Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(14)

She glanced back at the cave complex she and her Ashmadai called home and an image came to her. Just to the left of the opening, up behind the front rocks of the cave, sat a small skeleton of a tree, just a single, twisted trunk with a single broken branch pointing forward, looking out like a sentry beside the cave entrance.

Sylora climbed the stones to stand beside the dead tree. She tapped the wooden scepter against the dark trunk and gasped as a blast of energy flowed through her. Her fingers tingled and a burst of ash came forth from her scepter, spraying the dead tree, covering it in blackness.

The ground shuddered violently and to the other side of the small hill, a boulder broke away and tumbled down.

Sylora looked around, not understanding.

The ground shuddered again, and on the other side of the small hill, another boulder broke away and tumbled down.

Sylora looked around, not understanding.

The ground shook again. The skeletal tree began to grow.

The sorceress backed away, nearly tripping and falling to the ground.

The tree widened, and with a great grinding sound, it climbed upward, ten feet, twenty, thirty. The hill grumbled in protest and stones tumbled. There came a cry from inside the cave, and an Ashmadai man stumbled out of the entrance, coughing and covered in dirt.

“Lady Sylora!” he cried.

She stood in front of a tower of ash, a tower that very much resembled a dead, skeletal tree. High above the clearing, beneath what had once been a broken tree branch, an opening had formed in the tower, creating a covered balcony.

The Ashmadai called to her again, but Sylora paid him no heed. She backed down the hillside, her gaze never leaving the ash tree tower. In her hand, the scepter called for more.

So Sylora, giddy with power, complied. She walked out some fifty paces from the cave opening and drew a line in the earth with the tip of her scepter, her conduit to the eager magic of the Dread Ring. By the time she completed the first half of her semicircle, moving to the side of the rocky hill, the initial points of her scratching bubbled with lava as the Dread Ring reached deep into the ground, bringing forth the residual power of the decade-old cataclysm.

She left a ten-foot gap before marking the second half of her creation, and by the time she was done with that curving line, the first wall had begun to erupt from the ground. Molten stone roiled and fell over itself as the wall climbed higher, to ten feet and more.

Sylora giggled like a child at play, and laughed all the more when the zealot called to her again, begging explanation.

His answer came gradually as Sylora Salm completed the wall, building a narrow channel moving out from the gap, turning boulders into smaller structures and two dead trees into smaller guard towers overlooking the wall.

Other zealots arrived from the nearby forest, all looking on with wide eyes, some falling to their knees to offer prayers to their devil god, others rushing in to see Sylora and to ask the same questions.

But she gave them no explanation and merely disappeared into the cave opening.

A few moments later, she reappeared, higher up in the tower, standing in the opening of the broken branch, her balcony.

“My lady?” the first of the Ashmadai inquired again.

There was reverence in his voice. There was awe showing clearly in all of their upturned faces.

Sylora liked that.

“Behold Ashenglade,” she said to them, a name that had just popped into her thoughts. “Finish it!”

She disappeared back into the tower and the zealots looked around in confusion.

“Double gates for the entryway!” one offered.

“And a roof!” said another, and so they went to work.

Inside the treelike tower, complete with three stories and a circling stairway, Sylora Salm reclined and listened to them going about their tasks. For a decade, the sorceress had lived in the forest or in the caves or in one or another abandoned house.

Now she understood—Szass Tam had made it clear to her. Since she had come to Neverwinter Wood, more than a decade ago, she had treated her time there as a step to something else, something grander. That had been her mistake. Now the Dread Ring had shown her the error of her ways, had forced her to take ownership of the mission, of the place, and soon, of Neverwinter itself.





DRIZZT AND DAHLIA FOLLOWED THE COASTAL ROAD NORTH OF Port Llast. Andahar’s steady gait moved them swiftly toward Luskan, his speed and endurance doubling the pace of a normal mount even though he carried two riders. With less than a day left in their journey, Drizzt surprised Dahlia by veering the unicorn from the road, turning west along a side trail.

Dahlia slapped him on the shoulder and offered him a quizzical look when he glanced back.

“I prefer a different gate,” the drow explained.

“Different? They are the same, all three,” the elf protested.

“I was in the city only recently. The guards—”

“Are never the same, and could be at any of the gates in any case,” said Dahlia. “You have not been in Luskan in tendays, and likely all the ships in her harbor are changed, and thus, most of the guards serving the high captains have rotated ship to dock and dock to ship. What matter then, which gate?”

Drizzt didn’t answer, other than to hunch a bit forward and urge Andahar on more swiftly.

Dahlia started to argue once more, but when she looked ahead and saw the rolling farmland, she reconsidered. Given their encounter south of Port Llast, and given what she knew of Drizzt Do’Urden, she could guess why he felt compelled to probe inland, the farmlands, before entering the city.