imp’s bulbous eyes widened. Suddenly the diminutive creature couldn’t scramble fast enough to hand the wand over to the terrifying lich.
Valindra took it and brought it up in front of her eyes, issuing a little mewling sound as she did, as she connected to the comforting power of the Dread Ring.
“Shall I inform my mistress that you’re the new Thayan leader in Neverwinter Wood?” the imp asked.
Valindra didn’t even hear the creature, her focus locked on the sudden sensations of the roiling power. Sylora’s overreach had hurt the ring, she knew, and badly.
“Shall I inform my mistress that you’re the new Thayan leader in Neverwinter Wood?” the imp repeated.
“Be gone,” Valindra replied, staring at the wand the whole time, feeling its power as she rolled it around her fingers. “Tell her—Ark-lem!—that I’ll speak with her presently.”
The infusion of power tickled her, and mostly tickled Valindra’s thoughts. Images of Arklem Greeth flooded her. With this power, surely she could reclaim her beloved. And surely, once she’d resurrected him, he would help guide her from the tumult within her head. Maybe she wouldn’t need the Abolethic Sovereignty’s ambassador anymore. Valindra hated letting that piscine creature into her deepest thoughts, emotions, and secrets.
The imp fluttering up in front of her eyes pulled the lich from her contemplation, and as it sped away, sputtering curses, Valindra realized that it had likely asked her a question, likely repeatedly, before leaving in such a huff.
Valindra dismissed the creature from her thoughts—her increasingly scrambled thoughts. So much possibility! So great a promise of power! And the notion of Arklem Greeth at her side once more!
“No, no, I mustn’t,” the lich told herself.
Then she nodded as she considered her course and knew where she must go, and what she must ensure. She fell into her magical powers, preparing to leave, but stopped short and considered one other thing she might want to bring along.
There he was, crumpled on the ground just off to the side.
Only when she stood on the edge of the Dread Ring did Sylora Salm understand the depth of her error, the travesty she’d wrought. Basking in the power of the wand and the connection it offered her, Sylora had taken more than the life force of a few ashen zombies. Indeed, those rings of woe, and maintaining that magical shield against the barrage of arrows, had stolen power from the Dread Ring itself, and no inconsiderable amount.
Blood oozed from her shoulder. The drow’s arrow had wounded her critically, perhaps mortally. She needed the Dread Ring’s power again, she knew, to heal herself.
But dare she pull more from it? Could she?
The implications of the depleted grayness before her struck the sorceress profoundly. She could almost picture Szass Tam within that smoking ring, could almost see the look of unmitigated anger on his withered face.
He wouldn’t forgive her this time, she knew. After more than a decade, she had at last failed him.
Perhaps she could retreat belowground. Perhaps the Sovereignty would take her in.
Her thoughts spun as she sought a way out, and the desperation of her situation was brought home vividly when she heard the sound of approaching riders.
She turned and put her back to the Dread Ring. Whatever fears she had of Szass Tam’s response seemed distant then, as the immediate necessities became clear. Sylora closed her eyes and tried to connect to the power behind her, asking the Dread Ring for still more.
Entreri eased up on his nightmare’s pace as he noted the form in the clearing beyond the last tangle of trees. Drizzt did the same as he brought his unicorn up beside the nightmare, though neither steed seemed overly comfortable with the other so near.
It was indeed Sylora, all three riders saw.
“The Dread Ring is right behind her,” Dahlia warned.
They crossed through the tangle and into full view of the sorceress Sylora, and the smoky tendrils of darkness behind.
Drizzt let fly an arrow, but alas, the sorceress once more had enacted a magical shield in front of her.
Not so great a shield, Drizzt and the others realized, though, as the sorceress winced in discomfort and staggered back a step.
Drizzt broke Andahar to the left and set another arrow to Taulmaril, but behind him, before the unicorn had gone three running strides, Dahlia struck next.
As Entreri pulled his nightmare up short, Dahlia cried out for Sylora to “Defeat this!” and used all the momentum of the stopping mount to hurl Kozah’s Needle, spearlike, at her foe.