The Shadow of Shelzar?

Elaine placed her left hand on the glass of the window, and watched with casual interest, as the rays of the setting sun carved between her fingers, setting her white skin ablaze with rose light. Shelzar, the part of Shelzar she knew, the part, which woke as the sun set, was stirring three floors below her hand. Music filtered up through the winter air, and drifted past the silk and lace curtains, dancing on the wind, and into the mansion, whose former owner still stood, pinned to the wall by the shafts of three white arrows through his head. He was not forgotten, just ignored, as the group behind her paused for a moment, to let sink into their minds, the events of the last two hours. They had not expected to be in the position they found themselves in, nor did Elaine. Retribution was a motive, yes. But some how, this had gone further than simple retribution for betrayal, and now the former head of the largest crime cartel in Shelzar, was dead by their hands. Elaine could feel his ghost, still desperately clinging to his fallen body.

"If you had to guess, if there was no other choice, if you had to venture a reasoning to all of this, what would you say Sorlaya?" Elaine asked the elf woman behind her, leaning against the ornate wooded table, as the sunlight continued to fade behind her porcelain white hand, the rose light deepening, turning crimson, and then to blood.

"Say about what?" Sorlaya asked, idly sipping a high ball of fine Shelzar whisky from a crystal and silver glass, and wondering if this transformation of young girl she was bound by oath to protect was permanent, or would the power of the dragon crystal, now embedded between her breasts, return Elaine to the her true state eventually? Right now, the youth resembled the persona of death magic.

Elaine parted her fingers just enough to let the last rays of the sun slip through, and enter her eyes directly. The warmth felt wonderful, but some how far away. "When my father arrived here only two years ago, he soon found himself not only a captive, but a vampire as well. Cursed by the dragon Duruk." The sun dipped below the horizon, and Elaine turned to her protector. "He came searching for something important to him, and found it, and then was cursed. And now, I have come to this land, searching for something important to me, and though I am not a vampire, I am cursed."

Sorlaya set her glass down and looked at the young woman, now 17 years of age. The youthful blond hair, now raven black, with silver streaks, her soft skin, now marble white, the eyes once warm and green as a tropical sea, now dark and violet. But more than that Sorlaya could feel the death magic in her, even standing across the room; it pulsed with Elaine's own heartbeat. Looking at her in the growing darkness of the room, she was both the most attractive woman Sorlaya had ever seen, and the most repulsive creature she had ever been near. The correlation to her father's vampirc state was obvious. But Elaine was not vampire, and the curse was her own doing.

"Are you looking for answers?" She asked Elaine.

"No, just possibly a direction, or perhaps a pattern. Patterns sometimes show motive, and motives sometimes show a personality." Elaine replied.

Sorlaya set her glass down beside her white and silver bow for which she had become famous, and gave Elaine a wry smile, "Perhaps your mirror, Elaine, would be a good place to start. It is true that your arrival, and the events we have been through afterwards have been close to your father's recent history, but from where I stand, it has been a chain of events which you have chosen yourself."

"So you don't feel that perhaps an outside force would use my personal weaknesses to be more like my father?" Elaine asked.

Sorlaya lifted an eyebrow, she hadn't thought Elaine was thinking along those lines or even old enough to consider the aspects. Young people, young humans, such as Elaine, normally couldn't see beyond their own needs. The world was still centered on them. Their visions traveled no further. Perhaps the elf nature in her was stronger than she suspected. Elaine recognized her own personal errors, summed them up, and was now looking for who else may have noticed the same pattern. It was a personality trait, which Sorlaya had come to expect from Elaine's father Edrin. A trait which had saved his life more than once in the past few years.

"Let me ask it this way Sorlaya, how many people, do you suppose know my father's history here well enough to recognize my naive blunderings and use them to either predict my next moves, or manipulate them?" She asked.

Sorlaya leaned back, putting her elbows on the bar table. Her pose was obviously attractive to Mac Anu, lounging in a well stuffed chair to her left, who shifted his pose slightly and looked away. Sorlaya smiled inwardly at his response, but then addressed Elaine's question, making a mental list. There was the group that came over with Edrin; so Heilan, Shane, Tanasha, and her husband Sal Woodcloak. Shane probably knew more facts about it than anyone, but he was dead now, his mind destroyed by a Penumbral Lord, and his body by Edrin himself. Tekane knew enough to put most of the parts he didn't know, together. He was too smart to simply discard from a list of 'who knows what'. Also on that list would have to be Jerro. The little gnome simply attracted 'secret' information, and he seemed to know everyone. The dwarves couldn't be discounted either, Torrdek was the one who cleaved the rod, to break the curse on Edrin, and was a good friend of Jerro. Edberk, traveled with Torrdek, and knew just about everything the younger dwarf knew, eventually.

Narrin Took had to be added to the list as well. The halfing was uncanny at simply 'knowing' things about people. Sorlaya found his knack unnerving most of the time. Nabilia Silverheart the sorceress in Mithril who helped Shane remove the curse from Edrin, and Ashmere, Edrin's lover for a time, and then Natalie of course, Edrin's wife to be.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Elaine, and she noticed the rest of the group was starring at her, as time continued to pass before she could answer. "I see," said Elaine, "from your look of concentration, the list is more than five or six." She was smiling as she said this, and Sorlaya returned the smile.

"Yes, the list is more than five, though less than twenty or so." Sorlaya responded.

"I'm not sure about that Sorlaya." Elaine said, walking from the window, now grown dark with night. She drifted across the room, shadows clinging to her like lover's hands, and pointed at an ornate lamp of silver and mithril on the wall behind Naill, and said a minor word of power. A tongue of fire gave life to the wick of the lamp, and life to the richly decorated room, though shadows still clung as they could to Elaine. "While my father was a mock-vampire, or whatever you call that state, he as attacked several times in the crypts below Mithril City. Attacked by shadow beings and other vampires. One of those shades sent to kill him, is still with him in fact, the wolf shade. Those beings didn't just show up, they were sent."

Sorlaya nodded her head, confirming the information. "Sent by Dar' Tan, we thought, though that is probably not true. We suspected Dar' Tan himself simply because he was the only Penumbral Lord we knew about at the time, with enough power to control such beings. Since then, we have learned that there are a great number of them who could have been at the heart of the attacks."

"So we know at the very least, one or two knew about his history at the time, but since my father has been in the service of Drendari, and has proven to be very effective at hunting these Penumbral wizards down, I'm sure more of these have been told, or found out in their own way, about my father and his trials here in the Ghelspad. I'm sure they all know that he is a prince from Elentra, City of the Elves, and about the shade wolf he now shares his spirit with."

Again, Sorlaya nodded her head.

"Excuse me." Interjected Mac Anu, "I hate to interrupt, and this is all very fascinating, learning about your family and all. Normally this would be very entertaining. But, we just killed the leader of the Sa'an Crime Cartel; who by the way is still pinned to the wall in the other room by three well placed arrows through his skinless skull, and we are now just sitting around in his former personal living room, drinking his," he paused to take a sip of wine, "very good wine and liquor, talking about old times, while downstairs is another dead body, one of his personal body guards I would imagine, as well as two dead young lads on the front porch, who looked as if they died rather horribly, and in a great deal of pain." He paused, took a breath, looked around the room at each of his companions, "Is anyone else a little freaked out by this?" he asked, raising his left hand to cast his own vote.

Fesoj, and Naill both raised their hands to answer his question.

"Yes, Mac Anu, this is all true, and my question right now is, why?" Elaine said, pouring herself a glass of wine, and taking a small cube of cheese from a silver tray sitting on the bar. She nodded her head, appearing to approve of the taste, and plucked two more from the tray into her hand, and sat down on the couch across from Mac Anu, who watched her do this without comment, except for the look of astonishment in his eyes.

"Why, what?" Mac Anu asked. "Why are we sitting around eating cheese and sipping wine in a mansion full of dead people, or why are we talking about the good ol' days, when we should be running for our lives?"

"None of the above Anu," Elaine said quietly, "Why are the dead people dead, is what I want to find out, before the Cartel arrives to kill us." She popped a cube of cheese in her mouth and took another sip of the wine. The liquid on her lips, against the marble white skin looked like blood. Mac Anu, averted his eyes, not sure what he was feeling about her at the moment.

"They are dead," Mac Anu said, coming to a sitting position, and then leaning forward as if to explain something very important to a small child, "Because we killed them. People are dead after we kill them Elaine, it's just the way things go."

"Why did we kill them Anu?"

"Because they took from us, what we spent a great deal of time and skill in stealing from the Calistian Embassy, so we could help you, and it pissed us off!" Mac Anu answered, and leaded back, "And, perhaps out of frustration as well."

"Frustration?" She asked, seeming to be distracted from her own thoughts for a moment.

"Yeah, frustration. Frustration Elaine, frustration at going all the way to Vashon, breaking into the Spire, getting all the way to the Tapestry Room, to find that not only was the Dragon Crystal no longer there, but that you already had it, not to mention the fact that all of this seems to have been for naught!"

"Naught?" Elaine asked, lifting an eyebrow at him, "who speaks like that?"

"I do, when I'm pissed off." Mac Anu spat back. "Look at you Elaine, you look like death warmed over and shoved back in the cold box! What exactly did that Dragon Crystal do for you?" He stood up and began pacing back and forth in front of her. "Its there, an extremely powerful artifact, embedded in your chest, with weird things writhing inside and doing what it does, whatever that is, and you are reeking death out of every pour, which from what I see, right now, isn't very many. You look like a living statue Elaine. Is that thing helping you at all?" He slumped into another chair, and tossed his legs over the back of another. "Are you going to get better, or is this as good as it gets?"

"We don't have time for this line of questioning." Fesoj, said, from beside an open window, looking out to the sea, and the night, "The Cartel will be here soon, to discover who we are, what we want, and extract their revenge if our answers aren't what they want to hear. We can find out about Elaine's state at another time, or, it won't be important."

"I agree." Piped in Naill, "besides, I'm not sure I really want to know the answer to that one right now."

"My concern right at this moment is not the Cartel, although they are a problem, it is one that I think I can handle, after talking with Mr. Asuras earlier." Elaine said, popping the last cube of cheese in her mouth and looking over at Fesoj. "The Cartel, under Mazat, the late Shadow of Shelzar, were looking to take over House Asuras. Not planning very well, sort of looking with one blind eye, but none the less, causing more than few small problems for House Asuras and the members of the Cartel."

"Were they the ones behind the warehouse fires?" Naill asked, sitting up, now more relaxed since the tone of Elaine's voice was the one she remembered. Sure, solid, exact. She felt more comfortable dealing with the world when in action, and that's where this tone of Elaine always put them, in action.

"No, I don't know anything about the warehouse fires, and since Mr. Asuras didn't mention them in the long list of damages the Cartel has caused directly and indirectly, I'm sure he doesn't know who is behind the arsons either. We might want to look into that soon, if you think you can get results Naill. Could be a playing piece for us later."

"Mr. Asuras?" Mac Anu, asked, "Seems like a bit formal. I've never heard you use a person's title like that over and over before."

"Yes," Elaine said, "'Mr. Asuras', Mac Anu. He's over 100 years old, and has been the leader of the most powerful organization in the Ghelspad for most of that time. The Ancients might be the most feared, and the Mithril Knights the most revered, but House Asuras is never to be taken lightly."

"And Mazat was trying to take them over?" Sorlaya asked, "The man was an idiot then."

"Yes, he was an idiot, and always has been. Blunder after blunder brought him to Shelzar in the first place, such as trying to take over the Lokil Library, with a band of half starved desert raiders." Elaine said, smiling.

"After which he blundered into becoming the head of the largest crime cartel on the Ghelspad." Fesoj said in a hard sobering voice, popping a cube of cheese into his mouth from the silver plate on the bar, and giving an approving nod to the taste. He picked up another, and walked back to his place by the window, which Sorlaya noticed was the farthest point in the room away from Elaine. "One should not take fools lightly, for the wise often fall to fools." Fesoj finish.

"Not only wise men, but fools often fall to their own kind as well, Fesoj, as Mazat fell to us." Elaine said. Fesoj nodded to her on this one, a twinkle in his eye giving more than approval to her ability to follow his line of thought.

"So, we are the next fools in line?" Mac Anu asked.

"It would seem so." Said Elaine simply, sipping her wine and shucking off her boots to wiggle her feet in the lush carpeting on the floor.

"And these Cartel guys, who are on their way, which we aren't worried about." He continued, "Are they fools or wise men?"

"They are greedy." Elaine said. "And were not all that happy with Mazat's tactics of late, as his plans were often very expensive, with very little profit margin. But you don't simply walk in the front door of the Shadow of Shelzar and kill him off because you don't like something he did."

"Yeah, certainly not. I can see that." Mac Anu said, and finished his wine in a gulp and went looking for more. "I can see it so clearly, my previous question comes to mind, as well as Fesoj's, and this leaves me wondering why we are still here and not on a nice fast boat going some place far away? This city Elentra sounds interesting, and far away."

"We aren't going to my father's city." Elaine said, with a sigh.

"Where are we going?" Mac Anu said, tossing the wine glass over his shoulder and picking up what looked like a bottle of whisky, as broken crystal tinkled across the marble tile floor behind him. "And more importantly, when?"

"No where until I know what is going on and who is pushing us. I can be certain, as much as I can be certain of anything that it is not Drendari." Elaine finished.

"Not Drendari." Man Anu said, "So, you and her are still on good speaking terms, with this change of yours and all?" He said, and then continued to answer his own question. "Of course you are, she sent you to Hollow Faust in the first place."

"Mac Anu," Fesoj interjected, "again, I don't think this is the time or the place."

"Yes, you said that. I don't remember agreeing, but you did say that." Mac Anu said.

"Who are you so mad at, Anu?" Elaine said, standing up and walking torward him at the bar. "Drendari? Calistia? The Liche? Me?"

"Um. Sure, and anyone else I can get my hands on at the moment." Mac Anu said and walked away from her to sit back at the table.

"So you believe," Fesoj started in again, ignoring Mac Anu, "that someone or something else is pulling our strings?"

"In a word, yes", Elaine said turning away from Mac Anu, and facing Fesoj, but not walking closer to him. She could see he was uncomfortable with the death magic still pouring out of her. "But not directly. In prayer earlier, I had a vision. No, that's too strong of a word for it really, it was as if I was in a fog, and suddenly it was clear, and I saw myself, as if I was someone else, and how I was acting, and what was happening. Through this clarity, I saw how easy it would be to manipulate me, and events around me, if someone was simply paying a bit of attention, and had a little inside information. Sorlaya, has confirmed for me, and us, that enough people have access to my history, and my father's history to use it effectively. For example, the stolen papers from the boat."

"What about them?" Mac Anu asked, setting his glass down, his thoughts cooling.

"Did the Cartel take them?" Elaine asked. "The gentleman that met us at the restaurant, never confirmed, or denied that they took them directly. Perhaps someone else did and merely sold them to the Cartel, who would be a very willing buyer in such a transaction. This would be, while I was in a fog, an easy manipulation for us all. Those papers could have been the deciding factor between my life and true death, or undeath. On top of that it put all of you in danger, having to enter Calistia without them, and certainly put the war to the north, and Fesoj's people in more danger than if we could have put those papers in the hands of the druids there or my father. It was a decisive blow to us, as a whole, and many of the areas of our lives that we care about."

"We responded to this, as we saw it, as a personal threat. On top of that, the target of our anger, Mazat, was also an insult to Drendari, calling himself the Shadow of Shelzar. My intent when we arrived here, was to chase him out of town, to put him back in the desert. To scare the crap out of him. With the death magic still pouring out of me, I believed this would not be difficult, and by the time he regained his composure, the Cartel would have closed the door on him. I knew a few months back that the Cartel was not happy with him, although as we said before, you just don't knock off the head of the Cartel, and they weren't ready to make a move on him yet."

"But then things got ugly fast, and Sorlaya killed him. Also, there weren't many guards here when we arrived and they certainly weren't the best available, as they should have been. Also, our gentleman friend, our contact with the Cartel, was not here, although I followed him not only to this house, but watched him walk in."

"Now, he could have just ran out the back when the front door guards screamed, and it could have been that the best guards were still behind us, having been sent to the restaurant to watch over our meeting there. But it seems too convenient to me."

"Convenient? What is convenient about being trapped in a house waiting for the heads of the Cartel to arrive and take our collective heads?" Asked Mac Anu.

"They aren't coming to take our collective heads, Mac Anu, they are coming here to meet their new boss." Elaine explained.

"Their new boss?" Mac Anu spat, "I think that maybe you should lay down for a while."

"It is tradition in the Cartel that the leader is the one who vanquished the last leader." Elaine, explained.

"Like wolf packs." Fesoj, said, nodding his understanding.

"Yes." said Elaine, "that is why they haven't come yet, and why they have given us plenty of time to prepare for their arrival, and why it will be the leaders showing up, and not a hit squad, or shock troop."

"So Sorlay is the new leader of the Cartel?" asked Naill, looking at Sorlaya, who spat out her whiskey.

"If she claims it," teased Elaine, "after all, she is the one that made the killing blow."

"I am not claiming leadership over a group of criminal humans." Sorlaya stated flatly.

"Then you shouldn't go killing what you can't eat." Mac Anu said, "Isn't that like some hunter rule?"

Sorlaya gave him a hard look, and Mac Anu quit smiling.

"So it is you they are coming to see?" Asked Naill, to Elaine.

"They don't know who they are coming to see. They are coming to see us, and since we have not left the house, they are assuming that they are expected and we are prepared. They are coming to find out if they have a new leader, or a house full of scared rabbits, who got themselves in too deep. If they find the later they will kill us, if they find a possible leader, then they will continue forward, testing the leader to see if they will follow, or challenge."

"So, what if we are not rabbits and don't want to be leader?" Mac Anu asked.

"Not really sure on that bit. They will probably leave, peacefully and send a hit squad after us, seeing this as an act of war from the Cutpurse Gang."

"Ah." Said Mac Anu. "So. Um, not really sure how to put this, leader, but I hope you are up for the job, at least until we can get out of this spot."

"That's my point Mac Anu. Once again we are in a situation where it is one or the other, not many gray areas floating around. And once again, one path far outweighs the other, and once again the more appealing path is one very close to my father's history." She started to pace in the room. "Once again, it looks like we got here, by mere circumstance, where we were caught up in perfectly acceptable natural causes led us here, and the next indicated step is the one which will give us continued life and even a step up."

"Mac Anu," Elaine continued turning to him, "less than a year ago, you couldn't afford a decent jacket, and I was in the Calistian Embassy basement, wrapped up in a blanket. Now there is little you can't afford, and I'm about to become the leader of a group who could be a serious threat to any group on the continent, or even the world. You might ask, 'why us?' but I believe the answer to that question is not that we were the most capable, or blessed, but that we were not in a position ask many questions, or even know what questions to ask."

"So you are saying we are someone's pawns." Naill said.

"Yes", Elaine said looking over at her, "and now I want to know whose pawns we are." Elaine said, and then raised a finger, "before, I make another move." She sat down on the couch again, and curled her feet under her. "Look, our path from Drendari, and Denev is clear, find the other eight Dragon Gems, before the Penumbral do. Wouldn't you agree Fesoj?"

"Yes, I concur with that. Denev has made at least that much clear to me." The druid said, coming from the window to face Elaine. "Though there is some doubt as to exactly how we accomplish that task."

Elaine nodded her head, going deep in thought for a moment, and then said, in a low whisper, "so we need resources, and just at the time we need resources to follow our directives, a huge resource presents itself, a resource, that we weren't really looking for, but one that I have resources to control, and make the most of, but they are not, 'my' resources. It is like my father, again. Right down the line." She folded her hands and put them under her chin. "It is an unknown path, foriegn to me, but some how comfortable, because I can look to my father and feel a connection, and get guidance."

"And you say this isn't Drendari's work?" Mac Anu asked.

"Why would Drendari put me here. These thugs are not her followers. In fact they are everything she despises in a Rouge. Greedy, selfish, and only interested in making sure they get the next gold piece, no matter who they hurt to get it." She looked at Mac Anu, "and before you suggest that this is why I am here, to bring these cut-throats to her and show them the way, let me remind you that Drendari's followers find her, she doesn't seek them out .If Drendari's hand was here, we would be with the shade touched of Hollow Faust, or the Cut Purse gang, or back in Mithril, or maybe even in Freeport, but not here, not with these villains."

"I don't like being manipulated by anyone, and I'm certainly not feeling pawnish today, so I say, we take the money we can find in this house and get out of here." Mac Anu said, getting up and starting to look around for possibilities. There were plenty to choose from.

"That is one choice, the other is to use the Cartel until we don't need them any more." Said Fesoj.

"Taking the money and running means we are now on the run from the Cartel, not a very happy future there. The Cartel's resources are extensive." Suggested Naill.

"We can take them." Mac Anu said, walking into the master bedroom.

"Perhaps we can," Sorlaya said, picking up her bow from the bar top, "but we can not take them, and continue on with our path at the same time."

"Ah," Mac Anu replied, poking his head back out of the bed room door, "Well, no harm taking inventory and seeing what we have to work with is there?"

"There are always three or more answers to any problem." Elaine said, standing up again. "My point here is not that we have been manipulated, or that we are going to be, my point is that we have not bothered to look for the third option for a very long time. My point is that I have not been a good Drendari follower. I've chosen between light and dark, death and life, and have not been looking to shadow for a third option. I wish to change that, now. And if we find out later, that we have been manipulated, then we will be in a better position when the cards are finally placed on the table."

"What?" asked Mac Anu, walking back into the private living room, "Are we playing poker or chess here?"

"We are playing, 'stay alive'" retorted Naill.

"Oh, good, I like that game. Count me in." Mac Anu said, and disappeared back into the bedroom. "You guys should at least check out this room, it has many interesting things."

He was interrupted by the sound of claws running down the drain gutter outside, and then Silver, Elaine's Mink, jumping into the window and bounding across furniture to Elaine. "We don't have time for that right now Anu, get out here, the Cartel boys are here."

"Fesoj, answer the door please," Elaine said, "Sorlaya, cover him from the stair way and then as soon as you can slip out and onto the roof, make sure we aren't interrupted without warning. Naill, stand by the door and try not to be noticed right away. Don't hide. Just stand there. Mac Anu, you are here in the living room with me, stay standing, and near a shadow."

"What is your plan Elaine?" Naill asked, as the others headed for their positions.

"To stay alive long enough to come up with one." Elaine answered.

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