Pool of Twilight

4

"Why, by all the bloodiest gods, must I always endure such fools around me?"

A bolt of magic streaked from Sirana's fingertips. It ricocheted wildly around her circular spellcasting chamber, deep in the subterranean warrens of the thieves' guild, pulverizing priceless sculptures and blasting antique furniture to ashes before finally dissipating against the porphyry walls.

"How could they lose?" Sirana shrieked, her hands clenched into fists. But no human being could answer her. The last three thieves who had entered her chamber were now scuttling around the floor in the form of cockroaches, doing their best to avoid being crushed by her boot heels. "How could they have lost to a band of doddering holy men? All that blasted abishai had to do was bring back an old book and a foolish boy!"

Sirana caught a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror of polished bronze. She liked what she saw-a tall, shapely woman with dark hair and smoldering eyes, clad in a thin white shift belted by a heavy braid of gold. Yes, she thought, even in her rage she looked supremely beautiful. She enjoyed this human form she had taken. Not a hint of her fiendish heritage showed beneath the sultry, feminine exterior.

She sank into an ornately carved chair-one of the few items in the room that had escaped her magical wrath- and bit delicately on a knuckle. It was time to put rage aside and calculate a new course of action. Revenge was best planned with a cool head. Sirana knew that well. After all, she had made revenge her specialty.

It was obvious that a direct attack on the clerics of Tyr would not avail her. She had spent months taking over Phlan's thieves' guild, perverting it to suit her purposes. Then she had summoned Slayer to be her servant. Slayer was a baatezu abishai, a magical creature of fearsome power, but he had failed miserably. No matter the armored horde of thieves and the pack of feral spinagons she had sent to help him.

She picked up a small black-lacquered box from a table beside the chair. It was her most precious possession, a gift from her beloved mother on the day Sirana had murdered the old crone. It was a box full of magical memories. Carefully, Sirana opened the lid. Gradually an image began to form in the darkness within.

An image of a lofty tower, hewn of crimson stone.

Though Sirana had never gazed upon the tower with her own eyes, it was nonetheless a familiar sight to her. The tower had belonged to her father, Lord Marcus, a powerful Red Wizard from the eastern land of Thay. Once it had been a citadel of awesome power built above a legendary pool of darkness. Marcus had managed to imprison the entire city of Phlan in a cavern underneath the tower, intending to drain the life-forces of the citizens in order to transform himself into a demigod.

"But it was all for nothing," Sirana whispered mournfully. "If only I could have been there to help."

She watched as history replayed in the images of the black box. She saw the defilers come to the tower: a ranger, a sorceress, a barbarian who could assume the form of a great cat, and finally the one who always sent a shiver of fear through her-a skeletal paladin, his empty eye sockets glowing with horrible, holy blue light. The undead paladin had been the cause of her father's demise, and for that she despised him most of all. The paladin had turned to dust at the end of the battle, so he was beyond the reach of revenge. But the others were not.

She watched as the tiny tower inside the black box began to topple and fall. She watched as the invaders fled the scene of destruction. For long moments, the images were still. Nothing moved. Then Sirana could glimpse her mother, the beautiful, fiendish erinyes who had served the human, Lord Marcus, crawl from the ruins, bleeding, wings twisted and broken, yet alive.

The erinyes had given birth to Sirana not long after the defeat at the red tower. Because of her half-fiendish blood, Sirana had grown quickly. Early on, her mother had sown the seeds of enmity in Sirana's heart, teaching her everything about the powers of darkness that might be useful one day to hunt those who had killed Marcus and injured the erinyes. When Sirana was nine, she had tested her daughter's progress in a magical duel. In the course of the battle, Sirana had slain her mother, gaining the erinyes's power for her own. Neither regretted the outcome of the duel. Even as she lay dying, the erinyes had presented the memory box to Sirana and made her take a vow of vengeance.

For years, Sirana had bided her time, waiting for the perfect moment to enact her revenge. And then a wondrous opportunity had presented itself. She discovered a fantastic new source of power that made her stronger than she had ever dared to hope. A plan unfurled in her mind. Not only would she kill those who had slain her father, she would also regain the precious Hammer of Tyr the city held so dear. Without the hammer, Phlan would never be healed of the vice and corruption that had come to plague it since the hammer was lost. Then she would ransom the hammer to one of the many dark gods who despised Tyr. In exchange for the relic, she would demand to become a demigod, just as Marcus himself, her father, had once dreamed. Her vengeance, and her destiny, would be complete.

The iron door of her spellcasting chamber flew open with a boom, shattering her pleasant reverie. She scowled, snapping shut the memory box. A cruel light shone in her dark eyes. Yes, she would have her revenge, and she would become a deity. This minor setback at the temple meant nothing at all. But first she had some tedious business to take care of.

"We have dealt the imbecile clerics of Tyr a blow they will not soon forget, Sirana!" a voice thundered.

Slayer. The abishai strutted into her chamber, displaying dagger-sharp fangs. Several roaches scuttled about in terror. Unlike Slayer, they possessed an inkling of what was going to happen.

The massive fiend stood before Sirana's chair, breath reeking, the veins in its membranous wings pulsing with black blood.

"It was a glorious battle," Slayer snarled arrogantly. "The morons of Tyr will never stand another assault."

"Is that so?" Sirana crooned. "And what do we have left to assault them with, Slayer? An army of cockroaches?" She flung a small crimson ball of energy at one of the insects crawling by. When the smoke cleared, all that remained was a scorched spot on the stone floor.

Slayer shrugged massive shoulders. "They couldn't prove any worse in battle than your spinagons, mistress. Not that your army of thieves was much better. Despite their ineptitude, I almost got my hands on The Oracle of Strife. Then a blasted paladin I had set ablaze had the gall to collapse on the book. It was ashes before I could blink. Your idiot spinagons should have stopped him, but they had all perished at the hands of an elven illusionist." The fiend's scarlet eyes glowed hotly. "You didn't tell me there would be a mage in the temple, mistress. Tch, tch! You should be grateful I am still alive to serve you."

A smile coiled itself about Sirana's lips like a small ruby serpent. "Indeed, abishai, I am exceedingly grateful. And I feel I should grant you a reward for your accomplishments."

She lifted a hand. Slayer's eyes flared suspiciously. Black flames encircled the fiend's body. Layer after layer of magical protections wove themselves about the abishai. The fiend glared at its mistress smugly. It had nothing to fear from the half-breed daughter of a lowly erinyes.

"You dare to raise a hand against me?" Slayer snarled. Drool flew from the abishai's maw, pitting the stone floor where it splattered. "I am a prince among fiends. Your mother's kind are insects to me, and your father's most powerful spells could not so much have scratched my defenses. You summoned me into this world, Sirana, but do not for a moment believe that you will be able to hurt me."

Sirana feigned an impressed look. "I have misjudged you, great abishai," she simpered. She fell to her knees before the fiend's clawed feet, bowing her head submissively. "Truly I am not worthy of being called mistress by one so mighty as yourself."

Slayer let out a deep, rumbling laugh. "Well, this is more appropriate, erinyes-spawn."

Abruptly Sirana stood up, a vicious smile on her beautiful face. Slayer stared at her, too late noticing the rune she had drawn upon the floor while she knelt.

The rune spewed forth a white-hot funnel of sparks.

"What is this?" the abishai hissed as the sparks covered its body. The fiend tried to bat them away, but the sparks seared its scaly flesh with pain wherever they touched. Black flames flared to protect Slayer, but the sparks sent by Sirana spun faster and faster. The abishai's aura of protection shattered.

"No!" Slayer screamed. "This cannot be!"

Sirana watched as the sparks adhered to Slayer's skin. They covered the fiend, consumed it.

"But I am a prince of fiends!"

The abishai writhed like a skewered lizard, its entire form burning with magic, its body lost in the maelstrom of sparks. The tornadolike magic whirled faster and faster. Then Slayer began to shrink, melting into the rune on the floor. One last wail of fury echoed around the chamber, then the tornado was sucked down into the rune that had spawned it.

The magical symbol shimmered with power. Sirana did not hesitate. She knelt down, pressing her forehead against the rune.

Searing heat shot through her skull, but before she could scream it faded to a dull, almost pleasant tingling. Sirana stood, new power surging through her veins. The rune on the floor had vanished, but a mirror image of the symbol glowed momentarily on her pale forehead. Then it, too, faded. All the power that had been Slayer's was now hers to command.

She stretched luxuriously, then sank onto a velvet covered chaise, reveling in her victory over the abishai. A month ago such a conquest would have been beyond her abilities. But not now. Every day she grew stronger. Her destiny beckoned.

True, The Oracle of Strife had been destroyed, but the riddle of the hammer's hiding place had apparently been solved, or the clerics of Tyr would never have allowed the book to go up in flames. Sirana would find other ways of obtaining her prize. It would be simple enough to find the hammer by following those sent to fetch it, and Sirana's otherworldly spies had already informed her that the son of two of her father's killers would be among them.

She tossed her head back and laughed, a high, trilling sound that echoed off the cold stone walls. She was a highly creative fiend, after all. She was certain she would think of something.

Raising her hand, she gently stroked a braided ring fashioned from the coarse hair of some monster. "Hoag, I summon you. Come to me."

Instantly, a creature materialized high above her. The hamatula, a baatezu of the Nine Hells, was a tall, long-limbed fiend covered from head to claw with cruelly barbed spikes. The hamatula were cousins of the abishai and erinyes, but after her experience with Slayer, Sirana found that she preferred the cruel and crafty hamatula to the brutish and arrogant abishai. Hoag had served her well in the past. She should have thought to summon this particular fiend earlier.

"Sirana," the fiend growled with pleasure. "How wonderful it is to be summoned by a wizard of your eminence once again."

It bowed low, its long, spindly limbs strangely graceful. Its exquisitely sharp talons brushed the stone floor, tracing fine lines in the hard stone. "What task may I perform for you, mistress?"

"I need you to help me with a little plot I've concocted, Hoag," Sirana said liltingly. She ran a finger lightly along one of the hamatula's razor-edged barbs. "Of course, I can't have you walking around the city of Phlan looking like this."

The sorceress waved her hand. Shadows drifted down to swirl about the hamatula. When the shadows dispersed, the spider-limbed fiend was gone, and in its place stood a tall knight of noble bearing clad in ornate armor of midnight black. He bore a sable shield without device or crest. His face was concealed behind the visor of his helm.

"That's better." Sirana, deep in thought, chewed her lower lip delicately. "Of course, a good knight needs a proper steed." She waved her hand again. This time the shadows coalesced to form a glossy, jet-black charger. Its scarlet nostrils flared as it snorted, tossing its shadowy mane.

"Now, listen carefully at what you are to do, Hoag."

The tall knight nodded his head. "It is with the greatest pleasure that I serve, my dark lady."

Sirana was resting in her chamber after sending Hoag off on his errand, lost in daydreams of power and vengeance and on the verge of drifting into an exquisite slumber.

Suddenly, she felt hostile energy attack the intricate tapestry of warding enchantments she had woven around her spellcasting chamber. Her smoldering eyes flew open, and she leaped to her feet.

I will not be ignored!

The voice seemed to roar in her mind, ancient and powerful. It came to her across a vast distance, but Sirana reeled beneath its thunderous force all the same.

Release me, wizard!

She could feel the enchantments that cocooned her chamber waver. Fear clutched at her heart, and she cursed herself inwardly. She should have been expecting some onslaught.

Release me now!

A terrible blast of pure energy shredded the last of the chamber's defenses, knocking Sirana to her knees. Fighting panic, she did her best to absorb the virulent forces. To her amazement, she found the will to resist.

She staggered to her feet. This morning such an attack would have burnt her to cinders. She must have usurped more power from Slayer than she had imagined. Her far-off foe would not get another chance to strike. Closing her eyes, she launched a barrage of her own against her unseen assailant. She was rewarded by a howl of pain that she heard mentally. That would buy her a little time.

With a single word of magic, Sirana propelled her spirit from her body. She had learned to travel astrally from her mother, and nowadays did it as if it were second nature. She seemed to rise up through the ceiling, then high into the sky above, all the while trailing a twisted silver thread that kept her spirit in contact with the corporeal form that remained behind in her subterranean chamber.

The land rushed by in a blur beneath her. In moments, she approached a line of high, knife-edged peaks: the Dragonspine Mountains. She plunged down into a chasm of darkness. In less than an eyeblink, her spirit journey ended.

Sirana snapped her astral fingers. Light flared into existence all around her, revealing a huge cavern. She stood at the edge of what appeared to be an underground lake. Its surface was a dull, steely color, its waters strangely thick and turgid. But then, this was no ordinary pool. It was a pool of twilight, a source of powerful and forbidding magic.

"Why have you dared to attack me?" Sirana demanded.

Something stirred beneath the leaden waters of the pool.

The guardian.

You promised that you would free me if I granted you power! A wheedling note had entered into the guardian's voice. I have kept my end of the bargain, wizard. Now your turn has come. Release me!

Sirana considered her reply carefully. She didn't have the slightest idea what the true nature was of the creature trapped within the pool, but she did know that it was treacherous and deadly. It had nearly slain her the day she had finally located the pool after years of searching. Yet Sirana was nothing if not cunning. She had adopted a sympathetic tone with the guardian of the pool, that day months ago. Lonely after centuries of isolation, the guardian had listened to her soothing promises. She had struck a bargain with the creature. If the guardian infused her with magical energy from the pool, making her the most powerful wizard in Faerun, she would endeavor to free it from its watery prison.

Of course, Sirana had absolutely no intention of fulfilling her side of the bargain. The only way to free the guardian, she had learned, would be to trade places with it, and she was hardly going to condemn herself to such a fate once she had gained the hammer. No, she was destined to become a goddess! But the guardian need not know that. It must believe that she intended to liberate it. Otherwise, the guardian would never consent to help her carry out her grandiose ambitions.

"Of course we have an agreement," Sirana said finally, choosing her words carefully. "I have not forgotten that, even if you have."

But I have given you the power you asked for! The waters of the pool stirred sluggishly again. Bubbles rose to the surface, breaking slowly, like pox blisters on the skin of a victim.

"It is not enough!" Sirana clenched a fist, baring her white teeth. "You must give me strength enough to defeat my enemies. That is our pact."

But you are battling foes greater than you can imagine, the guardian protested. Throughout the centuries, I have sent my own minions to wipe that wretched city of Phlan off the face of Toril, and each time my hordes have been defeated! Always the people of Phlan seem to find some blasted hero to come to their rescue. Always! You cannot let them find the Hammer of Tyr. If the hammer returns to Phlan, the city will be protected for all time, and neither of us will have our glorious revenge!

"Leave Phlan and the hammer to me," Sirana snapped. "That is none of your concern. Now grant me more of the pool's power, or-"

Or what?

"Or suffer the consequences."

Chanting a harsh incantation, Sirana pointed a finger at the stalactite-covered ceiling high above. Abruptly, one of the massive limestone stalactites broke free. Glowing red-hot, it plunged into the pool. The dusky waters closed around it without so much as a splash or sizzle. But a cry of pain rose into the air of the cavern.

She continued her chant. Another molten stalactite plunged into the pool, then another, and another. Each of them sank below the surface without a sound, but Sirana knew they were striking the unknown creature concealed below, burning into its flesh.

No more, wizard! Please, stop!

Sirana chanted on. A veritable rain of searing stalactites cascaded down on the pool.

I beg you, wizard! Please! You shall have what you seek!

This last was little more than a guttural whisper. Sirana halted her chanting. The molten rain of stone ended.

"That's better," she murmured condescendingly.

A small glass vial rose up out of the pool, separating itself from the thick fluid with a sucking sound.

Drink of this, wizard, and you shall have the power you seek.

Sirana closed her astral fingers around the vial. "I knew you would come to your senses, guardian," she said. With a flick of her wrist she transported the vial back to her spellcasting chamber. "I trust you will not try anything so foolish again. I will free you when I have gained my revenge, and not a moment before. Is that clear?"

Exceedingly clear, wizard.

Sirana smiled, an expression of sublime evil. "Good. I'm so glad we understand each other." Without another word she dispatched her astral body. It soared up out of the chamber and back toward Phlan.

If Sirana had stayed just a moment more, she might have noticed several bubbles rising to the dull surface of the pool, breaking with a thick, wet noise that sounded uncannily like laughter.

Once more Sirana reclined on the black velvet lounge in her private chamber. It was verging on midnight, and she was weary. Astral travel was terribly draining, and the confrontation with the guardian of the pool had consumed most of her considerable reserves of strength. But she could not rest, not if she was going to find that damnable Hammer of Tyr.

She gazed at the vial in her hand. Faint sparkles of light seemed to drift through the thick, metallic-looking fluid within. She briefly considered summoning Hoag. The guardian of the pool could have given her the vial as a trick; it might be poisonous. To find out, she could command the hamatula to taste it. But she didn't want to take the risk of giving the fiend greater power. "Let's be done with it," she said finally.

She lifted the vial to her lips and drank down the oddly warm, steely tasting liquid.

Fire coursed through her veins.

Choking in pain, Sirana fell from the lounge. Her perfect alabaster flesh darkened in hue, becoming a rich bronze color. Two flecks of silvery light ignited in her dark eyes. Writhing on the floor, she swore. What a dolt! She should have suspected a trick. She should have readied a spell of transference so that she could escape this now-doomed body to possess another.

"I cannot die like this!" she croaked, her face twisted in agony. "Not yet!"

Suddenly, the pain vanished.

It was as if she had been plunged into a vat of cool, dark water. Slowly, Sirana pulled herself to her feet, gasping. The darkened chamber seemed to have been transformed. Where before there had been mere shadows, now there was layer upon layer of scintillating darkness. She spun about. Everywhere she looked she saw shades of jet, onyx, and ebony. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

A realization struck her. It was not the room that had changed, but her eyes! Darkness was no longer a barrier to her vision. Now she could see and touch the very fabric of night. This was a gift indeed. She reached out and stroked the silken darkness, gathering it about her like a cloak.

"What is this?" she murmured.

She touched a strange, glistening thread of darkness hovering before her. It was a thread of summoning, she realized. She had used such magical tendrils to call fiends to her many times before, but those threads had always been silvery, shimmering with life energy. This thread was wonderfully black. What type of creature could it possibly belong to? She tugged at the thread, willing whatever existed on the other end to hasten to her side.

"Who dares?" a thin, dusty voice whispered.

"I command you to appear," Sirana ordered. She stepped into the protective center of her summoning symbol and pulled harder on the black thread.

"You do not sleep," the dusty voice rasped with strange surprise. "You do not dream."

"No, I command." Gathering her will, Sirana gave one final tug on the thread. Suddenly, it evaporated in her fingers, and the creature arrived.

It floated before her, a thing of shadow the size of a man. It seemed featureless except for its long, twiglike fingers and a mouth full of moon-white teeth.

For a moment a feeling of alarm surged in Sirana's chest. She had never seen a being quite like this before. Would she be able to control its terrible evil? With her mental powers, she gently probed its aura. Immediately she relaxed. She could sense that this shadow creature was bound to her by her summoning. It must obey.

"What are you?" she demanded.

"I am Sigh," the creature breathed in its indistinct voice.

"I am a bastellus. The world in which my kind dwells is far from this one. But there are some of your race there. They know us as dreamstalkers." Tendrils of shadow floated about the bastellus like ethereal tentacles. "How is it that you summoned me?"

"I ask the questions here," Sirana proclaimed imperiously. Dutifully, the creature fell silent.

Sirana was well pleased. It seemed the guardian of the pool of twilight had kept its part of the bargain. She had never seen a creature of such perfect blackness. It was beautiful. And it was all hers.

"Shall I enter the dreams of your foes and feed upon them, mistress?" the bastellus hissed.

"That is within your powers?"

The bastellus nodded.

Sirana smiled in cruel satisfaction, tapping a thoughtful finger against her smooth jaw. "Very well, Sigh."

She laughed then, a rich, evil sound, the flecks of twilight-colored light flickering in her dancing eyes.