Bone Lord 3

by Dante King

  “Did anyone come looking for us while we were gone?” I asked Elyse after she’d been reassured the mission had been a success.

  “The Webmaven asked after you,” she said. “I told her that you were… entertaining those two.” She jerked her head in Rami-Xayon and Isu’s direction. “She mentioned something about how it was a pity that you didn’t drink some of her spider-root tea before you entertained your women, whatever she meant by that.”

  Hmm. That was interesting. Now, I was definitely going to ask Layna for some—if the council didn’t try to ambush and kill us during the night, of course.

  And if they did, I was ready. Those assholes would get one very nasty surprise if they thought they could fuck with us. I was eager to see what my undead war-spiders could do in battle.

  “Vance,” Rami-Xayon said suddenly, “something evil is happening in this city. I just felt a wave of it, the most powerful one yet.”

  Strangely enough, the moment she said this, I also picked up on an eerie sensation, a chill rushing down my spine. Well, we would be here for one night only. Then it wouldn’t be our problem anymore.

  I turned to Elyse. “Did the Webmaven say she’d be coming back?”

  Elyse nodded. “She said she’d give you an hour or two to finish up with your women, and then she’d return. She said there was a sensitive matter, a very important matter, that she needed to discuss with you.”

  “I see. Rami-Xayon,” I said, turning my attention to the Wind Goddess, “I’d better stay here, but do you think you have enough access to Rami’s enjarta skills to go snoop around? You’re right, there’s definitely something fucked up going on here, and it couldn’t hurt to find out what it is. Even if it is just to be prepared for something that won’t likely involve us. I doubt any anyone will notice if it’s just you missing from the chambers here.”

  Rami-Xayon agreed and left. The others retired for the night, but I stayed awake. Not too long after, there was a knock at the door. I slipped Grave Oath out of its sheath and tucked the dagger behind my back, ready to attack in the blink of an eye if necessary.

  I opened the door and found Layna. She carried a tray with number of small mugs and an ornate, steaming hot teapot.

  “I brought you some spider-root tea,” she said with a smile. “And here, just to allay any fears you might have, I’ll drink it in front of you.”

  She poured herself some of the liquid from the pot, drank it down, and smiled.

  “Ah,” she sighed, “there’s nothing quite like a good cup of spider-root tea.”

  “You told my friend that I should have had some before entertaining my women. Why is that?”

  A mischievous look crossed her face. “I told you before, Vance, that it produces feelings of great joy in the drinker. And it also has another pleasing effect. It acts as a natural aphrodisiac, enhancing both male and female pleasure in the bedchamber.”

  “Damn,” I said, “I’ll definitely have some before I ‘entertain’ my women again. In my humble opinion, entertaining women is one of the most effective ways of relaxing and of getting one’s mind, body, and spirit to higher planes. I’m sure I’ll be doing it again before long, so there’ll be plenty of opportunity to try it out. However, I’ll have to pass on it for the moment. You look like you have something more pressing on your mind.”

  She nodded. “Come with me. We must talk in private.”

  I still didn’t trust her completely, so I kept Grave Oath hidden behind my back as I followed her. She led me up a long spiral staircase, which seemed to go up forever, until we eventually emerged in the top of one of the palace towers. The view over Aith was quite spectacular, and it was a lot more comforting to see the city from this height when I wasn’t clinging to a vertical wall, with only my fingertips preventing me from plummeting to my gory death.

  There were no guards or servants here, so it seemed like a good place for a private conversation. For good measure, Layna locked the door behind us.

  “Things are not well here in Aith, Vance,” she said. “Not for me, at least, and not for many other Arachne either. The Council of Aith have grown corrupt. I have spies who have told me they are plotting to overthrow me, almost brazenly. They want to dismantle the Webmaven system completely and install themselves as sole rulers over Aith. There is something else though, something that goes beyond mere greed and lust for power. There is a deep evil that has been growing in this city for some time now, but in recent days, it has been reaching levels at which it feels like… it will explode, inevitably, and soon.”

  “My uncle passed through your city recently” I said. “And you know now why he was traveling through Aith: to assault the fortress of the Charm Goddess. He wants to capture her and sacrifice her to the Blood God. I think you have just answered a question that has been burning in my mind ever since I explained this to your council, who seemed to want to do everything in their power to prevent me from traveling through Aith. Why, with my cause being so important, would they want to hinder me and my army? And, on the other hand, why would they simply have allowed my uncle, whose purpose in traveling through Aith was truly nefarious, to have strolled through the city with his followers?”

  The answer seemed clear to me, but I wanted Layna to comprehend the implications as well.

  “Could they be in league with your uncle?” she asked me.

  “Well, I have my suspicions, but let me ask you one more question: have there been any unexplained disappearances of young women in Aith?”

  Layna nodded. “A handful at first, but far more in recent times. We thought perhaps they had attempted to leave the city. The youth believe the curse is nothing but a rumor, but few are brave enough to test the theory.”

  “I doubt they’ve decided to up and leave the city. I think certain members of your council have decided to serve the Blood God.”

  “They. . . they’ve been killing the young women?”

  I nodded. “Most likely. Sacrifices.”

  Layna shuddered. “Violence and murder are wonderful things, but not to your own kind.”

  “We’ll know for sure soon enough. My friend Rami-Xayon is out investigating this very moment. I expect her to learn that the council also plan to kill me and my party. They’ll be wanting to stop us by any means necessary to appease their damn evil god.”

  “You’re right,” the Webmaven gasped. “That’s why they took their war-spiders home with them after the meeting this evening! I can’t believe I didn’t see this sooner. Of course, I have firsthand knowledge of how one should fight a war-spider, even without magic, but that’s just one war-spider. The council have access to many.”

  “It will come in handy anyway. Have you fought a war-spider?”

  “Well, my firsthand knowledge is from the other side, from my war-spider whom you fought outside the gates. So, in a way, it was me you fought; I was controlling the spider.” She grinned proudly.

  I didn’t know whether to roar with laughter or yell; that very same day, she had quite literally been doing her best to kill me!

  “Don’t worry,” she added, “I wasn’t too attached to that war-spider. I have others. You don’t need to feel bad about killing him.”

  “Trust me, I don’t. About your other spiders, though… Are they all huge red ones like that one I killed?”

  “They are, yes.”

  “If you’re not mad about me killing your pet, you might be mad about something else,” I said, chuckling humorlessly. “On a different scale, let’s say. Tell me first, though, how you feel about a preemptive strike against your council buddies.”

  She scrunched her beautiful face into a frown. “Those liars are not my ‘buddies.’ They want to kill me as much as they want to kill you and your friends. Regardless,”—a look of savage delight crossed Layna’s face—“I think it would be perfect. The Council of Aith thinks I’m a toothless ruler. This would be the perfect means by which to show those traitors just how ruthless a Webmaven I actually am.”

&nbs
p; “Good. So, uh, keep the awesomeness of the idea of a preemptive strike in mind while I take you down to the sewers to show you what I did, okay?”

  “All right…”

  With that, I led Layna down to the sewers, where my squadron of undead war-spiders was awaiting my command. As I’d predicted, Layna wasn’t too happy that I’d slaughtered and resurrected over 50 of her prized war-spiders, but to her credit, she didn’t explode emotionally. She was actually impressed at what I’d managed to pull off, and she had plenty more war-spiders still in the pens.

  By the time we returned to my chambers, Rami-Xayon had returned from her mission. She wore a dark expression.

  “It is as we suspected,” she muttered. “But before I tell you anything, tell me where she stands.” She fired an icy stare at Layna.

  “The Webmaven is with us,” I said. “The members of the Council who have turned to the Blood God are also planning a coup against her.”

  “You have my war-spiders,” Layna said. “All of them are at your disposal. In addition to those war-spiders you have already… turned.”

  “Then we need to strike hard and strike fast,” I said. “Where do these council members live?”

  A sly smile appeared on Rami-Xayon’s lips, and she spoke before Layna could answer my question.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “in the way of the enjarta, we consider the best time to strike at your adversary to be the time when he believes he is triumphant. Allow him the illusion of victory, and you will be able to attack him at his most vulnerable.”

  I knew exactly what she was getting at.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The hour before dawn was dark, especially with all the torches and candles in our chamber extinguished. Still forms lay silent under their bed covers. I stood in the shadows and watched as the door was quietly opened from the outside. A number of war-spiders started filing in, creeping carefully across the floor, the footsteps of their huge, hairy feet strangely soundless on the polished marble. These were green spiders, not the red ones that belonged to myself and Layna.

  I watched as each green war-spider walked up to a sleeping figure in a bed and positioned itself, ready to strike. I cocked my wrist crossbow and took aim—I had enough bolts to take out each of the spiders in our chamber, and I’d still have one or two left—but I didn’t shoot. Not yet.

  Moving as one, controlled by their council masters, the war-spiders let out unearthly howls and attacked, pouncing on the beds. They plunged their huge, venomous fangs through the flimsy sheets into the bodies beneath, injecting them with deadly venom and ripping like sharp swords through their flesh and bones, impaling torsos and then ripping heads and limbs off in a frenzy of violence.

  And still, I did not shoot. I was waiting for the perfect moment.

  In his chamber, the leader of the Council of Aith—the one who had spoken with such haughtiness—laughed with malevolent glee as he experienced his spider’s kills, his mind linked to the beast’s in the same way mine was linked to the minds of my undead troops. He and his friends had just killed my entire party, and they would be handsomely rewarded for this by the Blood God. And after killing Layna, the city would be his.

  He stood up from his ornate desk and walked over to a cabinet to pour himself a drink to celebrate the success of his traitorous mission.

  At least, that’s what I assumed had happened right before the door to the old man’s chamber exploded, smashed by a massive force from outside, and I saw him scream in terror as a huge red war-spider, burst into his room, its eyes glowing an unearthly yellow-green, its fangs dripping with black, gooey venom. Whimpering with terror, the leader of the Council of Aith dropped his glass and scrambled for his sword, but the spider was on him in two bounds. I made sure it held him down with its eight legs and killed him very slowly, and very painfully.

  The zombie-spider’s venom had changed its characteristics since they had become undead. Now, it was linked to my necrotic venom, and anyone they bit—if their victim survived being impaled by fangs the size of scimitars—would be infected with a fast-spreading grave rot that would turn their flesh gray and have it slough off their bones.

  In my chamber, I watched as the last of the green war-spiders I’d shot with my Tree magic wrist crossbow stopped writhing. It turned into a tree, its legs becoming roots that pushed into and cracked the smooth marble floor beneath it. Where the spiders had stood a minute or two earlier, there were now only young trees, their leaves rustling gently in the night breeze coming through the open windows.

  And in the beds were the torn-up bodies. But they weren’t those of my party. They were more corpses we’d taken from the cocoons and hidden in the beds to fool the council traitors. My party members were hiding on the roof.

  Now, the council traitors who had served the Blood God were all dead, killed by both my war-spiders and Layna’s. We had triumphed. I would have passage for my army through Aith, and Layna was the undisputed ruler of the city, having purged the Council of Aith of all traitorous elements.

  It was still dark when I brought down my party from the roof, and I went up to find Layna after our victory. She was grateful for my help but declined my offer to celebrate with her at this moment. Apparently, she had a lot to sort out, having completely rearranged the political landscape of Aith in a matter of minutes. She did urge me to celebrate, though, and this was something I fully intended to do. I needed a bit of fun before marching my army through Aith toward the castle of the Frost Giants, the Jotunn.

  Since the beds were pretty much wrecked from what had just happened, Layna’s servants assigned some new chambers to my party. We were now split up, but that didn’t matter. My party members could sleep in peace with the traitors neutralized.

  I ended up in a chamber with Rami-Xayon and Isu. My earlier idea entered the forefront of my mind. The one that involved certain ways to resolve the conflict between them. Without making any announcements about my plans, I retrieved a pot of spider-root tea and brought it to our chamber.

  “A great victory calls for a bit of a celebration, right, ladies?” I said to them.

  “It’s been a very long time since I last had spider-root tea,” Isu said, “and it’s one of the things I missed most about Aith. I’ll gladly share some with you, Vance.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “And what about you Rami-Xayon?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” she said with a grin. “I’ve heard great things about it.”

  We each had a cup of the tea. It had a pleasant taste, with a slightly sour edge to it. I began to notice the effects only a minute or two after finishing my cup: a sense of lightness coming over me, along with a general contentment. I wasn’t intoxicated though. My mind was sharp. Everything was simply lighthearted and funny.

  I also started to notice something else. Isu and Rami-Xayon, who were already incredibly beautiful, were starting to look even more irresistible. And the happy feeling from the tea seemed to be pooling in a very specific part of my anatomy.

  I took a seat between Rami-Xayon and Isu, who were sitting on either side of a large sofa, draping my right arm around Rami-Xayon’s shoulders and my left around Isu’s.

  “I know that there’s some bad blood between the two of you,” I said. “I know it goes back a long way too, and it involves some very painful memories. But in the interests of defeating a very powerful foe, I think it’s time to put your differences aside. Forgive and forget, heal old wounds… and make up.”

  I could see sexual hunger gleaming in each woman’s eyes as I looked at them in turn. The tea was having the same effect on them as it was on me.

  “How do you propose we put our differences aside and ‘make up,’ as you call it?” Isu asked, smiling slyly.

  “How about you make out to make up,” I suggested with a shrug.

  This idea would previously have thrown Rami-Xayon into a rage, but the glow of our recent victory over the Council of Aith—which had only been possible because she and Isu had worked
together so brilliantly—combined with the effects of the tea, made her see the question from a different perspective.

  “You’re right, Vance,” she said. “I’ve held this grudge for too long, and to tell you the truth, I think I’ve always been far too hard on Isu for her part in the Purge.”

  “Well, go on,” I said to Rami-Xayon, “show Isu that you’ve forgiven her.”

  The two of them locked eyes, and I watched as they moved closer together, their faces drawn closer to each other like a pair of lodestones. In front of my face, they closed their eyes and pressed their lips together and started kissing passionately, each with one hand resting on my legs. The moment they started doing this, moaning into each other’s mouths as they made out mere inches from my face, a surge of hot blood rushed into my cock.

  This night was just getting better and better.

  They gasped and grunted, their kisses becoming more passionate with every passing second. It was amazing just watching this girl-on-girl loving right in front of me. But I’d never been content with merely watching.

  I reached up, cupping one of Isu’s breasts in one hand, and one of Rami-Xayon’s in the other. They shuddered with pleasure at my touch and let out long, slow moans as their tongues danced in each other’s mouths. My cock throbbing with eagerness, I massaged their breasts in my hands. Rami-Xayon’s small but pert tit in one hand and Isu’s big, round breast in the other. Variety is the spice of life, as the old saying goes, and I was definitely enjoying the variety of tits I had to play with at this moment.

  “I think we’re all overdressed for the occasion.” I smiled as I continued to fondle their breasts. “You both know me, and you know I like things to be… informal.”

  Finally, their mouths parted, each breathing hard, chests heaving, and eyes smoldering with raw lust.

  “I agree,” Isu gasped and practically ripped her dress in half in desperate haste to remove it.