Bodvar barely glanced at the weapon. "I'll use my dagger. That thing’ll break the first time-"

"Not likely." Melegaunt brought his sword down across Bodvar's dagger and sliced through the blade as though it were made of soft wood instead of cold-forged iron, then flicked the stump out of the grasp of the astonished Vaasan and replaced it with the hilt of his own weapon. "Be careful not to take off your foot."

Bodvar closed his sagging jaw, and one arm still hanging limply at his side, stepped past Melegaunt and lopped the heads off two bog people emerging from the peat behind him.

"It'll do," he said. Despite the obvious pain from his separated shoulder, the Vaasan did not even clench his teeth as he spoke. "My thanks for the loan."

"Consider it a gift," Melegaunt replied, turning back to the rest of the clan. "I use it so seldom."

To his dismay, the bog people had been far from idle while he was rescuing Bodvar. Half the warriors who had been mired when he arrived had already vanished beneath the surface, while the women and old men were struggling to keep dozens of bog people from clambering onto the cargo wagons with the clan's sobbing children. Melegaunt pulled a handful of shadowsilk from his cloak and flung it in the direction of the wagons, then spread his fingers and waggled them in a raining motion. A dark pall fell over the six closest wagons, and everyone it touched-Vaasans and bog people alike-fell instantly asleep.

"How did you do that?" Bodvar demanded. "Sleep magic doesn't work against the bog people!"

"Clearly, you have been misinformed." Melegaunt held his arm out toward the nearest wagon, extending the shadow-walk to within three paces of the driver's bench. "Do you think…"

Bodvar was already sprinting down the shadow-walk, borrowed sword in hand. When he reached the end, he launched himself into a wild leap over the horns of a mired ox, bounding off its half-submerged shoulders, and came down on the seat between the slumbering driver and the old man slumped beside her. Despite Melegaunt's warning to handle the weapon lightly, he set to work on the sleeping bog people with an ardor that left little doubt about the primitive state of Vaasan weaponsmithing.

Melegaunt saw him cut two enemies cleanly apart across the torso and cleave through three of the wagon's sideboards before he could no longer bear to watch and turned his attention to the mired warriors.

The nearest vanished beneath the surface as Melegaunt approached, and two more cried out in alarm. Seeing he had no hope of rescuing even a dozen of the remaining warriors, he tossed his tarp line onto the surface and uttered a long spell. The far end raised itself out of the peat, and the black rope began to slither forward. He pointed at the nearest of the warriors, and the line angled in the man's direction. "As the rope conies by-"

That was all Melegaunt needed to say. The first warrior snatched the line, and slipping free of his trousers, allowed it to pull him free. He slid across the slippery surface for three paces, then rolled onto his back and began to hack at something beneath the surface with his sword. Seeing that he had at least a reasonable chance of defending himself, Melegaunt directed the rope to the next warrior in line, who also came free without his pants or boots, and there were two Vaasans slashing at their unseen pursuer.

They seemed to get it after a dozen yards, but by then Melegaunt had three more warriors on the line, and two of them were being trailed by the tell-tale rise of a bog person traveling just beneath the surface. He summoned the rope over to his shadow-walk and used his last shadow bolt to kill one of their pursuers, and the warriors themselves took care of the last one before bounding off after Bodvar to help defend the wagons.

Melegaunt glanced toward the mountains. To his alarm, the distant fliers were now so close that he could make out not only the white bodies hanging beneath their wings, but their bandy legs and curved swords as well. Whatever the creatures were-and he had yet to see their like in a century and a half of wandering this world-they were as fast as baatezu. He only hoped they were not as adept as the pit fiends at defeating shadow magic.

Melegaunt sent the rescue rope out again and managed to pull in six more warriors before the bog people claimed the rest. Though he was not happy to fail so many-the number had to be nearly twenty-the Vaasans took their losses in stride, pausing only to grunt a half-understood word of thanks before rushing back to join Bodvar and their fellows in defending the women and children.

Seeing there was no more to be done, Melegaunt retrieved his tarp line and turned toward the mired wagons. With the half-naked warriors he had rescued rushing back to help, the women and old men were holding the bog people at bay with surprising displays of swordsmanship and bravery. No matter how well they fought, though, it was clear that the younger children and older clansmen lacked the agility to leap from wagon to wagon-especially over the heads of panicked oxen- as the warriors were doing.

Melegaunt rushed alongside the caravan, laying his shadow-walk close enough that the trapped Vaasans could jump from their wagons onto the path behind him. The bog people redoubled their attacks, glugging up alongside the walk in a near-solid wall. But all of Bodvar's clansmen were as well-trained and disciplined as his warriors, and they repelled the attacks easily. Though Melegaunt failed to understand why the bog people did not use their rotting magic on the wagons themselves, he was relieved that they were not. Perhaps their magic-user had run out of spells, or maybe the enchantment took too long to cast.

With their panicked masters rushing past, the mired oxen bellowed for help that would never come. Given time, Melegaunt could certainly have freed the creatures and saved the cargo in their wagons, but as things were, he would be doing well to lose no more of their masters. As he neared the end of the caravan, he was astonished to see that the bog people had not pulled even one of the beasts from its yoke. Whatever their reason for attacking the Moor Eagles, it had less to do with hunger than wanting to wipe out the tribe.

Melegaunt was twenty paces past the last mired wagon when a trio of bog people emerged before him, snatching at his legs with their webbed hands. He drilled the middle one with a black shadow bolt, then heard hooked finger-talons clattering off his spell-armor as the other two attempted to slash his legs from beneath him. He brought his boot heel down a sloping forehead and heard a loud pop as the skull caved in, then caught his other attacker by the arm and jerked it out of the peat. Save that the bog-man was covered in slimy brown scales and had a flat, lobsterlike tail in place of legs and feet, it looked more or less humanoid, with powerfully-built shoulders and a navel that suggested it was born rather than hatched.

It slashed at Melegaunt with its free hand several times. When its claws continued to bounce harmlessly off the wizard's shadow armor, it gave up and opened its mouth, attacking with a long, barb-tipped tongue so fast Melegaunt barely had time to tip his head aside and save his eye. He caught the tongue as it shot back toward the creature's mouth, then whirled around to find Bodvar and the rest of the Vaasans staring at him with expressions that were equal part awe and terror. "Don't just stand there," Melegaunt ordered, "kill it!" Only Bodvar had possession enough of his wits to obey, slashing the thing across the waist so hard that Us borrowed sword came a hair's breadth from opening Melegaunt's ample belly as well. Eyeing the chieftain sidelong, Melegaunt tossed aside the lifeless torso, then pointed at a long line of bog people rising out of the peat beside the gape-mouthed Vaasans.

"Lift your jaws and see to your enemies!"

Without waiting to see whether they obeyed, he turned and extended the shadow-walk the rest of the way to the logs, then led the way to the relatively solid footing of the road. The bog people had no choice but to give up their attack, for all the Vaasans had to do to be safe was retreat to the middle of the road where they could not be reached.

The creatures flying in from the mountains were another matter. Only a few hundred yards distant, they were close enough that Melegaunt could make out scaly white bodies with long, pointed tails and craggy saurian heads with long snouts, swept-back horns, and huge yellow eyes. One of the creatures flung something in their direction and began to make spell gestures.

Melegaunt flattened a ball of shadowsilk between his palms, then flung it toward the approaching dragonmen and uttered a few words in ancient Netherese. A hazy disk of darkness appeared between the two groups and began to bleed black tendrils of shadow into the sky, but Melegaunt had not been quick enough to raise his spell shield. He felt a familiar softening underfoot, and the Vaasans cried out and began to stampede up the road. It was exactly the wrong thing to do. The rotting logs came apart all the faster, plunging the entire tribe to their knees in sodden peat.

In an attempt to spread their weight and slow their descent, they immediately threw themselves to their bellies and splayed their arms. Still standing atop the peat by virtue of the spells he had cast before the battle, Melegaunt cursed and laid his shadow-walk again, then turned to meet the dragonmen.

They were nowhere to be seen, at least not near his spell shield. Pulling another strand of shadowsilk from his pocket, Melegaunt pivoted in a slow circle and-as expected-found them diving out of the sun. Melegaunt allowed himself a tight smile. They were wise to respect his abilities-much wiser, in that regard, than had been better-known foes in the south. He tossed his shadowsilk into the sky and uttered the incantation of one of his more potent spells.

That whole quarter of the sky broke into a shower of shadowy tears. Instead of rolling off when they fell on a body, however, these drops clung to whatever they touched, stretching into long threads of sticky black fiber. Within moments, the entire column of dragonmen had become swaddled in gummy balls of darkness and was plunging headlong into the bog. Melegaunt watched long enough to be certain that none of the fliers would escape, then turned to find the Moor Eagles rushing onto the log road behind him.

They were glancing at him over their shoulders, making signs of warding that might have kept a demon at bay, but that only made Melegaunt feel lonely and unappreciated. Stifling bitter laughter, he walked across the bog to where Bodvar and three more brave warriors stood waiting for him at the edge of the road.

"I’m sorry for your losses, Bodvar," he said. "I might have saved more, but there was much you didn't tell me."

"And much you didn't tell us," Bodvar replied. He laid the hilt of Melegaunt's black sword across his arm and offered it to the wizard. "My thanks."

Melegaunt waved him off. "Keep it. As I said, I seldom use it anymore."

"I know what you said," Bodvar replied, "but only a fool takes gifts from a devil."

"Devil?" Melegaunt snapped, still not taking his sword. "Is that how you repay my kindness? With insults?"

"What is true is no insult," Bodvar said. "We saw the things you did."

"It was only magic," Melegaunt protested. "Southern magic. If you have not seen its like before…"

"Now it is you who are insulting us." Bodvar continued to offer the sword. "In Vaasa, we are backward in many things-but wisdom is no longer one of them."

Melegaunt started to repeat his protests, then realized he would only anger Bodvar by insisting on the lie-and revealing the truth about the Shadow Weave was, of course, out of the question. If he were lucky enough to avoid being struck dead on the spot, he would lose forever the dark power that had so impressed the Vaasans.

When Melegaunt made no further attempts to argue, Bodvar said, "We will keep the bargain we made." He tipped his chin toward the three warriors with him. "These are the guides I promised. They will take you wherever you wish to go in Vaasa."

Melegaunt started to say that he no longer needed them-then thought better of it and smiled. "Anywhere!"

Bodvar looked uncomfortable, but nodded. "That was our bargain."

"Good. Then I want them to take me wherever the Moor Eagles are going." Melegaunt took his sword back. "And no tricks, Bodvar. I'm sure we both know what happens to those who play false with devils-don't we?"

Higharvestide, the Year of the Moat

In the Shadows of the Peaks of the Dragonmen

Bodvar came to the island, as Melegaunt had known he would, late in the day, when the sun was sinking low over the Peaks of the Dragonmen and the shadows of the mountains lay long upon the cold bog. What the wizard had not known was that the chieftain would bring his wife, a young beauty with hair the color of night and eyes as blue as a clear sky. She seemed a little thicker around the middle than the last time Melegaunt had seen her, though it was always hard to tell with Vaasan women- their shape tended to vanish beneath all the furs they wore.

Melegaunt watched them pick their way across his zigzagging boulder-walk until a metallic sizzle behind him demanded his attention. He checked the sky to be certain there were no white-scaled fliers diving down to trouble them, then donned a huge leather mitt and pulled a long narrow mold from the oven he had kept blazing for three days. In the mold, floating on a bed of liquid tin, lay a sword similar to the one he had offered Bodvar all those tendays ago-save that this one was still molten and glowing white hot.

Melegaunt placed the sword on a bed of ice-freezes came early to this part of the world-then waited for the mold to cool. When he was sure the cold would draw the tempering elements down to the underside, he began to lay fibers of shadowsilk on the molten glass, taking care to arrange them first lengthwise, then diagonally in both directions, then lengthwise again so the weapon would have strength and resilience in all directions. Finally, he used his dagger to open another cut on his arm, dripping his warm blood into the mixture and quietly whispering the ancient words that gave the blade its magic thirst.

By the time that was finished, the sword had hardened enough that he could lift it from its mold and plunge it into a vat of slushy water, placed at just the right distance from the furnace to keep it that way. Once the heat had melted all of the slush, Melegaunt removed the sword, then placed it on its bed of hot tin with the opposite side down and returned the mold to the oven again. Such was the art of the shadow blade, heating and cooling a thousand times over, tinting them with shadowsilk until the glass could finally hold no more and began to shed fibers like an unbrushed dog.

A soft boot scuffed the stone at the edge of Melegaunt's work site, then Bodvar called, "I see you are still here, Dark Devil."

"You can see that by the smoke of my furnaces." Melegaunt pulled the sleeve of his cloak down to hide the cuts on his arm, then turned to glower at the chieftain. "Come for a sword, have you?"

"Hardly." Bodvar cast an uneasy glance at the nineteen weapons racked at the edge of the work site. Though all were completed and honed to a razor edge, they were paler than Melegaunt's sword, with a crystal translucence that still showed the lay of the shadow fibers embedded in the glass. "You are wasting your time on that account."

"Am I?" Melegaunt smirked knowingly. "Well, they will be here when you need them."

"Our need will never be that great."

Melegaunt did not argue, only swung an arm toward the furnace behind him and said, "That will be twenty. Twenty warriors is all that remains to you, is it not?"

Instead of answering, Bodvar glanced around the cluttered work area and shook his head. "Only a devil could live out here alone. It is exposed to every wind that blows."

"It's a safe place to work."

Melegaunt glanced at Bodvar's young wife and smiled. Idona smiled back but said nothing. Though Vaasan women were hardly shy, he had noticed that most of them preferred to keep their silence around him. He looked back to Bodvar.

"The bog people protect every ground approach but one, and the dragonmen are easy to spot from here."

"The dragonmen can watch you," Bodvar countered, "and the bog people have you surrounded."

"Vaasans may see it that way." Melegaunt knelt and began to feed his furnace from the charcoal pile beside it. "The way to destroy an enemy is to make him fight in his home instead of yours."

Melegaunt raised his mitted hand toward a white-hot poker, and Bodvar, not thinking, reached for it-then shrieked in surprise as Melegaunt used a cantrip to summon the utensil and spare him a burned palm.

Idona giggled, drawing an embarrassed, though tender, frown from her husband. Melegaunt shook his head in mock exasperation at Bodvar's clumsiness, and she broke into full laughter.

"You see?" Bodvar complained lightly. "This is what comes of treating with devils."

"Of course, my husband," Idona said. "This bearded one is always saving you from something, the mudbreathing knave."

"That is what worries me," Bodvar said, his tone more serious.

Desperate not to let Bodvar's suspicious nature undermine the unexpected openness his humor had won from Idona, Melegaunt poked at the coals, then changed the subject. "Speaking of mudbreathers and saving you, Bodvar, you never did tell me why the bog people and dragonmen were trying so hard to wipe out your tribe."

"Were?" Idona echoed. "They still are. Why do you think we stay camped at the other end of your walkway? If it wasn't for you-"

"Idona!" Bodvar snapped.

Hiding his delight behind a tolerant smile, Melegaunt tossed the poker aside-it remained hovering in the air- and began to feed more charcoal into the fire.

"I'm only happy to be of use." Melegaunt fixed his gaze on Bodvar. "But that still doesn't answer my question."

Bodvar flushed and said nothing.

Idona smirked. "Are you going to answer him, Husband, or am I?"

The more Idona spoke, the more Melegaunt liked her.

"By all means, Idona," Melegaunt said, "I would rather hear it from your-"

"I had this idea," Bodvar began. "I wanted to build a fort."

"Fort?" Melegaunt stopped feeding the flames and stood.

"For the treasure caravans," Idona said, rolling her eyes. "He actually thought outlanders would give us good coin just to sleep with a roof over their heads."

"And to have us stand guard," Bodvar added defensively. "When we're out hunting, they're always asking to share our camps and fires."

"Do they pay then?" Idona demanded.

Bodvar frowned. "Of course not. Who'd pay to pitch his own tent?"

"I see." Melegaunt found it difficult to keep the delight out of his voice. At last, he had discovered something that might move Bodvar to take help from a "shadow devil." "But the bog people and dragonmen prey on the caravans, and they have other ideas?"

Bodvar nodded. "The dragonmen sacked our first fort before it was half completed, and when we tried to move south to a more defensible site… well, you saw what happened."

Idona took his hand. "We're better off anyway," she said. "Who wants to live one place the whole year? What happens when the herds move?"

"What indeed?" Melegaunt asked absently.

He was looking over his shoulder toward the granite summit of his little island. On a clear day, it was possible to look across the bog clear to where the log road ended- or began, if the caravan was coming from the mountains with its load of treasure. If he could see the road, then anyone on the road would be able to see the top of the island.

"Melegaunt?" Bodvar asked.

Realizing he had not been paying attention, Melegaunt tore his gaze from the summit and turned back to Bodvar. "Sorry. You were saying?"

"He was inviting you to take feast with us," said Idona. "It's Higharvestide, in case you have lost track."

"It's Idona's idea," Bodvar added, though his friendly tone made it clear that he did not object too strenuously. 'She says it's only common courtesy."

"And no more than we owe," Idona added, frowning at Bodvar, "considering all you have done for us."

"All I have done for you?" Melegaunt waved a hand in dismissal. "It's nothing, truly, but I can't join you. Next Higharvestide, perhaps."

"Next Higharvestide?" Bodvar scowled at the furnace where the last sword lay on its bed of sizzling tin. "If you're staying to watch over that sword, you may as well come, because-"

"It's not the sword," Melegaunt said. "The sword will be done by nightfall. I must have my rest tonight. Tomorrow will be a busy day for me." Idona's face was not the only one that fell. "Then you are leaving?" Bodvar asked. "If you are, be certain to take your swords with you, because they will only-"

"I'm not leaving." Melegaunt had to turn toward the island's granite summit-try as he might, he could not hide his smile. "Tomorrow, I start work on my tower."

"Tower?" Idona echoed.

"Yes." Finally in control of his expression again, Melegaunt turned around. "To watch over the treasure caravans."

But Melegaunt knew he would have no rest that night. He had read in the dawn shadows that this would be the evening when the Moor Eagles moved onto the island with him. His divinations proved correct shortly after dark, when the clan's mead-induced revels were interrupted by the clanging of the sentry's bell. Melegaunt lit a signal beacon he had prepared for the occasion, then he went to the front of the work site to inspect the situation. A cloud of white forms was descending from the peaks of the dragonmen, their wings flashing silver in the moonlight as they spiraled down toward the bog's edge. Their spellcasters were already hurling magic bolts and balls of golden flame at the Moor Eagles, but the rest of the warriors were taking care to forestall counterattacks by keeping their magic-users well screened from Melegaunt’s island. A sporadic stream of arrows began to rise from Bodvar's camp and arc into the night, falling pitifully short of their targets.

Melegaunt spread his arms and cast a shadow fog over the camp, more to prevent the Moor Eagles from wasting their time and arrows than to delay the dragonmen. Still, they had not forgotten the sticky rain he had called down on them in the bottomless bog-half their number had sunk beneath the peat and drowned-so they gave the dark cloud wide berth, angling away to land in the foothills on the far side of camp.

Leaving the Moor Eagles to fend for themselves, Melegaunt turned his attention to what he was sure would be the second part of the dragonmen's plan and found a company of bog people slithering up to block his boulder walk. The clan women were gamely rushing forward to meet them, Idona and a few of the others wielding iron swords or wood axes, but most armed with nothing more deadly than fire-hardened spears and cudgels so light Melegaunt could have snapped them over his knee.

"Hold!"

Melegaunt's Vaasan had grown passable enough over the last few months that Idona recognized the command for what it was and called her sisters to a stop. He pointed at a hole in the exact center of the shadow-walk and spoke a single word of magic. A whirling pinwheel of black tentacles erupted from the hole and slashed the bog people into so many chunks of slimy flesh, then withdrew back into the hole.

"Now you can come," Melegaunt called, using his magic to project his voice. "And bring those foolish husbands of yours, or the only Higharvestide feast will be that of the dragonmen."

Idona raised her sword in acknowledgement and sent the other women forward with the children, then rushed back into the shadow swaddled camp. Melegaunt waited impatiently for her return. It seemed to take her forever, and he feared the surviving bog people would regain their courage before she could convince her husband to retreat to the safety of the island. Finally, warriors began to stagger onto the boulder walk in twos and threes, often supporting and sometimes carrying each other. Melegaunt thought for a moment that the evening's festivities had simply been proceeding faster than he expected, but then he noticed that one of the men was missing an arm and another had something dangling on his cheek that might have been an eye.

Bodvar came last with Idona at his side, holding an armful of quivers over one arm and a shield over the other, alternately feeding arrows to her husband and stepping forward to intercept the wicked barbs flying their way from somewhere deeper in the camp. Melegaunt allowed them to retreat to the first sharp bend in that fashion, then speaking a magic command word, he pointed at a crooked crevice bisecting the boulder closest to shore.

A wall of faintly writhing shadows shot up from the fissure, sealing the boulder walk off from the Vaasans' camp. Bodvar and Idona turned and raced for the island, moving so fast that they nearly overran the next turn. Only Idona's quick feet-and quicker hands-kept Bodvar from going over the edge and plunging into the cold bog. They took the next corner more cautiously then reached the island and started up the trail behind the others.

By then, the first wave of dragonmen were flying over and around the shadow wall at the other end of the boulder walk, staying low and close to avoid making themselves targets. It was a bad mistake. As they passed by, the writhing shadows struck out like snakes, entwining anything else they could reach. Whatever they touched vanished, and soon arms, legs, wings, even heads were raining down on the shore and into the bog.

The dragonmen's pursuit stopped cold, and the Moor Eagles' women and children began to pour onto the work site. Melegaunt directed them into the shallow shelters he had hollowed out behind the sword rack. When he turned back to the battle, the tentacles in his shadow wall were swirling outward in three separate cones, each spiraling toward a small cluster of dragonmen hovering over the village. The spinning cones tore through the warrior screen as easily as they had the pursuit fliers a moment earlier, then diced the spell casters they had been trying to shield.

"Try to dispel my magic, will you?" Melegaunt called in ancient Draconic. "Come hither. I have more of the same waiting here!"

The last few dragonmen sank behind the shadow and vanished. For a time, Melegaunt feared he truly had defeated the attack so easily. The warriors began to reach his work site and check on their families. There were a handful of anguished cries and panicked calls for missing children, but with Melegaunt's help, the Vaasans had managed their retreat without losing many of their number. Three warriors who were too badly injured to fight were given over to the clan's healing witch, then

Bodvar and Idona arrived, breathing hard and supporting each other, but both whole and sound.

"Well, Devil, it seems you have saved us again," Bodvar said. "Whether we like it or not." Melegaunt spread his hands. "I live to serve." Bodvar scowled and started to make a retort, then someone called, "Whitescales from the east!" and someone else yelled, "And from the west! Thirty at least, coming in low over the bog!"

Melegaunt rushed to the western edge of his work site and saw a long rank of dragonmen approaching the island, their white scales shining like ivory against the dark peat. Their line curved behind the island, and from the cries behind him, it continued all the way around to the other side. The clan of the Moor Eagle was surrounded. Struggling to bite back his smile, Melegaunt turned to find Bodvar and Idona standing behind him.

"It seems your faith in me was misplaced," Melegaunt said. "My apologies, Bodvar."

"None necessary. I'm the one who brought this on us," Bodvar said. He fluttered his fingers in the direction of the approaching dragonmen. "Just do what you can."

"I am afraid that will not be much, my friend." Melegaunt spoke loudly enough to be sure that nearby warriors, already gathering to eavesdrop, would be certain to overhear. "Even I have my limits." "Limits?" Bodvar growled.

"I did not expect this. My magic is all but exhausted." Bowstrings began to thrum around the perimeter of the work site, but they were too few-and their arrow points too soft-to turn back the dragonmen.

Melegaunt drew his black sword, stepped away from the edge, and said, "But I can still give a good accounting of myself."

As he had hoped, the sight of his darksword proved an inspiration.

The black swords!" Idona cried, turning toward the rack. "Those will balance the-"

"No." Calm though it was, Bodvar's voice was surprisingly masterful and imposing. "Of all the women in the tribe, Idona, you should know better. A devil's gift is no gift at all."

Idona looked as though she wanted to argue, but her respect for her husband-and for her chieftain-was too strong. She bit her tongue and pointed at the hidden shelter.

"Then we had better fall back," she said, "before there is nothing left to defend."

Bodvar gave the order, and the dragonmen were on them, streaming onto the work site from all sides. They flew headlong into battle, thrusting at their overwhelmed enemies with iron-tipped spears and relying on their size and speed to carry the attacks home. Half-a-dozen human voices wailed in pain in the first three heartbeats alone, then the second wave came crashing down from the island summit, and it grew clear that the Vaasans hadn't a chance. When they were lucky enough to land a strike, their brittle weapons either bounced off or broke like icicles against the dragonmen's thick scales.

Still, the Vaasans fought bravely and well, falling back toward the shelter behind the sword racks in good order, defending each other and striking at eyes and armpits and other vulnerable areas whenever the chance came. Within moments, there were as many dragonmen lying on the stony ground as there were humans.

And Melegaunt quickly added to the toll. Protected as he was by an aura of impenetrable shadow and holding a sword that would cut through any armor known on Faerun, he turned and whirled through the dragonman ranks, slashing legs off here and behorned heads there, dancing past spear thrusts and shrugging off claw strikes like a drow blademaster.

One of the huge saurians managed to clasp him from behind in a bear hug, lifting him off the ground and trapping his arms so that it was impossible to wield his sword. Perhaps thinking to take him out over the bog and drop him to his death, the creature spread his wings and leaped into the air. Melegaunt slammed the back of his head into his attacker's snout, smashing it flat and driving one of the bony horns back into the thing's brain. When the wizard dropped back to his work site, the other dragonmen fell over each other to find someone else to attack.

Then it happened.

A trio of dragonmen spotted the hidden shelter, and battering a pair of human defenders aside with their powerful wings, charged for the children. The first warrior scrambled to his feet and rushed after them, shattering his brittle sword against the back of a thick reptilian skull.

The other Vaasan grabbed one of Melegaunt's glass swords. He sliced one dragonman's legs out from beneath him, then cleaved a second's spine on the backstroke and ran the blade through the third one's heart from behind. As this last saurian crashed to his knees, the warrior let out an anguished gasp. He stumbled back clutching at his heart, and one of the women in the shelter wailed in despair and cried out his name, but he did not fall. Instead, his hair and beard went as white as snow. The swarthiness drained from his face and his skin turned as pallid as ivory, and when he turned back to the battle, his eyes were as dead and black as those of the bog people, and the sword in his hand had lost its crystal translucence. Now it was as dark and glossy as Melegaunt's, with no hint at all of the shadow fibers embedded in its heart.

A dragonman stepped out of the mad whirl, thrusting at the warrior's heart with an oaken spear as thick as a man's arm. The Vaasan brought his sword up to block and slashed through the shaft as though it were a twig, then smiled darkly, opened his attacker across the chest, and waded after more victims.

His success inspired another warrior to snatch one of the weapons, and a woman in the shelter grabbed one to defend her children from an approaching dragonman. They killed their first enemies and underwent transformations similar to the first sword-taker, then they, too, began to cut a swath through the attacking saurians. A dozen dragonmen leaped into the air, angling for the rack of deadly swords. They were met by a like number of Vaasans, all pulling weapons off the hangers and putting them to good use.

Bodvar appeared at Melegaunt's side, nearly losing his hand when he made the mistake of grabbing the wizard's shoulder without warning.

"Stop them!"

"How?" Melegaunt caught a battering wing on his shoulder, then lopped it off and slashed his attacker across the back of the knees. "The choice is theirs. They would rather live than die."

"Not live in your service!" Bodvar objected. "You arranged this."

"Not arranged." Melegaunt pointed his palm behind the angry Vaasan's head and blasted a would-be attacker with a shadow bolt. "You give me too much credit."

"And you do not give me enough." Bodvar stepped close, and Melegaunt felt the tip of a sword pressed to his back. "Release my clan."

Melegaunt glared at the chieftain. "At the moment, Bodvar, you have worse enemies than me." Relying on his shadow armor to protect him, he reached back and snapped the steel sword with his bare hand. "If you want them released, do it yourself. All you need do is persuade them to set aside their swords."

Melegaunt shoved the chieftain away and turned back to the battle. With most of the glass swords now in hand, the Vaasans seemed to have matters well under control. The dragonmen were being forced steadily away from the shelters, and even when they attempted to use their wings to slip over the defenders, they were met with a flurry of flashing shadow. Finally, they gave up trying and took wing-at least those who could.

Dozens of wounded saurians remained behind with wings too shredded or broken to lift them yet still strong enough to fight-and ferocious enough to do it well. The Vaasans quickly set to work on them, herding them into a tight ball and driving them toward the cliffs on the east side of the work site. Seeing that only one sword remained, Melegaunt left them to their work and quietly went to the rack and slipped the last sword into his empty scabbard-and that was when Bodvar choose to assert himself again.

"My warriors, look at each other!" he called. "See what Melegaunt's devil weapons have done to you?"

Melegaunt groaned and shook his head in resignation. Were Bodvar not so stubborn and sure of himself, the wizard supposed, he would not be worth the trouble in the first place. He turned to find the chieftain and his loyal wife standing behind their warriors, Idona holding a cloak loaded with an armful of steel swords, which Bodvar was trying none too successfully to press into his clansmen's hands.

"Finish the battle with your own weapons," he said.

One of the sword-takers-Melegaunt thought it was the first-scowled. "Why would we do that?" He hefted his darksword and said, "These are better."

"Better?"

Bodvar lunged for the sword-and was dropped to the ground by a solid elbow to the face. This one belongs to me," the warrior said.

"Does it?" Idona dumped the steel swords on the ground. "Or do you belong to it?"

She glared over her shoulder with a look that sent a cold shiver down Melegaunt's spine then grabbed her husband beneath his arms.

"Come, Bodvar." She pulled him to his feet and turned to leave. "We are Moor Eagles no more."

"Leaving?" gasped the warrior who had struck Bodvar. He looked at his darksword a moment, then, as a discontented murmur began to build among his fellows, lowered the weapon. "Wait."

Melegaunt cursed Idona for an ungrateful shrew, and fumbling in his thoughts for some way to salvage the situation, started forward. As usual, it was the dragonmen who saved him. All at once, they burst into action, hurling themselves at the distracted Vaasans. The first sword-taker and another warrior fell instantly, and the work site erupted into a maelstrom of violence even more confused and ferocious than the first. Melegaunt saw a pair of saurians springing in Bodvar's direction and took the first out with a bolt of shadow, but the second was too quick. This one bowled the chieftain over on the run and lashed out for Idona, then a half-dozen other melees drifted between Melegaunt and the young wife, and he lost her.

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 bloody 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 passing, 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 green ones. 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 passes 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.