Valindra Shadowmantle’s fiery red eyes gleamed with hunger as the scrabbling zombies passed her by.
She held the magical scepter, and through it willed the zombie legions out of the forest and across the small clearing. They ran on all fours to the distant wall, oblivious to the many arrows reaching out at them.
A fireball lit up the night on the middle of the field, consuming several of the hunched forms, but Valindra, so amused by destruction, could only giggle.
A group comprised of living soldiers ran up beside Valindra, but didn’t pass.
“Would you have us attack, Mistress Valindra?” asked an Ashmadai woman, a young and pretty thing who had until only recently been the consort of Jestry.
“Let them play! Let them play!” Valindra shrieked in response, and the group of Ashmadai shrank back against the unexpected anger in her voice. “Ark-lem … Ark-lem … oh, which way was it? He will help us, he will. Greeth! Greeth! Greeth!”
The Ashmadai woman looked to her companions and rolled her eyes.
Suddenly, Valindra’s magic hurled the woman up in the air and onto the field, where she stumbled, but managed to hold her footing.
“To the wall!” Valindra commanded her. “Go and kill them!”
Beside the lich, the group of Ashmadai cheered and started to charge, but Valindra turned on them fiercely and held them back. “Not you!” she ordered, and as one, they stopped short.
Valindra turned back to the young woman. “You,” she explained, her voice sinister and thick with vicious amusement.
The woman hesitated and the lich leveled her scepter. Whether out of fear or from the simple reminder of her loyalty to Asmodeus, the warrior woman gave a battle cry and sprinted toward the wall.
Then Valindra waved her scepter and drove on her zombie legions. She nodded repeatedly, happily, as hundreds more swarmed out from the forest. She reached into the scepter, feeling its power, calling on that power to increase, to awaken fully. She held it out in front of her horizontally and closed her eyes, trying to find the tunnel gate to connect this place with the Nine Hells.
She imagined the looks on the faces of those fools in the ruins of Neverwinter when a greater devil, a pit fiend, perhaps, walked into their midst.
The ends of the scepter flared to life. Sylora had told her not to summon forth any denizens of the Nine Hells, but Valindra was too caught up in the moment to remember Sylora’s words, or to care.
She spoke the name of a fiend, and ended with a great, ecstatic exhale as she closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, she expected to see a great devil standing in front of her, but alas, there was none. Just the scepter, its ends still shining, but hardly with the power Valindra expected. She closed her eyes and redoubled her efforts, demanding that a devil come forth.
But as she looked more deeply into the magic, Valindra realized that there was no tunnel to be found.
“Sylora,” she rasped, for Sylora had been in possession of the scepter earlier that day, and had shown some great control over it. Szass Tam had given it to Sylora Salm, not to Valindra, and Sylora had granted it to Valindra for the journey to the dwarven mines. Was it possible that the sorceress knew some other secrets of the item, some internal locks on some of its powers, perhaps?
Valindra tried one more time to bring forth a devil, but she couldn’t—not even a minor manes or some other such fodder creature.
“Clever witch,” she whispered, and she cursed Sylora a thousand times under her breath.
From across the way came the shouts, and the field near the wall lit up with fire and lightning as Neverwinter’s wizards joined the battle. Before the thunderous retorts ended, however, the screams began. Not shouts of glory or cries of rage, but screams of pain.
Zombies wouldn’t cry out in such a manner, of course. And other than the zombies, there was only the one living Ashmadai nearing the battle.
Valindra uttered no more curses at Sylora or anyone else. She basked in the screams, found herself growing more animated by their beautiful pitch. If she’d had a beating heart then surely it would have thumped against her breast at that moment.
She turned to the Ashmadai. “Surround me,” she ordered, and she, too, began drifting out to the open field to join in the battle.
“This is the moment of our glory,” Jestry continued to complain as he and Sylora traveled swiftly south of Neverwinter.
Sylora Salm had heard enough. She stopped abruptly and whirled on Jestry, her eyes and nostrils flaring. “You are my second—and I hold you there above others who are far more powerful than you and quite envious of you.”
“Valindra,” Jestry said.
“Not Valindra,” said Sylora. “Though she could destroy you with a thought. Nay, there are others about, of whom you do not know and will not know.”
The Ashmadai brought his hands to his hips. His pout was just beginning to show when Sylora slapped him across the face.
“You are my second,” she said. “Act as such or I’ll be rid of you.”
“The battle is back there!” Jestry argued. “The moment of our glory—”
“That’s a minor skirmish to placate Szass Tam,” Sylora shot back. Jestry’s eyes widened. “My lady!”
“Are you afraid to hear the truth? Or can I not trust you? Perhaps I should now fear that you will betray me to Szass Tam?”
“No, my lady, but—”
“Because if you so intend,” Sylora went on as if not even hearing him, “then you should consider two things. First, perhaps I’m merely testing your loyalty in speaking so candidly to you, when in truth I’m not speaking candidly at all. And second, you should always be aware that I can kill you—too quickly for even Szass Tam to save you. I can kill you and I can deny you a place at the foot of Asmodeus, do not doubt.”
“I am loyal,” Jestry weakly replied.
“It doesn’t matter, as I’m higher in Asmodeus’s regard than a mere zealot,” she answered.
“I’m loyal to you,” Jestry apologized.
Sylora paused and let it all sink in, nodding for a few moments. “Our attack is merely a feint, Jestry,” she explained. “We must pressure the folk who attempt to rebuild Neverwinter, as I wish to see the limits of their powers. Valindra commands less than a fifth of my zombies this night, and only a small number of your Ashmadai. She will not risk herself against the walls of Neverwinter, for that’s not her mission. Perhaps some of the citizens will die this night, but we will not take Neverwinter, nor tear down her walls.”
“But still, I would be there.”
“We’ll learn—”
“I would learn!” he insisted. “I’m no novice to battle, personal or grand.”
Sylora sighed heavily. “It is naught but a prelude,” she said. “For we’ve now been offered the promise of a greater ally by far, one that might produce the cataclysm Szass Tam and our Dread Ring demands.”
He looked at her curiously.
“You were there!” she yelled at him.
“The lady Arunika?”
“Lady,” Sylora echoed with a knowing little laugh. “Ah, my young zealot, you have so much to learn.”
“Do we go to her now?” he asked eagerly. “We can’t be far from her cottage.”
Sylora grinned, and Jestry stiffened.
“Intrigued?” Sylora asked.
“No,” he blurted. “It’s just—”
Sylora laughed and started away.