Cloak of Shadows - Ed Greenwood [88]
"When you don't know what you're doing," Belkram agreed solemnly, hefting his saddlebag, "that's not too hard."
Sharantyr gave him a half-smile and a shrug in reply, and reached for the door. As her hand approached it, the door gave way silently, pivoting back into dim shadows beyond.
Shar gave her companions a raised-eyebrows look of wary, impressed-despite-myself surprise and peered into the chamber beyond.
It seemed empty of life, though it held shadows that flickered and clawed at each other in a fitful semblance of life. Blade first, Sharantyr advanced, looking this way and that, and saw that this smaller chamber had two doors to their right and one ahead. A massive metal fish bolted to the far wall spilled out light from its mouth, like a tap that flowed radiant air rather than water. They peered at it suspiciously and then advanced across the room. Something echoed in the mists, far ahead beyond the single door… a tapping sound. It came to their ears once but was not repeated.
"They're here, all right," Itharr murmured, trying to ignore the eel-like thing his left arm had just become. "I don't know just where, but they're here."
The other Harper looked at him and sighed. "Act like we belong here," Belkram suggested firmly, "not as if we're creeping around an enemy stronghold."
Itharr looked innocent. "But what if we are creeping around an enemy stronghold?"
Shar chuckled despite herself. The mist swallowed the sound as if it were hungry, and she stopped short and looked around once more. "I feel like I did in the Under-dark," she said softly, "creeping around, hoping I'd not be found…"
The two Harpers exchanged glances. Belkram laid a kindly flipper on her shoulder and said, "Shield high, Shar. We're-"
He broke off at the rather nauseated look she was giving her shoulder, or rather, at the part of him that was wiggling obscenely there, well on its way to changing into something else.
Her look was so comical that both men chuckled-long, deep chuckles that built into shaking mirth. Sharantyr gave them both a hurt look.
"Do you two giggling idiots mind?" she asked indignantly.
And the door in front of them swung open.
They hadn't even time to look apprehensive before an apelike, shambling thing with the head of a handsome young man and one hand that ended in a cluster of tentacles moved through the door and headed past them, over toward one of the doors on the right. He gave them a cold glance and then stiffened, turned, and looked Sharantyr up and down.
"Shapes of Faerunians? Are you practicing for a foray after this Elminster mortal, or just having"-his gaze traveled back and forth between them, and his grin acquired a few needlelike teeth-"a little fun?"
Sharantyr gave him an easy shrug. "A little fun," she drawled in soft, lazily menacing tones. The Malaugrym seemed to hesitate, and she added pointedly, brushing one arm along Itharr's now-pustuled flank, "Private fun."
The Malaugrym seemed about to say something more but merely nodded and went on. As the door opened, he looked back and was favored with a trio of faintly mocking, faintly challenging half-grins, just the look Belkram had seen on the lips of Elaith Craulnobur, the notorious elven adventurer, in a spell-scene shown to him by a Harper in Waterdeep. Itharr remembered that look from a lady brothel-keeper he'd arrested in Elturel, just before half her girls returned to their true doppleganger forms and she'd started to scream. And Sharantyr would always see the almost-smiles on the faces of drow bending over her, whips in their hands.
Seeming satisfied