seeking Delzoun blood—living allies who could entrap the beast once more. Following the tendrils of the Hosttower, some were drawn toward Luskan. Others found darker roads, descending to the deeper Underdark, endless corridors few living dwarves would dare to walk.
They carried with them their sorrow for what once had been, their pain for what had recently been marred, and their fears for what would yet come when the primordial awakened in all its mad rage.
THE WAR OF DARK AND DARKER
BLACK SMOKE ROSE IN SERPENTINE SPIRALS ABOVE THE DEATH-SCORCHED ground. Like a river of death, a line of decay and necromantic magic reached out from the main hub of disaster across a field and into the pyroclast, seeking spirits that had been trapped within the shriveled corporeal husks and calling them forth to serve.
Sylora Salm watched this newest outreach with her typically sparkling eyes and satisfied grin. Though nearing forty, the years had not yet dulled the Thayan sorceress’s beauty—changed it, perhaps, making her a bit thicker about the waist, her skin a bit less smooth, and some small wrinkles had appeared around her eyes. But more than counterbalancing those unavoidable physical changes, there had come to the formidable woman even more inner substance and strength, more confidence and an increased air of power. It showed in her eyes, and in her grin.
Her Dread Ring was becoming a reality at long last, though the number of dead in the sparsely populated area of Neverwinter Wood, even before the cataclysm, had been deemed inadequate by several of Szass Tam’s ambassadors, most of whom were Sylora’s rivals. Szass Tam had trusted in Sylora’s judgment, though, and she continued to have faith that she would deliver on that trust, that her Dread Ring would come to fruition, giving the lich lord the hold he had so long desired on the Sword Coast.
The pyroclast began to stir, a shaking of the black volcanic stone. Some loose ash and dirt fell into growing cracks. A small gray hand appeared, withered and shriveled, its fingers twisted in a pose of perpetual agony. Slowly at first, but with increasing frenzy, the hand clawed and shoved at the rock. A pair of Ashmadai attendants started toward the spot to help the newest child of Szass Tam break free from its decades-old tomb, but Sylora held them back with an upraised hand.
She smiled widely, even giggled as the zombie pushed aside enough of the debris to poke forth its other arm, then prying the two limbs apart, shoved its head from its pyroclastic womb. Its scrabbling movements grew increasingly frenetic, the creature demanding to come free, desperate to hunt the living—but only those living, of course, who were not attuned to His Omnipotence Szass Tam.
Standing beside Sylora, Dahlia was far less imposing than she had been a decade before, though she looked exactly the same, her elf heritage protecting her from the ravages of a mere decade. She wore her traveling garb: the high black boots, the red-banded black hat, the white blouse under the black leather vest, the black skirt that climbed diagonally nearly to her hip, and the nine diamond studs in her left ear and one in her right. She had been ordered not to remove them, or to change the pattern—a reminder to Korvin Dor’crae that Sylora’s intervention had been to his benefit. And of course she still commanded Kozah’s Needle. But as there seemed something more formidable about Sylora, more solid and confident, so Dahlia appeared diminished.
She didn’t smile as she watched the birth of their newest minion—she hardly ever smiled anymore.
“Take heart, young one,” Sylora said to her, more of a tease than a gesture of goodwill. “See what we have done.”
The obedient Dahlia nodded, and wondered, not for the first time, how it had happened, how she’d fallen so far. Obviously her descent in the ranks of Szass Tam’s hierarchy had been facilitated by those long-ago pangs of conscience, her failure to finish the deed and begin that which she had promised. It hadn’t helped her, of course, that Sylora Salm had been the one to rescue her mission. That Dahlia had even been allowed to live after being captured in Luskan had surprised her, and still she wasn’t sure if the mercy had been because of her work in locating the primordial, or simply so that Sylora could subjugate her, and keep her in thrall.
Many were the days when Dahlia wished they’d killed her.
Beyond her predictable descent in the hierarchy, though, it