Though the fireball passed over her without harm, it scorched her opponent. The dragon-kin shrieked and turned on the offending drow for revenge. As the two enemies fought each other, another dragon-kin moved in to attack Kestrel. She stole a look at the Vessel of Souls, still suspended in place. What was taking Corran and the others so long? Surely by now they'd had sufficient time to reach their stations. A second glance revealed slight movement of the nearest support beam. Thank the gods! The urn would drop any moment

Suddenly, a loud crash! rent the air. The sound came not from the floor, where Kestrel had expected it, but from above. The dragon-kin, distracted, spun around, allowing her to plant Loren's Blade in her opponent's back and see for herself the source of the noise.

Shards of glass rained down from the chamber's window as a lone figure swung in on a rope. An angel of darkness, her face a mask of vengeance, swooped in to seize justice for the wronged and wreak retribution on the guilty.

Nathlilik.

The drow leader gripped the rope with only one hand. In the other she clutched a spiked mace, raised high. Blood running from cuts all over her body, her white hair streaming loose behind her, she sailed through the air toward the Vessel of Souls.

"Kedar!" she cried. "I do this for you!"

As the arc of her swing brought her directly above the urn, she let go of the rope. She dropped twenty feet to the vessel and struck the invisible force field with her mace. At the same moment, the support beams finally slid out of place. The Vessel of Souls, and Nathlilik along with it, plummeted.

It smashed through the floor, shattering the glass and continuing its descent. A deafening explosion sounded. Unholy shrieks and sobs filled the chamber, rising to a crescendo so intense that Kestrel covered her ears lest the cacophony of terror and torment drive her mad.

A whirlwind surged up through the jagged hole in the floor. Thousands of lost souls, their ghostly faces contorted with hopelessness, spiraled toward the ceiling. The cyclone snuffed out the chamber's torches, leaving only the pale natural light of the broken window to illuminate the room.

The funnel of damned spirits arched through the window. As it reached the open sky it flew apart, releasing the trapped souls to the gods. The horrible anthem of despair at last ceased.

Within, every drow in the chamber collapsed at once, their bodies turned to dust. At the loss of their allies, the remaining dragon-kin took to the air and fled. Only the companions remained.

In the hushed aftermath, Kestrel picked her way through drow ashes and shards of broken glass to the edge of the circle. She peered down. Nathlilik's broken, lifeless body lay surrounded by fragments of the vessel she'd given her life to destroy.

Corran's disembodied voice broke the stillness. "Is she alive?"

Kestrel shook her head and backed away from the ledge in silence. She couldn't say she mourned the arrogant drow's passing, but she respected Nathlilik's sacrifice.

"Athan? Durwyn?" Corran called. "You still here?"

"Aye."

"Here."

"Then we haven't a moment to lose. Now that the drow have fallen, Mordrayn knows exactly where we are."

"What word from Mulmaster?"

"The city is nearly depleted. Panic spreads throughout the Moonsea-soon all the Heartlands will be ours. What tidings here?"

"Intruders have toppled the Vessel of Souls. The Mistress is beyond irate. She says the pool shall be well-fed tonight-either with them or with us."

Kestrel smiled in satisfaction as she listened to the exchange between cultists. Though the news from outside troubled her, she delighted in the knowledge that they'd gotten under Mordrayn's skin.

After leaving the vessel chamber, the party had hurried to the ground floor of the castle and combed it for a route of descent to the pool cavern. Thanks to Pelendralaar's cave-in, none existed save this room-the castle's former great hall, now a magical way station for cultists. Four enchanted gates occupied the hall, one on each wall. Three were of ordinary size, while the last appeared three times the size of any Kestrel had ever seen. A cult sorcerer kept watch at the entrance of each gate, and several squads of fighters were stationed throughout the hall.

Kestrel and the others observed the scene from the corner of a gallery that ran the length of three walls. As they watched, cultists arrived through the smaller gates and entered the large one. A few, like the fighter they'd just overheard, stopped to talk with the cult sorcerers standing guard. From the conversations, she surmised that the small gates all led to points outside Myth Drannor, while the main gate led to the pool cavern.

She gazed at the smaller gates longingly. Beyond lay the outside world. What an easy thing it would be to sneak away from the party and dart through one of those gates, out of Myth Drannor and away from this impossible quest. A few short days ago, she might have done that very thing.

But-independent of the fact that the cult's plan meant no safe place existed to run to-she found she could not abandon her companions now. She felt a responsibility to them and to their mission. Her mission. The fate of the world as they knew it rested in their hands. For once in her life, she was part of something greater than herself. She would not back away.

When they were finished, when they had defeated the cult and destroyed the pool, then they could use those smaller gates to leave Myth Drannor. They could go home. She could collect her cache-perhaps even a reward from Elminster-and set herself up for a life of ease. After all this, she'd earned it.

With new conviction, she assessed the situation once more. Somehow, they had to pass through that main gate. "Ghleanna, perhaps now would be a good time for those remaining invisibility spells," she whispered. Corran, Athan, and Durwyn remained unseen. "Cloak yourself and Faeril-I can sneak past the guards."

Ghleanna, her clawed face partially healed by a blue-glow moss potion, shook her head. "I have developed a modified invisibility spell of my own. We can all pass through unseen."

"First we must close the other gates," Corran said, "to stop the influx of cultists."

"If we do that, how will we ever get home?" Kestrel wished she could see Corran's face and not have this conversation with a disembodied voice. "After we stop Mordrayn, and…" She caught the expression in Ghleanna and Faeril's eyes.

None of them were going home.

"You've been saying all along that this quest is suicidal," Ghleanna said gently. "I think we must face the possibility that in destroying the pool, we may also-"

"No!" Kestrel shook her head vehemently. "I won't accept that." She couldn't accept it-her survival instinct was too strong. "I know what I said before, but I don't intend to die a martyr's death. We are going to confront Mordrayn and the dracolich, we are going to annihilate that damnable pool, and then we are walking out of here alive. Do you hear me? Alive. All of us."

Her new-found optimism surprised Ghleanna and Faeril. In truth, it surprised her, but she had worked hard to get to this point, fought harder than she'd ever fought for anything in her life. No one-not Mordrayn, not Pelendralaar, not every member of the whole despicable cult-was going to rob her of telling this tale in her old age.

A strong, unseen hand touched her shoulder. "Let us leave one gate open, then," Athan said, "to go home."

Ghleanna's forked lightning bolt stunned the sorcerer standing guard and collapsed one of the small gates in a crackling implosion of electricity. All eyes turned to the bolt's point of origin just in time to see a second bolt race forth to disable the gate opposite and shock that guard as well. The bolts seemed to spring from thin air-Ghleanna's improved version of Jarial's spell enabled her to remain invisible while spellcasting.