Imoen dreamed.
It makes them vulnerable.
Islanne's runes danced across the paper. She read from the beginning: mage-symbol for reach, the same as the beginning of a charm spell. The shape of the rune said purple in her mind, like an enchantment. Mage-symbol for touch, or it could be sense or pierce or. End.
If'n Skie hadn't nagged her about it.
No, this one started with mage-symbol for take, soft gold and curved and reshapeable just like the metal. Then it was surround or through or suffuse. And then the first one curved back into something else, and she had to read it again.
She could smell blood. Smelt a lot of that lately; they'd all bled down in the tower, from doppelgangers and monsters and the rest of it. It meant just as much that she could smell blood whenever she'd the curse too, she and every other woman. It didn't mean anything.
Gods, how embarrassing. She was bleeding out her robes and it pooled around her feet like a lake, and because she didn't feel wounded it had to be that. A red sphere, a sun of blood, an egg of blood, set above her. Must be nighttime. Sticky dark blood up to her ankles now, gushing out of her when she tried to read. Her brain wasn't goin' right. She read it and there was no time. Read one part, forget it, go back to it. Her head hurt.
A clawed hand reached for her. She knew very well what it was—hadn't it had a trace of pink on its head, scales and claws and all aside? The monster in the dreams. She didn't manage to think that she was dreaming of it again. Fear blocked her throat; blood welled inside her mouth. She knew what it wanted and she didn't want a piece of that, no way. She'd never. The blood was at her thighs now. She could drown in the sticky sea of it.
"Lady... Lady Winthrop. Hope...hope could return with you..." Mr G. again, she thought hazily, old and clever and telling you things you didn't realise were right until later. No. Something new. He wasn't the blood or the thing with the claws. She looked at him. He was clearer to her than the magic runes she couldn't read. "I know...ways against spirits...against spirits that take..." He wheezed like ol' Parda, who hardly went anywhere without smoking a pipe with sickly black tobacco that made her gag. Funny, she thought hazily, Parda didn't appear just because she was thinking of him this time. This one was taller than Parda, bearded and built like a stick, thin and wispy, a staff in his left hand. Blood filled her mouth and she was about to vomit; the blood moved in a torrent against her body. It was trying to drown her. It couldn't even wait until it got high enough that it would cover her mouth and her nose without even bothering. It stirred and it shook and it slipped angry tendrils around her to pull her below. Something was screaming in anger at her.
Then the other one's translucent hand reached out, and it was a lifeline given her. He pulled her up and away, and the blood washed down through a dark drain set in the bottom of the floor. Imoen set over it a plug, as if it was the inn's baths she cleaned of mould and all sorts of muck dragged in by monks and nobles who really ought to have known how to keep clean by now. That was it. No more blood. The one who had saved her was still there when she looked. He was transparent in front of a wall of scrolls.
"...come find me..." she heard the voice of it ask of her. "All for knowledge..."
She was awake in the small tent with a half-moon shining white light into it. Imoen sat up and rubbed her eyes. She reached quietly for her water and gave herself a few drops on her face, across her eyelids. Waste of it, but she wanted to know she was awake. Bad dreams. It was all quiet outside. If it was near midnight then Viconia would be on watch doing her holy rituals on whatever it was that Sharran priestesses actually did in detail she wasn't sure she wanted to know about, Imoen thought to herself. Funny how you could never think things properly through in dreams. The cool water bathed her eyes; she'd known it would make her feel better. Faldorn breathed loudly across from her; and there was Skie beside her, sleeping quietly, curled up and pale. Some of Skie's hair had fallen across her face; Imoen brushed it back, gently enough not to waken her. She'd seen Skie saying weird things in her sleep, sometimes. Maybe havin' weird dreams was going all around the party: Ajantis tossed and turned a lot in the small tent he had to himself with Aquerna, and Viconia sometimes moved around and said things in drow in her sleep that they could overhear even though she shared with Shar-Teel. And if Shar-Teel'd done even half the things she said she'd done, and Shar-Teel was more of the tell-the-absolute-truth-about-how-many-skulls-gleefully-crushed type than the idle-boasting type, then she shouldn't be sleeping the sleep of the proverbial either, Imoen thought. Maybe it was just her turn now for the nightmares. Imoen patted Skie's unmoving shoulder. 'S nothing, kiddo.
Skie got weird sometimes, even if she said she wanted to help people now; maybe she'd learned more from Shar-Teel than she wanted to admit to. Imoen'd seen her killing her other self easily down at the bottom of the tower, more easily than Imoen'd found herself able to fight the monster that hadn't even looked like her, and knowing how to fire that arrow too, and all the things that happened before that. As long as the kid didn't try dragging them against proper demons, even if she'd got sword skills better than Imoen's by now. (And that wasn't really that hard; first sneakthiefing and then magic kept Imoen busy enough.) She was practically two inches shorter than Imoen (it rounded up, not down), so that way she was the little sister Imoen hadn't thought she wanted. She gave another soft pat to Skie's arm.
"Are you going to start giggling with her and keep me up all night again?" Faldorn suddenly demanded with a hiss, sitting up in her own bedroll. Imoen flung the blanket at her, and felt that she'd rather managed to relieve her feelings before settling back down to a dreamless rest. It was cold.
—
23 Flamerule
Faldorn's wolf was heard to howl loudly at the eleventh hour of the day, more so than it had done before; and when it returned it had dark human blood on its mouth.
The ground had gone dry, again; not quite the barren dust of Durlag's Tower, but a gorse-encrusted moor, a little like the dry land just outside the exit to Nashkel mines. I could still remember that slime-controlling wizard who tried to set his pets on us... Perhaps we'd veered too far east, but it was easier to forge through than undergrowth for most of us. Further to the east rose some hills; to the west more forest.
"Come here," Faldorn called to her creature. She knelt by it, examining the stains upon its maw, and looked up at us. "Some trespasser who failed to respect nature. I see."
"Dead person?" Imoen said. She'd been shivering cold that morning, but was strong enough by then. "Right. Let's go." She made a face at the sight of the wolf. "Does that thing have to eat, Faldy?"
"No; but it makes better kills when it is well-fed on flesh." Imoen raised her eyes to the heavens and muttered a brief plea to Mystra. "It's an entirely natural part of the cycle of life and a sign of the perfect designs of Silvanus that the bodies of the dead enrich the earth," Faldorn added sulkily, stroking the wolf's head.
We found the man on the ground by a rocky hill. His clothing was plain and suited to travelling in the wilderness; he decayed, the skin perhaps weathered and well-tanned and the hair dark brown. The wolf had eaten a large hole in his chest. Shar-Teel bent down heedless of the stains and scooped up his pack.
"Look, foolish surfacers." Viconia reached to the ground, and pulled loose a pale bone. It couldn't have belonged to the corpse; clean and sun-picked to white. Human-looking. "Naut-elghinyrr: the undead reign here. Shar designs all with dark purpose."
Ajantis shook his head; but he said nothing against her statement of religion. "We must see how this man met his end," he said. "At the least, because to us it may..."
Viconia ran a hand almost caressingly over the corpse's cheeks, touching the tormented skin of his neck. "Athiyk'caluss," she said, "whatever pathetic term you surfacers use for it. Rise for me; ku'lam at Shar's will..."
She prayed; darkness gathered around her hand and she stroked the body's skin. Cal was a verb that meant to eat in her language; as for athiyk I could make nothing of it. Surely she could not mean that the body had been eaten; it was the wolf that had preyed on it.
The skin sloughed from the corpse at her touch of it. Hair and scalp sliding from a baring skull; eyeballs melting to liquid and dissolving through blank eyesockets; clothing and flesh alike boiled away from the bones as if in a pot of water. The...skin-shape of the man fell down, slipping through the ribcage and below the bones, under the gaping hole of the white jawbone like the outside of a soft cloth puppet pulled away from wooden joints. The skeleton rose to stand; the pile of flesh lay on the ground in the shape of a boneless person. Ajantis looked ill.
"Come," Viconia ordered it throatily. The skeleton rose and followed her, its eyesockets dark. She smiled prettily. "There," she pointed; "that power which took this surfacer male." Stony hills rose there, after an hour or so walking east. We began to see one broad mound as greenery encompassed by a high ring of white stone, a section of its cliff with the appearance of stairs roughly carved into pale yellow rock.
It was broad daylight. Even if the undead were here; perhaps it would be easy under noonday's creep.
"Help us," a grey creaking voice like the hinge of an old house said. We looked, and Imoen took a quick step backward. It was a ghost. This hung in the air, in the sunlight; it was translucent like Durlag in the dark. Unquestionably a spirit, and it troubled to talk first to us before trying to kill us again.
Viconia stepped forward. "Shar—" she breathed, raising her dark circle toward the shape in the air. It seemed to look down at her; a tall bearded man in mage's robes. Shar-Teel's sword was drawn; I'd magical blades too that might work on a ghost...
"Viconia, stop it!" Imoen moved quickly; she pushed Viconia aside on purpose, knocking her down on her knees. "What are you and what do you want?" she burst out to the ghost. "I thought I saw you, you're—" She sounded tense; I went to her side, to protect her if she needed it.
"...the best of schools," the ghost whispered, fluttering gently in the air. Viconia hissed, but it seemed to look only at Imoen now. "...heard the name...Ulcaster?"
Imoen took a deep breath before speaking. "Yeah. Ulcaster. Heard of it. Mage school that got all dead. Sorry, that's a bit rude. I thought you helped—"
"...a storage of arcane knowledge," the ghost reflected further. "I...was once known by that name...Lady Winthrop..." It knew Imoen's name. My hand tightened across the Burning Earth's hilt.
Imoen placed both hands on her waist, and looked jauntily across at the spirit who claimed to be Ulcaster. "So you need help? That's us. Heroes of Nashkel, once; heroes of Durlag's Tower." Viconia, cursing, took a place behind her; Shar-Teel watched, and I didn't doubt she would fight at the least provocation.
The ghost whispered again to her. "...ware those who eat flesh...But those are not the thin air that once took...a tome to describe why..."
"The—thin air that took?" It sounded too strange. The destruction of Ulcaster was a mystery; I knew little of it but one day the school was simply no more, the building a sudden ruin despite the hundreds of young students there.
"...nothing left," the ghost said, and its voice was still more bleak and hollow. "...Nothing left and we knew not why...the worst fear of a mage..." The voice, weak as it was, seemed to break. "lost, all lost...lost, all lost..."
Imoen managed a shrug that looked insouciant. "Another adventure! Let's go."
"...impolite...student..." The ghost was trying to lecture Imoen, it seemed, raising a long and spindly forefinger. "...will not pass if not..." Wind whistled around us. I shivered; perhaps it was in the power of this spirit to raise a true barrier, though it could not be powerful enough not to need us. Imoen raised her eyebrows.
"Well. I had dreams, you know that—" she said to it, then recklessly grinned. "Got it!" She pulled off her light pack and flung it to the ground in front of her. "Think I know how to say it in wizard talk. Master Ulcaster of Ulcaster. Would it behoove us—I hope that's right—" She briefly hesitated. "That I, Imoen Winthrop of Candlekeep, ought to so swear upon her magic contained within her ancient and noble form—well, her young and reasonably good-looking form—to aid thou..."
"...aid thee; or rather to aid you, since you and I know each other not..." the ghost corrected.
"...That Mistress Imoen Winthrop of Candlekeep, journeywoman transmuter—or Lady Imoen, she doesn't mind it if you call her that either, Lady Imoen or Lady Winthrop's got a perfectly good ring to it, 's long as it's not Lady Puffguts—" Imoen said, "may swear upon the entirety of her arcane magic to aid Master Ulcaster of Ulcaster to find out what happened; and he in return shall recomprehense...recompense...this deed by..."
She spent several long moments burrowing into her pack, and stood up again with three scrolls in hand. None of us made any attempts to stop her.
"—By these three scrolls. No, I'll spell it out specifically: that Master Ulcaster of Ulcaster shall teach Imoen the Pink of Candlekeep that Great and Terrible Transmuter Wizardess fully each of the three spells contained by these scrolls," Imoen continued boldly on, with an air of triumph to her formalities. "That the before-mentioned Lady Mistress Winthrop daughter of ol' Puffguts...I mean, daughter of Sir Winthrop, ward of Gorion Greymantle...can scribe each one of them into her own book and cast them when she wants to cast them under the provisional that she has the mental capacity and studies them," Imoen said. "That you'll teach me properly the way you'd teach any other student," she finished. "Because I need to know, and you're someone who can teach me."
Was there a smile somewhere upon the face of the ghost, a tremble at his lips? "Imoen...wizardess of Candlekeep...upon my own magic I will teach the transmuter before me...I will teach such a student..." The cold winds seemed to die down, the sunlight reaching upon us once more. "...But you must find, Lady Winthrop...knowledge to prevent...horror of all students...I can give no more without knowing..." His wizard's robes faded and fluttered in the light. A few minutes later and we could scarcely see Ulcaster at all, nor speak with him. If he was in fact Ulcaster, of course.
"If there's gold enough," Shar-Teel said. "More undead? Sharran, find them. Boy, you're with her. Fire from you, druid." She stood easily confident and ready.
"I can do that," Faldorn promised. "It is better to slay what is unnatural." She glared very suspiciously in the direction of the ghost itself.
"Aye, milady," Ajantis replied, and looked surprised as if he'd noticed that language as stale and formulaic since Le Morte de Queen Biancavere was published fifty-eight years ago.
I'd the Burning Earth in my left hand, the green-hilted shortsword in the right; we went to the foot of the white cliffs unencumbered by excess material in our packs, concealed in a gully some distance from this area. Ulcaster, Ulcaster, Ulcaster. I didn't read a lot of magical histories. Those who ate flesh and something that made mages afraid. Imoen. Shar-Teel yelled at us to keep together; had to be ready for anything. Faldorn held her flame blade aloft between her hands.
The rock had stairs to it; carved at some point. Ulcaster was old. We walked up the ring of pale yellow; above our heads there were no overhangs, nothing that would stop things atop it from hurling arrows or boiling oil or spells down. But it was still. Flies buzzed in the noon air and the sun beat down above. There were hauntings that it was much easier to picture than this scene. At the top, the grass was a luscious and moist green, exactly like an illustration of some bucolic scene of perfect farmland. Perhaps, I thought, that was because rain hit this part first; but that was silly. Surely this raised area ought to be as dry as the bare ground that surrounded it.
We stepped slowly to the grass from the stone, behind Shar-Teel's lead. There were ruins there, exactly as spoken by the ghost; perhaps a yellowy mist hung around the rusting iron and discarded granite, or perhaps it was simply a trick of the light. They were dull and dingy walls, scattered, the ground flat and the thick grass beneath them. No obvious artefacts remained within them; simply old, above-ground walls that offered only a vague understanding of historical architecture from what remained of their decay. The style of the thick walls and a fallen pole that looked as if it had been once heavily carved made the style seem perhaps inspired by the Haedrakian period in Tethyr, or one of the not-too-long-subsequent monarchs; some of the older mansions in the city try to imitate that architecture, like the Albaier family seat. But there was hardly enough of it left for a strong judgement. Empty ruins that had been plundered already; what on earth could the ghost have wanted? We stood together not far from the pale steps. Shar-Teel was first to move forward, and Imoen followed her.
Faldorn had bent down to the grass; she'd be left behind that way. I looked back at her to see her digging, her flame blade placed into the ground by her. She stood again, armed with a handful of grass pulled up by the roots. A large clump of dark, moist soil clung to the tendrils below the green. Grass and dirt here was like grass and dirt everywhere, I supposed, not very interesting; but she asked us to look at it.
"And?" Imoen said, making an impatient gesture. "C'mon; there's got to be something among the ruins."
Faldorn did not smile back but looked grim, and squeezed the dirt she held tightly. Red crept downward over her hand and leaked to the ground below; dark red stained her skin...
She'd hurt herself. "—Are the roots barbed?" I said. I'd never had occasion to read much about grass. "They're not poisonous, are they? I don't know if grass roots can be poisonous or spiked. Can you heal yourself? Viconia could heal you—"
"I'm not injured," Faldorn said, the tone of her voice cool and flat. "This soil is very moist. If I squeeze it..."
Blood dripped from her hand. Imoen reached down where she was on the knoll, digging into the grass; she pulled up more of it and squeezed. Blood ran from that earth as well. "It smells like it," she said. "Gods."
"Human blood is quite a good fertiliser," Faldorn said; which probably none of us but perhaps Viconia wanted to learn. "The grass flourishes, but...I do not like it." Imoen and Ajantis looked nauseated; Imoen quickly rubbed her stained hand over her mage's robes, brushing it frantically as if she could remove it all by that simple movement. Instead she gave red streaks to her clothing.
"Old carrion," Shar-Teel said. "Find something that I can force to bleed. Or crack apart," she said. Viconia allowed her skeleton to follow her meekly, a tall white presence behind her along the bloodied soil.
Imoen tapped at a wall. "There's Weave-threads around here," she said, frowning, her eyes unfocused in that way that usually meant she was grasping at some spell beyond our understanding. "Doesn't feel like there was a great battle here or anything, but I haven't been too many places with great wizardly battles. Spells, but ordinary sorts of spells. 'S a bit small up here to be a legendary mage school, isn't it?" She stamped around one of the fallen slabs of rock; her frown seemed to cover up nervousness at this strange place.
"Some things were smaller back then," I said, uncertainly; "The population's increased over the past few hundred years, and when things have legends told about them rather than proper histories written it's usual they get exaggerated..."
"No," Imoen said, glancing over at Viconia, who nodded. "The old threads go under our feet."
"It puzzled me precisely how long it should take to comprehend, mal'ai, even if it is not true Underdark." Mal'ai: strength-lack, or fool. Viconia's slaves and all her siblings called her Malla Viconia, she claimed, and ai was a derisive suffix. Drow was interesting even if she wasn't.
I saw Imoen disappear from sight behind a thick slab of old wall, fallen. She shouldn't be on her own; I went to make sure I was near.
It rose out of the soil. She screamed. It was blue, because it was not living. It was thin, because it was dead. It was tall and held her by talons. I lunged forward before I'd time to think.
It dropped Imoen. It sizzled by the fire in the longsword. Arrows flew—
They had risen from the grass: warriors yellow-bone with bows. A hail of arrows. Ajantis was ducked behind a slab of stone, Imoen down, Viconia crying out and Shar-Teel running to them, arrows in her armour. Faldorn's wolf was hit—
Imoen was on the ground, but I could hear her voice. She was near the rough shelter of a wall; I tried to push forward against the creature with both blades, but it didn't move. The long talons it wore on its fingers struck. It was looking—there was a dark blue light in what had to be eyesockets, a long finlike face like the set of ancient bones mounted in the Curio Hall of the Duchal Palace, brought to the city by Balduran, a great creature that once lived in the sea before humans lived on Toril— I moved away, down, back from it. Let Imoen have the time for her spell; try to take cover in what remained of the school—
"Will you give me your flesh?" it asked. The lights in the black hollows of its face were deep as an ocean, prone to drowning sailors in their torrents. "I am Icharyd, and I would like to wear skin once more."
Imoen's spell completed; four of her rose and ran from the arrows. They weren't aiming at the one who must be leading them, Icharyd—
Perhaps one could offer oneself to him. Die, of course. He was old—undead—so much greater time on this earth, so blue and cold and numb—
But I don't want to, I thought.
The longsword to fend away the seeking talons, the shortsword in a quick stab to the midsection. It opened something. Icharyd hissed. The other hand moved too quickly, and scraped along my shoulder; pierced my thick leather. I felt my skin tearing. My blood fell from those talons.
"Then we take your flesh." Something changed on his shoulder; bubbling and boiling along the blue leathery skin as a sudden heat. Four light-coloured strips grew there, new skin fresh and pulsing. My skin—that was my shoulder, not his. He took it and grew it on his body. He ate flesh...
Shar-Teel I could hear. Arrows whistled through the air. Imoen was running. There was cover here; Shar-Teel and Ajantis had stopped some of the bow-wielding undead. An arrow took one of Imoen's images to thin air; she stumbled to find cover.
My skin on Icharyd's shoulder. Was that laughter? It sounded like the noise of the pit below Kirinhale's dying feet when she stepped back into the Abyss. But it was fairly obvious what I had to do—Icharyd was tall like Shar-Teel, talons instead of her long reach, if I tried to duck under and get close with the shortsword—
The talons struck again, but I was fast enough. Under them, close because it—he—was so tall; shortsword stabbing and slashing. He didn't bleed but he tore; blue leathery skin over bones that looked like they should have been crumbling but weren't. I tried not to look at my own skin on him. I spun away from him; he went forward, after me. An arrow flew near us, the air moving too close to my back.
"By Shar! I have the power now. Rei ulu ussta yorn—" Viconia chanted; her holy symbol was aloft and dark, shining black; she was amidst many of them and spoke as if she would capture all of them to her will—
I let the flame blade catch Icharyd's talons. That bone did not turn blacker than it was. Then Viconia screamed. On the ground—an arrow in her chest—
Imoen gasped behind me. Her spellcasting halted in shock. Viconia...
Icharyd's talons still wove through the air. Deflect; strike low; use footwork. Steps Shar-Teel had beaten into memory. Icharyd's speed was terrible and his blows shook my arms. Move under them. Wove between the remains of the school.
There was the roar of a bear; it was Faldorn, shapeshifted, running through what crowded around Viconia's body. Ajantis and Varsona sliced down. I knew the undead were not as cold as that blade. But mindless as they seemed they were led by Icharyd, this thing who wore others' bodies.
A thick rectangular block of stone lay behind us. I jumped atop it; there was height enough to slash what Icharyd had for a face. Then—it was difficult—my own skin on its shoulder, and I imagined it didn't hurt when I cut into it—
The young bear had brought down the enemy; Shar-Teel was coming up behind, smashed corpses in her wake. Then Imoen's spell was ready again, and fire scorched the back of Icharyd's neck. He did not whirl on her—I stabbed at the same time, we knew each other well enough—and went deeply into that dark blue. Imoen shouted out quick missiles to scorch Icharyd's body; and by then Shar-Teel was by his side.
When Icharyd sought her flesh he could not pierce her armour. He could barely scratch her. She sunk the end of her sword into his face, and pushed down. The undead lost control. I stabbed down at one on the ground, skin thinly stretched over yellow bones; and vaulted back, slicing at Icharyd's leg. It went through; he overbalanced ready for Shar-Teel to finish the battle. Though he lay still, blue dust flying from what remained of his bones, there was disorganisation rather than destruction of the creatures that aided him. Not quite zombies and not quite skeletons; somewhere between. Imoen cast again, her hands afire.
Faldorn knelt over Viconia. I used the burning longsword on a corpse already down, which was still twitching after Shar-Teel had cut through its ribcage. They lay scattered atop the grass; which was green and fresh and moist still.
"Dead or alive?" Shar-Teel said, with a tone as indifferent as if she was talking about the weather. Faldorn's hands were wrapped around the arrow, set in a leathered gap between the plates Viconia wore on her body, not far below her left breast and embedded past her ribs. A second arrow marked her left thigh. I couldn't see that she was breathing. Faldorn began to chant, and the arrow dissolved between her hands. Bright red blood gushed out of Viconia; Faldorn laid her hands forcefully upon the wound and called to Silvanus' name again.
Imoen looked pale. "I wanted to do this—" I heard her whisper, staring at Viconia's body.
Wanted to kill Viconia? Saying that would have been sarcasm, I told myself. I'd never wanted—or maybe I had— But if you didn't do it, you didn't have to feel guilty about it. I put an arm around Imoen. "It's not your fault."
"Half an inch higher," Faldorn said, leaning back upon her heels, "and it would have gone to your heart and meant death." She next lowered her hands to Viconia's thigh; again when she dissolved the arrow, blood gushed from that wound.
Viconia screamed with a high endless cry like a tortured cat in the night. "Vost xta'rin uns'aa! Vith'ir! L'puul rivvil, iblith—" She lay back, unmoving, panting and sweating. Faldorn finished the chant of her healing spell and wiped her hands on her leather tunic.
"Dorn o'goth usstan!" Viconia shrieked, flailing her hands to push Faldorn away, and began a chant of her own. It seemed to fail, her voice faltering and her body collapsing back. "Vith'ir! Vith'ir! Vith'ir!"
"If you wanted nature's vitality in you, I could have cast it," Faldorn said, and turned to chant a healing spell over Ajantis next, ignoring Viconia's wails.
"Ravhelen—crazen—ssussun flamgran—vith'ir—plynn ussa dal ghil—oloth d'jal—iblithen—" she gasped out; she turned on the ground like fishbait on a hook, like a legless carrion crawler trying to raise itself up. She struggled to writhe under her cloak, failing to let it cover all of her body, screaming at the sun that hit her skin. Shar-Teel reached for the longer cloak Ajantis wore, and threw it down across her as she lay there.
"Centuries," I heard her crying, drow words thickly woven between her tirades in our language, "the power was mine for centuries, shortlives could never comprehend, I have commanded undead warriors five times the size of this, bearing the best tk'parhn of the drow that any could obtain—that power I had—my lady Darkness—I hate the light more than all—I have power, you fools all of you, desert me at your peril—do not watch me, do not dare mock me! You are disgusting weaklings—all of you! In the streeatul fighting for your betters you would have perished! Slaves—rivvin—how dare they—naut-elghinyrr—disgusting skeletons—command—harl'il'cik—down before me—obey—leave me—stop your mockery—may Shar cut out all your black hearts and consume them by scorpions—"
"That's enough," Shar-Teel said. "You were reckless as any stupid male. You paid for it."
"Venorsh, ilharess!" Viconia shrieked at her. "Venorsh! —And you, they say," she said, hissing; "you stood alone in a forest challenging any who walked past—as if you are one to speak of recklessness or stupidity—elg'caress—"
"And yet I've won," Shar-Teel said, with what was for her unusual tolerance, unbuckling a potion from her waist and taking it for herself. "They say it's only stupidity if you lose."
"Curse you all," Viconia hissed again, and blackness gathered around her hands; she touched herself again, whispering to Shar, and this time the darkness seemed to become absorbed into her body. She sat up, tucking herself deeply inside both cloaks. "May you all die alone in darkness. If your jaws are hanging open and slack yet again, lackwits, you may move them back into your heads and follow down in silence." She kicked at the ground beside her. Slatted wood lay below that part of the grass, over stone steps that led downward; and Imoen was first upon them.
—
mal'ai - idiot
Rei ulu ussta yorn - Fall to my will
Vost xta'rin uns'aa! Vith'ir! L'puul rivvil, iblith - Get your hands off me, foul human
Dorn o'goth usstan - I am able to heal myself
ssussun flamgran - the light burns
plynn ussa dal ghil - take me away
venorsh - silence
—