"I require a service, yugoloth." Vhaeraun said, and the whisper of his voice went hard.

Inthracis stiffened. Not a favor, not a request-a service. It was worse than he had feared. He ran his long forked tongue over his lip ridges while he tried to formulate a suitably vague response.

The darkness swallowed Vhaeraun, and in the next heartbeat the avatar stood behind

Inthracis, his breath hot in the ultroloth's upper left ear.

"Would you refuse me?" Vhaeraun asked, his soft words dripping menace.

"I would not, Masked Lord," Inthracis answered, though he would have if he could have.

While yugoloths were mercenaries, even they had their limits when it came to patrons. Inthracis had no desire to get involved in whatever divine conflict Vhaeraun may have been engaged in with his mother.

The next moment Vhaeraun was no longer behind him but across the room near one of

Inthracis's bookshelves. The corpses in the wall recoiled as much as their contorted forms allowed at the nearness of the god. Dead eyes stared out of the wall in horror. Even those dead whose hands and arms formed the bookshelf tried to squirm back into the wall, and a score of priceless tomes clattered to the floor. Vhaeraun eyed them and tsked.

Inthracis wondered how his corpses perceived Vhaeraun's appearance. Surely not that of a drow male.

Vhaeraun looked up and said, "Listen." He cocked his head to the side and his eyes went hard.

"Do you hear it?"

The wind outside rose and fell, carrying its message of Lolth's Chosen. The corpses near

Vhaeraun moaned again.

Inthracis nodded. "I hear it, Masked Lord. Yor'thae. It says Yor-"

Vhaeraun hissed and held up a hand, silencing Inthracis. The eyes of the corpses in the walls went wide at the demonstration of divine pique.