been named for an evil and insane god. The horse was nearly impossible to ride, but his temperament precisely suited Matteo's mood and purpose.
He set to work saddling and bridling the horse. Cyric must have sensed the jordain's urgency and found it to his liking. For once the stallion stood docile, and even opened his mouth to accept the bit and bridle. Matteo had barely settled into the saddle when Cyric shot out of the stable like a ballista bolt, thundering toward the gate and whatever misadventure waited beyond.
Chapter Three
In his watery lair, Akhlaur bent over his table, scrawling with feverish haste as he etched runes into delicate, faintly blue parchment. After much experimentation, he'd found that a triton's hide yielded the finest parchment for his current purposes-long lasting and water resistant, not to mention its pleasing azure hue.
A trio of magic-dazed tritons, for the moment still wearing their blue skins, huddled in one of the cages that lined the vast coral chamber. Akhlaur favored these creatures and considered them nearly the equivalent of elves in terms of usefulness. Except for their coloring, their astonishing beauty, and their seal-like flippers, they resembled humans and were thus excellent test subjects. Their innate magic, however, provided some unexpected and interesting possibilities.
Akhlaur did not limit his studies to tritons. Each cage housed creatures whose lives and deaths contributed to the necromancer's art. Their moans and cries provided a counterpoint to Akhlaur's frenzied thoughts.
'An interesting spell, this,' he muttered as he scrawled. 'Wouldn't have thought an elf could manage it. Can't be necromancers, elves. Bah! Whoever said
A note of pride had crept into the wizard's musings concerning the elf woman. He shrugged aside Kiva's years of captivity and torment, choosing to regard her as his 'apprentice.'
'Apprentices challenge their masters. That is the way of things. You've done well, little elf-' he broke off to concentrate on shaping a particularly clever and lethal rune-'but you're not ready to face Akhlaur in battle.'
The wizard finished the spell with a flourish. He rose and stroked his scaled chin as he stalked past a row of cages.
He paused before the bone and coral dungeon that housed the laraken. The monster instinctively lunged toward the life-giving magic surrounding Akhlaur, then cringed away when it realized the source.
Akhlaur considered his pet for a long moment. He needed a subject upon which to test the difficult spell he'd just transcribed. The laraken had survived this spell once, but Akhlaur could not be entirely certain that it would do so again. Most of the wizardly enchantments drained from Kiva passed through the laraken whole and with full detail; this one came to Akhlaur as the mere shadow of a spell. The laraken had absorbed the general shape and form during the casting, and passed this imperfect report along to its necromancer master. Akhlaur had filled in some gaps. Most likely he had improved the spell, but with elven magic, who knew?
'Too risky,' he decided. 'Let us send another beast first, and see how it fares.'
The necromancer strolled past his collection of monsters. One, a fierce, four-armed fishman that reminded him of a mutant sahuagin, caught his eye. These creatures were common enough in the Elemental Plane. Should the experiment fail, it would be a simple matter to acquire another.
With a nod, Akhlaur shook out the parchment roll and began to read aloud. The spell he'd taken from the laraken-which in turn the laraken had taken from Kiva-rang through the living water. Bubbles rifted from the necromancer's lips and drifted off to encircle the caged beast. They spun and dipped and glowed, bringing to mind elves dancing beneath a starlit sky. Akhlaur ignored the elven flavor of Kiva's spell and concentrated on the sheer ingenuity of it.
As the chant continued, the bubbles began to merge, growing in size as they united. When Akhlaur pronounced the final, keening word of power, the bubbles converged into a single sphere that surrounded the monster.
For a moment the necromancer merely stood and watched as the creature threw itself from one side of its prison to the other, gasping in the thin and unfamiliar air. The scent of its terror was as intoxicating as a greenwitch's herb garden. Akhlaur drew in long draughts, taking time to savor its pungency. When at last he felt pleasantly sated, he took a small coral circlet from a spell bag and placed it between him and the entrapped monster. It hung like a round, empty frame on an invisible wall, or perhaps a peephole such as the powerless and suspicious often carved into their doors.
Again Akhlaur began to chant. A wall of power began to leech from the edges of the coral circle, gleaming with weird greenish light. When the wall spanned the vast chamber, the wizard took a tiny metal token and hurled it at the coral frame, shouting a single word.
The token disappeared with a burst of light and sound. The bubble lurched toward the coral circlet. It clung, and the air it contained rushed through the hole in a whirling spill of bubbles. The monster, too, was sucked toward the opening. Its form elongated weirdly and flowed through the opening like a genie emerging from a narrow- necked bottle.
In moments the giant bubble was gone, and the monster stood but three paces from Akhlaur. The wizard dispelled the wall of force with a single gesture and smiled into his captive's hideous face. The monster bared its fangs and snarled like a cornered wolf.
'Attack me,' Akhlaur invited. 'This day has been lacking in diversion.'
For a moment instinct warred against instinct as the creature weighed certain death against continued captivity. A tormented roar ripped from its throat.
Akhlaur shrugged. 'Indecision is its own choice,' he observed. He nodded, and the bone gate of the monster's cage yawned open. A flick of the necromancer's fingers created a miniature vortex that sucked the beast back into its prison and slammed the door behind it.
Not giving the monster another thought, the necromancer set to work affixing the coral frame to one of the cage's bars, securing it with wards and trigger spells.
'A gift for you, little Kiva,' he said, gazing toward another tiny opening-the imperfect gate, a leak that spilled water and magic into Halruaa. 'You sent me the laraken. When you touch the waters of the spring, I shall respond with a messenger of my own. Given the trouble you've taken on my behalf, it would be rude to ignore you. The proprieties, after all, must be observed.'
The necromancer chuckled, envisioning the elf woman's surprise when the four-armed beast leaped from the gate. It was a small ploy, a mere feint in the opening moments of battle. But oh, how marvelous was the prospect of a worthy opponent!
Akhlaur let himself drift into pleasant dreams of vengeance. His thoughts dwelt not upon the little elf woman, but on his oldest friends-his most hated foes.
The Nath, the northeastern corner of Halruaa, was among the wildest and most desolate places in all the land. A few trade roads transversed it, but they were narrow and lightly traveled. Barren, rock-strewn valleys twisted among foothills honeycombed with caves, and often covered with dense forest. Monsters and bandits laired in these hidden places, but more dangerous still were the slim gray figures that moved like shadows through the smoking ruins of a trade caravan.
All were female Crinti, an elf-descended race who were gray of hair and skin and soul. Their leader kept over to the side, mounted on a dusky horse and directing the activity with an occasional gesture of her slim, gray hands. More infrequently, she snarled out a command in a language that once, long ago, had been that of the drow. Shanair, a chieftain among the Crinti raiders, took much pride in her dark heritage.
The Halruaans called her kind 'shadow amazons.' Thanks to the human barbarians in her ancestry, Shanair was tall for an elfblood, and powerfully built. Her limbs were long and lean, her curves generous over a tightly muscled frame. A mass of iron-colored hair tumbled over her shoulders like a mountain stream, framing a face that was all planes and sharp angles. Although her ears were only slightly pointed, she emphasized her elf heritage with silver ear cuffs that extended up into exaggerated, barbed points. Her boots and leathers and cloak were all gray. Other than her eyes, which were an unexpectedly vivid shade of blue, the only slash of color about her was the jagged red tattoo encircling her upper arm and the red paint that turned her fingernails into bloody talons.
