"—We front up to the dragon like we're delivering Fentan to the precious Shade Lord, and we make bloody sure it can't follow us up the stairs—" Montaron said. He'd scouted around; and before them was the way to the dragon, and behind them they'd been trapped. Take a few moments of breathing-space to rest and they took advantage of it—he was the trap-grappler and the only one with sense, he was the one should've noticed and found a place small enough for him at least to get out and escape, should've figured that where they sat wasn't big enough to get back out of the temple— The drow drove anger in at herself too, for she claimed it was a trap worthy only of the rankest of amateurs in the Underdark.
A rockfall brought down by shadows cut them off from going back, and the creatures stood guard beyond it. The wizard incinerated a few, and yet over time they grew back and fled away; and Xzar could have helped to start to clear the block too, but they had a near endless supply of raw stone and earth to work from. Fentan's group had disappeared from Imnesvale two tendays ago, and she'd long lost time passing; and now they felt it too. The drow whined over not being able to pray midnights, and Montaron felt exhausted and ill-hedged with the off-balance that could get ye killed fast as anything else.
"Nothing else left to try," Montaron said, and better to die trying to kill something than slowly starving here.
"A beautiful creature," Xzar said. "Black glass wings and such sharp teeth. When its wings beat the bones scream, and the air breaks down to dust."
Fentan coughed faintly; maybe she'd be first to die from weakness. The ghost-girl sat in the mad mage's lap with her bony hand locked around his arm.
"The third holy ceremony is where the sons and daughters are raised to bid farewell to the setting sun and then the prayer to the light tomorrow is read aloud," Amauna recited. "The second holy ceremony is to pluck a golden flower and offer it up to the midday sun and sing the hymn to the light. The first holy ceremony is to rise and greet the sun with gentle hands and wordless song. The fourth holy ceremony is to bring back the sun on the winter solstice in the dark backwards and everything weeps widdershins. The fifth holy ceremony is to consecrate the body of the prophetess to the sun in the light outside the prism like a weapon to burn her heart. The eighth holy ceremony is to lie on the altar and take up the golden knives. The third holy ceremony is..."
Like a failed musician who didn't know when to shut up his broken songs. The ghost-child spoke with her creepy eyes nowhere on any of them, into the air repeating the same she had for nights. Fentan weren't any help in getting her away from Xzar, the one who'd desecrated her bones.
"Bring back the sun widdershins," Xzar said, and that mad grin spread between the tattoos on his face. "Monty, we have a working plan. Widdershins with the prophetess of the Sun dissuading."
"And Fentan our hostage. The brightest lights cast the strongest shadows," Viconia said. She reached down, and carefully and deliberately stroked Fentan's hair to taunt her. "Isn't it interesting, little one, that the Shade Lord wants a knight of Arvoreen for his own? None of us would be sanctified enough. Except for the dead brat, if she were not dead."
"—I serve my lady. My sword is my lady. My sword is my life. I am a blade of Arvoreen of righteousness. I—" Fentan cried. Since the concussion she'd lost half her senses.
"Enough." Viconia backhanded her.
"Flares and shields and restorations," Montaron told the casters. "Make me fast, mad-mage, and make it last proper. Or ye won't."
I am...Thaxll'ssillyia. I have a name. I have a form. And I have a hunger, the voice of the dragon pierced past them, nothing near mortal, straight into their minds like a black spear to their heads.
The roof above her, Montaron noticed—she mightn't be a her, but something in the voice was like the drow—was glittering from the light spilling from Amauna's shape, was thin and veined-looking, like it was grey wings itself that could fold back and set her free. Darkness lay beyond her.
"We bring the Shade Lord's consort to him, us'jalil tagnik'zur," Viconia said, smooth as silken bonds.
Respectful. A dead-black tongue curled out of a mouth with teeth that looked like they were made of glass. The mad wizard was preparing some spells like he ought to be; and Amauna spun widdershins, light spinning around her from the jewel in her forehead and out from her ghost's eyes. I know no other dark mortal creatures.
Then Thaxll'ssillyia moved her wings; and Montaron saw exactly what the crazy mage had said. Where she shifted them through the air it turned to dust, wiping away real things. She didn't belong here. Sort of thing that made ye want to hurl out your belly, things that didn't belong.
I know another sky, Thaxll'ssillyia whispered, and Amauna answered her:
"I know other skies too. I could see far into the distance beyond the sun." And where the ghost-priestess danced and lit up part of the dragon's wing, it turned glassy as if it was part of some mad illusion.
"Let us pass with the small knight," Viconia said, and the black dragon raised a long wing to let them to the stairs upward.
—The stairs upward. As if they found their way to the surface again. Why'd a Shade Lord keep himself upstairs when his creatures liked dark? The mad wizard was humming while they tracked up the old stone stairs, too tall for a halfling's comfort, Fentan dragged behind the drow. At the end of it a door opened and they found themselves in the dark. Black thorns grew too thickly for any sun to pass through, too many to slice through. There was dry earth below their feet, ground instead of underworld; but that must be the Shade Lord waiting by.
"Patrick. Arne. Phoebe. Agnola. Jarvis," Fentan whispered, and black shapes—longlimb and hin—peeled themselves free from a gathering around an altar in the centre of the ground. They carried weapons: halberd, sword, bow, hammer. Sooner or later they'd fight. "Is there nothing left of the souls you were?"
"You've come to me, my knight miniature," said a woman's voice. A black cloak covered her body: below her hood was an ordinary human face, long and lean and tanned. Then you saw the eyes were black and the shape was dead as anything the necromancer played with.
"We were thinking of trading her for our lives," Viconia said, taking care to sound as if she wasn't. "But, of course, there is the minor detail that we cannot trust you, Shade...Lord."
"This skin?" The woman raised a gloved her hand, her sleeve falling to show bared arm. Maggots crawled between fragments of tendons and flesh. Black bones were riddled with holes. "A little thing I threw on not too long ago."
'Splained the mystery of the dragged-off ranger.
"Give my new consort to me," the Shade Lord said, dropping Merella's hand to rest on the blackened altar.
Amauna screamed. "This was the altar to the Sun," she cried. "He'll desecrate her like my bones. Don't let him."
The Shade Lord stepped forward, and his black cloak blew through the air even though there wasn't any wind here. The ends of it licked at Amauna's bones. "Defiled beyond the orders of my minions. Reanimated in darkness, my old enemy. You can't stand against me with your tainted light."
"...Yes. Yes, that was completely my fault, wasn't it?" Xzar said. "You need a living body to dance yourself into this world."
"Your old body decays and you require the little knight," Viconia said, her teeth glinting white in the darkness. "An amateur's trick to give so much knowledge away. Among the drow you would last a minute or two at most."
"Then walk away," the Shade Lord said. "Oh, I forget. I have trapped you here." True enough, Montaron thought, keeping balance; they should've taken surprise and attacked first off. The shadows here were heavy shapes, black and solid and armed. Have the mage fireball the archer, the Shade Lord... Doors'd closed behind them: stone thick enough to block a dragon.
I have a plan, the cursed drow assured.
"Do you know how delicious a soul strong enough to dedicate to a knight's path in the body of a halfling? Mazzy Fentan burns like the sun. The laws of chaos reverse."
Mazzy Fentan did whatever heroes did, and rose up even weak and starved as she was. Did whatever heroes did, nicely taking the blows for the profit of others.
"Come and join us, Mazzy," a human-shaped shadow said. "I changed. I can't wait to feel you ripped open under me, screaming my name."
"—Patrick—" Mazzy cried; and then she flung herself backward onto Montaron's blade. It cut the bonds on her hands; then she was on the shadow, breaking his arm and seizing his weapon.
"—Wizard, now!" Xzar flung his spell: green stuff immolated the black bowman in the back. Montaron flung himself below the halberdman, let the weapon flail in the empty air above his head— He cut into its body; but the shadows grew back faster than he could hurt them. The mad mage flung spells at the Shade Lord and the altar it rested on, and shook him a bit. Montaron moved fast, tangling the shadows who chased him with each other. His blade stripped a black throat at hin-height, but with its master nearby it healed over itsef. He shoved one of the gold bullets into a cut and felt the flesh jerk over it inside the body. The drow—
One of the shadows had Viconia down, pincushioned with a black javelin. She shouted out, hands bloody; and then the Shade Lord sent Xzar down beside her. And all the ghost-priestess did was stand and wail like a child—
Then they were all on him, trapping him between dark flesh nothing like what the drow offered to anything that moved. He didn't lose his grip of the sword; but it sunk into their parts and barely hurt them. Some still smelled of Xzar's fires.
Fentan was last to go, it sounded like.
"Thank you, Patrick. Bring her to me."
"—Turning into women's bodies? What kind of molly-boy Shade Lord are ye?" Montaron shouted. Black oily stuff was shoved into his mouth. He spat and bit.
"The brightest stars cast the darkest voids when they change," the Shade Lord said. "My knight has only brought me...dragon food. Perhaps the necromancer could have damaged me in more time; but you were lost the moment you tried to challenge me."
"I thought so," the drow said. "Loss attends us like a sister."
"I want to peel your lovely flesh and drain the life from you like an orange, Mazzy, and leave you an empty ruined shell," the shadow of her man said. "You ask if there is anything left of me? I remember the last we were together. I want you below me again."
Fentan's voice was high and shrill. "Not my Patrick!"
"How bright she burns," the Shade Lord's cold voice said. And the drow chimed in again.
"He will use you, Fentan. I ought to have slain you."
"Get away from me!" Fentan cried out, and Montaron got a sight of it when one of the shadows who held him moved. Fentan struggled on the altar like a pinned cockroach held down by her man, and the drow flopped forward, still wounded. The Shade Lord stripped off a glove and laid a rotting hand across Fentan's face, fingers on her eyes.
"I do not need to lie to you, Fentan," Viconia said. "He will use your soul to be stronger than ever before, and he will slay countless others. But, of course, you are not a knight to ever make any meaningful sacrifice."
"Arvoreen! I would not—do not—"
And something dark passed between the bony hand and Fentan's face, and she screamed like a mating tomcat.
"I would bring dark to you all and slay anything in my path," Fentan's voice broke from her mouth. "I will stand on a mountain of corpses and destroy any who ever called me short! I will kill far more than I ever thought possible, and soak the Realms in blood—
"No! No—please—Arvoreen—Patrick—" Fentan stopped and begged. The thing had a hold on her. The drow said a few words of her own, some prayer that made Fentan turn to her.
"Selfish," Viconia said, "all of you holy ones are hypocrites in the end. Your upright soul turns to darkness of equal measure, and you do not end it when you can."
The bitch had to say it. Always her precious cursed goddess of hers. All her fault that dragon's glass teeth would be biting down on all of them soon enough.
"My faith to Arvoreen," Fentan said. Her skin changed to black on her nails and skin of the fingers, the ranger's old body starting to fall away beside her. "You are...evil. No. Never—"
"I am a liar too, but I am not lying now and you know it," Viconia said. "One chance. He overwhelms all here, and only you have the power..."
"Dragon food," hissed the Shade Lord through Fentan's mouth. "Stand up and kill them all."
"Renounce your goddess and darken your soul," Viconia said.
Fentan struggled again. The shadow held her in place, and Montaron felt the touch of the shadows clawing him where he was. He clawed back. "Then let me surrender my salvation—darken me to weaken him—" Fentan begged. "I swear apostasy to Arvoreen!"
It was words; but this time something happened to Fentan for taking the name of her goddess in vain.
"A virtuous heretic is still virtuous," Viconia breathed, and she stood with the wound in her side mended, her dress bloodied. "You have lost all. Now call to Shar."
And then the drow prayed some more, her holy symbol high in the air, and Montaron never knew exactly what she did in that moment of shadows everywhere, Sharran and Shade Lord and fallen paladin on the altar—
Things became something else in dreams. The Shade Lord reached into what already belonged to the night, and the priestess of Shar called her goddess to overwhelm foreign shadows. The child of the sun wept helplessly. The masked assassin whirled, blade through the shadows in his way; and the Lady of Darkness sealed the invader to the cold plane he came from. Fentan, black-armoured and raising a dark sword, stood cold sentinel against the Shade Lord. She was corpse-pale, guardian of the realm of the Lady. Viconia DeVir smiled.
The altar was still black, Fentan was laid out on it not breathing, and the black hulking shadows stood like an honour guard. The wizard sat up in tattered robes, and Montaron picked himself up from the ground. Dead halfling knight; and still a reanimated brat that shouldn't be, bones in yellow silks on dark purple-grey tiles, beside the wizard by the barrier of black thorns against the daylight.
"Shar was quite displeased with her deathbed convert," Viconia said. "She selected an appropriate punishment to make the soul of our halfling Blackguard stand guard against the male pretender's gate for eternity. And nonetheless, she was pleased by my actions." Viconia shoved Fentan's body off the altar, not without effort; let it fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes besides the ranger's rotting corpse. It wasn't more ceremony than she'd have shown to him if he'd died; and he'd do the same to the Sharran when she got herself killed on some fool scheme for picking up converts. Toss the wench aside and kick her for good measure.
There was a circle drawn on the altar that Montaron would have sworn hadn't been there before: purple-edged, black. Her symbol.
"It is Shar's temple now," Viconia said.
"—One of the nasty mean ones," Xzar said, "turn everything to void and expect you to thank them for eating your skin—"
"Unwise to speak against my lady in her shrine, apostate," Viconia told him, leaning against her altar. "I learned wisdom from Shar while I consecrated her temple: Amaunator is a dead god of the sun." She pointed to the ghost. "A male deity of the sun is long dead, and the Lady of the Night endures. Shar is eternal."
"Lord Amaunator is dead," Amauna said, tears on her cheeks. "I wish you had never come to this place."
"Gods are dead," Xzar said. "The void would exist without her. Therefore why—? But now is not the time..."
Viconia glared scarlet at him.
"You're all bones," he said to the little girl's ghost, "you could run through the thorns and see..."
Both of them shoved themselves into the black wall, sharp points scraping across the wizard's skin; disappearing into the tangle. Mask, Montaron thought or whispered, he said enough to the patron of thieves that he wouldn't wind up in the Nine Hells, but he didn't mess with gods and priests. Ye shouldn't borrow trouble. Most Sharrans had the half-a-grain o' common sense that kept what they were hidden; the drow had learned some since last time. When she'd been running alone from the Flaming Fist she'd really liked to spill how a surface deity had her.
"Going to set up housekeeping here?" he snarled. She'd kept some of the shadow-creatures, standing around the altar.
"I might...show the village some things," Viconia said. "What would you like to do with them, halfling?"
"Hurt them for sending us on this mad job," Montaron said. He'd not meant to be so honest about it. The town sheep sent them up here to bleed and die for them.
"Don't think that I do not have plans," the drow said, and with a sway of her hips pushed the door loose. Beyond in the dragon's chamber was empty tiled floor, though it looked like black dust had blown across it: Montaron saw the shape of a fallen dragon with outstretched wings. Above the ceiling was black glass. "It should have been cleaned, at least a little, for its new mistress."
"That'd be your deity. Not ye," Montaron reminded her.
"Of course." She flicked back her pale hair, walking safely below the dark roof. Neither of them needed light to see. Back to the rockfall, and tarlike Sharran shadow-figures lifted away the obstacles in their path. An old statue of a male figure lay in fragments on the ground, and in a wall Shar's dark circle had materialised. Around it were faint triangles carved into the stone as if the old symbol had been something like noonday sun. Montaron scrambled up and over the rubble ahead of Viconia; still better than stupidly forcing yourself through thorns. He landed easily on his feet, kicking aside the remains of the undead they'd fought. The walls looked a touch cleaner, dusty but not like they were moving in on you any more with their fool shadows. Coffins were flung everywhere and empty, like their corpses had gone away to dust. All clear here, with a few wolflike shades reflected on the stones like the dragon's shape had been.
"Wait for me," the drow snapped, throwing dust off her cloak. "How do you know I did not send servants to attack your insolence?"
"Didn't think ye that powerful. Nothing here I couldn't have beaten up one-by-one," Montaron said, damn them all and stab them in the kidneys where it counted.
"Sharrans make only rare sacrifices of blood," Viconia said, "we are ordered to slay the servants of the Moon Bitch on sight, but we favour...subtle means for most. The Spider Queen does pointless baths in blood; Shar is different. Live prisoners set to quiver in interesting ways. Though I have met few other Sharrans. Loneliness is part of existence." Start as a threat; go on to whining again. Or boasting. Some folk didn't know when to leave ye alone and shut up...specifically, if they were mad wizards called Xzar.
"Ye did well here, in the end," he told her, for they were living and the enemy dead, and no parts missing.
They walked out to find the mage; Zhent command had it that Montaron needed to waste his time keeping the fool alive. This one they'd note only as a bit of mercenary work, and the deaths of two Harpers. Yeah, that'd make the higher-up bastards sit up and take note. Mad Xzar was the wizard from the Keep but they rewarded talent when they noticed it.
Outside the sun burst in waves of white fit to blind and drown him. Montaron squinted with a hand shielding his face and saw nothing the same as when they'd got there. Hadn't been trapped underground that long, not some crazy magic that took them someplace else—
It was green and gold, broad daylight, trees growing like summer instead of black half-dead canopies, grass and flowers springing out between stones and in the woods. The prism-statue's spot was still there, but the thing itself was split into glass shards scattered on the ground. He couldn't say he'd miss it.
"The light burns," Viconia complained, "and pesky surface nature dares to grow again. But Shar rules in the temple."
Ye could see where the altar-spot was, now, from above where the light had been blocked before: a black sphere above the temple, guarded by that thick growth. Ye could still tell it was a sun-god first, Montaron gloated without telling it to the drow, for it was above-ground and they said Shar objected the same as the Shade Lord to light; but some dead god of the sun didn't matter either. And the mad wizard and his crazy necromantic creation of the ghost-girl were sitting further out in the woods in broad daylight that glinted off her bones.
"...And then Mister Sun went to the house, and said, 'Do you want to have a tea party'?"
Amauna held up a round piece of bark, roughly tied together with pieces of sticks that gave it head and limbs like a doll. There was another piece of stick in the mad wizard's hand, long and smooth except at the top and base.
"And Miss Fibula said, 'Of course with crinkled crepe,'" Xzar said, and shifted his figure next to the sun's. Scraped and bloodied and dirty, and he grinned like the maniac he was. "Then they walked crossways to the tea room..."
"And had two cups of acorn tea," Amauna said, lifting a pair of acorns that must've fallen from the spreading oak above her head. Take out one Shade Lord and ye got a...garden. More of a forest. Seemed tangled enough to be natural, the right colours for the warm season and thick dirt underfoot; even worse than the dark place it had been at first. "With lots of honey. Like the sun's colour."
"Would you take honey in your acorn tea, Mister Sun?" Xzar said. There was even a garland of wilting flowers around his head, and the same over Amauna's skull.
"Yes, please, lots," Amauna said. "And would Miss Fibula like some more lotus in her cup?"
"Freak," Montaron said at the mad mage.
"Sun-worshipper," Viconia criticised.
They saw the ghost and the necromancer stand up, leisurely; Amauna looked back toward the temple.
"You ruined everything," she said. "And you made me into this. My father didn't raise me. He gave me to the temple.
"By the law of Amaunator, for dark magic and heresy I sentence you to the darkness of you, Xzar. For eternity. My father never made daisy-chains with me. You separated me from Amaunator and made me undead."
"Silver dust," Xzar said. "Invert it—make it mercury-dust. A piece of gibbering heart. It's an interesting puzzle. Add a third element. A bit of basil, that's for sunlight. Heart and soul and memory, flare and bright and bone, banish away from the old chaining throne..."
"Please finish it," Amauna said. "You started it.'
"Get on with it," Montaron snarled; Viconia sulked, waiting around for them. The mad mage was...drawing a circle, runes around the girl's foot bones. Spilling his blood on it, glittering scarlet in the air before it hit the dirt, herbs and fool spellcasting. Then he raised his hands and started the spell. The sun beat down from above. The child in the centre smiled tearfully. And then the ectoplasm that made her shape boiled and wove itself off the bones, and white light rose from the bounds of the circle. Something like the child's yellow hair rose high to the sky, spreading into the air and dissolving; and then there was an explosion that brought it all down. The skeleton imploded into a cloud of bone dust. Montaron was half-deafened by it and went to a coughing fit.
"It worked," Xzar said, brushing away daisy-chain and dust from his face. "Interesting necromantic experiment, wasn't it, Monty?" He dug down in the earth where some of the bone dust had blown. "Here, it got separated at the last from her frontal cranium. Ioun stone, Monty! Wear it floating around your head and it'll help you focus better."
"Maks ye look like a complete tit, and also like a wizard which means they try to kill you first," Montaron said, and Viconia held out her hand for the bounty. He checked on Valygar Corthala's head to make sure it was still there to make the other claim, and headed back to Imnesvale at a fair pace.
"You're both utterly filthy," Viconia said. Town-lights beckoned them for the evening, an inn and a meal even if he had to slit throats for it. They stepped across the bridge above the mill stream.
"Your mouth is open. Don't spoil it," Montaron said. The drow stopped right there.
"Do you know I gained powers from Shar in her temple, pitiful little man? Do you understand not to talk back to a powerful female?"
"Do ye hear that, Xzar? Something's flapping its lips like a crippled chicken." He could forelock-tug with the best of them if the case called for it with a shit-eating grin wide as anyone's—why yes, Lord Zhent, humble halfing servant here to swallow the crap ye expect us to take, what shiny turds ye have, sir—but not to her. "Ye'd kick anyone fool enough to lick your boots, lady, so I'll ask ye kindly to do the same for my arse."
"I command you," Viconia hissed, and then he found himself standing on the bridge's wide rails, staring into her black face and the white hair streaming back behind her. "Jump into the water."
"Silly, Monty," the mad mage was saying, "she got you under her casting, but I'm thinking past it..."
Then the vague force stopping his brain snapped back the moment he hit the cold water, and then with something like a mace blow to the solar plexus the mad wizard was flung down with the same effect. The water rushed over both of them and Montaron ran a hand over the mud in his face.
"It's very cold," Xzar said, splashing idly. The dirt on Montaron's armour fell away; the water was too deep for him to touch bottom. "Monty, Miss DeVir's mean, isn't she? Really mean. She thinks it's fun to make live people wriggle on the end of a hook. She's a lot like you."
"You're the one who animates kids," Montaron snarled, thinking of hurting things.
"Yes. But she's religious about it. That's all right, though. The three of us are our own small family," Xzar said, and promptly went into a dead man's float where he pretended not to hear a word Montaron swore at him, heavy robes waterlogged below him.
—