skull gem’s powers,” Valindra teased. “And you can use it to possess another, to steal a body and give form to your … energy.”
The vampire’s ghost didn’t respond in words, but Valindra felt his eagerness, his desperation. She understood that Dor’crae had seen his just reward, and he would do anything, apparently, to avoid that ultimate fate.
“You are my eyes on the wind,” Valindra explained. “Szass Tam demands of me a cataclysm, and so I must deliver one. Seek out Gauntlgrym once more and return to me with word of the primordial.”
It is a long way. I haven’t much time.
“You travel as the wind,” Valindra said with a laugh. “Go! And return! And then you will seek out more. I must know more! Greeth! Greeth! Oh, but I was a bad girl! There is slaughter to be done, so much! I must know more of those around so that I can arrange the cataclysm, and you are my eyes.”
She stopped abruptly and looked curiously at the skull gem. Valindra glanced all around. It took her a few moments to realize that Dor’crae had already gone.
Good, she thought.
“What does it mean?” Jestry asked Sylora privately, less than a tenday removed from their encounter with Szass Tam. A group of Ashmadai stood nearby, engaged in their own conversations about the mission.
“Valindra seeks to please Szass Tam, and we will allow her to find her way to do so.”
“Why would you trust that mad lich?” Jestry replied, shaking his head with every word and obviously disgusted at even mentioning Valindra Shadowmantle.
“You have forgotten our visit with Szass Tam?” came the sarcastic reply.
“No, but—”
“And that Valindra deflected his ire from us, and to herself?”
“You believe she did that for our benefit?” Jestry asked.
Sylora wore a puzzled expression, as if the answer should be obvious.
“I think Valindra is simply insane,” Jestry replied.
Sylora seemed for a moment as if she were about to lay him low with a shock of lightning, or some other powerful spell.
Jestry swallowed hard. He realized he was being quite forward. Dare he speak to her in such a manner?
But she quickly relaxed and nodded. Jestry sighed. Sylora must value him as an honest advisor to allow him to speak his mind.
“She has no idea of the danger involved in admitting such a failure to the archlich.” He couldn’t help but raise his voice for just a moment before catching himself and going back to a whisper. “She was rambling, hardly coherent of her own admission of failure.”
“No,” Sylora said flatly. “You underestimate Valindra Shadowmantle at your own peril.”
“Underestimate? I’m terrified of the creature!” Again his voice rose, and a few Ashmadai glanced his way before wisely turning back to their own conversation.
“You underestimate the power of her mind,” Sylora explained. “She survived the unwitting conversion to lichdom and the Spellplague, and that’s no small thing. I’ve spoken with her at length about her early days after the fall of Arklem Greeth. Yes, she was quite insane, but a drow psionicist helped pull her cogent reasoning back to the fore.”
“She babbles, she sings, she is … inappropriate,” Jestry argued.
“She allows the insanity to spill forth. She releases it, and copes with it, and follows it up with reminders of reality. She saved us from Szass Tam, consciously so.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because she knows she’s not yet ready to command the Ashmadai of Neverwinter Wood, nor is she capable of bringing the Dread Ring to fruition. Valindra needs me, or she will disappoint Szass Tam far more than did the failure in Gauntlgrym.”
“And when she needs you no more?”
“I will be pleased to accept my victory for Szass Tam and return to Thay, leaving Valindra as Szass Tam’s commander on the Sword Coast.”
“They will destroy you,” Jestry insisted, but Sylora shook her head and wore an expression of complete confidence.
“I’ve spoken to Valindra at length,” she repeated with gravity. “And I’ve studied the history of Valindra Shadowmantle, once a mistress in the fabled Hosttower of the Arcane. She was accomplished in life, and she will become even more powerful in undeath, as her mind heals.”
Jestry stepped back and looked Sylora over carefully. “You see her as a conduit to your own immortality,” he said suddenly, then he gasped, obviously fearing he’d gone too far.
But Sylora grinned. “You are but twenty years old and I near middle age,” the sorceress explained. “You’ll one day understand. Now, go.” She pointed to the path, which seemed a tunnel through the dark trees lining its sides, branches intertwined