other business to attend, and I’ll not hold my forces here in Neverwinter Wood another decade. Nor will I have Sylora’s Dread Ring come to fruition. I hold you personally responsible to stop it. Know that most of all.”
“Yes, Master.”
Draygo Quick stared at him for a bit longer then slowly turned and walked away, the shadows gathering around him as he went. Barely a few strides away, his form became so blurred as to be indistinguishable, and he was gone, melting back into the Shadowfell.
Herzgo Alegni closed his eyes and brought a hand up to rub his face, feeling weary.
“You truly can’t even bear to look upon me,” came a scratchy and whiny voice from the same area where Draygo Quick had disappeared.
Alegni didn’t have to open his eyes to know the identity of the speaker. It was Effron the Twisted, of course, Draygo Quick’s understudy, who should have been at study with Argyle—at study with Argyle forever, or at least until Herzgo Alegni was dead of old age.
“Can you not even look upon me?” the newcomer asked, and Alegni opened his eyes to regard the young tiefling, who firmed his chin and lifted it.
Alegni knew him to be more than twenty years of age, but he looked like a young teenager. Frail and thin, so very thin, his eyes, one red, one blue, barely reached the top of Alegni’s broad chest. He sported ramlike horns, like Alegni’s, lifting from mid-scalp forward then rolling around in a tight outside circle and looping back, tapering to a point that just jutted forward of the front bend. His hair was black, shot with purple, swept back and hanging scraggly around his painfully thin and twisted shoulders. This battered creature had suffered great trauma, and just looking at him now reminded Alegni that he should not be alive. His left shoulder jutted out behind him, his useless and withered left arm hung limply down his back, swaying as he walked.
He wore what seemed more like a woman’s slip than a wizard’s robe. The clingy material emphasized his bony frame, his jutting ribcage, his narrow hip bones. He carried a black bone wand in his right hand, and constantly worked it in circles around his fingers. Yes, Alegni remembered that, too.
“I do so always enjoy the look upon your face when first you glance upon me,” Effron the Twisted said. It was obviously a lie, for the young tiefling struggled to hold his composure and keep the pain from his thin face.
“I have not seen you in three years, and only a few times, and a few short times, since you were a boy,” Alegni replied.
“But you recognize me!” the emaciated warlock replied, and he jerked left-to-right so that his withered and useless arm would swing around enough for him to clap his left hand with his right.
“Don’t do that!” Herzgo Alegni warned through clenched teeth.
Effron laughed at him. It was a sad laugh.
“Go back to Draygo,” Alegni said. “I warn you, there’s no place for you here.”
“Master Draygo thinks there is.”
“He’s wrong.”
“You underestimate my powers.”
“I know your skill.”
“You underestimate my knowledge of your enemies, then,” Effron insisted. “Knowledge that will give you the victory you desire.” He widened his red eyes and gave a crooked grin, revealing a mouthful of straight white teeth that seemed so out of place with the rest of the twisted tiefling. “The victory Master Draygo orders you to complete, and in short time. Without me, that will not be achieved. Do you so loathe me that you would accept failure and the consequences of Master Draygo’s rage rather than accept my help?”
“Your help,” Alegni snorted.
“You’re not winning here,” Effron insisted.
“Perhaps you were so deep in your studies you missed my victory outside Neverwinter’s wall.”
“If you think that a victory, then you’re more in need of me than even Master Draygo believed—and he believed it quite strongly, I assure you.”
Alegni glowered at him.
“Was Sylora Salm on the field?” Effron asked.
Alegni narrowed his eyes.
“Was her champion? The elf warrioress with the mighty staff?”
“She has not been in these parts for years.”
“She returns,” Effron assured him, and Alegni couldn’t hide his surprise.
“I know your enemies,” Effron said. “I’ll help you win here, and then I’ll be gone.” He paused and considered Alegni, who could barely hide his contempt. “Which would be the more pleasing to you?”
Herzgo Alegni scowled and turned away, and Effron slumped, a bit of moisture glistening in his strange eyes.
Intrigue overwhelmed caution in Valindra’s thoughts as she glided