The Stories of Elaine Cunningham

POSSESSIONS

This is the first and, as yet, the only ghost story I've written. It tells a little about the background of Farah Noor, a minor character in the Counselors amp; Kings trilogy. Again, this tale offers a familiar scene through another pair of eyes, as Noor witnesses events related in the novel The Floodgate-events that led to Kiva's madness and her hatred of Halruaa's wizards.

It is such a dark tale that some people have had difficulty equating it with the mild-mannered soccer mom I appear to be. When Dave Gross, the editor of Dragon at the time, asked for a tidbit of personal information to include in a two-sentence author bio, I mentioning that I'd just been asked to fill in for the PTA president of the local elementary school. While this factoid was true enough, the suggestion was entirely tongue-in-cheek. But Dave gleefully seized this notion, and it took some persuading to convince him to let it go. Apparently I'm not the only one who's really fond of irony.

Noor could hear someone chanting. The sound was distant, dreamlike, as if filtered through deep mist. Yet the power in the chant was undeniable; each word pushed at the darkness that had inexplicably engulfed her.

She struggled toward awareness, like a dreamer who knows herself a player in some unpleasant drama of her own making. Finally she shook off slumber, only to find herself floating over a slender, raven-haired girl who lay, face down and arms outstretched, before a shining alter.

A sharp stab of fear sent Noor reeling back, flailing at the empty air and kicking wildly in a vain attempt to gain a footing. She hit the wall behind her, hard enough to bounce away. None of this shattered the oddly lingering dream. Disoriented and deeply puzzled, Noor gazed about in search of clues to her present state.

The girl on the floor was young and willowy, with hair the glorious shining ebony common to Ghalagar nobles. She was clad in scarlet and black-a necromancer's colors, colors Noor had recently taken to wearing despite her father's objections. So this girl, this supplicant, must be her. Noor accepted that. But why was she floating here, looking down at her own body?

Her gaze swept the room. The walls and alcoves and altar were fashioned of a rare blue-veined marble that resembled fine opals. Silver chalices stood on marble pedestals, and an elusive hint of incense filled the room like moonlight. A tall priest stood over Noor's body, chanting as he waved a wand that leaked shining blue smoke. He was robed in white vestments, and the silver circlet on his brow marked him as a high priest. Noor expected no less, for this was the chapel on her family's ancestral lands.

Understanding came to her in a sudden, bright flood. The chanting was a prayer, requesting a vision from Mystra, Lady of Magic. Family custom demanded a mystic journey, a threshold that must be passed before a wizardly apprenticeship. This detachment from herself, this strange, floating experience, must be part of her vision.

It was odd, though, that she remembered so little of what had come before. Odd, too, that she and the priest were alone. The Ghalagar clan always gathered to see fledgling wizards on their way.

Noor studied her prostrate form. She was dressed for rough roads, and her feet were shod with boots rather than her customary jeweled slippers. Most of the rings on her outstretched hands looked unfamiliar to her, but that was not so surprising. Gifts from her indulgent father and numerous suitors were so plentiful that she had chests full of jewels never yet worn. She did, however, recognize the large black and red circlet on her left thumb. Carved from obsidian and set with a giant ruby, it was a deathwizard ring.

So that was why her father had not come!

Anger, black and bitter, welled up in Noor's heart. She embraced it, for it was less painful than the sting of rejection. Granted, necromancy was the least regarded of Halruaa's nine Arts, but she could not understand her father's aversion to her chosen path. Wealth, lineage, and beauty were already hers: Noor aspired to power. Toying with the hearts and pride and honor of her suitors was a fine diversion, but as a necromancer, she could possess their very souls, and hold life and death in her jeweled hands!

The chanting grew louder as it gathered magic from the Weave that sustained and connected all. Noor's heart pounded in cadence with the quickening power. She threw back her head and laughed with anticipation, not caring that her astral form made no sound.

She could not have been heard, regardless. The priest's chant had risen in power until it engulfed the room, until it became too large for a human voice to contain. The chant tore free of the priest and bore down on her like a hundred thundering hooves.

The magical onslaught swept her away. For a moment Noor was a leaf in a monsoon gale-utterly, terrifyingly adrift. Then unseen hands caught her, and pulled her with a single wrenching tug back into her prostrate body.

Noor came to with a gasp. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, feeling dizzy and unaccountably heavy.

The priest knelt before her. Gentle fingers cupped her chin and raised her face to his. "Lady Noor?" he inquired.

Dark eyes, kind and concerned, searched her face. The priest used her given name, and his touch held the familiarity of long acquaintance, but his face was that of a stranger.

Panic fluttered through Noor, filling her belly like the baiting wings of caged birds. She turned her head sharply aside to remove her chin from the priest's grasp and rose unsteadily to her feet.

"Lady Ghalagar," she corrected in cold, regal tones-a voice that one of her suitors had likened to an ice sculpture honed by generations of wealth and privilege. "I am ready for my journey."

A small, sad smile ghosted across the priest's face. "Yes, I can see that you are. Welcome back. Your boat has been prepared and provisioned."

She darted a quizzical look at him. "Boat?"

"Your journey will take you to the Confluence," he explained. "It is a place of great power, where the warp and weft of Mystra's Weave-"

Noor cut him off with a single imperious gesture. "Who are you, to instruct me on my family's history? I know my destination, priest. I also know that the paths to the Confluence have been dry throughout my lifetime and yours."

He averted his eyes. "The River Ghalagar overflowed its banks."

This news set her back on her heels. The river that rioted down from the Lhairghal peaks was a slow and sedate thing by the time it reached her family estates. It brooded its way through ancient woodlands and emerald-green horse pastures with an air of middle-aged resignation, finally to disappear into the Swamp of Ghalagar. Never in her life had the river overflowed! How could such a thing happen, and she not remember?

Noor quickly moved past the shock of this revelation to consider the implications. If she needed a boat to reach the Confluence, it was entirely possible that swamp creatures had made their way through the floodwaters to that magical place.

Her lips curved in a feline smile. The swamp was a cauldron into which life disappeared, and simmered, and rose again in unexpected ways. Few travelers were equal to the swamp. Noor could think of no better place to test her fledgling powers.

Suddenly the priest's concern took on new meaning. Noor's chin went up, and her cheeks burned with insulted pride. "You think I will fail," she stated coldly. "You consider the challenges ahead beyond my skills and courage."

She thrust out her hand so that the ruby in the Deathwizard ring caught the torchlight and glowed like a malevolent eye. "I earned the right to wear this ring, and to wield the powers it holds!"

Noor glared at him, silently daring him to curse her, as her father had done. Deathwizard rings were rare and precious. The price was always high, always paid in blood. This ring had cost Noor her virtue, her father's favor, and the lives of three good men. Even so, she counted it a bargain.

The priest's gaze faltered before her furious challenge, and he bowed his head. "This is your threshold, Lady Noor. The decision to pass through or turn aside belongs to you, and no other."

She gave a curt nod and strode purposefully from the chapel. The door swung open as she approached, creaking, as she had never remembered it doing, as if its magic were somehow tainted by the priest's reluctance. Then Noor's gaze fell on the garden, and all other thoughts fled. She stopped so abruptly that she had to seize the doorframe for support.

The chapel garden had been all but swallowed by the floods. Trees that had provided fruit and shade were hunched over like broken old men, and the courtyard's bright mosaic paving had been reduced to an indecipherable jumble of cracked and faded tiles. Once a broad sweep of marble stairs had led to sunken gardens that were the pride of her family and the envy of their neighbors. Now, the steps disappeared into murky water, and their marble was cracked and begrimed with green scum. A servant stood in knee deep water, holding the rope that secured a low, shallow skiff.

Noor's gaze slid over the small craft. The prow rose in a graceful curve, but the boat itself was broad and low-sided and nearly as flat as a barge. It skimmed like a water bug, barely dimpling the surface. She let out a small sigh of relief. At least one thing was as it should be! Such boats were commonly used during monsoon season to travel through swamplands and flooded fields, moved by spells so simple that nearly any Halruaan child could cast them.

She allowed the servant to hand her into the boat. After settling down, she fixed in mind her desired destination and began the easy, singsong chant of the spell. The boat glided steadily toward the Confluence. Noor held her head high, determined to ignore the blighted landscape and focus on the task ahead.

Her resolve soon faltered. She turned this way and that, gazing in open horror at the changes wrought by storms she could not remember. Ancient, barren trees loomed overhead, moss draping the skeletal branches like a moldy shroud. The air became heavier, fetid. Large bubbles simmered free of the murky water, and the deep, grumbling calls of swamp creatures came from all around her.

A giant dragonfly darted past, so close that wings of rainbow gossamer brushed Noor's face. She shied violently away, shoving her fist into her mouth to muffle her startled scream. Showing fear could be deadly, for the dragonfly's touch was far from accidental. The creatures fed upon carrion and soon-to-be carrion. It had "tasted" her, and decided that she was not yet near enough to death to be of interest. Or perhaps it had recently feasted on the storm-provided bounty.

Noor closed her eyes, trying not to imagine the bloated bodies of drowned horses. Her father's breeding farms lay near the chapel. She did not wish to see what had become of those sleek, fleet animals, or watch the dragonflies gather in feeding frenzy. She had seen such a thing once. They had gathered as thick as flies, their brilliant colors shimmering like obscene flowers in a breeze as they reduced a rothe cow to bone.

A frustrated sigh escaped her. The monsoons that fueled such flooding must have been fierce, yet she could remember nothing. No doubt the ritual left her confused. Her memory would surely return once the threshold journey was complete. If it did not, she would have that wretched priest flayed alive, and his hide tanned for boot leather!

Suddenly the boat lurched to the port side. Noor slapped her hands against the low sides to keep from tumbling off her seat. But the boat continued to tip, the starboard side moving slowly, heavily up. Noor threw herself onto the boat's floor and braced her feet against the port wall. The boat rose until it stood upright on its side, then continued its path until it leaned ominously over the dark, hungry water. Finally the boat stopped, quivering like two strong wrestlers locked in combat, too evenly matched to prevail and too stubborn to cede victory.

Noor clung desperately to the seat to keep from falling. "You'll never capsize me!" she shrieked at her unseen foe. "My father's magic protects the boat!"

"And you, as well?" inquired a dry, mocking voice. "I don't think so, little deathwizard."

Shock numbed her, silenced her. Noor had spoken out of fear and bravado, never expecting a response!

"Speak up, girl! A well-bred lady does not stand about gaping like a carp."

A second wave of dread shivered through Noor. She had heard these words before, many times, scolding and prodding her throughout her childhood and toward "proper behavior." The voice had been leeched of tone or pitch, but there was no mistaking the crisp, exaggerated precision of the words. Well-bred ladies were, above all, articulate.

"Grandmother?" she whispered.

"Give me the ring, little deathwizard, and go home."

"No!" The word tore from Noor in a rising scream, fueled by terror and fury and denial.

The boat slammed back down. Fetid water splashed over Noor, and the jarring impact sang down her spine like a banshee's wail. She gritted her teeth against the pain and rolled aside.

Just in time. A skeletal hand lurched over the side and drove down hard. Bony fingers screeched against wood as the hand groped about for its prey.

Noor scuttled back, crab-walking away from her attacker. But oddly enough, curiosity outweighed fear. If this undead thing had indeed been her grandmother, why could it speak? Her grandmother had been an imposing matriarch, but not much of a wizard. The spells that transformed a dying wizard into an undead lich were far, far beyond the woman's meager skills.

"Who gave you this power?" Noor demanded.

A second hand grasped the edge of the boat. Bony fingers flexed, and then a skull rose above the side of the boat. The famous Ghalagar hair was gone, replaced by lank strands of seaweed. Empty eyes regarded Noor above sharp, aristocratic bones.

"Deathwizard," the skeletal moaned. There was an eternity of sorrow in that word, yet the jawbones still moved in a manner than ensured ladylike annunciation. And then, they shattered into a thousand pieces as crimson lightning flashed from the ring on Noor's hand.

Noor stared at the wisp of fetid smoke, all that remained of the skeletal wizard. She glanced down at her left hand. Still clenched in a fist, it was thrust out, twisted so her thumb pointed toward the attacker. Crimson fire still smoldered in the deathwizard ring.

"Worth the price," she whispered, adding the destruction of her undead ancestor to the cost of the ring. She took a long, steadying breath, and then renewed the spells that sent the boat gliding over the dark water.

The mist steadily deepened as Noor neared the Confluence, closing around her until she could not see past the prow. She was therefore startled when her boat grated against stone and ground to a halt.

At that moment a strangely cold wind blew though the swamp. The mist parted to reveal a tall black tower, a wizard's tower, built upon the very point of the Confluence.

After a moment of stunned silence, Noor rose to her feet, shaking with wrath. This was her land, her inheritance! She climbed out of the boat, too angry to puzzle over the fact that she stepped out onto dry land.

A pair of fierce gargoyles guarded the door, gray stone demons with elven ears and heads crowned with writhing snakes. Unimpressed, Noor looped the mooring rope around a menacing stone hand. Balling her fist, she pounded on the tower door.

It swung open immediately to reveal a comely young man clad in the crimson robes of a necromancer's apprentice. A practical color, by Noor's estimation, for only a few damp spots and a faint coppery smell betrayed the blood that stained his garments. The lad gave her a friendly, open smile and a courteous greeting, and offered to take her to the master. Disarmed and curious, Noor followed him.

The room through which they passed was round and vast-much larger than the exterior of the tower had suggested possible-and it bustled with activity. A dozen red-robed apprentices hurried about, carrying sharp implements or shallow bowls brimful of blood. Cages stood about in no apparent order, filled with strange creatures unlike any Noor had ever seen.

That no one had seen before, she realized. She looked about with real interest as she followed her escort through the teeming chaos. Along one wall was tethered a line of centaur-like creatures, human torsos rising from the bodies of strange and mighty beasts. A small wind buffeted her as they passed a young griffin that bated its wings tentatively, its eagle-like beak moving as it muttered to itself in a plaintive, very human voice.

An excited smile burst over Noor's face. She had heard of such things-combining forms, transferring the life force of one creature into another body. This was necromancy at its most exciting!

"What is he doing?" Noor asked, nodding toward another crimson-clad youth. The young man stood on a stool, using a long wooden paddle to stir the contents of an enormous cauldron. Apprentices came and went, pouring thick red sludge into the pot.

"Cats," the apprentice said cheerfully, pointing to the sludge. "The jungles are teeming with them. We're rebuilding a man with a cat's muscles. Measure for measure, cats are ten times as strong as men, and far more quick and agile."

As Noor watched, a human skeleton rose from the thick and fetid soup. Chains linked its wrists to handles on either side of the cauldron. The skeleton fought against its bonds, writhing and struggling as if to shed the alien flesh that slowly gathered upon its bones.

"Reverse decomposition," Noor said slowly. She had heard of such a spell. It was exceedingly difficult, and obviously painful. But when the process was complete, what a servant the necromancer would possess!

She considered her grandmother's final word in this new light. Perhaps that final, whispered "deathwizard" was not a taunt, but an answer to Noor's question. Most likely her grandmother's remains possessed speech and memory not because of any magic the woman had once claimed, but through the power of the wizard who had raised her!

The apprentice gestured to a tall, black-robed man who stood with his back toward them, reading from a massive book that floated before him. "The master," the lad said simply. He bowed to Noor and left her.

She took a deep breath, trying to reclaim some of her indignation. "Lord wizard," she called out as she stalked toward him.

He turned, and something in his gaze stopped Noor in mid stride. His was a striking face, graced with fine features and framed with an abundance of glossy black hair. He might have been handsome, but for black eyes as soulless as a shark's.

Nevertheless, Noor met his gaze. "You are trespassing upon Ghalagar lands, my family home. This tower was raised in defiance of our ancestral claims, and against Halruaan law. What have you to say to this?"

"I am Akhlaur," the wizard responded, as if that explained all.

As indeed it did.

Noor's heart thudded to a painful stop, then took off at a gallop like a bee-stung mare. The room tilted and spun wildly as she dropped to one knee before the greatest necromancer of their time.

"I am Noor, first daughter of Hanish Ghalagar. Your presence here lends my family grace, my lord, and I bid you welcome in my father's name."

A wicked glint sparkled through the wizard's eyes, proclaiming her words as the lie they truly were. Building a tower on another wizard's lands, especially in these dark and contentious times, was a challenge the Ghalagar family could not ignore. There was no way this could end but in war, and they both knew it.

Even as the thought formed, another path opened-one so bright and full of promise that Noor gasped with the wonder of it.

"My lord Akhlaur, it is my family's custom that every youth and maiden must pass a threshold. We journey to this place of power, seeking a vision from Mystra."

Akhlaur lips curved with dark amusement. "And I am the vision the Lady granted? Apparently she possesses a fine sense of irony!"

Noor rose to her feet quickly, before her courage failed. "We make this journey before taking vows of apprenticeship, to test our true path." She held up her hand, and showed him the deathwizard ring. "It is my desire to learn the necromancer's Art. I am the Ghalagar heiress. If you accept me as apprentice, none will challenge your right to this place."

"Do you think I need such an alliance?" Akhlaur asked, more in curiosity than anger.

She dipped into a hasty curtsy. "Of course not, my lord. The advantage would be entirely mine."

The necromancer glanced at her hand. "You have a deathwizard ring," he stated. Without hesitation Noor stripped it off and handed it to him.

Akhlaur turned the ring over, studying the workmanship. "A princely gift. What did you do to acquire this ring?"

Noor told him.

The wizard seemed neither shocked nor impressed by Noor's candid recitation. Indeed, he seemed waiting for something more. Noor gestured toward the bustling activity. "You accept many apprentices, Lord Akhlaur. Take me, and I swear I will serve you as well and faithfully as any other."

He studied her for a long time, measuring her with his unfathomable black eyes. "We will see."

Abruptly he turned and strode through the vast chamber. After a startled moment, Noor followed. They passed through a back door and walked between rows of long, low buildings that looked rather like her father's stables. The floodwaters had receded here, and the ground was dry and firm. Herbs scented the air, and flowers nodded in a gentle breeze. She knew some of them: purple monkshood, maidentowers in shades of rose and soft coral, and delicate blue and white skitterbreeze. Deadly poisons all, despite their beauty.

The wizard paused before a stone building. "This is where my elves live," he announced, "and this, also, is where most of them die. If you've a soft heart or a weak stomach, speak now. I've no patience for tears and tantrums."

Though the building had no windows, though the door was stout and solid oak, Noor could hear the terrible screams that echoed through the building. "I am ready," she said in a voice that, even to her own critical ears, sounded admirably cool.

They passed through a stout wooden door into the shallow of hell. Noor kept her eyes focused on the necromancer's back, ignoring as best she could the wretched cells that lined both sides of the long corridor.

Akhlaur led her to a small, stone cell, and to the source of the agonized cries. On a small cot lay a female wild elf, hardly more than a girl, pinioned by wrists and ankles with iron chains. She writhed in the most horrific travail Noor had ever witnessed. Her coppery skin was beaded with sweat, and her belly, not yet rounded with full term, churned and buckled as if something were trying to fight its way out through her skin.

"I have not yet succeeded in bringing one of these to term," Akhlaur observed. "The creature is stronger than its female host, but it is not yet ready to be born, and will die as soon as it breaks free."

Noor swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. "What creature, my lord?"

"You have heard of the laraken?"

She nodded. They were creatures of legend, voracious monsters that haunted swamps and fed upon magic carried by unwary travelers. They were said to resemble floating yellow globes framed by a pair of fleshy tentacles. No living man had actually encountered one and returned with a trophy, but stories of sightings were told in the taverns, and children frightened each other by whispering the bloody tales.

"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 cannot truly die."

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 announced, gazing with satisfaction upon the glowing gem. "We will return to the tower."

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.

"I wondered when you'd get around to visiting," Akhlaur went on. His gaze slid dismissively over the battle-ready wizards, lingering for a moment on Hanish Ghalagar. "These are the best allies you could muster? Let me transform them into mindless undead. It could only improve them."

Noor's eyes darted to her father. His face darkened with familiar temper, and he lifted his wand to avenge this insult. Before Noor could shout a warning-whether to her father or her master, she could not say-light burst from Hanish's wand.

It veered away from Akhlaur and streaked toward Noor like lightning to a lodestone, flowing into the crimson gem. Her black hair rose and writhed about her face as her father's magic coursed into the gem. Hamish's wand quickly spent itself, blackened, and withered to ash. Yet still the magic came, flowing until the hand holding the wand was little more than skin-wrapped bone. When at last the lightning ceased, a desiccated shell wrapped in the rich robes of Hanish Ghalagar fell lifeless to the floor.

Noor stared, too stunned to grieve, barely noticing that the crimson gem rise from her hands and float over to Zalathorm. The wizard deftly caught the artifact.

"You cannot harm me with that," Akhlaur said, still with a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Nor you me," Zalathorm returned grimly. "With this gem, we entrusted our lives to each other's keeping."

The necromancer lifted raven-wing brows in mock surprise. "Why, Zalathorm! Take care, or I shall suspect you of harboring doubts about our friendship!"

"Doubts? I don't know which is the greater perversion: the use you have made of this gem, or the monster you made of the man I once called friend."

Akhlaur glanced at his apprentice. There was nothing in his eyes that acknowledged Hanish Ghalagar's death, or noted the bitter tears streaking Noor's face. "Tiresome, isn't he?" he said with a sneer, tipping his head in Zalathorm's direction. "But what can one expect from someone whose family motto is 'Too stupid to die?'"

In response, Zalathorm lifted the gem with one hand and began to trace a spell with his free hand. Every wizard in the room mirrored his gestures.

Suddenly the tower disappeared in an explosion of white light and shrieking power. Noor's senses, keenly attuned to the Confluence, felt the rending tear as the tower was wrenched free of its moorings.

She fell to her knees, blinded by the sudden flash and shaken to the depths of her soul by the enormity of this casting. Powerful magic was common in Halruaa as rain in summer, but moving an entire tower, a wizard's tower- Akhlaur's tower!-was an astonishing feat!

But to what purpose?

The white light faded. Noor blinked away the sparks that danced and swam in her vision and struggled to focus upon her master. He crouched in guard position, like a master swordsman, his weapons a skull-headed scepter and an ebony wand. Noor knew the spells stored in these weapons, and understood that Akhlaur could hold off magical attacks for a very long time. Her gaze slid to the necromancer's face. A puzzled moment past before she understood his wild eyes, his twisted expression.

Akhlaur was afraid.

His darting gaze fell upon Noor's face. "The laraken!" he howled, brandishing his specter at the wizards who began to circle him like hunting wolves. "Summon the laraken!"

So that was why the wizards had moved the tower! Away from the laraken, they had hope of engaging the necromancer in spell battle without adding their magic to his! Indeed, they had somehow stripped the tower of its defensive magic. No spells poured from the powerful artifacts in Akhlaur's hands.

Noor's hands began to move in the gestures of summoning. But her eyes drifted to the withered shell that had been her father, and then to the gleaming gem that now held his magic.

And, perhaps, more than his magic. Akhlaur's elves had added their life force to the gem's power. Noor could not say with certainty what afterlife awaited a human wizard slain and swallowed by the necromancer's greed.

An image flooded her mind, a vivid memory of her father leaning low over the raven-black neck of his favorite horse, racing over the emerald fields and laughing with joy. He had taught her to ride before she could walk, to love the freedom of a wild gallop over the vast lands that were her birthright. For a necromancer's power, Noor had betrayed both her father and her heritage. Yet Hanish had sacrificed his magic and his life to wrest her from Akhlaur's hand. Perhaps he had only come to reclaim the family land. She would never know. She supposed it shouldn't matter-after all, she had made her decision, and he his.

Her hands faltered. The unfinished spell crackled through her fingers as her uncertain gaze swept the room. Several of the wizards had leveled their wands at her, ready to loose killing spells. But all of them looked to Zalathorm, who held up a restraining hand and studied Noor with eyes that were both sympathetic and measuring.

"Your father," he said softly, "was a hard man, but a good one. He believed that magic carries a stern price. He came here to pay his daughter's debts."

Noor's eyes darted to the glowing gem in Zalathorm's hands. For a moment she knew a terrible affinity to the trapped souls. Because of the death bond she shared with Akhlaur, she could never truly die, not while he lived.

"You will free them?" she asked in a ragged voice. He inclined his head in solemn agreement.

A ghost of a smile touched her lips. Noor began anew the gestures of the summoning spell, altering it slightly. She began to chant, intoning words of power she had learned at the necromancer's side.

The spell was an ancient casting, one that Akhlaur had employed in the creation of the laraken. Power crackled through the tower as the Weave shifted, opening a gate into another, very different place. A roar like that of an angry sea filled the air, and rising above it, a keening, vengeful shriek.

Magic exploded through the tower for a second time. The circle of wizards fell back, uttering cries of horror as they beheld the creature that appeared in their midst, stepping from a shimmering oval.

Noor held her ground. She had seen such creatures before, captured and tormented by the necromancer. This one had taken part of the laraken's creation, no more willingly and nearly as painfully as the elfwoman who had birthed the monster.

The creature was twice the height of a man and as heavily muscled as a dwarf, and its fearsome body was covered with green-black scales. Eels writhed around its head like the snakes of a medusa, framing a hideous, asymmetric face. The water demon-for such it was-shielded its glowing red eyes with taloned hands. Its gaze fell upon the necromancer. Hatred burned in its eyes like hellfire.

"Akhlaur," the demon said in a grating, watery voice, pronouncing the word like a foul curse. It sprung, massive hands curved into rending talons.

The necromancer dropped his useless weapons and seized the creature's wrists. With preternatural strength he grappled with the demon, chanting defensive spells. Magic crackled like black lightning around the struggling pair. The writhing eels on the demon's head shrieked and flailed about in agony as they burned and withered. One by one, they fell limp to creature's massive shoulders. Fetid steam rose from the demon's body, and green-black scales lifted from its flesh like worn shingles. Too furious to understand its own death, the water demon moved Akhlaur inexorably back toward the gate.

The necromancer's hate-filled eyes sought Noor's face. He captured her gaze and jerked the demon's hand, pantomining a slashing motion.

Noor's head snapped back, and four burning lines opened her throat. She felt a terrible sundering, as if her spirit was being ripped from her flesh, and then she felt nothing at all.

The next thing Noor knew was a sense of darkness fading into thick gray mist. Even before her vision cleared, Noor knew that she was back at the Confluence-she could feel its power. Akhlaur's tower had also returned to its rightful spot, but it was ghostly, insubstantial. Through its misty form, Noor could see a mossy obelisk, nearly half submerged in swamp water.

Puzzled, she looked around. Water was everywhere, as it had been when she first arrived at the tower. Gone were the elves' prisons, the stables, the gardens full of flowering poisons.

Noor stood in the barge that had brought her here, and she was not alone. A young woman, garbed in red and black travel clothes and wearing a fortune in Ghalagar jewels, stood less than arm's length away, staring at her with horror-glazed eyes.

For a long moment Noor gazed at a face very like her own: delicate features, dark eyes enormous in a pretty face gone far too pale. Noor reached out to the girl, half expecting her to mirror the gesture. But the girl shrunk back, flinging out one hand as if to ward off a blow. She uttered a choked little cry as Noor's fingers grazed her small hand, and the deathwizard ring upon it.

Pain, unexpected and searing, flashed through Noor. She snatched her hand away. What matter of creature was this? Her flesh was hard as stone, and burning hot!

The fleeting contact seemed to have the opposite effect upon the girl. Her face, already pale, blanched a whiter shade. She tore the obsidian ring from her finger, revealing a livid blue band beneath-skin as dead and frozen as the feet of fools who got caught in storms on the Lhairghal peaks. The girl's terrified eyes darted to Noor, and then to ghostly tower, which was swiftly fading away.

"It was a dream," she said in a faint, choked voice. "None of it was real!"

"Of course it is," Noor responded tartly, out of patience with mystery in general and this shrinking wench in particular. "You would deny the most powerful necromancer of our time?"

"Our time?" The girl's laughter was brittle, with a hysterical edge. "Akhlaur is long dead!"

A faint, nameless apprehension stirred in Noor's heart. "That is impossible. I am bound to Lord Akhlaur by a death bond. His death will be mine, and while he lives, I cannot truly die."

For some reason this only seemed to deepen the girl's horror. Then something else dawned in her eyes. Noor would have called it pity, but that was not an emotion people dared turn in her direction!

The girl collected herself with visible effort and pointed to obelisk. "This monument was raised two hundred years ago, in memory of a dark time and heroic ancestors."

Noor bristled. "Whose ancestors? This is Ghalagar land!"

The girl was silent for a long moment. "The swamp waters are rising. Powerful magic, you see, carries a stern price."

"So I've heard tell," Noor said coldly.

"Family legend claims that when the obelisk is fully submerged, Halruaa will cease to be. Legend also claims that a spirit lingers here, weeping. Her tears, whether they be penitence or pique, mingle with the rising waters."

"What is that to me?" Noor said heatedly. "You speak of legends, and family, yet this had been Ghalagar land since the dawn of Halruaa!"

"It was Ghalagar land. The family name was changed, so that we would always remember the price of magic. I never understood why until now."

"Changed? To what?"

The girl took a deep breath and met Noor's eyes. "Noor."

For a long moment Noor stood speechless. She could make no sense of this odd pronouncement, or of much else that had happened since she stepped into this barge.

Then it occurred to her that she was not in the barge, but standing just above the surface of the water, just as she had floated above this girl at the onset of the ritual.

So that was it, then. The battle in Akhlaur's tower had jolted her from her body-which, inexplicably, was independent enough to resist the reunion. Fortunately, Noor had a necromancer's skill now, and a deathwizard ring. With such power in her possession, she would soon resolve the matter. She reached for the ring, but the girl shrunk away.

"You and I are one," Noor reminded her. She lunged forward, arms outstretched to embrace and engulf her material form. "We are both Noor."

The girl shrunk back, shaking her head in frantic denial. "Farrah," she gasped out. "My name is Farrah Noor, and no magic is worth such a price!"

So saying, she hurled the deathwizard ring into the mist and dropped down to huddle into the prow of the boat. Her blue lips moved in silent chant as she sped through the words to the enchantment. The boat began to move away from the Confluence.

Noor watched the skiff float away, skimming over the waters and leaving no sign of its passing. She noticed, without thinking it particularly odd, that her own feet did not even dimple the waters upon which she stood.

The skiff disappeared into the mists. Noor tried to follow, but the water held her fast. She struggled like one in a nightmare, unable to move, unable to flee.

Time passed. Noor could not say how much, nor did it seem particularly important to know. Exhausted by her struggle, she sank down at the base of the obelisk. Beneath her the water felt as firm as a dark, murky mirror.

But not completely dark, she noted. There, far below, was the ruby gleam of the deathwizard ring, glowing as it had when she had used it to fend off the undead Ghalagar matriarch. Noor's spirits lifted at the thought of possessing this treasure. As she studied the water, it seemed to her that the ring took on a richer hue, and that the light grew and splintered off into glowing fragments. Her excitement grew as the shards of light deepened and focused, revealing not one ring, but several!

She let out a little crow of triumph. It was a rare necromancer who owned more than one such ring! They would be among her dearest possessions. They would bring her great power.

Noor reached for the rings, but the water would not part for her seeking hands. She tried again and again, but the surface of the water was an impenetrable as glass.

As Noor slumped, defeated, against the half-drowned obelisk, memory stirred. This was vaguely familiar. Young wizards had come before, and would again. After all, it was the family custom. And some of them would hurl their deathwizard dreams into the mist.

They would come again, but she so hated waiting! It was cold in the swamp, painfully cold. She huddled at the base of the obelisk, wrapped her arms tightly around her shivering form. Despairing tears slid down her transparent cheeks, mingling with the slowly rising waters. Originally published in Realms of Shadow Edited by Philip Athans, April 2002