Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(9)

Sylora instinctively reached for the scepter, fearing that the archlich would be outraged indeed that she had given such an item to any of her inferiors.

“Good, Valindra, and well done in bringing forth the pit fiend,” Szass Tam replied, halting Sylora’s reach. “Valindra commanded the pit fiend with ease. With practiced ease. She is possessed of great power beneath her … her condition.”

Sylora nodded stupidly.

“Sylora knows—oh, don’t be silly!” Valindra erupted, and she laughed wildly. “She is my friend. She has been reminding me of the times … oh, why can’t I remember those times of power and play, of magic the same and magic different?”

“Before the Spellplague,” Sylora translated. “Her affliction has confused her, but it hasn’t erased those powers she knew before the collapse of Mystra’s Weave.”

“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!”