“Perhaps Lady Dahlia seeks alliance,” Effron offered.
“Dahlia, who murdered my patrol,” Alegni reminded him sourly, and Effron quickly backed away. “Barrabus has joined forces with Dahlia after she murdered my patrol! And more than a dozen other Shadovar besides.”
“I didn’t mean that the fool Barrabus should go unpunished,” Effron was quick to reply. “Perhaps after he kills Sylora, you can remind him of his failings.”
Herzgo Alegni turned away and walked to the edge of the bridge to regard the last colors of daylight. The simple truth of it was that if Barrabus brought him the head of Sylora Salm, he would hardly punish the man.
A grin widened on Alegni’s face as he considered his stealthy champion, and remembered all of those times over the last decades when Barrabus the Gray had exceeded expectations so completely Alegni had to work hard to keep from openly marveling at the man.
If Barrabus returned to him bearing the head of Sylora, and the head of her champion, Dahlia, as he expected would likely happen, then Alegni would surely reward the assassin.
Of course, if Barrabus failed him, whether he was killed or not in the attempt, Herzgo Alegni could use Effron’s startling information as an excuse to torment the man even more.
For an instant, Alegni almost hoped Barrabus would fail. Only an instant, though, for defeating Sylora Salm was surely the greatest prize of all, and one that would gain him accolades from his superiors in Shade Enclave, would perhaps silence even the wretched Draygo Quick for a while.
The Netherese lord glanced back at Effron as the light diminished in the west, and that dimness seemed somehow to help complete the crooked and misshapen warlock’s form, to make him seem more substantial and less… defective.
In that moment, Herzgo Alegni wished he didn’t have to loathe this one so greatly, wished that the mere sight of Effron didn’t turn his stomach so.
When Herzgo Alegni walked onto the bridge that bore his name, the villagers of Neverwinter typically avoided that route. There were two other bridges, after all, though neither matched the grandeur and width of this one, and even though Alegni and his band had been declared heroes of the city, few were comfortable around the tiefling, and fewer still would dare to interrupt him in any case.
So when a small form, a woman it seemed, bending low against the wind and with her red cloak and hood pulled tight, stepped onto the bridge and headed his way, Alegni eyed her curiously, then with grinning recognition.
She didn’t slow.
“Take a different bridge,” Effron called out, and lifted his wand at the approaching figure.
Herzgo Alegni grabbed the young warlock by the forearm and forcefully pushed his arm back down. Effron looked over at him in shock, but Alegni shook his head.
The woman neared, and pulled back her cowl, showing her curly red locks.
“Welcome, Arunika,” Alegni greeted.
“What news, Herzgo Alegni?” she replied. “Your posture tells me that the word is good.”
Alegni laughed at that. Arunika had told him she was an observer, after all, and that knowledge was her true power.
“Have you met Effron?” Alegni asked, deflecting her inquiry. “A warlock strong beyond his years.”
Arunika glanced at him with that inviting, disarming smile of hers, and Alegni’s face screwed up with surprise when he saw Effron-Effron the insufferable!-return that look with a sincere smile and open expression of his own.
Alegni glanced back at Arunika and scrutinized her in a different light then.
“What news?” Arunika pressed. “You just came in from the forest, I’ve been told, and came straight to speak with our guardian here.” She motioned at Alegni, and flashed him a rather wicked smile and a wink.
Effron seemed truly flustered, and that, too, had Alegni off-balance. When ever before had this cynical and smart young tiefling ever teetered in disarray?
“It’s no news as of yet,” Alegni answered, and Arunika looked at him doubtfully, and a bit, he understood, as if she’d been wounded by his lack of trust.
Herzgo Alegni thought back to the night before, to their amazing tryst.
“Hopeful signs, though,” he said. He glanced over at Effron and waved the warlock away, then turned to face Arunika more directly. When Effron didn’t immediately depart, Alegni cast him a sour glance.
“We may have found unexpected allies in our battle with the Thayans,” Alegni admitted to Arunika as Effron shambled off the bridge. “Her champion returns from the north.”
“Her champion? Would that not bolster-”
“ Former champion,” Alegni corrected. “This warrior, Dahlia, returns with a vendetta against Sylora, it would seem, and brings beside her a drow ranger of great renown.”
“A drow ranger? Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“Yes, and now my man Barrabus has joined with them on their path to rid us of Sylora Salm. If they succeed, if they can behead this Thayan beast that has infected Neverwinter Wood, we will claim a great victory.”
Arunika stared at him for a few moments, then matched his hopeful grin. “That’s quite a trio of power,” she said. “And likely, Sylora’s champion will know of the Thayan defenses and how to get through them.”
“Barrabus almost rid me of the witch by himself,” Alegni agreed. “With those two beside him, I’ve no doubt that Sylora Salm will soon be dead. Barrabus is an annoyance, to be sure, but a useful one, else I would have destroyed him long ago.”
“It’s good that you didn’t, then,” said Arunika. She paused for a few heartbeats then smiled once more and turned to leave. As she lifted her hood back in place, she whispered, “Will you join me later that we might celebrate this hopeful news?”
Herzgo Alegni had every intention of doing just that, whether Arunika invited him or not.
Sylora sat in her chamber in the tree-tower, impatiently tap-tapping the crooked wand on the chair’s arm. She looked across at Arunika’s messenger, the imp hopping back flips in front of the hearth for no apparent reason.
The sorceress had already known that Dahlia and the drow ranger were on their way. She’d communed with devils of her own, and so had learned of Hadencourt’s fate. Sylora understood the power of the malebranche and its ever-present allies, and so she understood that Dahlia had found a capable companion indeed to have so defeated that troupe.
But now, with the news from Arunika, Sylora understood that the danger had grown substantially.
The sorceress stood up quickly, and the imp responded by halting its spinning for a bit and staring at her curiously. “Where is she?” Sylora asked, pacing over and throwing another log on the fire.
“In Neverwinter, silly wizardess,” the imp replied.
“Not Arunika!” Sylora snapped back, though she realized the imp already knew that and was just being clever.
“Dahlia on her way…” the imp started, but Sylora cut the tiny creature short with a glower.
“Not Dahlia,” Sylora said evenly. “I know where Dahlia is. You just told me where Dahlia is.”
“Then why ask, Lady of Silly?”
Before Sylora could respond-and she intended to respond with a killing bolt of Dread Ring energy-there came a shuffling noise from the stairwell, and both the sorceress and the imp turned to watch Valindra enter the room. Another form lurked behind her on the stairs, in the shadows.
“We should strike the city this night,” Valindra said, her voice surprisingly clear, her eyes remaining focused. “They’re battered from our first assault and even more so by the damage and carnage caused by the ambassador’s umber hulks. They’re vulnerable and we shouldn’t let them get their footing back on solid ground.”
As impressed as she was by Valindra’s clarity of thought and expression, Sylora shook her head throughout the speech. “Not yet.”
“Delay favors the Netherese.”
“It cannot be helped. We have more pressing business.” Sylora looked over at the imp.
“Dahlia again?
” Valindra asked with clear exasperation.
Sylora had to pause and consider that for a bit before responding.
Valindra’s mental instability seemed fast fading. The ambassador had been working on Valindra quite extensively, helping her as the drow psionicist had aided her in the early days of her affliction. Only more effectively, Sylora knew. She was thinking in leaps now, instead of merely reacting to the situation in front of her, and more importantly, she sold her advice with more than mere words but with emotion and even cleverness, like the dramatic effect in her response to Dahlia.
“Don’t underestimate her.”
“As Hadencourt did?” Valindra asked. She’d been at Sylora’s side when they received the news of the malebranche’s defeat. “He’s a devil, Sylora, and so thought himself so elevated above the mere mortals he could act foolishly. So he did, and so he’s paid for his mistake.”
“As you do now,” Sylora warned.
“Not at all,” Valindra replied with confidence. “I’ve witnessed Dahlia’s martial prowess and know it to be considerable. I also know I can defeat her. Magic is stronger than the blade… or than that stick she spins with such abandon. I would think Sylora Salm would know that.”
“She has an ally, a ranger of great reputation.”
“And you have me.”
“She has another ally,” Sylora went on, again turning to the imp. “The Netherese champion has joined with her. Those three, at least, are coming for us, and we must expect that Barrabus the Gray will bring along Shadovar reinforcements.”
“I do not fear them,” Valindra announced.
“But nor will I ignore them,” said Sylora. “They are coming. They are likely nearing our position even now. And so we’ll prepare for them. Keep the Ashmadai close-double the guards at the walls and let the zombies roam the forest near to Ashenglade. You watch them, Valindra. You see through their eyes. We’ll know when these would-be assassins come into our fortress, and we will destroy them. How much weaker will the Netherese be when their champion’s head is returned to them?”
“Or when their champion is raised by the power of the Dread Ring and turns to fight against them?” Valindra replied, and that brought a grin to Sylora’s face.
Valindra turned back to the stairwell and lifted her hand and beckoned, silently calling. “As you requested,” she said when the crinkled ashen zombie crept in through the door.
Sylora had indeed asked Valindra to bring along one of their undead pets, and she suppressed her revulsion at having the diminutive thing in her private room. With every step, the wretched little creature left ashen footprints, and the smell of burned flesh was a perpetual condition for these monsters. A decade had passed since the cataclysm, and still the zombie legions reeked with the foul aroma.
Behind the sorceress, the imp snorted and let out a little shriek.
Sylora ignored the tiny devil, focusing on the zombie and the sensation in her wand because of the proximity of the creature. She’d felt this before, but from afar, and now with Ashenglade’s first round of construction completed, the wand, the Dread Ring, had compelled her to further investigate.
She reached out to the zombie and closed her eyes.
Soon she was seeing through the undead creature’s eyes.
Sylora could inhabit it at will, could see through it, could hear through it, could control its every movement. She almost unleashed the creature’s continual fury, then, for in looking back at herself, in looking past her meditating form, she noted the imp, its face a mask of disgust, its long and pointed tongue hanging out and flicking with distaste. Through the zombie’s ears, Sylora heard the curses muttered under impish breath.
Sylora moved back fully into her own consciousness, and slowly turned to face the impudent little imp. “You don’t approve of my pet?”
“Wretched disgusts me, it does,” the imp whined.
“This is a child of the Dread Ring,” Sylora explained.
“Let it fall dead and bury it deep!” said the imp.
“You try my patience,” Sylora warned. “Only because of Arunika’s favor do I not punish you for such words.”
“Arunika! Arunika is not my mistress! I’m indebted to her, but I’m free when done with you!”
A wry smile widened on Sylora’s face, telling the imp that perhaps it should not have admitted such a thing. “You insult the zombie, you insult the Dread Ring,” she said.
“Wretched disgusts me!”
“And if I allow the zombie to act on your insults?” asked Sylora. She felt the wand thrumming in her hand, the power building with her intent and her understanding now that she didn’t have to put up with the impudent little beast.
The imp’s long tongue flicked and sent a line of spittle at Sylora’s feet. “I go!” it announced.
“You do not!” Sylora demanded sharply. “First you must battle and defeat this child of the Dread Ring you have so callously insulted.” She glanced over at Valindra, letting the lich see her grin, but that brought more puzzlement to Valindra’s expression than anything else.
Sylora recognized that and wasn’t surprised by the lich’s reaction, given that Valindra hardly understood what was happening either. But something surely was happening, within the wand and deep in her subconscious, and the sensation she received from the Dread Ring was of power and pleasure, like a building climax.
The imp spat on the floor again and cursed Sylora.
She invited the release.
The ashen zombie beside Valindra exploded into a puff of black smoke and ashes, and before any could spread wide or descend to the floor, the wand drew them in, hungrily eating the zombie’s remains.
Sylora’s eyes closed in a fit of power and pleasure, and she let the decomposed zombie flow through the wand, bursting back out in a black spray that struck the imp and sent it flying backward into the wall. It howled in pain as wafts of smoke began rising from all around it.
“What have you done?” Valindra asked happily, but Sylora ignored her, couldn’t be bothered with her at that moment as she, too, tried to sort out the magic she’d just enacted.
The imp came forward, but slowly, its movements sluggish as if it was in thick mud or tar. It was the ash, Sylora realized, hardening around its joints and skin. The imp tried to spit, attempted to stick out its tongue, but Sylora saw the black goo covering the creature’s mouth press forward.
The magic fully encased the creature except for one eye the imp had managed to close before being struck, and that the imp had opened quickly enough to avoid the hardening black coating. That eye revealed the creature’s hatred for Sylora, a red gaze of sizzling and seething flame.
The diminutive beast kept approaching, and Sylora was too mesmerized to even realize she should retreat, or strike again.
But it didn’t matter. The imp turned aside and dived into the fireplace. It rolled around on the logs and slid its limbs under the hot coals, burning the black goo from its body. The fire didn’t bother a creature of the lower planes, after all. In moments, it was free, and it shot one last hateful look at Sylora, full of indignity and dire threats, then rushed up the chimney and out of Ashenglade entirely.
“That show was worth the cost of a zombie,” Valindra said coyly.
Sylora turned to her and held forth the crooked, blackened wand Szass Tam had given her. “There’s more,” she said with both conviction and confusion, for she knew there were indeed more and varied catastrophes she could conjure with the magical energy of the ashen zombies, though she wasn’t quite sure what those disasters might be.
Sylora’s eyes sparkled at the possibilities.
“You can channel the power of the Dread Ring,” Valindra reasoned, and Sylora nodded.
“It’s intoxicating,” the sorceress admitted.
“More powerful than your own practiced magic?”
Sylora considered that for a few moments, then nodded once more. “I had thought my time here near its end,” she admitted. “One last strike a
t the Netherese and the settlers of Neverwinter, one added massacre to complete the Dread Ring, and I would move along to another place, another mission.”
“But now?”
Sylora was too lost in the sensations of the wand to catch the undertone of concern in Valindra’s voice, or to even consider that she hadn’t made her impending departure a secret, or that her departure would place Valindra Shadowmantle as her heir apparent in Neverwinter Wood.
Valindra’s question remained unanswered as Sylora fell deeper into the connection to the Dread Ring, trying to sort out the powers it might now afford her. She wasn’t quite sure.
But she intended to find out.
It’snew to me,” Dahlia whispered. She lay on a grassy knoll , Drizzt to her right and the man she’d known as Barrabus the Gray farther to her right, beyond the drow.
“It’s a very recent addition,” Entreri replied, though Dahlia had aimed her remark at Drizzt. She hadn’t spoken a word to Entreri since the fight of the previous day. “I’ve been scouting Sylora Salm for some time-all through your journey to Gauntlgrym. I’ve been near to her, looking over her shoulder, and I’ve seen nothing like this fortress before. Not a hint that any such thing existed.”
“It reminds me of my homeland, strangely,” Drizzt added.
He couldn’t help but make that comparison. The centerpiece of the grand fortress was a treelike tower, obsidian colored, set on the side of a rocky hill. If some wizard graced that tower with purple faerie fire, it could well be set in Menzoberranzan to hide among the stalagmite mounds that served as homes for the various drow families.
The whole of the fortress also showed that same otherworldliness as Menzoberranzan. The obsidian-black walls were not of mortared bricks, but seemed as if they’d simply lifted up from the ground, pressed forth by magic, in a single piece. Gate towers-perhaps they were gate towers-showed at various points, looking much like smaller versions of the treelike tower on the rocky hillside that dominated the place. Other structures showed, usually abutting the walls, and those, too, were obviously created and not constructed: large blackened boulders, roughly shaped to resemble squat stone buildings, like barracks and other necessary structures. One on the far side of the fortress was open faced, a forge burning within. Another appeared as no more than a stone lean-to, and under its sheltering wall lay a rack of bows, piled quivers of arrows, and a host of those Ashmadai staff-spear scepters.
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