presence I found there flung me out of death, back into life. That was no doppelganger.'
'Ah, yes,' Miltiades replied. 'In any case, Eidola was among the most powerful weapons of the Unseen, a creature meant to spread their influence throughout Faerun. There must be others such as her about.'
'In fact, through your efforts and my own, their ranks have been thinned in the past month,' Khelben noted. 'Aleena and I have been doing more than brewing tea.'
Miltiades gave the Lord Mage a dark look. 'I'd like to know why you two waited so long. Aleena told me you both knew the truth about Eidola before the wedding. Why didn't you stop her then?'
'She was a fine piece of work,' Khelben replied. 'Dangerous, yes, but less so than those who created her. If we'd destroyed Eidola, her creators would have made another creature to infiltrate the palace, and done a better job of it. We needed her alive to trace her makers, which I've done.' There was unmistakable finality in his voice.
The Lord Mage set down his teacup and added, 'Until then I'd fitted her with a girdle of righteousness, binding her actions.'
'I-ahem-am the one who removed the belt in the mage-king's dungeon,' Noph volunteered, redness creeping up his neck. 'I thought it was a… that is, she implied… er, I still thought she was a woman of honor, you see, and what more ignominious torment is there for such a one as… well, a chastity belt?'
Eyebrows lifted around the room. Hiding a smile, Khelben came to Noph's rescue. 'Another decision that turned out to be right. By removing the belt, you revealed at last what Eidola really was and almost lost your life demonstrating it. The belt had served its purpose by then; once Eidola was abducted, I hired an assassin to track her down in the Utter East and kill her. The best such blade in all Faerun.'
'Too bad he failed,' Miltiades said disdainfully.
Khelben shrugged. 'No matter; he's dead. And where he failed, you succeeded. You ended up killing the woman you were sworn to rescue.'
'Yes,' Miltiades replied, despite himself. Scowling, he reached into a bag at his belt, and drew forth the slender hand of a woman, severed mid-forearm. It was rigid, bleached of all color, and clutched a gigantic diamond.
Sudden stillness governed the room. Miltiades bore the hand to the Open Lord's bedside. 'Eidola is well and truly dead. I brought this back as proof. We've not been able, by means muscular or magical, to tear the gem from her grasp. The gem holds her soul. Fearing the Unseen might use it to create Eidola again, we bring it to you for Khelben to deal with.'
Vapor from Piergeiron's teacup spun lazily around the lord as he gently took Eidola's hand in his own. For a moment, gazing at the thing, he seemed to see the grasping octopodal tree of his dream.
'You say what she was, and I believe you. Her mind spell nearly killed me, and yet…' He turned the grisly trophy over and over in his grasp. 'I cannot shake the sense that what I met in the world of the dead was no false lady… no malicious trickery.'
The change in his face was so subtle that no one there could have ascribed it to a shifting crease or a widening pupil. But all of them felt the silent agony underlying it. Piergeiron drew in a long, shuddering breath, and said, 'To me, she was not a monster. To the people of Waterdeep, she was none other than my bride. She's gone, so what does it matter what she really was? To me, to the people, let her remain a vision of good.'
Miltiades gazed down at his boots, clearly shocked and not knowing what to say. Rings and Belgin stood in respectful silence. Aleena looked at Khelben, back beside his kettle. Noph's eyes met the Open Lord's, and in the young hero's gaze dawned understanding and admiration.
'Hold,' Khelben said gently. 'Before this gem-bearing hand can be laid to rest, the soul within must be dispersed. I anticipated the truth of this diamond. There's only one sort of gem a doppelganger would cling to so strongly.'
He took the severed hand from Piergeiron and held it up, his eyes glinting back its reflected light. 'Now that we've all had at least a sip of the tea I brewed-a pleasant drink and protection against soul possession-it should be safe to discover just what Eidola might have to say for herself.'
The company fell back to give the wizard room. A wide-eyed Miltiades lifted his now-cool cup and downed it to the dregs.
Khelben's hand began an intricate dance in the air about the jewel. Purple and green mists trailed his fingers with each arcane gesture. Then dark and menacing words came from his lips. Mists swirled around the stone. The incantation sounded again by itself, the words seeming to echo with the vicious barbed edges of ancient evils brought into the light of a new day.
Up from the mists swirled a cloud of smoke that shivered, rippled, and became a feminine face, eyes closed, high cheekbones almost too beautiful.
'Shaleen!' Piergeiron gasped in sudden hope.
The vision's eyes opened. Her pupils were vermilion slits, glowing with hatred. 'All you wanted was me, Piergeiron. All I wanted was all you had. We could have done very well for each other.'
'Begone, vile beast!' Khelben growled. 'Let only the memory of your outward virtue remain!'
In the moment before Eidola's soul dissipated forever into the bright morning breeze, her humanity melted away. A gray-skinned, dull-eyed, wholly inhuman something stared hatefully at them all.
J. Robert King Ed Greenwood
The Diamond
Interlude
Musing and Madness
I'm no longer dead, but on some level I must be mad.
Mad with loss, first for my Shaleen, and now for my Eidola. It's the privilege, perhaps the responsibility, of survivors, especially mad survivors, to remember the dead always, to reassemble them not out of trivial facts but eternal verities.
If we must all die-and we must, of that I'm sure-at least let what remains of us in the hearts and hopes and dreams of friends be what was best and brightest. Death can have the rest.
Perhaps I am mad, Miltiades, but let me mourn. Perhaps I am heroic, Noph, but do not overindulge me. Perhaps I am both mad and heroic, for what are humans but those who know they'll die and go on living, madly heroic? Whatever I am does not matter. Whatever she was does not matter. Judge if you wish and come to your own conclusions, Water deep. I ask one thing only…
Mourn with me.
Chapter 5
Khelben watched from his all-too-accustomed spot in the balcony of the renovated chapel. There were solemn acolytes, of course, and glauren and all groaning their way through yet another dirge. This rendition of the funeral march, the third in one week, at last captured the true spirit of the music. Ponderous. Torpid. Grating. Bilious. Not merely lifeless but verging on putrific.
Khelben wouldn't have attended, but he had to support his luckless friend Piergeiron in his time of greatest need. He was also on hand to prevent Lasker Nesher from using the chance to grandstand. He would not have come, save that he knew what would inevitably follow.
The rest of Waterdeep had turned out eagerly, almost hungrily. To them, this was the funeral of a princess. Already, gossip had piled tale upon idle tale, building Eidola up into tragic proportions. Folk who had never seen, let alone met, her fell upon each others' shoulders in sobbing grief. More had been spent on flowers in two days than had been spent on shipbuilding in the past two years. The chapel was a veritable garden of white and green, all destined tomorrow to be as dead as the woman they were meant for.
Piergeiron had been right. After all the confusion of the last month, the people needed to mourn, wanted to
