Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(100)

Behind the sorceress, the imp snorted and let out a little shriek.

Sylora ignored the tiny devil, focusing on the zombie and the sensation in her wand because of the proximity of the creature. She’d felt this before, but from afar, and now with Ashenglade’s first round of construction completed, the wand, the Dread Ring, had compelled her to further investigate.

She reached out to the zombie and closed her eyes.

Soon she was seeing through the undead creature’s eyes.

Sylora could inhabit it at will, could see through it, could hear through it, could control its every movement. She almost unleashed the creature’s continual fury, then, for in looking back at herself, in looking past her meditating form, she noted the imp, its face a mask of disgust, its long and pointed tongue hanging out and flicking with distaste. Through the zombie’s ears, Sylora heard the curses muttered under impish breath.

Sylora moved back fully into her own consciousness, and slowly turned to face the impudent little imp. “You don’t approve of my pet?”

“Wretched disgusts me, it does,” the imp whined.

“This is a child of the Dread Ring,” Sylora explained.

“Let it fall dead and bury it deep!” said the imp.

“You try my patience,” Sylora warned. “Only because of Arunika’s favor do I not punish you for such words.”

“Arunika! Arunika is not my mistress! I’m indebted to her, but I’m free when done with you!”

A wry smile widened on Sylora’s face, telling the imp that perhaps it should not have admitted such a thing. “You insult the zombie, you insult the Dread Ring,” she said.

“Wretched disgusts me!”

“And if I allow the zombie to act on your insults?” asked Sylora. She felt the wand thrumming in her hand, the power building with her intent and her understanding now that she didn’t have to put up with the impudent little beast.

The imp’s long tongue flicked and sent a line of spittle at Sylora’s feet. “I go!” it announced.

“You do not!” Sylora demanded sharply. “First you must battle and defeat this child of the Dread Ring you have so callously insulted.” She glanced over at Valindra, letting the lich see her grin, but that brought more puzzlement to Valindra’s expression than anything else.

Sylora recognized that and wasn’t surprised by the lich’s reaction, given that Valindra hardly understood what was happening either. But something surely was happening, within the wand and deep in her subconscious, and the sensation she received from the Dread Ring was of power and pleasure, like a building climax.

The imp spat on the floor again and cursed Sylora.

She invited the release.

The ashen zombie beside Valindra exploded into a puff of black smoke and ashes, and before any could spread wide or descend to the floor, the wand drew them in, hungrily eating the zombie’s remains.

Sylora’s eyes closed in a fit of power and pleasure, and she let the decomposed zombie flow through the wand, bursting back out in a black spray that struck the imp and sent it flying backward into the wall. It howled in pain as wafts of smoke began rising from all around it.

“What have you done?” Valindra asked happily, but Sylora ignored her, couldn’t be bothered with her at that moment as she, too, tried to sort out the magic she’d just enacted.

The imp came forward, but slowly, its movements sluggish as if it was in thick mud or tar. It was the ash, Sylora realized, hardening around its joints and skin. The imp tried to spit, attempted to stick out its tongue, but Sylora saw the black goo covering the creature’s mouth press forward.

The magic fully encased the creature except for one eye the imp had managed to close before being struck, and that the imp had opened quickly enough to avoid the hardening black coating. That eye revealed the creature’s hatred for Sylora, a red gaze of sizzling and seething flame.

The diminutive beast kept approaching, and Sylora was too mesmerized to even realize she should retreat, or strike again.

But it didn’t matter. The imp turned aside and dived into the fireplace. It rolled around on the logs and slid its limbs under the hot coals, burning the black goo from its body. The fire didn’t bother a creature of the lower planes, after all. In moments, it was free, and it shot one last hateful look at Sylora, full of indignity and dire threats, then rushed up the chimney and out of Ashenglade entirely.

“That show was worth the cost of a zombie,” Valindra said coyly.

Sylora turned to her and held forth the crooked, blackened wand Szass Tam had given her. “There’s more,” she said with both conviction and confusion, for she knew there were indeed more and varied catastrophes she could conjure with the magical energy of the ashen zombies, though she wasn’t quite sure what those disasters might be.

Sylora’s eyes sparkled at the possibilities.

“You can channel the power of the Dread Ring,” Valindra reasoned, and Sylora nodded.

“It’s intoxicating,” the sorceress admitted.

“More powerful than your own practiced magic?”

Sylora considered that for a few moments, then nodded once more. “I had thought my time here near its end,” she admitted. “One last strike at the Netherese and the settlers of Neverwinter, one added massacre to complete the Dread Ring, and I would move along to another place, another mission.”