Neverwinter

1

Sylora Salm stood outside the ash cloud of the budding Dread Ring, shifting from foot to foot. She knew the stakes. Her scouts had returned confirming her fears: The primordial had been trapped once more by a host of water elementals and the residual magic of the fallen Hosttower of the Arcane. There would be no second eruption of primordial magnitude. The ground was no longer trembling daily beneath her feet.

Her enemies had averted catastrophe.

Sylora stared into the ash and could almost feel it diminish. She had been counting on a volcanic cataclysm to strengthen her magical beast, this Dread Ring that fed upon death.

She continued to shift from foot to foot. If she understood her failure, then so did the being approaching her behind the gray-black veil.

Sylora could hear her heart thumping in her chest. Behind her, Jestry Rallevin, the Ashmadai zealot who had become her closest advisor, swallowed hard.

“I feel him,” he whispered. Jestry Rallevin was no ordinary Ashmadai. Though young, barely into his twenties and quite inexperienced, the man still commanded the attention and respect of all the other zealots, both because of his striking appearance-with his large shoulders, dark hair, and brooding dark eyes-and his willingness to throw himself into the cause with absolute abandon. And he could fight-so perfectly in balance, striking with precision and power. If only she had known of his prowess before the few recent skirmishes with the Netherese forces, Sylora silently lamented. She could have used Jestry to tempt that vile Dahlia and then destroy the witch altogether.

That notion reminded Sylora of Temberle, another strong male consort whom she had shared with Dahlia, and one Dahlia had slain before coming west. She glanced at Jestry, measuring him against Temberle.

No comparison, she believed. This one, a true zealot, would have carved Temberle to pieces had they come to blows. Might he have done, might he do, the same with Dahlia? It was a pleasant and intriguing thought, to be sure.

“Sylora, he’s coming,” Jestry repeated.

Sylora nodded but didn’t reply, afraid to break the muted silence of the dead ash. She had understood the coming of Szass Tam from the moment he had focused his magical energies on her Dread Ring. She slumped her shoulders and waited outside the edge. She wouldn’t go in there to meet him. Within the Dread Ring, the power of Szass Tam was simply too terrible to behold.

Behind her, she heard Jestry licking his lips nervously. She wanted him to stop, desperately so, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.

An emaciated humanoid under a heavy black hooded robe approached. Somehow he was darker than the Dread Ring through which he glided.

“I haven’t felt the pleasure of a thousand souls crying out their last,” the lich said in his uneven and scratchy voice. Two dots of angry fire within the shades of blackness stared at Sylora and his form wavered, blurred by the swirl of magical ash. “I haven’t felt the strengthening of my new domain, as you promised.”

Sylora swallowed hard. “We have encountered enemies-”

“I know of your failure,” Szass Tam’s voice reached out like a claw for her heart. “I know of the battle in the dwarven mines. I know it all.”

“There are many reasons,” Sylora blurted. “And the fight is not yet lost!” She paused then and grimaced, thinking her last word choice to be truly foolish.

“I was there,” Szass Tam assured her. “Looking through other eyes. The magic is restored. The primordial of fire is recaptured. It will not be freed again, soon or easily.”

Sylora lowered her eyes, her shoulders slumping further. “I have failed you,” she said. She stood there for many heartbeats, awaiting recrimination, awaiting a terrible death.

“You have,” Szass Tam finally said.

“It was but one battle!” Jestry cried out from behind.

A bolt of black energy flashed out of the Dread Ring, crackling the air beside Sylora. Jestry flew backward to the ground and there he squirmed, his limbs trembling in agony, his hair dancing.

“Is he valuable?” Szass Tam asked Sylora, which was his way, she knew, of asking her if Jestry should be fed to the Dread Ring.

She spent a few moments sorting the riddle. She could throw Jestry to the lich here in the hopes that his sacrifice would suffice…

“He has proven his worth many times over,” she heard herself replying instead. “Jestry Rallevin has slain many Netherese, and has led my warriors to many victories here in the forest. I should like to keep him beside me.”

“You should like to keep him?” Szass Tam retorted. An invisible hand reached out from the ashes to grab Sylora by the throat. She clawed at it, but there was nothing to grab, and yet as insubstantial as it seemed, that magical grasp lifted her up on her toes and began pulling her into the blackness. Suddenly it stopped and she hung there in the air, still scratching, still squirming. Her bulging eyes widened even more when Jestry came up beside her, similarly choked and floating.

“Do not blame me for your doom, poor Ashmadai,” Szass Tam whispered from inside the Dread Ring. “Sylora Salm requested your presence.”

As he spoke his last word, another voice rent the air, a keening sing-song cry of “Arklem! Ark-lem! Greeth, Greeth, oh, where are you! I don’t see you, Arklem. Ark-lem! But you see me… oh, I know you see me! Of course you see me. You see all.”

Sylora dropped to the ground and barely held her balance. Beside her, Jestry crumpled to the ground and lay groaning, still shaken from the black lightning. From within the Dread Ring, Szass Tam laughed.

Continued babbling drew Sylora’s gaze behind her. The lich Valindra Shadowmantle glided among the skeletal remains of many fruit trees. Her half-rotted fingers tapped her chin and she rambled to this unseen companion Arklem Greeth, as if sorting out some deep secret of the world that no one had yet deciphered.

She moved right up beside Sylora before she even seemed to notice the sorceress, the Ashmadai, or even the Dread Ring and the great being standing within.

“Oh,” she said to Sylora. “Well. Good afternoon. Well met. And it is a good day! Have you seen Arklem?”

Szass Tam cackled.

“And who is that? Who is that?” Valindra asked. “Is that you, Arklem?”

“It’s Szass Tam, Valindra,” Sylora said quietly. “The archlich of Thay.”

“There is no introduction necessary,” Szass Tam said. “Hello again, Mistress Shadowmantle. I did so enjoy our communion in the dwarven halls.”

Sylora started to question that, but bit her words back and turned a disbelieving stare over Valindra, Szass Tam’s spy.

“Oh, hello and well met, again!” Valindra replied. “I used it!”

“How?” Sylora asked, looking from Valindra back to Szass Tam. “Used what?” she added, twisting her head back to regard the elf lich at her side.

“I still have it,” Valindra assured Szass Tam, and she opened a fold of her robe and produced the scepter of Asmodeus, a powerful summoning artifact that Sylora had lent her on her journey to the lair of the primordial.

Sylora instinctively reached for the scepter, fearing that the archlich would be outraged indeed that she had given such an item to any of her inferiors.

“Good, Valindra, and well done in bringing forth the pit fiend,” Szass Tam replied, halting Sylora’s reach. “Valindra commanded the pit fiend with ease. With practiced ease. She is possessed of great power beneath her… her condition.”

Sylora nodded stupidly.

“Sylora knows-oh, don’t be silly!” Valindra erupted, and she laughed wildly. “She is my friend. She has been reminding me of the times… oh, why can’t I remember those times of power and play, of magic the same and magic different?”

“Before the Spellplague,” Sylora translated. “Her affliction has confused her, but it hasn’t erased those powers she knew before the collapse of Mystra’s Weave.”

“And why is that important?” asked Szass Tam.

“I bring the past to the present,” Valindra answered before Sylora could, and the female lich’s voice was unexpectedly steady.

“You saw the events within the dwarven mines?” Sylora asked Szass Tam.

“Some.”

“I was told that great enemies came upon my charges,” said Sylora.

“You erred in sending so meager a force,” Szass Tam countered.

“The pit fiend,” Sylora protested. “Valindra! And Dor’crae, who stood as my second.”

“You erred in sending so meager a force,” Szass Tam repeated, biting every word off short for emphasis, as if each was a verdict, a sentence and pronouncement unto itself.

Sylora lowered her eyes. “I did, my lord.”

“More than ample, were it not for the residual power of the Hosttower of the Arcane,” Valindra replied. “The fault is mine, and not Lady Sylora’s.”

Sylora and Jestry gawked in utter confusion at Valindra’s suddenly cogent words.

“I should have known-oh, I should have!” Valindra’s fingers began to tap and her head began to shake. She heaved a great sigh. “It was me, of course. I know the Hosttower-none other! So why didn’t I think it so powerful there and then, in the halls of the dwarves? Oh, Valindra!” She slapped herself across the face. “Oh Arklem! Ark-lem! Ark-lem! Arklem, where are you? Greeth, Greeth, I need you!”

Sylora turned back to Szass Tam and held up her hands helplessly.

“Valindra!” the archlich roared, his voice magically enhanced so that it sounded like the bellow of a dragon and had both Sylora and Jestry wincing and covering their ears.

“Yes?” Valindra replied sweetly, seemingly unbothered by the deafening volume.

“Your fault?”

“I should have warned Lady Sylora.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Sylora winced.

“I needed the power!” Valindra shrieked, shaking wildly and waving her emaciated arms. “Greeth! Greeth! For Greeth, of course.”

Sylora couldn’t tell if she was talking to them, to herself, or to some unseen third party.

“To bring him in. I was a bad girl, not good, not good. Arklem Greeth-Ark-lem! Ark-lem!-in the body of a great fiend. Oh, but how wonderful that would have been!”

“What is she babbling about?” Szass Tam demanded.

“Valindra?” Sylora asked calmly, moving over into the distracted lich’s field of view and forcing Valindra to look at her. “You meant to place your beloved into the corporeal form of the pit fiend?”

“Heresy!” Jestry shouted, or almost finished shouting, before another black bolt of energy slammed him and threw him some twenty feet away. He sat on the ground, hair dancing again, teeth chattering.

“Another word and I’ll eat you,” Szass Tam promised.

“Oh, Arklem in such a mighty body!” Valindra clapped her hands together. “I should have brought him to me, along the Hosttower vines, you know. I had to put him into the corporeal form right as the fiend was weakened. But that Jarlaxle! Oh, wretched drow!”

“Sylora?” Szass Tam demanded.

“She intended to somehow free Arklem Greeth from his phylactery, apparently,” Sylora explained. “To possess the form of the devil she had summoned.”

“Oh! What a warrior he would have been!” Valindra shouted, and she clapped her hands together again. “Any who fled the volcano would have met a darker death indeed!”

Sylora stepped away from her and glanced over at the Dread Ring, expecting Szass Tam to reach out with some unspeakable power to destroy Valindra then and there.

“And oh, what a lover!” Valindra shouted, and Sylora spun back, blinking.

“My love. My love! How I miss my love!” Valindra rolled off into another of her “Ark-lem” choruses.

“We failed in Gauntlgrym because that mad creature desired a pit fiend lover?” Szass Tam groaned.

“Our enemies in the dwarven halls were powerful,” Sylora replied.

“Our enemies, and allies of the Netherese?” Szass Tam asked.

“Nay,” Sylora was quick to point out. “Allies of the dwarven ghosts, it would seem.”

“Why should I not slay you this instant, and destroy this miserable Valindra creature with you?”

“Dahlia!” Sylora answered. “Because it was Dahlia Sin’felle who led our enemies to defend the mines and recapture the primordial. A useless witch, as I feared. Would that we had destroyed her back in Thay!”

“Valindra!” Szass Tam commanded in his magically enhanced voice.

Valindra stood straight and stared directly at the source of the command, her eyes clear, her babbling ended.

“The blame for our failure was yours?” Szass Tam asked.

“I should have warned Sylora.” The lich lowered her eyes.

“Don’t destroy her, I beg you,” Sylora said quietly.

“I am still pondering whether or not I should destroy you,” came the growled response.

“And so I owe to you a catastrophe!” Valindra said. “Oh, and a fine one it will be!”

Sylora could still hardly make out the form of Szass Tam, but she was certain the archlich stared dumbfounded at Valindra.

Singing to Arklem Greeth yet again, Valindra Shadowmantle disappeared into the skeletal remains of the forest.

“I had hoped you would have taken the city by now,” Szass Tam remarked.

“It is fully garrisoned,” Sylora replied, “with hardy warriors.”

“Make of them soldiers in your zombie army,” the archlich ordered, and Sylora nodded and bowed.

“The Dread Ring will lend you power now,” Szass Tam explained. “It is strong enough to enchant, to create, to transform.”

“I didn’t dare take from it, fearing I would subtract from its power,” Sylora replied, her gaze still on the ground.

“Then take from it only to facilitate its strengthening,” Szass Tam said. “You need the help, it would seem.”

Sylora winced, but she tried not to show any further weakness. Szass Tam didn’t tolerate weakness.

“Do you live in the forest?”

She nodded. “We have caves. Occasionally a farmhouse.”

“How charmingly primitive. Ah, if only you had conquered the city by now…”

Sylora’s eyes flashed with threats despite herself.

Szass Tam laughed. “You are one of my favored lieutenants,” he said. “And you would live in a cave?” She heard his raspy sigh, and something flew out of the ash ring.

Sylora winced again, thinking it was aimed at her, but the missile, a small branch broken from a blackened tree, landed harmlessly at her feet.

Confused, she looked back at Szass Tam then slowly bent to retrieve the object. As soon as she touched it, the woman couldn’t contain a grin, for she could feel a distinct connection to the Dread Ring, and the powers of the strange scepter flashed clearly in her mind: to enchant, to create, to transform.

“Build a fortress!” Szass Tam yelled at her.

“I didn’t want-”

“Do not fail me again!” the archlich commanded. “Either of you!”

There came a crackle and a sharp retort, and a bright flash erupted within the Dread Ring.

And he was gone. The Dread Ring settled into the dull pall of ash once more.

Sylora Salm breathed more easily.

“What just happened?” asked a confused Jestry, daring to move back near to Sylora.

“Valindra just saved our lives,” she replied.

“Indeed she did,” Valindra called, surprising them both. She seemed to slip out of a nearby tree trunk, as two-dimensional as a shadow. She reverted to full form and looked up at the two of them, her eyes clear, her expression lucid. “And now Valindra must create a catastrophe. Oh, what a pleasure that will be!”

Without another word, her expression locked in a wild-eyed and wicked, even gleeful grin, Valindra Shadowmantle glided away yet again.

Sylora swallowed hard.

“Not so crazy,” Jestry whispered after a long, long pause. “Or too crazy.”

Herzgo Alegni walked tall this morning, more so than in many troubled days. His scouts had returned with the welcome news: The primordial within the ancient dwarven homeland had been put back in its hole, and a host of mighty water elementals swirled around the walls of the entrapping pit. Sylora Salm’s plan had failed. There would be no second volcano to feed her Dread Ring. The tremors would not split the earth beneath his feet, and would not drop his ambitions into a deep black pit.

The tiefling stood well over six feet tall, not counting his curving, ramlike horns. He popped up the stiff collar of his weathercloak, showing its satiny red interior. He liked the way that bright red called out his demonic eyes, and matched, too, the blade of the deadly sword he carried in a belt loop on his left hip. He puffed out his massive chest, pulling wider the ties of his unfastened vest to show off his thick muscles. He let his black cloak fall behind his left shoulder and moved out of his tent with a strong, sure stride.

He strolled across the high bluff and stood in the shadows of a wide-spread oak. There he took note of a group of his Shadovar minions. “Where is Barrabus?” he asked. The three looked to each other, unsure, and obviously fearful.

“Go and find him!” Alegni demanded. “Bring him to me!”

The trio fell all over each other trying to scramble away, and as they scattered, they spoke to other Shadovar they passed, who glanced at Alegni before they, too, ran off.

Herzgo Alegni waited until all were out of sight before allowing himself a grin at the spectacle of his power.

In short order, the one man in his command who didn’t scramble at his every word strolled up to him. Fully a foot shorter than Alegni, and with few ornaments on his small frame-just a diamond-shaped belt buckle and a seemingly unremarkable sword and dagger on opposite hips-this black-haired, grayish-skinned man somehow didn’t seem diminished in the presence of the mighty Netherese tiefling. He stood with one arm cocked so that his forearm rested on the hilt of his sword, the other hanging at his side, his fingers rolling an unbitten green apple, which he occasionally tossed and caught without even glancing at it.

“The scouts have returned from the dwarven halls,” Alegni informed him.

“I know. Our enemies have failed.”

“You spoke with them?” Herzgo Alegni demanded, his red eyes flashing with rage and disappointment. “They spoke with you?”

“They usually do,” he answered anyway.

Barrabus the Gray could barely contain his smile. It pleased him to know that Alegni would severely punish the returned scouts for such a breach of etiquette-perhaps he would even kill a few of them. The thought of a few Shadovar tortured to death didn’t trouble Barrabus the Gray. Quite the opposite.

Of course, he hadn’t spoken to anyone. Why would he need to, to deduce such a simple riddle as the one before him in the form of the puffed-up Netherese lord? The failure of Sylora’s minions was hardly unexpected. He’d seen her enemies, including Drizzt Do’Urden and Bruenor Battlehammer, in Sylora’s own scrying pool.

Herzgo Alegni grumbled a few curses. “The moment is upon us,” he said. “Our enemy is reeling, and would be more so if you had not failed in the task I commanded.”

Barrabus didn’t respond, other than to give a graceful bow. Indeed, he had been sent to kill Sylora, and should have done so, and would have done so had not that image in the scrying pool interfered, filling him with such confusion and rekindling such long-buried emotions that he had nearly dropped from the high branch into the midst of Sylora’s encampment.

He shook that image away, not daring to get caught up in the implications with an angry Herzgo Alegni so close at hand.

“Perhaps I should send you back to her, to finish the deed,” Alegni said.

“The guard, already impenetrable, will no doubt be redoubled.”

“Surely that doesn’t frighten one as cunning and powerful as Barrabus the Gray,” came the sarcastic, and wholly expected, reply.

Barrabus shrugged. “You would rally your charges instead, and assail Sylora’s minions full on,” he reasoned.

“The thought has occurred to me.”

“And to me, and to Sylora as well, no doubt. The sorceress is no fool.”

“You do not think it the time to strike?”

“I think that Sylora must strike, and quickly,” said Barrabus. “She has lost her catastrophe and needs to create a new one.”

Alegni looked at him, curious.

“She serves Szass Tam, or so you’ve told me,” Barrabus explained. “She seeks to complete her Dread Ring. I’ve heard it whispered that Szass Tam does not accept failure well.”

Clearly intrigued, Herzgo Alegni paced to the oak then moved around its thick trunk.

“She’ll attack us?” he asked as he came around to face Barrabus once more.

“And if you were in her position?” Barrabus said. “Your Dread Ring demands to be fed. You need carnage on a large scale, and quickly. Would you attack an army awaiting your ranks?”

A grin spread on Alegni’s face. “With a city full of men and women so near…” he said, catching on. “Sylora will soon go against Neverwinter.”

Barrabus shrugged again.

“Go out and confirm it!” Alegni yelled.

Barrabus the Gray smiled and bowed, more than happy to take his leave. He’d barely gone a few steps, though, when he turned back to regard the tiefling.

“You’re welcome,” Barrabus the Gray remarked.

“I didn’t thank you.”

“But you know my worth. Your frustration reveals as much. That’s thanks enough.”

Alegni scoffed at the notion, and scoffed all the more when Barrabus added, “I will have my dagger back, my master, that I might serve you all the better.”

A scowl enveloped Alegni’s face.

“You’ll come to see the wisdom of it,” Barrabus promised, and laughed, and turned away.

The small man’s mirth faltered as he moved out of Herzgo Alegni’s sight. Truly, he hated that tiefling more than he’d ever hated any living or undead being. But Alegni had the sword, so Barrabus could not go against him. That wretched sword, so attuned to him, knowing his every move before he made it. That vile artifact, so easily dominating him, so easily destroying him if it, or its wielder, so chose.

Were it simply a matter of dying, Barrabus would have forced Alegni’s hand long ago and gladly gone to his elusive “reward.” The sword, now known simply as Claw, would do more than merely kill him, he knew. It would obliterate him and enslave the fragments of his soul for eternity. It would feed upon his life force, and only grow stronger because of the kill.

Or it would kill him and resurrect him, so that it could torment him yet again.

Yes, Barrabus hated Alegni, and hated the red-bladed sword, and hated most of all his helplessness, his servitude. Only once before in the many decades of his life had Barrabus the Gray known such a feeling of helplessness: in Menzoberranzan, the city of the drow. Upon his escape from that dark place, he swore that he would never again serve in such a manner.

The blade they called Claw and the Netherese lords who claimed the sword as their own had ripped that vow from him along with his freedom.

“For now,” Barrabus the Gray promised himself as he wandered through Neverwinter Wood.

He thought of his dagger, a weapon that had been his trademark for most of his life, a weapon that had wrought fear in the hearts of sturdy warriors and other assassins from Calimport to Luskan and everywhere in between. He knew Alegni would never give it back to him-even though he held Claw, Herzgo Alegni was wary of Barrabus the Gray, and wouldn’t lend him any assistance in the form of such formidable magic. Still, he entertained the thought of the great struggle should he ever retrieve that blade. He would use it to draw out Alegni’s life force even as Claw diminished his own. He would be the stronger, he believed, and even if they both died in the battle, it would be an end Barrabus the Gray would consider most fitting.

“For now,” Barrabus said again.

“Sylora doesn’t know I have this,” Valindra Shadowmantle whispered, giggling.

She held up the fist-sized gemstone, shaped as a skull. The fires of her undead existence flared in her eyes and reflected in the hollowed orbs of the gemstone.

“I took it from her,” Valindra explained, apparently to herself, and she giggled all the more.

The skull was her phylactery, her soul’s escape from the frailties of her withering mortal coil. Should Valindra’s body be destroyed, there she would reside until another body could be found.

But this particular gem was much more than that. It was an ancient artifact, one of a pair, and served as a great conduit of magical power. Arklem Greeth-Valindra’s beloved Greeth!-resided in the other, though Valindra knew not where the sister gemstone and Greeth might be.

She had tried to discern that location-that was why she’d dared steal this artifact from Sylora in the first place. She’d looked into the phylactery and her vision had gone forth from there, in the fugue between the lands of the living and the dead, seeking Greeth, but had found someone else instead, a powerful undead spirit, recently disembodied. Fast had that spirit flown, away from this plane of existence, to its just reward or punishment, but faster had Valindra, through the gemstone, reached out to grab the terrified spirit and offer it a home, an anchor, a phylactery.

“Come forth, friend,” Valindra bade, and she rubbed the skull gem. “Come, I have need of you. I know, I know-Greeth, Greeth!-that you cannot fly free of the gemstone for long, but long enough, I think!”

Nothing happened.

“Come forth, or I’ll come in there to find you,” the lich warned, her voice suddenly grim.

The eye sockets of the skull gem flared with red fires and a cold wind blew forth from its skeletal mouth.

The spirit shimmered in the air in front of Valindra, a pitiful thing, terrified and full of rage-helpless rage, for it was just an immaterial ghost, a malevolent, impotent whisper of anger.

“Korvin Dor’crae!” Valindra cackled with glee. “Oh, you must help me!”

Why would I? the disembodied vampire spoke in Valindra’s thoughts.

“Because if you do, I’ll grant you more of the skull gem’s powers,” Valindra teased. “And you can use it to possess another, to steal a body and give form to your… energy.”

The vampire’s ghost didn’t respond in words, but Valindra felt his eagerness, his desperation. She understood that Dor’crae had seen his just reward, and he would do anything, apparently, to avoid that ultimate fate.

“You are my eyes on the wind,” Valindra explained. “Szass Tam demands of me a cataclysm, and so I must deliver one. Seek out Gauntlgrym once more and return to me with word of the primordial.”

It is a long way. I haven’t much time.

“You travel as the wind,” Valindra said with a laugh. “Go! And return! And then you will seek out more. I must know more! Greeth! Greeth! Oh, but I was a bad girl! There is slaughter to be done, so much! I must know more of those around so that I can arrange the cataclysm, and you are my eyes.”

She stopped abruptly and looked curiously at the skull gem. Valindra glanced all around. It took her a few moments to realize that Dor’crae had already gone.

Good, she thought.

“What does it mean?” Jestry asked Sylora privately, less than a tenday removed from their encounter with Szass Tam. A group of Ashmadai stood nearby, engaged in their own conversations about the mission.

“Valindra seeks to please Szass Tam, and we will allow her to find her way to do so.”

“Why would you trust that mad lich?” Jestry replied, shaking his head with every word and obviously disgusted at even mentioning Valindra Shadowmantle.

“You have forgotten our visit with Szass Tam?” came the sarcastic reply.

“No, but-”

“And that Valindra deflected his ire from us, and to herself?”

“You believe she did that for our benefit?” Jestry asked.

Sylora wore a puzzled expression, as if the answer should be obvious.

“I think Valindra is simply insane,” Jestry replied.

Sylora seemed for a moment as if she were about to lay him low with a shock of lightning, or some other powerful spell.

Jestry swallowed hard. He realized he was being quite forward. Dare he speak to her in such a manner?

But she quickly relaxed and nodded. Jestry sighed. Sylora must value him as an honest advisor to allow him to speak his mind.

“She has no idea of the danger involved in admitting such a failure to the archlich.” He couldn’t help but raise his voice for just a moment before catching himself and going back to a whisper. “She was rambling, hardly coherent of her own admission of failure.”

“No,” Sylora said flatly. “You underestimate Valindra Shadowmantle at your own peril.”

“Underestimate? I’m terrified of the creature!” Again his voice rose, and a few Ashmadai glanced his way before wisely turning back to their own conversation.

“You underestimate the power of her mind,” Sylora explained. “She survived the unwitting conversion to lichdom and the Spellplague, and that’s no small thing. I’ve spoken with her at length about her early days after the fall of Arklem Greeth. Yes, she was quite insane, but a drow psionicist helped pull her cogent reasoning back to the fore.”

“She babbles, she sings, she is… inappropriate,” Jestry argued.

“She allows the insanity to spill forth. She releases it, and copes with it, and follows it up with reminders of reality. She saved us from Szass Tam, consciously so.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because she knows she’s not yet ready to command the Ashmadai of Neverwinter Wood, nor is she capable of bringing the Dread Ring to fruition. Valindra needs me, or she will disappoint Szass Tam far more than did the failure in Gauntlgrym.”

“And when she needs you no more?”

“I will be pleased to accept my victory for Szass Tam and return to Thay, leaving Valindra as Szass Tam’s commander on the Sword Coast.”

“They will destroy you,” Jestry insisted, but Sylora shook her head and wore an expression of complete confidence.

“I’ve spoken to Valindra at length,” she repeated with gravity. “And I’ve studied the history of Valindra Shadowmantle, once a mistress in the fabled Hosttower of the Arcane. She was accomplished in life, and she will become even more powerful in undeath, as her mind heals.”

Jestry stepped back and looked Sylora over carefully. “You see her as a conduit to your own immortality,” he said suddenly, then he gasped, obviously fearing he’d gone too far.

But Sylora grinned. “You are but twenty years old and I near middle age,” the sorceress explained. “You’ll one day understand. Now, go.” She pointed to the path, which seemed a tunnel through the dark trees lining its sides, branches intertwined so tightly that even the light of the full moon failed to penetrate.

“You’re going to perform the summoning of the devils,” Jestry said. “I would wish to witness the glory of your call to the Nine Hells.”

“No summoning tonight,” Sylora assured him. With a knowing smirk, Sylora glanced to her side and nodded as the lich Valindra came drifting out of the shadows, the Scepter of Asmodeus in hand.

“Through some magic I don’t know-perhaps with the scepter’s ties to the Nine Hells, perhaps with the skull gem I allowed her to take from my tent-Valindra has sensed something unusual on the outskirts of Neverwinter,” Sylora announced to Jestry and to the group of Ashmadai standing ready in front of the tree tunnel. “You will escort her as she demands. You will do anything that she demands!” Her voice rose powerfully as she finished, the threat all too clear. Her wide eyes scrutinized each and every member of the party.

“But not you,” she whispered to Jestry out of the corner of her mouth. “You are my eyes and ears and nothing more, whatever Valindra demands. Of you, I ask only that you return to me with a full recounting of the night’s events.” She turned to face him as she stepped back, putting him between her and the other Ashmadai. “I would not have my lover slain by a lich, to be raised horrid and cold and useless to my needs.”

Jestry could hardly draw breath. Her lover? Could it be? Was she at last offering him that which he had most desired since the day Szass Tam had put the Ashmadai war party under her command?

Sylora glanced back at him only once. “Don’t disappoint me,” she whispered in a throaty voice. “We will know great glory here, you and I. And great pleasure.”

She crossed paths with Valindra then, the lich drifting past her and tittering quietly, muttering something the distracted Jestry could not discern-not that he was paying her any heed in any case. He just stood there as Valindra floated past him as well, telling him to “Greeth Greeth, move along!”

But he couldn’t tear his eyes off the spectacle that was Sylora Salm. The high, stiff collar of her black gown perfectly framed her hairless head, her smooth and creamy skin glistening in the moonlight. That head struck Jestry as the perfect orb, held on the pedestal of that collar, and so entranced was he that it took him many heartbeats to allow his eyes to rove down the curving, shapely form, to the high slit in the back of the dress, and there he stared once more, his heart stopping then leaping at each flash of white skin, catching the moonlight with every alluring step.

Her lover, she’d teased.

Her lover.

He had to succeed, had to survive through this dangerous night. Jestry took a deep breath and steadied himself, finding the control required of an Ashmadai. He even managed to tear his eyes away from the departing Sylora, to spin around… and to realize that Valindra and the others had already started away.

He began to sprint, but barely took a step before he found himself glancing back yet again toward the woman he so desired.

But she was not to be seen, having melted into the night.

Jestry Rallevin reminded himself of who he was, and of the danger ever-present around him-danger to him and to his beloved Sylora Salm. They had faced Szass Tam and had barely escaped the archlich’s murderous wrath.

They had to start winning. Sylora needed the carnage to feed her Dread Ring. Jestry had to make it happen for her.

For them.

He ran down the dark tree tunnel toward the distant torchlight.

Sylora Salm was glad to be alone, at last. She brought forth the strange scepter of black wood from a fold in her cloak and held it up in front of her glistening eyes.

She could feel the energy in it, vibrating with power. This was a conduit to the Dread Ring, a dark scepter for a dark queen.

She glanced back at the cave complex she and her Ashmadai called home and an image came to her. Just to the left of the opening, up behind the front rocks of the cave, sat a small skeleton of a tree, just a single, twisted trunk with a single broken branch pointing forward, looking out like a sentry beside the cave entrance.

Sylora climbed the stones to stand beside the dead tree. She tapped the wooden scepter against the dark trunk and gasped as a blast of energy flowed through her. Her fingers tingled and a burst of ash came forth from her scepter, spraying the dead tree, covering it in blackness.

The ground shuddered violently and to the other side of the small hill, a boulder broke away and tumbled down.

Sylora looked around, not understanding.

The ground shuddered again, and on the other side of the small hill, another boulder broke away and tumbled down.

Sylora looked around, not understanding.

The ground shook again. The skeletal tree began to grow.

The sorceress backed away, nearly tripping and falling to the ground.

The tree widened, and with a great grinding sound, it climbed upward, ten feet, twenty, thirty. The hill grumbled in protest and stones tumbled. There came a cry from inside the cave, and an Ashmadai man stumbled out of the entrance, coughing and covered in dirt.

“Lady Sylora!” he cried.

She stood in front of a tower of ash, a tower that very much resembled a dead, skeletal tree. High above the clearing, beneath what had once been a broken tree branch, an opening had formed in the tower, creating a covered balcony.

The Ashmadai called to her again, but Sylora paid him no heed. She backed down the hillside, her gaze never leaving the ash tree tower. In her hand, the scepter called for more.

So Sylora, giddy with power, complied. She walked out some fifty paces from the cave opening and drew a line in the earth with the tip of her scepter, her conduit to the eager magic of the Dread Ring. By the time she completed the first half of her semicircle, moving to the side of the rocky hill, the initial points of her scratching bubbled with lava as the Dread Ring reached deep into the ground, bringing forth the residual power of the decade-old cataclysm.

She left a ten-foot gap before marking the second half of her creation, and by the time she was done with that curving line, the first wall had begun to erupt from the ground. Molten stone roiled and fell over itself as the wall climbed higher, to ten feet and more.

Sylora giggled like a child at play, and laughed all the more when the zealot called to her again, begging explanation.

His answer came gradually as Sylora Salm completed the wall, building a narrow channel moving out from the gap, turning boulders into smaller structures and two dead trees into smaller guard towers overlooking the wall.

Other zealots arrived from the nearby forest, all looking on with wide eyes, some falling to their knees to offer prayers to their devil god, others rushing in to see Sylora and to ask the same questions.

But she gave them no explanation and merely disappeared into the cave opening.

A few moments later, she reappeared, higher up in the tower, standing in the opening of the broken branch, her balcony.

“My lady?” the first of the Ashmadai inquired again.

There was reverence in his voice. There was awe showing clearly in all of their upturned faces.

Sylora liked that.

“Behold Ashenglade,” she said to them, a name that had just popped into her thoughts. “Finish it!”

She disappeared back into the tower and the zealots looked around in confusion.

“Double gates for the entryway!” one offered.

“And a roof!” said another, and so they went to work.

Inside the treelike tower, complete with three stories and a circling stairway, Sylora Salm reclined and listened to them going about their tasks. For a decade, the sorceress had lived in the forest or in the caves or in one or another abandoned house.

Now she understood-Szass Tam had made it clear to her. Since she had come to Neverwinter Wood, more than a decade ago, she had treated her time there as a step to something else, something grander. That had been her mistake. Now the Dread Ring had shown her the error of her ways, had forced her to take ownership of the mission, of the place, and soon, of Neverwinter itself.