Ryld bellowed a war cry, sprang at them, and struck them down before they could do any more damage. He kneeled beside his friend. Beneath the elegant piwafwi, Pharaun’s equally gorgeous robe had two punctures in it, and was dark and wet from breastbone to thighs.
“I heard them coming a moment after you did,” the wizard wheezed. “I didn’t turn around fast enough.”
“Don’t worry,” said Ryld. “It’s going to be all right.”
In reality, he wasn’t at all sure of that.
“The goblin thrust through the gap between the wings of my cloak. The little bastard hurt me when Greyanna and her followers couldn’t. Isn’t that silly?”
chapter
twelve
When Quenthel had decided she must don armor, she had performed the task as methodically as she did everything else. She’d put on a cunningly crafted adamantine gorget, a Baenre heirloom, beneath her chain mail and piwafwi, and it was likely that protective collar that saved her life.
Still, the unexpected impact on the nape of her neck knocked her forward and down onto one knee, and the edge of her enchanted buckler clanked against the floor.
For a moment, she was dazed. The whip vipers hissed and clamored to rouse her, their outburst clashing with the jumbled howling of the advancing chaos demon.
She felt something hanging down her back and bade the serpents pull it off. Hsiv reared over her shoulder, tugged the article out of the mail links and cloth with his jaws, and displayed it for her inspection. She recognized it from the armory. It was an enchanted quarrel sized for a two-hand arbalest, and if it, or one like it, so much as pricked a dark elf ’s skin, it would almost certainly kill.
Quenthel thought her assailant had had just about enough time to reload. If so, the Baenre obviously couldn’t trust her cloak and mail to protect her—the first bolt had pierced them easily enough.
Though it meant turning her back on the demon, she wrenched herself around, remaining on one knee to make a smaller target, and did her best to cover herself with her tiny shield.
Just in time. A second quarrel cracked against the armor. A shadowy but recognizably female figure ducked back into an arched doorway, no doubt to ready her weapon again.
Trapped between two foes, Quenthel thought that if she didn’t eliminate one of them quickly, they were almost certainly going to kill her. Judging her sister dark elf the easier mark, she leveled a long, thin rod at her.
A glob of seething green vitriol materialized in the air before her, then shot toward her enemy. Quenthel could just see the edge of her opponent’s body in the recessed space, and that was what she aimed for. Even if she missed, the magic ought to slow the assassin down.
The green mass clipped her foe’s shoulder. It exploded, and the dark figure jumped. The stonework around her was covered in a sticky mass of something like glue. Quenthel smiled, but her foe, apparently unhindered by the entrapping magic, returned to the task of cocking the crossbow. Something, her innate drow resistance to hostile magic, perhaps, had shielded her from harm.
Quenthel glanced over her shoulder as she slipped the rod back into her belt. Though moving at a leisurely pace, the chaos demon had already traversed more than half of the lengthy gallery, and of course its speed could increase at any moment, just as every other aspect of its being altered unpredictably from one heartbeat to the next.
But if the Spider Queen favored Quenthel and the entity didn’t accelerate, she might have time for another strike at her foe of flesh and blood. Silently directing the vipers to keep an eye on the demon, she turned back, and read from a precious scroll. When Quenthel pronounced the last syllable, the scroll disappeared in a puff of dust and a brilliant light filled the chamber. The dark elf in the doorway reeled and clutched blindly at the door frame. She touched the slowly-dripping mass of glue and snatched her fingers away, leaving skin behind.
Quenthel started to read another scroll as the air around her stirred, blowing one direction then another. Hot one moment and cold the next, the gusts wafted countless smells, pleasant and foul alike. She took it for a sign that the demon had drawn very close, and the vipers’ warning confirmed it.
Still, she wanted to finish her lesser adversary off before the girl recovered her sight. She completed the spell, the exquisitely inked characters burning through the parchment like hot coals.
From the elbow down, the enemy female’s left arm rippled and swelled, becoming an enormous black spider with green markings on its bristling back. Still attached to the rest of her body, it lunged at her throat and plunged its mandibles in.
Quenthel spun around. Mauve with golden spots, then white, then half red and half blue, the demon loomed over her. Most of the time it looked flat, like a hole into some other luminous, turbulent universe, and an observer had only its inconstant outline from which to infer its shape. Over the course of a couple heartbeats, it seemed to become an enormous crab claw, a wagon complete with driver, and a whirling dust devil. The length of gallery behind it resembled a tunnel carved from melting rainbow-colored slush except for one little stretch. That section appeared unchanged until Quenthel noticed that the carvings had flipped upside down.
The high priestess scrambled to her feet. As she rooted in her bag for another scroll, her scourge dangled from her wrist. The vipers writhed and twisted.
The chaos demon blinked from ochre to a pattern of black and white stripes, and from the form of a simple isosceles triangle to that of an ogre. Its cry currently a mix of roaring and cawing, it swung its newly acquired club.
Quenthel caught the blow on her buckler. To her surprise, she didn’t feel the slightest shock, but the shield turned blue, changed from round to rectangular, and became many times heavier than it had been before.
The unexpected weight dragged her down to the floor again. Resembling a cresting wave, the intruder flowed toward her. She yanked, but her shield arm was caught somehow and wouldn’t pull free of the straps.
Rippling from magenta to brown stippled with scarlet, the demon advanced to within inches of her foot. Quenthel’s boot evaporated into wisps of vapor, and pain stabbed through the extremity.
Finally her hand jerked out of its restraints, and she flung herself backward, rolling, her mail whispering against the floor.
When she’d put sufficient distance between herself and her foe, she rose, then faltered. For an instant, she couldn’t locate the fiend, and her mind struggled to make sense of the scene before her. Green and blue, shaped like an hourglass, the demon was gliding along the ceiling, not the floor. It was still pursuing her. The cursed thing was random in every respect save its doggedly murderous intent.
The entity’s howl ceased for a moment, then resumed with a peal of childish laughter. Quenthel snatched and unrolled a scroll, which abruptly turned into a rothé’s jawbone. The air took on a sooty tinge, and her next breath seared her lungs.
Choking, she stumbled back out of the cloud. She could breathe, though the stinging heat in her throat and chest persisted. She suspected that, had she inhaled any more of it, the taint might well have killed her. As it was, it had incapacitated and possibly slain the vipers, who hung inert from the butt of the whip.
She tossed away the jawbone, grabbed another scroll, and started reading the powerful spell contained therein. Shaped like some hybrid of dragon and wolf, the demon, back on the floor again, advanced without moving its legs. Though colored the blue and gold of flame, it threw off a bitter chill that threatened to freeze the skin on her face and spoil her recitation with a stammer.
Quenthel thanked the goddess that her own education in ArachTinilith had taught her to transcend discomfort. She forced out the words in the proper manner, and a black blade, like a greatsword without a guard, hilt, or tang, shimmered into existence in front of her.
She smiled. The floating weapon was a devastating magic known only to the priestesses of Lolth. Quenthel had never seen any creature resist it. Though the stone floor was still chilly against the s
ole of her bare foot, the ghastly cold had passed, and she stood her ground, the blade interposed between her and her pursuer.
“Do you know what this is?” she asked it. “It can kill you. It can kill anything.”
Certain the demon could hear her thoughts, she sent it the words, Surrender and tell me who sent you, or I’ll slice you to pieces.
Emitting a sweet scent she’d never encountered before, looking like a giant frog crudely chiseled from mica with rows of wicked fangs in its sparkling jaws, the chaos demon waddled forward.
Fine, the Baenre thought, be stupid.
Controlling the black blade with her thoughts, she bade it attack. It hacked a long gash in the top of the frog head and knocked the demon down on its belly. The edges of the wound burned with scarlet fire.
The intruder turned inky black while flowing into a shape that resembled two dozen hands growing on long, leafy stalks. The stems stretching and twisting, the creature grabbed for the sword.
Quenthel let the hands seize hold of it, and as she’d expected, the magically keen double edge cut them to pieces, which dropped away onto the floor. The demon gave a particularly loud cry, which sounded in part like the rhythmic clanging of a hammer beating metal in a forge. Wincing at the noise, the priestess didn’t know if the extreme volume equated to a scream of pain, but she hoped so.
The demon turned into a miniature green tower shaped according to the uncouth architectural notions of some inferior race. A force surrounding it tugged at the sword as if the keep were a magnet and the conjured weapon, forged of steel. Quenthel found it easy to compensate for the pull. She slashed away chunks of masonry.
The tower opened lengthwise like a sarcophagus. It lurched forward, swallowed the sword, and closed up again.
The entity had caught Quenthel by surprise, but she didn’t see why it should matter. It might even be more effective to cut and stab her foe from the inside. She used the blade to thrust, felt the point bite, and her psionic link with the weapon snapped.
Startled, she nonetheless reflexively reached for another scroll. The demon spread out into a low, squirming red and yellow mass. A hole dilated in the midst of it, and it spat the sword out. The weapon retained its shape but rippled with shifting colors just as the intruder did, and Quenthel still couldn’t feel it with her mind.
She backed away, the blade followed, and, rattling and growling, the demon brought up the rear. The sword swept back and forth, up and down, while she ducked and dodged. So far, she was evading it, but it hampered and hurt her simply by being near. Her mail turned to moss and crumbled away. Her flesh throbbed with sudden pains as the demon’s power sought to transform it. One leg turned numb and immobile for a moment, and she nearly fell. Itchy scales grew on her skin then faded away. Her eyes ached, the world blurred to black, white, and gray, and the colors exploded back into view. Her identity itself was in flux. For one instant, she thought the thoughts and felt the soft, alien emotions of an arthritic human seamstress dwelling somewhere in the World Above.
Somehow, despite all such disconcerting phenomena, she managed to read the spell on the scroll and avoid the radiant blade at the same time.
She wasn’t sure how this particular parchment had found its way to Arach-Tinilith. She questioned that a dark elf had scribed it, for it contained a spell that few drow ever cast. Indeed, some priestesses would disdain to cast it, because it invoked a force regarded as anathema to their faith. But Quenthel knew the goddess would want her to use any weapon necessary to vanquish her foe, and it was remotely possible that this magic would prevail where even the supposedly invincible black blade had failed.
Bright, intricate harmonies sang from the empty air. A field of bluish phosphorescence sprang up around her. Within it, she could make out intangible geometric forms revolving around one another in complex symmetrical patterns.
The cool radiance expressed the power of order, of law, the antithesis of chaos. The sword that had become an extension of the demon’s will froze inside it like an insect in amber—and the demon was equally still. For a moment, at least. The creature began hitching ever so slightly forward, working itself loose of the restricting magic.
The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith was essentially a creature of chaos as well, but mortal and native to the material plane, and thus the spell had no power over her. She wheeled and dashed to the body lying in the doorway. Only the spider part of it was moving, chewing and slurping on the rest.
The dead girl turned out to be Halavin Symryvvin, who’d had the surprisingly good sense to remove all that gaudy, clinking jewelry before attempting to attack by surprise. The novice had managed the arbalest rather deftly, considering her sore, mutilated hands.
Quenthel stooped to pick up the weapon and the quiver containing the rest of the enchanted quarrels. She moved warily, but the feasting arachnid paid her no mind.
She turned, laid a dart in the channel, and shot. When the shaft hit it, the demon shuddered in its nearly immobile form, but didn’t die.
It occurred to her that she could get away from it while it was trapped, muster any loyal minions who hadn’t partaken of the poisoned supper, and fight the thing at the head of a company, just as she’d originally intended. After the recent harrowing events, the idea had a certain appeal.
But after what she’d endured, she wanted to be the one to teach this vermin a lesson about molesting the clergy of Lolth. Besides, the appearance of strength was vital. So she kept shooting as fast as the cocking action of the weapon would allow. The demon inched its way toward her as if it was made of half-cooled magma.
Four bolts left, then three. She pulled the trigger, the dart struck the demon in the middle of its horned, triangular head, and it winked out of existence.
She could still hear its voice, but knew that was just because it had shrieked so long and loudly. She gave her head a shake, trying to quell the phantom sound, then glimpsed yet another shadow watching her from some distance away.
“You!” she shouted, cocking the arbalest to receive the penultimate quarrel. “Come here!”
The other dark elf bolted. Quenthel gave chase, but she was still a little winded from the struggle with the demon, and her quarry outdistanced her and disappeared.
The Baenre stalked on through the labyrinthine chambers and corridors until she rounded a bend and came face to face with three of her minions. The goddess only knew what their true sentiments were, but confronted with her leveled arbalest and the obvious fact that, while her gear was much the worse for wear, she herself was unscathed, they hastily saluted.
“I killed tonight’s intruder,” she said, “and a homegrown enemy as well. What do you know of our situation? Is anyone else dead?”
“No, Mistress,” said a priestess. The lowered visor of her spidercrested helmet completely concealed her features, but from her voice, Quenthel recognized Quave, one of the senior instructors. “Most of those who ate and drank the tainted meal are waking. I think the poisoner only wanted to render us unconscious, not kill us.”
“Apparently,” said Quenthel, “she was willing to let the demon administer the coup de grâce to me. What of those who encountered the entity before I did?”
Quave hesitated, then said, “When they tried to hinder it, it hurt them, but not to the point of death. They should recover as well.”
“Good,” Quenthel said, though she took no joy in knowing she was the unknown enemy’s sole target.
“What are your orders, Mistress?” asked Quave.
“We’ll have to sort out the living from the dead, and deal with each accordingly. We’ll also look for the place where the demon got in, and seal it.”
These were tasks that would doubtless keep her occupied for the rest of the night, but she knew she had to find a way to stop the intrusions, and pull the fangs of another crisis as well.
It would all for make an arduous day’s labor, with the outcome uncertain enough to depress even a high priestess. Still, her mood lifted slightly whe
n her vipers began to stir.
“I have a healing potion,” said Ryld. He took a small pewter vial from his pouch, unstoppered it, and held it to Pharaun’s lips. The wizard drank the liquid down.
“That might be a little better,” Pharaun said after a moment. “But it’s still bad. I’m still bleeding. On the inside, too, I think. Do you have any more?”
“No.”
“Pity. A wretched little goblin did this. I can’t believe it.”
“Can you walk?” asked Ryld.
Pharaun would have to move or be moved, somehow. He couldn’t just lie in the street, not in the Braeryn, not on a night when the hunt was out. It was far too dangerous.
“Possibly.” The mage strained to lift himself up with his hands, then slumped back down. “But apparently not.”
“I’ll carry you,” said Ryld.
He gathered the mage in his arms, and bidding Pharaun do the same, called upon the magic of his House insignia. They floated slowly upward, and swung onto a rooftop.
The view from that vantage point was far from encouraging. Screaming undercreatures ran through the streets and alleys of the Braeryn with whooping riders in pursuit. The dark elves killed the goblins with the thrust of a lance, the slash of a sword, or simply by trampling them under the clawed feet of their lizards. They tended to find intimate mayhem more amusing. Some, however, had no qualms about loosing a quarrel or conjuring a blast of magic.
Still other drow wheeled above the scene on foulwings, wyverns, and other winged mounts. Ryld saw danger on every side.
He hauled Pharaun up against a sort of gable in the hope that it would provide cover against the scrutiny of the flyers.
“It’s bad,” the swordsman said. “A lot of drow are hunting. There’s no clear path out of the district.”
The wizard didn’t reply.
“Pharaun!”
“Yes,” sighed his friend, “I’m still conscious. Barely.”
“We’ll hide here until the hunt ends. I’ll cover us with a patch of darkness.”
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 20