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.