The Wizardwar   ::   Каннингем Элейн

Nor could she answerthe necromancer's questions without stepping off another precipice. She had given birth, just once, before the laraken's spawning had destroyed all hope of further progeny. Her long-ago daughter had been half-elven, a scrawny, sickly thing barely clinging to life, almost completely devoid of magic. Akhlaur had never acknowledged his child by Kiva, but he had made good use of the girl. That sad little half-breed had been Akhlaur's first magic-dead servant, the germ of an idea that eventually became the jordaini order.

To Akhlaur, that long-ago daughter was the subject of a necromantic experiment, and nothing more. He would be insulted by any claim of kinship. Yet Kiva could not take a similar viewpoint without disparaging the child's human father.

No answer was correct. Any response could bring harsh reprisals. It was the sort of cruel game Kiva remembered from her distant captivity. But she was no longer that captive elven girl.

Her chin lifted, and her eyes cooled to amber ice. "My only living child is the laraken. It carries a portion of Akhlaur's magic. How could I possibly disdain that?"

For a long moment their stares locked. Then Akhlaur stooped and seized the half-elf's head by the hair. He lifted it and regarded it thoughtfully. "How old do you suppose she was?"

Kiva blinked at this unexpected question. "Forty, maybe forty-five years. Quite young for a half-elf, and about the same as twenty-five years of human life."

"Then I suppose there's little chance she achieved arch-mage status."

"It seems unlikely."

"Pity. I've a spell that requires the powdered skull of an archmage who died during the lich transformation."

Kiva shot him an incredulous look. "Is this a common enough occurrence to warrant its inclusion in spell components?"

"If the spell were common, it would hardly be worth casting." The necromancer negligently tossed the head into the pool, and tapped thoughtfully on his chin as he gazed out over the spreading ripples. "Well, no matter. There are other ways of raising the tower."

He gave a terse command to the undead warriors. They fell to work digging a narrow canal that would divert the water downhill to a nearby river.

"A small thing," Akhlaur said with a shrug, "but this river feeds the pool drowning my tower. The more water is removed from that pool, the easier the task of raising the tower. Perhaps I will return the tower to its original location. An unusually strong place of power, that."

Dark inspiration struck Kiva, a small repayment for Akhlaur's cruel game.