“What’re ye meaning?” Athrogate asked. “A magic tunnel?”
“Come along,” Jarlaxle instructed, and he rose and moved toward Dahlia as Dor’crae started off along the left-hand divide.
“We will solve it quickly,” Dahlia promised as the pair neared.
Jarlaxle motioned for Athrogate to keep walking, along the same path Dor’crae had taken. “I have no doubt of that, dear lady,” he said, drawing out a wand and pointing it down the tunnel.
Dahlia’s expression changed to one of shock and trepidation, but Jarlaxle spoke the command word before she could react, and the tunnel brightened with magical light.
“What the—?” Athrogate yelped in surprise, for the light stung his eyes. As his temporary blindness subsided, though, the dwarf caught a glimpse of Dor’crae—or at least it should have been Dor’crae. Instead, a large bat fluttered away, out of the light and down the tunnel.
“Why did you do that?” Dahlia scolded.
“To mark Dor’crae’s return,” Jarlaxle replied, moving toward the conjured light. “And to better view these strange veins along the tunnel walls. I had thought it a vein of gemstone—perhaps some variant of bloodstone—at first.” He kept walking, Dahlia hustling to catch up. “But now I see them differently,” Jarlaxle said as he came into the light and peered closer at a nearby vein. “They appear almost as hollow tubes, and full of some liquid.” He drew out another wand, of which he seemed to have an inexhaustible supply, and pointed it at the tendril.
Dahlia grabbed the wand. “Take great care!” she warned in no uncertain terms. “Do not break the tendril.”
“The what?” asked Athrogate.
Jarlaxle pulled the wand away and executed its dweomer, which detected the presence of magic. He appeared quite impressed as he turned back to Dahlia and said, “Powerful magic.”
“Residual magic,” she replied.
“Well, obviously you know more of this than I do,” Jarlaxle said.
Dahlia started to answer, but then caught on to the ruse and put her hands on her hips, glaring at the drow. “You knew the undercity of Luskan well,” she said.
“Not so well.”
“Enough to know that these are not gemstone veins.”
“What’s she babbling about?” Athrogate demanded.
“They are the roots of the fallen Hosttower,” Jarlaxle explained, “sapping the strength of the sea and the earth, so we thought, though never did we imagine they spread so far from the city.”
Dahlia offered up a wry grin.
“And they follow the left fork here, but not the right,” Jarlaxle went on.
Dahlia shrugged.
“We’re following them,” the drow said, and he let a bit of suspicion creep into his voice.
“Ah, but what’s yer game, then?” Athrogate demanded of the elf. “What of the dwarven city ye telled me to get me to come along? What o’ the treasures, elf, and ye best be telling me true!”
“The tendrils lead to the place I described,” Dahlia said. “Following them was how Dor’crae found the mines and the great forge and structures that will steal your breath, dwarf. Perhaps in an age long lost, the dwarves crafted more than weapons, perhaps they forged a pact with the great wizards of the Hosttower. Even dwarven-forged weapons needed a wizard’s enchantments, yes? And armor blessed by the magic of great mages can withstand much stronger blows.”
“Are ye sayin’ my own ancestors used these … these roots, so the wizards could send a bit o’ magic their way?”
“It is possible,” said Dahlia. “That is one—and one likely—explanation.”
“And what are the others, I wonder?” Jarlaxle asked with unmasked suspicion.
Dahlia offered no answer.
“We’ll know soon enough, then,” said Athrogate. “What, right?”
Dahlia replied with a disarming smile and a nod. “Dor’crae thinks there may be a shortcut. Perhaps you’ll find your treasures sooner than we expected, good dwarf.”
She smiled again and walked back the other way, to where Valindra stood, eyes closed and singing some strange song. Every so often, the lich stopped singing and scolded herself, “No, that’s not right, oh, I’ve forgotten. That’s not right. It’s not right, you know. No, that’s not right,” and all without ever opening her eyes, before launching back into a voice-lifting refrain of, “Ara … Arabeth …”
“You saw Dor’crae?” Jarlaxle asked the dwarf when they were alone.
“Was him, eh? Good cloak he’s got there.”
“It wasn’t his cloak.”
Athrogate eyed him. “What do ye know?”
“It’s his nature, not a magic item,” Jarlaxle explained.
Athrogate mulled on that for just a moment, before his eyes went wide and he slapped his hands onto his hips. “Ye ain’t sayin’ …”
“I just did.”
“Elf …?”
“Fear not, my friend. Some of my best friends were vampires.” Jarlaxle patted Athrogate on the shoulder and moved back toward Dahlia and Valindra.
“ ‘Were?’ ” Athrogate remarked, trying to sort out that bit of information. He realized then that he was standing alone, and with a vampire out there somewhere with him. He glanced over his shoulder and hurried to catch up to Jarlaxle.
“He knows the way,” Jarlaxle explained to Athrogate a couple of days later. “And he’s valuable in keeping the undead in check.”
“Bah, but there ain’t no more, and them what was would’ve kissed me morningstar balls,” the dwarf grumbled back.
Jarlaxle cringed and replied, “He moves swiftly, and silently, and again, he knows the way.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m knowin’,” Athrogate grumbled and waved the drow away.
Up ahead in the line, Valindra began to sing again, still questioning every line, scolding herself for getting it wrong before launching once more into “Ara … Arabeth … Arararar … Arabeth!”
“So I’m gettin’ why she bringed the bat-boy,” Athrogate said. “But why that idiot?”
“That idiot is not without power … great power.”
“I’m hardly waitin’ for her to blow us all up with a fireball.”
“Great power,” Jarlaxle said again. “And Dahlia can control it.”
“What? How’re ye knowing that?”
Jarlaxle just held up his hand and stared ahead at the two women. For years, Kimmuriel Oblodra, Jarlaxle’s lieutenant and the current leader of Bregan D’aerthe, had used his psionic abilities to scout Valindra’s mind. Only Kimmuriel had kept Valindra from utter insanity in those first days after Arklem Greeth had converted her to her undead state. And in those sessions, Kimmuriel had assured Jarlaxle that within the trappings of apparent dementia, there remained the quite powerful, quite sinister, and quite cogent being who had once been Valindra Shadowmantle, Mistress of the North Tower of the Hosttower of the Arcane … not just a wizard, but an overwizard. That Valindra had begun to emerge again soon after.
And Dahlia was too careful to not know that. She would never have brought such an unpredictable and potent creature along if she wasn’t sure she could control her.
Jarlaxle considered the consequences if Dahlia somehow managed to return Valindra her full consciousness. Valindra Shadowmantle had been formidable in life, by all accounts. The drow could only imagine the trouble she might affect as a lich.
“If the vampire knows the way, and the lich is such a ‘great power,’ then what in all Nine Hells’re we doin’ here, elf?” Athrogate asked.
Jarlaxle scrutinized his friend, a formidable sight indeed in his heavy coat of chainmail links, his iron helmet, and those devastating morningstars crisscrossed on his back. He thought back to his original conversation with Dahlia, when she had explained why she needed them. Had he allowed his own hubris to take her at face value on that?
No, he reminded himself. Dahlia needed him, needed his connections so that she could dispense with the promised trove of artifacts and coins.
He looked again at Athrogate. Dahlia had specifically explained her need for the dwarf, of course, and perhaps gaining the services of Athrogate meant also bringing along Jarlaxle, as the two were inseparable.
Was Jarlaxle, then, just add-on baggage?
Jarlaxle never answered Athrogate’s question. A few moments later they caught up to Dahlia and the others, who stood at the edge of a deep pit, staring down.
“We’ve arrived,” Dahlia announced when they joined her at the edge.
“Not much of a city,” Athrogate grumbled.
“The shaft drops fifty feet,” Dahlia explained. “Then curves at a steep but traversable decline off to the left a bit. It winds in various directions for a few hundred feet beyond that, and ends at a … well, you’ll see soon enough.”
She turned to Valindra, and Jarlaxle noticed that Dahlia reached under the edge of her tunic to a strange brooch, touching her fingers to its onyx stone.
“Valindra,” she whispered. “Is there something you can do to help our friends go down this hole?”
“Throw them in!” the lich keened. With Ara … oh, yes, with that one!”
“Valindra!” Dahlia barked, and the lich shook her head and sputtered as if Dahlia had thrown a bucket of water in her face. “Safely down,” Dahlia clarified.
With an exaggerated sigh and hardly any effort at all, Valindra waved one hand and a blue-glowing disc appeared in the air, suspended over the hole.
“You, too,” Dahlia explained to the lich, taking her by the hand and guiding her to stand on the disc. “We’ll need more, I think, for the drow and the dwarf.”
With another exhale and a wave of her left hand, then one more and a wave of her right, Valindra created floating discs in front of Jarlaxle and Athrogate.
Dahlia let go of Valindra’s hand and bade her to proceed. Valindra’s disc floated down into the pit. A nod from Dahlia to Dor’crae had him lifting his cape up behind him. It fluttered over his head, and as it descended, obscuring his form, he became a large bat and dived off after Valindra.
Dahlia motioned to the two remaining discs then grabbed the edges of her own magical cloak—the cloak she’d taken from Borlann.
“What do you know?” Jarlaxle asked before she’d gone. “About Valindra, I mean?”
“I expect that, in a strange way, her insanity protected her from the Spellplague,” the elf replied. “She’s a unique combination of what was and what is. Or perhaps she’s simply a wizard gone mad, undead and gone beyond any hope. But whatever she is, I know she’s useful.”
“So to you she’s just a tool … a magic item,” Jarlaxle accused.
“Pray tell me what use you and your drow have had for her these many years.”
Jarlaxle grinned at the astute comeback and tipped his wide-brimmed hat. He started to step on his disc and bade Athrogate to do the same, but as soon as the dwarf hopped up, Jarlaxle hopped back down. “After you, good lady.”
