He rushed forward swinging sword and spraying shadow, but the battle was as mad and confused as it was quick. Before he could find Bodvar again, he had to slay two dragonmen and use a spell of shadow-grabbing to keep from being dashed lifeless on the rocks at the base of his own cliff.

When Melegaunt did find the chieftain, he wished he had not been so quick to save himself. Bodvar was standing in the midst of a b.l.o.o.d.y pile of Vaasans and dragonmen, holding two broken swords of steel and searching the carnage around with a look of utter terror on his face.

"Idona?"

Bodvar found a female leg kicking at the ground from beneath a dead dragonman and used a boot to roll the white-scaled corpse away, but it turned out that the leg belonged to the mother who had grabbed one of the swords to defend her children.

He turned away from her without comment and called again, "Idona?"

"There," rasped someone. "They've got her." Melegaunt spun toward the speaker and found a pallid-faced sword-bearer pointing across the work site to a small knot of fleeing dragonmen. They were just starting down the trail toward the boulder walk, each one with a limp Vaasan body slung over its shoulders. The last body in line was that of Bodvar's young wife, her throat ripped out and her head dangling by the spine alone, her blue eyes somehow still locked on Melegaunt's face.

"No!" Melegaunt gasped. He laid a hand on Bodvar's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Bodvar. Sorry beyond words."

"Why? You have what you came for." Bodvar reached down to Melegaunt's scabbard and drew the last dark-sword, then turned to start after his dead wife. "You have your twenty souls."

Liar's Game

Jessica Beaven

The Year of the Starfall (1300 DR)

At the edge of a city in Faerun, a sewer main empties into the swamp. The light reaching inside gives way quickly, any who enter must proceed by touch. Deeper, the sewage grows thicker.

It sucks at one's calves. Deeper still, and the refuse is dry. The procession from wet to dry challenges the very imperative that water must flow downward. And yet the sewers go even deeper. Debris has come to rest here: a shoe with a foot decaying in it, a head wedged against a pipe protruding from the floor, worse.

With no heavenly bodies to mark its pa.s.sing, time loses meaning. A drip falls, then fades into the past, dripping forever in its moment.

The pipes give way to catacombs. Sounds of weeping fill the close air.

From one corridor, light issues, it seeps from the walls. Shifting animal forms inhabit this hall. Bars and wire hold them in, stripe their features. Some of the creatures look normal-cats shivering in shelved cages, mongrels drooping, even a lion cramped in a forward-sloping cell, its hide pressed into the bars.

The weeping creature in one of the larger cells has retreated to a corner to express its grief.

Only fur is visible. For some reason, it stops crying and shifts.

It is another cat-or rather, two. One is joined to the other, exactly upside-down on its back- head melting into head, hip into hip, one tail twitching against another limp one. The piggybacker is motionless, legs flopping, tongue protruding, yellow eyes glazed an inch or two above the greenones. The living cat is lacerated, so that its intestines have spilled from its middle and drag behind it upon the floor.

This corridor is long. It pa.s.ses into more corridors with small carry-cages abandoned here and there, jumbled alongside tables, cushions, and tapestries. A doorway breaks the expanse of one wall.

Inside the doorway, a would-be archwizard turns, as if sensing a presence. Then she returns to poring over a book of beasts. Druidic scrawl covers the pages.

She appears beautiful, with that ruggedness of druids- lithe body, sun-tinted dark brown hair, blue eyes-but that is only the body she chose to wear today.

She is a descendant of a woman and a man who withdrew, with the everdark Shade Enclave, to the Plane of Shadow centuries ago. She had learned the story as a fledgling druid just starting to taste the power that would entice her to archwizardry, and the ancestral memory of Shade Enclave added fuel to that fire.

Now she can hear the enclave sometimes, calling to her, reminding her of its hold upon her.

The Shadovar will soon return to her land, the land of the enclave's birth.

When they do, she will make Shade her home.

She rises and leaves her study.

1.

"Pain is reality. But false pain is easy to engineer."

-Chever's last notes The druid rose and glanced about her chamber, following an impulse to leave prematurely for the meeting of aspiring archwizards. The meetings came more frequently of late. Perhaps, like her, the older the dark ones grew, the more the Plane of Shadow called to them.

She strolled through her museum of abominations, following an urge to check upon them. She had thought she felt a disturbance earlier, but no-all seemed in order. She paused before her double cat, which was the most vocal, and closed her eyes to let its pain seethe over her. It had stopped crying for the moment. It had almost forgotten that it once had a life before this, but its despair remained, to confirm reality for the druid-wizard. Only real pain could call forth such misery. This brought the druid-wizard vicious comfort, similar to what a survivor of a shipwreck must feel upon stealing a life raft from a drowning shipmate. She had known doubts about the nature of reality once, long ago. It had been like finding that she could no longer trust the ground to hold her up.

The best specimens were those who had known dejection before she found them-mutations that lived in fear of sounder-bodied predators. Any suffering she could heap upon these abominations compounded that which they already knew. The thrill she derived from their torture could prove almost excruciating, and she would cry out in dark joy. The power she gained from those sessions-the afterglow-lasted for days.

An emissary from the Twelve Princes of Shade had come to her group earlier in the year, having somehow gotten wind of the clandestine organization. After testing the group for sympathy to the Shadovar through various-in some cases fatal-means, the emissary had a.s.signed tasks. After the moot, the druid-wizard would set to her task: to seek out a collection of notes written by the archwizard Chever, who had lived in ancient Netheril. Chever had created the Opus Enclave, which had once housed Netheril's centers of learning.

In his last days, Chever had contacted and conversed with myriad extraplanar creatures and taken down his notes, which made little sense compared to the well-organized books and lectures he had delivered in earlier days. In fact, they allegedly made little sense compared to most anything. His laterrecordings, especially, disclosed madness.

But the Shadovar deemed the notes valuable, so the druid-wizard would find them. The emissary had given her a starting point: the notes were last rumored to have been in the hands of a scholar living near the northern end of the Desertsmouth Mountains.

The moot pa.s.sed with relative ease. The would-be archwizards spent most of the meeting cl.u.s.tered, heads bent, over this or that tome, debating the consequences and efficacy of proposed actions. They seemed to have it under control, so the druid-wizard slipped away early, both to prepare for her journey and to escape being a.s.signed a new task.

She had things to attend to-like her beast collection, which would fit so perfectly deep inside the catacombs of the floating enclave. Others might control the enclave's surface, but she would take advantage of the fact that surface has no depth, only one who rules an object's substance truly commands it. She would be the one who whispered suggestions that must be followed, the one who masterminded activities that the enclave's figureheads would consider their own.

She made the trip back to her stronghold automatically, not remembering anything of the distance she had traveled from the wizards' moot to her room. She checked her beasts' water supply, which she had tapped from drainage pipes. The system kept the creatures watered automatically, so she would not need to worry about them dying in her absence. She dressed in the traveling garb of a druid and filled her satchel with the items she would need in the Desertsmouth. She would let her druid aspect ascend for this trip, as she would need to give the wizard full control upon her return.

2.

"At the edge of darkness is where the light is greatest."

-Chever's last notes She chose to walk to her destination-a walk of many nights, but one that allowed her to flex her druidic muscles. She would live off the land and revel in moon, stars, sun, and earth. She supposed some part of her would miss these things when she moved to Shade Enclave, but then it wasn't as if she couldn't leave now and....

Anyway, it didn't really matter. When she reined in the druid again after this trip, the wizard would find satisfaction. Best to please that-the strongest of her two natures-first.

As the Desertsmouths rose on the horizon, the bushes and small trees along the banks of the river by which the druid-wizard had been traveling gave way to meadow gra.s.s as she neared the foothills. She curved away from the river and followed a brook through sun-speckled groves and alpine flowers.

After traveling for several more hours, with ground squirrels and meadowlarks as her only companions, she broke free of a small patch of oaks and aspen to encounter a cottage near a dip in the creek she had been following. She had pa.s.sed several cabins along the way, but until now she had come across none that had the aura of promise she sought. This one, though ... this one was different.

She peered into a warped-gla.s.s window, but the dwelling's single room was empty. A bowl of stew and sheets of parchment on a rough-hewn table told her of recent occupation. In fact, a door between a case of shelves and some gardening tools against the back wall was cracked open, allowing a ray of sunlight to reach in and illuminate dust motes and floorboards.

She would observe the cottage's owner. It had been a while since she had enacted the Change, and it would feel good to a.s.sume wolf form again. She performed the ritual and watched lazily as her palms thickened into paws, her fingers withdrew into pads. She felt her nose and mouth pull out as if some G.o.d shaped them of clay. Fur sprouted all over her body, she was the earth in spring, shoots of hair emerging from her in a quiet burst. Her bone structure changed, forced her p.r.o.ne. Her knees reversed, her tailbone extended into a plume. The process lasted a mere moment, and a strange voice in her mind wove through it all, as if it, and not she, had commanded the Change.

The druid-wizard veered into the meadow gra.s.ses, slunk to a vantage point among them. Her brown ears and blue eyes lifted to just above the gra.s.ses' tips.The man's back was partially turned to her. He was slim yet muscular, and his facial features-silhouetted against the green and yellow of the creek's trees and the sun on the leaves-formed smooth angles against his tousled hair.

He spoke in the voice that had accompanied her Change.

The druid-wizard sidled around to better see what the man was doing. He was crouched near a vegetable garden, shaded under an eave. He spoke to a rose plant.

But his lips did not move.

His voice seemed to fade for a moment, as if the druid-wizard's surprise at the realization forced That Which Was to become That Which Was Not. But then her credulity caught up to her. She had known stranger things than this in her hundreds of years of magic. Why had this affected her?

The voice returned, rising and falling in windlike rhythm. It seemed to create a wind, for though no breeze swept the gra.s.ses among which the druid-wizard hid, the rose nodded and swayed, almost as though it responded to the man's thoughts.

The druid-wizard swiveled her ears, as if to better catch those thoughts.

... fell asleep in my stew and dreamed of music. In that music, you spoke to me. And I tried to tell you "soon," but I don't know if my words reached you. Now I am awake, and I can talk to you only like this. Please understand me. Please know that I am talking to you. Ah! You nod! But I never know if your replies are real or merely figments of my desperation. I have lost my ability to know anything with certainty. I am ... I am lost....

He broke into quiet sobs. The druid-wizard thought she sensed an image in his mind-an image of a woman... .

Clearly the man had gone mad in his isolation. Fascinating.

The druid-wizard could almost imagine that he spoke to her somehow, and not to the rose. Some part of her responded to the idea with a surge of longing so sudden that she could not breathe, an imperative that, for a moment, wiped out all else.

She had not lost control of her emotions in such a way since childhood. To know surprise at a simple hermit's thought-projection! To be blindsided by emotion hitherto suppressed, unsuspected! She should leave, power of this magnitude could ruin her. Even as she thought this, she knew that whatever force was at work here had already secured its hold on her. Plus, she must complete the task for the Shadovar, and that meant exploring every avenue of this country. She must see where this path led.

The man shook himself. Perhaps he chided himself for becoming so emotional over a plant, or perhaps he shuddered in an echo of the druid-wizard's longing. He stood and entered his cabin, closing the door behind him, leaving the rose to nod and twitch alone. It turned to face the druid-wizard-almost as if it knew she was there and regarded her with curiosity. But that was just the way some breeze had blown it.

Angry with herself, the druid-wizard resumed her human shape abruptly enough to cause herself pain and strode to the cottage's back door. She hated her weakness, but she could not deny that she wanted the man- wanted to make him speak to her as he had spoken to the rose.

As she knocked, she forced her turmoil aside and focused upon enhancing her beauty. She drew from the vague image of the woman she had seen in the man's mind, as well as from her own ideal self-image. Her eye color intensified, her hair took on new highlights and curls, the top few b.u.t.tons of her shirt undid themselves. No man had ever resisted this spell.

The man opened the door, a puzzled half-smile betraying surprise at the appearance of a visitor so soon after his moment with the rose-and at the back door, no less. For a moment his heart had surged with the wild hope that... but no, he must not indulge such fantasies.

When he saw the woman, puzzlement gave way to l.u.s.t and wariness, the latter because one such as this woman would never appear at a place such as this without trouble in the land or powerful magic at work.* * * * *

Time for the druid-wizard to play her part, if she was really to make this man her own.

She adopted an expression of uncertainty and stammered a pattern of truths and half-truths. "I... I...

felt drawn to this place. I have no one, and I dreamed that I must journey .... I saw you with your rose, and I thought I would like to know love like that. So ... here I am.

"I'll leave if I came in error," she added, to dispel any doubts that might remain after her speech.

He said not a word-not one word for her in that voice!-but drew her inside.

Now I'll see if I can call forth love as effectively as I can call forth pain, she thought. And, once I do, to see if love can grant me as much gratification. Perhaps, as some attest, even more.

She let her body take control-drew his head to hers, kissed him deeply, felt him kiss back. From there they fell to the floor, and so the day pa.s.sed.

Afterward, as they sat at the table over fresh bowls of stew and the druid-wizard secretly used her magic to destroy any chance of a child taking root, the man finally spoke to her.

"I dreamed I would meet you," he said.

He had recurring dreams of a woman linked to him with powerful bonds. The bonds, though they kept the woman's spirit close to his, stretched over chasms of time and s.p.a.ce. Her features were usually indistinct, but he thought she might look something like the druid-wizard.

"Was that the same dream in which your rose spoke to you?"

He looked at her askance. "No ... you heard that?"

"Yes, I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself."

He frowned, then shook his head. "It's fine. It's probably good that you came now. I think I might have started to invent things, to hallucinate, if I'd been alone much longer."

Perhaps you already were hallucinating, the druid-wizard thought. She said, "How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. A long time. I got tired of cities and people and just wanted to get away for a while.

How about you?"

"I've been alone for a long time, too. I live in the city, though, and I have ... pets."

"That must help."

They fell into pregnant silence.

"Will you go back to the city, then?" he asked. "To take care of your pets?"

"Oh . . . yeah, I should. It's still home for now, even though I've found true love." She met his eyes and smiled as though at a joke. "Would you like to come with me?"

True love, she had said. The man supposed they were true lovers-he had dreamed of a woman something like this one, and this woman had been drawn here. But the words rang cra.s.s. He considered expressions of true love best uttered in times of great emotion, great change-not over bowls of half-eaten stew and among garden tools and cupboards. Just because she didn't share this fancy ... that didn't mean he and this woman weren't destined for each other.

In any case, he had been away from the world long enough.