Storm of the Dead - Lisa Smedman [48]
Seldszar nodded, his attention still on his spheres. He'd offered the other master a morsel of information, and Urlryn had done as he'd anticipated. Gulped it down, then offered a tidbit of his own. It was the way the game was played.
Seldszar, of course, already knew of the "Nightshadow's" visit to Urlryn's college. When Miverra had departed from his college, Seldszar had locked one of his tiny crystal balls on her. Through it, he'd seen her alter her female body, reshaping it into the image of a male rogue. She'd then teleported into the heart of the College of Conjuration and Summoning-something that should have been impossible for a stranger. It had drawn Urlryn's attention at once. Questioned by him, she admitted to being a Nightshadow, then spun much the same story for Urlryn that she had for Seldszar.
Except that she'd told Urlryn it was Vhaeraun's clerics who needed the Conclave's aid.
It was almost as if she'd known of Urlryn's role in conveying the survivors of the slaughter in the Tower of the Masked Mage to safety-an act that had seemed out of character for Urlryn, unless one knew of the little "favor" the black-masked assassins had done for him, more than a dozen years ago. A favor involving poison.
"Did you believe the Nightshadow's story?" Seldszar asked.
Urlryn shrugged. "Possibly."
Noncommittal answers were typical of Urlryn. Yet the other master had obviously taken the visitor seriously. Like Seldszar, Urlryn had agreed to attach wizards from his college to the band of spies that would be snooping around Kiaransalee's temple. Even then, one of the spheres orbiting Seldszar's head showed Urlryn's three conjurers making their departure. Fortunately, it zipped past too swiftly for Urlryn to make out details of the scene it contained.
"Did you tell the Nightshadow anything about the Faerzress?" Seldszar asked. He waited for the answer-there was a slight chance that Urlryn had confounded his earlier scrying.
The other master shook his head. "No."
Seldszar saw his purple sphere speed past; its color hadn't changed. Urlryn might have shielded his mind against intrusion-every mage capable of it did so whenever they stepped within range of Seldszar's spells-but Urlryn couldn't do anything about the crystal. He wasn't lying. Their secret was safe.
And a strange secret it was. For centuries, it had been passed down from one master to the next. Seldszar wasn't privy to how this had been done in the College of Conjuration and Summoning, but he knew how it worked within his own college. More than two centuries ago, when the previous master of the College of Divination had died and Seldszar had been selected to sit in the master's chair, he'd had a dream. In it, the college's first master, Chal'dzar, had appeared in ghostly form to impart the tale of how their city came to be.
More than four thousand years ago, Chal'dzar, together with a powerful conjurer named Yithzin who specialized in teleportation, had worked a spell that forever altered the face of Sshamath. They'd wrenched loose the Faerzress that permeated the stone surrounding the city, forever flinging aside this impediment to their spells.
Or so they thought. For three centuries prior to their casting, more males than females had been born. After the Faerzress "disappeared," the city's rulers-at that time, priestesses of Lolth-noticed that males trained in spellcasting were developing augmented powers. If the uneven birthrates persisted, those individuals, combined, would one day wield power greater than Lolth's clergy. In a typically drow attempt to thwart the rebellion they were certain would come, the priestesses attempted a culling of those with arcane talent. Their attack quickly brought about the rebellion they'd tried to prevent in the first place. The noble Houses fell and the wizards stepped into power. The Conclave had ruled Sshamath ever since.
The ghostly