Gauntlgrym by R.A. Salvatore Read Free Book Online

blame the young man. She narrowed hereyes into hateful slits. How she wanted to be rid of Dahlia Sin’felle!
    “Those thoughts do not serve you well, my pretty,” came a familiar voice from within the Dread Ring—and even if she hadn’t recognized the voice, only one creature would dare enter so new a ring.
    “Why do you tolerate her?” Sylora said, turning back to stare into the fluttering wall of blowing ash that marked the circumference of the necromantic place of power. She couldn’t actually see Szass Tam through that opaque veil, but she could feel his presence, like a blast of a winter wind carrying sheets of stinging sleet.
    “She is just a child,” Szass Tam replied. “She has not yet learned the etiquette of the Thayan court.”
    “She has been here for six years,” the woman protested.
    Szass Tam’s cackling laughter mocked her anger. “She controls Kozah’s Needle, and that is no minor thing.”
    “The break-staff,” Sylora said with disgust. “A weapon. A mere weapon.”
    “Not so ‘mere’ to those who feel its bite.”
    “It is just a weapon, absent the beauty of pure spellcasting, absent the power of the mind.”
    “More than that,” Szass Tam whispered, but Sylora ignored him and continued.
    “Swashbuckling trickery,” she said. “All flash and dazzle, and strikes a child should dodge.”
    “I count her victims at seven,” the lich reminded her, “including three of considerable renown and reputation. Could I not bring them back to my side in a preferable form,”—the manner in which he so casually referred to his reanimation of the dead sent a freezing shiver along Sylora’s already cold spine—“I would fear that the Lady Dahlia might be thinning my ranks too quickly.”
    “Count it not as her skill,” Sylora warned. “She coaxed them, every one, into vulnerable positions. Her youth and beauty fooled them, but now I know, now we all know.”
    “Even Lady Cahdamine?” said Szass Tam, and Sylora winced. Cahdamine had been her peer, if never really her friend, and they had shared many adventures, including clearing the peasants from the land for the very Dread Ring she stood before—clearing the peasants’ souls, at least, for their rotting flesh had fed the ring. During that pleasurable time, three years before, Cahdamine had spoken often of Lady Dahlia, and of how she had taken the young elf under her wing to properly instruct her in the arts carnal and martial.
    Had Cahdamine underestimated Dahlia? Had she been blinded by her arrogance to the dangers of the heartless elf?
    Cahdamine had become the middle diamond on Dahlia’s left ear, the fourth of seven, Sylora knew, for Sylora had caught on to the elf’s little symbolism. And Dahlia wore two studs on her right ear. Dor’crae was one of her lovers, of course, and—Sylora glanced toward the distant castle, along the path Themerelis had taken.
    “You will not have to suffer her here for some months—years, more likely,” Szass Tam remarked as if reading her mind. “She is off to Luskan and the Sword Coast.”
    “May the pirates cut her to pieces.”
    “Dahlia serves me well,” the disembodied voice of Szass Tam warned.
    “You speak so to keep me from destroying her.”
    “You serve me well,” the lich replied. “I have told Dahlia as much.”
    Outraged, Sylora spun away and departed. How dare Szass Tam elevate the wayward waif to her level with such an insinuation!

    An important night, she knew, and so she had to look the part. It wasn’t vanity that drew Dahlia to the mirror but technique. Her art was a matter of perfection, and anything less would be a death sentence.
    Her black leather boots rose up above her knees, touching her matching black leather skirt on the outside of her left thigh. Nowhere else did leather meet leather, though, for the skirt was cut at a sharp angle, climbing up well above the mid-point on the thigh of her other shapely leg. Her belt, a red cord, carried leather pouches on