“I know all about Lady Dahlia,” Hadencourt admitted.
“Who are you?”
The tall man smiled as he’d done outside, revealing long, pointed teeth. He furrowed his brow and a pair of horns sprouted from his forehead.
“I thought you were Ashmadai,” Sylora said, trying to keep her calm façade—no easy task when confronted by a mighty malebranche devil.
“Oh, my lady Sylora, I surely am!” Hadencourt replied. “More devoted than these tieflings and humans, of course. After all, they merely worship Asmodeus, while I witness his glory personally. And let me assure you that he’s every bit as impressive as his hordes of worshipers would have you believe.”
“Does Szass Tam know of your—?”
“Do you think me foolish enough to try to hide something this important from the archlich?”
“And he sent you here anyway,” Sylora remarked.
“Fear not, my lady Sylora,” Hadencourt said with a deep bow. “In this endeavor, I am subservient to Sylora Salm. I am no spy, unless it’s your spy. Such were my orders from Szass Tam, and I honor them with relish.”
Her expression reflected her skepticism.
“Greeth! Greeth!” Valindra chimed in.
Sylora looked past the devil to the lich, and Hadencourt turned as well to regard her—fast enough to see a serious and cogent expression on Valindra’s face, albeit briefly, before she tittered and floated away.
Grinning knowingly—the lich wasn’t as insane as she let on—Hadencourt faced Sylora once more.
“Were I a demon of the Abyss, you would be correct in your doubts, I expect,” Hadencourt said. “But consider my heritage. One does not survive the Nine Hells with subterfuge, but with obedience. I accept my place as your second.”
Sylora cocked an eyebrow, drawing a laugh from the devil.
“As your primary scout, then?” Hadencourt bargained. “Surely you will not expect me to submit to the commands of one of these mortal Ashmadai.”
“You will remain separate from the warriors here,” Sylora agreed.
“Well, then, with your leave, I’ll return to my duties on the north road.” He bowed again, and seeing Sylora’s nod, turned to leave.
“If you wish to truly serve as my second,” Sylora remarked, stopping him before he’d gone more than a couple of steps, “you will relieve me of that nuisance Dahlia.”
Hadencourt turned a sly eye Sylora’s way. “Szass Tam was not as definitive regarding her fate.”
“Szass Tam didn’t understand the depths of her traitorous ways, then.”
They exchanged nods.
“With pleasure, my lady Sylora,” Hadencourt the war devil said.
Sylora Salm had enough experience with devils to know he meant it.
“You would deny me this glory?” growled the Ashmadai warrior, Jestry. “I have earned this moment, and you would see me stand back and allow …” He paused, blowing his breath out in angry gasps as he considered the huddled, ash-covered zombies scrabbling through the forest all around them, heading for the walls of Neverwinter. They were some of the multitudes who had died in the cataclysm—the great volcanic eruption that had buried Neverwinter a decade before. They seemed more like the corpses of halflings, or human children, for the molten fires had shriveled their forms.
“We will not win this night,” Sylora replied. “Not fully, at least. All that we send in will be destroyed.”
“I’m not afraid to die!” Jestry proclaimed.
“Are you eager to die, Jestry?”
The Ashmadai warrior went to strict attention. “If in the service of my god Asmodeus—”
“Oh, shut up, fool,” Sylora said.
Jestry blinked in astonishment, and he seemed wounded.
“If Asmodeus thought you of more service in his presence, then he would drag you to the Nine Hells personally, and immediately,” Sylora teased. “He wants you to fight for him, fearlessly, but not to die for him.”
“My lady, an Ashmadai must be willing—”
“Willing and wanting are two different things,” Sylora interrupted. “Pray do sort out that difference, Jestry. I expect you to die in service to me, if it’s necessary. I don’t want you to die in service to me—not yet, at least—and surely I don’t want you to want to die in service to anyone else, and if you do then know that there will be ramifications.” She matched Jestry’s dumbfounded stare with a glower. “If you die, I can raise your corpse,” she explained, and motioned to the shriveled zombies moving in the forest night. “When I come to believe that you will be of more service to me as such, I’ll kill you myself, I promise you.”
Jestry paused for some time before speaking, “Yes, my lady.” His gaze went back to the northwest, to the distant torch lights marking the low wall of Neverwinter.
“Come along,” Sylora bade him, and she started walking the other way, to the south and deeper into the forest.
“My lady?”
“Be quick.”
“But … the battle against Neverwinter?”
“The servants of Szass Tam know their mission,” Sylora assured him, and she kept walking. Jestry, after another longing look to the distant torchlight, scrambled to catch up.
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.”