Draygo Quick had disappeared.
Alegni didn’t have to open his eyes to know the identity of the speaker. It was Effron the Twisted, of course, Draygo Quick’s understudy, who should have been at study with Argyle-at study with Argyle forever, or at least until Herzgo Alegni was dead of old age.
“Can you not even look upon me?” the newcomer asked, and Alegni opened his eyes to regard the young tiefling, who firmed his chin and lifted it.
Alegni knew him to be more than twenty years of age, but he looked like a young teenager. Frail and thin, so very thin, his eyes, one red, one blue, barely reached the top of Alegni’s broad chest. He sported ramlike horns, like Alegni’s, lifting from mid-scalp forward then rolling around in a tight outside circle and looping back, tapering to a point that just jutted forward of the front bend. His hair was black, shot with purple, swept back and hanging scraggly around his painfully thin and twisted shoulders. This battered creature had suffered great trauma, and just looking at him now reminded Alegni that he should not be alive. His left shoulder jutted out behind him, his useless and withered left arm hung limply down his back, swaying as he walked.
He wore what seemed more like a woman’s slip than a wizard’s robe. The clingy material emphasized his bony frame, his jutting ribcage, his narrow hip bones. He carried a black bone wand in his right hand, and constantly worked it in circles around his fingers. Yes, Alegni remembered that, too.
“I do so always enjoy the look upon your face when first you glance upon me,” Effron the Twisted said. It was obviously a lie, for the young tiefling struggled to hold his composure and keep the pain from his thin face.
“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
