of the flesh, a lich instead obsessed on harnessing the mystical powers it could never achieve while remaining a living being. That it would create its own language was no surprise.
'You would have me kill this ranger in the midst of hundreds of his own?' Krystarn let her incredulity sound in her voice.
'It is true that I am a harsh taskmaster, Krystarn Fellhammer,' Shallowsoul said, 'but it would be foolish for me to give such an assignment without giving you the means to see it through. Even while mortal, I was never a foolish man.'
Krystarn had some reservations whether the lich could remember back that far to make such a statement.
Shallowsoul sat at the desk. A single candle burned at the desk, but the drow knew it was more for conducting spells that needed heat or fire rather than any need for light. The lich saw as well as the drow in the absence of light, perhaps even better.
Krystarn surveyed the room as her mother had taught her. Her peripheral vision took in the short flights of stairs heading in three different directions less than a stone's throw from the desk area. When she had time, she fully intended to map out the area in her book based on the parts of the library she had seen so far.
'Why not have Baylee killed away from the forgathering?' the drow asked.
'I want a message sent,' the lich said, digging in a drawer of the desk. 'Fannt Golsway found the bitter dregs of a trail better left uncovered. I will not allow it to come anywhere close to this library. I want no one else to come after Baylee Arnvold or Fannt Golsway with prying eyes. The secret dies with them.'
'Are you sure that Baylee knows about the library?' Krystarn asked.
The lich regarded her with his fiery green pinpoint gaze from the hollowed eye sockets. 'You ask so that you may add to your own small store of knowledge.'
'I ask because I have a vested interest at stake as well.' Krystarn forced herself to stare into the lich's dead gaze. Her muscles trembled against the urge to turn and flee from the cold emanating from the foul creature. 'You and I have an agreement. For every five years of my servitude to you, I am allowed to make a copy of a book from this library.'
The lich waved to the shelves. 'A pittance against all that is actually here.'
'Yet a fortune to me,' Krystarn countered. 'I would learn from you, as I have offered.'
'I have no need of an apprentice. I do not intend to forsake this unlife.'
'As you have made so clear.'
Shallowsoul regarded her, and a cold smile curved his tattered lips baring his teeth even more. The drow thought she even heard the flesh crack and split. 'I want you to kill the ranger, Baylee Arnvold.'
'How?' Krystarn challenged.
The lich brought a bag onto the desk. Four gold bands big enough to go around Krystarn's head encircled the bag. Even as the bag lay on the desk, the cloth jumped and moved. 'Do you know what these are?' He tossed one to her.
At her knowing touch, Krystarn could feel the magic within the band. 'No.'
'You've seen skeleton warriors, I presume?' Shallowsoul asked.
'Yes.' Krystarn's stomach tightened at the thought, and the announcement confirmed the suspicion she had about the gold bands.
'These are control bands for the four skeleton warriors in this bag.' Shallowsoul tossed the bag across. 'Do you know how to use them?'
Krystarn caught the bag of holding. 'I've been told once you're wearing a band, you have control over the skeleton warrior.'
'Their souls were captured and placed within those bands,' Shallowsoul agreed. 'Those particular four were once enemies. I killed them, stripped their souls from their dying bodies, and enchanted them within those bands. They've been there for hundreds of years.'
The bag shifted in the drow's grip. The gold bands felt chill against her skin.
'Choose three of your men and take them with you.' Shallow-soul crossed the room to a stack and took down a weathered wooden staff. 'This staff has already been charged with enough magic to take yourself and the three you've chosen to the forgathering. There are two charges. One to open a dimensional door to take you there, and the other to bring you back again.'
Krystarn caught the staff, folding it readily into her grip.
'Go now,' the lich ordered, 'and do not fail me.'
Questions filled the drow's mind, but she uttered none of them. She had learned never to question Shallowsoul. The lich brooked no such thing. She inclined her head again, taking one last glance around the room to memorize it, then turned and walked away. She deliberately chose another path, hoping the lich thought she'd merely gotten turned around.
Two steps forward, her eyes hungrily devouring the texts around her, searching for a clue as to what the pages might contain, the air in front of her suddenly rippled. Shallowsoul's grating bone laughter flared to harsh life around her. Then the dimensional door pulled her through.
In one cold, falling eye blink, she stood back in the tunnel. A wave of dizziness overcame her as the last of the lich's laughter faded away.
One of the males reached out to aid her.
Regaining her balance, Krystarn drew one of the short daggers secreted in her corset and raked a cruel line of blood across the male's cheek. Even as he reacted, trying to step away from the blade, Krystarn stepped forward and shoved the dagger up under his nose, hooking the tip into one nostril to freeze the male into place. A trickle of blood ran down his upper lip.
'Do not forget your station,' she warned. 'I've killed drow women for less, much less a member of an imperfect gender.'
'Forgive me, Malla. I only forgot-'
'There is no forgetting around me,' Krystarn said.
'Yes, Malla.'
'Step back.' When the drow warrior moved back, Krystarn flipped the dagger slightly, cutting through the male's nostril and creating a slit almost a half-inch long.
To his credit, the warrior said nothing, though his ebony face grayed in pain.
Krystarn put her dagger away, secreting it once more. 'Do not ever let me think you see me in a moment of weakness,' she told all of the men. 'I shall not be weak because that would only encourage the craftiest among you to try to slip a blade between my ribs. And I do not intend to lose any more of you than I have to.' So far, only two of her warriors had died in the tunnels surrounding the library's hiding place.
The wounded man stepped back into the military formation, ignoring the blood that streamed down his chin and dripped to his tunic.
'Captain Vnk'itn, we are traveling again. Get your men into a bag of holding.'
The captain waved his arm and one of the men produced a large bag of holding from a backpack. He held it open while the man next to him climbed inside and disappeared without a sound.
'Also,' Krystarn told her captain, 'I want yourself and two other men whose nerve will not fail to stay with me.' She grasped the staff Shallowsoul had given her and waited for her orders to be carried out.
It would be good to get back to the business of taking lives. Lloth would be pleased. The ranger was as good as dead.
11
'What would the Waterdhavian Watch want with you, Baylee?'
The ranger shook his head at Serellia's question as he lounged in the shadows by a tree overlooking the table where Cordyan Tsald sat with one of her companions. The female watch lieutenant's name was already being passed rapidly throughout the forgathering after the axe throwing event.
'The only tie I have there is Golsway,' Baylee answered. He watched a brief fluttering of leathery wings take