by Лиза Смедман
He saw the swath of chopped vegetation the barrier of blades had cleared and the blackened patch of ground where the troll had died, but no sign of the priestesses. He drew Splitter and spoke the words that would activate its magic, assuring himself that the priestesses weren't using an illusion or invisibility to cloak themselves.
Satisfied that he was alone, he strode into the clearing. Squatting, he studied the footprints left in the slush.
Halisstra stood here, he thought, and one of the priestesses there. The other two had stood there, and there. .
And that was where the footsteps stopped. The priestesses hadn't left on foot, they'd used magic to spirit themselves away?and Halisstra with them.
She was gone, and there was no trail to follow.
Unless. .
Yes, it's just possible, he thought as his eye fell on a footprint in the slush.
It was the track of the gray animal that had been fleeing through the forest. The beasts had been communicating with each other, at least, and might just communicate with him.
Ryld sheathed his sword, and began to follow the trail.
Chapter Ten
Valas peered down at the expanse of dark water below him. Lake Thoroot was even larger than he'd been told?so wide that the far side of it was lost in darkness. It reminded him of the wide, flat expanse of Anauroch, the desert they'd recently visited. The difference, however, was that the lake had steep cliffs hemming it in on every side, a waterfall that thundered into it from the cavern where Valas perched, and a high, domed ceiling overhead. Enormous stalactites hung from that ceiling. Some had points that touched the water; others were broken off like jagged teeth, making the cavern look like an enormous, ranged mouth. Valas shivered, hoping it wasn't an omen of what was to come.
A hand touched his shoulder. Turning, he saw Pharaun. Danifae was right behind him.
"What's wrong?" the mage asked.
"Nothing," Valas answered. "It's just the spray from the waterfall. I'm chilled."
Quenthel scrambled up behind Pharaun and Danifae?who backed away, one wary eye on the whip in Quenthel's belt. Quenthel was crouching to negotiate the low ceiling, her hands and feet spread wide to keep her balance on the slippery rocks. That and the hungry gleam in her eye made her look like a dark spider. Jeggred was one pace behind her, as usual, moving nimbly across the uneven ledge, his second, smaller set of arms held out for balance.
Quenthel peered into the vast cavern beyond the waterfall and asked, "Have we reached Lake Thoroot?"
Her voice was barely audible over the roar of falling water.
"It's just below," Valas answered with a nod. "About fifty paces straight down."
"Do you see any sign of the city?or the ship?"
Valas shook his head and replied, "Both are probably far beneath the surface."
But which part of the surface? he wondered.
For all Valas knew, Zanhoriloch was on the far side of the lake, though he wasn't about to admit that to Quenthel. They had entered through the only approach to the lake the scout was familiar with. The last thing he wanted was to exhibit any weakness or uncertainty, even after they found the ship and left the Underdark?and his expertise?behind.
One hand clutching the wet rock beside him, Valas leaned as far out as he dared, studying the wall below. The tunnel they'd been following was a wide one, with a natural ledge of rock on one side of the river. It had provided a welcome shortcut to the lake, an easy trek after their long, weary journey. But from there, things got tricky. The river burst out of the tunnel like a horizontal fountain, its spray soaking the rock for a great distance on either side. Through the mist, Valas could see faintly glowing streaks of green against the stone: patches of water-soaked, slippery fungi.
Valas felt someone looming behind him, and fetid breath told him who it was. Jeggred stared out at the lake, his monstrous body crowding Valas and nearly forcing him over the edge.
Elbowing Jeggred back, Valas shouted back to the others over the draegloth's head, "I'd like to scout ahead before we go any farther. Pharaun, I'll need magic to climb down, and that spell of yours that will allow me to breathe underwater."
"You're going alone?" the mage asked. "Shouldn't you take someone with you?" He glanced past Quenthel as if anticipating someone else to materialize behind her, then he sighed. "What about Jeggred?"
"No!" Quenthel barked, the vipers in her whip lashing. "Jeggred stays with me."
Sensing her anger, Jeggred scrambled over to crouch at her side.
"He can take Danifae," Quenthel said.
Before Valas could shake his head in protest, Pharaun butted in.
"Danifae will only slow him down?and I don't want to waste my time and talents preparing the same spells twice."
Valas glanced between Quenthel and Pharaun. Valas had to tread carefully, so as not to tip the scales?a balancing act that was growing wearisome. It would be a relief to get away on his own for a while.
"I'll go alone," he told them.
The Bregan D'aerthe scout took off his piwafwi, then set his haversack, bow, and quiver beside it. He also shed his chain mail?its weight would only drag him to the bottom of the lake?and his boots. He carefully removed from his enchanted vest any of his many talismans that might be harmed by the water, then put the vest back on. Next he lashed his daggers into their sheaths. The thread he used would prevent them from falling out when he was underwater but was thin enough to be broken easily in an emergency.
When he was done, he looked up at Pharaun and said, "Ready."
The mage nodded and pulled a small sheet of mushroom-skin paper from his pocket. Unfolding it, he handed its contents to Valas: a small blob of a black, tarry substance.
"Eat it," the wizard instructed.
Without asking what it was, Valas popped it into his mouth. It had a bitter taste, and it stuck to his teeth. With an effort, Valas forced his jaws apart, unsticking his molars.
Pharaun laughed and said, "You don't have to chew it. Just swallow."
Valas swallowed the substance, then stood waiting as Pharaun chanted the words to his spell. The mage ended by fluttering his fingers against Valas's chest, like a mother imitating a spider in a child's nursery rhyme. When Pharaun was done, the scout's fingers and toes felt gummy. He lifted one hand from the rock, and sticky strands of web followed it.
Pharaun reached into a pocket of his piwafwi a second time and pulled out a short length of some kind of dried surface plant.
"Ready?" he asked.
Valas nodded.
The mage grinned and said, "Then rake a deep breath."
Valas did, and Pharaun blow through the stick at him, completing his second spell.
Valas's chest felt heavy, and water trickled from his nostrils.
"Go!" Pharaun shouted.
Valas didn't need any urging. The pressure of the water that filled his lungs was incentive enough. Scrambling over the edge, he scurried down the cavern wall like a spider, his sticky hands and feet allowing him to crawl along the sheer cliff face. Head-down, he hurried toward the water, eyes squinted against the spray. Above him, the waterfall arced out and over, obscuring his view of the tunnel he'd just left, it hit the water below in a thundering roar that grew louder as he descended.
The scout was still a pace or two above the surface of the lake when the urge to breathe overcame him. Expelling the water in his lungs like a vomiting man, he tried to draw air?and nearly drowned.
Sputtering, he at last reached the lake. As his head plunged beneath the cold, choppy surface he drew in a great lungful of water and felt relief.
He continued down, following the wall of stone until the churning water washed the stickiness from his hands and feet. Pushing off from the wall, he swam, allowing the current caused by the waterfall to carry him deeper. The water was cold?and dark. He swam through it for some time without seeing anything, relying on his keen sense of direction to keep him oriented toward the middle of the lake. Pharaun's spell would enable him
to keep breathing water for more than a cycle?he could rest on the bottom of the lake, if he needed to?but he hoped it wouldn't take him that long to find some sign of where the aboleth city was.
After he swam, and rested, and swam a while longer, Valas saw a glow in the darkened water ahead. As he made his way toward it, the glow resolved itself into a pattern of tightly clustered, greenish-yellow globes that brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed.
Are those the lights of Zanhoriloch? Valas thought as he stroked toward them, only to be disappointed as he drew near enough to see the lights more clearly.
The glowing globes turned out not to be the lights of the aboleth city but a school of luminescent jellyfish. There were hundreds of them, each the size of Valas's palm. They moved together, their tendrils contracting, then pulsing in unison, each pulse pumping up their light from greenish-yellow to yellow.
Valas started to turn away, disappointed, when he spotted a silhouette swimming between him and the jellyfish. The scout froze, not wanting to betray himself with movement. Drifting with the current, he hung in the water, watching.
The silhouette was the same size as a drow and had two arms and two legs, each of which ended in a wide webbed hand or foot. It also had a fluked tail?but no tentacles. Definitely not an aboleth then. . but what race was it?
The creature swam beside the jellyfish, herding them with a staff it held in one hand. The head of the staff emitted crackling bursts of light whose frequency matched the pulsing of the jellyfish. Valas could just barely hear the sound that came from it, a low-pitched thum, thum, thum, like the sound of a muted drum.
Intent upon its glowing flock, the creature hadn't spotted Valas, which left the scout with a decision to make. He could approach and try to communicate, in the hope that the creature would tell him where Zanhoriloch was, or exercise his usual caution and swim away.
He touched his star-shaped talisman, reassuring himself that it was still pinned to his shirt. If necessary, he could always use its magic to escape.
He swam toward the creature.
As he drew nearer he could see that it had skin as dark as a drow's. Its head was bald, and its body glistened in the light of the jellyfish. A layer of greenish slime covered its skin. When Valas was perhaps ten paces from it, the creature must have sensed his presence. It turned with a sudden, whiplike flick of its tail. Seeing its face, Valas gasped. The high cheekbones and pointed jaw gave the creature a distinctively drow appearance. It even had red eyes, but no ears?or at least, only gnarled ridges around holes in its head that looked like the melted remains of ears. The thing's hands?one sculling back and forth, keeping the creature in place; the other holding the staff?had a thumb, but only two fingers, with a wide web of skin between them.
Valas opened his mouth, then remembered he was breathing water and was unable to speak. On a whim, he tried drow sign language instead. He chose a carefully neutral message. He still didn't know if the creature was a friend or foe of either the drow or the aboleths.
This is the lake of the aboleth, is it not? he asked. Is their city nearby?
He didn't expect an answer. The scout who'd told him about Lake Thoroot had said that only a handful of drow had ever ventured that way.
Valas was shocked, then, when the creature replied in sign?albeit a sign that was made clumsy by his awkward, webbed fingers, You seek the aboleth? Are you insane? Go back, before they?
The drow-thing convulsed as if it had been struck a blow. Releasing its staff it curled into a fetal position, webbed hands clutching its head, mouth open in a silent scream. Valas twisted around, reaching for his daggers as he searched for the threat, but before he could draw them a high-pitched scream pounded in through his skull.
Louder than any noise he had ever experienced, the scream shattered thought and forced his body into spastic jerks. He found himself curled in the same fetal position, eyes squeezed shut in a pained grimace and hands pressed over his ears.
It didn't help. The scream continued, echoing against the inside of his skull until he was certain the bone would shatter like crystal. Then, mercifully, silence and darkness claimed him.
Chapter Eleven
Halisstra sat cross-legged on the wet stone floor of a cave whose only exit was far overhead. The walls of the cave were covered with pictures, the paint daubed onto the stone itself, the lines following the natural contours of the rock. Life-size figures of drow strained toward the ceiling, hands extended overhead and eyes glowing with rapturous desire. All of the figures were adult, but each had an umbilical cord that snaked down toward the floor of the cavern like a root.
Halisstra's wrists were no longer bound, but she could no more escape the cave than the painted figures could step away from the rocky canvas that held them. The walls were at least three times her height and curved inward to meet the hole in the ceiling, making climbing impossible without the aid of magic. She had been carefully and thoroughly stripped of all magical devices and weapons, and the curse the priestess had placed on Halisstra prevented her from singing or even humming?from using any of her bae'qeshel magic.
After Ryld had gone, the priestess who'd slain the troll teleported Halisstra into the cave, then disappeared. The First Daughter of House Melarn had remained there for an entire day, at first restlessly pacing the cave, looking for a way out. When she finally accepted the fact that she was trapped, she sank, cross-legged, into Reverie. Once she'd emerged from her meditations, she'd watched the circle of sky above grow gray, then black. The rain had stopped but the sky was still overcast. Neither the stars nor the moon could be seen. Looking up, Halisstra could almost imagine that she was in the Underdark?that above the cave was a tunnel or passage. But the earth-and-bark-scented breeze blowing in through the hole destroyed that illusion, as did the low rumble of thunder in the distance. So too did the ferns hat surrounded the opening like a fringe of hair. Beads of rain dripped from their sodden stems.
From outside came the sound of singing. The voices were those of the priestesses who'd gathered to decide Halisstra's fate. Their song was accompanied by the silvery tones of a flute and the rapid clash of swords, a staccato of metallic clangs marking the beat. Halisstra thought it might just be her imagination, but it sounded as if the song was reaching a crescendo. She assumed that one of Eilistraee's followers would appear in another moment and announce how Halisstra was to die.
Halisstra braced herself for the inevitable. One way or another?by the magic of their traitor goddess or the cold steel of a sword?she was going to be put to death. The priestesses would have come to their senses and realized that Halisstra had only been buying time when she swore fealty to Eilistraee. The time had come for Halisstra to pray and prepare for entry into the next realm?but pray to which god?
Halisstra knew hundreds of prayers to supplicate Lolth?prayers she could recite with her hands, using the silent speech?but they would go unheard, unseen. Lolth had vanished and was no longer listening to prayers. She wasn't even punishing blasphemers. The Demonweb Pits had been devoid of the souls of the dead, and Halisstra had to presume that Lolth's faithful were disappearing into oblivion, just as their goddess had.
Should Halisstra pray instead to Selvetarm, Lolth's champion? For all she knew, he might be locked in battle with Vhaeraun still and unable to hear her?or worse, slain. Was there any god who was still listening?
Halisstra shivered and drew her knees up against her chest, wrapping her arms around them. At least Ryld was safe. Her surrender had saved him. She started to rest her chin on her knee, hen winced as it touched the cut from Ryld's sword. The wound was a tiny one, no bigger than the crescent of her thumbnail, but it burned like a fresh brand. It had broken open and was bleeding again, even though Halisstra's chin had barely touched it.
Outside, the singing stopped. Halisstra heard a rustling above and glanced up to see Feliane, kneeling in the ferns and staring down at her. The priestess had scrubbed her face clean of the black dye, and her skin was an unhealthy looking m
ushroom-white. Looking at it, Halisstra decided she must have been wrong about the sky being overcast; the moon must have been peeking through the clouds, because for a moment a faint, silvery radiance illuminated Feliane. Then it was gone, and Halisstra could see the priestess's face clearly again.
Well? Halisstra asked in sign. What is my fate to be? The song?or the sword?
"The song," Feliane answered.
Halisstra nodded grimly and stood. She wanted to meet death on her feet.
I'm ready, she signed, fingers moving in tense, sharp jerks.
Feliane's round face broke into a grin. On a drow, it would have been a gloat of triumph, but so innocent and naive looking was Feliane that for a moment it appeared like a warm smile. Halisstra pushed that foolish notion from her mind and stood, rigid, waiting.
Feliane began to sing in High Drow. From behind her, Halisstra could hear a chorus of women's voices, though Feliane's was the strongest.
"Climb out of the darkness, rise into the light.
"Turn your face to the sky, your elf birthright.
"Dance in the forest, sing with the breeze;
"Claim your place in the moonlight among flowers and trees.
"Lend your strength to the needy; battle evil with steel.
"Join in the hunt; to no other gods kneel.
"Purge the monster within and the monster without;
"Their blood washes you clean, of this have no doubt.
"Trust in your sisters; lend your voice to their song.
"By joining the circle, the weak are made strong."
Feliane extended her hand down into the hole, as if inviting Halisstra to take it. Her pale skin had taken on a moonlit glow.
It took Halisstra a moment to realize the import of the song and gesture. It wasn't an execution but an invitation. And not just to life, bur to join the circle. To join the priestesses of Eilistraee.
Halisstra's eyes narrowed. It had to be a trick of some kind.