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around her. The bloody sword was cold and heavy in her hands as the world
dissolved in tears again. . . .
The voice, when it came, was menacingly quiet. "What have you done?"
Irendue lifted her head and the sword together, glaring up through tangled
hair at the other shapeshifter. He wore the form of a handsome, sandy-haired
man with a mustache . . . but his eyes glittered dark and deadly, like those
of a hawk.
"Freed us," Irendue gave him her fiercely whispered answer. "Freed us all."
"You shall die for this," Lorgyn said softly.
"I know," the woman replied calmly, embracing the sword as if it was a babe in
her arms. "Kill me, then, and have done . .. monster."
Lorgyn showed his teeth in a smile. "Ah, no," he said in almost friendly
tones. "Death need not be so fast and easy as all that. I shall use your
sorcery to help me raise another gate . . . and your body to power it. Of
course, that body need not be whole ..."
Still wearing that terrible grin, he advanced on her.
ED GREENWOOD
Elven Court woods, Flamerule 30
"Die!" Belkram roared in fury, forgetting all thoughts of stealth and nearby
wizards as he thrust his blade repeatedly into the shapeshifter's hairy,
many-taloned bulk. If only it were still silver, he thought fiercely as he
drove his steel home once more and struck something hard within, making the
Malaugrym quiver.
It snarled and shrank away, and Belkram lunged after it, catching sight of
Sharantyr's blade flashing on its far flank. The lady ranger's blade glistened
as it rose and fell with a green-hued, translucent slime that must be the
monster's blood.
"Right," Belkram snarled, "let's see all of your blood, beast! All of it!"
His blade thrust down to its hilt into the shifting bulk before him, and the
Malaugrym recoiled, drawing flailing tentacles back into itself in struggling
spasms of pain.
As it receded, it left Itharr behind, writhing weakly on the ground, his
lifeblood drenching the moss and dead leaves around him. The Harper's mouth
worked, and his eyes were blood-red; Belkram knew his friend was sorely
wounded.
Delude yourself not, Belkram told himself sourly, he's dying.
Frantically he chopped and slashed at the shapeshifter, hearing Sharantyr's
sobbing as she did the same thing. Her hair swirling around her, and she leapt
high to throw all her weight behind her blade.
Something blazed with sudden fire behind her. A rolling wave offeree, like a
wave she'd once waded through on the beaches of Sembia, took her behind the
knees and flung her forward onto the Shadowmaster.
Gray flesh opened up around her, seeking to suck her down in and smother her.
Sharantyr screamed in fear and fury, clawed her way clear, and wriggled off
the beasts's far side.
She came up wild-eyed, with blade in hand and
ALL SHADOWS FLED
breast heaving and gaped in astonishment at a cold-eyed man in the robes of a
Red Wizard, who stood over Itharr with staff in hand, glaring at a
rainbow-hued radiance in the air around him.
"Must all spells go wild?" he snarled, leveling his staff in both hands as if
it were a lance. Sparks raced down its length, and from its end burst
brilliantly blue butterflies.
Belkram was still cutting at the heaving, roiling ten-tacled mass that was the
Malaugrym, but trying at the same time to keep watch on this newcomer. The
shapeshifter rose into a pillar of flesh, reached spade-shaped arms toward the
Red Wizard, slimmed those arms into needlelike pincers ...
The Red Wizard said something soft and brief and fire seemed to be born within
the Malaugrym, hurling its flesh and tentacles apart in an eruption of hissing
steam.
The riven body fell back onto scorched moss, dwindling into something that was
almost human. Something faceless and sprawled, which blazed with many small
fires.
Shar faced the Red Wizard across their smoke and asked in a shaking voice,
"Why ... why did you aid us?"
The wizard's cold eyes met hers, and Sharantyr was suddenly aware of how
easily he could destroy them. Even with magic fraying wild, he bore several
wands at his belt, something longer and more impressive sheathed like a sword
at his hip, and the staff. Lights winked here and there along its carved
length, and were answered by glows from among the many rings on his fingers.
The Knight swallowed and stepped back, raising her sword. Belkram moved to her
side, his blade also ready.
The Red Wizard smiled thinly. "Another day we might be foes to the death," he
said in a voice strong with confidence and power. "But against such a one as
this ..."
The sorcerer gestured down at the collapsing ashes that had been the
Malaugrym, and went on, "Against
271
ED GREENWOOD
such a one, all must stand together or no man in Faerun will know freedom, in
the end."
He did something to his staff, and a glass vial appeared in the air above
Sharantyr's hand. As it came to rest gently in her palm, he bowed to them both
and turned away.
The flash of his departure lit up the rune graven in the glass. "A healing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]