Faeryl perched on the northeast side of the roof. Outlined in blue, green, or violent phosphorescence, the homes of her wealthier neighbors glowed all around her. Had she looked from a distance, she would have observed her own residence shining in the same way. Fortunately, the luminescence only defined the silhouette of the tower and picked out several spiders sculpted in bas-relief. As long as she stayed away from the images, kept silent, and enjoyed a measure of luck, it shouldn’t reveal her presence.
A soft, indefinable sound rose from the northwest. Grateful that she at least still had the brooch that would make her weightless, she scuttled quickly along the sloping pitch of the roof, fearless in the knowledge that even if she lost her footing, she needn’t fall.
In a few moments, she reached the northwest aspect. She peered over the drop and discovered the source of the sound in the plaza below.
Bare to the waist, rapiers in one hand and parrying daggers in the other, two males circled one another. They stood straight and stepped lightly in the manner of well-trained fencers. Their discarded piwafwis, mail, and shirts lay where they’d tossed them on the ground along with a pair of empty wineskins. A third male looked on from beneath an overhanging balcony some distance away, where the combatants quite possibly hadn’t noticed him.
Faeryl sighed. This little tableau was mildly intriguing, but it clearly had nothing to do with her own situation.
After her frustrating interview with Matron Mother Baenre, she’d realized she had an opponent. Someone who’d traduced her, possibly to keep her from departing Menzoberranzan, though she couldn’t imagine why. From that inference, it was a small step to the suspicion that the enemy had an agent inside her household. It was what any intelligent foe would try to arrange, and it arguably explained how Faeryl’s intention to go home had been discerned and countered with a word in Triel’s ear.
Seething with the need to outwit those who had made a fool of her, Faeryl devised a ruse to unmask the spy. She surprised her retainers with the order to pack. They were slipping out of Menzoberranzan that very night. She thought her loyal vassals would obey, but the traitor would try to sneak away to report the household’s imminent flight. Crouched on the roof, Faeryl would spot her when she did.
That was the plan, anyway. The ambassador could think of several reasons why it might fail. The residence had means of egress on all four sides, but she couldn’t survey all four at once, not unless she floated well above the roof, and that option presented problems of its own. Most dark elf boots possessed a virtue of silence, and their mantles, one of obscuration. The traitor might even have some more potent means of escaping notice, such as a talisman of invisibility. Were she any higher above the ground, Faeryl might have no hope at all of detecting the spy’s surreptitious exit.
Of course, the traitor might also have a means of communicating with her confederates via clairaudience, or a charm of instantaneous transit, in which case the envoy’s scheme was doomed no matter what. She’d cling to the roof until someone in authority, a company of Baenre guards, perhaps, showed up to take her and her entourage into custody, but she’d had to try something.
She crawled on. Below and behind her, one of the duelists groaned as his foe’s blade plunged through his torso. Magic flickered and sizzled, and the victor dropped as well. The wizard who’d been watching from a distance strolled forward to inspect the steaming corpses.
Faeryl wondered if the three had been siblings, and the wizard was the clever one. She’d had a brother like that once, until an even trickier male turned him to dust and absconded with his wands and grimoires. A minor setback for her House, but interesting to watch.
Overhead, something snapped. She glanced up. Four or five riders on wyvern-back were winging their way east. Above them, projecting from the cavern ceiling, the stalactite castles shone with their own enchantments, a far lovelier sight, in her opinion, than the miniscule monochromatic stars that speckled the night sky of the so-called Lands of Light.
Then, so faintly that she wondered if she’d imagined it, something brushed against something else. The sound had issued from the southwest.
Faeryl scurried over to that part of the roof and peered down. At first glance, nothing appeared changed since the last time she’d checked that way. Perhaps her nerves were playing tricks on her, but she kept on looking anyway.
Octagonal steel grilles protected the round windows cut in the wall below her, but if a drow knew the trick, she could unlatch one and swing it aside for an entrance or exit via levitation. Apparently, someone had, for after a few more moments, Faeryl noticed that one of the web-pattern shields hung ever so slightly ajar. With that sign to guide her, she spotted the shrouded figure skulking toward the mouth of an alleyway.
The noble of Ched Nasad was a fair hand with a crossbow. She might have been able to shoot down the traitor from behind, but that would gain her few answers. She didn’t happen to possess a scroll with the spell for interrogating the dead. She needed to catch up with the spy and take the wretch alive.
She read from a scroll she did have, then she stepped away from the top of the tower into empty space.
Except that it wasn’t empty for her. The air was as firm as stone beneath her soles. For two paces, she strode on a level surface, and, because she willed it so, the unseen platform dipped into an equally invisible ramp. She sprinted down with no fear of blundering off the edge. Wherever she set her foot, the incline would be there to meet it. That was how the magic worked.
Her progress entirely silent, she dashed unnoticed above the traitor’s head, then with a thought dissolved the support beneath her boots. Her crossbow ready, she dropped the last few feet to the ground and landed in front of the spy.
Started, the traitor jumped. Faeryl felt her own pang of surprise, for though she liked to think she maintained a proper suspicion of everyone, in truth, she never could have guessed the pinched, sour face she saw half hidden inside the close-drawn cowl could be the spy’s.
“Umrae,” the ambassador said, aiming her hand crossbow.
“My lady,” the secretary answered, bending with her usual stiffness into an obeisance.
“I know all about it, traitor. I’m not actually planning to leave tonight. My pretending so was a trick to see who would slip away to play informer.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I just wanted to buy some items for the journey. I thought that if I hurried over to the Bazaar, I could find one of those merchants who stays open late and be back before anyone missed me.”
“Do you think I haven’t realized I have an enemy here in Menzoberranzan, someone with access to Matron Baenre? Two tendays ago, Triel considered me loyal. She approved of me. She granted a good deal of what I asked on behalf of our people. Now, she doubts me, because someone has persuaded her to question my true intentions. What did my foe offer to lure you to her side? Don’t you realize that in betraying me, you betray Ched Nasad itself?”
The scribe hesitated, then said, “Matron Baenre has people watching the residence. Someone is watching us right now.”
“Perhaps,” Faeryl replied.
Umrae swallowed. “So you can’t harm me. Or they’ll harm you.”
Faeryl laughed. “Rubbish. Triel’s agents won’t reveal their presence just to keep me from disciplining one of my own retainers. They won’t see anything odd or detrimental to Menzoberranzan’s interests in that. Now, be sensible and surrender.”
After another pause, Umrae said, “Give me your word you won’t hurt me. That you’ll set me free and help me flee the city.”
“I promise you nothing except that your insolence is making me angrier by the moment, and a quick capitulation is your only hope. Tell me, who turned you, and why? What does anyone hereabouts have to gain by persecuting an envoy, one who stands apart from the feuds and rivalries among the Menzoberranyr Houses?”
“You must understand, I fear to betray them and remain. They’ll kill me if I do.”
“They won’t get
the chance. I’m the one pointing a poisoned dart at you. Who are your employers?”
“I won’t say, not without your pledge.”
“Your friend didn’t slander me to Triel until after I started contemplating a return to Ched Nasad. Was that the point of the lie? To keep me from venturing out into the Underdark? Why?”
Umrae shook her head.
“You’re mad,” Faeryl said. “Why would you condemn yourself to perpetuate someone else’s existence? Ah well, you’re plainly unfit to live, so I suppose it’s for the best.”
She made a show of sighting down the length of the crossbow.
“No!” Umrae cried. “Don’t! You’re right, why should I die?”
“If you answer my questions, perhaps you won’t.”
“Yes.”
Trembling a little, her nerve having been broken, the clerk raised her hand to her face, perhaps to massage her brow. No—to lift a tiny vial to her lips!
Faeryl pulled the trigger and her aim was true, but by the time the quarrel pierced Umrae’s stomach, the secretary’s form was changing. She grew even thinner, shriveling, but taller as well. Her flesh cooled and stank of corruption, leathery wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, and her eyes sank into her head. Even her garments altered, blurring and splitting into moldering rags. No blood flowed from the wound the poisoned dart had made, and it didn’t seem to inconvenience her in the slightest. She didn’t even bother to pull the missile out.
Faeryl was furious at herself for allowing Umrae to trick her. Next time, she’d remember that even a dark elf devoid of beauty, grace, and facile wit, seemingly undone by fear, was yet a drow, born to guile and deception.
The potion had temporarily transformed Umrae into some sort of undead, in which form she likely wouldn’t suffer at all from her usual clumsiness. Had Lolth not forsaken her priestesses, Faeryl might have controlled the cadaverous thing with her clerical powers, but that was no longer an option. Nor were any of her other retainers likely to notice her plight and dash to her rescue. She had them all too busy packing up the house.
It was unfortunate, because like most undead, except for the lowly corpses and skeletons spellcasters reanimated to serve as mindless thralls, Umrae in winged-ghoul form could probably do grievous harm with any strike that so much as grazed the skin, and Faeryl didn’t even have a shield to fend her off. How was she to know the spy would possess such a potent means of defense?
Umrae took a shambling step, then, with a clap of her wings, bounded forward. Faeryl hastily retreated, dropped the useless crossbow, and opened the clasp of her cloak. Pulling the garment off her shoulders with one hand, she unsheathed a little adamantine rod with the other. At a snap of her wrist, the harmless-looking object swelled into Mother’s Kiss, the long-hafted, basalt-headed warhammer the females of House Zauvirr had borne since the founding of their line. Perhaps an enchanted weapon would slay Umrae where the envenomed quarrel had failed.
Faeryl would have to hope so. Even if she were willing to stand meekly aside and let the traitor fly away, Umrae, her thoughts perhaps colored by the predatory guise she’d assumed, plainly wanted a fight, and the envoy could see no way to evade her. It would be stupid to evoke darkness and run. In undead form, Umrae would likely manage better in the murk than its maker did. It would be even more pointless to try to levitate or ascend through the use of the air-walking charm when the shapeshifter could simply spread her ragged wings and follow.
Faeryl waved her piwafwi back and forth at the end of her extended arm, to confuse Umrae and serve as some semblance of a shield. No one had ever taught Faeryl to fight thusly, but she’d observed warriors practicing the technique, and she tried to believe that if mere males could do it, it would surely present no difficulty to a high priestess.
Umrae lunged, Faeryl lashed the cloak in a horizontal arc. Possibly thanks to luck as much as skill, the garment blocked Umrae’s hands. Her talons snagged in the weave.
Surprised, Umrae faltered in the attack and struggled to free her hands. Faeryl stepped through and smashed the pointed stone head of her hammer into the center of the servant’s carious brow. Bone crunched, and Umrae’s head snapped backward. A goodly portion of her left profile fell off her skull.
Certain the fight was over, Faeryl relaxed, and that was nearly the end of her. Transformed, Umrae could evidently endure more damage than almost any creature with warm flesh and a beating heart. She opened her mouth, exposing long, thin fangs, and what was left of her head shot forward over the top of the cape. The ambassador only barely managed to fling herself back out of the way in time.
The piwafwi was stretched taut between the two combatants, as if they were playing tug-of-war. Both yanked on it simultaneously, and Faeryl was the luckier. The cloak tore free of Umrae’s grasp, but despite the garment’s reinforcing enchantments, it returned to the ambassador with long rips the ghoul’s claws had cut. A few more such rendings and it would be useless.
The cape’s sudden release also sent Faeryl stumbling backward. With another beat of her festering wings, Umrae hopped and closed the distance. Her clawed hands shot forward.
Crying out in desperation, Faeryl managed to plant her feet and arrest her helpless stagger. She lashed out with the hammer and clipped one of Umrae’s hands. The imitation ghoul snatched it back and gave up the attack. Instead, she began to circle. Just as a living creature would, she shook her battered extremity several times as if to dislodge the pain, then lifted it back on guard.
Faeryl turned to keep the foe with her crushed, half-flayed head in view. What is it going to take to stop this thing? the ambassador wondered. Can I stop it?
Yes, curse it!
When she was a child, her cousin Merinid, weapons master of House Zauvirr, dead these many years since her mother tired of him, had told her that any opponent could be destroyed. It was just a matter of finding the vulnerable spot.
Umrae lunged. Once again, the ambassador snapped out the folds of her frail, flapping shield. The cloak entangled one of the servant’s hands. The other raked, rasping and snagging, across Faeryl’s coat of fine adamantine links. The winged ghoul’s touch sowed cramping sickness in its wake, but the claws hadn’t quite sheared through the sturdy mail, and the sensation only lasted an instant.
Faeryl swung at Umrae’s withered chest in its covering of filthy, crumbling cloth. If she couldn’t slay the ghoul-thing with a strike to the head, then the heart must be the vulnerable spot, just as with a vampire. Or at least she hoped so.
To her surprise, Umrae denied her the chance to find out one way or the other. It looked as if the traitor had so committed to her attack that she would find it impossible to defend against a riposte. Yet she interposed her withered arm to take the shock of the warhammer, then stooped to claw at Faeryl’s unarmored knee.
The envoy avoided that potentially crippling attack with a fast retreat, meanwhile ripping the cloak away from her foul-smelling adversary. The garment was starting to look more like a bunch of ribbons than one coherent piece of silk.
The duelists resumed circling, each looking for an opening. Occasionally Faeryl let the tattered piwafwi slip or droop out of line, offering an invitation, but Umrae proved too canny to attack when and how her opponent wished her to.
Faeryl realized she was panting and did the best to control her breathing. She wasn’t afraid—she wasn’t—but she was impressed with her servant’s potion-induced prowess. Formidable from the moment she imbibed it, Umrae was truly getting the hang of her borrowed capabilities as the battle progressed.
While still maneuvering and keeping an eye on Umrae, Faeryl nevertheless entered a light trance. With a sense that was neither sight, hearing, nor any faculty comprehensible to those who’d never pledged her service to a deity, she reached into that formless yet somehow jagged place where she had once been accustomed to touch the shadow of the goddess.
The presence of Lolth had absented itself from the meeting ground, leaving a vacancy that somehow throbbed
like a diseased tooth. Still, it seemed an appropriate domain in which to pray.
Dread Queen of Spiders, Faeryl silently began, I beg you, reveal yourself to me. Restore my powers, even if only for a moment. Has Menzoberranzan offended you? So be it, but I’m not one of her daughters. I’m from Ched Nasad. Make me as I was, and I’ll give you many lives—a slave every day for a year.
Nothing happened.
Umrae sprang in, clawing. Faeryl jerked the part of her spirit that had groped in the void back into her body. Retreating, she blocked the undead creature’s claws with her cloak and struck a couple blows with the warhammer. She didn’t withdraw quickly enough to take herself completely out of harm’s way, nor did she settle into a strong stance and swing as hard as she could have. She wanted the ghoul to feel on the brink of overwhelming her opponent and keep coming. If Umrae grew too eager, she might open herself up for an effective counterattack.
Umrae’s talons whizzed through the air, tearing scraps from the sheltering cloak until it was the size of a ragged hand towel. Unexpectedly, the spy beat her riddled wings, hopped in close, and struck at Faeryl’s face. The noble recoiled, but even so the claws streaked past a fraction of an inch before her eyes, so close she could feel the malignancy inside them as a pulse of headache.
Still, it was all right, because she thought Umrae was finally open. She sidestepped and swung her stone-headed hammer at the ghoul’s rib cage—
—to no avail, even though Faeryl had been correct, Umrae couldn’t swing her hands around in time to block the blow. Instead, she took another stride, slapped the ambassador with a flick of her wing, and sent her reeling.
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 15