Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(30)

A short while and a dozen chambers and corridors later, the pair came into a strange room.

“What is this place?” Dahlia asked, for it seemed more the drawing room of a fancy inn than a subterranean chamber amidst a network of damp caves. Colorful tapestries hung around the chamber, which was set with lavishly-decorated and well-crafted furniture, including a marble-topped vanity with a large, gold-gilded mirror set atop it.

“It is my home,” said a woman seated on a delicate chair in front of that vanity. When she turned in her seat and smiled at the couple, Dahlia tried hard not to wince. She might have been beautiful, with long, lustrous black hair and delicate features, though what color her eyes might once have been was long lost to the red dots of a lich’s unnatural inner fires. Her smile was a ghastly thing, for her gums had rotted back, making her teeth seem far too large, and her pallid skin seemed almost to crack as she smiled.

“Do you not like it?” she asked sweetly—too sweetly, as if she was a young girl at play, perhaps.

“Oh, we do, Valindra! Oh, we do!” Dor’crae said with exaggerated enthusiasm before Dahlia could even begin to reply. The warrior looked to her vampire companion then back at the lich.

“You are Valindra Shadowmantle?” she asked.

“Why, yes, I am,” Valindra replied.

“I have heard stories of your greatness,” Dahlia lied, and Dor’crae squeezed her hand in approval. “But even those flattering tales greatly understated your beauty.”

With that, Dahlia bowed low, while Valindra tittered and laughed.

“Where is your husband, good lady?” Dor’crae asked, and when Valindra spun as if looking for someone, Dor’crae nodded his chin up toward a shelf on a glass-fronted hutch, where sat a most curious, skull-shaped gem the size of Valindra’s fist.

As they all considered that phylactery, the eyes of the skull flared red, brightly for a moment before going soft once more.

“Greeth is in there?” Dahlia quietly asked her companion.

“What’s left of him,” the vampire replied. He directed Dahlia’s gaze the other way, to a second skull-shaped gem, which showed no life within its smoky white crystal.

“Valindra’s phylactery,” Dor’crae explained.

Dahlia felt at the brooch on her vest as she considered the gems. She dared walk over to the hutch, and noting that Valindra still smiled stupidly, she dared to open the door. Dahlia glanced back at Dor’crae, who held up his hands, having no answer.

“A most beautiful gemstone,” Dahlia said to Valindra.

“It’s my husband’s,” the lich replied.

“May I hold it?”

“Oh, please do!” said Valindra.

Dahlia wasn’t sure if that sweetness was from her apparent simple-mindedness, or if it was an enthusiastic prodding for more nefarious reasons. Holding the phylactery of a disembodied lich, after all, was reputedly the easiest way to get oneself possessed.

But Dahlia wore Szass Tam’s brooch, which offered great protection from such necromancy, and so she took the gemstone in her hand.

Almost immediately, she felt the rush of confusion, anger, and terror contained within that gemstone. She knew it was Arklem Greeth, and would have even if Dor’crae hadn’t told her so, for the lich screamed at her to release him, and to kill someone named Robillard.

She saw flashes of the glory that had been Hosttower of the Arcane, for Arklem Greeth had been its final master. So many images assaulted her, so many discordant thoughts flickered in her consciousness. She felt herself being drawn into the inviting depths of the gemstone.

She began to wonder where Dahlia ended and Arklem Greeth began.

In a flicker of recognition, Dahlia dropped the skull gem back onto the shelf and quickly stepped back, gasping for breath and trying hard to hold her composure.

“Your husband has a magnificent gemstone, Valindra,” she said.

“Oh, but he does, and mine is no less wondrous,” the lich answered, and her voice sounded different then, husky, threatening, sober.

Dahlia turned on her.

“Why are you here?” Valindra asked. “Did Kimmuriel send you?”

“Kimmuriel?” Dahlia asked, looking more at Dor’crae than the lich.

“One of the leaders of the dark elves in Luskan,” the vampire explained.

“Where is he?” Dahlia asked.

“He went home,” Valindra unexpectedly answered, her voice full of regret. “Far, far away. I miss him. He helps me.”

The warrior and the vampire exchanged curious glances.

“He helps me remember,” Valindra went on. “He helps my husband.”

“Did he give you the gemstones?” Dahlia asked.

“No, that was Jarlaxle,” Valindra answered, “and the stupid dwarf.”

Dahlia looked to Dor’crae, who shook his head, then back at Valindra.

“Bwahaha!” Valindra erupted, ending with a sour expression and an even more sour sigh. “Stupid dwarf.”

“So, Jarlaxle is a dwarf?”

“No!” said Valindra, seeming quite amused by that notion. “He is drow. Handsome and clever.”

“And he is in Luskan?”

“Sometimes.”

“Now?”

“I … I …” The lich’s eyes darted around, seeming at a loss.