boots scraping on the stone, and saw Sylune floating into view around a wall.
"Some folk," Shar said sternly, waving her blade, "have a very strange thing where / carry a sense of humor."
Sylune's light laughter tinkled on a night breeze, and a sleepy male voice said, "All day you have to gossip, and you must do it when honest men are trying to sleep?"
"Belkram," Shar told him smugly, "there are no honest men here, only you and-"
"What's that?" Belkram cried, pointing at her blade. "You didn't have that when I went to sleep!"
"Fast, isn't he?" Sylune observed lightly.
"Not half so fast as he's going to have to be, if I find he's awakened me for no good reason," a deeper, more sour voice said from another corner of the roofless room.
"Well met, Itharr!" Shar said gaily, waving her blade at him.
"Where'd she get that?" Itharr asked Belkram irritably. The Harpers, both propped up on their elbows in the moonlight, exchanged glances and shrugs.
"I haven't a scrap of an answer to that," Belkram said testily. "Tomb-robbing, probably. That's usually how such baubles turn up. But she's been waving it around like a young maid displaying a doll at her birthday feast since I woke up!"
"And still is," Itharr said, tossing his blanket aside. "Where'd you get it, Shar?"
"In a tomb," Shar said lightly, tossing it from hand to hand. "Like it?"
"Here," he replied, coming toward her, "let's have a look at it!"
She sprang back, fetching up against a stone wall suddenly enough to make one of the horses snort in its sleep, and told him, "Looking is generally performed with the eyes, Itharr. Only thieves need to 'look' at things with their hands!"
Belkram chuckled. "Right enough, Shar. Tell the man."
Itharr halted, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Seriously, Shar… where've you been?"
"In the Elven Court," she told him quietly, meeting his incredulous gaze with level eyes, "in a tomb somewhere dose to Myth Drannor."
"And how did you find this tomb?" Belkram asked softly, disbelief heavy in his tone. Sharantyr saw his gaze dart to her empty blanket, to be sure he wasn't facing some apparition-or shapeshifter.
"Mystra took me there," Sharantyr told him, wonder in her eyes, "and gave the sword to me. A weapon against the Malaugrym, she called it, and charged me to use it against them. Are you with me?"
"Shar," Itharr said gently, "we've been with you since we met in a ruined castle by the desert, and watched a crazy old mage kissing a rotten old archlich. We're still with you." He tilted his head to regard her coolly. "But are you sure your wits are steady?"
Sharantyr held up the blade. In response to her rising exultation, it blazed bright blue fire around her. "You think I'm imagining this?"
"Well," Belkram told the nearest wall brightly, "it's certainly nice to share the same delusions as one's closest friends…"
Sylune chuckled. "She's telling the truth, Harpers, and she's not crazed. Excited, yes, but meeting Mystra does that to one… as you should both remember."
"I believe," Belkram said, getting up and folding his blanket.
"We believe," Itharr corrected, going back to retrieve his own bedding. "So