“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.