“Imagine that!” Dahlia exclaimed sarcastically at yet another bit of common knowledge.

“There are rumblings … the Hosttower … magical wards and unleashed energy …”

Wicked Dahlia cocked her shapely head despite herself, and eased up her prodding finger just a bit.

“I know not the full tale as of yet,” the vampire said, his words coming more easily. “It is shrouded in mystery older than the oldest elf, in a time long ago when the Hosttower of the Arcane in Luskan was first built. There are—” He stopped with a grunt as Dahlia’s wood-covered finger burrowed in.

“To the point, vampire. I haven’t an eternity.” She looked at him slyly. “And if you offer me eternity one more time, I’ll show you an abrupt end to your own.”

“There is magical instability there, due to the fall of the Hosttower,” Dor’crae blurted. “It is possible that we could create carnage on a scale sufficient—”

Again the woman twisted the words from his mouth, silencing him. Luskan, Neverwinter, the Sword Coast … the significance of that region was no mystery to Dahlia. The mere mention of the area rekindled memories of her childhood, memories she clutched close to her heart as constant reminders of the wretchedness of the world.

She shook the haunting images away—it was not the time, not with a dangerous vampire held at arm’s length.

“What more?” she demanded.

A panicked look came over the vampire, who obviously had nothing substantial to add and expected a sudden end to his existence at the hands of the merciless elf.

But Dahlia was more intrigued than she showed. She retracted her hand so suddenly Dor’crae fell to hands and knees and closed his eyes in silent thanks.

“There is no time you are near me when I cannot kill you,” the woman said. “The next time you forget that and try to afflict me, I will utterly, happily, joyously destroy you.”

Dor’crae looked up at her, his expression conveying that he didn’t doubt her for a heartbeat.

“Now make love to me, and do it well, for your own sake,” the elf said.

It had been a fine trip to the stream for water. The pollywogs had just hatched and the twelve-year-old elf lass had found hours of enjoyment observing their play. Her mother had told her not to rush, since her father was out on the hunt that day anyway, and the water would not be needed until supper.

Dahlia came over the rise and saw the smoke, heard the cries, and knew the dark ones had come.

She should have fled. She should have turned around and run back to the stream, and across it. She should have abandoned her doomed village and saved herself, hoping to rejoin her father later on.

But she found herself running home, screaming for her mother.

The Netherese barbarians were there, waiting.

Dahlia pushed away the memories, channeling them, as she always channeled them, into her need for dominance. She slapped the vampire aside and rolled atop him, taking full control. Dor’crae was a most excellent lover—which was why Dahlia had kept him alive for so long—and the woman’s distraction had given him the upper hand. But only for a short while. She went at him angrily, turning their lovemaking into something violent, punching him and clawing at him, showing him the wooden finger prod at just the right moment to deny him his pleasure while she experienced her own.

Then she pulled away from him and ordered him gone, and warned him that her patience neared its end and that he should not return to her, should not come into her sight, until he had more to reveal about the Hosttower and the potential for catastrophe in the west.

The vampire slunk away like a beaten dog, leaving Dahlia alone with her memories.

They murdered the men. They murdered the youngest and the oldest of the females, who were not of child-bearing age, and for the two poor villagers with child, the barbarians were most cruel of all, cutting the children from their wombs and leaving both to die in the dirt.

And for the rest, the Netherese shared their seed, violently, repeatedly. In their demented fascination with mortality, they sought the elves’ wombs as if partaking of an elixir of eternal youth.

Her dress was much like the one Dahlia had been wearing that same day, high collar, open neck and low cut, and none could deny that Sylora Salm wore it in an enticing manner. Like her rival, her head was cleanly shaven, with not a hair on her pretty head. She was older than Dahlia by several years, and though Sylora was human, her beauty had surely not dimmed.

She stood on the edge of a dead forest, where the diseased remnants of once proud trees reached to the very edge of the newest Dread Ring, a widening black circle of utter devastation. Nothing lived within that dark perversion, where ashes could be naught but ashes and dust could be naught but dust. Though she was dressed as if to attend a royal ball, Sylora did not seem out of place there, for there was a coldness about her that complemented death quite well.

“The vampire inquired,” explained her lone companion, Themerelis, a hulking young man barely into his twenties. He wore only a short kilt, mid-calf boots, and an open leather vest, showing off his extraordinary musculature, his wide shoulders exaggerated by the greatsword he wore strapped diagonally across his back.

“What is the witch’s fascination with the Hosttower of the Arcane?” Sylora asked, talking more to herself as she turned away from Themerelis. “It has been nearly a century since that monstrosity tumbled, and the remnants of the Arcane Brotherhood have shown no indication that they intend to rebuild it.”

“Nor could they,” Themerelis said. “The dweomers of its bindings were far beyond them even before the Spellplague. Alas for magic lost to the world.”

Sylora looked at him with open mockery. “Something you heard in the library while spying on Dahlia?” She held up her hand as her consort started to reply. The man was too dim to understand the insult. “Why else would you be in a library?” she asked, and she rolled her eyes in disgust when he looked at her with obvious puzzlement.

“Do not mock me, Lady,” the warrior warned.

Sylora turned on him sharply. “Pray tell me why?” she asked. “Will you take out your greatsword and cleave me in two?”

Themerelis glared at her, but that only evoked a burst of laughter from the Thayan sorceress.

“I prefer other weapons,” Sylora said, teasing him, and she let her hand come up to stroke Themerelis’s powerful arm. The man started toward her, but she moved her palm before him to halt his advance.

“If you earn the fight,” she explained.

“They are leaving this day,” Themerelis replied.

“Then be quick to your work.” She gave him a little push backward then waved at him to be gone.

Themerelis offered a frustrated snort and spun away, stomping back through the trees and up the distant hill toward the castle gate.

Sylora watched him go. She knew how he was so easily getting near to the wary and dangerous Dahlia, and she wanted to hate him for that, to murder him even, but she found she couldn’t blame the young man. She narrowed her eyes into hateful slits. How she wanted to be rid of Dahlia Sin’felle!

“Those thoughts do not serve you well, my pretty,” came a familiar voice from within the Dread Ring—and even if she hadn’t recognized the voice, only one creature would dare enter so new a ring.

“Why do you tolerate her?” Sylora said, turning back to stare into the fluttering wall of blowing ash that marked the circumference of the necromantic place of power. She couldn’t actually see Szass Tam through that opaque veil, but she could feel his presence, like a blast of a winter wind carrying sheets of stinging sleet.

“She is just a child,” Szass Tam replied. “She has not yet learned the etiquette of the Thayan court.”

“She has been here for six years,” the woman protested.

Szass Tam’s cackling laughter mocked her anger. “She controls Kozah’s Needle, and that is no minor thing.”

“The break-staff,” Sylora said with disgust. “A weapon. A mere weapon.”

“Not so ‘mere’ to those who feel its bite.”

“It is just a weapon, absent the beauty of pure spellcasting, absent the power of the mind.”

“More than that,” Szass Tam whispered, but Sylora ignored him and continued.

“Swashbuckling trickery,” she said. “All flash and dazzle, and strikes a child should dodge.”

“I count her victims at seven,” the lich reminded her, “including three of considerable renown and reputation. Could I not bring them back to my side in a preferable form,”—the manner in which he so casually referred to his reanimation of the dead sent a freezing shiver along Sylora’s already cold spine—“I would fear that the Lady Dahlia might be thinning my ranks too quickly.”

“Count it not as her skill,” Sylora warned. “She coaxed them, every one, into vulnerable positions. Her youth and beauty fooled them, but now I know, now we all know.”

“Even Lady Cahdamine?” said Szass Tam, and Sylora winced. Cahdamine had been her peer, if never really her friend, and they had shared many adventures, including clearing the peasants from the land for the very Dread Ring she stood before—clearing the peasants’ souls, at least, for their rotting flesh had fed the ring. During that pleasurable time, three years before, Cahdamine had spoken often of Lady Dahlia, and of how she had taken the young elf under her wing to properly instruct her in the arts carnal and martial.

Had Cahdamine underestimated Dahlia? Had she been blinded by her arrogance to the dangers of the heartless elf?

Cahdamine had become the middle diamond on Dahlia’s left ear, the fourth of seven, Sylora knew, for Sylora had caught on to the elf’s little symbolism. And Dahlia wore two studs on her right ear. Dor’crae was one of her lovers, of course, and—Sylora glanced toward the distant castle, along the path Themerelis had taken.

“You will not have to suffer her here for some months—years, more likely,” Szass Tam remarked as if reading her mind. “She is off to Luskan and the Sword Coast.”

“May the pirates cut her to pieces.”

“Dahlia serves me well,” the disembodied voice of Szass Tam warned.

“You speak so to keep me from destroying her.”

“You serve me well,” the lich replied. “I have told Dahlia as much.”

Outraged, Sylora spun away and departed. How dare Szass Tam elevate the wayward waif to her level with such an insinuation!

An important night, she knew, and so she had to look the part. It wasn’t vanity that drew Dahlia to the mirror but technique. Her art was a matter of perfection, and anything less would be a death sentence.

Her black leather boots rose up above her knees, touching her matching black leather skirt on the outside of her left thigh. Nowhere else did leather meet leather, though, for the skirt was cut at a sharp angle, climbing up well above the mid-point on the thigh of her other shapely leg. Her belt, a red cord, carried leather pouches on each hip, both black with red stitching. She wore a puff-sleeved white blouse of the finest silk, cinched with diamond cuffs to allow her free movement. A small black leather vest provided some padding, but her real armor came from a magic ring, an enchanted cloak, and small magic bracers hidden under the cuffs of her blouse.