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"I summoned the laraken, and used them as building blocks for a more interesting and powerful monster," Akhlaur said matter-of-factly. "And I believe I have found a way past this particular inconvenience." He illustrated this comment with a casual wave of one hand toward the dying elf woman.
Noor followed him down to the end of the corridor. In the last cell, an elf maid crouched in the corner, clad only in her own long, jade-green hair.
"Look at me, Kiva," the necromancer commanded, speaking in a tone other men might use to summon a hound.
Compelling magic thrummed through Akhlaur's voice. The elf's chin lifted, slowly and heavily, as if the force of her will was almost equal to the great necromancer's compulsion. The silent battle raged for several moments before its inevitable conclusion. The elf's head snapped back, and her gaze locked with Akhlaur's. Golden eyes burned in a small, angular face. The hatred in them was neither human nor sane.
The scalding heat of the elf's fury hit Noor like a physical blow. Instinctively she took a step back.
But Akhlaur's smile was almost proud. "This one has spirit! Even so, she would never survive the growth of the laraken spawn had I not forged a death-bond with her. I doubt there'll be much left of her after the laraken's birth, but while I live, she ca
Noor let out a long, tremulous sigh. This was horrible, yet it was wonderful! This was precisely the sort of power she longed to possess!
"A death-bond," she repeated wistfully. "That spell is not known to me."
The necromancer's gaze shifted from the captive elf to the ambitious noblewoman. "It could be," he said softly.
Something in his tone froze Noor's blood and prompted the calm, reasoned voices inhabiting the back of her mind to scream out warnings. Yet when Akhlaur reached out to her, she placed her hand in his. Nor did she pull away when he plucked a small, curved knife from the empty air and lowered it purposefully to her palm. As he began to chant, Noor closed her eyes and thought about the power that would be hers.
Twilight deepened the shadows of Noor's ancestral woodland as she followed on Akhlaur's heel, as she had done a hundred times. In her hands she carried an enormous crimson gem, shaped like a many-pointed star and glowing with life.
The forest was strangely silent, but for the furtive, shuffling sounds of the hunting laraken. The monster foraged ahead like a hound scenting a trail. And as Noor walked, the crimson gem grew brighter and brighter.
Noor steeled herself to confront the source of this gathering power. As she rounded the massive trunk of a bilboa tree, sunlight glinted off a perfect crystal form-an elf-shaped statue as transparent as water, and colder than death.
No matter how many times she witnessed this transformation-and she had seen it many times-it still chilled her that creatures could be snatched from life so quickly and completely that their absence left visible holes in the Weave. Yet she could not deny that this was precisely what Akhlaur had done. The laraken fed upon magic, draining it from every source it encountered, and passing this bounty along to its master. The life forces of countless elves had passed into the gem. Elsewhere in Halruaa, other dark servants and powerful artifacts added stolen magic to Akhlaur's storehouse of power. Soon, none would be able to stand against him. The necromancer was on the verge of conquering all of Halruaa, and Noor's dream of power was coming near to fulfillment.
Even so, Noor was tempted to throw the glittering gem to the forest floor, just to see if it could break. And perhaps, to see if the souls imprisoned within could be freed by such a mundane act.
She quickly brushed aside the impulse. Wild thoughts occurred to her from time to time; even as a child riding with her father, she occasionally wondered what might occur if she urged her horse to leap over a ravine. All people had foolish, fleeting notions. Only madmen acted upon them.
"It is enough for today," Akhlaur a
Noor glanced into the dusk-shadowed trees. "And the laraken?"
"Leave it," the necromancer said negligently. "Let it hunt and feed as it will."
"We are a good ways from the tower," she reminded him.
"What of it? If I require the laraken, you can summon it with a few words."
Noor nodded. The relationship between Akhlaur and the laraken was even more complex than the death bond that linked her to the necromancer. Magic flowed from the laraken to the wizard, but never once had she seen Akhlaur cast a spell upon the laraken. She suspected that he could not, though she had never once given in to the temptation to ask. Challenging Akhlaur was yet another example of the sort of impulse to which only madmen yielded.
She watched as her master deftly summoned a magic portal, a shimmering oval that caught the last long, golden rays of the sun. She took his hand when he offered it, and they stepped together over the bright threshold.
They emerged a few paces from the tower, to find the wizard's holdfast as silent as a crypt. Even the raucous birdsong from the surrounding forest was hushed.
Akhlaur's eyes darted to the crimson gem and narrowed with speculation. For a long moment he listened to voices that Noor could not hear.
"So he has found me at last," he murmured. Without explanation he strode into the tower.
Noor followed, and stopped dead on the threshold. By all appearances, a storm had swept through the tower. The floor was covered with a thick sheet of ice. Several of Akhlaur's apprentices lay dead in frost-shrouded mounds, others stood trapped in ankle-deep ice. Stone guardians lay in piles of rubble. Magical treasures strewed the floor in scattered, broken bits. At least a score of wizards waited in somber formation, wands held like ready swords or hands filled with bright globes that coursed with the snap and shudder of contained power. Noor's gaze slid over them, and then snapped back to a stooped, white-haired man. She moved closer, peering at the aged wizard.
"Father?" she murmured, not quite believing her eyes. Less than three years had passed since she entered Akhlaur's service, and when she had left home, Hanish Ghalagar had been a man in his vigorous prime. Her father had often warned that powerful magic exacted a stern price, and the proof of this claim was etched into his own face.
"The change your see in me is but a small thing to that I perceive in you." Hanish did not speak aloud; subtle magic carried the words from his mind to his daughter's ears, but there was no missing the deep sorrow and regret they carried.
Even now, he was ashamed of her! Noor's chin lifted. "Why have you come, Father?" she said loudly, with a precise articulation that her grandmother might have envied. "To free me, or kill me?"
Her tone was flippant; her question was not. Hanish Ghalagar was a powerful wizard, as were the men and women with him. Yet her master took little note of the exchange between Ghalagar patriarch and his estranged daughter, and seemed not at all concerned by the strength and numbers of the invading party.
"Well met, Zalathorm," Akhlaur said with a hint of amusement.
One of the wizards broke from the group and strode forward. He was nearly a head shorter than Akhlaur. His hair and beard were a soft brown, a pallid color by Halruaan standards. There was nothing in his face or garb to suggest power, and his hands were empty of weapons or magic. But Noor knew the name-she had heard stories of the wizard who was slowly bringing peace and order out of the killing chaos Akhlaur had created in his rise to power.