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

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

  The weapons master started to riposte with a chest cut, then sensed movement on his flank. He pivoted. Hoping to take him unawares, the rogue next to Urlryn was swinging an axe at his knee. It was how warriors fought in a line. You killed the male who was focused on your neighbor.

  Ryld leaped over the attack. When he landed, his leg screamed with pain and threatened to buckle beneath him. Shouting, he made it hold and cut at the axeman’s belly. The broadsword crunched through mail, and the rogue toppled.

  Ryld’s blade was still buried in the axeman’s guts when Urlryn and the other surviving warrior rushed him. The master floundered backward, dragging the broadsword free. Swords flashed at him, and somehow, even off-balance, he dodged them, but in so doing, fell on his rump.

  The rogues scrambled forward to finish him. He surprised the other stranger with a bone-shattering kick to the ankle, knocking him reeling backward, then reared up on one knee, his sword raised in a high guard for what he knew was coming.

  Urlryn’s blade crashed down on his own, and he felt the jolt all the way to his shoulder. With both feet planted beneath him, the renegade could bring all his strength to bear. Ryld couldn’t.

  But he was bigger and more powerful than his adversary and was nicely positioned to hamstring other drow. Teeth gritted, he maintained his defense until his enemy faltered, then whipped the broadsword behind the rogue’s leg for a drawing cut.

  Urlryn let out a shrill cry and staggered sideways. Ryld heaved himself up and turned toward the wizard, only to discover he could no longer see him. Deprived of his wall of warriors, the spellcaster had conjured another defender, a vaguely bearish thing with folded bat wings and luminous crimson eyes, so huge it nearly filled the corridor.

  Ryld had watched Pharaun exercise the famous Mizzrym talent for illusion on numerous occasions, and his experiences stood him in good stead. He sensed, though he couldn’t say how, that the demon bear was just a phantasm. He limped forward, flicked the broadsword at it, and it popped like a fungus discharging a cloud of spores. It was strange to think that, had he believed in it, it could have torn him to shreds.

  The rogue mage turned tail. Ryld didn’t want the bastard to reappear and try to kill him again later, so he gave chase. His head and wounded leg seemed to scream in unison, and he had to stop. The sorcerer scuttled round a corner and disappeared.

  As Ryld waited for the pain to subside, he realized he couldn’t survive many more fights in his present condition. He either had to escape his foes posthaste or shed his disabilities.

  Sadly, he had just about come to the conclusion that he was fated to wander through the castle, ducking his enemies the while, until pure luck led him to an exit. That could take hours.

  He had reason to hope he wouldn’t need nearly as long to revitalize himself, but he’d leave himself vulnerable during the process. He wouldn’t be able to sneak in the opposite direction whenever he detected a party of hunters. He’d have to stay in one place. Still, it seemed the better option.

  He skulked along the corridor, peering into doorways. One led to a desolate training hall. The target mannequins looked like ghosts in their shrouds of spiderweb.

  Near the right-hand wall were tiers of seats, from which spectators could watch the warriors train. If Ryld crouched down behind the structure, no one would see him without making a careful search of the entire room.

  Besides, the master thought, going to ground in a salle might bring him luck. The dark powers knew, he needed it.

  He limped behind the sculpted seats and sat down on the floor with his legs crossed. He rested his hands on his thighs, closed his eyes, and commenced a breathing exercise.

  Spellcasters smugly imagined they were the only folk who truly knew how to meditate. They were mistaken. The brothers of MeleeMagthere had mastered the practice as well. It helped them reach the highest level of martial proficiency.

  Spellcasters. The thought reminded him of Pharaun. It brought the shock and anger flooding back.

  But at the moment, those feelings were an impediment. He had to relax and empty his mind.

  He could heal the wound Syrzan had left inside his head. He could stop his leg bleeding. He could banish pain and fatigue and tap his body’s deepest reservoirs of strength.

  If only the enemy gave him time.

  Pharaun groped his way onward for a time, then found another staircase, this one a narrow spiral leading downward. It was almost as if the mysteriously silent Lolth had returned long enough to reward him for his treachery.

  If so, he soon had cause to recall that she was a fickle and treacherous entity herself. He reached the bottom of the steps, headed down a hallway with a high, arched ceiling, and heard another band of hunters. It sounded as if they were just about to round the corner dead ahead. Pharaun looked around at the blank walls. The corridor lacked any doorways into which a fugitive might duck.

  The wizard could run, but he didn’t want to retreat back the way he’d come. He could evoke a curtain of darkness, but that would alert the rogues that someone was hiding behind it. He could throw darts of force, but it would exhaust his offensive magic. He decided to take a chance.

  Concentrating on the stolen House insignia, he shed his weight and floated upward to stretch out horizontally, his spine pressed against the crest of the rounded ceiling.

  The hunters passed below him, oblivious to his presence. He stared down, looking for a fellow mage. If there was a chance he could obtain new spell foci, he might attack and the odds be damned, but the males were all warriors.

  Once they’d gone by, he drifted back down to the ground and skulked onward. He got turned around once more, then unexpectedly found himself before a small service entrance to a stable much like the one in his family’s castle. Moldy stone troughs, casks, mounting blocks, and rusty iron-ring hitches defined regular patterns across the floor, while musty, rotting tack hung along the walls. The aerial steeds were long gone, stolen by the conquerors, evidently, as he didn’t see any bones. Two rogues stood watch, guarding the huge sliding doors.

  Pharaun smiled, threw his last darts of light, and, without waiting to see how much damage they did, broke from cover and sprinted toward the sentries.

  One renegade coughed blood and fell. The other appeared unaffected. A nice-looking fellow with a single elegant tendril dangling beside each cheek, he turned, spotted Pharaun, and calmly lifted his crossbow.

  The wizard threw himself flat, and the bolt whizzed over his head. Still prone, he shot his own crossbow. The shaft plunged into the renegade’s chest.

  The rogue snarled, drew his scimitar, and advanced, but only for three steps. He stopped, and his arm fell, his sword clattering against the floor. An astonished look on his face, he dropped to his knees.

  Rising, Pharaun noticed that the dying male’s garments were as tasteful as his coiffure.

  “Who’s your tailor?” Pharaun asked, but the renegade merely fell facedown. “Ah, well.”

  The wizard strode on to one of the outside doors, unbolted it, and shoved it open. Perhaps the casters were magical, for they worked as well as ever. The panel rolled easily and quietly aside.

  On the other side was a sheer drop to the glowing palaces a thousand feet below. Silently thanking the dead guard’s House, he touched the stolen brooch and sprang over the edge.

  chapter

  twenty-two

  Pharaun could float down a thousand feet, or he could fall, relying on levitation to slow his descent at the end. The latter course was dangerous. If he waited too long to counteract the pull of gravity, he would break bones or even pulp himself when he landed.

  Still, he chose to plummet, because of what he saw beneath him. He’d lost track of time inside the rogues’ citadel, but it was plain that the Call had gone forth around the black death of Narbondel, when most dark elves had gone home for the night. With few drow about to contest them for possession of the streets, the undercreatures had erupted from their kennels to kill, loot, and destroy.
Pharaun couldn’t make out individuals, but he could see the mobs as great surging, formless masses like the living jellies that infested certain caverns, and he could certainly see the fires they were setting. He could smell the strange, foul smoke of burning stone, and he could hear the goblins shouting.

  Perhaps the embattled commoners looked to the noble Houses for succor. If so, they waited in vain. Sorcerous power flashed white and red from the windows and baileys of the stalactite castles as the nobles struggled with their own rebellious slave soldiers. For the time being, at least, the drow were pinned down, unable to brace the marauders outside their own walls.

  A house was growing larger and larger beneath Pharaun’s boots. He made himself lighter than air but still slammed down hard. The impact knocked the wind and the sense out of him, and when his wits returned, he was bouncing upward again.

  Restoring a portion of his weight, he achieved a more graceful landing, flattened himself against the roof, and peered about. The goblins weren’t running amok in his immediate vicinity—not yet—so he jumped down onto the street. Glad the Bazaar was just three blocks away, he dashed in that direction.

  He’d almost reached his destination when a motley assortment of scaly little kobolds, pig-faced orcs, and shaggy, hulking bugbears surged from an alley. So far, the revolt was going well for them. They’d manage to lay their hands on spears, swords, and axes, and bloody them, too.

  Pharaun ran even faster. A javelin flew past him, but the thralls didn’t chase him. Evidently they were more interested in other prey.

  When the wizard reached the marketplace, he cursed, for the riot had arrived there ahead of him. Undercreatures were looting and burning the stalls, creating patches of dazzling glare. Some of the merchants had fled. Others attempted to defend their wares, unsuccessfully if they relied on goblin underlings for assistance.

  Pharaun skirted the edge of the Bazaar, witnessing scenes of carnage as he skulked along. Laughing, a goblin flogged his master’s corpse with a scourge. A bugbear used her manacles to strangle a merchant. Trapped in a blazing stone pen, riding lizards hissed and scuttled back and forth in fear.

  The first stall Pharaun had hoped to find intact was burning merrily, and the second was crawling with gnolls, growling, whining, and barking as they pawed through the vendor’s goods. The Master of Sorcere knew of only one more possibility on the perimeter of the Bazaar. Should that one be lost to him as well, he would either have to venture deeper into the burning, orc-infested maze of stalls or conceive another plan.

  Warty, bearded ogres overturned a twelve-wheeled wagon, dumping out the dark elves who’d been making a stand inside. A walking mushroom, taller than any of the brutes, and, with its slender, fluted stem, far more graceful, swung wide to avoid the little massacre.

  Pharaun slipped around the slaughter as well. A few more strides brought him to a scene that, after the carnage he’d just witnessed, seemed almost unreal. The westernmost portion of the marketplace was quiet. Some of the merchants had armed themselves and taken up positions outside their tents and kiosks, but they seemed calm and unafraid.

  Over the course of an adventurous life, Pharaun had witnessed the same phenomenon before. Under the proper circumstances, it was possible for folk to remain essentially oblivious to a pitched battle raging just a few yards away.

  The wizard ran on. Ahead, a luminous green circle scribed on the ground surrounded a commodious stall built of hardened fungus. A heavyset male stood in the doorway with an arbalest in his hand and a toad, his familiar, squatting on his shoulder. He wore a nightshirt, and his feet were bare. The merchant scowled when he spotted Pharaun.

  “Stay back,” he said, his throaty voice even deeper than Ryld’s.

  Pharaun halted, took a breath, and wound up coughing, thanks to the smoke fouling the air.

  “My dear master Blundyth, is that any way to greet a faithful customer?”

  “It’s the way to greet the madman who attacked a patrol only yesterday.”

  That was right, Pharaun thought, it had been only yesterday. So much had happened since, it felt like a year.

  “My past indiscretions no longer matter,” the Mizzrym said. “Do you have any notion what’s going on?”

  “You mean the smoke and commotion over yonder?” Blundyth nodded to the east. “I guess a merchant’s eliminating the competition. It’s nothing to do with me, though I’m ready if trouble spills this way.”

  “Would that were true,” said Pharaun. “Alas, none of us is truly ready for tonight. Have you glanced up over the roof of your shop?”

  He pointed to the orange light presently flickering in the east.

  “The nobles are up to something,” Blundyth said. “Maybe some of the Houses have joined forces to wipe out a common rival. Again, it’s nothing to do with me.”

  “You’re mistaken. All across the city, the undercreatures are rebelling.”

  Blundyth snorted, “You are mad.”

  “Don’t you or your neighbors own thralls?”

  “Of course. They’re off somewhere.”

  “Indeed. Off preparing to cut your throats.”

  “Just go away, Master Mizzrym.” Blundyth shifted his grip on the staff and added, “We always got along. Don’t make me hurt you.”

  “The orcs pose a considerable threat. I know how to oppose it, but I need your help. I still have credit here, don’t I?”

  “I don’t sell to outlaws. I don’t want any trouble with the priestesses.”

  Pharaun looked into the merchant’s eyes and saw that he’d never convince him.

  “Too bad. You’ll regret this decision. In just a moment, most likely, but by then it will be too late.”

  The master turned and strode away, but once he was out of Blundyth’s sight, he circled back around. Creeping through the cramped spaces between the booths, he approached the burly drow’s stall from the side. As he skulked along, he listened to hear if the undercreatures were coming closer, but he couldn’t tell. He suspected that one of the cursed sound baffles was muffling the noise.

  At any rate, he reached the dimpled fungal structure without any orcs attacking him. He swept his hands through a mystic pass and whispered an incantation. The protective circle of light winked out of existence.

  Pharaun ran to the stall, floated upward, and swung himself onto the roof. The petrified fungus supported him like stone. Blundyth cursed and came stalking around the side of the stand, his crossbow at the ready. Pharaun thought he’d better make sure the merchant didn’t get a chance to use it.

  The wizard jumped off the roof onto Blundyth’s back. He knew he hadn’t executed the move as nimbly as poor Ryld would have, but it worked. It slammed the merchant to his knees. The toad hopped away.

  Clinging to his victim, the master drove his dirk repeatedly into the big male’s side. Sometimes the blade plunged deep, and sometimes it caught on a rib. Blundyth flailed and bucked for a while, couldn’t break free, then tried to aim the arbalest back over his shoulder. Pharaun ducked away from it. Finally the merchant fell sideways, pinning his attacker’s knife and hand beneath him.

  Pharaun dragged his hand free, but didn’t bother with the dirk. He was about to procure a set of vastly superior weapons. He wiped his bloody fingers on Blundyth’s clothing, then rose and headed for the entrance to the stall.

  Blundyth’s neighbors watched him, but didn’t interfere. As the dead male might have observed, his murder was nothing to do with them.

  The wizard’s supply shop was as well-stocked as usual. Jars, bottles, and boxes stood on limestone shelves, and a greenish mirror glowed on a wooden stand in the corner. The air smelled of spices, herbs, bitter incense, and decay.

  Blundyth’s piwafwi lay carelessly draped across a chest, and it was the first item Pharaun appropriated. The cloak fit him like a tent, but it had the customary row upon row of hidden pockets. Next he examined the vials and drawers, finding the magical components that corresponded to the spells he had prepared. With
every one he filched, he felt a little better, almost like a cripple regaining the use of his legs.

  As he worked his way across the room, he spotted a pair of boots sitting atop a little cupboard. They were plainly special in some way, for the maker had tooled runes into the leather. Without his silver ring, Pharaun lacked the ability to instantly discern what virtues they possessed, but playing a hunch, he decided to take the time to try them on.

  The boots squirmed, molding themselves to his feet, then quivered against his flesh like an animal eager to run. He took an experimental step, and the magical footwear kicked off on its own, augmenting the strength of his legs and propelling him all the way across the shop in a single bound.

  Not bad, he thought. Not as good as a flying carpet, but helpful nonetheless.

  He took a few more strides, getting the feel of the boots, then headed out. Just as he exited the shop, a howling, shrieking cacophony exploded out of the air. An instant later, a horde of undercreatures—orcs, mostly, with a sprinkling of long-armed goblins—came charging out of the stands of stalls and kiosks to the east.

  Blundyth’s neighbors gaped in utter astonishment. For some, the instant of consternation was fatal. The undercreatures swarmed over them like ants harvesting the carcass of a mouse.

  Some of the remaining merchants bolted. Others shot their hand crossbows, or conjured flashes of magic. One optimist sought to cow the rebels with threats, invective, and commands until a scrofulous orc, slopping the liquid out of a tin bucket, threw some of Syrzan’s liquid fire on him. The incendiary ignited flesh as easily as stone.

  His great blanket of a piwafwi flapping around him, Pharaun ran. Each amplified stride bounced him off the ground, but thanks to the virtues of the magic boots, he always landed softly.

  A pair of orcs glared at him and hefted their spears. He whispered an incantation, and a ragged blackness, the essence of death itself, danced among the undercreatures. They collapsed, already rotting.