More so to the artifact than to the dark elf, for Crenshinibon had made it quite clear to Jarlaxle that it needed to construct an image of itself, a tower to collect the brilliant sunlight.
A step closer to its ever-present, final goal.
Chapter 7
TURNING ADVANTAGE INTO DISASTER
Kohrin Soulez held his arm up before him, focusing his thoughts on the black, red-laced gauntlet that he wore on his right hand. Those laces seemed to pulse now, an all-too- familiar feeling for the secretive and secluded man.
Someone was trying to look in on him and his fortress at Dallabad Oasis.
Soulez forced his concentration deeper into the magical glove. He had recently been approached by a mediator from Calimport inquiring about a possible sale of his beloved sword, Charon's Claw. Soulez, of course, had balked at the absurd notion. He held this item more dear to his heart than he had any of his numerous wives, even above his many, many children. The offer had been serious, promising wealth beyond imagination for the single item.
Soulez had gained enough understanding of Calimport's guildsmen and had been in possession of Charon's Claw long enough to know what a serious offer, obviously refused and without room for bargaining, might bring, and so he was not surprised to find that prying eyes were seeking him out now. Since further investigation had whispered that the would-be purchaser might be Artemis Entreri and the Basadoni Guild, Soulez had been watching carefully for those eyes in particular.
They would look for weakness but would find none, and thus, he believed, they would merely go away.
As Soulez fell deeper into the energies of the gauntlet, he came to recognize a new element, dangerous only because it hinted that the would-be thief this time might not be so easily dissuaded. These were not the magical energies of a wizard he felt, nor the prayers of a divining priest. No, this energy was different than the expected, but certainly nothing beyond the understanding of Soulez and the gauntlet.
"Psionics," he said aloud, looking past the gauntlet to his lieutenants, who were standing at attention about his throne room.
Three of them were his own children. The fourth was a great military commander from Memnon, and the fifth was a renowned, and now retired, thief from Calimport. Conveniently, Soulez thought, a former member of the Basadoni Guild.
"Artemis Entreri and the Basadonis," Soulez told them, "if it is them, have apparently found access to a psionicist."
The five lieutenants muttered among themselves about the implications of that.
"Perhaps that has been Artemis Entreri's edge for all these years," the youngest of them, Kohrin Soulez's daughter, Ahdahnia, remarked.
"Entreri?" laughed Preelio, the old thief. "Strong of mind? Certainly. Psionics? Bah! He never needed them, so fine was he with the blade."
"But whoever seeks my treasure has access to the mind powers," said Soulez. "They believe that they have found an edge, a weakness of mine and of my treasure's, that they can exploit. That only makes them more dangerous, of course. We can expect an attack."
All five of the lieutenants stiffened at that proclamation, but none seemed overly concerned. There was no grand conspiracy against Dallabad among the guilds of Calimport. Kohrin Soulez had paid dearly to certify that information right away. The five knew that no one guild, or even two or three of the guilds banded together, could muster the power to overthrow Dallabad-not while
Soulez carried the sword and the gauntlet and could render any wizards all but ineffective.
"No soldiers will break through our walls," Ahdahnia remarked with a confident smirk. "No thieves will slide through the shadows to the inner structures."
"Unless through some devilish mind power," Preelio put in, looking to the elder Soulez.
Kohrin Soulez only laughed. "They believe they have found a weakness," he reiterated. "I can stop them with this-" he held up the glove-"and of course, I have other means." He let the thought hang in the air, his smile bringing grins to the faces of all in attendance. There was a sixth lieutenant, after all, one little seen and little bothered, one used primarily as an instrument of interrogation and torture, one who preferred to spend as little time with the humans as possible.
"Secure the physical defenses," Soulez instructed them. "I will see to the powers of the mind."
He waved them away and sat back, focusing again on his mighty black gauntlet, on the red stitching that ran through it like veins of blood. Yes, he could feel the meager prying, and while he wished that the jealous folk would simply leave him to his business in peace, he believed that he would enjoy this little bit of excitement.
He knew that Yharaskrik certainly would.
Far below Kohrin Soulez's throne room, in deep tunnels that few of Soulez's soldiers even knew existed, Yharaskrik was already well aware that someone or something using psionic energies had breached the oasis. Yharaskrik was a mind flayer, an illithid, a humanoid creature with a bulbous head that resembled a huge brain, with several tentacles protruding from the part of his face where a nose, mouth, and chin should have been. Illithids were horrible to behold, and could be quite formidable physically, but their real powers lay in the realm of the mind, in psionic energies that dwarfed the powers of human practitioners, even of drow practitioners. Illithids could simply overwhelm an opponent with stunning blasts of mental energies, and either enslave the unfortunate victim, his mind held in a fugue state, or move in for a feast, attaching their horrid tentacles to the helpless victim and burrowing in to suck out brain matter.
Yharaskrik had been working with Kohrin Soulez for many years. Soulez considered the creature as much an indentured servant as a minion. He believed he had cut a fair deal with the creature after Soulez had apparently rendered Yharaskrik helpless in a short battle, capturing the illithid's mind blast within the magical netting of his gauntlet and thus leaving Yharaskrik open to a devastating counterstrike with the deadly sword. In truth, had Soulez gone for that strike, Yharaskrik would have melted away into the stone, using energies not directed against Soulez and thus beyond the reach of the gauntlet.
Soulez had not pressed the attack, though, as Yharaskrik's communal brain had calculated. The opportunistic man had struck a deal instead, offering the illithid its life and a comfortable place to do its meditation-or whatever else it was that illithids did-in exchange for certain services whenever they were needed, primarily to aid in the defense of Dallabad Oasis.
In all these years, Kohrin Soulez had never once harbored any suspicions that coming to Dallabad in such a capacity had been Yharaskrik's duty all along, that the illithid had been chosen among its strange kin to seek out and study the black and red gauntlet, as mind flayers were often sent to learn of anything that could so block their devastating energies. In truth, Yharaskrik had learned little of use concerning the gauntlet over the years, but the creature was never anxious about that. Brilliant illithids were among the most patient of all the creatures in the multiverse, savoring the process more than the goal. Yharaskrik was quite content in its tunnel home.
Some psionic force had tickled the illithid's sensibility, and Yharaskrik felt enough of the stream of energy to know that it was no other illithid psionically prying about Dallabad Oasis.
The mind flayer, as confident in his superiority as all of his kind, was more intrigued than concerned. He was actually a bit perturbed that the fool Soulez had captured that psychic call with his gauntlet, but now the call had returned, redirected. Yharaskrik had called back, bringing his roving mind eye down, down, to the deep caverns.
The illithid did not try to hide its surprise when it discerned the source of that energy, nor did the creature on the other end, a drow, even begin to mask his own stunned reaction.