As the moments passed by, Athrogate inevitably slid toward the lever, licking his lips in anticipation. He was right in front of the thing when Jarlaxle put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Glancing up at the drow, the dwarf followed his gaze to the walls and ceiling of the chamber, which were heavily veined with the tendrils of the Hosttower.
“What is it?” Athrogate asked.
“I believe it’s the lever to power all of Gauntlgrym,” Dor’crae replied. “Magical lights and rail carts that move of their own power-magic to give the city life once more!”
Athrogate started forward eagerly, but again Jarlaxle held him back. The drow turned to Dahlia with a questioning expression.
“Dor’crae… knows the place better than I,” the woman explained.
Jarlaxle let go of Athrogate, who leaned toward the lever, but the drow kept staring at Dahlia and made no move to stop him.
“What is it?” Jarlaxle asked her, for there was something in Dahlia’s voice then, some great uncertainty, some hesitation, that Jarlaxle had never heard from her before.
“I… agree with Dor’crae that it will bring Gauntlgrym back to life,” Dahlia remarked, aiming the words at Athrogate.
“Or set loose the power of the fallen Hosttower upon us all,” the drow argued. He knew she was lying, and knew that she was struggling with those lies.
“So we should just leave it and seek out the treasury?” Dahlia asked, waving her hand as if the thought was absurd-waving her hand a bit too dismissively.
“A fine idea,” Jarlaxle agreed. “I am ever in favor of baubles.”
Behind the drow, though, Dor’crae whispered to Athrogate, “Pull the lever, dwarf.”
Jarlaxle knew then that there was more to that request, that the vampire was trying to exert his undead willpower over the dwarf. That, of course, came as a clear warning to Jarlaxle. He stepped toward Athrogate, but stopped abruptly as Valindra materialized right in front of him, staring at the drow with hunger, her fingers waggling in the air between them.
“What do you know?” the drow demanded of Dahlia.
“I like you, Jarlaxle,” Dahlia replied. “I might even allow you to live.”
“Athrogate, no!” Jarlaxle cried, but Dor’crae kept whispering and the strong dwarf moved to grasp the lever.
In her thoughts, she was a girl again, barely a teenager, standing on the edge of a cliff, her baby in her hands.
Herzgo Alegni’s child.
She threw it. She killed it.
Dahlia proudly wore nine diamond studs in her left ear, one for every lover she had defeated in mortal combat. She always counted her kills as nine.
But what of the baby?
Why didn’t she wear ten studs in her left ear?
Because she was not proud of that kill. Because, among everything that she had done in her flawed life, that moment struck Dahlia as the most wrong, the most wicked. It was Alegni’s child, but it had not deserved its fate. Alegni the Shadovar barbarian, the rapist, the murderer, had deserved its fate, had deserved to witness that long fall, but not the child, never the child.
She knew what the lever would do. She had enlisted the drow because of the dwarf. Only a Delzoun dwarf could close that lever. And that was the point after all, to close the lever, to initiate the cataclysm, to free the power that fueled Gauntlgrym, to create the Dread Ring.
The circle of devastation would not be built on the soul of Herzgo Alegni, or even on those of a few wicked lovers deserving their doom. It would be built on innocents, on children, like the one she had thrown from the cliff.
“Athrogate, stop!” Dahlia heard herself saying, though she could hardly believe the words as they came forth.
All eyes turned to her-the confused dwarf, the suspicious drow, the surprised vampire, and the obviously amused lich.
“Do not touch it,” Dahlia said, with strength seeping back into her voice.
Athrogate turned to her and put his hands on his hips.
“What do you know?” Jarlaxle asked her.
The image in front of Athrogate blurred, replaced by visions of Delzoun ghosts. They gathered before him, and begged him to pull the lever.
Free us! they implored him in his mind.
Give to us, and to Gauntlgrym, life anew! one pleaded.
The elf fears it! said another. She fears us, and the return of the greatest dwarf kingdom!
Athrogate stared with hatred at Dahlia, and turned back to the lever.
“Dahlia?” Jarlaxle asked.
The elf was stricken as she stared into the eyes of the drow. “It frees… the beast,” she whispered.
Jarlaxle glanced back at Athrogate and Dahlia followed his gaze. Both looked on in alarm as the dwarf grabbed the lever in both hands.
“Athrogate, no!” they yelled together, but the dwarf was listening to other voices then, voices he thought belonged to the ghosts of his ancestors.
“He cannot hear you,” Sylora assured the pair from the anteroom. As one, they spun to regard her, and her contingent of fierce Ashmadai warriors, standing just outside the archway, crowded on that side of the pit room.
Behind them came a grinding sound as Athrogate pulled the heavy lever.
“Tell him, Dahlia,” Sylora said, tilting her chin at Jarlaxle.
The ground beneath them rumbled. Out past the anteroom came the sound of a great rush of water, like a tremendous waterfall rushing over the stones, then a hiss that sounded like a million giant vipers.
Looking past Sylora, Dahlia witnessed the rise of billowing steam, and within it, she noted living, watery forms-elementals, she presumed.
“What have we done?” Jarlaxle asked.
Sylora laughed at him. “Come Dor’crae,” she bade the vampire. “Leave them to their doom.”
“You betrayed me!” Dahlia shouted at the vampire. She noted just a hint of regret on his face, then she took up her staff and leaped at him, determined to destroy him first.
But Dor’crae was a human one blink and a bat the next. He fluttered past her, and past Jarlaxle into the anteroom, where Sylora had opened a magical gate once more, through which she and most of her prized Ashmadai zealots took their leave.
Valindra laughed hysterically then and blinked away, appearing at Sylora’s side.
“Yes, you, too, my sweet,” Sylora said to her, and showed her the skull gem, her phylactery, and bade her to enter the portal. “Tell him,” Sylora called to Dahlia right before she too stepped through the portal, which would take her to Neverwinter Wood, where she could witness the carnage and glory of her triumph. “Tell your dark elf stooge of the end of the world.” She laughed and disappeared, but closed the portal behind her, leaving a dozen Ashmadai behind.
“Occupy them, so they cannot leave,” Sylora’s disembodied voice instructed her warriors.
“Elf?” Athrogate asked from near the lever. “The ghosts told me to!”
“Sylora Salm told you to pull that lever,” Dahlia explained, her voice full of rage and of regret, full of guilt and venomous spit.
“Tell me,” Jarlaxle insisted.
The floor bucked again beneath them. From the pit came more hissing, more billowing steam, and a guttural roar that sounded as if Faer?n itself had been uncomfortably awakened.
“We’ve not the time,” Dahlia replied. She took up her staff, snapping it open to its eight-foot length.
The Ashmadai charged.
Jarlaxle drove them back with a sudden barrage of thrown daggers that appeared as if from nowhere, then Athrogate drove them back further, bursting between the elf and the drow, morningstars in hand, his heart full of absolute outrage. “Defiled it!” he wailed. “Ruined it!”
Tiefling and human warriors came at him front, left, and right, swinging and stabbing their crimson scepters. But Athrogate didn’t even try to stop the weapons, his focus purely on the offense. A morningstar head crushed the skull of the human on the left, a second swatted the half-elf on the right, and he met the head-butt of the tiefling in the center with his own armored skull.