without peer. When he killed, he did so without fanfare.
Moving with a rapidity and ease born of long practice, he reached around Horgar and tore open the dwarf's throat. He turned visible the moment he struck.
The hole in the prince's throat sprayed blood across the map, across the cavern wall. Horgar gagged and fell across the table, his muttering becoming a fading, wet gurgle. The prince tried to turn to see his attacker, but Nimor had split his throat so thoroughly that the muscles of the gray dwarf's neck would not function.
Nimor grabbed Horgar by the top of his head and jerked his face around, partially to let
Horgar see who had killed him and partially to ensure that the crown prince was beyond the ability of the duergar clerics to help. Horgar's eyes went wide, and Nimor satisfied himself that the gaze had flashed recognition even as the duergar's life blood pumped from the gash in his throat. The prince's gnarled body began to spasm in its death throes. The clerics would be unable to save him.
Shouts of surprise and rage erupted around Nimor-the stomping of boots, the clank of armor,
the ring of weapons. He looked up to see duergar charging him from all sides, rushing to their fallen prince. Some were enlarging as they charged, growing taller and broader with each step.
Others called upon their innate ability to turn invisible and vanished from his sight.
No matter, Nimor smiled, swallowed, triggered a reaction in his lungs, and exhaled a cloud of billowing, viscous shadows that nearly filled the whole of the cavern. He poured all of his pent up frustration, anger, and shame into the exhalation. The cloud of darkness engulfed the onrushing duergar and siphoned energy from their souls. Nimor heard them shouting in pain,
cursing, shrieking. He stood unharmed in the midst of the cloud, grinning at the death around him.
The shadows dissipated quickly. Duergar lay scattered around the cavern, some of them dead,
some of them dying, some of them weakened so much that they could no longer stand. A few,
perhaps, would live.
Unless a drow patrol happened upon them.
Nimor located Horgar's scarred bodyguard. The duergar lay to Nimor's right, still holding his warhammer. The gray dwarf's eyes were unfocused, and drool dripped from the corner of his mouth. Nimor stepped to him, knelt, and looked him in the face.
'You should have chosen your master with more care,' he said and slit the guard's throat.
He found the death pleasingly cathartic. It always did him good to kill.
Without another word, Nimor rose, shifted back into the Shadow Fringe, and left the cavern of dead and dying duergar behind him. He wanted to see Kaanyr Vhok before he returned to
Chaulssin.
Inthracis walked the flesh-lined lower halls of Corpsehaven. The walls squirmed in his wake.
Nisviim, his jackal-headed arcanaloth lieutenant, walked beside him.
The screams of mortal souls sounded in the distance, audible through the walls. No doubt some of his mezzoloths were feeding soul larvae to his canoloth pets.
'Shall I sound the muster for the Regiment, Lord?' Nisviim asked.
Despite the arcanaloth's muzzle and overlarge canines, his voice and diction were impeccable.
His heavy robes swooshed with each step. He toyed with one of the two magical rings on his hairy fingers as he spoke.
'Soon, Nisviim,' Inthracis answered, 'but first we must attend to a small matter in my laboratory.'
The arcanaloth cocked his head with curiosity but kept his questions to himself.
'Very well, Lord,' he said.
Nisviim was as skilled an enchanter as Inthracis was a necromancer. Ordinarily, an arcanaloth of Nisviim's power would not have been content to serve as a second to Inthracis, but Inthracis had long ago learned Nisviim's true name. With it, he kept Nisviim obedient and subservient. The only alternative to service for Nisviim was pain.
They approached the flesh-and-bone door that led to one of Inthracis's alchemical laboratories. Two hulking, round-bodied, four-armed dergholoths stood silent guard outside the door, both of them dead, both of them animated by Inthracis's spells. Recognizing their master,
the guardian dergholoths made no move to stop Inthracis's advance.
Inthracis telepathically projected the password to suspend the wards on his door. The doors flared green as the wards dispelled. Decaying hands reached from the jambs to swing the portal open. The stink of rot, pleasant to Inthracis, wafted into the hallway.
Inthracis and Nisviim walked through the dergholoths and entered. Corpsehaven's dead pulled the door closed behind them.
Animated hands, arms, and claws crawled the floor of the laboratory-the aftereffects of some of Inthracis's experiments. All of them scrabbled out of the ultroloth's path. Several immobilized and magically silenced barbed devils lay on tables, all of them partially dissected. Beakers and braziers covered the multitude of bone workbenches. The handkerchief with which Inthracis had daubed Vhaeraun's blood soaked in an enchanted beaker filled with shadow essence. A bound fire mephit chained to the beaker held his tiny, flaming hand under the glass. Inthracis hoped to turn the blood into a distillate strongly resistant to Shadow Magic.
'Follow, Nisviim,' he said.
They crossed the laboratory to the opposite wall, where Inthracis spoke a word of power. The corpses in the wall rearranged themselves at its utterance, squirmed wetly aside, and formed an archway. A small, secret, heavily warded chamber lay beyond. With a mentally projected series of words, Inthracis temporarily deactivated the wards.
The ultroloth walked through, as did his lieutenant.
The arcanaloth believed that he had never before seen the chamber, but Inthracis knew better.
Nisviim had been in the chamber many times, but he remembered none of them.
Within the room, reclined in a clear case of glassteel, was Inthracis's body. Or at least one of them. As a matter of prudence, he kept at all times at least one clone of himself in temporal stasis. Were his current body to die, his soul, and his memories and knowledge, would immediately inhabit the clone. Upon being released from stasis, the clone would live; Inthracis would live.
He had been through three cloned bodies already, and the process had served him well. He'd died under devil claws before Dis's gates in battle with the forces of Dispater, and he'd been consumed by a caustic ooze on the fungus-filled thirty-fourth layer of the Abyss.
'A clone, Lord,' Nisviim observed.
Inthracis pushed aside the memories of his earlier deaths and nodded. The time had come.
Without preamble, he spoke aloud Nisviim's true name: 'Heed me, Gorgalisin.'
Instantly, Nisviim's body went slack, his eyes vacant. The arcanaloth stood perfectly still, as much an animated corpse as the dergholoths outside the laboratory. At that moment, Inthracis could have commanded Nisviim to do anything and the arcanaloth would have done it without question. Indeed, had he desired it, Inthracis could have used the invocation of Nisviim's true name to wrack the arcanaloth's soul or stop his heart.
He did not desire it, of course. A bound, named arcanaloth was too valuable an asset to waste with an amusing death.
Instead, Inthracis said, 'In the event that you gain knowledge of my death or if I do not return to Corpsehaven within a fortnight of this day, you will enter this chamber-' and Inthracis telepathically projected into Nisviim's mind the words to bypass the wards of his laboratory and the secret clone chamber-'and dispel the stasis on this body. Thereafter, you will return to your quarters and forget that any of this ever occurred. Nod if you understand.'
Nisviim nodded.
'Return now to your quarters,' Inthracis said, 'and let slip from your consciousness all that has transpired during the last hour. Thereafter, sound the muster and summon the regiment to the
Assembly Hall.'
Nisviim nodded, turned, and walked slowly from the chamber.
Inthracis watched him go, content that even if he died in combat with the drow priestesses, or if Vhaeraun betrayed and murdered him, he would live again.
In a thoughtful mood, he studied his hand, compared it to that of the clone in stasis. He wondered for a few
