The stalking proved to be a nerve-racking business. Kevin was no woodsman or housebreaker, schooled in the art of sneaking soundlessly, and no matter how he tried, he couldn't avoid making little noises, each of which threatened to reveal his presence. Nor could he shake the nagging fear that as he concentrated his attention on the shadows ahead, some other phantom would spot him and take him unawares.

But none did, and eventually the shadows and their coffle led him to a drum-shaped keep notorious throughout Cormyr. When Kevin perceived that it was indeed their destination, he nearly laughed in dismay, because it figured, didn't it?

The ruin-now no more ruinous than the rest of Old Town-had once been the residence of the enchantress Tilvara. According to rumor, it was now home to strange beasts and the restless dead, and hellishly dangerous. Few would-be explorers ever even got past the "Medusa's Garden," the field of statuary in front of the entrance. The figures animated and attacked them.

Though many of the statues lay shattered on the ground, a goodly number remained intact. Still, the shadows and their prisoners passed them unmolested. Maybe they knew the trick of it, or perhaps the tides of battle magic washing through the city had somehow rendered the effigies inert.

The procession vanished through an arched door, and Kevin wondered whether or not to keep following. He was sorely tempted to go look for Ajandor, but what if he couldn't find the knight, who by now might already be wandering the city, either to find his errant squire or simply in search of his own destruction? Or what if he did locate Ajandor, and the knight just didn't care? Or what if the shadows slew the captives while Kevin was off searching?

No, curse it, he had to go in.

Kevin headed for the statues. He realized he was breathing hard, tried to control it as Ajandor had taught him, and couldn't quite. He started down the path.

Stone warriors, rocs, manticores, wolves, and double-headed ettins surrounded him on every side. If they all came to life at once, he wouldn't stand a chance, but only one of them even tried. A lion shuddered as he passed but could do no more. Some power had indeed rendered them harmless.

Kevin tiptoed up to the doorway and peeked beyond the threshold into a murky hall. As far as he could tell, no sentries waited there, just as none patrolled the battlements high above. Kevin found the shadows' want of caution peculiar, but perhaps they didn't think like human beings. Maybe they considered themselves so secure in their possession of Tilverton that an assault was inconceivable.

Not that Kevin contemplated anything so grand. Could he simply spirit the captives away, he would be well satisfied.

Onward he skulked, groping his way through stygian chambers that would have been entirely lightless save for the gaps in the ancient walls. Legend peopled these spaces with watchghosts and round, floating, many-eyed beholders, but he didn't encounter any of those. He wondered if the shadows had destroyed even them.

He did soon come to the conclusion that the keep was larger inside than out, but the paradox didn't particularly unsettle him. He'd heard that powerful mages could create such effects. At least the doorways weren't sealing themselves behind him. He'd heard that could happen, too.

A vague form moving on four legs, or perhaps six or eight, prowled out of an arched opening not twelve feet ahead of him. His heart pounding, he flattened himself against the wall. The phantom turned in the opposite direction and disappeared into the blackness.

When his nerves ceased their jangling, Kevin crept on, peeked into the archway, and finally saw the prisoners, those he had been tracking and maybe fifteen others as well.

Tilvara had probably maintained a perfectly good dungeon beneath her residence, but for some reason, the shadows had opted to hold their captives in a spacious chamber where eight or ten looms stood at regular intervals about the floor. Some still supported unfinished bits of weaving, the weft and woof rotting away and tingeing the air with the smell. The humans were still bound, but not with ropes, which lay in careless tangles on the floor. Instead, the prisoners stood enmeshed in strands of darkness, which, anchored to the back wall, floor, ceiling, and looms, were nearly invisible in the gloom.

Kevin didn't know what the black cables were made of-perhaps the same shadow-stuff as the phantoms themselves-but he assumed he would be able to cut them once he disposed of the jailer. For as best he could tell in the darkness, only one shadow lingered in the weavers' workroom, and it had its back to the door.

Kevin crept over the threshold. Evidently sensing his presence, the shadow began to turn, and he cut at it. The sword sheared into its head, and it staggered and disappeared.

The prisoners started to babble, and he frantically tried to shush them, so intent on the need for quiet that it took him a moment to take in what they were saying.

"Look up! The spider! It's right above us!"

As soon as he did understand, he looked up instantly, galvanized by a jolt of terror. He didn't like spiders, and if such a creature had spun the strands holding the captives, it must be huge.

Yet he couldn't see it. The room was too dark, and the ceiling too high. His mouth dry as sand, he pivoted back and forth, trying to spot it.

"Does anybody see it?" he asked the others. "Do you? Do you?"

Evidently they didn't. They simply knew from bitter past experience that it was there.

It occurred to Kevin that he could back out of the room and leave them to their fate. He'd tried to help them, no one could say that he hadn't. It was possible that his sword couldn't even cut the spider.

But he knew he couldn't really abandon them. It wouldn't be chivalrous. Ajandor-the old Ajandor, anyway-would never have countenanced such a selfish, craven act.

Kevin glimpsed motion from the comer of his eye. Impelled by pure reflex, he jumped to one side, and the leaping spider pounced on the spot where he'd just been standing. Some of the prisoners wailed.

Made of the same shifting murk as the other horrors infesting Tilverton, the spider was perhaps the size of a child, its fused bulbs of head and body hanging between arched, segmented legs. Hoping he could land a blow before it reoriented on him, Kevin hacked at its abdomen.

Quick as a cat, the shadow wheeled to face him. His blade slashed through one of its legs, but without encountering any resistance, and without severing the limb.

The spider scuttled toward him and he retreated, cutting and thrusting as he went. It was still like sweeping his sword through empty air. In the dimness, he could just make out a hint of the shadow's ring of bulging eyes, the jagged mandibles opening and closing around its maw.

He backed into one of looms, which banged, rattled, and shed choking, eye-stinging dust into the air. As he started to flounder around that obstacle, he collided with strands of the shadow webbing. The stuff was as sticky as he would have expected, and it had hold of his sword arm, not that his sword had done him any good.

He struggled to pull free. The glue began to give but not quickly enough. The spider scuttled forward to plunge its no-doubt poisonous fangs into his flesh.

Just as the shadow's mandibles were about to close on his knee, he heaved his legs up, evading the bite. The weakened adhesion couldn't support his weight, and he fell free of the webbing and onto the shadow.

He plunged right through the creature just as his sword had done. For an instant, as they were joined, his mind blazed with inhuman sensations. He slammed down on the floor beneath the spider's underbelly.

The shadow started to scuttle off him. Gripping his sword by the blade for use in such close quarters, he jammed the point into the crack between the spider's abdomen and cephalothorax.