Lisa Smedman - Storm of the Dead

Assuming he was right about what lay behind it.

He glanced at the others and smiled as he saw parted lips and gleams in their eyes. Even Zarifar was paying attention. So was Alexa, but that couldn't be helped. Q'arlynd would have to invite her to join his college as his fifth apprentice, after all, to ensure her silence. Fortunately the ring was in his pocket. He might need it to test her potential loyalty.

"Instead of squabbling about who had the lorestone first," he suggested, "we should ask ourselves a more important question." He rapped a hand against the door. "How do we get this open again?"

Eldrinn nudged the empty stonefire bomb with a toe. "It's supposedly impossible."

"Wrong," Q'arlynd said. "I just opened it, didn't I? And if you had the kiira before me, Eldrinn, you must have gotten it from somewhere-perhaps by also opening the door. We just need to figure out how it's done."

He turned to the others. "Piri, I want you to study that text you read for other clues. Baltak, you can try assuming different shapes; perhaps the door is keyed to a particular race. Alexa can provide teleportation back and forth between Sshamath and here. Assuming, that is, she's willing to join our school and not tell anyone else about the door."

Alexa nodded briskly.

"And Zarifar can…" Q'arlynd paused. The geometer mage stared dreamily at a spot above Kraanfhaor's Door, idly tracing a pattern in the air with his finger. "Zarifar can study the door's… patterns. Or something. Eldrinn and I will be away for a time on the trade mission, but I'll be scrying you-frequently-to check on your progress."

That would, of course, be impossible where Q'arlynd was going-but they needn't know that.

He held up a finger in a gesture reminiscent of a lecturing master. "Remember this: if any of us does find the key, I want him to inform the others immediately. When the time comes to open the door, we're going to do it together."

Heads dutifully nodded.

Q'arlynd knew better than to trust them, however. They'd only worn their rings a short time, and they weren't used to working as a team yet. One or more of them would probably try opening the door on his own-or her own-while he and Eldrinn were gone. Q'arlynd doubted they would succeed, though. Eldrinn, he suspected, was the key.

And Q'arlynd intended to keep that key securely in his pocket.

Urlryn Khalazza strode through the scriptorium door-literally strode through it, as if the heavy wooden door were a mere illusion. The scribe at the table closest to the door gave a start and lost control of his quill, but the others kept at their copywork, forefingers twitching as they magically directed quills that scribbled rapidly on parchment.

Seldszar glanced past the tiny spheres that circled his head, noting the door. For several moments, it held an outline of Urlryn, limned in crackling indigo. Then the faerie fire faded.

"Master Urlryn," he said. "Thank you for responding so swiftly to my invitation."

The master of the College of Conjuration and Summoning nodded. He was a large male, broad-shouldered for a drow, with a stomach that strained the ties of his vest, the visible result of his love of excessively rich, conjured feasts. His college insignia hung against his chest on a mithral chain: a golden goblet, ensorcelled to expand and fill with wine whenever he raised it to his wide lips. Though Urlryn's thinning hair and drooping jowls gave the impression of age and sloth, he was amply protected. Trotting at his side-invisible to the scribes but clear to Seldszar's eye-was a vicious phantasmal dog. It eyed Seldszar warily, lips twitching and hackles raised. At the slightest hint of a threat to its master, it would attack.

Urlryn halted in front of Seldszar and stared meaningfully at the faerie fire that sparked from the other master's forehead. "You wish to discuss our mutual problem?"

"Indeed I do." Seldszar spoke while staring at the spheres. Though the faerie fire posed irritating interruptions to his view of them, his observations continued. He'd shifted their focus to his own college and the mages therein. "I've learned something interesting about the… disruption."

Urlryn cleared his throat in warning and tipped his head at the nearest scribes.

"Indeed," Seldszar told him. "Pointed ears and private business." He hissed, releasing a spell. Heads thunked onto wooden tables as the scribes fell forward, unconscious. An inkwell clattered to the floor, leaving a splash of dark blue ink. The quills continued scribbling a moment more, then collapsed onto their parchments.

"Have your sages come up with any answers yet?" Urlryn asked.

Seldszar glanced briefly at the sphere that showed his college's most learned wizards arguing vociferously around a table. "No. But I recently received a visitor who claims to know who's causing this plague of faerie fire-though she was vague on the details. That visitor was a priestess of Eilistraee, from the Promenade. She blames Kiaransalee's cult. Something they are doing in a temple far to the northeast is augmenting Faerzress throughout the Underdark-including ours."

"I see."

For several moments, neither wizard spoke. The only sound came from a water clock that hung from the scriptorium's ceiling. Drops fell steadily from a tiny hole in the bottom of the cut-glass bowl into a pan below with dull, metallic thunks. The clock was a thing of the World Above, calibrated to mark the quarters of the day and night, so of little practical use in the Underdark-until then. Like the water sinking almost imperceptibly lower in the bowl, time was running out.

"I, too, received a visitor," Urlryn said at last. "A cleric of Vhaeraun, from Skullport. He told me much the same thing. Including the fact that the augmentation of the Faerzress seems to be affecting only drow."

Seldszar nodded, his attention still on his spheres. He'd offered the other master a morsel of information, and Urlryn had done as he'd anticipated. Gulped it down, then offered a tidbit of his own. It was the way the game was played.

Seldszar, of course, already knew of the "Nightshadow's" visit to Urlryn's college. When Miverra had departed from his college, Seldszar had locked one of his tiny crystal balls on her. Through it, he'd seen her alter her female body, reshaping it into the image of a male rogue. She'd then teleported into the heart of the College of Conjuration and Summoning-something that should have been impossible for a stranger. It had drawn Urlryn's attention at once. Questioned by him, she admitted to being a Nightshadow, then spun much the same story for Urlryn that she had for Seldszar.

Except that she'd told Urlryn it was Vhaeraun's clerics who needed the Conclave's aid.

It was almost as if she'd known of Urlryn's role in conveying the survivors of the slaughter in the Tower of the Masked Mage to safety-an act that had seemed out of character for Urlryn, unless one knew of the little "favor" the black-masked assassins had done for him, more than a dozen years ago. A favor involving poison.

"Did you believe the Nightshadow's story?" Seldszar asked.

Urlryn shrugged. "Possibly."

Noncommittal answers were typical of Urlryn. Yet the other master had obviously taken the visitor seriously. Like Seldszar, Urlryn had agreed to attach wizards from his college to the band of spies that would be snooping around Kiaransalee's temple. Even then, one of the spheres orbiting Seldszar's head showed Urlryn's three conjurers making their departure. Fortunately, it zipped past too swiftly for Urlryn to make out details of the scene it contained.

"Did you tell the Nightshadow anything about the Faerzress?" Seldszar asked. He waited for the answer-there was a slight chance that Urlryn had confounded his earlier scrying.