'Akhlaur,' the demon said in a grating, watery voice, pronouncing the word like a foul curse. It sprung, massive hands curved into rending talons.
The necromancer dropped his useless weapons and seized the creature's wrists. With preternatural strength he grappled with the demon, chanting defensive spells. Magic crackled like black lightning around the struggling pair. The writhing eels on the demon's head shrieked and flailed about in agony as they burned and withered. One by one, they fell limp to creature's massive shoulders. Fetid steam rose from the demon's body, and green-black scales lifted from its flesh like worn shingles. Too furious to understand its own death, the water demon moved Akhlaur inexorably back toward the gate.
The necromancer's hate-filled eyes sought Noor's face. He captured her gaze and jerked the demon's hand, pantomining a slashing motion.
Noor's head snapped back, and four burning lines opened her throat. She felt a terrible sundering, as if her spirit was being ripped from her flesh, and then she felt nothing at all.
The next thing Noor knew was a sense of darkness fading into thick gray mist. Even before her vision cleared, Noor knew that she was back at the Confluence-she could feel its power. Akhlaur's tower had also returned to its rightful spot, but it was ghostly, insubstantial. Through its misty form, Noor could see a mossy obelisk, nearly half submerged in swamp water.
Puzzled, she looked around. Water was everywhere, as it had been when she first arrived at the tower. Gone were the elves' prisons, the stables, the gardens full of flowering poisons.
Noor stood in the barge that had brought her here, and she was not alone. A young woman, garbed in red and black travel clothes and wearing a fortune in Ghalagar jewels, stood less than arm's length away, staring at her with horror-glazed eyes.
For a long moment Noor gazed at a face very like her own: delicate features, dark eyes enormous in a pretty face gone far too pale. Noor reached out to the girl, half expecting her to mirror the gesture. But the girl shrunk back, flinging out one hand as if to ward off a blow. She uttered a choked little cry as Noor's fingers grazed her small hand, and the deathwizard ring upon it.
Pain, unexpected and searing, flashed through Noor. She snatched her hand away. What matter of creature was this? Her flesh was hard as stone, and burning hot!
The fleeting contact seemed to have the opposite effect upon the girl. Her face, already pale, blanched a whiter shade. She tore the obsidian ring from her finger, revealing a livid blue band beneath-skin as dead and frozen as the feet of fools who got caught in storms on the Lhairghal peaks. The girl's terrified eyes darted to Noor, and then to ghostly tower, which was swiftly fading away.
'It was a dream,' she said in a faint, choked voice. 'None of it was real!'
'Of course it is,' Noor responded tartly, out of patience with mystery in general and this shrinking wench in particular. 'You would deny the most powerful necromancer of our time?'
'Our time?' The girl's laughter was brittle, with a hysterical edge. 'Akhlaur is long dead!'
A faint, nameless apprehension stirred in Noor's heart. 'That is impossible. I am bound to Lord Akhlaur by a death bond. His death will be mine, and while he lives, I cannot truly die.'
For some reason this only seemed to deepen the girl's horror. Then something else dawned in her eyes. Noor would have called it pity, but that was not an emotion people dared turn in her direction!
The girl collected herself with visible effort and pointed to obelisk. 'This monument was raised two hundred years ago, in memory of a dark time and heroic ancestors.'
Noor bristled. 'Whose ancestors? This is Ghalagar land!'
The girl was silent for a long moment. 'The swamp waters are rising. Powerful magic, you see, carries a stern price.'
'So I've heard tell,' Noor said coldly.
'Family legend claims that when the obelisk is fully submerged, Halruaa will cease to be. Legend also claims that a spirit lingers here, weeping. Her tears, whether they be penitence or pique, mingle with the rising waters.'
'What is that to me?' Noor said heatedly. 'You speak of legends, and family, yet this had been Ghalagar land since the dawn of Halruaa!'
'It was Ghalagar land. The family name was changed, so that we would always remember the price of magic. I never understood why until now.'
'Changed? To what?'
The girl took a deep breath and met Noor's eyes. 'Noor.'
For a long moment Noor stood speechless. She could make no sense of this odd pronouncement, or of much else that had happened since she stepped into this barge.
Then it occurred to her that she was not in the barge, but standing just above the surface of the water, just as she had floated above this girl at the onset of the ritual.
So that was it, then. The battle in Akhlaur's tower had jolted her from her body-which, inexplicably, was independent enough to resist the reunion. Fortunately, Noor had a necromancer's skill now, and a deathwizard ring. With such power in her possession, she would soon resolve the matter. She reached for the ring, but the girl shrunk away.
'You and I are one,' Noor reminded her. She lunged forward, arms outstretched to embrace and engulf her material form. 'We are both Noor.'
The girl shrunk back, shaking her head in frantic denial. 'Farrah,' she gasped out. 'My name is Farrah Noor, and no magic is worth such a price!'
So saying, she hurled the deathwizard ring into the mist and dropped down to huddle into the prow of the boat. Her blue lips moved in silent chant as she sped through the words to the enchantment. The boat began to move away from the Confluence.
Noor watched the skiff float away, skimming over the waters and leaving no sign of its passing. She noticed, without thinking it particularly odd, that her own feet did not even dimple the waters upon which she stood.
The skiff disappeared into the mists. Noor tried to follow, but the water held her fast. She struggled like one in a nightmare, unable to move, unable to flee.
Time passed. Noor could not say how much, nor did it seem particularly important to know. Exhausted by her struggle, she sank down at the base of the obelisk. Beneath her the water felt as firm as a dark, murky mirror.
But not completely dark, she noted. There, far below, was the ruby gleam of the deathwizard ring, glowing as it had when she had used it to fend off the undead Ghalagar matriarch. Noor's spirits lifted at the thought of possessing this treasure. As she studied the water, it seemed to her that the ring took on a richer hue, and that the light grew and splintered off into glowing fragments. Her excitement grew as the shards of light deepened and focused, revealing not one ring, but several!
She let out a little crow of triumph. It was a rare necromancer who owned more than one such ring! They would be among her dearest possessions. They would bring her great power.
Noor reached for the rings, but the water would not part for her seeking hands. She tried again and again, but the surface of the water was an impenetrable as glass.
As Noor slumped, defeated, against the half-drowned obelisk, memory stirred. This was vaguely familiar. Young wizards had come before, and would again. After all, it was the family custom. And some of them would hurl their deathwizard dreams into the mist.
They would come again, but she so hated waiting! It was cold in the swamp, painfully cold. She huddled at the base of the obelisk, wrapped her arms tightly around her shivering form. Despairing tears slid down her transparent cheeks, mingling with the slowly rising waters.
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE
19 Marpenoth, the Year of Wild Magic (1372 DR)
Long rays of morning sun slanted through Halruaa's ancient trees, reaching out like tentative fingers to waken the rain-sodden village. But Ashtarahh was already long awake and bustling with activity.
The summer monsoon season was over. The village diviner decreed that yesterday's storm would be the last.
