others are.' Naglatha nodded to her
Knights. Heraclos and Milos moved to separate ends of the table, their robes parting enough to reveal their impressive scimitars. Tazi and Justikar had no choice but to move along with them, still under her influence.
'Enough is enough,' shouted Azhir Kren rising to her feet. Tazi could tell the tharchioness kept a watchful eye on their position as she challenged Naglatha. 'What nonsense are you speaking of? '
Naglatha did not back down. 'I know you hate Rash-emen, former general. Well, I say you have reason to hate them. We should take that country and any other that stands in our way!'
'And how to you propose garnering support for that?' she asked, but even from where Tazi stood riveted, she could see the other woman was intrigued as well. Naglatha had struck a nerve with more than just one of the guests within the walls of the Citadel.
'With this,' Naglatha told them proudly, and she removed the stolen parchment from the concealment of her long robe. 'With this one spell, all our dreams can come true. Thay can take its rightful place as the true power of Faerun. And we will claim that right through blood,' she informed them, 'not through petty commerce. People will say our names in hushed whispers and fear us as they should, not think of us as common merchants. We shall be terror itself.'
Tazi could see some of the other wizards were starting to get agitated. But none of the others in attendance had brought any slaves with them for this gathering, and they were well aware that Naglatha's servants were all armed, even though they didn't know two were unwilling.
'And what will that do?' asked the black-eyed Zulkir Aznar Thrul.
'Watch as I call forth all the atrocities that live beneath the Citadel and the Thaymount. With these beasts under my control, I will finally rid this land of that undead lich once and for all. His end will be permanent with no hope of resurrection. And with him gone, we shall guide Thay into the future.'
Naglatha held the parchment in one hand and gestured for silence with the other. Slowly, she began to read the ancient spell. Tazi heard uncertainty in her voice as she tripped over some of the words written in an ancient hand. But as she progressed through the spell, her confidence grew. A mild tremor shook the building, and the other wizards looked to the floor and each other in some confusion. The Zulkir Mythrell'aa, small as she was, was even thrown to the floor by its force.
Suddenly, from the other side of the room, a cracked voice cried out in anger.
'Stop!'
And Tazi found she could turn her head ever so slightly. She believed that Naglatha was so focused on her spell that she must have had difficulty maintaining her other enchantments, or she had simply lost interest in them. She turned her head farther, saw that the duergar had some mobility as well, and beheld a fearsome sight beyond him.
From a corridor opposite the one Tazi had used,Szass Tarn appeared. But it was not the visage that had charmed Tazi the night before. The lich was so enraged by Naglatha's impudence that he had entered the chamber wearing his true form. Gone were the healthy features of silky black hair and beard, the full cheeks and the coal eyes. Only his luxurious robes remained unchanged, though they now hung off of a skeletal frame and were frayed at the edges. He floated into the room, with his robes fluttering behind him like some winged beast of prey, and Tazi could see his eyes were burning points of red light in his skull, skin stretched paper thin across it. He held out one bony arm toward Naglatha and screamed again, but she ignored his skeletal claw and finished her heinous chant before the lich could stop her. As the last words left her lips, she raised her head to meet the lich's frightening stare and smiled in absolute triumph, the ground trembling beneath her feet.
From somewhere deep within the bowels of the Citadel, howls and screams slowly rose in volume until the cacophony momentarily drowned out all other sound within the chamber. Tazi pressed her hands against her ears.
But the noisЂi did relent and fade until the only sound in the room was a deep, rumbling laughter. Tazi looked to Naglatha, but it was not her. As Tazi realized the Red Wizard's hold over her was almost gone, she twisted at her torso to see where the sound came from. As soon as she turned to the table, Tazi could see that all the wizards faced Pyras, who was now rising to his feet.
Gone was his sickly pallor and demeanor. He continued to laugh deeply, and a smile formed on his full, fleshy lips. No one seemed more surprised by the turn of events than Naglatha herself. As he straightened himself, Tazi rubbed at her eyes, temporarily disorientated by the vestiges of Naglatha's spells, because she thought he appeared to be growing as he stood. But then Tazi realized that was exactly the case.
Pyras knocked back his cushioned chair and spread his arms forth. The muscles bulged and inflated along his arms, and at the same times, claws stabbed through the tharchion's former fingernails. With a tearing sound, his robes gave way as he reached a height of almost fifteen feet. Tazi could see his skin darken from its former pale flesh color to red and black. And his skin appeared to harden and split into a series of plates that more closely resembled armor than flesh. He dropped his head forward and screamed. Tazi watched, horror-struck and fascinated at the same time, as the skin on his face seemed to melt and run forward to accommodate the muzzle that sprouted out from the center of his skull. He threw back his head, and Tazi could hear flesh splitting and tearing. Great horns speared their way through his scalp and twisted above him, and a pair of giant, insectlike wings opened up from his back.
As the creature regarded the others in the room with his red-slitted yellow eyes, he flexed those monstrous wings behind him. Tazi saw some of the other wizards scramble backward, and one or two actually fled. Naglatha, however, was transfixed with wonder-but also surprise-as though this was not her doing.
Tazi turned to the lich and she saw something akin to recognition on his skeletal visage.
'Eltab!' he hissed.
The towering fiend laughed again and pulled back his lips in whatTazi supposed was a smile, though it looked more like a monstrous grimace.
'Yesss…' the demon hissed at Szass Tarn. 'It is me once again.'
Tazi turned to the lich and could see surprise play across his skeletal features, which was difficult to do.
'Did you think I was truly gone? ' the tanar'ri lord mocked him.
'My spell of Twin Burning-' Szass Tarn began.
'It was incomplete, old man. You failed.' And the creature flexed his great wings again, spanning the length of the table, reveling in his physical freedom.
Tazi, now completely free of Naglatha's power, drew her sword. She heard the dwarf snort. He was actually laughing at her and the sorry picture she presented. But he had freed his war axe as well. They stood ready though no one in the hall moved an inch. Somewhere deep in the corridors below, the screaming started up again, and the ground began to shake once more. Yet everyone was mesmerized by the tableau in front of them.
'You sought to bind me, that is true,' the demon admitted. 'But you made a crucial error in your ritual. You tried to close the gate on me, but you were sloppy, and left it open just a crack. And that was all I needed.' He laughed again.
'Oh, it took time. But that was something I had. You understand that, don't you, dead man?' he looked at the lich, but Szass Tam remained silent. 'I was weak after you tore me free from my prison under Eltabbar, and that was the only reason you were able to paralyze me with your Death Moon Orb and bind me to your Throne. But you weren't strong enough to make it last, though you thought you had.
'As I sat there, I reached out with my powers, knowing there existed a way to escape. Granted, I couldn't go far, but I didn't need to, did I? I found what I needed easily enough under your roof.'
Tazi looked from the lich to the tanar'ri lord and wondered why neither struck the other. Or why no other wizard, including Naglatha, made a move to flee or fight. However, Tazi found she was just as spellbound as the others by the demon-king and wondered if that was somehow his doing.
'You kept your young puppet here, always under your wing, under your watchful eye,' he explained in his ancient voice, referring to Pyras. 'You needed him because of his weakness. So did I.'
'Where is he?' demanded the lich, andTazi doubted the necromancer truly cared about the fate of his minion. The tanar'ri lord only smiled more.
'Over the years of my entrapment, I sent my energies over to him. Slowly, oh so slowly, so no one would know. And you helped me grow strong, Szass Tarn. You kept this vessel,' he paused to tap his chest with a heavy claw, 'so safe and so protected from harm. Even you must appreciate the irony in all of that. And all this time I have been waiting and watching and planning,' the demon-king finished and the ground rumbled again.
