Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(12)

“For now,” Barrabus said again.





“Sylora doesn’t know I have this,” Valindra Shadowmantle whispered, giggling.

She held up the fist-sized gemstone, shaped as a skull. The fires of her undead existence flared in her eyes and reflected in the hollowed orbs of the gemstone.

“I took it from her,” Valindra explained, apparently to herself, and she giggled all the more.

The skull was her phylactery, her soul’s escape from the frailties of her withering mortal coil. Should Valindra’s body be destroyed, there she would reside until another body could be found.

But this particular gem was much more than that. It was an ancient artifact, one of a pair, and served as a great conduit of magical power. Arklem Greeth—Valindra’s beloved Greeth!—resided in the other, though Valindra knew not where the sister gemstone and Greeth might be.

She had tried to discern that location—that was why she’d dared steal this artifact from Sylora in the first place. She’d looked into the phylactery and her vision had gone forth from there, in the fugue between the lands of the living and the dead, seeking Greeth, but had found someone else instead, a powerful undead spirit, recently disembodied. Fast had that spirit flown, away from this plane of existence, to its just reward or punishment, but faster had Valindra, through the gemstone, reached out to grab the terrified spirit and offer it a home, an anchor, a phylactery.

“Come forth, friend,” Valindra bade, and she rubbed the skull gem. “Come, I have need of you. I know, I know—Greeth, Greeth!—that you cannot fly free of the gemstone for long, but long enough, I think!”

Nothing happened.

“Come forth, or I’ll come in there to find you,” the lich warned, her voice suddenly grim.

The eye sockets of the skull gem flared with red fires and a cold wind blew forth from its skeletal mouth.

The spirit shimmered in the air in front of Valindra, a pitiful thing, terrified and full of rage—helpless rage, for it was just an immaterial ghost, a malevolent, impotent whisper of anger.

“Korvin Dor’crae!” Valindra cackled with glee. “Oh, you must help me!”

Why would I? the disembodied vampire spoke in Valindra’s thoughts.

“Because if you do, I’ll grant you more of the skull gem’s powers,” Valindra teased. “And you can use it to possess another, to steal a body and give form to your … energy.”

The vampire’s ghost didn’t respond in words, but Valindra felt his eagerness, his desperation. She understood that Dor’crae had seen his just reward, and he would do anything, apparently, to avoid that ultimate fate.

“You are my eyes on the wind,” Valindra explained. “Szass Tam demands of me a cataclysm, and so I must deliver one. Seek out Gauntlgrym once more and return to me with word of the primordial.”

It is a long way. I haven’t much time.

“You travel as the wind,” Valindra said with a laugh. “Go! And return! And then you will seek out more. I must know more! Greeth! Greeth! Oh, but I was a bad girl! There is slaughter to be done, so much! I must know more of those around so that I can arrange the cataclysm, and you are my eyes.”

She stopped abruptly and looked curiously at the skull gem. Valindra glanced all around. It took her a few moments to realize that Dor’crae had already gone.

Good, she thought.






“What does it mean?” Jestry asked Sylora privately, less than a tenday removed from their encounter with Szass Tam. A group of Ashmadai stood nearby, engaged in their own conversations about the mission.

“Valindra seeks to please Szass Tam, and we will allow her to find her way to do so.”

“Why would you trust that mad lich?” Jestry replied, shaking his head with every word and obviously disgusted at even mentioning Valindra Shadowmantle.

“You have forgotten our visit with Szass Tam?” came the sarcastic reply.

“No, but—”

“And that Valindra deflected his ire from us, and to herself?”

“You believe she did that for our benefit?” Jestry asked.

Sylora wore a puzzled expression, as if the answer should be obvious.

“I think Valindra is simply insane,” Jestry replied.

Sylora seemed for a moment as if she were about to lay him low with a shock of lightning, or some other powerful spell.

Jestry swallowed hard. He realized he was being quite forward. Dare he speak to her in such a manner?

But she quickly relaxed and nodded. Jestry sighed. Sylora must value him as an honest advisor to allow him to speak his mind.

“She has no idea of the danger involved in admitting such a failure to the archlich.” He couldn’t help but raise his voice for just a moment before catching himself and going back to a whisper. “She was rambling, hardly coherent of her own admission of failure.”

“No,” Sylora said flatly. “You underestimate Valindra Shadowmantle at your own peril.”

“Underestimate? I’m terrified of the creature!” Again his voice rose, and a few Ashmadai glanced his way before wisely turning back to their own conversation.

“You underestimate the power of her mind,” Sylora explained. “She survived the unwitting conversion to lichdom and the Spellplague, and that’s no small thing. I’ve spoken with her at length about her early days after the fall of Arklem Greeth. Yes, she was quite insane, but a drow psionicist helped pull her cogent reasoning back to the fore.”