I know not, but I’m not afraid to find out. That’s my freedom now, to walk my road with eyes wide and heart open, without regret and with a true understanding of how blessed my existence beside these companions has been.
And there is one other freedom now: For the first time in decades, I awaken to discover that I am not angry. Strangely so. I feel as if the rage that has for so long kept my muscles tightened has at last relaxed.
This too stings me with pangs of guilt, and I am sure that those around me will often hear me muttering to myself in confusion. Perhaps I am simply deluding myself. Perhaps the loss of Bruenor has pushed me past the bounds of sensibility, where the level of pain has become intolerable and so I trick myself into something wholly converse.
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
I can only shrug and wonder.
I can only feel and accept.
I am alone now.
I am free.
– Drizzt Do’Urden
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 a
rchlich 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!”
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