Realms of Shadow Part 9

"For now," Melegaunt replied. He stood and backed away another couple of paces. "Somethingcame after me."

"One of the bog people," Bodvar said. "They are attracted by vibration." "Vibration?" Melegaunt echoed. "Like talking?"

"Like talking," Bodvar confirmed. "But do not worry about me. My armor m.u.f.fles the sound-it is made of dragon scales."

"All the same, rest quiet for a while." Melegaunt's opinion of the Vaasan was rising-and more because of the risk he was taking for his tribe than because he wore dragon-scale armor. "I'll get you out.

I promise."

"A man should not promise what he cannot be certain of delivering, Traveler," Bodvar said, "but I do trust you to do your utmost."

Melegaunt a.s.sured the Vaasan he would, then retreated a few more paces up the road and held his hand out over the road edge. There was not even a hint of shadow. Melegaunt's magic would be at its weakest, and he had already seen enough of his foe's power to know it would be folly to duel him at less than full strength-even in this world of decay and rebirth, wood simply did not rot as fast as had those logs.

Doing his best to ignore the occasional screams that rolled out of the fog, Melegaunt removed a handful of strands of shadowsilk from his cloak pocket and twisted them into a tightly-wound skein. In a century-and-a-half of reconnoitering Toril, he had yet to risk revealing himself by using such powerful shadow magic where others might see-but never before had he been given reason to think his long quest might be nearing its culmination. This Bodvar was a brave one, and that was the first quality. He was also wary, neither giving oaths nor taking them lightly, and that was the second. Whether he was also the third remained to be seen-and it soon would, if matters went as expected.

Once Melegaunt had twisted the shadowsilk into a tightly wound skein, he uttered a few words in ancient Netherese and felt a surge of cold energy rising through his feet into his body. Unlike most wizards in Faerun who extracted their magic from the G.o.ddess Mystra's all-encompa.s.sing Weave, Melegaunt drew his magic from the enigmatic Shadow Weave. As universal as the Weave itself, the Shadow Weave was less known and far more powerful, if only because the cloaked G.o.ddess-she who must never be named-kept it uncompromisingly secret and maddened anyone who revealed its existence.

When he was sufficiently imbued with the Shadow Weave's cold magic, Melegaunt tossed the skein of shadowsilk out over the bog and made a twirling motion with his fingers. The cord began to unwind but sank into the peat before it finished and continued to spin, drawing long tendrils of fog after it.

An oxen bellowed in alarm, then there was a huge glugging sound followed by the crackle of splintering wood and the shrieks of terrified women and children.

"T-t-traveler?" called Bodvar, sounding weaker and colder than before. "H-have you left us?"

"Stay quiet, Vaasan, or there will be no reason for me to stay," Melegaunt shouted back. "I am working as fast as I can."

Judging by the restless voices that followed, the clan of the Moor Eagle took little comfort from this a.s.surance. Melegaunt urged them again to be patient. While he waited for his first spell to do its work, he prepared himself for battle, girding himself with magic armor and shields of spell-turning, readying power word attacks and casting enchantments that would allow him to walk on mud or swim through it with equal ease. By the time he finished, his spell had thinned the fog enough that he could see a long line of mired Vaasan men and overloaded wagons curving away toward the jagged gray wall of a distant mountain range. The end of the column was perhaps two hundred paces distant, and fifty paces beyond that, he could see the brownish ribbon of logs where the road resumed again. Instead of looking impressed or grateful, Bodvar and his equally bearded warriors were all searching the blue sky with expressions of alarmed expectation. Those with free sword arms were holding their weapons ready, while on the wagons, women and old men were stringing longbows and raising spears. Melegaunt glanced around the heavens and found nothing except snow clouds-then heard two loud slurping sounds as another pair of warriors were drawn down into the muck.

He stepped to the end of the log road and held his arm out. Finding that there was now enough light to cast a shadow, he swung his arm around until the dark line pointed at Bodvar. Though a good twentypaces remained between them, the fog was so thin now that Melegaunt could see that with sapphire-blue eyes and hair as red as bloodstone, Bodvar was both handsome and fair-haired by Vaasan standards.

"You caused this clearing, Traveler?" Bodvar asked.

Melegaunt nodded then lied, "I like to see what I'm fighting." Actually, he was more comfortable fighting in darkness than light, but if he could keep the Vaasans from pondering the nature of his magic, there was a good chance they would be unfamiliar enough with outsider spells to think he was using normal magic. "The battle goes faster."

"Indeed," Bodvar answered. "Let us hope not too fast. There is a reason the Mountainshadow Bog is crossed only in thick fog."

Melegaunt frowned. "That would be?"

"On its way."

Bodvar raised his hand-the one that was not trapped in the bog-and pointed west. The nearby peaks had grown distinct enough that they resembled a line of snow-capped fangs, and curving down from their summits, Melegaunt saw several lines of pale specks.

"Griffins?" he asked. "Or wyverns?"

"You will wish."

"Well, as long as they're not dragons," Melegaunt said. "Anything else, I can handle." "You have a high opinion of yourself, Traveler." "As shall you," Melegaunt replied. With that, he spoke a few words of magic, and the shadow he had lain across the bog expanded to the width of a comfortable walking trail.

Melegaunt stepped off the logs, and continuing to hold his arm out, followed the shadow forward. To prevent the path from vanishing as he moved forward, he had to utter a spell of permanency-and that was when the sodden peat let out an explosive glub beside him.

Melegaunt turned to see a pair webbed hands clutching the edge of his shadow-walk, and between them was a slimy reptilian head shooting up to attack. The face itself was rather broad and froglike, save that its dead black eyes were fixed on Melegaunt's leg and its lips were drawn back to reveal a mouthful of needle-sharp fangs. He lowered a hand and spoke a magic power word, unleashing a cold black bolt that drilled a fist-sized hole through the thing's head. The hands opened, and its lifeless body slipped back into the sodden peat.

"What magic is that?" Bodvar gasped, watching from a few steps ahead.

"Southern magic," Melegaunt lied. He stopped at the Vaasan's side and stooped down, offering his hand. "You wouldn't know it."

Bodvar was not quick to reach for the shadow wizard's swarthy arm. "Who would?" he demanded.

"We are not so backward here in Vaasa as you may think. We know about the dark magic of Thay."

Melegaunt had to laugh. "You have no idea." He uttered a quick spell, and tentacles of darkness shot from his fingertips to entwine the Vaasan's wrist. "Now come out of there. You made a bargain."

Melegaunt stood and drew the tentacles back into his fingers, pulling Bodvar's arm along. A m.u.f.fled pop sounded from somewhere below the peat, and the Vaasan screamed. Though Melegaunt was fairly certain he had just separated the chieftain's shoulder, he continued to pull-pulled harder, in fact. As loud as Bodvar had screamed, the bog people would be after him like a school of snagglesnouts after a waterstrider.

The Vaasan did not budge, and though Melegaunt had the strength to pull the arm off, that would not free Bodvar of the sodden peat's cold clutch. He stopped pulling. Bodvar continued to groan-though less loudly than he had screamed before-and a long ridge of upwelling peat began to snake its way toward the chieftain.

Melegaunt pointed a finger at the head of the ridge and uttered a magic syllable, and a ray of black shadow shot down through the peat. The creature was too deep to see whether the attack hit home, but the ridge stopped advancing in Bodvar's direction.

"Be quiet," Melegaunt urged. "See if you can slip free of your boots and trousers."

Bodvar stopped groaning long enough to cast a sidelong glance at Melegaunt. "My trousers? My dragon-scale trousers?"

"You must break the suction," Melegaunt explained. "It is your trousers or your life."Bodvar sighed but struggled to move his free hand under the peat.

"Can you reach them?" Melegaunt asked.

"No, I can't-" Bodvar's eyes suddenly went wide, then he began to yell, "Pull! Pull!"

Melegaunt felt the Vaasan being dragged downward and began to haul in the opposite direction.

Bodvar howled in pain and rage, his body squirming and thrashing as he struggled to free himself. There was a m.u.f.fled crunch that sounded something like a breaking bone, then Bodvar finally came free, rising out of the bog with no boots or pants, but a dagger in hand and his sword belt looped over his elbow.

Melegaunt glimpsed a slimy figure slipping down the hole with the Vaasan's trousers trailing from one corner of its smiling mouth, then the bog closed in and concealed it from view. Melegaunt cast a shadow bolt after it, but it was impossible to say whether the spell bit its target or vanished into the bottomless depths without striking anything.

"h.e.l.l-cursed mudbreather!" Bodvar swore. "Look what it did to my sword!"

Melegaunt lowered the Vaasan to the shadow-walk, then looked over to find the man naked from the waist down and one arm sagging askew from the shoulder socket, holding the flopping scabbard of a badly shattered sword in his good hand.

"How am I to fight with this?"

"Fight? In your condition?"

Melegaunt glanced toward the mountains and saw that the distant specks had now become V-shaped lines, all angling toward the bog where the largest part of the Moor Eagle clan was still trapped. He opened his cloak and pulled his own sword, a slender blade of what looked like black gla.s.s, from its scabbard.

"Use this," Melegaunt said, "but with a light hand. It will cut much better than that iron bar you're accustomed to."

Bodvar barely glanced at the weapon. "I'll use my dagger. That thing'll break the first time-"

"Not likely." Melegaunt brought his sword down across Bodvar's dagger and sliced through the blade as though it were made of soft wood instead of cold-forged iron, then flicked the stump out of the grasp of the astonished Vaasan and replaced it with the hilt of his own weapon. "Be careful not to take off your foot."

Bodvar closed his sagging jaw, and one arm still hanging limply at his side, stepped past Melegaunt and lopped the heads off two bog people emerging from the peat behind him.

"It'll do," he said. Despite the obvious pain from his separated shoulder, the Vaasan did not even clench his teeth as he spoke. "My thanks for the loan."

"Consider it a gift," Melegaunt replied, turning back to the rest of the clan. "I use it so seldom."

To his dismay, the bog people had been far from idle while he was rescuing Bodvar. Half the warriors who had been mired when he arrived had already vanished beneath the surface, while the women and old men were struggling to keep dozens of bog people from clambering onto the cargo wagons with the clan's sobbing children. Melegaunt pulled a handful of shadowsilk from his cloak and flung it in the direction of the wagons, then spread his fingers and waggled them in a raining motion. A dark pall fell over the six closest wagons, and everyone it touched-Vaasans and bog people alike-fell instantly asleep.

"How did you do that?" Bodvar demanded. "Sleep magic doesn't work against the bog people!"

"Clearly, you have been misinformed." Melegaunt held his arm out toward the nearest wagon, extending the shadow-walk to within three paces of the driver's bench. "Do you think ..."

Bodvar was already sprinting down the shadow-walk, borrowed sword in hand. When he reached the end, he launched himself into a wild leap over the horns of a mired ox, bounding off its half-submerged shoulders, and came down on the seat between the slumbering driver and the old man slumped beside her. Despite Melegaunt's warning to handle the weapon lightly, he set to work on the sleeping bog people with an ardor that left little doubt about the primitive state of Vaasan weaponsmithing.

Melegaunt saw him cut two enemies cleanly apart across the torso and cleave through three of the wagon's sideboards before he could no longer bear to watch and turned his attention to the miredwarriors.

The nearest vanished beneath the surface as Melegaunt approached, and two more cried out in alarm. Seeing he had no hope of rescuing even a dozen of the remaining warriors, he tossed his tarp line onto the surface and uttered a long spell. The far end raised itself out of the peat, and the black rope began to slither forward. He pointed at the nearest of the warriors, and the line angled in the man's direction. "As the rope conies by-"

That was all Melegaunt needed to say. The first warrior s.n.a.t.c.hed the line, and slipping free of his trousers, allowed it to pull him free. He slid across the slippery surface for three paces, then rolled onto his back and began to hack at something beneath the surface with his sword. Seeing that he had at least a reasonable chance of defending himself, Melegaunt directed the rope to the next warrior in line, who also came free without his pants or boots, and there were two Vaasans slashing at their unseen pursuer.

They seemed to get it after a dozen yards, but by then Melegaunt had three more warriors on the line, and two of them were being trailed by the tell-tale rise of a bog person traveling just beneath the surface. He summoned the rope over to his shadow-walk and used his last shadow bolt to kill one of their pursuers, and the warriors themselves took care of the last one before bounding off after Bodvar to help defend the wagons.

Melegaunt glanced toward the mountains. To his alarm, the distant fliers were now so close that he could make out not only the white bodies hanging beneath their wings, but their bandy legs and curved swords as well. Whatever the creatures were-and he had yet to see their like in a century and a half of wandering this world-they were as fast as baatezu. He only hoped they were not as adept as the pit fiends at defeating shadow magic.

Melegaunt sent the rescue rope out again and managed to pull in six more warriors before the bog people claimed the rest. Though he was not happy to fail so many-the number had to be nearly twenty-the Vaasans took their losses in stride, pausing only to grunt a half-understood word of thanks before rushing back to join Bodvar and their fellows in defending the women and children.

Seeing there was no more to be done, Melegaunt retrieved his tarp line and turned toward the mired wagons. With the half-naked warriors he had rescued rushing back to help, the women and old men were holding the bog people at bay with surprising displays of swordsmanship and bravery. No matter how well they fought, though, it was clear that the younger children and older clansmen lacked the agility to leap from wagon to wagon-especially over the heads of panicked oxen- as the warriors were doing.

Melegaunt rushed alongside the caravan, laying his shadow-walk close enough that the trapped Vaasans could jump from their wagons onto the path behind him. The bog people redoubled their attacks, glugging up alongside the walk in a near-solid wall. But all of Bodvar's clansmen were as well-trained and disciplined as his warriors, and they repelled the attacks easily. Though Melegaunt failed to understand why the bog people did not use their rotting magic on the wagons themselves, he was relieved that they were not. Perhaps their magic-user had run out of spells, or maybe the enchantment took too long to cast.

With their panicked masters rushing past, the mired oxen bellowed for help that would never come.

Given time, Melegaunt could certainly have freed the creatures and saved the cargo in their wagons, but as things were, he would be doing well to lose no more of their masters. As he neared the end of the caravan, he was astonished to see that the bog people had not pulled even one of the beasts from its yoke. Whatever their reason for attacking the Moor Eagles, it had less to do with hunger than wanting to wipe out the tribe.

Melegaunt was twenty paces past the last mired wagon when a trio of bog people emerged before him, s.n.a.t.c.hing at his legs with their webbed hands. He drilled the middle one with a black shadow bolt, then heard hooked finger-talons clattering off his spell-armor as the other two attempted to slash his legs from beneath him. He brought his boot heel down a sloping forehead and heard a loud pop as the skull caved in, then caught his other attacker by the arm and jerked it out of the peat. Save that the bog-man was covered in slimy brown scales and had a flat, lobsterlike tail in place of legs and feet, it looked more or less humanoid, with powerfully-built shoulders and a navel that suggested it was born rather than hatched.It slashed at Melegaunt with its free hand several times. When its claws continued to bounce harmlessly off the wizard's shadow armor, it gave up and opened its mouth, attacking with a long, barb-tipped tongue so fast Melegaunt barely had time to tip his head aside and save his eye. He caught the tongue as it shot back toward the creature's mouth, then whirled around to find Bodvar and the rest of the Vaasans staring at him with expressions that were equal part awe and terror. "Don't just stand there," Melegaunt ordered, "kill it!" Only Bodvar had possession enough of his wits to obey, slashing the thing across the waist so hard that Us borrowed sword came a hair's breadth from opening Melegaunt's ample belly as well. Eyeing the chieftain sidelong, Melegaunt tossed aside the lifeless torso, then pointed at a long line of bog people rising out of the peat beside the gape-mouthed Vaasans.

"Lift your jaws and see to your enemies!"

Without waiting to see whether they obeyed, he turned and extended the shadow-walk the rest of the way to the logs, then led the way to the relatively solid footing of the road. The bog people had no choice but to give up their attack, for all the Vaasans had to do to be safe was retreat to the middle of the road where they could not be reached.

The creatures flying in from the mountains were another matter. Only a few hundred yards distant, they were close enough that Melegaunt could make out scaly white bodies with long, pointed tails and craggy saurian heads with long snouts, swept-back horns, and huge yellow eyes. One of the creatures flung something in their direction and began to make spell gestures.

Melegaunt flattened a ball of shadowsilk between his palms, then flung it toward the approaching dragonmen and uttered a few words in ancient Netherese. A hazy disk of darkness appeared between the two groups and began to bleed black tendrils of shadow into the sky, but Melegaunt had not been quick enough to raise his spell shield. He felt a familiar softening underfoot, and the Vaasans cried out and began to stampede up the road. It was exactly the wrong thing to do. The rotting logs came apart all the faster, plunging the entire tribe to their knees in sodden peat.

In an attempt to spread their weight and slow their descent, they immediately threw themselves to their bellies and splayed their arms. Still standing atop the peat by virtue of the spells he had cast before the battle, Melegaunt cursed and laid his shadow-walk again, then turned to meet the dragonmen.

They were nowhere to be seen, at least not near his spell shield. Pulling another strand of shadowsilk from his pocket, Melegaunt pivoted in a slow circle and-as expected-found them diving out of the sun. Melegaunt allowed himself a tight smile. They were wise to respect his abilities-much wiser, in that regard, than had been better-known foes in the south. He tossed his shadowsilk into the sky and uttered the incantation of one of his more potent spells.

That whole quarter of the sky broke into a shower of shadowy tears. Instead of rolling off when they fell on a body, however, these drops clung to whatever they touched, stretching into long threads of sticky black fiber. Within moments, the entire column of dragonmen had become swaddled in gummy b.a.l.l.s of darkness and was plunging headlong into the bog. Melegaunt watched long enough to be certain that none of the fliers would escape, then turned to find the Moor Eagles rushing onto the log road behind him.

They were glancing at him over their shoulders, making signs of warding that might have kept a demon at bay, but that only made Melegaunt feel lonely and unappreciated. Stifling bitter laughter, he walked across the bog to where Bodvar and three more brave warriors stood waiting for him at the edge of the road.

"I'm sorry for your losses, Bodvar," he said. "I might have saved more, but there was much you didn't tell me."

"And much you didn't tell us," Bodvar replied. He laid the hilt of Melegaunt's black sword across his arm and offered it to the wizard. "My thanks."

Melegaunt waved him off. "Keep it. As I said, I seldom use it anymore."

"I know what you said," Bodvar replied, "but only a fool takes gifts from a devil."

"Devil?" Melegaunt snapped, still not taking his sword. "Is that how you repay my kindness? With insults?"

"What is true is no insult," Bodvar said. "We saw the things you did.""It was only magic," Melegaunt protested. "Southern magic. If you have not seen its like before...."

"Now it is you who are insulting us." Bodvar continued to offer the sword. "In Vaasa, we are backward in many things-but wisdom is no longer one of them."

Melegaunt started to repeat his protests, then realized he would only anger Bodvar by insisting on the lie-and revealing the truth about the Shadow Weave was, of course, out of the question. If he were lucky enough to avoid being struck dead on the spot, he would lose forever the dark power that had so impressed the Vaasans.

When Melegaunt made no further attempts to argue, Bodvar said, "We will keep the bargain we made." He tipped his chin toward the three warriors with him. "These are the guides I promised. They will take you wherever you wish to go in Vaasa."

Melegaunt started to say that he no longer needed them-then thought better of it and smiled.

"Anywhere!"

Bodvar looked uncomfortable, but nodded. "That was our bargain."

"Good. Then I want them to take me wherever the Moor Eagles are going." Melegaunt took his sword back. "And no tricks, Bodvar. I'm sure we both know what happens to those who play false with devils-don't we?"

Higharvestide, the Year of the Moat In the Shadows of the Peaks of the Dragonmen Bodvar came to the island, as Melegaunt had known he would, late in the day, when the sun was sinking low over the Peaks of the Dragonmen and the shadows of the mountains lay long upon the cold bog. What the wizard had not known was that the chieftain would bring his wife, a young beauty with hair the color of night and eyes as blue as a clear sky. She seemed a little thicker around the middle than the last time Melegaunt had seen her, though it was always hard to tell with Vaasan women- their shape tended to vanish beneath all the furs they wore.

Melegaunt watched them pick their way across his zigzagging boulder-walk until a metallic sizzle behind him demanded his attention. He checked the sky to be certain there were no white-scaled fliers diving down to trouble them, then donned a huge leather mitt and pulled a long narrow mold from the oven he had kept blazing for three days. In the mold, floating on a bed of liquid tin, lay a sword similar to the one he had offered Bodvar all those tendays ago-save that this one was still molten and glowing white hot.

Melegaunt placed the sword on a bed of ice-freezes came early to this part of the world-then waited for the mold to cool. When he was sure the cold would draw the tempering elements down to the underside, he began to lay fibers of shadowsilk on the molten gla.s.s, taking care to arrange them first lengthwise, then diagonally in both directions, then lengthwise again so the weapon would have strength and resilience in all directions. Finally, he used his dagger to open another cut on his arm, dripping his warm blood into the mixture and quietly whispering the ancient words that gave the blade its magic thirst.

By the time that was finished, the sword had hardened enough that he could lift it from its mold and plunge it into a vat of slushy water, placed at just the right distance from the furnace to keep it that way.

Once the heat had melted all of the slush, Melegaunt removed the sword, then placed it on its bed of hot tin with the opposite side down and returned the mold to the oven again. Such was the art of the shadow blade, heating and cooling a thousand times over, tinting them with shadowsilk until the gla.s.s could finally hold no more and began to shed fibers like an unbrushed dog.

A soft boot scuffed the stone at the edge of Melegaunt's work site, then Bodvar called, "I see you are still here, Dark Devil."

"You can see that by the smoke of my furnaces." Melegaunt pulled the sleeve of his cloak down to hide the cuts on his arm, then turned to glower at the chieftain. "Come for a sword, have you?"

"Hardly." Bodvar cast an uneasy glance at the nineteen weapons racked at the edge of the work site. Though all were completed and honed to a razor edge, they were paler than Melegaunt's sword, with a crystal translucence that still showed the lay of the shadow fibers embedded in the gla.s.s. "You are wasting your time on that account.""Am I?" Melegaunt smirked knowingly. "Well, they will be here when you need them."

"Our need will never be that great."

Melegaunt did not argue, only swung an arm toward the furnace behind him and said, "That will be twenty. Twenty warriors is all that remains to you, is it not?"

Instead of answering, Bodvar glanced around the cluttered work area and shook his head. "Only a devil could live out here alone. It is exposed to every wind that blows."