Teeth gritted, Pharaun shook off the compulsion to laugh. Gasping, he lifted his head and looked around. The bard was simultaneously drawing his enchanted dagger and starting another song, this time pitched falsetto. Houndaer was on his feet battling Ryld, their swords ringing. At the end of the room, Tsabrak, shifting his eight legs in agitation, aimed an arrow at Pharaun, while in the doorway the alhoon simply stood with only its mouth tentacles moving, seemingly content to let its compatriots do the fighting.
Pharaun threw himself sideways. The arrow missed him and clacked and skipped across the floor. The mage slapped the stone, and a wall of sheltering darkness sprang up between him and the foe. Moving with a practiced, silent grace, he scrambled on.
Something clamped down on Pharaun’s mind, smothering his will and robbing him of the ability to move. The undead mind flayer hadn’t been idle after all. Syrzan had simply utilized its psionic strength in preference to its wizardry and thus hadn’t needed to whirl its three-fingered hands in arcane passes. The wall of shadow no impediment, the Prophet had reached out, found Pharaun’s intellect, and struck a crippling blow.
The barricade of darkness disappeared. Syrzan must have employed a bit of countermagic to dispel it and in so doing, afforded Pharaun a view of the space beyond. Rather to his surprise, Houndaer was still alive, perhaps because Tsabrak had discarded his bow, drawn a broadsword, and come to fight alongside him. The two conspirators were trying to catch Ryld between them, generally an effective tactic, but thus far the teacher’s piwafwi, dwarven armor, and prowess had preserved him from harm.
The Tuin’Tarl made a halfhearted slash, and Ryld, recognizing the feint for what it was, didn’t react. The pale phosphorescence of the carvings gleaming on his naked limbs, Tsabrak spat venom onto his blade. The bard brought his shrill singing to a crescendo, crossed his legs, and wrapped his arms tightly around his torso, all but tying himself in knots.
With the aid of his ring, Pharaun saw a glittering pulse of magic fly from the singer to Ryld. He could even tell what it was intended to do. His friend was supposed to contort his own body in helpless imitation of the bard’s constrictive posture. But, strong of spirit, Ryld resisted the compulsion without even realizing he was doing it.
The weapons master faked a cut at Houndaer’s head, then whirled and dived. He slid between Tsabrak’s legs, breaking away from the drider and Houndaer, too, leaped up, and charged Syrzan. He recognized the alhoon as the most dangerous of his foes, even though the illithilich hadn’t attacked him yet.
Syrzan reached into a pocket and produced a small ceramic vial. When it swung the bottle from right to left, a dozen orbs of bright flame materialized in its wake. They shot at Ryld in one straight line and exploded one after the other, banging rapidly like some hellish drum roll.
The glare was dazzling. For a moment, Pharaun couldn’t see anything, and he made out Ryld through floating blobs of afterimage. His friend appeared unscathed. He was still charging and almost in sword’s reach of the alhoon.
Syrzan used its mind flayer talents. Even though the lich hadn’t directed the attack at him, Pharaun felt the fringe of it. It was like a sprinkle of hot ash burning his brain. Ryld dropped.
Syrzan gazed down at the warrior for a moment, evidently making sure he was truly incapacitated, then walked over to Pharaun. Despite the long skirt of its robe, there was something noticeably strange about its gait, as if its legs bent in too many places. Up close, it exuded a faint stink not unlike rotten fish. Its garments, once of princely quality, were frayed and stained.
It touched a finger to Pharaun’s brow, and they were elsewhere.
chapter
nineteen
The Underdark was boundless, its mysteries infinite, and despite centuries of following wherever his curiosity led, Pharaun had never seen an illithid city. Save for a dearth of inhabitants, he thought he’d just stepped into one.
Artisans had carved the walls and columns of the vault into spongiform masses like brain tissue, then covered the convolutions with lines of graven runes. Pools of warm fluid dotted the floor. Redolent of salt, the ponds crawled and throbbed with a mental force that even a non-psionic intelligence dimly sensed as a whisper of alien, incomprehensible thought at the back of the mind.
Pharaun recognized that the cavern was in some sense an illusion, but that didn’t make it any less interesting. He would have liked nothing better than to explore every nook and cranny. It was an inclination rooted in a profound sense of well-being, a blithe unconcern no more genuine than the landscape, but seductive all the same. He would have to fight it.
He turned, saw Syrzan standing a few feet away, and cast darts of force, a spell requiring only words of power and a flourish of the hands. Halfway to their target, the streaking shafts of azure radiance stopped dead in the air, fell to the ground, and turned into limbless things like leeches or tadpoles, which, squealing telepathically, slithered toward the nearest pool.
“Your spells won’t work here,” said Syrzan in the Prophet’s rich, compelling tones.
“I suspected as much, but I had to try. Are we inside your mind?”
“More or less.”
Syrzan strolled closer. Off to the side, liquid splashed and plopped as the tadpoles wallowed.
“We’re conversing in my special haven,” the undead mind flayer said, “but we’re also still in the heretic’s chapel. In that reality I’m rebuking Houndaer for fetching you after I told him it was dangerous, and you’re insensible.”
“Fascinating,” Pharaun said, “and I suppose you spirited me into the dream for a private tête-à-tête.”
“Essentially,” the alhoon said. Even in this phantasmal domain, it smelled faintly of decaying fish. “This is actually a form of mindreading. You won’t be able to lie.”
The Master of Sorcere chuckled. “Some people would say that so handicapped, I won’t be able to speak at all.”
The mages began stroll along side by side. The atmosphere felt quite congenial.
“How is it,” Syrzan asked, “that you came looking for my associates and me?”
Pharaun explained. He didn’t see how it could do any harm.
When he was finished, the illithilich said, “You couldn’t wield my particular sort of power.”
“I understand that now. You enthrall the undercreatures through a deft combination of wizardry and mind flayer arts, and I lack the innate capacity to master the latter. What’s more, you conspirators know nothing about the priestesses’ difficulties.” Pharaun cocked his head. “Or perhaps you do, Master Lich.”
“No,” said Syrzan, its mouth tentacles coiling and twisting. “Like the others, I know what’s happened but not why.”
“So none of what I sought was ever here for the finding.” Pharaun laughed and said, “My sister Sabal once told me that a clever drow’s wits can lead him into follies no dunce would dare to undertake . . . but that’s blood down the gutter. What of you? What in the wide world prompted a creature such as yourself to throw in with a band of Menzoberranyr malcontents?”
“You seek information you can use against me.”
“Well, partly . . .” Pharaun had to pause for a moment when a wave of psionic force from one of the larger pools dizzied him and threatened to wash his own thoughts away. “In the unlikely event I’m ever afforded the chance. Mostly, though, I’m just curious. You’re a mage. Surely we share that trait even if little else.”
Syrzan shrugged, the narrow shoulders beneath its faded robes hitching higher than would a drow’s.
“Well,” the alhoon said, “I suppose it can do no harm to enlighten you, and it’s been a long while since I’ve had the opportunity to converse with a colleague of genuine ability. Not that you’re my equal—no elf or dwarf could ever be—but you’re several cuts above any of Houndaer’s allies.”
“Your kind words overwhelm me.”
The two wizards stepped onto a bridge, a crooked limestone span arching over one of the briny pools.
“So on the day you achieved your immortality,” Pharaun said, “you forsook your homeland forever, or at least until the day when you could conquer it.”
The two mages stopped at the highest point on the bridge and looked out over an expanse of warm, briny fluid. Pharaun noticed that the stuff rippled and flowed sluggishly, as if it was thicker than water.
“Indeed,” Syrzan said. “I hoped to manage my departure circumspectly, but somehow the folk of Oryndoll sensed my metamorphosis. For decades, they hunted me like an animal, and I existed like one in the wilds of the Underdark. Those times were hard. Even the undead crave the comforts of civilization. Finally Oryndoll forgot me or gave up on me. That was an improvement, but still I had no home.”
“I’ve heard,” said Pharaun, “that one or two secret enclaves of illithiliches exist. Didn’t you search for one?”
“I searched for ninety years and found one,” Syrzan replied, sounding slightly miffed that its prisoner had jumped ahead in the story. “For a time, I dwelled therein but I quarreled with the eldest alhoons, who considered themselves the leaders of the rest. I conducted certain investigations they had, in their ignorance and timidity, forbidden.”
The Master of Sorcere laughed and said, “If you can’t find it in your heart—assuming an illithilich retains the organ—to consider us equals, you must at least concede we’re kindred spirits. You weren’t angling for the Sarthos demon, were you?”
“No,” said Syrzan curtly. “Suffice it to say that if not for some bad luck, I would have usurped the place of the eldest lich of all, but as matters fell out, I had to flee into the wilderness, a solitary wanderer once more.”
“Surely you found someone to enslave.”
Pharaun noticed the air in the dream cavern had grown cooler. Perhaps it was responding to its maker’s somber reflections.
“I found small encampments,” Syrzan said. “A family of goblins here, a dozen troglodytes there. I used them, used them up, each in its turn, but no little hole infested with a handful of brutes could give me what I truly craved. I yearned for a teeming city, full of splendors and luxuries, over which I would rule, and from which I could conquer an empire. But the taking of such exceeded even my powers.”
“Or mine,” Pharaun said, “hard as that is to credit. So, lusting for what you couldn’t have, you spied on the cities of the Underdark, didn’t you, or one of them, anyway. You kept your eye on Menzoberranzan.”
“Yes,” Syrzan said, “I’ve watched your people for a long while. I discovered the cabal of renegade males some forty years ago. More recently, I observed the priestesses’ debility; no mere dark elves could hide such an enormous change from an observer with my talents. I remembered the would-be rebels and arranged for them to make the same discovery, then I emerged from the shadows and offered them my services.”
“Why?” Pharaun asked. “Your collaborators are drow, and you’re, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, a member of an inferior species. Jumped up vermin, really. You don’t expect Houndaer and the boys to honor a pact with you once the prize is won? Dark elves don’t even keep faith with one another.”
“Fortunately, the prize won’t be won for decades, and during those years, I’ll be subtly working to impose my will on my associates. Long before they assume the rulership of the city, I’ll be ruling them.”
“I see. The fools have given you your opening, and now that which you could never conquer from the outside you’ll subjugate from within, extending the web of compulsion farther and farther, one assumes, until all Menzoberranyr are mind-slaves marching to your drum.”
“Obviously, you understand the fundamentals of illithid society,” said Syrzan. “You probably also know that we prefer to dine on the brains of lesser sentients and that we share your own race’s fondness for torture. Still, some of your folk will fare all right. I can’t eat or flay everyone, can I?”
“Not unless you want to wind up a king of ghosts and silence. And where, may I ask, do these stone-burning fire bombs come from?”
“Menzoberranzan isn’t the only drow city possessed of ambitious males,” the illithilich said.
Pharaun was momentarily speechless. Another drow city—
“Now, it’s your turn to satisfy my curiosity,” Syrzan said, interrupting the drow’s reverie.
“I live for the opportunity.”
“When Houndaer and the others explained our scheme, did you sincerely consider joining us?”
Pharaun grinned and said, “For about a heartbeat.”
“Why did you reject the idea? You’re no more faithful or less ambitious than any other drow.”
“Or illithid, I’ll hazard. Why then did I remain firm in my resolve to betray you to Gromph?” The slender dark elf spread his hands. “So many reasons. For one, I’m a notable wizard, if I do say so myself, and in Menzoberranzan we mages have our own tacit hierarchy. In recent years, I’ve channeled my aspirations into that. Should I rise to the top, it will make me a personage nearly as exalted as a high priestess.”
Syrzan flipped its tentacles, a gesture that conveyed impatience, and a flake of skin fell off. Unlike the slimy hide of living mind flayers, the lich’s flesh was cracked and dry.
“The renegades are trying to place themselves above the females,” the undead creature said.
“I understand that, but I doubt it’ll work out the way they plan, or even the way you plan.”
“You believe the priestesses are too formidable, even divested of their spells?”
“Oh, they’re powerful. They may well extinguish this little cabal. Yet for the moment, I’m more concerned about the undercreatures. Do you realize how many goblins there are, how fervently they hated us even before you maddened them, or how dangerous your stone-consuming fire is? It could be that after they riot, we won’t have a Menzoberranzan left for anyone to rule.”
“Nonsense. The orcs will have their hour, and your people will butcher them.”
Pharaun sighed. “That’s what folk keep telling me. I wish your consensus comforted me, but it doesn’t. That’s one of the drawbacks of knowing yourself shrewder than everybody else.”
“I assure you, the orcs cannot prevail.”
“At the very least, they’ll destroy some of the lovely architecture the founders sculpted from the living rock, and they’ll set a defiant example for future generations of thralls. Your scheme will harm not merely the priestesses but Menzoberranzan itself, and I disapprove of that. It’s sloppy and inept. Only a fool mars the very treasure he’s striving to acquire.”
A sneer in its tone, Syrzan said, “I wouldn’t have taken you for a patriot.”
“Odd, isn’t it? I’ll tell you something even stranger. In my way, I’m also a devout child of Lolth. Oh, it’s never kept me from pursuing my own ends—even past the point of murdering a priestess or two—but though I strive for personal preeminence, I would never seek to topple the entire social order she established. I certainly wouldn’t conspire to place her chosen people and city under the rule of a lesser creature.”
“Even gods die, drow. Perhaps Lolth is no more. If Menzoberranzan is indeed the mortal realm she loves best, why else would she abandon you?”
“A test? A punishment? A whim? Who can say? But I doubt the Spider Queen is dead. I saw her once, and I don’t just mean the manifestation who visited Menzoberranzan during the Time of Troubles. I’ve gazed upon the Dark Mother in the full majesty of her divinity, and I can’t imagine that anything could ever lay her low.”
“You have looked upon the Spider Queen?”
“I thought you might be interested in that,” said the mage. “It wasn’t long after I graduated from Sorcere, returned home to serve my mother, and sided with my sister Sabal against her twin Greyanna. One night, a delegation of priestesses came to our stalactite castle. Triel Baenre herself led the expedition—she was Mistress of Arach-Tinilith in those days—and she’d brought along dignitaries from Houses Xorlarrin, Agrach Dyrr, Barrison Del’Armgo, and other families of note. It was a momentous occasion, especially for me, because all these great ladies had come to arrest me.
“I never did find out if Greyanna instigated the affair. It was the kind of thing she would have done, but it needn’t have been her. You’ll scarcely credit it, but in those days, I was considered an insolent, uppity scapegrace, a far cry from the meek and modest gentleman you see before you today. A good many clerics may have suspected me of irreverence.”
“This is what happened to Tsabrak,” Syrzan said. “The priestesses arrested him, turned him into a drider, and drove him forth.”
“Sometimes they mete out punishments even fouler,” Pharaun said, “but first they examine you to determine your true sentiments. I hoped my mother would intervene. She was one of the great Matrons of Menzoberranzan, and I’d scored a number of coups for House Mizzrym, but she never said a word. Perhaps she believed me a traitor in the making or was reluctant to disagree with the Baenre. Maybe she simply found my predicament amusing. Miz’ri’s like that.
“Be that as it may, the priestesses threw me in a dungeon and put me to the question, employing whips and other toys. Somehow I managed to resist the urge to make a spurious confession merely to stop the pain. A fellow wizard cast a mind-reading spell, only to slap up against the defenses most mages erect to protect their thoughts. I imagine an illithid would have smashed right through, but he was unequal to the challenge.”
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 30