"No," Storm said sharply. "Even if either or both of those conditions were true, they are your affairs. We merely meant that it's apparent to us all that some adventures befell all three of you that went beyond 'See Malaugrym, slay Malaugrym, run run run'."
Shar giggled. "That sounds elegant."
"Indeed," Sylune agreed dryly. "So give, Lady Sharantyr. What did you learn in the Castle of Shadows? And I don't mean about Malaugrym, or shapeshifting, or the nature of ever-shifting Shadowhome. I mean about yourself."
"About myself?"
"About Belkram and Itharr, then," Storm said gently. "How are my two half-trained Harpers?"
"Very good companions and able protectors. Belkram has a touch of Torm in him, I think."
Shar heard Storm's silent amusement at that observation, and went on, "Itharr is quieter, and there's a darkness in him. H-He needs to kill, sometimes."
"And how would you look upon spending several years adventuring with them both?" the lady bard asked. "Just the three of you, not a part of the Harpers or part of the Knights of Myth Drannor."
"I'd enjoy it, I hope," Shar replied, then added quickly, "but I fear the Shadowmasters will soon strike back, and-"
"And?" Sylune asked quietly.
"And I'll lose one or both of them," Sharantyr said. Her voice sank almost to a whisper.
"You are fond of them both, then?" Storm asked quietly.
"Aye, I-" Sharantyr's voice sharpened. "Why are you asking me this? Do you want me to shout from the tower turrets that I love them?"
"No, Shar," Sylune said softly. "We want you to admit it to yourself."
In the little silence that followed, Belkram snorted softly in his sleep, and at the comical sound something inside Sharantyr suddenly rose into her throat, and she wept as quietly as she could.
The radiance of Sylune was suddenly all around her, and she felt a gentle, chill touch on her forehead. The ghostly kiss left a tingling behind, and her somehow calmer.
She sniffed away the last of her tears, and said in a small voice, "I'm so afraid of losing them."
"That's why I came along," Storm said softly, "to lend one more sword to the fray and make all of your chances for survival that much better."
"Malaugrym are everywhere!" Sylune intoned in tones of mock horror.
"Don't say that!" Sharantyr told her fiercely, turning her head to stare into eyes that were two serene white wraith fires.
"Why not? Face your fears as you should face everything else in life-openly. Name them, and they become things you can handle, after a fashion."
Sharantyr laughed, a little ruefully. "I didn't expect to spend my time staring into the night talking about my loves and fears," she told the two age-old sisters.
"Why not, Shar? What could we possibly talk about-in all our lives-that's more important than what we love and fear?" Sembia, Flamerule 22
"I love to smell their fear," the man with the head of a panther said, raising bloody jaws from a villager who would never again flee screaming from anything.
"Now how could I tell that?" replied the man whose arms split into tentacles. A choking merchant struggled in the coils of two of those tentacles.
The Malaugrym shook the merchant, much as a hunting cat shakes a rat in its jaws, and tightened his tentacles with lazy strength, tearing the man's head off. Blood sprayed in all directions as the corpse convulsed, wriggling in its final agony.
"Well? Are you going to eat this one?" Bralatar asked, his hands lengthening into talons to tear the man's body apart. He licked his lips in anticipation of the feast.
Lorgyn took one bite, then tossed the headless body aside. "No. I'll find something a little more succulent," He looked across the night-shrouded garden where they stood, at a building whose distinctive red lanterns marked it as a brothel. "In there."
"No wonder old Elminster wanted Faerun for himself!" Bralatar said, watching his comrade reach up with a small forest of tentacles and swarm up the side of the building. "It's a neverending love-feast and brawl!"
"Aye," Lorgyn called down, heedless of whose attention they might alert, "only better!"
A man's head suddenly appeared out of one window. "Hoy!" he snarled, "what're-doppelgangers! Call the Watc-"
A tentacle descended in a slap that carried the weight of falling stone, breaking the man's neck as a child snaps a twig. He fell onto the sill, and said no more.
The Malaugrym's tentacles were busy at a higher window. He reached in to a bed where a fat merchant was rolling among slippery silk sheets, pretending he couldn't find the giggling owner of the bed, wriggling around beneath them.
"Not here!" the merchant hollered, clutching at a pillow. "Where's she gone? Oh, sweet merciful gods, help me… my partner'll be furious when he learns how much I spent for an hour of pleasure, and then couldn't find the wench for the size and opulence of her bed! Are there other men lost under here, I wonder? That wagon of mine that went missing last moon, perhaps? I'll just have to see! May-"
"Oh, be silent!" Lorgyn snarled in exasperation, snapping out a tentacle to wrap around the man's jaws.
The fat merchant suddenly grew a mouth as wide as a horse and caught the tentacle; an extra mouth appeared in his forehead and hissed, "Get your own plaything!"
Lorgyn recoiled in amazement. "Who-?"
The grotesque mouth spat the tentacle back at Lorgyn and shrank away to nothingness, dwindling into features the Malaugrym at the window recognized. "Lunquar!"
"The same," the older Shadowmaster replied, ignoring the sudden terrified scream from the bedclothes beneath him. He pinned the woman down without sparing her a glance, and said, "I've been watching you two break necks and hurl bodies about for days now; why such a bold rampage?"
"Fun, Lunquar, fun!" Lorgyn said exultantly, using one long tentacle to snatch up the man whose neck he'd just broken and shake him as a trophy. "See?" There was a scream from the window below.
"That's just what I mean," the Shadowmaster on the bed said. "You left that one dangling half out of a window! Hear the screaming now!"
"So?"
"So why rouse half of Faerun when a little subtlety could win you thrones?"
"What fun is that?" the voice of Bralatar came floating up to them. "You can rule just as well through fear… in fact, whenever we've the time to spare, we should spread a little more fear!"
"Your style, perhaps; not mine," the older Shadowmaster replied. "I'm saving my fury for when I meet up with one of Mystra's Chosen!"
"Aye," Lorgyn agreed, his voice menacingly soft. His eyes glowed a sudden emerald green in the gloom. "If you want reasons for rampaging, there's always… revenge."
12
Sembia, Flamerule 23
Birds called and fluttered in a wood where moss grew green on old, proud trees, untouched by a woodsman's axe for three hundred years. A stone wall as high as six men kept errant axes out, for the wood was part of a private estate in the fair uplands of Sembia-an estate that saw few visitors, and even fewer uninvited ones.
Yet one can never be too careful, and trolls may lurk anywhere. So it was that the war dogs Warhorn and Bolder wandered the grounds diligently, carrying two hundred pounds of taut muscle each behind their spiked war collars. Their jaws closed often on squirrels, and they suffered nothing larger than that to live-except men they knew.
No man they knew smelled quite like the peculiar odor now in Warhorn's nostrils. The mighty war dog growled a deep warning to Bolder and advanced cautiously toward the smell, questing from side to side like a soldier.
Bolder caught up to him, stiffened, and rubbed his flank alongside Warhorn to signify he'd smelled the scent, too. They went forward soundlessly together on stiff, alert legs, lips drawn back to bare huge teeth.