Within was the stink of fear and sweat and death. A sobbing woman, cold gray manacles still about her wrists and ankles, swung a jewelled whip to rain blows down on a bloody, huddled form. The manacles and a wild look were all she wore. The chains that had held her dangled empty from a beam overhead.
She looked up, saw Elminster, and managed a savage smile of gratitude. Then, deliberately, she turned and brought the whip hissing down again with all the strength of a blood-spattered arm, though it was clear that the meat she struck could no longer feel it.
"Fly now, lady," Elminster bid her gently. "Flee before other wizards come to slay ye. Out, among the people, and throw both whip and keys into one of the streams as soon as ye can. Take nothing else or they'll know ye." Her dirty bare shoulders shrugged in reply, and he added, "Ye want to live, to see them all dead, don't ye?"
The woman listened to that, still panting out her fury in great sobbing breaths. She abruptly turned and snatched up a ring of keys from the mage's now-empty chair. Her eyes met Elminster's in fierce, silent gratitude, then she was gone into the morning.
Elminster turned eyes that had grown old again on Sharantyr. "I bade him good morning and snatched up that scepter you saw me use. He sprang up to stop me, so I tossed it where he'd try to catch it, tripped him as he bent, and emptied a bowl of his wash water over his head. I got his keys and freed her before he could be up and hurling spells." He smiled faintly. "She snatched up the whip before I'd even freed her ankles. I nearly lost a finger to it, plucking the wand out of his belt before he could."
Sharantyr looked at him and then at what was left of a man on the floor. She shivered for just a moment, then asked steadily, "The wand? What sort is this one?"
Elminster sighed. "Well, it can make things larger or smaller. If we had a tenday or two to spare searching this place, the keep, and any other haunts this mala-spell may have had, I suspect we'd find all manner of missing coins, gems, and other finery made very small. We might also find argumentative or very beautiful folk that the guard stopped, shrunk to the size of thy smallest finger."
Sharantyr stared at him, eyes large and round. "What a monster!" she hissed, looking around the hut as if every drawer and corner held coiled snakes waiting to leap out at her with hungry fangs.
Elminster shrugged. "Ever wonder why there are more evil mages than good ones?" he asked. As he turned to go, he added quietly, "It's because power like that makes it so hideously easy to rule all about ye. Remember always, there is no such thing as a mage that is not dangerous."
With a grunt of satisfaction, he took a handful of dusty, well-stoppered glass vials from an earthen jar by the door. "Healing quaffs," he said. "The only thing I dare spare the time to take. Let's be off, lass, before thy feared counterblow comes from the keep."
He stepped out through the curtain and paused.
"Ye might pick up all the food ye can find-and wine, for that matter." He looked out, seemed satisfied, and added, "Never forget the food. Coins, now, are hard on the digestion and don't seem to restore a man like simple bread and cheese do."
"Women," his companion told him dryly, "are no different. And my name's Sharantyr, 'lad.' " She met his eyes challengingly.
Elminster laughed and replied, "My apologies, Sharantyr. Now hurry, will ye? I'll be giving this wand to one of the folk here, to hide away and use to free shrunken friends later."
A few hurried breaths later, they vanished back into the woods, Sharantyr's belt heavier by eleven daggers she'd stripped from the fallen Wolves.
It seemed they'd left these trees very long ago, but up the road, the fat Sembian merchant in newly slit-into-rags clothing could still be seen, sweating pounds off his rotund frame as he fretted, clambered, and pleaded to get his wine-wagons safely away before more guards arrived looking for someone to blame for the fate of their comrades lying sprawled bloodily in the dust of the road. Sharantyr cast a last look around, found herself grinning, and followed the Old Mage into the concealing green depths of the woods.
Belaerus shook his head. "Who'd a' thought it?" he said, staring at the bodies sprawled all around. "Just one old man."
Durvin the cellarer slid the wand he'd just been given into his boot and looked at his friend sharply. "I saw only a young man, a man with a long beard, braver than we. Young enough and brave enough to fight an entire guard of Wolves for the dale. To win back our homes for us."
Belaerus nodded hastily. "Aye, brave enough."
"Brave enough," echoed another merchant, and there were nods and murmurs there on the road. Men straightened and set their jaws. Durvin remembered old words, long unsung, and began, his rough voice rumbling loud along the road.
Six breaths later, when mounted, full-armored Wolves swarmed out of the keep and thundered down the road like a black wind, they found men with fierce, hard eyes and no fear in their faces standing amid the black-armored bodies on the road, singing the old Shieldsong of the High Dale.
Men rode hard that day, galloping importantly here and there about the dale. Longspear's message riders, hard eyed and quick, spurred from castle to keep and from keep to posts and barracks. In their wake, the aroused Wolves gave the High Dale a waiting air of armed alertness.
Bands of soldiers rode the roads, peered into inn rooms and farm kitchens to check again what had been checked many times before, and plunged repeatedly into the dark cloak of trees that covered the northern slopes of the dale.
Longspear himself, stout and hook-nosed and massive in his worn and well-used armor, sat on an armor-plated war steed as big as some cottages in the dale and eased himself around the streets beneath the frowning walls of the High Castle. Commanding and stern he looked, eyes hard and jaw grim, as he waved and pointed with huge iron-gauntleted hands. Attentive message riders galloped in obedience to his every order. But for all his authority and their energy, the intruders who'd hurled spells enough to destroy half a handful of the lord's feared mages and sent twenty or more Wolves to their graves in blade-to-blade battle remained uncaught.
Heladar Longspear surveyed the mountains fearlessly. Unmoving, uncaring of the might he commanded, they walled in the High Dale to the north and south, at once protecting him and shielding his newfound, mysterious foes. Was Sembia behind this? Cormyr? Outlaws trying to seize a home? Or worse?
Deep inside, a chilling whisper repeated the thought he'd been pushing down since the first blood had spilled on the Daggerdale side of the supposedly secret gate that linked him with the Zhentarim. Was a rival priest, mage or faction within the Brotherhood seeking to bring him down, to work some dark and hostile plan?
It might be someone here in the dale. Angruin, perhaps, angry that he'd not been given open rule. Or one of the lesser mages, ambitious and impatient to better his standing in the Brotherhood. That would be bad. Danger close at hand, and skillful enough that he'd not seen it until twenty or more blade-brothers had fallen.
Perhaps the alternative was worse. Someone-it could be anyone-in the Brotherhood striking from the shadows, pursuing an unknown plan with unknown strength. A beholder, half-a-handcount of liches, a rebel cabal of priests… all such had happened before. It was even whispered that Manshoon cold-bloodedly worked behind such intrigues, keeping rivals down and everyone afraid of each other-and of him.
Heladar found himself sweating and forced his thoughts to more comfortable matters: affairs of war fought with swords, with no magic more than priestly healing and a few flash-and-bang spells cast by obedient magelings. Scouring the High Dale was his task right now, then a good evenfeast. After the meal, the council would gather. He'd called the moot, and he'd have to see past the masks of smooth words and stiff faces that each man there always wore. His own life might well depend upon it.