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 Chal'dzar had imparted no details of the spell he and his partner had wrought, but he had speculated upon one point. That the Faerzress, instead of being shifted to another location in the Underdark, had found a new home in Sshamath: within the drow who inhabited the city. Were all of Sshamath's drow to suddenly depart the cavern, he surmised, the Faerzress would return to the stone from whence it came.

The centuries that followed provided ample evidence that Chal'dzar had guessed correctly. As the city's population rose, the percentage of those born with innate arcane talents gradually declined. The Faerzress, it seemed, spread itself thinner as it took up residence within all of the drow of Sshamath-both those born there and those only recently arrived in the city-until it bled out of them every time a drow cast a spell involving divination or any of the various modes of teleportation.

With a nod, Seldszar indicated the faerie fire that crackled between his forehead and the circling spheres. "Did the Nightshadow warn you that it's going to get worse?"

"Yes. Though it won't be as bad for us as it will be for you. Only about half of our spells will cease to function. We'll still have one leg to stand on-until someone shoves us over." Urlryn gave a sarcastic laugh. "I might be able to fool the other masters, for a time, by arranging for an 'incident' that will force a magical lockdown of the city, but Masoj will figure it out, in time."

"As will the rest of the Conclave," Seldszar said. He nodded at the sphere that showed the cluster of fine-spun stalagmites and stalactites that formed the temple of the Spider Queen, but it moved too quickly for Urlryn to peer into it. "And so will Lolth's priestesses. They may jump to the conclusion that all of the colleges are about to topple. It could be the Rebellion, all over again. In reverse, this time."

Urlryn conjured a silk handkerchief into his hand and wiped his forehead. Despite the cool, dry air of the scriptorium, he was sweating. A flick of his fingers, and the handkerchief vanished. "Do you think it is the Crones?"

"I don't need to think. I know. They are the cause of it."

Urlryn tilted his head slightly, something he did whenever he had second thoughts. "Should we inform the Conclave? Send an army?"

"No," Seldszar said. Forcibly. "That would be the wrong thing to do."

Urlryn nodded. "One of your premonitions?"

"Yes." Seldszar spoke more to himself than to Urlryn. "Absolutely the wrong thing to do. Observe." He held one palm over the other and spoke an incantation; after a moment, an image appeared between them. Into it, he projected the memory of what his brief contact with the Astral Plane had revealed: a glimpse into a future in which the warriors of Sshamath fought, died, then rose to fight again-against their former comrades. Wave upon wave of undead spread through the Underdark, overwhelming all like a rushing tide, feeding and growing with each new army sent against it. As the vision unfolded, a single word pealed like a bell: Defeat… Defeat… Defeat.

"Thus did the Observarium predict," Seldszar said, clapping his hands shut.

It was a moment before Urlryn spoke. "If we could find a way to reverse the spell that Yithzin and Chal'dzar cast and drive the Faerzress back into the stone, then perhaps-"

"I thought of that too, but it's no solution. It will conceal the problem but not make it go away. Inside us or inside the stone of Sshamath's cavern, the Faerzress will still negate our spells."

"Our colleges could relocate. Somewhere beyond the effect."

"To where? A city ruled by these?" Seldszar snatched one of his crystals out of the air, focused it on Lolth's temple in Menzoberranzan, and held it up for Urlryn to see. Inside the tiny sphere, a priestess moved through a temple nursery, her snake-headed whip driving a terrified gaggle of children ahead of her. One male slipped on his own blood, fell-and continued to be whipped, long after his small body had stopped twitching.

Urlryn's lip curled.

Seldszar flicked the sphere back into orbit. "Even if we chose to flee, it would only be a temporary measure. Our visitor said the effect would spread across all of Faerun. Throughout the Underdark. There's nowhere to run to. Save for the World Above. And that's somewhere, I'm sure, neither you nor I would ever choose to live."

"There must be a way out of this," Urlryn said. "We just haven't seen it yet."

Seldszar glanced at his fellow master, eyes glittering. "I'd like to show you something. Indulge me, if you would. Transpose us."

The other master looked puzzled. "As you wish." He moved a few paces away from Seldszar, then held up his hand. "Ready?"

Seldszar nodded.

Urlryn stared at Seldszar's feet, then snapped his fingers. Instantly, the two swapped places. Urlryn stood next to the water clock, his body shimmering with faerie fire. Seldszar peered back at him through his own veil of pale-green sparkles.