The Scepter of the Sands (Book 3 of the Vicelord Chronicles)

Calimshan

(24th of Hammer, 1380 Dalereckoning)

Ilythiiri.

Visions of a male Elf with pale skin and kind eyes, and his darker-skinned mate.

A city aflame.

Ilythiiri.

The bloodline, lost to demonic corruption.

Infected with Demonic Taint.

Wendonai.

Wendonai.

Are you the one, Vala?

Are you the one?

Vala?

Vala?

“Vala?”

She startled, blinking, and found herself again riding along a stone-lined trail, the blistering desert sun peaking through the drab brown curtains of their covered wagon.

But all of this was muted detail, lost within the deep, dark brown of Adir’s eyes.

The Sun Elf Pasha sat beside her, his skin left tan and rugged by a lifetime in the Calim Desert, much of it concealed by his dark robes and turban. The gem set in his crownpiece shimmered with enchantment, not unlike the sapphire in her choker, left mostly inert through Ahriman’s meddling.

“I’m sorry, husband. What did you say?” she asked, righting her skirt as she shifted position, taking care not to disturb her father, Netal, who slept through the days covered in a thick shawl. He hadn’t yet taken to the surface and its bright sun.

Vala smiled at the sight of him. As her orcish mother, Gul’tah, was no more, he was the only family she had left save the child she’d carried for nearly two months now.

“You still dream of him, then?” Adir asked, more intrigued than envious of this attention she gave to another male, and she shrugged, “An artificial memory, I think. Prepared by someone else. These words make no sense to me: Ilythiiri. Wendonai. I remember Iljrene speaking of the Ssri-Tel’Quessir, which were the race of Elves which later became the modern Drow. I don’t know what these visions mean, or how I used them to...do the things I did in Almraiven, but I know they’re connected. They have to be”.

She shivered at the mere recollection of the power that had flowed through her body. Mere moments...but that had been more than enough to almost completely redefine her understanding of the invisible art.

She’d struggled to hold on to what she’d learned, but still, much had slipped away. Far too much...

Adir wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and she rested her head against his chest, privy to the rhythmic beat of his heart, “I know I need to discover the truth of this vision, this...ancestor? I still feel something about me; a presence like ozone and static. This power frightens me, but I know we will need it if we are to reclaim our home”.

It had taken time to acclimate to her place, but Adir’s manse and Almraiven in general had indeed become her home. Even now she felt an ache not unlike she had when fleeing the Dark Promenade, Nezierre’s scornful words trailing her like winged devils.

“We’ve made good progress.” Adir noted, “A few-weeks trek has brought us to Manshaka, and with what remains of my wealth I have secured this caravan, led by servants both old and new. We will reach Memnon, and Pasha Ormat, and there I can determine our next steps”.

Vala winced. The foppish Genasi had been the one to drug her wine, after all, in a revel she’d attended at Adir’s invitation. Her servitude had been a result of his trickery.

Adir grinned at her discomfiture, “Worry not, my love. With that bit of awkwardness behind you, I’m sure you two will make fast friends. You have much in common, after all”.

Rolling her eyes, Vala sat back, content to watch the wagon crest the endless sandy hills of the Calim desert in the stifling, exhausting heat, aware but not quite awake, as she reviewed again the visions of this Moon Elf with pale skin and kind eyes...

Amon suffered another day consolidating King Ahriman’s rule.

More nobles to intimidate or execute.

Commoners to disperse.

Currency flowed through one avenue or another. The new influx of slaves, and the deportation of the like; mostly locals that would resist the new authority but were of possessed of no ability to actually combat it. Servants of the dethroned Vicelords, mainly. Adir’s manor was still impassible thanks to the damned gargoyles, but the servant quarters at least had been emptied.

He knew not their fates and found he could care less. In this world, all others besides himself were expendable. It was the attitude that afforded him his survival and his station, his power and his pleasure.

Still, Amon found himself relieved as he entered his harem, far removed from his actual sleeping chamber. He had no desire to actually rest beside his thralls, after all. Here he would enjoy a purely physical form of release, while the pleasure of killing Adir and his Dark Elf whore eluded him for a time.

He clapped his hands, twice, summoning his consorts. Seven approached him through the translucent curtains covering the massive bed in the center of the room, natives of Calimshan or imported from lands beyond. A fire-haired lass from the dales. A blond, blue-eyed maiden from the High Forest. A trained Tuigan catamite from the far east, a secret depravity known only to the wealthiest of buyers, though an admittedly short-lived experience.

But it was the least impressive one that he chose today, a born native, and his most recent addition.

Erona Firelash, deposed Vicelord and powerful wizard, had been his sweetest conquest, for he despised her nearly as much as he did Adir.

She scowled, though her eyes were downcast. Her split lip and black eye had healed nicely, though the lashes across her back had not. Inspired by her moniker, he’d heated the whip before using it to break her spirit. Those marks were well hidden by the raunchy, disposable costumes he forced her to wear.

“What do you wish of me, master?” she asked in a dull tone, only a hint of hostility coloring it, easily unnoticed by one who had not spoken with her at length. Amon noticed it. He backhanded her, reopening her lip, smiling, “Have you scrubbed the floors about this chamber, like I asked?”

She nodded.

“Have you dusted?”

Again, she nodded.

“Good. I will have you tend to this entire manor soon. But don’t worry, I will find the energy to see to you yet. The clothing. Lose it”.

Her gown parted down her shoulders, tumbling into a small pile at her feet.

He reach out a hand, and cupped her breast, making a show of considering, before adopting a look of supreme disappointment, “Into the back room with you. I don’t like others watching when this mood overtakes me, and I find that I will achieve pleasure through your pain”.

Her eyes widened, but she let him lead her through a darker-lit section of the room, and as the curtains closed behind them, she let out a little cry of exasperation.

Oh, her cries would be louder than that...

While her body slumbered peacefully next to Adir, Vala drifted along the currents of her mindscape; the metaphysical representation of her thoughts, memories, and emotions. Manifesting as a likeness of a night sky filled with constellations of heavenly bodies and shimmering clouds of stardust, here was where she roamed during meditation in an effort to attain new insight into herself, and thus, her psionic abilities.

The shadowed areas, those she could not see clearly, were merely aspects of herself she had not yet discovered. Every psion, as every living sentient being, was born incomplete and unaware of the whole of themselves, and self realization brought about heightened awareness of one’s abilities.

But this once familiar realm had changed...

Not since her imprisonment and forced marriage had she been able to access her mindscape through meditation, and so, after so much had befallen her, Vala had assumed things would be different. But...this...?

Every part was no longer static, that is, solidly affixed to the demesne proper and thus herself, but flowed inward to a central point, a point which was not shadowed, but...blurred. Some gravitated faster than others, but it seemed everything would inevitably collapse into that rift.

The shadowed corners of her mind represented untapped potential, insight, the unrealized possibility of apotheosis. But this...this she could not explain.

“Staring”, or affixing her attention on this phenomenon, caused sharp spikes of pain that followed her into the waking hours, so she’d since opted to observe indirectly, and thus, she was able to comprehend little of it nature or its purpose.

Was this pull it was exerting on her being indicative of her change of perspective as Adir’s wife? Or was she changing into something different altogether, something she could not understand?

Was it related to these strange visions of days long passed?

More importantly, what would happen when everything she was fell in?

A city aflame.

Ilythiiri.

The bloodline, lost to demonic corruption.

Infected with Demonic Taint.

Wendonai.

Wendonai.

Distressed, Vala tried again to access the visions with the use of her powers, but found that they eluded her. She only called up her memories of the event, not the actual event itself.

"What do you want from me?” Vala asked, and found her “voice” to be wavering, uncertain. It reminded her of the first, unpleasant days with her husband.

Troubled, Vala opened her eyes, again in the caravan on its way to Memnon, a fur blanket draped over her to banish the night chill.

How could a place so miserably hot in the daytime be so cold at night?!

Glancing around, she found the wagon to be empty aside from her and Adir, so she gently twisted out of his embrace without waking him, and dressed herself in the corner. Having taken the effort to find her a more economical facsimile of her dancer’s regalia, the ornamentation bronze and copper rather than gold, Vala had decided to humor Adir by wearing it during their attendance in Ormat’s manor. As it was the only other article of clothing she now owned it was a relatively easy decision...

Begrudgingly, Vala donned a top with a plunging bosom and bronze-tinted trim, gauzy sleevelets cut at the elbows, thin enough to be slightly translucent. Bracelets weighted her wrists, resembling shackles with a connecting chain and ring for each index finger, and she also wore leggings that were mostly transparent below the knee-line and cut around the exterior of the thigh to allow easy movement, and a pair of anklets with small copper charms which made a gentle chiming noise as she walked.

As the outfit lacked footwear, Vala briefly concentrated and formed a thin layer of telekinetic energy about the bottoms of her feet, so she wouldn’t vent body heat through the cold ground.

She also covered herself in Calimshan custom with a thin, translucent veil over the bottom half of her face, since the actual need for a Hijab outside a city proper was negligible.

Her hair, thanks to the attentions of her handmaidens, remained finely brushed, tumbling down her shoulders in wavy lengths, save for a thick lock that parted over one eye.

Daring a glance at her husband and finding him to be sound asleep, exhausted by his days of experimentation and study, the better to regain a measure of his power, Vala leaned over and gently kissed him through the veil.

His only remaining weapon, the Codex of the Infinite Planes, was likely sequestered in a very hidden place. Having stolen the near-sentient artifact, it alone had remained with her during her time in Almraiven, and thus had remained safe during King Ahriman’s duplicity. Whether it, her psionic abilities, or both, would prove their salvation remained unclear, though she knew it could grant incredible powers to those worthy to wield it.

She believed Adir to be of that caliber.

Exiting their wagon, Vala surveyed the caravan for her father. They had made camp in a narrow ravine, the Marching Mountains a blur on the eastern horizon. From Manshaka, a small but necessary trade route along the Shining Sea, they had turned north through St. Taril’s Monestary, then west across the bridge of the Calim River, and then north again, skirting the river, the mountains, and the Faeressar; stronghold of the abolitionist Janessar Clan, in a swift but unsafe trek to Memnon.

They had considered seeking shelter among the Janessar, but Adir, a known slave trader, a pair of Dark Elves, one pure, one half-blood, and their Human servants would find little rest among such a group, all but the latter at least.

No matter. Two or three more days along the River Agis would bring them to Ormat, and there Adir would consider their options in earnest.

A dozen tents surrounded the wagon, and three fire pits smoldered dimly, the better to avoid alerting slavers, highwaymen, or worse of their presence. Adjusting to infravision, the heat-privy sense unique to Underdark-dwelling races, she squinted at their now blinding luminescence, but nonetheless located Netal’s heat signature, as well as four patrolling guards. They were thicker, larger, and burned warmer than he did, so it was easy to pick him out at the camp’s outskirts.

Smiling, Vala called upon her experiences among the Darksong Knights of the Drow goddess Eilistraee, and crept towards her father. So soft, so graceful were her footsteps, that the charms about her ankles didn’t once make a sound.

She circled around a tent, and could see the heat signatures of a male and two females. Their sprawled positions informed her that the male had and would continue to sleep very well until the morning.

Tiptoeing around a fire pit, she could just make him out outside of the infrared spectrum. Netal Oblodra was sitting cross-legged, staring out into the desert. When she reached ten paces, he looked back to her, startling her.

Disappointed, Vala resumed a normal walking pattern, anklets jingling, before kneeling beside him, hands in her lap.

“It is...strange.” Netal noted, eyes upward, “This roofless cavern. I feel as though I will fall up through eternity whenever I look up, and forward whenever I look beyond the next stretch of land”.

Grinning, Vala shrugged, “When they first brought me to the surface; the maidens of Eilistraee, that is, they had to pull me upright, because I ended up crouched over, holding onto the grass for dear life. It took almost a half hour for me to calm down enough to open my eyes”.

His expression remained unchanged, but a slight glint in his eyes betrayed his amusement. Drow could be notoriously inscrutable, but Vala knew the signs...

That was why she shifted uneasily as his mood visibly darkened.

“When you offered me a place in Adir’s court.” he added dryly, changing the subject, his eyes burning like hot coals in the gloom, “I was not under the impression it would be as a refugee”.

“That’s true.” Vala conceded, looking away, “As we are, we are a valid noble house escaped from house warfare. With no right of accusation, we must be cautious and ruthless in reclaiming our place atop the hierarchy...or even beyond that“.

“But consider, Father...” she added with dramatic flair, “This glorious opportunity. In Almraiven, the hierarchy is not so set. If we succeed, we will be akin to the Baenre in power and authority. Surely such a possibility intrigues you”.

“To serve a powerful house as a lackey.”

“To serve a powerful house as a warlord.”

“A title only”.

“You forget...” Vala replied, “...that gender roles are mostly reversed here. I will attain rank and status only as Adir’s wife and a close advisor. That is the farthest up the hierarchy I can attain as a female and an outlander”.

“Yet you are content with this?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He looked over to her, the confusion he felt evident.

Vala shrugged, then held a hand to her belly, which had expanded with her slowly advancing pregnancy, “Perhaps my upbringing has stunted my ambition, or the humility I learned as an initiate of Eilistraee, but I do not think this is so. I feel...that there is something else I need to do, something more important than the petty trappings of power. I cannot explain why I feel this way, but it feels right. And besides, what is most important to me is right here”.

“To what are you referring? The Faerie Elf? His seed?”

“Adir. This child. You. My family. That’s what’s important to me.”

“The beginnings of your noble house? The success of your house?”

“In a sense.”

“I...suppose I understand”.

Vala eyed him sadly, “No. You don’t. But perhaps you will. In time...”

They sat in silence for a time, listening to the mournful wind as it passed through and around the hills of sand, then, “It was worth coming here anyway. If nothing else, I feel more alive and awake than I have in decades. Every little sound, the constant shifting of heat patterns in the wind... It is very different on the surface”.

Vala grunted an affirmative, then paused, confused, “Speaking of which...do you mark that down there? That bloom of heat?”

“Where?”

“There.”

It was only visible for a few moments, but she pointed it out as best she could; on the other side of a small trench that had served as a latrine for their encampment.

He shrugged, “I see nothing. A stray animal, perhaps? Not everything is giant and carnivorous here, or so you assure me”

“That may be the case...” Vala admitted, biting her lip, “But that doesn’t mean the surface is entirely safe, either. Wait here. I will inform the guards to stay alert”.

She rose, and turned around, cutting through the camp swiftly but without much urgency. It was just a coyote, certainly, scrounging through their refuse for scraps of food. They were common to the region.

She glanced briefly around the firepits, then grew more alert as she failed to find the guards. They were supposed to be orbiting the outskirts of the camp before reconnoitering every five hundred count. She’d waited at least that long. Hadn’t she?

Just to be safe, she placed two fingers against each of her temples, and focused her consciousness outward in an empathetic link, seeking Adir’s unique thought patterns.

But then she heard music, and it spoiled her concentration.

Snarling, the Half-Drow decided she would have the woman flogged for singing while they were supposed to be traveling with all possible secrecy. Now she stomped her way towards the music, not caring who heard. They would learn not to defy the orders of-

Just as she rounded a tent, Vala recoiled, finding herself within seven paces of a monstrous creature. Standing among the four sentries, or rather, perched among them, the Lamia had the upper torso of a beautiful Human female with russet hair and dark eyes, her modestly exposed with the casual ease Vala had only seen among highborn Drow. Indeed, the males seemed quite taken with her...despite the fact that below the waist her four-legged body was that of a lion, its tuft-tipped tail flicking with agitation, or perhaps pique.

She sang again, her voice so akin to Qilué Veladorn’s rich soprano and yet also her own mother’s hard, rumbling croon, that Vala found her surprise and horror overwhelmed by a crushing sense of sadness and longing. Knowing the sensation to be mere illusionary suggestion, Vala righted herself as the creature turned towards her, smiling cruelly.

“A Dark Elf! My champions, defend me! Slay it!” the Lamia rasped in a dry voice, incongruous from one with such a young face, and the armored Humans drew scimitars and rushed her, their eyes glazed over by magical domination.

“Guards!” Vala shouted as loudly as she could, “We are attacked!”

Willing herself truly incorporeal, rather than into ectoplasm, Vala immediately began to penetrate the clearly weak minds of Adir’s mortal servants while ignoring their attacks as they passed without resistance through her shimmering flesh.

As she did this, she conjured a sheet of cold vapor that would slow and hinder her attackers, and a half dozen dagger-length shards of psicrystal that orbited her body in smooth, rhythmic patterns to confuse and disorient them.

It didn’t work. As the Humans thrust again and again, their accuracy never wavered. Were it not for her incorporeal nature, they would have cut her down in seconds.

Four of her shards separated from the others, and hurled towards the Lamia, only to deflect off her skin as if it were plate armor. Two more projectiles followed, each of which flew into a small talisman hanging from its belt, vanishing on impact.

“You are far from home, stranger...” The Lamia mused, sneering, completing her series of mystic passes with a broad flourish. Vala intuited the tap of Mystra’s weave, and a powerful wave of disjoining magic washing over her...

To no effect.

Her psionimancy derived from another source altogether than conventional spells. But the incorporeal nature proved to be a prodigious drain on her focus. She willed herself backwards several paces before returning to normal.

With only moments to prepare, Vala summoned another series of shards, aiming for the legs. The Human warriors emitted no battle cry, as was normally their wont, and charged in silence, their eyes raging beneath their cowls. The first man died in silence, as a hand closed about his throat and a thin, expertly balanced Drow blade pierced his kidney. Netal let him fall, and hurled a pair of balanced daggers into the back of another, tumbling him.

The sight of her father jarred her for the precious moments she had left, and she cursed, set upon.

Calling upon her combat training with Iljrene, Battlemistress of the Dark Promenade, the Half-Drow angled her body slightly sideways to present a smaller target, and threw out her ankle and right elbow, hooking the thrusting blade of one berserk Human while kicking his leg inwards, unbalancing him.

Using the man’s body as a shield, his sword arm pulled too far out to pose an immediate threat, Vala heard the other Human collide thoughtlessly with his fellow, steel sinking into flesh that wasn’t hers. Seeming not to notice whatever wound his ally gave him, the struck Human grasped her throat with his hands, and tried to squeeze. Her choker, Adir’s symbol of marriage and ownership, saved her life. He fumbled around its surface just long enough for Vala to reinforce her neck with a thick sheet of psicrystal, forming rudimentary armor.

The second Human struck again. The one choking her coughed blood, but didn’t seem to notice.

As one, they collapsed in a heap.

Vala gasped as they tried to claw at her, as she struggled futilely, then screamed as she willed her cloud of vapor to lethal temperatures in a panic. She heard sharp intakes of breath, then the shriek of the Lamia somewhere far away, and then a stifled curse, before she regained enough of her focus to become intangible again and stand up.

As she rose, she concentrated ectoplasm vapor to coalesce into lengths of psicrystal that formed a whipblade, Toshisha, which manifested in her right hand, which had grown a shade paler from the cold.

Looking down, she noted that the two Humans wouldn’t be getting up to harass her, so she turned, shivering, towards her attacker.

Several, actually.

In the time she’d struggled with her would-be assailants, the camp had roused to repel dozens more attackers, a motley band of dirty, emaciated Humans, Lizardfolk, and Half-Elves, led by a trio of Lamia, one female, not including the one she sought, and two males.

The Lamia from before fought tooth and nail against her father up a small hill a bowshot in the distance, his body covered with rippling shadows; a technique she’d taught him to blur and distort his actual position. The creature, in turn, was covered in faerie fire, a harmless but brightly burning flame called into being by full-blooded Drow in times of need.

By the looks of it, the Lamia couldn’t retreat any further, pinned between the sharp descent of the hill on one side and her and the camp on the other.

Despite her magical defenses, the Lamia sported several shallow but heavily bleeding wounds, the result of the deeply biting Drow steel called adamantine.

It screamed; a vile, deafening peal like that of a Banshee, and both Netal and Vala herself groaned, and she was forced to clutch her ears and avert her eyes at both the sound and the unexpected brightness that followed. Heat blossomed all across her skin, leaving pinpricks of sweat. In contrast to the cold she’d experienced moments prior, it felt invigorating.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to strike, Toshisha forming a tight coil.

Adir caught her arm, his mouth pinched, his eyes blazing with wrath focused solely upon her.

Reminded very poignantly of the authority of the Sun Elf slaver and necromancer, Vala paled, and relaxed in his grip. Toshisha crumbled apart. He turned her towards the battle, and she grimaced, seeing the female quite dead, her scorched and blackened body curling into a tight ball. Her father backed away from a pillar of crackling flame, which perched nearby, writhing and undulating like a living thing, the only sign of his agitation the tenseness of his back.

The fire elemental turned towards the camp, then darted forward with prodigious speed, encompassing and immolating a male Lamia. Its fellows, horrified, managed to cast hasty counterspells, but if their efforts even annoyed the creature she couldn’t say. It rampaged among their thralls without slowing.

Adir pointed towards the other male, and a thin green shaft of light discharged from his fingertip. When it struck the man-beast, the air behind him pulled towards an unseen point, a column of viridian light opening wide to form a portal that dragged him inward. The Lamia could only scream as his body passed through the threshold, and a gout of intense flames burst outward in his wake, a grim signifier of his fate.

Adir must have finally mastered the elemental summoning spell and the planar banishment, two advanced abilities offered by the codex and not obtained through his other studies. Elementals were hardly his forte, after all...

The raiding party swiftly dissolved into a mob, and Adir’s men, several armed with crossbows, picked off the dominated thralls while they covered the retreat of the lone surviving Lamia. Adir pointed his finger again, no doubt intent on casting that deadly banishment spell again, then stopped, puzzled. He rubbed his eyes, hissing with discomfort, and by then it was gone, its four legs carrying it with the speed of a horse.

He turned to his elemental, which approached now that the battle had ended, awaiting further instruction.

“Run it down...” he snapped, his grip on her arm painful, “When it lies dead, you are free to return to your home demesne”.

Vala watched as the being of flame surged forward, leaving a thin trail of smoking volcanic glass in its wake, and did not envy the beast its fate.

Netal stepped towards his daughter and his new patron, puzzled by their body language.

“Scabbard the steel, Netal.” Vicelord Adir snarled, “Now”.

Only because of the precariousness of his position in the surface world did he obey the word of a Faerie Elf, and a fellow male, at that...

“Rafid.” the Elf continued, speaking into a small charm on his bracer, and through it, his majordomo, “Secure the camp. Execute the enemy survivors. Tend to the wounded. We must be ready to move in an hour”.

Pausing, considering his daughter, the Elf turned to him, eyes narrowed dangerously, “I tasked you with one thing and one thing only, Netal, since you decided to join us; keep Vala out of danger. Why then, have I found her under a pile of my own men, frozen half to death by her own hand? Could you explain this to me”.

“I’m fine, Adir...” Vala assured him meekly. Against him, her shivering stopped, and normal coloration returned.

Neither of them paid her heed.

Not willing to suffer disrespect from a male, even after that display of power mere moments ago, Netal scoffed, “She is female, and Drow, and a Psion. They were Humans. Iblith. There was no danger to speak of.”

“She is my wife and carrying my heir!” Adir replied vehemently, “I will decide what is to be considered dangerous. And do not insult my men ever again, Irinal, or I will take your tongue in recompense”.

He almost drew steel. Almost. Vala’s despondent expression stayed his hand.

Confused, he merely nodded in acquiescence.

“And you...” Adir continued, wrapping both arms around the female and turning her to face him, his voice softening, but only somewhat, “That was foolish of you. Running into the fray? You are heavy with child! You are too important for me to expend on trivialities. You will not fight again, even to save them. Do you understand?”

Instead of putting the impertinent male in his place, Vala only nodded, eyes downcast, “I understand. Forgive me, husband”.

He forced her eyes to meet his, a peculiar smile across his face, as he stroked her cheek, “Of course, my love. Let us return to the wagon. We can travel in relative safety in the small hours before dawn. Lamia hunt in small packs of four or five, but live in colonies of up to a score or more, so it would be best to be far away”.

With that, he led her away, leaving Netal fumbling for an explanation for his daughter’s behavior.

The surface was a different creature indeed from the Underdark that was his home...