"This is bad, Monty. This is very bad." The mad wizard weren't much hurt; walls halfway down, shattered glass of experiments on the ground, rooftop and house ruined about him. The apprenti lay in burned claylike shapes on the ground covered by their robes. Broken bottles of the whisky stash, too. Montaron groaned. Haphazardly Xzar flung components and broken alembics into a pack. "I fought the bad Harpers off with magic! But there's too many of them. We have to flee. Why are you wearing a bedsheet, Monty?"
"It be curtains," Montaron snapped, then noticed that wasn't the point. He thrust the papers he'd stolen. "Here, mad wizard. Cost me a lot, but take 'em and read. Exactly what you wanted."
Xzar took them up with sudden interest, same as for any instruction-sheet on how to stuff and animate a corpse in some language nobody bothered to speak nowadays. "Manshoon—or rather an underling—may even be pleased. Very good, Monty. Harpers and their silly schemes—they don't know who's the other guild, but I've visited the graveyard with my folding shovel and they haven't—rumours of Gorion the Harper's Bhaalspawn—the powerful arcane aura beyond the Promenade that's in fact nothing to do with us—secret code about the rabbits—et cetera—"
"Ye said, little man?" Montaron let the curtain drop for his clothing here. Ye travelled light adventuring, only fools like the cack-brained addled ranger'd the strength to carry half an armoury on your back and enough clothes to please even the Silvershield brat; here he'd trousers and a padded jerkin that hadn't been lost in the fight. He limped across in nothing more than he'd been born in.
"I had your kind as slaves in the Underdark. It's simply a trick of proportion," the drow snapped. "Your limbs are short but your valueless parts are closer to human."
He made a hand gesture that she understood, for all she liked to spill her drow words everywhere she spoke as if she knew no Common to speak of.
"And besides, skill matters far more." For a moment she draped herself lazily against a half-gone wall while he fastened the trousers. The mad wizard, who'd ignored it as if he knew nothing, glanced at her.
"Couldn't you help with the packing, Miss DeVir?" Xzar said. "I'd like to think of us as one big happy family—Monty, you, the little apprenti cheerfully playing on the floor to violate the laws of man, nature, and deity alike..." He began to cast a spell. Pale fire spread from his hands to cover the bodies of the apprentices. "Can't risk the infernal Harpers finding out how I built them." The clay figures melted easily, turned into a single black gleaming puddle between them with the odd lump floating on its surface. Montaron reached for his second-best pigsticker of a blade, the metal sharp enough to outlast the iron crisis while the hilt was tarnished and commonplace.
"They did not even try to take advantage of me," Viconia complained, smoothing her ruffled though undamaged dress. "The male Galvarey only looked down at the drow in his possession; I could have manipulated them with ease had they succumbed. Just as I have done before." The mad mage fiddled carefully with a melted lock on an oaken trunk; tried a spell; then signalled for Montaron to do the unfastening. "As if they were above me, and I somehow soiled."
"Ye get that way for sleeping with half the coast," Montaron agreed. Part of a stash of tools had been spilled in the wreckage; his best diamond-head pick was ruined. He shifted the lock with a few cuts, and then saw a small heap of coin in platinum, a few jewels thrown into the mix.
"Mad wizard? Where did ye summon or steal this lot?" he said.
"Oh, from a nice captain of the city guards called Sir Isaea who ordered some of my goblins and a couple of others. Monty, don't keep all of them yourself; I'll want some funding for my further researches."
"Ye forget which of us has the most know-how in coin," Montaron said, stuffing his pockets. Perhaps this venture weren't quite as damnfool as he'd thought it. He reached up to the remains of a shelf once his height.
"Well, what do you have, Monty? You're a thief and you keep telling Miss DeVir she's a courtesan." Xzar fastened a bedroll with a strange-looking pin that glittered with unearthly light, tightened the flasks on his belt amidst various spell components that stank of gravedirt, and straightened ready for the road.
"Mistress DeVir, or my lady DeVir, will do," the drow purred at the boy-wizard.
"I like the term, 'treacherous whore who sold us out to the Harpers', myself," Montaron said. He'd finally laid hands on a working crossbow, and turned to level it at her black heart. "It's a bit long, but longer than her death'll take.
"She spilled it all to 'em, Xzar, and she'll do it next time someone asks for details on our mission. I'd say kill her slow, but we don't have time for it."
"Call off your ape." Viconia glared down; and tried to get 'round Xzar by tugging down the neckline of her dress, showing a length of coal-grey flesh. Nothing they hadn't seen before with her lazing on her arse in the house.
The wizard looked worried. "Monty? What do you think? What did she do? Without you I just don't know what I'd do; if I'd lost you to those Harpers I couldn't think of anything for the mission..."
"They tortured me," Viconia whined.
"They tortured me!" Montaron said. "You spilled it without any!"
"As if you would not have changed places if you had thought of it. As if you did not break from your vengeance against me for the sight of mere coin. A Sharran knows when to pursue darkness," the drow said.
"Torture hurts. I work with dead people; I don't go to those Cyricist parts; I don't have to go to the cellars of the Keep..." Xzar babbled. "The Harper druid, she wanted us dead, Monty, she was frightening! Harpers are the dragons with feet like rabbits, they're bad if they catch you. I only slice into skin after they're dead..."
"Surfacers are all amateurs at the art," Viconia said. "Were I holding the whip, the simple dagger, the burning brand; there is so much more that could have been done with the Harpers' tools, and far more with the specialised devices of the Underdark. And yet you endure ably, sakphul. It bodes well for your survival." She smiled falsely. "I am a priestess. Would you prefer to gain the vengeance of Shar, or her aid to deliver it to others?" For a moment she silenced her gob as if to let them think of it.
"Shar's one of the mean ones, Monty. She wants everything to be a black glass hole nowhere and everywhere," the mad wizard complained. "But one of the scary mean ones—"
The drow grabbed him fast. "Cast your share of magic today, spell-worker? Helpless, I see. How useful." She stretched a black arm around his neck. The mad mage's body stiffened as if it'd turned to ice. He screamed; then his left hand was blue and he pushed sharp cold fingers into the drow's neck. She dropped to the ground nursing her throat.
"Don't touch me!" Xzar cried, and reached down on her to pat not the open flesh of her chest but where she'd kept pouches at the waist of her dress. The drow reached up for a newborn cully's uppercut to the base of the mad mage's jaw that still had him fall back to land on his tailbone. She stood. It was like watching a pair of toddlers going at it, skill-wise—both bloody useless.
"Monty." Xzar nursed his jaw. "She's useful if she learns not to grab people like that. Stop threatening the scary drow. And no touching me without warning."
Viconia rested a hand on an outthrust hip. "I could make you beg for a single brush of a finger, human. I could make both of you plead for a mere glance."
Xzar got up without looking at her. He reached into one of his own pouches, where coin clinked. "Why am I the only fiscally useful member of this partnership at the moment, Monty? Why, I would rather be rich in spleens and spare lungs.'"
Montaron reluctantly lowered the weapon and stored away the bolts. Right that they should be leaving with Harpers swarming like pondscum in a druid swamp. "Because ye got lucky. 'Least my thieving's better than the drow's favourite bed-position selling her body—lay back and gripe."
"And yours?" Viconia whirled a black cloak over her shoulders and scowled at its burned, torn edges. "I have no doubt it would be a second's worth of dribbling and congratulating yourself for lasting ten times your customary stamina, or of touching yourself while maggots writhe inside a corpse!"
A flask of water; a bit of drybread still intact for the road. "I bet ye'd trap yer cuntpipe with razorblades and clamp your knees together for something extra to whine about," Montaron said. She hissed at him.
"No, that sort of activity has never counted as studying corpses," Xzar corrected, wagging a long forefinger as if lecturing her. "Truly, one's investigations into dead bodies can be carried far further with a rongeur scoop and a curette. And they should be dead maggots...spell components." Something rustled in one of the spell component pouches on his robes. He seemed to decide to ignore how they'd all tried to kill each other moments before. "Shall we depart on our great adventure, gentlemen and ladies? Flee the meddling Harpers! Send occasional reports to Manshoon! Off to find the dragons with feet like rabbits!"
—
"And the direction we'll go shall be..." The mad mage flung a pair of polished knucklebones in the air as if part of a divination circle. They looked human, and Montaron didn't know exactly where he'd got them from. He bent down and studied them carefully; the ink that marked them in unreadable dead runes was a dark brownish black. "That way! Into the forest!"
The fool almost skipped. They'd made it past the gate guards, who'd glared at an open mage but hadn't gone too far deep into the cloaked, gloved woman who claimed to be ill; Viconia let down the scarf she'd worn around her face.
"He does not have the least of ideas as to where to go, does he?" she said.
"Never has, never will," Montaron said, and smiled unpleasantly. "Made Athkatla too warm to hold ye, and now you're all alone in the wilderness with a couple of upstanding Zhentish citizens. I'd make ye cook us dinner if I weren't afraid of poison by undercooking and your uselessness, woman."
"Drow know their poisons, little man," Viconia said. "Many things may slay human or halfling, and harm not the drow; and many more cannot harm a priestess with the spell of antidote."
"Yeah, see? Madam Bloody Useless on this little camping trip. Can't cook, can't darn, cleaning plates ain't good enough for ye, can't even serve for Beshaban kindling," he reminded her. They'd have burned the drow for heresy; would've passed over a thief to the guards, after a while, and given him time and chance to escape on his own.
Viconia showed blindingly white teeth, including a few sharper than the others. "Is it that you feel I have shown insufficient gratitude, thief?" she asked.
"Xzar!" Montaron yelled at the fool mage-boy, getting too far ahead. Cursed longlegs, especially him. "Yer direction's Imnesvale." He'd the uncracked pate to know the surrounds, and he weren't tramping around in the blasted forest and singing to the trees for tendays at a time like some prissy elf. Imnesvale by the Umar Hills was the town nearest to what Xzar'd madly picked; as good as any for a passing-through with a bit of pickpocketing, plundering, and pillaging as asked for. "Take the left path." The mage gave a cheery wave and bent down to a small growth of daisies.
"Ah, I predicted you should lead us to civilisation," the drow gloated with a lusty sigh. "A bed and a bath, that is all I ask for at the end of the journey through these barbarian lands...feather-mattressed, I expect, goosedown, of a size to easily lie either way, freshly cleaned bedclothes, and a private pool with steaming hot water wide enough to submerge my hair. A few basic comforts for one of noble birth. After all, it is not as if you lack the coin for the best these peasants have to offer."
The mad mage screamed, and Montaron saw the gibberlings that had risen from the dark of the forest. He drew his crossbow and got his first bolt into the chest of the one that had grabbed Xzar's wrist with sharp teeth. It fell nicely and he grinned at even the distant bloodshed, then drew his sword and went for the thick of it. Killing always made him feel better. Even gibberlings.
The blue things went down one by one; his sword slid nice and sharp between their ribs like they were made of hot butter. He could've done with a buckler handy to fend off their wild stabs, but they fought about as well as the mad wizard. He slashed a blue neck deep and let the blood spray where it would, and then the next one came up for its physic. He sent it howling to the Nine Hells and stepped over its corpse.
The Sharran'd been chanting something, curse her bones; she finished and stretched out five fingers, and the same number of gibberlings lay on the ground giving their throats up for slitting. Montaron gave more attention to the two coming up behind him and the stench of the grease on them. There was a bite on his arm; he swore, and beat the gibberling into a tree hard enough to knock its brains out. His sword caused enough blood to feed a blade well and he pierced the creature down past the collarbone. There was another going for the mad wizard; he cursed the fool alike and leapt to plunge the blade straight through its back. Blood soaked up to his elbows. The drow had a second chant, and he couldn't trust her not to stab them all in the back. She stood near the wizard, just bright enough to realise her place in a fight, and then the dead gibberling rose up at her priest's command. There'd been almost a herd of the creatures fool enough to attack them and the dead gibberling strode back into place. Montaron ripped his sword easily through the neck of one in a good enough arc to send two to the Black Dog in one blow.
The mad mage started to cackle. Montaron ignored him and waded through gore even as the surviving gibberlings tried to gather together. More fool they. "Oh, you've a clever hand with the undead, lady priestess! Divine cheating, I call it," Xzar said. He scrabbled on the ground for a gibberling body. "Let me show you the arcane methods!"
He cast. He crushed the gibberling's head in his hand and twisted it off the body with magic. Flesh and brains dripped off the skull to leave it stripped white.
"Monty, get down!" the mad wizard howled like a banshee. Montaron gave a last vindictive stab and flung himself to the ground. Ye trusted Xzar's word when the fool mage started yelling about explosions brewing. The gibberling skull flew through the air to the centre of the gathered critters. Then all was dark for a moment; fragments of bone flew like crossbow bolts as the skull imploded. The gibberlings screamed and died and above them for an aftershock was the black-dusted image of a skull in the air.
Xzar wiped the dust off his hands as Montaron kicked spitefully at a gibberling legbone and scraped a bloodied arm across his face to wipe away the black dust gathered there. "Perfectly destructive," the boy-mage said, eyes glinting. "With a human it's even better." He laughed wildly and too long; in a second or two he'd killed all that were left. Montaron gave another kick to a dismembered part.
"Reasonably...effective," drawled the drow, eyeing the carnage. "But they are so small. Not unlike goln. We should hunt larger prey."
—
Instead of anything commonplace, large and with a lot of bleeding to do, a black shadow shifted through the night. At first he'd thought it was part of the woods, trees bending in different ways in the dark while wind flapped ice-cold through them. But Montaron knew shadows and how they moved, and spotted it for weirdling-cruft. The sliver of the Moon-whore's tears was up; the town supposed to be not far off.
"Wizard." He jerked a finger in the last he'd seen. Blasted thing had vanished again; he'd have no peace until he found out what. He reached for the crossbow and cursed Beshaba's luck for only plain bolts. "What have ye gone and done now?"
"—and pierce the liver with eight copper wires and a lightning bolt..." Xzar shook his head and looked down. "No, Mummy, it wasn't me! What is it, Monty? I like the dark. Such a good time to pay visits to graveyards and silver ghosts."
"Take a look, fool," Montaron said. At the edge of his eyes the cursed thing flew again between the trees, but Maid of Misrule damn him if he'd say he saw a thing in the dark and couldn't the mage just fix it.
"Veldrin. Darkness; concealment; signs of my dark lady." Viconia flung back her hood merrily. "Come to me, my dalharil, my daughter. You are mine; you must be of the Mistress of the Night."
Blasted be all gods! Montaron looked again. Give him a proper target to aim at, flesh and blood to sink a blade deep through. "Mage, light," he ordered. It moved too quick. The wizard threw a skull carelessly in the air and said a few words of arcane-fiddling; and their clearing was lit by sickly green out of eyesockets and gaping jaw. Montaron's bolt hit into the darkness almost the instant the spellslinging was done.
The shadow—animal-like, blurred and clawed—leapt unharmed for his throat. He flung down the crossbow and went for his blade. What he pierced wasn't a throat but something colder than the Harpers' cursed spirits. He swore to Mask and ran out from under it, leading it to the drow. For all it was shadowed cold teeth bit through his shoulder and he felt himself bleed. Plain steel did nothing to it.
"...It does not obey," Viconia said, weak-sounding. The mage chanted and quick green spheres melted into the darkness that flung itself on the drow next. Black claws sank into her and made her bleed red. She screamed like a dying tomcat. Montaron reached for flints, slowly. A stick from the ground; wrestling clumsy fingers into place, curse everything that crazy mages and drow priestesses messed with. Xzar hit the thing again and it made a noise like broken glass pieces tumbling together.
At last the fire burned the sharpened wood Montaron held. He flung himself on its back for revenge, show who was toughest here; it was the moment after one of the mage's blows and he shoved the fire into the crevice left by the magic. This time it went deep in, shivering away from the light.
Montaron grinned even as the claws went for him again, and then stuffed the contents of a flask of cooking oil by his lit wood. The fires burnt the drow near as much as the shadow-creature, but it howled and she fled to a tree to hide; and with a last shout of magic from the necromancer the thing all but melted away.
"Follow it to the shadow-world!" Xzar cheered, pulling up robes above his ankles. Montaron caught him by the knee and threatened to stab him. His breath came short and he knew something'd been done to him; like a curse. He'd rather he had the thing still here to make it shed blood, or whatever it shed. Bugger mageries.
Viconia slowly pulled herself to her feet. "Not Shar's. For once you speak sense, mad rivvil. Find and interrogate it; hunt it down and discover..."
"No, hunt down the inn," Montaron snapped, ready to drop his weapons as if he'd had all the blood drained from him, limp and useless as a eunuch gnome. Wouldn't show it until he was indoors with lamp and candle and salt sprinkled on the lintels; ye were eaten alive by the vultures or worse at the sign of slipping. "Wade into a herd of shadows by moonlight if ye so feel like it, but I'll not be pulling fools from their own cess! We reach Imnesvale. Grab torches, the pair of you."
Xzar made a clap-handed job of a Zhentilar's salute. "Aye-aye, Capt'n Montaron! Somewhere warm and comfy with bunny slippers." Viconia complied, silent; she stepped lead-slow, near to clumsy as if the same thing'd been done to her. They'd leave her lying in the woods if she fell and couldn't move.
Imnesvale below the Umar Hills would've been a one-horse town if they hadn't boiled the old nag for soup long ago. Wind blew through hollows and cracks in the log walls; the paths were dirt-packed and empty in the dark. Hens—the winged sort—complained not far from them as if they'd woken 'em up. Viconia ducked inside her cloak to hide her drow skin.
Tavern had more lights than the other places; Montaron flung himself up to grab the iron knocker.
"Travellers looking for a place to spend coin," he said, playing on greed; "adventurers looking for a chance to earn it," he added. They'd know of the shadows in their woods, blasted things sending cold into the bones and about to make him drop the weapons. The flickering flame between the cracks made him hope the full town weren't the property of the shadow-things; in case of unfriendly reception he gripped the dagger with the special paste he'd spread on it from the last of the supplies the Harper raid'd left. He stopped himself from shaking like an old granny whining about the cold.
Human longlimbs stood in the place, ale flowing and fires burning. Merchant stock lay piled up by tables, one of books and one of weaponry; might as well keep the mad wizard from the first.
"Pair of rooms," Montaron ordered sharply, flicking three gold danters and a bloodstone ring across the table; it'd impress a town like this well enough. He'd stop the ache in his bones, tie down the mad wizard for a night of undisturbed sleep and bar the door from the inside.
"She's my...daughter!" Xzar invented, patting Viconia's shoulder below the cloak. Montaron cursed himself for not finding a better excuse for the creepy-looking figure in the dark cloak. Far too old to be the mad mage's kid no matter what the Keep'd done to him. "Self-esteem issues," he said. What in the Nine Hells—never mind. Montaron scowled up at the girl waiting and saw her jump back.
"We've got...one. Sorry, sir, it's a small place..." she babbled.
"And fetch hot water to it," Viconia ordered, flinging coin about from her own gloved hands. "Do not delay; I require a bath. Make sure the room is clean and I shall not give consequences for your poor planning to crowd this...establishment." She looked down at the straw-covered stones at their feet; that it wasn't a dirt floor was luxury enough for a place like this, Montaron thought. She'd learn far better, or get herself burned for a witch again. It was a happy thought, like lying on a bed and sleeping it off.
"Don't let the mad wizard run loose," he told her. Two longlimb beds and one straw-tick of a mattress on the floor. He lay down without bothering to get off his armour.
"Why must I do it?" Viconia whined, as if she were tired the same way. Xzar's laughter echoed in his ears and turned his sleep to shadowed nightmares.
—
