"You will find not my name in there," came a high-pitched voice that seemed on the verge of keening, a voice held tenuously, like a high note, ready to crack apart into a shivering screech.

Jarlaxle silently cursed himself for getting so drawn in to the book. He regarded the lich, who stood at the open door.

"Your name?" he asked, suppressing his honest desire to scream out in terror. "Why would I desire to know your name, O rotting one?"

"Rot implies death," said the lich. "Nothing could be farther from the truth."

Jarlaxle slowly moved back behind the chair, wanting to put as much distance and as many obstacles between himself and that awful creature as possible.

"You are not Zhengyi," the drow remarked, "yet the book was his."

"One of his, of course."

Jarlaxle offered a tip of his hat.

"You think of Zhengyi as a creature," the lich explained through its ever-grinning, lipless teeth, "as a singular entity. That is your error."

"I know nothing of Zhengyi."

"That much is obvious, or never would you have been foolish enough to come in here!" The lich ended with a sudden upswing in volume and intensity, and it pointed its bony fingers.

Greenish bolts of energy erupted from those digits, one from each, flying through the air, weaving and spinning around the book, the tentacle pedestal, and the chair to explode into the drow.

That was the intent, at least, but each magical bolt, as it approached, swirled to a specific spot on the drow's cloak, just below his throat and to the side, over his collarbone, where a large brooch clasped his cloak. That brooch swallowed the missiles, all ten, without a sound, without a trace.

"Well played," the lich congratulated. "How many can you contain?"

As the undead creature finished speaking, it sent forth another volley.