in the grief she still carried for the loss of the House she was to one day rule. Halisstra might not have permitted herself to shed a tear for Ched Nasad, but the malignant truth of her plight had an odd way of sur-facing in her thoughts, poisoning them with a cold, hopeless disbelief that was difficult to set aside. Long hours of imprisonment offered her the opportunity to exhume the hateful situation in its entirety and contemplate her loss of station, wealth, and security until her horrible fascination was in some way sated.
At dusk the guards brought her fresh food, a bowl of some bland but nourishing stew and another half loaf of bread. Halisstra found herself rav-enously hungry, and she devoured the meal with little thought to the pos-sibility of poison or drugs. Soon after she'd finished, the door to her cell was unlocked with a rusty scraping of iron, and Seyll Auzkovyn slipped inside again.
The priestess had shed her long, heavy cloak, and wore an elegant lady's riding outfit, an embroidered green jacket and knee-length skirt over a blouse of cream and high boots that matched the jacket. The sight of a drow priestess dressed as a noble surface elf struck Halisstra as jar-ringly incongruous.
"Did the surface lord dress you like that?" she sneered at the Eilistraee worshiper. "You seem almost a perfectly helpless gentlelady of the accursed sun elves in that outfit."
"How else should I dress?" Seyll replied. "I'm among friends here, and need not wear armor. Besides, I found that the skull and spider motifs of my previous wardrobe seemed to alarm the surface folk." She made a small gesture to the jailers outside, and the door was closed behind her. "Anyway,' she added, "there are no sun elves here."
"They're all the same to me," Halisstra said.
"When you know them better, you'll be able to tell their kindred easily enough."
"I have no wish to know them better."
"Are you so certain of that? There is always advantage in knowing one's enemies. . . especially if they need not be your enemies."
Seyll knelt easily on the floor beside Halisstra and composed herself. She was young, not much more than a hundred, and pretty enough in her own way, but her carriage was . . . wrong. Her eyes lacked the hungering ambition or the cold appraisal Halisstra was accustomed to seeing mir-rored in the faces around her. One could easily mistake Seyll's patient ex-pression for a sort of submissiveness, the lack of the will necessary to achieve, and yet there was a calm assurance about her that hinted at strength held in check.
Halisstra's eyes fell to Seyll's hands, as the priestess smoothed her gar-ments. They were strong, and callused like a weapons master's.
"I had the opportunity to examine the heraldry of your arms today, and study the devices. Melarn is a leading House of the city of Ched Nasad, is it not?"
"It was," Halisstra said.
She instantly regretted the slip. If thesurface folk didn't know of Ched Nasad's fate, then she hardly needed to provide them with a gift of infor-mation. She had to set a price on anything she revealed.
"You were defeated in a House war?"
It was a reasonable guess on Seyll's part, as most drow Houses that vanished, lost status, or otherwise fell low usually did so because of the actions of other Houses.
"Not quite."
Seyll waited a long moment for Halisstra to elaborate, and when she did not, the Eilistraee priestess shifted tactics.
"Ched Nasad is a long way from Cormanthor. At least six or seven hundred miles, with the great desert of Anauroch and the phaerimm-haunted Buried Realms between here and there. Lord Dessaer is curious about the circumstances that would bring a high-ranking daughter of a powerful House of Ched Nasad into the lands of his people. To be honest, I am curious too."
"So this is to be the method of interrogation, then?" Halisstra said. "A sympathetic ear to garner the answers to questions asked in seeming friendship?"
"Some account of your purpose in Cormanthor must be made before Lord Dessaer will release you into my parole. If your business is as inno-cent as you say, you need not be imprisoned here."
"Release me?" Halisstra laughed long and quietly. "Ah, I see you have not lost your penchant for cruelty despite your apostasy, Auzkovyn. Did your surface friends ask you to play on a prisoner's hopes by offering free-dom in exchange for cooperation, or did you suggest the tactic? Did you really think a single day in