“Greeth, Greeth,” Arunika muttered as she walked through the forest, and she shook her head in disgust. She had hoped that the Sovereignty ambassador had used its influence with Valindra to prepare the lich to take over where Sylora Salm had left off. The Thayans might again serve as foil to the Netherese threat, but this time with a leader who was, ultimately, under control of the ambassador.
Thus, Arunika’s disappointment had been paramount upon meeting up with Valindra at the remains of Ashenglade, Sylora’s fortress created out of the magical coalescing ash of the Dread Ring. As Ashenglade had diminished, its binding forces dissipating, its ashen walls crumbling, so, too, had Valindra’s clarity diminished. Just a short meeting with the confused lich had shown Arunika the truth: The aboleth had abandoned Valindra, had perhaps even thrown in an added bit of jumble to the lich’s already-scrambled brains for good measure. Certainly Valindra had regressed. She seemed less lucid than when Arunika had first met her, and that was before Arunika had arranged the introduction between the lich and the aboleth.
“Ark-lem! Greeth! Greeth!” Valindra had shouted, the name of her mentor, Arunika believed, or a long-lost lover, or both, perhaps.
The succubus let the thoughts of Valindra melt away as she came to her destination. Standing on the edge of Sylora’s Dread Ring, Arunika found herself surprised and disappointed yet again. She knew that the Dread Ring had been injured—its weakness was apparent in the diminishment of Sylora’s fortress construct—but never had she imagined so dramatic a change as this. Where once had been a field of death, a black ashen scar tingling with nether energy, now seemed more a place that had, perhaps, been witness to a recent fire. The blackness remained, the stench of ash hung thick in the air, but nothing like before, with nowhere near the intensity that promised power to challenge Herzgo Alegni’s forces.
Arunika strode onto the scarred ground, something she would not have dared just a couple of days previous. For then the ring had teemed with palpable necromancy, and then the ring had served Sylora and Szass Tam. Arunika was schooled enough in the Thayan manipulation of the thin veil between life and death to understand that such a functional Dread Ring could accomplish many tasks for its masters, not just in granted power to raise a fortress or raise and control undead, or even to create implements of channeling energy to draw the life force of enemies, but the power of scrying and manipulation. For Arunika to enter Sylora Salm’s functional Dread Ring was to grant Sylora and Szass Tam true knowledge of Arunika, perhaps even to strike forcefully into Arunika’s mind in a manner similar to the intrusions the aboleth had waged on Valindra.
But not now, the succubus knew with confidence. There was residual power, but it posed no threat to a being as powerful as she. She continued her walk through the blackened patch until a scrabbling sound caught her attention. On her guard, Arunika cautiously approached.
It took her a moment to decipher the curious sight, for before her lay a female, dressed in torn but once-magnificent robes. Arunika gasped as she recognized Sylora Salm, or what was left of the sorceress. Several brutal wounds showed on the corpse, burns and blasted holes, but even those mortal injuries paled compared to the greater image. For Sylora had been bent in half backward, folded at the waist in reverse! It seemed as if some powerful creature, a giant or major devil, perhaps, had simply folded the woman’s body over backward.
Arunika couldn’t contain a giggle as Sylora moved, trying ridiculously to crawl. She got only a few inches before toppling over onto her side once more, and so the scrabbling began anew as the zombie—a pathetic undead thing animated by the residual power of the Dread Ring—tried to prepare itself for another short dash.
Arunika nodded and considered Valindra’s present mental state in light of this new information.
She thought to destroy the undead Sylora, out of mercy, but then scoffed at the notion and simply walked off, shaking her head. As a creature of the lower planes, Arunika had little sense of, or care for, the concept of justice, but she did have a soft spot for the notion of cosmic karma. To see Sylora Salm, who had raised so many dead into a state of undead slavery, scrabbling so pathetically on the ground, pleased the succubus. Whatever the greater implications to the succubus’s overall designs, good or bad, Sylora’s demise, this part of it . . . pleased her.
The devil walked from the grotesque crablike zombie and turned reflexively toward Neverwinter, considering the now-dominant Herzgo Alegni. Perhaps the Thayans would return in force. Perhaps Szass Tam would appoint another powerful sorcerer, or even oversee the rebuilding of his Dread Ring personally.
Arunika shook her head, thinking that doubtful, and realizing that even if such an event were to come to fruition, it would not be in any timely manner, considering how fast things were moving in Neverwinter.
The foil for Alegni was no more.
What did that mean? What did it mean for her? She thought of the many possibilities and potential roads before her.
“It is weaker,” came a raspy and familiar voice behind her.
“Invidoo,” Arunika replied, speaking the true name of the imp, a name that gave her great power over the nasty little creature. She turned to face the imp and shook her head, smiling knowingly, as she considered the open sores and torn flaps of skin that still covered the diminutive devil’s form, wounds suffered at the hand of Sylora Salm.
“She is defeated.”
“She’s dead,” Arunika corrected.
“Yesss!” Invidoo replied with a satisfied hiss. “Sylora Salm is defeated and dead and gone, and Invidoo killed her.”
Arunika stared at the imp doubtfully.
“I took her wand!” Invidoo insisted. The imp began to gulp in air then, manipulating its torso, rolling its thin belly under its rib cage. Then with a cough and some gagging, Invidoo vomited into its own hand, and as the acidic bile flowed through, only a small discolored digit remained. Grinning widely, showing a grate of yellow, bile-soaked pointed teeth, Invidoo held up that trophy.
“Took her wand, took her fingers!” the imp said triumphantly. “Have more, have another!” Invidoo assured Arunika, and it began to undulate and gag once more, until the succubus patted her hand in the air and bade Invidoo to stop.
“Invidoo killed Sylora!” the imp announced proudly.
Arunika didn’t know what to make of the seemingly absurd claim, and didn’t really care anyway. It mattered not at all to her how Sylora Salm had died, only that Sylora was dead.
“You said when Sylora dead, Invidoo go home,” the imp reminded her. “Invidoo go home?”
The question reminded Arunika of her suspicions regarding some of the imp’s other recent exploits, and her pretty face grew very tight as she stared hard at Invidoo.
“Had you come to me directly upon Sylora’s death, I would have granted you leave,” she said slyly.
Invidoo hopped into a back flip, then landed rocking back and forth from clawed foot to foot. “Had to heal.”
The imp’s voice trailed off and it began to upchuck again, a panicked expression coming over the little creature’s face as Invidoo realized the telepathic intrusion of the succubus.
For Arunika was not without some mind-reading powers of her own, particularly regarding an imp she had taken as her familiar.
“Let me go!” Invidoo implored her. “Home! Home! Away from him!”
“Him?” Arunika asked, and she moved nearer, towering over the imp.
“The broken tiefling.”
There it was, Arunika knew, her suspicions confirmed. She had guessed that Effron had played a role in informing Alegni of the recent dramatic events in Neverwinter Wood, and Invidoo’s admission had just clarified for her where Effron had gotten the information.
“I should utterly destroy you,” the succubus warned.
“Everyone say that!”
Arunika laughed, and almost fell murderously over Invidoo. Almost, but she reminded herself that this one might still be of use to her, particularly since she now knew that Effron might utilize the imp for his own information—or misinformation, if she played it correctly.
“You will go home,” Arunika said, and Invidoo leaped into another back flip, this time spinning over twice in mid-air with barely a flap of its small batlike wings before alighting dexterously on clawed feet. But the wretched little creature’s glee proved short-lived.
“Without prejudice,” Arunika added matter-of-factly.
Invidoo’s eyes popped open wide and his jaw hung slack, his small wings drooping. “No!” he cried. “No, no, no, no, no!” For “without prejudice” meant that it was not being dismissed from this duty, that it had not completed the terms of its indenture, and that Arunika retained the right to recall it to her side at her whim.
“You say . . .”
“And you will return to me when I call,” Arunika informed it.
“No fair!” Invidoo argued. “Appeal to Glasya!”
Arunika narrowed her eyes at the threat. She knew it to be a hollow one, for Glasya, Lord of the Sixth Layer, would never side with the likes of Invidoo against her. But still, in devil society, a breach of contract was no minor issue, and even though Glasya wouldn’t overrule her, likely, she might not look favorably on being bothered over so minor a detail as the indenture of an imp.
“Do you truly wish to play this game against me?” the succubus asked quietly, her tone revealing an overt threat.
“A summary task!” Invidoo insisted, meaning that Arunika should give it a way to complete its indenture without having to return to the Prime Material Plane and her side. “Invidoo demands a summary—”
“Done,” Arunika agreed, smiling once more now that any thought of Invidoo going with its complaint to Glasya was off the table. All she had to do now was be a bit cleverer than the imp, and that seemed no difficult task. “Find me a replacement.”
“Easy!” Invidoo said without hesitation, and with a snap of skinny, clawed fingers.
“A replacement who knows of this new force,” Arunika finished.
Invidoo seemed to deflate once again, and stood staring at her. “Who knows of . . . ?”
“Drizzt Do’Urden,” Arunika remarked, nodding as she formulated the plan. “Find me a replacement familiar with . . .” She paused and looked at Invidoo suspiciously, knowing full well where it would take that edict. “Nay,” she corrected. “Find me a replacement intimately familiar with Drizzt Do’Urden, and you may transfer your binding to it.”
Invidoo shook its catlike face so furiously that it nearly threw itself from its feet—indeed, only a last-moment flap of wings prevented it from toppling right over! “Cannot! Intimately? How possible?”
Arunika shrugged as if that hardly mattered to her, which it did not. “That is your summary task. You asked for one and I complied.”
“Glasya will hear of this!” the imp warned.
“Do tell,” Arunika replied, calling the impotent bluff.
Invidoo growled and stamped its clawed foot.
“Intimately,” Arunika repeated. “Now be gone before I destroy you for betraying me, for even speaking to that wretched Effron creature.”
Arunika thrust her arm out to the side and a bolt of fire flew from her hand, striking the ground and catching hold, a sizzling, wildly dancing flame gate. “Be gone!”
Invidoo squealed in fear and half-ran, half-flew to the fire, then dived in head first.
As if expecting the imp to deceive her and slip back out, Arunika was fast with her next invocation, blowing out the flames with a ferocious wave of her hand. She considered the spot on the ground, a second dark scar atop the wider carnage of the Dread Ring.
She would have to concoct some elaborate ruse for when Invidoo returned to her side, she knew, for of course she expected that the imp would fail in its task. She would have to be ready to match wits with this Effron creature, and he was one she would not underestimate.
But that plotting had to wait, she told herself, for more immediate concerns pressed in on her, not the least of which was the obvious damage done to her relationship with the dangerous Alegni.
She started for home but moved slowly, letting her thoughts carry her along every avenue of possibility.
Even though she meandered for half the night, Arunika was still quite surprised to find Brother Anthus waiting for her at her small house south of the city. His visits with the ambassador usually lasted much longer.
More surprising was the expression on Anthus’s face, a look of complete confusion and even fear, as if something had truly unnerved the young man.
“They’re gone,” he said, barely getting the words out, before Arunika could begin to question him.
“Gone?”
“The Sovereignty,” the monk explained. He rubbed his face red.
“The ambassador is gone? Has it been replaced?”
“All of them,” Brother Anthus replied. “The ambassador and all of its minions. All of them have gone.”
“Relocated, then,” Arunika reasoned. “Perhaps they believed themselves vulnerable since Sylora’s fall, and so moved to—”
“Gone!” Brother Anthus shouted, and Brother Anthus rarely raised his voice. He was frantic, though, thoroughly flustered and agitated. “They have departed the region. The ambassador left this behind.” He pulled a small cloth off a vial beside him and held it aloft. Arunika looked at it curiously.
“A thought bottle,” Brother Anthus explained. He held the opened vial up before his nose, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply, then shook his head as if listening to a sad song, finally ending again with a simple, “Gone.”
Arunika took the vial from him and similarly inhaled. She didn’t exactly hear a voice in her head, but the message left behind was clear enough. The situation was too unstable, the Sovereignty had decided. The fall of Sylora Salm might well introduce more powerful minions of Szass Tam, or even Szass Tam himself, into the region, and that might bring a corresponding response from the Netheril Empire. Most prominent of all of the thoughts imparted was the notion that this was not the time for the Sovereignty to move on the region.
“They are not mortal in the sense that you are,” Arunika explained to Brother Anthus.
“They play the long game,” the monk agreed.
“They can afford to.”
“As can you,” the monk retorted rather harshly, and Arunika found herself surprised by his declaration. “What does it matter to you?” he asked rather flippantly, and the succubus feared then that the monk had figured it out and knew of her true identity. Had the aboleths informed him?
“Or to them?” he quickly added, seeing the devil’s dangerous scowl. “What is a score of years to beings who measure their lifetime in centuries, or even millennia? What is a century?”
“Aboleths are not eternal.”
“But their thoughts are. Their collective understanding, their meld, will continue through generations yet unborn.”
“And you will be dead,” Arunika said, somewhat callously.
Brother Anthus looked at her plaintively. “I gave them everything,” he whined. “I let them into my every thought. I stood naked before them as never before, even to myself.”
“Could you have stopped them from so stripping you, had you tried?” Arunika tossed out, but Anthus, wound up in his tirade, seemed to not hear.
“I believed in them!” the monk roared on. “I forsook my own order, my kin and kind. I made few inroads among the citizens of Neverwinter, gave not a thought to Sylora Salm, and have not even spoken directly with the new Netherese Lord of Neverwinter. And now they have abandoned me! And I am left with . . . what?”
“And myself?” Arunika asked, trying to get a full admission from the man.
“What do you care?” he shot back. “You did not throw in with the Sovereignty as I did. Arunika will thrive, whichever lord claims stewardship of Neverwinter.”
Arunika quietly breathed a sigh of relief, now thinking that Anthus’s comments referred to the little she had to lose, and not the millennia she had to live.
“Szass Tam will not come,” she assured him. “I have visited his Dread Ring, and there is little left of it worth his troubles. With the Netherese strong in the region, the cost would prove too great. He’ll keep his Ashmadai fools here, likely, and there remains Valindra—though believe me when I tell you that she is missing the Sovereignty more than you ever could. But Szass Tam will make no further concerted move against the region.”
“There remain the Shadovar.”
“With the fall of the Thayans, Alegni will get no further help from Netheril.”
“He will not need it.”
Arunika smiled at him slyly. “That remains to be seen.”
“What do you know?” the monk asked hopefully.
“If Herzgo Alegni is to be Lord of Neverwinter, then who will come to join the settlers? What man or elf or dwarf or halfling or any other race will come in to join the glorious rebuilding of Neverwinter when it is under the domination of the likes of a Netherese tiefling barbarian like Lord Alegni?”
“What Shadovar, then?” the suddenly-cynical Brother Anthus said. “Or orcs. He will attract orcs, no doubt!”
“And invite the Lords of Waterdeep to turn their eyes and arms to the north?” Arunika replied with a laugh. “Alegni thinks he achieved a great victory with the death of Sylora Salm, but in truth, his power came from the fear of an enemy. As that enemy diminishes, so will he, do not doubt. Soon enough, he will grow bored and fly away. Or his Netherese masters will send him back into the forest in search of the artifacts, as was his original mission. Or he will overstep and invite war with Waterdeep, and he will lose.”
She nodded solemnly at Brother Anthus, even rubbed the forlorn monk on the shoulder. “The Sovereignty will return in a decade or two, fear not. Few understand them, but their pattern is not to abandon a place once they have laid the base of a new home. Use these years wisely, my young friend,” she advised. “Make of Brother Anthus a great name in Neverwinter, so that when the aboleths return, they will see in you a powerful ally.”
The monk looked up at her and tried to nod, albeit unsuccessfully.
“I will help you,” Arunika promised.
“You are staying?”
“To watch the downfall of Alegni? Surely!” She laughed, uncomfortably perhaps, but she was indeed feeling quite jovial at that moment, for in trying to bolster Anthus, Arunika had herself found a new way to view the recent dramatic developments. She wasn’t sure that everything, or anything, of what she had predicted would come to pass—perhaps Alegni would remain as Lord of Neverwinter for fifty years.
But her hopes of his demise were quite plausible, even probable, she had come to realize.
And there remained an even more immediate solution, a powerful group allayed against Alegni, the same trio who had defeated Sylora, who seemed every bit the Netherese lord’s equal. Perhaps they would rid Arunika of the troublesome shade.
Perhaps Arunika would find a way to help facilitate that.
As she considered the delicious possibilities, the succubus found herself feeling even more jubilant. She would survive this, as Anthus had predicted. She would survive and she would thrive, whoever proved victorious in the struggles for Neverwinter. She looked Brother Anthus in the eye, her grin from ear to ear.
“What?” he managed to ask in the heartbeat before Arunika fell over him passionately.