Sword of the Gods: Spinner of Lies

by Bruce R Cordell

  “Not disintegrated,” said Demascus, and chuckled.

  “Waukeen’s empty purse!” Chant said. “As if we didn’t have enough to worry about, and you go putting notions like that in my head.”

  “Well, it was a concern,” said the deva. His mouth twitched on the edge of a grin.

  “Where are we?” asked Jaul. The corridor in which they stood was built from the same stone blocks as the courtyard on the other side of the portal. Chant glanced behind him and was relieved to see a misted arch. He’d worried they’d entered someplace without an exit. The naked stone of the corridor stretched only a few tens of feet before it was overrun with a layer of thick gray spiderwebs. Chant couldn’t tell if webs covered the corridor surfaces or actually subsumed it—he suspected the latter. Instead of a square-cut corridor, the path forward was a spiraling woven tunnel.

  “A passage only a drow could love,” said Demascus. “We might not be in the world any more, my friends. And if we step into that web tunnel … but I can’t be certain.”

  “We should move,” said Riltana, glancing back at the arch. Blood slicked her scalp, and her eyes were tired. “If we can step through without any special key, the vampires will be able to do the same.” Demascus nodded.

  “Excuse me, but no one mentioned vampires before,” said Chant. “Why are they chasing us? What paintings were they talking about? And how’d they know where to find us?”

  Riltana looked at the floor. The woman vampire had said something about a thief. So it was the windsoul who had provoked them! He should have known.

  “Something to talk about once we find someplace safer,” said Demascus. “Let’s move.”

  They hustled down the corridor. Under Chant’s feet, the woven floor was only slightly adhesive—sticky enough to notice, but not so bad that it hindered movement. He wrinkled his nose as the air changed from bracing to acidic.

  After a few hundred yards, the corridor opened into a large, vaulted chamber resembling a temple’s transept and nave, woven in webs. Gray columns lined the walls, and the distant ceiling arch was lit with a scattering of firefly gleams. Directly below the highest point on the ceiling stood a dais, easily ten feet high. A litter of bones was strewn over the top of the dais and spilled down the sides. Some of the bones were humanoid. And all were rough at the ends, as if the marrow had been gnawed and sucked from them.

  “Stop,” said Demascus. As if he’d had to say anything, thought Chant. He really didn’t want to get any closer to the chewed leftovers of whatever butchery had occurred there …

  “What’re those?” Jaul pointed to the walls, between the columns. The webbing was pocked with closed doors intricately carved with spiders and geometric designs.

  “Exits,” said Demascus. “Each door leads to another place in the network, I suspect. Maybe places halfway across Faerûn. Or farther.”

  “Or deeper,” said Chant. “Like subterranean cities of dark elves …”

  “On the other hand,” Demascus continued, “they could lead to an empty storeroom, or down another leg of webbed tunnel.”

  “Which one did the arambarium thieves go through?” said Riltana.

  Demascus shook his head. “We should be able to pick up their track—it’s fresh. And then choose someplace they didn’t go, because I need to rest. I’m exhausted.”

  “There you go again!” said Riltana. “Always napping.”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “Plus, you know my rule about fighting too many vampires before bedtime. That always makes me cranky.” She laughed.

  Chant said, “So, let me get this straight. The vampires have nothing to do with the drow?”

  “No,” said Demascus. “Well, they didn’t before they tracked us into the Demonweb.” He frowned. “Speaking of dark elves, we should check to see if I’m right about us being able to track them. Care to take a look?”

  “Sure,” said Chant. He bent and examined the ground. Demascus was correct—because the floor was slightly adhesive, any appreciable pressure applied to the floor shifted the threaded webs composing it. Once he got the hang of how a disturbed patch of web reacted, he figured it would be easy to track creatures through it. Although it seemed like the webs were naturally inclined to return to their original position over time.

  Chant followed what might have been a trail to the dais and grabbed a femur bone. It was cool and smooth in his hands, but the rough part near the chewed end … Don’t think about that, he told himself. He experimentally prodded the floor with the jagged end of bone. Thousands of individual strands, maybe more, formed the ground. And each strand was probably made up of hundreds or thousands of even smaller threads. Could be why they weren’t as sticky as they should be. But still enough to hold an impression!

  Although … He bent closer. Were the webs moving on their own? Was that a … face?

  “No!”

  He jumped back and pointed at the floor. His stomach was making a serious effort to crawl into his throat. “The—this entire chamber—is haunted! I saw a man’s face, screaming. Made out of webs.”

  “This place was created by drow,” said Demascus, “It’s probably woven as much from webs as from souls sacrificed to the dark elf goddess.”

  Chant swallowed.

  “I didn’t need to know that,” Jaul said.

  The pawnbroker empathized.

  Just then, a howl tore into Chant’s brain. Were the faces in the webs coming to life? His fingers suddenly went numb and dropped the bone as he stared at the webs.

  “Vampires!” said Jaul. “They’ve come through the portal!”

  Oh, right, the vampires. Chant cleared his throat. “Where to?”

  “No time to choose,” Demascus said. He jounced across the web floor, scattering human remains. He stopped before one of the side doors between the columns. Chant didn’t have time to note the symbol carved on the door’s face before Demascus shoved the door open.

  “Everyone inside,” the deva whispered. No one argued.

  Chant found himself in a room with a hard floor, not a web, thank Waukeen’s stingy mercies! The air was musty, like a damp basement that had suffered several floods. The sunrod’s light had noticeably dimmed, as if it was working twice as hard to shed even half the amount of light it was normally able to …

  Demascus slammed the door on the webbed corridors. The moment it closed, the door melted into the wall and was gone. Or maybe disappeared into the inky shadows.

  “Where are we?” said Jaul.

  “Shh,” said Demascus. The deva laid his head against the wall to listen where the door had been. Why was it so dark? Chant stepped closer to one wall, and was barely able to tell that it was painted a dreary gray and decorated with chipped and peeling wainscoting. Two exits were visible.

  “I feel like I’ve gone blind,” murmured Jaul. He rubbed at his eyes. Chant felt the same—it was almost as if a grainy film covered everything.

  Demascus flashed the kid a look, then motioned to Chant. The pawnbroker brought the rod closer. He saw the door hadn’t exactly disappeared, though it had suffered some kind of transformation. A line drawing defaced the wall and wainscoting, penned by a quill dipped in charcoal ink, and traced a square only half as large as the opening they’d come through. The line wasn’t even particularly neat or straight—it looked like it had been scrawled by a determined though not particularly talented child.

  “Can we get back through?” he whispered to Demascus.

  “Hope so. Now’s not the time to test it. We wouldn’t want to step through into our pursuer’s laps. I can hear their screams on the other side, faintly. They sound angry.” Chant shuddered.

  “I don’t think we’re in Faerûn anymore; the light falls differently,” said Demascus. “So we shouldn’t stray too far from this entrance. Who knows what kind of place this is? On the other hand, if our pursuers look through from the other side, I’d rather they not immediately see us camped here.”

  The deva approached one paneled door hanging a
jar on the opposite wall. Chant followed, holding the sunrod at head height in one hand and his crossbow in the other.

  The room beyond contained torn and rotting divans. Deep claw marks scored the hardwood furniture. Two walls were wainscoted and held a door apiece, but the longest wall was a mortared, slightly curved expanse of stone. Snuffed candles littered the floor near a fallen candelabra. Faint sparks glittered through a single narrow aperture in the curved wall.

  “Arrow slit?” Chant said, pointing. When Demascus shrugged, he advanced and looked through the vertical opening. It was night. And—

  “We’re in a tower!” he said. They were in one of several turreted fingers rising from a labyrinthine castle that sprawled across the slope of a mountain range. Only a handful of stars burned red in the night sky, barely bright enough to illuminate the tallest mountain peaks. His breath steamed as it escaped out the gap. Out on the battlements, things fluttered just at the edge of perception, whispering and creeping, waiting to pounce on anyone foolish enough to go out into that endless night …

  “We’re in some kind of old fortress,” he announced, his voice hoarse. “One larger than I’ve ever heard tell of. And it looks … haunted.” The others crowded around to see. Chant stepped away and closed his eyes. Seeing those unfamiliar stars … it viscerally shook him in a way that the deva’s declaration, that they had left behind the world he knew, had not.

  He looked down at the golden yellow light of the sunrod and drank it in for solace. He needed it. Fear had taken root. Fear for his son and, indeed, for himself. A pack of vampires had chased them into a web of portals and from there into the first side-exit they’d found, which resembled a deformed echo of the real world—a practice model that’d been tossed aside but not completely destroyed by the lords of creation. A failed attempt that lingered in some forgotten corner of existence, attracting ghosts, vengeful vampires, and foolish creatures like Chant Morven, who should have stayed home selling pawned silver.

  Chant wondered if he’d ever see sunlight again. Waukeen, you have much to answer for. Then he forced a smile for his son and put strength into his voice for Demascus and Riltana. “Let’s try one of these rooms away from the window, what say? I don’t like the cold air it’s letting in.”

  SOMEWHERE IN THE DEMONWEB

  18 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

  RAT-SNUGGLER!” HISSED RILTANA WHEN THE DOOR slammed behind her

  She spun, all but snuffing the light of the candle she held in one hand. Shadows jumped to malevolent life across the low ceiling. The candle flame stuttered … then shivered back from the brink of extinction. Claw-like shadows shrank back to the corners, where they lurked like vultures. “Fist this,” she muttered, gazing around the room she’d just entered. The wall to her left curved with the outer shell of the tower. It was fitted with leaded glass windows in iron latticework. Rotting chairs and couches were scattered around a bookcase. Two more doors lay on the opposite side of the room.

  Why did I volunteer to scout ahead? she thought. Damn Demascus and his stupid ideas! I’m nearly as worn out as he is—we should have sent that kid to look for a place to hunker down! She knew she wasn’t being fair. If vampires came through the portal into this shadowed castlescape, it made sense to leave Demascus on the threshold to hold them back. Which meant sending either her to spy out a few rooms or Chant, who refused to leave Jaul’s side. And Jaul was clearly not the one to send sneaking through these abandoned chambers. She’d seen the sense of it. She’d patted Chant and grinned her I-don’t-give-a-crap grin at Demascus, and set off.

  That was then. This is now, she thought. Jaul should have been the one to go. It would be good for the kid. Give him something to think about other than trying to impress her and snub his father. The silence stretched. Riltana convinced herself a draft had slammed the door, not a stalking ghost. She squinted at a bookcase. But the still-guttering candle’s light was too dim for her to make out its contents. She stepped closer and saw that only a few moldering tomes remained on the shelves, but with the way the light from her candle jumped around, it was difficult to see just how many …

  Damn. Why the fist had she thought it would be a good idea to save her sunrod for later and use a candle instead? What a terrible light source. It would probably get her killed when some ghoul crept up behind her using her inadequate light as a cloak, and …

  “Riltana,” she chided herself, but only after she looked over her shoulder. No ghoul. Another step closer to the shelves and she saw that just two books retained covers. One had an obsidian-black binding and no obvious title. She set the candle down and flipped through the ragged, blank pages until she reached the very last one, which seemed like a title: Tales of Unbecoming. She had a sudden bad feeling about the book, and replaced it on the shelf.

  The other book was halfsize, and decorated with a greenish teardrop-like design beneath the title, Final Journal of Delirium: A Book of Poisons, by Tora Kotryl. This one has possibilities, she thought. Instead of dropping it back on the shelf, Riltana closed her hand, folding the book away in the secret space of her gloves. Now I can add “books” to my list of larcenies …

  You’re wasting time, she thought. Remember why you’re here? Not to loot abandoned keeps or play hide and hunt with vampires—it’s to find the louts mucking with Akanûl’s arambarium supply. Only then will Queen Arathane intercede and send her letter to Carmenere. And then, after Carmenere forgives you, you’ll live merrily ever after. Right. Part of her wondered if she should still believe this dream. Would things really go that smoothly?

  Riltana blocked that avenue of thought. With a frown, Riltana approached the two doors on the room’s periphery. The first door opened onto some kind of wizard’s laboratory. Its central feature was a black cauldron filled with a dried mass of something she didn’t want to look at too closely. Benches were heaped with all manner of jars, vials, and slender glassware. Niches were cut into the curved stone side wall. She edged into the chamber far enough to see an urn in each hollow, and on each urn was a name. She shivered and backed out of the room.

  Behind the other door was a bedroom. Three beds with tattered sheets were crowded against a wardrobe and a bureau scattered with combs, pins, and a layer of dust years thick. A barred window over the beds looked out into the lonely night. This was it—the place to rest, despite being next door to the wall of urns. It had a secure window, a heavy door to hold against attackers, and better yet, beds.

  She retraced her route through the dark corridors, ignoring what sounded like distant screaming down one hall, and found the closet-like chamber where the others waited.

  Demascus looked dead on his feet. Seeing him reminded her of how tired she was. A rest was more than overdue.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ve found a place we can hole up for a while.”

  No one spoke as she led them back to the bedchamber, though Jaul moaned slightly when they passed the screaming hallway. Chant shoved the wardrobe in front of the door to barricade it. Demascus didn’t argue when she suggested he take one bed. She took another and let Chant and Jaul thumb wrestle over who’d get the third.

  The next thing she knew, she was opening her eyes. She’d been dreaming about eating frozen milk-honey and flying over the jubilant lights of Airspur on a spring evening …

  Chant’s sunrod was spent, and her candle had burned down, though someone had lit another. Its tentative flame sketched the shape of Chant huddled on the third bed. Jaul lay on the floor with a ratty black blanket covering him. Demascus was sitting up rubbing his temples.

  “Can’t sleep?” he whispered.

  She shrugged. “Actually, I was out like a snuffed lantern. How much time has passed?”

  “Hours. Probably five or six.”

  “Feel any better?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I won’t be juggling earthmotes any time soon, like I normally do. But I could probably do apples, or maybe even axes. How about you?”

  T
he image of Demascus juggling axes made her smile. She stretched. “Better.”

  “Good. So … Riltana?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Something’s bothering me, and I’m hoping you can help me out.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “Have you been entirely truthful about the vampires?”

  Oh shit, she thought. He knows! “Truthful?” she said.

  “Yeah, you know, when you explained what happened at House Norjah.”

  A bouquet of denials rose to her lips. But they didn’t smell sweet. She sighed. “I didn’t lie, Demascus. But I may not have told you absolutely everything.”

  “It appears we’ve got a little time on our hands. Maybe if I knew everything, I could make better decisions.”

  She nodded. She glanced over at Chant and Jaul. Both were still sleeping. There’d be no help or distraction from them. “All right. It went down like I told you. I got a lead that Cyndra’s painting was in Norjah’s gallery. I snuck in, didn’t find the painting I was looking for, and disturbed a bunch of vampires. They followed me to your place.”

  “But?” he prompted.

  “But … while they didn’t have the painting I wanted, the gallery certainly contained some interesting artwork.”

  “Riltana, did you—”

  “There were portraits—about ten, maybe twelve. All disturbing. One was a hooded man with no eyes, another was a soldier missing a hand, a wizard with no mouth … one was really awful, like a person sewed together with dead body parts …” The hair on the back of her neck prickled as she recalled the images on display in that room.

  “Disturbing how?”

  “It was like all the paintings were alive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They were talking to each other, well, whispering.”

  Demascus shook his head slightly as if to make room for the concept of speaking paintings in his mind.

  “What were they saying?” he said.

  “I couldn’t make it out, not with all of them talking at once. So, I …”