It was very peaceful in the woods around the shrine…and, since the killings had begun and fear had driven folks away, very quiet.
Most days Uldus Blackram was alone on his knees before the stone block, halfheartedly lashing himself a few times…gently, so as not to make much noise…and whispering prayers to the Nightsinger.
The shrine had been founded so nicely, consecrated with blood and a wild ritual that still made Uldus blush to remember it. Now there were no black-robed ladies to dance and whirl barefoot around the horned block and no one to lead him in the half-remembered prayers … so he did a lot of just thanking Shar for keeping him alive on his stealthy visits to the woods. He hoped she'd forgive him for not coming at night anymore.
"May your darkness keep me safe from the Slayer," Uldus breathed, his lips almost touching the dark stone. "May you guide me to power and exultation over mine enemies, and make of me a strong sword to cut where you need things cut, and slash where it is your will to slash. Oh, most holy Mistress of the Night, hear my prayer, the beseeching of your most loyal servant, Uldus Blackram. Shar, hear my prayer. Shar, answer my prayer. Shar, heed m…"
"Done, Uldus," said a voice from above him, crisply.
Uldus Blackram managed to strike his head on the altar, somersault over backward to get a good four paces away, and get to his feet all in one blurred flurry of movement.
When he froze, half turned to flee and panting hard, he was looking back at six bald-headed men in black and purple robes, standing in a semicircle around the altar facing him, with faint amusement on their faces.
"Lords of the Lady?" Uldus gasped. "Have my prayers been answered at last?"
"Uldus," the oldest of them said pleasantly, stepping forward, "they have. At last. Moreover, a fitting reward has been chosen for you. You're going to guide us into the Dead Place!"
"P-praise Shar!" Uldus replied, rolling his eyes wildly upward as he toppled to the turf in a dead faint.
"Revive him," Elryn commanded, not bothering to keep the contempt from his face or voice. "To think that such as this worship the Most Holy Lady of Loss."
"Well," one of the other wizards commented, bending over the fallen Uldus, "we all have to start somewhere."
The glowing spellsphere orbited the throne at an almost lazy pace. Saeraede gave it only casual attention, absorbed as she was in sending images of her peering self out into the trees to lure this bold Elminster back to her castle.
Aye, let us gently tease this fittingly powerful and somewhat attractive mage hence.
Yet the news was clear enough, from all the mages she covertly farscried. Word of the death of Mystra was spreading like wildfire, spells were going wild all over Faerun, mages were shutting themselves up in towers before grudge-holding commoners could get to them… or tarrying too long, and getting caught on the ends of pitchforks in a dozen realms, and on and on.
It was time to move at last and make Saeraede Lyonora once more a name to be feared!
Abruptly something tore through one of her images. Saeraede sat up with a frown, and peered, trying to find out what it had been. The spellsphere abruptly lost its scene of city spires and flapping griffon wings beneath armored riders and acquired the dappled gloom of the forest above her. A forest that held a crouching Elminster, several of her floating faces, and…
Arrows snarled through her conjured visage and the dead leaves beyond, to thud into the forest loam and send Elminster scrambling around the other side of a tree.
Arrows?
"Damned adventurers!" she roared, her cry ringing back to her off the cavern roof, and sprang up from the throne. The spellsphere winked out as it fell, the radiance around the stone seat faded…but she was already whirling up the shaft, her eyes spitting flames of mage-fire. Were a bunch of blundering sword swingers going to shatter her long-nursed plans now?
The fittingly powerful and somewhat attractive Elminster boldly dodged another arrow, hurling himself on his face in wet moss and dead leaves as another dark shaft whined past his ear like an angry hornet and fetched up in the trunk of a nearby hiexel with a very solid thunk.
El scrambled up, drawing breath for a curse, and flung himself right back down on his face again. A second shaft hummed past low overhead, joining the first.
The hiexel didn't look to be enjoying these visitations too much, but Elminster hadn't time to survey its sadness…or do anything else but charge to his feet, leap over a fallen tree, and whirl around behind its rotting trunk. He bobbed up into view right away, betting that the two archers wouldn't have had time to put fresh arrows to their strings just yet. He had to see them.
Ah! There! He loosed a stream of magic missiles at one, then ducked down again, hearing the approaching thud of booted feet running hard in his direction.
It was time to get gone and be blessed quick about it!
He sprinted away, downhill and dodging from side to side, hearing crashing in his wake that heralded the coming of someone large, heavy, armored, and sword-waving. He didn't stop to exchange pleasantries, but whirled around a tree to let the grizzled armsman have some magic missiles full in the face. The man's head jerked back, wisps of smoke burst from his mouth and eyes, and he ran on blindly for another dozen paces before stumbling and crashing to the ground, dead or senseless.
"Dead or senseless." Hmm, 'twould do as a motto for some adventuring bands, to be sure, but…
It was time to circle around and take care of that second archer, or he'd be fleeing through the forest feeling phantom arrows between his shoulder blades for the rest of the day … or until they brought him down.
El trotted a goodly way off to the right and started to work his way back toward the ruin, keeping as low and as quiet as possible. It didn't matter if he spent hours worming his way closer, so long as he wasn't seen too soon. He had to get close enough to…
A grim-looking man in leathers, with a bow ready-strung in his hand, stepped into view around a gnarled phandar not twelve paces away. He couldn't help but see a certain hawk-nosed mage the moment he lifted his eyes from the arrow he'd just dropped. El lifted his hand to shoot forth his last magic missiles spell.
A moment later the archer exploded into whirling bones and fire. El had a brief glimpse of two dark eyes… if they were eyes…in a confused whirlwind of mist. Then whatever it was had gone, and scorched bones were thudding down onto the moss.
The Slayer?
It had to be. The talk had been all of something that burned its victims when it killed, this was it. "Well met," Elminster murmured to the empty woods, and went cautiously forward. He knew he'd already find nothing but ashes and bones of the rest of the adventurers, but just in case …
Sprawled garments, weapons, and bones were everywhere he looked, as he drew near the overgrown keep. The ruins seemed deserted again. A tense silence hung over them, almost as if something was waiting and watching for his approach. El stole back to the gaps in the wall he'd looked into before. That big chamber, where he'd seen the wardrobes and … a mirror? That would bear another look, to be sure.
He peered very cautiously into that vast room again and met those dark eyes once more, the mist they were at the heart of swirling around a wardrobe as its doors banged open. Then the mist flared into blinding brilliance and he couldn't see what was taken out of the wardrobe. Whatever it was, the whirlwind spun around and around it, almost as if deliberately hiding it from his view in its bright and chiming tatters, as it sped away across the room. El almost clambered in the gap after it to see better, but paused prudently when the glowing mist did.
It lingered in the farthest, darkest corner of the room for a moment, hovering above what looked like a well, then plunged down into that ring-shaped opening and out of sight.