R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation

by Richard Lee Byers; Thomas M. Reid; Richard Baker

  Faeryl’s head rang, and the world blurred. As she struggled to throw off the stunning effects of the blow, she thought fleetingly how unfair it was that Umrae, who had long ago forsaken combat training as a humiliating exercise in futility, was demolishing a female who still doggedly reported to her captain-of-the-guard for practice once a tenday.

  After what seemed a long time, her head cleared. She whirled, certain that Umrae was about to attack her from behind. She wasn’t. In fact, the animate corpse was nowhere to be seen.

  Plainly, Umrae had taken to the air. Had she finally done the sensible thing and fled? Faeryl couldn’t believe it. Umrae hated her. The envoy didn’t know why, but she’d seen it in the traitor’s eyes. Such being the case, Umrae wouldn’t break off when she had every reason to believe she was winning and close to making the kill. No drow would, which meant she was still hovering somewhere overhead, poised to swoop down and, she undoubtedly hoped, catch her mistress by surprise and smash her to the ground.

  Her heart pounding, Faeryl peered upward and saw nothing. She listened for the beat of the creature’s wings but heard only the eternal muffled whisper of the city as a whole. She wasn’t entirely surprised. The undead were famously stealthy when stalking their prey.

  A black sliver momentarily cut the line of violet luminescence adorning a spire of the castle of House Vandree. The obstruction had surely been the tip of one of Umrae’s wings.

  Faeryl stared for another moment, then jumped when she finally spotted Umrae. Her tattered cloak flapping between her wings, the transformed secretary was already hurtling down like a raptor from the World Above diving to plunge its talons into a rodent.

  Hoping Umrae hadn’t seen her react to the sight of her, Faeryl kept turning and peering. When she felt the disturbance in the air, or perhaps simply the urgent prompting of her instincts, she jumped aside, pivoted, and swung the warhammer in an overhand blow.

  Under those circumstances, she had little chance of smashing the thing’s heart, but she’d seen that Umrae could suffer pain. Perhaps the initial blow would freeze the undead thing in place for an instant, affording Faeryl the opportunity for what she prayed would be the finishing stroke.

  The ambassador had timed the move properly, and the weapon’s basalt head smashed into Umrae’s flank. Deprived of her victim, unexpectedly battered, the ghoul slammed into the smooth stone surface of the street with a satisfying crash. Scraps of flesh broke away from her raddled body, releasing a fresh puff of stench.

  Faeryl marked her target, the place on Umrae’s chest beneath which her heart ought to lie, and swung Mother’s Kiss back for the follow-up attack. The traitor rolled and scrambled to her knees. Faeryl struck, and Umrae lashed out with a taloned hand. The ghoul caught the warhammer in mid-flight, tore it out of the ambassador’s grip, and sent it spinning to clack down on the ground ten feet away.

  Faeryl felt a crazy impulse to turn and go after the thing, but she knew Umrae would rip her apart if she tried. She backstepped instead. The inhumanly gaunt spy leaped to her feet—she looked like a pile of sticks spontaneously assembling themselves into a crude facsimile of a person—and pursued.

  While retreating, Faeryl started edging around in a looping course that might ultimately bring her to the spot where the hammer lay. Leering, Umrae moved sideways right along with her in a way that demonstrated she knew exactly what her mistress had in mind and would never permit it.

  Well, the aristocrat still had one weapon—pitifully inadequate to the situation though it was—a knife hidden in the belt that gathered her light, supple coat of mail at the waist. The gold buckle was the hilt, and when she pulled on it, the stubby adamantine blade would slide free. She started to reach for it, then hesitated.

  Against Umrae’s talons, long reach, and resistance to harm, the dagger really would be useless . . . unless Faeryl could get in close enough to use it, and unless she attacked by surprise.

  But how in the name of the Demonweb was she to accomplish that? Umrae was rapidly closing the distance, snapping her wings every few steps to lengthen a stride, and for three unnerving backward paces, Faeryl’s mind was blank.

  Then she remembered the cloak, or rather, the remnants of it, still clutched in her off hand. Perhaps she could employ it to conceal her drawing of the knife. The piwafwi was just a sad little mass of tatters, and she was no juggler adept at sleight-of-hand, but curse it, if clumsy Umrae had palmed a potion vial without her mistress noticing until it was too late, surely the mistress could do as well.

  Faeryl had been reflexively moving the cloak around the whole time, so it shouldn’t look suspicious for her to cover her waist with it. At the same time, she hooked the fingers of her weapon hand in the oval hollow at the center of the buckle and pulled. She had never before had occasion to employ this last desperate means of defense, but in the sixteen years since an artisan had made it to her specifications, she had always kept the knife and scabbard oiled, and the blade easily slid free.

  She studied Umrae. As far as the envoy could tell, the imitation ghoul hadn’t seen her bare the dagger, but she doubted she could keep it hidden for more than a heartbeat or two. She had to manufacture a chance for herself quickly if she was to have one at all.

  She pretended to stumble. She hoped her unsteadiness looked genuine. Umrae had touched her, after all, so it might seem credible that her strength was failing.

  The ghoul took the bait. She leaped forward and seized Faeryl by the forearms. This time, her claws punched through the envoy’s layer of mail and jabbed their tips into her flesh. At once, a surge of nausea wracked Faeryl, then another. Retching, she wasn’t sure she could still use the knife in any sort of controlled manner. Perhaps she’d just served herself up to her foe like a plate of mushrooms.

  Umrae grinned at Faeryl’s seeming—or genuine—helplessness. The envoy felt the clerk’s fingers tense, preparing to flense the meat from her bones, even as she pulled the noble closer and opened her jaws to bite down on her head.

  Fighting the sickness and weakness, Faeryl tried to thrust her hand forward. The effort strained her flesh against the ghoul’s talons, tearing her wounds larger and bringing a burst of pain—but then her arm jerked free. The blade rammed into Umrae’s withered chest, slipping cleanly between two ribs and plunging in all the way up to Faeryl’s knuckles.

  Umrae convulsed and threw back her head for a silent scream. The spasms jerked her hands and threatened to rip Faeryl apart even without the traitor’s conscious intent. Umrae froze, and toppled backward, carrying her assailant with her.

  In contradiction of every tale Faeryl had ever heard, the shapeshifter didn’t revert to her original form when true death claimed her. Still horribly sick, the envoy lay for some time in the ghoul’s fetid embrace. Eventually, however, she mustered the trembling strength to pull free of the claws embedded in her bleeding limbs, after which she crawled a few feet away from the winged corpse.

  Gradually, despite the sting of her punctures and bruises, she started to feel a little better. Physically, anyway. Inside her mind, she was berating herself for an outcome that wasn’t really a victory at all.

  Given that she needed to learn what Umrae knew, not kill her, she’d bungled their encounter from the beginning. She supposed she should have agreed to the traitor’s terms, but she’d been too angry and too proud. She should also have spotted the vial and fought more skillfully. If not for luck, it would be she and not her erstwhile scribe lying dead on the stone.

  She wondered if her sojourn in Menzoberranzan had diminished her. Back in Ched Nasad, she had enemies in- and outside House Zauvirr to keep her strong and sharp, but in the City of Spiders none had wished her ill. Had she forgotten the habits that protected her for her first two hundred years of life? If so, she knew she’d better remember them quickly.

  The enemy hadn’t finished with her. She wasn’t so dull and rusty that she didn’t recall how these covert wars unfolded. It was like a sava game, progressing a step at a time,
gradually escalating in ferocity. Her unknown adversary’s first move, though she hadn’t known it at the time, had been to turn Umrae and lie to Triel. Faeryl’s countermove was to capture the spy and remove her from the board. As soon as Umrae missed some prearranged rendezvous, the foe would know her pawn had been taken and advance another piece. Perhaps it would be the mother. Perhaps the foe would suggest to Matron Baenre that the time had come to throw Faeryl in a dungeon.

  But life wasn’t really a sava game. Faeryl could cheat and make two moves in a row, which in this instance meant truly fleeing Menzoberranzan as soon as possible, before the enemy learned of her agent’s demise.

  Light-headed and sour-mouthed from her exertions, Faeryl dragged herself to her feet, trudged in search of Mother’s Kiss, and wondered just how she would accomplish that little miracle.

  chapter

  ten

  Cloaked in the semblance of a squat, leathery-skinned orc, whose twisted leg manifestly made him unfit for service in a noble or even merchant House, Pharaun took an experimental bite of his sausage and roll. The unidentifiable ground meat inside the casing tasted rank and was gristly, as well as cold at the core.

  “By the Demonweb!” he exclaimed.

  “What?” Ryld replied.

  The weapons master too appeared to be a scurvy, broken-down orc in grubby rags. Unbelievably, he was devouring his vile repast without any overt show of repugnance.

  “What?” The Master of Sorcere brandished his sausage. “This travesty. This abomination.”

  He headed for the culprit’s kiosk, a sad little construction of bone poles and sheets of hide, taking care not to walk too quickly. His veil of illusion would make it look as if he were limping, but it wouldn’t conceal the anomaly of a lame orc covering ground as quickly as one with two good legs.

  The long-armed, flat-faced goblin proprietor produced a cudgel from beneath the counter. Perhaps he was used to complaints.

  Pharaun raised a hand and said, “I mean no harm. In fact, I want to help.”

  The goblin’s eyes narrowed. “Help?”

  “Yes. I’ll even pay another penny for the privilege.” he said as he extracted a copper coin from his purse. “I just want to show you something.”

  The cook hesitated, then held out a dirty-nailed hand and said, “Give. No tricks.”

  “No tricks.”

  Pharaun surrendered the coins and to the goblin’s surprise, squirmed around the end of the counter and crowded into the miniature kitchen. He wrapped his hand in a fold of his cloak, slid the hot iron grill with its load of meat from its brackets, and set it aside.

  “First,” Pharaun said, “you spread the coals evenly at the bottom of the brazier.” He picked up a poker and demonstrated. “Next, though we don’t have time to start from scratch right now, you let them burn to gray. Only then do you start cooking, with the grill positioned here.”

  He replaced the utensil in a higher set of brackets.

  “Sausage take longer to fry,” the goblin said.

  “Do you have somewhere to go? Now, I’m going to assume you buy these questionable delicacies elsewhere and thus can do nothing about the quality, but you can at least tenderize them with a few whacks from that mallet, poke a few holes with the fork to help them cook on the inside, and sprinkle some of these spices on them.” Pharaun grinned. “You’ve never so much as touched a lot of this stuff, have you? What did you do, murder the real chef and take possession of his enterprise?”

  The smaller creature smirked and said, “Don’t matter now, do it?”

  “I suppose not. One last thing: Roast the sausage when the customer orders it, not hours beforehand. It isn’t nearly as appetizing if it’s cooked, allowed to cool, then warmed again. Good fortune to you.”

  He clapped the goblin on the shoulder, then exited the stand.

  At some point, Ryld had wandered up to observe the lesson.

  “What was the point of that?” the warrior asked.

  “I was performing a public service,” answered the wizard, “preserving the Braeryn from a plague of dyspepsia.”

  Pharaun fell in beside his friend, and the two dark elves walked on.

  “You were amusing yourself, and it was idiotic. You take the trouble to disguise us, then risk revealing your true identity by playing the gourmet.”

  “I doubt one small lapse will prove our undoing. It’s unlikely that any of our ill-wishers will interview that particular street vendor any time soon or ask the right questions if they do. Remember, we’re well disguised. Who would imagine this lurching, misshapen creature could possibly be my handsome, elegant self? Though I must admit, your metamorphosis wasn’t quite so much of a stretch.”

  Ryld scowled, then wolfed down his last bite of sausage and bread.

  “Why didn’t you disguise us from the moment we left Tier Breche?” he asked. “Never mind, I think I know. A fencer doesn’t reveal all his capabilities in the initial moments of the bout.”

  “Something like that. Greyanna and her minions have seen us looking like ourselves, so if we’re lucky they won’t expect to find us appearing radically different. The trick won’t befuddle them forever, but perhaps long enough for us to complete our business and return to our sedate, cloistered lives.”

  “Does that mean you’ve figured out something else?”

  “Not as such, but you know I’m prone to sudden bursts of inspiration.”

  The masters entered a crowded section of street outside of what was evidently a popular tavern, with a howling, barking gnoll song shaking the calcite walls. Pharaun had never had occasion to walk incognito among the lower orders. It felt odd weaving, pausing, and twisting to avoid bumps and jostles. Had they known his true identity, his fellow pedestrians would have scurried out of his way.

  As the two drow reached the periphery of the crowd, Ryld pivoted and struck a short straight blow with his fist. A hunchbacked, piebald creature—the product of a mating of goblin and orc perhaps—stumbled backward and fell on his rump.

  “Cutpurse,” the warrior explained. “I hate this place.”

  “No pangs of nostalgia?”

  Ryld glowered. “That isn’t funny.”

  “No? Then I beg your pardon,” Pharaun said with a smirk. “I wonder why this precinct always seems so sordid, even on those rare occasions when one finds oneself alone in a plaza or boulevard. Well, the smell, of course. We don’t call them the Stenchstreets for nothing, but the buildings, though generally more modest than those encountered elsewhere in the city, still wear the same graceful shapes our ancestors cut from the living rock.”

  The teachers paused to let a spider with legs as long as broadswords scuttle across the street. The Braeryn notoriously harbored hordes of the sacred creatures. Sacred or not, Pharaun reviewed his mental list of ready spells, but the arachnid ignored the disguised dark elves.

  “That’s a foolish question,” said Ryld. “Why does the Braeryn seem foul? The inhabitants!”

  “Ah, but did the living refuse of our society generate the atmosphere of the district, or did that malignant spirit exist from the beginning and lure the wretched to its domain?”

  “I’m no metaphysician,” said Ryld. “All I know is that somebody should clear the scavengers out of here.”

  Pharaun chuckled. “What if said clearing had occurred when you were a tyke?”

  “I don’t mean exterminate them—except for the hopeless cases— but why just let them squat here in their dirt like a festering chancre on the city? Why not find something useful for them to do?”

  “Ah, but they’re already useful. Status is all, is it not? Does it not follow, then, that no Menzoberranyr can find contentment without someone upon whom she can look down.”

  “We have slaves.”

  “They won’t do. Predicate your claim to self-respect on their existence and you tacitly acknowledge you’re only slightly better than a thrall yourself. Happily, here in the Stenchstreets, we find a populace starving, filthy, pennil
ess, riddled with disease, living twenty or thirty to a room, yet nominally free. The humblest commoner in Manyfolk or even Eastmyr can turn up his nose at them and feel smug.”

  “You really think that’s the reason Matron Baenre hasn’t ordered the slum scoured clean?”

  “Well, if that conjecture seems implausible, here’s another: Rumor has it that from time to time, someone meets the goddess herself in the Braeryn. Supposedly she likes to visit here in mortal guise. The matrons may feel that the neighborhood is, in some sense, under her protection.” The wizard hesitated. “Though if Lolth has gone away for good, perhaps they don’t need to worry about it anymore.”

  Ryld shook his head. “It’s still so hard to belie—”

  Pharaun pointed. “Look.”

  Ryld turned.

  On a curving wall below a dark elf ’s eye level was a sketch, this time smeared in blue. It consisted of three overlapping ovals, conceivably representing the links of a chain.

  “It’s a different mark,” said Ryld. “Hobgoblin maybe, though I couldn’t tell you the tribe.”

  “Don’t be intentionally dim. It’s the same peculiar, reckless, pointless crime.”

  “Fair enough, and it’s still irrelevant to our endeavors.”

  “It’s a dull mind that never transcends pragmatics. Two signs, representing two races, implying two specimens of the lesser races demented in precisely the same way? Unlikely, yet why would a single artist daub an emblem not his own?”

  “Coincidence?”

  “I doubt it, but as yet I can’t provide a better answer.”

  “It’s a puzzle for another day, remember?”

  “Indeed.”

  The masters walked on.

  “Still,” pressed Pharaun, “don’t you wonder how many scrawled signs we passed without noticing and exactly what form they took?”

  Ignoring the question, Ryld pointed and said, “That’s our destination.”

  The house’s limestone door stood open, most likely for ventilation, for the interior radiated a perceptible warmth, the product of a multitude of tenants crammed in together. It also emitted a muddled drone and a thick stink considerably fouler than the unpleasant smell that clung to the Braeryn as a whole.