"No, you can't have it."
"Monty, please!"
"We're handing it to the Cowlie and it's shutting up."
"But we were having so much fun together!"
The severed head of Valygar Corthala groaned in Montaron's bag. He couldn't tell if its speech was the mad mage's delusions—zombies did anything you told them to, Xzar said, which was the sort of thing to make the sane salute the pavings with last night's dinner—or if he'd genuinely brought some part of the poor bastard's soul back from the Nine Hells. He wouldn't ask.
"Eyes ahead for shadows, mage."
"Oh, all right. Can I have him for dessert if I'm good?"
"No."
There wasn't any wind here. He wouldn't know oak from ivy, forests were things you stepped through fast as you could on the way between cities. Xzar hailed from the Keep and Viconia where no trees grew; those two hardly knew how to stop themselves walking in circles. But Montaron could see well enough that the tree leaves looked like thornbushes, the earth underfoot crunched darkly as if it was frost though no signs of ice broke on it, and for all he looked up to check the sun was still in the middle—they'd waited the night by fires in the Corthala cabin, and seen nothing—it looked dark as if the sky were evening, or an eclipse had come. If he'd cut into wood with his pocketknife he thought he might find nothing but dry death, like.
"Ain't normal," he said aloud. The drow looked into Corthala's charts again. That head had done the favour of marking out the parts he'd explored for shadows, playing the do-gooder like certain Harpers whose graves Montaron had enjoyed the pleasure of spitting on.
"We have walked hours," she whined. "This land is displeasing to the eye and I need rest if I must cure you of your own foolish injuries."
And the mad wizard had stepped off into a trance of his own, pig's luck. Montaron stepped forward to grab him by the robes and jerk him out of it, but his hands were already spinning through the air and he was chanting. Fancy white lights shone around Xzar's eyes and he thrust his arms out in front of him like a blind man trying to see with his crutch ripped from under him.
"They say it is the angels who fall from the highest blinding heights," Xzar said. "They say that to the blackest depths there are always those darker. Across the sun a black bird flies. Wings of ivory bone and a skull of long shadows. Build with a north face for the most light to shine in. The brightest lights cast the strongest darkness behind them. Chase the chilly cracks and the bones wrapped in meat; the rabbits bite the sun and the light dies. The shadows run..." He twitched, his fingers moving faster, falling into a trance of mad divination. "In the margins there's a name, secret name, true name, secret history of Manshoon and the rat in the cellars in the bowels of Zhentil Keep. Bears and gold, Monty! But what if the bear's not made of gold? What use a mirror's reflection with eyes? A long time ago little soft feet dance prettily around the summergem ..."
"'Tis meaningless babble, isn't it?" Viconia said.
"Aye," Montaron agreed, and let her be the one to shake Xzar out of it with a mace blow to the back of the skull. Xzar fell to his knees, shaking his head; so addled he wouldn't know what'd hit him. Viconia hid the mace behind her back and gave a treacherous smile.
It was almost a relief when the first shadow struck in that grey wood. Xzar'd strutted on as if he'd got where the shadows came from in the mad spellcasting, and then out it came. It and a friend the same black claws.
He'd a proper weapon, thank noble Lord Corthala for the generous donation. A dweomered dagger with a good plain hilt in iron and copper, and a gleaming-sharp gutlicker of a blade. He'd feed it with whatever the shadows held in place of blood.
His long tooth bit nice and strong. The shadow was clawed and rippled at the edges like wolf-fur. A shadow-werewolf, half wolf half man—mattered as much as counting the tangles in a sheep's wool. The vital thing was—he could cut into its vitals, so to speak. Strings of black mess peeled out from its shape like an orange skin and he moved around it to avoid the claws. The bigger they were, the easier it was to hamstring them.
The second lunged forward; he couldn't hold back both of them. "Mad wizard!" he yelled, signalling. "Flame 'em!"
"I'm sorry, Monty, but that divination and killing the Corthala took all the spells out of me. Ask me tomorrow?"
Then he took off running in circles through the trees. The drow swore in her tongue. Montaron felt the shadow opening below his blade; he slit where hits knees were and brought it down, and then a quick deep slash into where the throat'd be. He'd done the same many a time for fool natural longlimbs without a clue what they were doing. Hadn't thought to wonder what it meant for shadow-creatures.
"You are shadows, I bind you in the name of the Lady of the Night! Rothrl uns'aa xor peri'sol!" Viconia yelled out, which had the spectacular effect of drawing the thing to attack her. She screamed.
"Protect me, fool! I cannot heal you if I am drained!"
The shadow he fought had collapsed; Montaron leapt up for the next one's back. The trick was to be fast enough for all the bastards to chase you, and then you'd stab them even as they collided into each other. His sword found a lodgement in the back of it; then the drow used her brains and emptied out a flask of something that smelt like spices and poisonflowers and lit up a blazing burst on the thing.
Montaron went to stab the first shadow to the ground to keep it where it was instead of dwindling to ashes, but yet again it flickered out as if they'd been fighting nothing more than their imaginations. At Viconia's feet there weren't even dust. He wiped sweat from his face and brushed his hands across slashes in his thickened aketon jacket. The mad wizard was still running from it, but that weren't proof; but Montaron himself wasn't the type to lose his sanity. There were shadow-monsters between the trees, and they were there to send them all screaming into the Abyss.
"Umar...nightmare," came the low man's voice from the head in his pack. "Shadow...travellers..."
Montaron picked it up and shook it sharply, and Corthala's dead voice said nothing more.
—
It shouldn't be evening. Fifteenth hour or thereabouts; ye learned a decent sense of time passing when it came to guards and meetings and watches or ye were necromancer's fodder. Third was witching-hour, fifteenth was a happy sunny afternoon with second lunch served out on the table with ale and belt-loosening, if ye were a damned fool hin who'd heard too many bard songs about what their kin did. They should've turned back to Corthala's cabin from the grey forest; shouldn't have followed on. Now they'd a longer way to go back than forward to the cover up ahead on rising hills and caves, and the sun was missing. The forest stretched black thorns woven into each other above them that blocked most of the sky; and it had gone dark as a winter's night. It wouldn't have bothered him if it weren't cursed handwaving. Blame someone's fool wiggling fingers for this bloody mess... Montaron thought again how easily his sword'd fit through the shadows. The drow had given up bitching and moaning for the lost perfume she'd used to set the shadow alight three hours ago, and on the length of the journey one. The mad wizard marched jauntily through the black woods; he'd been given time to read his spells and her ladyship the bloody drow to rest her arse, and they were still walking annoyances.
He glanced down; there was a small piece of stone to vary the neverending waste of ground, and it'd had one side of it carved and graved to a straight surface at some time. He'd rather get to the point of thrusting in the business end of his blade without wasting fool time thinking on legends.
"Monty, it's a hint!" the mad wizard babbled. "People built things. People built where they shouldn't have built. The surprise secret is that when human angels fall they're the ones that build the abysses instead of ones from outside. But when they invite things that knock on the door and won't show their faces, it's no wonder they're troubled..."
Some old hut'd be as good a shelter as any. Fire away shadows and seal it good. The drow stepped faster. There was more stone to be had. Pavings and bits of bricks and then the shape rearing ahead of a building atop a hill. Rounded at the corners, and out its front some sort of statue of no shape. It was big, though, and it made Montaron uncomfortable that none o' the villagers'd seen fit to inform them about the giant ancient building.
"Corthala's notes," the drow said, "there are accounts of an older surfacer settlement here. But he did not know it for himself." Montaron had felt liquid from Corthala's neck still oozing through the bottom of his pack. The thing still felt damp behind him. Day-old blood should have long dried; from the sky's looks the air should be near cold to freeze the blood of a thousand. But the blasted wizard—like enough 'twas his fault. The zombie head didn't make any more noises while they walked further on. By the building itself the trees hadn't finished overgrowing the sky. Lighter spots on the stones looked like paint spatters at first, then it was obvious they were shafts of skylight. They crossed over to walking on solid stone pavers instead of dry dirt, and for all he looked Montaron couldn't see the shadows queuing up to attack just yet.
Xzar pointed to the statue before the building, a thick glassy thing taller than the wizard with as much shape to it as stirred seawater. The sort of work Montaron had always figured was from thieves more shameless than him who'd charge diamonds for a piece of art they'd crafted by kicking it around their bedroom a few times.
"They would dance barefoot around the summerstone," Xzar said. "Soft feet never hurt a pavement brimming with green. It is crystal as a beehive, honeycomb sweetness until..."
Looked like a temple to him, Montaron thought; rounded stuff with ruins of domes on top. Not like a Cyricist twisted thing with architecture that wanted to make your eyes bleed, or a Baneite all lines and black corners; something like the Lathanderians did. There were marks on it that might have been gold-faced roofing that lasted about until the overly trusting marks got it shoved in their faces that some folk'd steal anything not nailed down. Eh, those sorts of gods were molly-headed mercybringers who didn't object to trespassers, and it were an old place anyway.
"What ugly surfacer art," the drow said, glancing around herself with nervous crimson beady eyes. "Nau thrityhen. We should not have walked so far. I swear that I feel—"
"But we are where we have to be. Join hands and dance in the light of the prism!" Xzar said.
"Shut up and say what ye see, curse ye!" Montaron said. Maundering about, that's what it were below the dark trees. He hated marks who maundered about. He could see in the night better than any human longlimb, even those who finger-wiggled, and here he should've felt nothing more than a quick step toward something they could shield with for a rest.
"I behold surfacer artwork that looks like nothing more than vomit blown into a vaguely triangular shape," Viconia said. "It would be exactly as nauseating rotated in any direction; a perfect illustration of surfacer hubris that they mounted it so elaborately. Oh, vhaid rivvin, why are you all imbeciles? Your eyes see nothing from when you are born and so you have no aesthetic to speak of. Even this structure must have once been a true abomination. All meaningless glass lines that are a disgusting grey colour in this land; it hurts my eyes to look upon it and I will die from outraged sensibility before anything else! Perhaps I will make you males smash it for me. No doubt it was tastes like yours that fashioned such terrible sculpture."
"Prism shape," Xzar said softly, staring at it with wide mad eyes, "triangles have only two dimensions. This has four."
"I like my statues with big tits," Montaron said. "There's this nude figure of Lady Alustriel in Orthola gardens in Waterdeep..."
"Then alu vith natha rothe, and I think you know exactly what it means, little man!" Viconia said. "Pull on a cow's thick udders while fucking her—if you could reach from your stepladder!"
"Go suck off a carrion crawler," Montaron said easily enough. They were closer to that door, those stone walls; twenty feet or so from the statue in their walk. Xzar whistled a long, tuneless note. Something in the glass across from him seemed to echo it loud and high.
Then there were shadows around them on all sides, and Montaron suddenly knew exactly why none had been able to tell them of the building in front of them.
The mad mage went according to plan close enough; oil on the ground in a circle and then a thick fire-circle springing up to protect them. Then he aimed pain from his hands, and the drow cast something that stunned and slowed the massed shadows. They started reaching limbs above the fire even while it burned them, and Montaron stabbed up and through. The drow's protection rested on him and he walked through the fire unharmed, killing as much as any could want. This time the black shapes lay on the ground like outlines of the charcoal left from some mage's strong fireball.
Too many of them in a swarm, for all he went from one to the other slitting through the back of their knees. They all but seemed blind; the shadows were his cover as well as theirs. Claws bit at him but he wasn't slowing yet. Let the blade feed on black blood—
"Monty," Xzar said, sickly-green mage darts spilling from his hands against four shadows at once, "there's something I should probably have told you."
He'd no breath to curse the fool wizard to the Nine Hells and tell him to spill it before he stabbed him. The drow shrieked a curse in her tongue and lashed out with her mace at a shadow gone too close.
"The statue's a prism," Xzar repeated. "Glass reflects. It has four dimensions: height, breadth, width, and hour. The angles in it are perfect to catch the light if it's turned to the right angle and the right time; why can't you read them like an open book? It's the summerstone of honeyed light..."
"Take a path to it!" Montaron shouted, and drove his blade into the next in front of him. Mad wizard was fast on his feet when he had to be; and it sounded like he was casting a half-decent hasting. The next moment Montaron felt the speeding power rush through his veins, and heard the drow laugh. It made you faster than anything else on the battlefield; and it hurt like the Nine Hells at the moment it stopped. But they'd little time. Cold settled in him and he wondered if the claws had bitten and drained. While he'd quickness he could kill. The drow brought down more with her next spell.
The wizard ran to the summerstone with those long chicken legs of his, and Montaron killed everything that lay in his path. The speed bore him on, quicksilver and desperate, and he lunged to split the right arteries and let them all die. It went on, Xzar rushing forward and pulling as hard as he could at the statue, with the shadows doing their best to stop him as if they understood—
At last the stone grunted a final time, and suddenly Montaron stood in broad daylight half blinded, listening to Viconia's sudden scream. He feared claws lancing toward him, not seeing a thing until his eyes changed to it; then he looked properly, and the shadows had gone and left the pavings shining a brilliant gold with the sun still high in the sky. The trees weren't so many around this centre. Through the branches the light patterned everything as it should have.
"The light burns," Viconia said weakly, and tottered toward them as the spell wore off and left them all weak as newborn cullies for the moment.
—
They sat at the base of the stone, the mad wizard shifting it from time to time to get the proper sunlight to bathe away the shadow-creatures. The sun was setting; you couldn't get it to shine when it went below the horizon. Viconia sat with a strip of cloth bandaged around her eyes, and Montaron couldn't help but pant. The light took on a bloodred tinge for sunset. He made himself stop it; there was only one way they could go, after all.
"Get up," he said, "and we go in with torches afire. Or I'll stick the burning end in your eyes for a quick mercy kill."
Inside the temple they lit up the stone steps that crept down to darker places, and then in the stone walls the shadows came again, howling like wolves.
—