Sylora swallowed hard. “We have encountered enemies-”
“I know of your failure,” Szass Tam’s voice reached out like a claw for her heart. “I know of the battle in the dwarven mines. I know it all.”
“There are many reasons,” Sylora blurted. “And the fight is not yet lost!” She paused then and grimaced, thinking her last word choice to be truly foolish.
“I was there,” Szass Tam assured her. “Looking through other eyes. The magic is restored. The primordial of fire is recaptured. It will not be freed again, soon or easily.”
Sylora lowered her eyes, her shoulders slumping further. “I have failed you,” she said. She stood there for many heartbeats, awaiting recrimination, awaiting a terrible death.
“You have,” Szass Tam finally said.
“It was but one battle!” Jestry cried out from behind.
A bolt of black energy flashed out of the Dread Ring, crackling the air beside Sylora. Jestry flew backward to the ground and there he squirmed, his limbs trembling in agony, his hair dancing.
“Is he valuable?” Szass Tam asked Sylora, which was his way, she knew, of asking her if Jestry should be fed to the Dread Ring.
She spent a few moments sorting the riddle. She could throw Jestry to the lich here in the hopes that his sacrifice would suffice…
“He has proven his worth many times over,” she heard herself replying instead. “Jestry Rallevin has slain many Netherese, and has led my warriors to many victories here in the forest. I should like to keep him beside me.”
“You should like to keep him?” Szass Tam retorted. An invisible hand reached out from the ashes to grab Sylora by the throat. She clawed at it, but there was nothing to grab, and yet as insubstantial as it seemed, that magical grasp lifted her up on her toes and began pulling her into the blackness. Suddenly it stopped and she hung there in the air, still scratching, still squirming. Her bulging eyes widened even more when Jestry came up beside her, similarly choked and floating.
“Do not blame me for your doom, poor Ashmadai,” Szass Tam whispered from inside the Dread Ring. “Sylora Salm requested your presence.”
As he spoke his last word, another voice rent the air, a keening sing-song cry of “Arklem! Ark-lem! Greeth, Greeth, oh, where are you! I don’t see you, Arklem. Ark-lem! But you see me… oh, I know you see me! Of course you see me. You see all.”
Sylora dropped to the ground and barely held her balance. Beside her, Jestry crumpled to the ground and lay groaning, still shaken from the black lightning. From within the Dread Ring, Szass Tam laughed.
Continued babbling drew Sylora’s gaze behind her. The lich Valindra Shadowmantle glided among the skeletal remains of many fruit trees. Her half-rotted fingers tapped her chin and she rambled to this unseen companion Arklem Greeth, as if sorting out some deep secret of the world that no one had yet deciphered.
She moved right up beside Sylora before she even seemed to notice the sorceress, the Ashmadai, or even the Dread Ring and the great being standing within.
“Oh,” she said to Sylora. “Well. Good afternoon. Well met. And it is a good day! Have you seen Arklem?”
Szass Tam cackled.
“And who is that? Who is that?” Valindra asked. “Is that you, Arklem?”
“It’s Szass Tam, Valindra,” Sylora said quietly. “The archlich of Thay.”
“There is no introduction necessary,” Szass Tam said. “Hello again, Mistress Shadowmantle. I did so enjoy our communion in the dwarven halls.”
Sylora started to question that, but bit her words back and turned a disbelieving stare over Valindra, Szass Tam’s spy.
“Oh, hello and well met, again!” Valindra replied. “I used it!”
“How?” Sylora asked, looking from Valindra back to Szass Tam. “Used what?” she added, twisting her head back to regard the elf lich at her side.
“I still have it,” Valindra assured Szass Tam, and she opened a fold of her robe and produced the scepter of Asmodeus, a powerful summoning artifact that Sylora had lent her on her journey to the lair of the primordial.
Sylora instinctively reached for the scepter, fearing that the archlich would be outraged indeed that she had given such an item to any of her inferiors.
“Good, Valindra, and well done in bringing forth the pit fiend,” Szass Tam replied, halting Sylora’s reach. “Valindra commanded the pit fiend with ease. With practiced ease. She is possessed of great power beneath her… her condition.”
Sylora nodded stupidly.
“Sylora knows-oh, don’t be silly!” Valindra erupted, and she laughed wildly. “She is my friend. She has been reminding me of the times… oh, why can’t I remember those times of power and play, of magic the same and magic different?”
“Before the Spellplague,” Sylora translated. “Her affliction has confused her, but it hasn’t erased those powers she knew before the collapse of Mystra’s Weave.”
“And why is that important?” asked Szass Tam.
“I bring the past to the present,” Valindra answered before Sylora could, and the female lich’s voice was unexpectedly steady.
“You saw the events within the dwarven mines?” Sylora asked Szass Tam.
“Some.”
“I was told that great enemies came upon my charges,” said Sylora.
“You erred in sending so meager a force,” Szass Tam countered.
“The pit fiend,” Sylora protested. “Valindra! And Dor’crae, who stood as my second.”
“You erred in sending so meager a force,” Szass Tam repeated, biting every word off short for emphasis, as if each was a verdict, a sentence and pronouncement unto itself.
Sylora lowered her eyes. “I did, my lord.”
“More than ample, were it not for the residual power of the Hosttower of the Arcane,” Valindra replied. “The fault is mine, and not Lady Sylora’s.”
Sylora and Jestry gawked in utter confusion at Valindra’s suddenly cogent words.
“I should have known-oh, I should have!” Valindra’s fingers began to tap and her head began to shake. She heaved a great sigh. “It was me, of course. I know the Hosttower-none other! So why didn’t I think it so powerful there and then, in the halls of the dwarves? Oh, Valindra!” She slapped herself across the face. “Oh Arklem! Ark- lem! Ark-lem! Arklem, where are you? Greeth, Greeth, I need you!”
Sylora turned back to Szass Tam and held up her hands helplessly.
“Valindra!” the archlich roared, his voice magically enhanced so that it sounded like the bellow of a dragon and had both Sylora and Jestry wincing and covering their ears.
“Yes?” Valindra replied sweetly, seemingly unbothered by the deafening volume.
“Your fault?”
“I should have warned Lady Sylora.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Sylora winced.
“I needed the power!” Valindra shrieked, shaking wildly and waving her emaciated arms. “Greeth! Greeth! For Greeth, of course.”
Sylora couldn’t tell if she was talking to them, to herself, or to some unseen third party.
“To bring him in. I was a bad girl, not good, not good. Arklem Greeth-Ark-lem! Ark-lem!-in the body of a great fiend. Oh, but how wonderful that would have been!”
“What is she babbling about?” Szass Tam demanded.
“Valindra?” Sylora asked calmly, moving over into the distracted lich’s field of view and forcing Valindra to look at her. “You meant to place your beloved into the corporeal form of the pit fiend?”
“Heresy!” Jestry shouted, or almost finished shouting, before another black bolt of energy slammed him and threw him some twenty feet away. He sat on the ground, hair dancing again, teeth chattering.
“Another word and I’ll eat you,” Szass Tam promised.
“Oh, Arklem in such a mighty body!” Valindra clapped her hands together. “I should have brought him to me,
