Akhlaur reached out with his eel staff and stroked the shark's skull between its empty, glowing eyes.

"What have you brought me, my pet?" he inquired in a whispery tone.

Blue lightning sizzled from the eel into the undead shark. The bony cage flared with sudden light, prompting a thunderous, agonized shriek from the shark's latest captive. An explosion of bubbles and a long, wavering cry spiraled out into the water.

Akhlaur, intrigued but not impressed, leaned in for a better look. His eyes widened in sudden recognition. "By curse and current! I know this beast!"

The wizard's gills flared with excitement as he considered the implications of this latest capture. This was the laraken, the spawn of water demons and elven magic! It was his own creation, and a link to his homeland. If the laraken had found a way into the Elemental Plane of Water, then perhaps at long last he, Akhlaur, could find a way out!

"How did you come to be here?" the wizard demanded, "and what have you brought me this time?" He leaned his staff against a coral obelisk and began to gesture with both hands, easily tracing a spell he had not cast in two centuries.

In response, magic seeped from the monster like blood from a killing wound. The laraken clutched its bony cage for support as the wizard drained it to some minutely defined point just short of death.

Akhlaur savored the stolen spells as a gourmand might consider a sip of wine. "Interesting. Most interesting," he mused. "A blend of all the magical schools, with some Azuthan overtones. Definitely these are Halruaan spells, but the chant inflections are slightly off, as if the wizard were not a native speaker. The accent is that of… an elf?"

The wizard considered. Yes, the laraken's prey had definitely been an elf, probably female. The influence of Azuthan training flavored the spells-to Akhlaur's particular palate, the taint of clerical magic was as cloyingly unpleasant as sugar in a stew.

He snorted, sending a rift of bubbles rising. "Halruaa is in a sorry state indeed. Elf wenches and Azuthan priests!"

Yet the prospect did not displease him. He had slain hundreds of elves, outwitted and overpowered scores of priests. He could easily overcome such foes.

Or so he could, if only he could win free of this place!

By some odd quirk of fate, Akhlaur, the greatest necromancer of his time, had been exiled from the land he was destined to rule. For over two hundred years his every attempt to wrest free of this prison had fallen short. How, then, had some lesser wizard opened the gate wide enough to admit the laraken?

This should have been impossible. Any wizard who came near the laraken should have been destroyed, his magic and then his life drained away by the monster's voracious need. Akhlaur was invulnerable, of course, but he had created the monster, painstakingly fashioning the channels that made the laraken a conduit through which stolen magic flowed. This was one of Akhlaur's finest achievements, the very height of the necromantic arts. Creating the laraken had taken many years. Several attempts had ended in failure when the growing spawn destroyed its female host. Not until Akhlaur had thought to forge a death-bond with the green elf wench he'd nicknamed Kiva-

His thought pattern broke off abruptly, stumbling over a startling notion.

"No," he muttered. "It is not possible!"

But it was possible. Kiva had witnessed many of his most carefully guarded experiments. She had clung to life when thousands of others had yielded to pain and despair. She had even survived the laraken's birth-barely, but she had survived. Akhlaur hadn't wasted much thought on her. Who would have foreseen that a scrawny elf wench could not only survive but learn?

"It would seem," Akhlaur mused, "that I have acquired an unexpected apprentice."

He nodded, accepting this explanation. Apparently Kiva's resistance to the laraken had outlived the punishing birth. She was able to venture near enough to open the gate and let the monster through, even though that meant losing her wizardly spells to the monster's hunger.

Why would she do this?

Akhlaur studied the creature huddled within the undead shark. What had prompted Kiva to risk herself to send the laraken here? Not maternal warmth, surely! Elves could barely abide the notion of mixing their blood with humans, much less water demons. The only possible motive Akhlaur could fathom was vengeance.

Yet surely Kiva understood the laraken could not kill its creator. Perhaps she sent the monster not as an assassin but as her herald.

Yes, Akhlaur decided. This was the answer. His little Kiva had sent him a message.

The wizard glanced at the coral obelisk, where neat runes marked the passing of each moon tide. The lunar rhythm echoed through the miniscule opening that mocked his captivity, and the obelisk pointed the way home like the very finger of the goddess. Soon, when the moon was full and the path between the worlds shortest and surest, a vengeful and astonishingly powerful Kiva would come to repay him with his own coin.

"Come, then, little elf," he crooned, gazing past to the obelisk toward the invisible gate. "Come, and learn the full truth of the death-bond we forged."

To Lady Mystra

Great Lady, we have not spoken before-at least, not in any words I have fashioned or perceived. I am Matteo, counselor to Queen Beatrix of Halruaa. This summer marks my second year as a jordain in the service of truth, Halruaa, and the wizard-lords who rule. I have always known that you watch over this land. It seems strange, now that I think on it, that this is the first prayer I have ever offered.

You see, we jordaini are taught to revere the Lady of Magic, and to respect Azuth, the Patron of Wizards-but always from a respectful distance. We are untouched by your Art, and possess a strong resistance to its power. We are trained to stand apart from the flow of Halruaan life, observing and advising.

But never doing!

Please, forgive this outburst. It was not only unseemly but also inaccurate. I have done many things since last spring and in the doing have wandered far from my first vision of jordaini service. What I am, what I should be, is no longer as clear to me as it once was.

It is that very uncertainty that brings me to you. I have vowed to serve no master above truth, but how is one man to measure truth? Once I trusted in the wizard-lords, the jordaini order, the clerics and magehounds, the laws of Halruaa, the lore and sciences I have committed to memory. These are all fine things, but I cannot blindly follow any or all of them. And yet, what single mortal is wise enough to fashion his own path? What pattern should I see in the strange turns my life has taken?

Since leaving the Jordaini College, I have been counselor to Procopio Septus, the Lord Mayer of Halarahh, and now to Queen Beatrix. I have learned that great wizards are flawed and fallible. I have mourned the «death» of Andris, my oldest friend, then reunited only to watch helplessly as he was stripped of all but the shadow of life. I expected to counsel wizards on battle strategy but not to test skill and courage in actual combat. Yet I have fought alongside my jordaini brothers, many of whom who were stolen from their lives by the false magehound Kiva. We defeated a dark and ancient evil, and we delivered Kiva to the stern judgment of Azuth's clergy. Yet perhaps the most profound change has been wrought by my friendship with the street waif known as Tzigone.

I suspect that Tzigone, like me, has not been lavish in her prayers. Life has given her little reason to bless the wizards of Halruaa or-forgive me-their goddess. Yet Tzigone is like a gypsy lark, blithe and merry and full of song, despite an inner darkness profound enough to shroud her early memories. She seeks answers to the mysteries of her past and the truth of a mother she barely remembers. I suppose that Tzigone, like me, seeks to know who she truly is.