Then Lume gave each of the men a light crossbow with a single bolt, and a small dagger, and they left for Karsus. The plan was for Cy to lead the other a.s.sa.s.sins into Shadow's bedchamber where they would overwhelm him with sheer numbers.

"The archwizard won't try to use anything too deadly inside the small confines of that room,"

strategized the captain. "He'll more likely try to subdue us as he did Cy, or enspell the whole group to make us think he is our ally and deal with us individually at his leisure. We're not going to let that happen.

As soon as we get in sight, we unload with the crossbows. The bolts I gave you are magically enhanced to ensure a perfect strike. You only have one, because if you fail, there won't be an opportunity for another shot. Keep him distracted, so he can't use his magic, and we should all live through this." Lume looked at each of the a.s.sa.s.sins in turn. "Once Shadow is dead, we find his wand, and we get out of thereand celebrate."

The other raiders let out a loud whoop at their captain's confidence. Cy kept his mouth shut. It wasn't going to be that easy, and he knew most of these men, himself included, weren't coming back. He just hoped that one of those who wasn't going back to camp would be Captain Lume.

At the entry to Shadow's opulent home, Lume jabbed the end of his saber into Cy's ribs. "Now, be a good lad and show us in."

Cy led the silent, nearly invisible band of a.s.sa.s.sins down the long hallway into the decadent siting room. In complete silence, the entire troop weaved through the blonde constructs and marched down toward the bedchamber.

Just as before, the door at the end of the hall was ajar and a light was on inside the room. Cy beckoned the other a.s.sa.s.sins ahead of him and pressed himself against the wall. The raiders complied and moved around him, taking up positions on either side of the door. Lume came up behind Cy, and he nodded to the waiting troops. One of them held his hand out and silently counted to three with his fingers, then he charged through the door, the others following him in.

From where he was standing, Cy could only see the men leave the hall. With the boots they were wearing, he couldn't even hear them move. He and Captain Lume waited for the sounds of a scuffle or of magic being cast, but they never came. After several moments of silence, one of the men came back into the hall and waved the two men in. Lume pushed Cy by the shoulder, and he moved around the door in front of his captain.

The bedchamber was still in a shambles, but the wall was once more intact where the ogres had burst into the room. The other a.s.sa.s.sins stood around, casting nervous glances back and forth as if something invisible might sneak up on them. Cy moved over toward the wall, stopping briefly at the chest of drawers where his enchanted dagger was still resting.

I'd rather die with this in my hand, he thought. He picked up the blade.

When he reached the section of wall where the secret door had been, he placed his hand where he thought the doorframe might begin. His ringers slipped through the wall. The archwizard hadn't fixed the broken section, he had simply cast a spell over the opening. It would be a simple matter of stepping through the illusion to get to the stairs beyond.

Cy straightened up and headed out into the hall, motioning to Lume as he did.

The captain glared at Cy and asked, "What's going on?"

"Shadow has a laboratory in the bas.e.m.e.nt behind that wall. He's cast an illusion over the opening to make us think the wall is solid, but if I were him, I'd have other defenses in place as well. I think we're better off hiding out here and waiting for him to come out."

Lume nodded and pushed Cy back through the door. The captain arranged the a.s.sa.s.sins in strategic positions around the room, then he went back into the hallway, dragging Cy with him, waiting from relative safety.

Hours pa.s.sed. The a.s.sa.s.sins waited. Finally, the wall wobbled as the illusion allowed someone to pa.s.s through. Shadow was looking down at a contraption in his hands and not at all paying attention to his surroundings. The wand was stuck in the belt of his robe, and he didn't appear to have any of the bruises or scars that a man who had been brutally beaten by two ogres should have.

Two steps into the bedroom, the archwizard realized that something was wrong, and he began to cast a spell. The a.s.sa.s.sins unloaded their crossbows, and the man screamed, dropping the gadget in his hands and stumbling toward the bed, his spell lost on his lips.

Cy watched as the wizard fell to his knees, and Lume let out an excited yelp and bolted into the room, his dagger in hand. Shadow was holding his hands against his chest and looking at the ground. He was bleeding quite heavily.

"Well, well, well," intoned Lume. He was standing a few feet away from the archwizard with a large smile on his face. "If it isn't the mighty archwizard Shadow. Do you have any idea how long I've been trying to kill you?"

The man looked up from his position on the floor, and he finished mouthing the lasts words of another spell. He glared up at the captain as the magical bolts jutting from his body shot back out, sailingacross the room and striking the a.s.sa.s.sins who had shot them. Every one of them fell to the floor, dead with a bolt buried in his forehead. Shadow continued to bleed, and he put his hand out to steady himself.

His skin turned quite pale.

"No. Frankly," said the wizard, "you have a lot of compet.i.tion when it comes to a.s.sa.s.sinating me."

Lume didn't waste any time. He crossed to the wizard and pushed him to the floor, taking the wand from his belt with one hand and placing the edge of his dagger to Shadow's throat with the other.

"Well allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lume, and I work for Olostin."

"Yes." Shadow coughed hard. "Yes, I recognize the name. Pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Believe me, the pleasure is all mine." He turned to Cy. "Is this the wand you spoke of," he asked, holding up the crystal-tipped rod.

"It appears to be, yes."

The captain took a step back and turned again to the archwizard.

No longer under the watchful eyes of a band of a.s.sa.s.sins, Cy lunged at Lume with his dagger. "Die, you pig!"

The captain sidestepped the blow, but he stumble-stepped to one side.

Cy swung again at the older man's back. The enchanted blade sliced through Lume's leather armor, opening a long, b.l.o.o.d.y gash in the captain's side.

"You stupid fool," Lume hissed.

Pulling his saber in a flash, the captain made two Quick slashing attacks.

Cy parried the first blow, but the second landed just below his wrist, knocking his dagger from his hand.

Lume swung again, and Cy struggled backward, avoiding the blade but falling back over the bed.

Cy landed on the floor against Shadow, cradling his wrist where Lume had cut him.

The captain leveled the wand at the two men on the floor.

The archwizard struggled to breathe, but he laughed anyway. "You can't use that. You don't know the command word."

"You're wrong, wizard, and now I'm going to destroy you with your own toy." Lume smiled down at Shadow. "Ironic that you could spend so much of your life perfecting a tool such as this-" he shook the wand-"only to be killed by it in the end."

"You don't know what sort of forces you are messing with." He coughed, blood trickling down the corner of his mouth.

"Neither did you." Lume straightened his arm and spoke the word Cy had repeated for him back at camp. "Shadominiaropalazitsi."

Once again a column of rushing dark gray plasma flowed out of the wand. It headed straight for the p.r.o.ne archwizard, coalescing into humanlike forms along the way. As it jetted forward, the stream of shadows split into a curling ma.s.s. Shadow raised his hand instinctively to protect his face, but this time, the shadows broke into individual swirls, and twisted, wavering forms spread out all over the room. They filled every corner and place of darkness.

Now spread out, the shadows began to collect again, forming a cyclone around Captain Lume.

Lume screamed, "What's happening? What's going on?"

"Don't you see, you fool?" explained the archwizard. "Don't you recognize any of those shadows?"

"No, no, I don't." He swung his dagger in wide, swooping arcs. "Stay away from me," he screamed.

"Stay away, you hear."

Shadow lifted himself off the floor. "Is that any way to treat your previous a.s.sa.s.sins?" asked the archwizard. Lume's face dropped, and his swinging momentarily slowed.

"That's right." Shadow smiled. "I punished your a.s.sa.s.sins by turning them into shadows and trapping them in that wand, and you just released them to seek vengeance on you for earning them an eternity of suffering."

The shadows wasted no time, diving in to touch the stunned captain while he listened to the archwizard.

Lume's knees went weak, and he began his frantic swinging again. "But you were the one who sentthem to their deaths," he screamed.

"They don't blame me for defending myself from a.s.sa.s.sination. They blame you for sending them to kill an archwizard. You should learn to not mess with forces beyond your control."

Lume was getting tired, and his defense was weakening. His wild arcs with his dagger were slowing, and the shadows were touching him repeatedly. He dropped to the ground, lifting his head to speak again to Shadow. "Those are fine words, coming from the likes of you." Lume collapsed, his head hitting the wooden planks of the floor with a decided thud.

The shadows spun around in a pack over the limp body on the floor. A dark shape formed around the captain's corpse, then it coalesced into a humanlike shadow and lifted into the air, joining the swirling ma.s.s above. As a group, they dived toward the wand still gripped in Lume's dead hand. The dark gray stream narrowed as it approached the crystal, and as quickly as they had come forth, the shadows disappeared.

The archwizard reached into the sleeve of his robes and pulled forth a large purple bottle. Uncorking the vial, he swiftly drank down the contents. A strange white glow surrounded his skin, and the bleeding stopped. He appeared much better, though not quite whole and hardy.

He looked at Cy, who was still on the floor cradling his bleeding wrist, and said, "As I said before, you are entirely too young to be an a.s.sa.s.sin. I suggest you find another line of work." With that, he turned around and went back through the illusionary wall.

Cy looked down at the dead body of Captain Lume and nodded, then he turned around and headed back up the stairs, dodging a pretty blonde golem on his way out.

Too Long In The Dark

Paul S. Kemp

Netheril Year 3520 (The Year of the Sundered Webs, -339 DR)

Zossimus watched with appreciation as a wight hawk broke off its predatory circling and dived silently earthward through the perpetually twilit sky of Shade. A squirrel scampering across the lush lawn of the villa's interior courtyard sensed its danger a heartbeat too late. The unfortunate rodent gave an agonized squeak as the raptor's claws impaled its small body. Death was quick but no doubt painful.

Zossimus, seated on his favorite bench beside the courtyard's reflecting pool, nodded appreciatively as the hawk began to feed.

"Well done, little hunter."

Death to prey-and to enemies-should always come unexpectedly to the victim. Zossimus had learned that lesson well over the years. So too had the other leading arcanists of Shade. Indeed, the city's rivalry with its floating Netherese sister-cities had led Shade's arcanists to seek ever more obscure sources of magical power and ever more unexpected magical weapons. Recently, after long study of the writings of the arch-arcanist Shadow, they had learned of and begun to tap a new source of magic, a source that derived its power not from the Weave, but from a heretofore unknown source of power that the arcanists had named the Shadow Weave. None of Shade's arcanists yet knew the full potential of this alternate energy source. They knew only that it drew on the often unpredictable energies of Plane of Shadow.

To better tap those energies, and to further their research into the Shadow Weave, Shade's Twelve Princes had caused the city to straddle the border between Faerun and the Plane of Shadow, between light and twilight. Now cloaked always in muted grays, the city had not seen the unadulterated light of Faerun's sun in years. It bothered Zossimus little to live always in the dark, he deemed it a small price to pay in exchange for the city's magical preeminence. Jennah, of course, thought otherwise.

His love hated the city's darkness and would have left long ago but for Zossimus. At every opportunity, she begged him to transport them magically from the city to the sun-drenched plains below, where she ran through the waving gra.s.s and fragrant purplesnaps, laughing. He smiled at the thought of her long hair shining in the sun-Without warning, the familiar presence of the Weave was obliterated. The vight hawk gave a shriek, alit, and left its b.l.o.o.d.y meal unfinished in the gra.s.s.

A void opened in Zossimus's being. Though a distant part of him sensed still the presence of the Shadow Weave, the absence of the Weave-his original mistress-tore a hole in half of his being. Spells prepared that morning went absent from his mind, erased clean. He opened his mouth to scream but managed only a strangled gasp. A roar filled his ears. His temples throbbed as if a red-hot coal burned in his brain. He fell to his knees, gripped his head in his hands and tried to jerk it from his shoulders, to stop the pain with death, to fill the emptiness with oblivion.

The minor cantras that preserved the flora in his courtyard began to fail with audible pops. The ornate gargoyle fountain ceased its magically-driven perpetual flow. The ruby and emerald dragonfly constructs he had so painstakingly crafted as a gift for Jennah fell inert to the lawn. The artificial illumination from gla.s.s lightglobes fell dark. In a flash of insight, he realized that all magic in Faerun dependent on the Weave-which meant all magic other than the experimental shadow magic practiced in Shade-was failing.

How? he wanted to shout, but he could manage nothing but a low moan.

Beneath his feet, the floating mountaintop upon which Shade had been built began to fall earthward.

Zossimus's stomach lurched. His afternoon meal raced up his throat, but he swallowed it down, tasting bile. Birds of every color exploded from the trees and ferns of his courtyard and took wing, avian rats abandoning the sinking ship of Shade. Screams and shouts erupted from around the city, audible even in Zossimus's secluded inner courtyard. It sounded as though the whole city were screaming as one. Shade was falling....

Zossimus, paralyzed with pain and terror, waited for the impact that would kill them all.

After a few terrifying heartbeats, the city's descent slowed, slowed more, then stopped all together.

It took another heartbeat for Zossimus, still disconcerted, to deduce what had happened.

Shadow magic. The disappearance of the Weave had not affected the Shadow Weave. The Twelve Princes must have been drawing on it to save Shade, to keep it from crashing to earth. Even as that thought hit him, Zossimus could see in his mind's eye the other floating cities of Netheril plunging earthward as the magic that held them aloft failed. Their apocalypse would happen in the bright light of the sun, while Shade's salvation would occur in eternal twilight, because of the eternal twilight. Netheril's other floating cities, once testimony to the awesome power of Netherese arcanists, would be nothing more than grandiose tombs for tens of thousands.

The city began again to descend, slower this time. Zossimus's sense of satisfaction vanished. The Shadow Weave must have been inadequate by itself to keep the city aloft. Zossimus guessed that in the Palace of the Most High, the Twelve Princes were even now struggling to tap enough shadow magic to keep Shade airborne. They were failing.

Zossimus bit back his frustration. He would have joined them if he could, would have shaken the cobwebs from his head, endured the loss of the Weave, and added his considerable magical skill to theirs, but his teleportation spell had been lost when the Weave had been destroyed. It would take half an hour to traverse the city by foot. By the time he reached them, the issue would already be decided.

The city continued to descend, picking up speed incrementally. Another thousand feet maybe, and all would be over. When it hit the earth, it would kill every citizen, if not the impact, then the aftermath.

The partial mountaintop upon which Shade floated had an irregular base, so it would not settle peacefully to earth even if it were somehow slowed to walking speed. It would topple over on its side, and everyone would be crushed under an incalculably ma.s.sive avalanche of buildings and walls.

Zossimus wanted Jennah, desperately. If he were to die, he would die with his love.

"Jennah-"

A sudden shout-a roar of ecstatic triumph as loud as ten of Kozah's cyclones-carried from the south to drown out his voice. The force of the shout hit Shade like a maul and sent it lurching sideways, a bit of flotsam in the ocean of the sky. Zossimus fell facedown in the gra.s.s and cursed through his fear. He knew that voice-Karsus.

"Mystryl! I'll have your power!" boomed Karsus, his voice reverberating through the heavens.Shade steadied itself, though it continued to descend. Zossimus rose to all fours.

"Karsus, you arrogant a.s.s," he cursed.

Surely this was the end of the world, and Karsus had somehow brought it about.

Again the sound of Karsus's voice thundered through the sky, but this time Zossimus heard only sobs. Bottomless despair.

The crying fell silent, cut off as sharp as a razor. The world seemed to hold its breath, silently waiting. Nothing more.

Shade continued to slip earthward.

Zossimus wanted to hold Jennah in his arms. He had maybe a hundred heartbeats. He leaped to his feet and raced for the villa.

A small winged figure alit from an upper window, frantically flapping-Pleeancis. Zossimus's familiar streaked for him as though shot from a bow, a blur of green scales and membranous wings.

Unable to stop in time, the terrified little quasit crashed into Zossimus's stomach and got tangled in his voluminous violet robes. Man and demon went down in a heap.

Pleeancis's high-pitched voice squeaked oath after oath. "Oh, curse this purple h.e.l.l! I'll shred you thread-by-thread, wretched robe. Dare you to offend Pleeancis the Mighty-yeep!"

Zossimus grabbed the tiny demon by his left haunch and yanked him free of the robes. "Enough!"

The quasit fluttered in his hand. His red eyes shot the robes one last evil glare before giving Zossimus his most winning, fanged smile.

"All right, Boss. Just having a moment there. Easy on the leg, eh?"