Windwalker - Elaine Cunningham [46]
After a moment's consideration, Vestriss inclined her bulbous head in assent. Quiet your thoughts as best you can. It will make the process less painful for you, and what is far more important, more convenient for me.
The illithid rose and glided toward the slave, who dutifully knelt and tipped up her battered face. Facial tentacles enfolded the genasi's head as Vestriss's innate mental magic probed her slave's mind. She slipped past Azur's roiling thoughts with the ease of a halfling pickpocket, past word-shaped thought, past all emotions the genasi acknowledged and understood, moving swiftly and directly to the mind's hidden depths. There Vestriss found a hard, hateful knot of compulsion. With a mental touch as sure and delicate as a harpist's fingers as she loosened the threads-
Her concentration shattered suddenly, completely. Vestriss staggered back, staring in disbelief at the dagger's hilt protruding from between her lower ribs.
For the second time in her life, the illthid's mental voice was silenced-not by a drow's magic but by the white-hot pain pulsing from the blade.
"No more compulsion," Azar hissed. She rose to her feet, and her blue hand seized the dagger, twisting it. "No more slavery. Only vengeance. Do you still find me incompetent?"
The truth came to Vestriss slowly, beating at her dazed mind like the sound of distant surf. Azar hated the drow, loathed the bullywug shaman. That was real enough, but the mental clamor of these new indignities had cloaked her first and most bitter resentment.
Vestriss threw her will against the terrible pain, forcing it aside long enough to shape a final, important thought:
And the draw?
A sneer twisted Azar's bruised face. "Even now, you assume I'll do your bidding! The drow bested me, yes, but she bested you as well. In my mind, this settles all scores. Know this: You will die and she will not. If that pains you, I am content."
The genasi jerked the dagger's hilt downward and shoved the blade in high and hard, a brutal thrust that quested deep into the illithid's chest. Muscle resisted briefly, painfully, then the blade sank into something soft and pulpy.
The genasi tore the weapon free, and suddenly Vestriss was drowning. Ichor bubbled from her tentacles and welled up in her eyes, spilling down her face in scalding green tears.
The marble floor sped toward her. Vestriss did not register the impact, but she gradually became aware of a new and distant pain. Horror flooded her as she realized its source. Azar's dagger was slicing through a facial tentacle.
The genasi tossed one twitching appendage aside and reached for another. "Despite all, the bullywugs were an instrument of my freedom. This will be their reward," she explained. "As the drow will soon learn, I settle all scores."
The tapping on the hull of the ship grew more insistent. Shar-larra frowned. "Perhaps I should have asked for the answering code," she muttered.
With a shrug, she stepped over to the wall and rapped out an echoing quatrain of the unmistakable rhythm of "The Mermaid," one of the bawdiest tunes sung in Skullport taverns. That seemed to satisfy the unseen scout. Now it was time to pass the warning along.
That presented a problem. According to Khelben, Caladorn Cassalanter was aboard this ship. Sharlarra didn't know him well, but they had been partnered at the last Winterfest ball. There was a distinct possibility that he had figured out what happened to his jeweled cloak pin. No one would suspect one of Khelben Arunsun's apprentices of thievery, but she was far from Blackstaff Tower. In her close-fitting dark clothes, with a nobleman's jeweled sword on her hip, she looked suspiciously like a halfling second-story artist after a good night. Only taller. And sober.
Inspiration struck. Calling to mind Fyodor's face and form, she cast the illusion spell over herself and her gear. She examined the result in the bronze mirror over the washbasin and winced at the unfashionable image he presented: leather jerkin, linen shirt, dark wool trousers