"Yes. And before that, when the army of Kurgoth Hellspawn overran the cavern."

Cavatina stared at Karas with a fresh respect. Whatever else he might be, he was a survivor. Kurgoth's army of goblins, bugbears, and ogres had laid waste to the Underdark city of Maerimydra during Lolth's Silence. According to the stories, its streets had been filled with thousands of corpses after the army had sacked it. A bountiful harvest for the Crones who'd ruled what remained of the city afterward.

"Did you see Kurgoth yourself?"

"No, shadows be praised."

"That's… fortunate," Cavatina said. A lie-she would have loved to have crossed swords with a fire giant who was reputed to be half fiend. She supposed, however, there had been plenty of other adversaries wandering the streets of Maerimydra after the city's fall. She wondered if the Crone they'd just battled was the only one of Kiaransalee's worshipers Karas had killed.

She glanced around at the moonlit forest. "Do you expect more of them? More revenants?"

"No." He dumped more wood on the corpse. "The moon rat only mentioned this one." Over his shoulder, he added, "Do you know a prayer that can raise fire?"

"No."

He sighed then unfastened the straps that held the crossbow to his forearm and detached the bow from the rest of the mechanism. Then he reached for a stick.

Cavatina sheathed her sword and watched Karas twist the bowstring around the stick. He carved a hole in a dried scrap of wood and set one end of the stick in it, and added some dried moss. Then, holding the top of the stick loosely, he sawed the bow back and forth, twirling the stick rapidly in place. Eventually the base of it smoldered. A moment later, tiny flames crackled through the dried moss. Karas blew them to life, gradually adding tinder. Soon, he had a fire.

The flames licked at the undead priestess's robe, charring it. Then the body itself burst into flame. It burned rapidly and with great heat, melting away like a candle. Karas rolled the head into the fire. A smell like burning leather filled the air.

Cavatina moved closer to Karas as the Crone's head was consumed. The Nightshadow stared at it without emotion as the flames danced across its desiccated flesh. She wondered if the Crone had been beautiful when still alive-whether Karas had loved the woman, once. Then she remembered that they did things differently in the Underdark. Females simply "took" males when they wanted them. If it had been like that, little wonder Karas betrayed no emotion.

Cavatina was curious to hear how the undead hordes of Kiaransalee had been driven from the city, and even more interested in hearing about Kurgoth Hellspawn. She turned to ask Karas about the city's fall and recapture.

He was gone.

Q'arlynd stood beside the workbench where his scrolls and spell ingredients were laid out. He watched as the duergar metal crafter slid a long-handled crucible into the darkfire furnace. Sweat beaded the metal crafter's bald head and trickled down his temples into the steel-gray stubble on his cheeks and chin. With flat black eyes, he stared at the darkfire that licked the underside of the ceramic dish. So still did he stand that his body might have been carved from gray stone. His thick-fingered hands were dotted with teardrop-sized patches of white where splashes of molten metal had burned them, yet they gripped the handle with the confidence of a soldier holding a pike.

The magical darkfire burned with great heat, but no light. The flames flickering inside the furnace were black as dancing shadows. Coal-dark smoke poured out of a chimney atop the furnace and twisted up through the hollowed-out stalagmite that was Darbleth's workshop. The top of the stalagmite had been lopped off to release the smoke. Once, which rose toward the ceiling of the cave above, blending there with the outpourings of dozens of other forges and furnaces. It spiraled lazily above, eventually disappearing into a one-way portal at the center of the cavern that conveyed it to the surface realm.

When the copper in the crucible collapsed into a glowing puddle, Darbleth pulled the bowl from the furnace and swung it around in front of Q'arlynd. The wizard picked up a scroll and held his free hand over the dish, low enough to feel the heat rising from the molten metal. As he read from the parchment, he crossed each finger over the one next to it, then uncrossed them again, from forefinger to little finger and back again. Then he clenched his hand, as if grasping the haze of heat that rippled above the dish..

As Q'arlynd opened his hand, sparks of violet light erupted from his palm and spun off into the air. Startled, he jerked his hand back. There it was again: another of the manifestations that had been perplexing the sages at the College of Divination. For the past two cycles, any time anyone in the city cast a divination spell, bright sparkles of faerie fire appeared on his hands or lips-something that could be annoyingly inconvenient when secrecy was the aim. It didn't seem to matter how weak or powerful the divination spell, how skilled the caster, or even what method of spellcasting was being attempted. Wizard, sorcerer, bard, or cleric, the result was always the same, as long as the caster was drow: an involuntary glimmer of faerie fire. And it was getting worse. Two cycles ago, it had been a faint, barely noticeable glimmer; now it came as bright, crackling sparks.

No one had any idea why-least of all, Master Seldszar, head of the College of Divination.

A bit of an embarrassment, that. Especially when it was Seldszar's College that had been charged with finding a solution to the problem.

So far, the best theory his sages had come up with was that the effect was linked with the sun. They noted that all drow, down to the youngest, most unschooled boy, had the innate ability to evoke faerie fire and use it to clothe either their own bodies or whatever objects they pointed at in heat-less, sparkling radiance. Everyone knew that this ability was tied to the passage of the sun through the skies of the surface realms-drow could only invoke faerie fire once per cycle-and so the sages speculated that something must be affecting the sun. Increasing its intensity, perhaps, to the point where faerie fire was invoked whether a drow willed it or not.

As to why involuntary manifestations occurred during the casting of divination spells, the sages opined that the practice of the divinatory arts made spellcasters especially sensitive to the passage of time. All that was required was a little mental discipline, they said, and the involuntary manifestations of faerie fire would end. Then all would be well again.

Nobody was buying that explanation. Especially when reports from the surface realms indicated that the sun appeared exactly as it always had.

But now was not the time to dwell upon this problem. Q'arlynd had a spell to complete. He repeated the pattern five more times, then let his hand fall.

The copper was cooling and crusting over. Q'arlynd nodded, and Darbleth moved the crucible back into the furnace.

They waited.

Q'arlynd was making six magical rings, one for himself and five for the wizards and sorcerers who would be the foundation of his school-four of whom he'd already chosen.

That "school" was still in its formative stages. Still based in Eldrinn's residence and under the patronage of the College of Divination, it was a long way from being ready to stand on its own. But one day it would do just that, and Master Seldszar would nominate it for official recognition as one of the city's Colleges. That would elevate Q'arlynd to a master's title, and a position on the Conclave. With that secured, he would build his College of Ancient Arcana into the greatest school the city of Sshamath had ever seen. Bound together by their rings, Q'arlynd and the five mages who served as his apprentices would wield magic undreamed of-magic equal in power to the spell that had opened a temporary gate between the domains of Vhaeraun and Eilistraee, nearly two years ago.