“I have not seen you in three years, and only a few times, and a few short times, since you were a boy,” Alegni replied.
“But you recognize me!” the emaciated warlock replied, and he jerked left-to-right so that his withered and useless arm would swing around enough for him to clap his left hand with his right.
“Don’t do that!” Herzgo Alegni warned through clenched teeth.
Effron laughed at him. It was a sad laugh.
“Go back to Draygo,” Alegni said. “I warn you, there’s no place for you here.”
“Master Draygo thinks there is.”
“He’s wrong.”
“You underestimate my powers.”
“I know your skill.”
“You underestimate my knowledge of your enemies, then,” Effron insisted. “Knowledge that will give you the victory you desire.” He widened his red eyes and gave a crooked grin, revealing a mouthful of straight white teeth that seemed so out of place with the rest of the twisted tiefling. “The victory Master Draygo orders you to complete, and in short time. Without me, that will not be achieved. Do you so loathe me that you would accept failure and the consequences of Master Draygo’s rage rather than accept my help?”
“Your help,” Alegni snorted.
“You’re not winning here,” Effron insisted.
“Perhaps you were so deep in your studies you missed my victory outside Neverwinter’s wall.”
“If you think that a victory, then you’re more in need of me than even Master Draygo believed—and he believed it quite strongly, I assure you.”
Alegni glowered at him.
“Was Sylora Salm on the field?” Effron asked.
Alegni narrowed his eyes.
“Was her champion? The elf warrioress with the mighty staff?”
“She has not been in these parts for years.”
“She returns,” Effron assured him, and Alegni couldn’t hide his surprise.
“I know your enemies,” Effron said. “I’ll help you win here, and then I’ll be gone.” He paused and considered Alegni, who could barely hide his contempt. “Which would be the more pleasing to you?”
Herzgo Alegni scowled and turned away, and Effron slumped, a bit of moisture glistening in his strange eyes.
Intrigue overwhelmed caution in Valindra’s thoughts as she glided past the umber hulks lurking at the wide entrance to the underground cavern. The young monk, Brother Anthus, who led their troop had been here before, several times, and yet his skittishness couldn’t be denied. His breathing was so labored that Valindra expected him to topple over into unconsciousness.
And the lich certainly understood why.
Valindra didn’t breathe, of course, but no matter, for this spectacle of power—a dozen mighty umber hulks lined up in perfect order and discipline—would have intrigued her in life as much as now. With that thought, the lich looked to Sylora, a sorceress not so unlike herself in her former life. The Thayan seemed composed enough, but surely there was a bit of hesitation in her step.
And why not? The cavern beyond reeked of slime and the murky pond illuminated by the underground lichen wasn’t the most inviting of sights.
Valindra, Sylora, and Brother Anthus entered, moving between the lines of umber hulk guards, the loyal and fanatical Ashmadai contingent dutifully following.
The water stirred. Brother Anthus, a scrawny young man whose brown hair was already thinning from his constant fretfulness, shifted nervously and glanced back at Sylora and Valindra.
“The Sovereignty ambassador,” he whispered reverently.
The water stirred and the ambassador’s head appeared, an oblong mound on the water, two black eyes staring at the visitors.
A second form rose up out of the water as well, walking out of the shallows nearest them. It was a man, or had been a man, naked and wearing a perfectly blank expression on his face and in his strangely distant eyes. His skin was nearly translucent and covered with a slimy, membranous substance.
“Welcome,” he said in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere else, almost as if it was being channeled through him. Behind him, the aboleth stirred, rings of water rolling out from its large form.
The ambassador’s mind slave, its servitor, then spoke the creature’s name, and it was surely unpronounceable by any of those listening—and surely would have been unpronounceable to the speaker if he was trying to form those sounds all on his own, with combinations of consonant sounds that no human or elf tongue could hope to replicate. Still, despite the stark reminder of how foreign an entity this type of creature truly was, they all, from Sylora to the Ashmadai soldiers, felt a sense of calm, of warmth, of home.
Despite her eagerness and curiosity, Valindra didn’t share that warmth, and she couldn’t help but feel a bit of disgust as the aboleth’s piscine head rose up from the water. Rounded on top, flat underneath, not unlike a bottom-feeding catfish, the large mottled head climbed up several feet. Limp whiskers, like lines of black rope hanging below, dripped fetid dark water back into the pond.
“You are the one of whom we were told,” the servitor said, aiming the words at Valindra.
“Yes,” the lich hesitantly replied.
“We sense your confusion,” said the slimy man.
He bowed, and somehow that movement made Valindra much more comfortable.
“Welcome to all of you,” the servitor went on, and he began speaking to each of them individually, conveying great knowledge of who they were and why they had come.
Valindra tried to listen at first, very curious to get as strong a read on this strange creature as she could. The ambassador was the promise to her, the potential way through the fog that continually clouded her thoughts, or twisted them in directions she never desired. But soon into the remarks by the servitor, the lich felt something else, something too personal for her to ignore.
She felt the creature—not the servitor, but the aboleth itself—probing her thoughts. She “heard” its vibrations and instinctively hesitated and threw up mental barriers. Only for a moment, though, for in truth, the lich feared her continuing mental affliction more than she feared the aboleth. She consciously let her guards down, inviting the creature in.
“Ark-lem!” she called out, her natural reaction to stressful situations. “Ark-lem! Greeth! Gree …”
She bit off the last word as a moment of clarity invaded her confused mind. And not just simple clarity of thought—Valindra had experienced those brief moments, of course, particularly on the battlefield—but clarity combined with insight and memory, and more importantly still, a true memory of the former Archmage of the Hosttower of the Arcane. Suddenly, and for the first time, Valindra remembered the disembodied spirit of Arklem Greeth after the Spellplague, and recalled the sister skull gem, Greeth’s multi-dimensional and magically multi-faceted phylactery. Greeth’s essence remained within that gem, trapped and helpless, but in there nonetheless. Valindra had only begun to understand the true powers of those wondrous gems, and in this one moment of clarity, she considered Dor’crae, who was grounded to this plane of existence through the power of her own skull gem.
She could trap Dor’crae fully with the power of her gem, as Greeth was trapped by his own phylactery. She’d understood that from the first time she’d encountered the disembodied vampire. But if that were true, might she not, therefore, find a way to loosen the other skull gem’s hold on her beloved Arklem Greeth? Free him to possess the corporeal form of another so that he wouldn’t be lost to her any longer?
Valindra’s lies to Szass Tam regarding her desires with the pit fiend had been grounded in some measure of truth, after all. She grinned then at the possibility of putting her beloved Arklem Greeth into such a magnificent corporeal form.
But where was that other gem? It had been in the room, her room, in ruined Illusk beneath Luskan! Yes, she remembered that.
Where had it gone?
A name flashed in her thoughts, that of a particularly resourceful and self-serving dark elf …
All of that flashed through Valindra’s mind in a matter of a living creature’s heartbeat, a brief moment in which all the reasoning she should have been doing for months and years now had coalesced suddenly to create a great stream of possibility.
The lich stared out at the aboleth with awe, reverence, and hope. For even as the ambassador left her, then, it left behind the unspoken promise that it could indeed help her through her plight.
The meeting lasted only a few moments longer, with the servitor assuring Sylora Salm that this was the first of what might be a fruitful alliance. That strange slimy man also took a moment to assure Brother Anthus that the road for him would be long and glorious, and he ended with a smile and knowing nod at Valindra, who had been promised, perhaps, the most of all.
When they left the aboleth’s chamber, Sylora was smiling indeed. “The people of Neverwinter will pay dearly for their partnership with the Netherese,” she said.
“Because you have struck an alliance with …” Valindra paused and tried to figure out how she might speak the aboleth’s name, but quickly gave up on that idea and simply referred to their host as “the Sovereignty ambassador.”
“Informal, but to our mutual gain,” Sylora replied.
“Truly? Then what did you offer in return?”
“To allow the Sovereignty to exist here without our interference,” Sylora replied, and she looked at Valindra curiously.
“They don’t care about our designs here,” Sylora explained. “Unlike the Netherese, our ambitions for dominance do not include dominance over the living. The Sovereignty understands that we can coexist without ever crossing paths, they in the land of the living, us in the realm of the dead. Our friend, Brother Anthus, did well in preparing them for our visit.”
The young monk bowed stiffly and uncomfortably, as was his wont.
“An alliance of convenience,” said Valindra. “My favorite kind.”
“You will meet with the ambassador again. He … it, told me as much,” Anthus remarked.
Valindra nodded and smiled, her eyes flickering with hope.
“And you concur with the … speaker?” Sylora asked.
“He’s the ambassador’s servitor,” Brother Anthus explained. “Anything he says comes straight from the aboleth.”
“He assured me that the aboleth would help me elevate Jestry to become my champion,” Sylora reminded them.
“Then rest assured that it will be a promise fulfilled,” Brother Anthus replied without the slightest hesitation.
Valindra started cackling then with laughter. “It shall be so,” she said in her own voice, between giggles, and she stared long and hard at Anthus.
“Indeed, you are quite the proponent of our new friend,” Sylora remarked.
“You don’t have a spy in your midst,” Brother Anthus assured them. “There would be no point, since the Sovereignty can scour our very thoughts. Why waste time and effort and risk discovery with such subterfuge when the ambassador can go straight to the source … at will?”