“On the contrary,” Pharaun replied, moving to take a seat a few paces away but maintaining the position of the rapier between the two of them. “I am always delighted to make the acquaintance of a fellow practitioner. You can’t imagine how dull and dreary it can be, traveling with unimaginative companions who can’t appreciate the difference between a divination and an evocation.”
He swept his arm out over the side in the general direction of the other drow, who were far below him and well out of earshot.
Despite his casual manner, the mage was on edge and quite wary. He was sure the alu-fiend was sizing him up just as critically as he was her, and he considered everything carefully before opening his mouth. He certainly didn’t want to reveal something that could get him into trouble with her later. Nonetheless, he was fairly sure she already knew where the rest of his companions were, and pointing out their positions lower in the cavern was not giving away too big a secret.
“Don’t be too sure,” she said, absently toying with the lacing that ran up the side of her corset, “I can imagine your predicament quite well. You forget the crowd I normally run with. They can’t appreciate much beyond the next chance they’ll get to eat or rut, much less the intricacies involved in spinning a good spell. What’s a girl to do?”
When she finished, she gave Pharaun what he assumed must be one of her best pouts.
“Yes, I can see your point,” the wizard said, chuckling. “It can’t be much of a choice . . . rutting with the males, or seeking out a little more refined entertainment. I can’t blame you for slipping away from them for a while.”
“Oh, I never stray too far away from them,” the demon said, looking at the wizard levelly. “One or the other of us might get into trouble.”
Pharaun nodded slightly, acknowledging the hint. Still, he couldn’t help but grin, delighted as he was to be able to engage in such clever innuendo. It was another thing he missed since taking his leave of Menzoberranzan. It wasn’t just that most drow displayed a total absence of humor, his companions seemed even more staid than usual, though given the circumstances that wasn’t totally unexpected. Still, they were a tight-lipped lot.
Quenthel was clinging too fiercely to the mantle of leadership to spend time mentally sparring with the wizard, Faeryl said very little at all, Valas was hardly in the same vicinity, and Jeggred’s discussions had a marked singularity of topic to them. Pharaun had long since grown tired of hearing of the draegloth’s desires to rend his foes in one messy way or another. Ryld had always been more willing to converse with him than most, but even the warrior had been pointedly taciturn for most of the journey. With the exception of a few brief discussions regarding Quenthel’s heavy-handed methods, they had simply stopped the banter that had always marked the friendship between them.
It wasn’t as though Ryld wouldn’t talk to him, Pharaun admitted to himself, but things definitely weren’t the same as before.
Before I left him to his death during the insurrection, the mage concluded, inwardly sighing.
Ryld had accepted the wizard’s apologies afterward, claimed he understood the necessity of it, but in reality the pair’s friendship had been damaged. It wasn’t that Pharaun felt any real sense of guilt over the decision. He simply missed the benefits of the friendship.
“I said, you seem to be burdened with heavy thoughts.”
Pharaun started, realizing that the she-fiend had been speaking to him during his ruminations. As he refocused his attention on her, he noticed that the rapier had sagged low from inattention and he snapped it back onto guard. Furious with himself for relaxing his vigilance, he summoned the weapon back to him and let it disappear back into the ring.
No reason to keep it out, he thought ruefully. If she’d wanted to get past it and at me, she already had the perfect chance.
The wizard bowed his head slightly, wordlessly apologizing for his lapse in manners. The alu-fiend only smiled.
“You certainly don’t want to hear about my troubles,” he said at last, his tone bright. “You obviously dropped in on this social visit for other reasons.”
“Again, don’t be so sure,” the fiend replied, standing and stretching indolently. “It requires some fairly extraordinary circumstances to bring a band of dark elves through Ammarindar—” “Oh, nothing of any real consequence,” Pharaun interjected.
“—especially a mistress of the Academy and her retinue,” she continued, ignoring the wizard’s interruption. “Very extraordinary circumstances, indeed.”
She was looking at Pharaun, perhaps gauging his reaction.
In fact, his reaction was the slightest straightening of his back and shoulders, but it was only the merest hint of his true surprise.
She knew.
A dozen thoughts floated through the mage’s head in the next instant, considerations of who might have betrayed them, who back in Menzoberranzan had sent them off on this journey for the mere purpose of disposing of them in the clutches of Kaanyr Vhok and his minions, but the notions were dismissed again just as quickly. The risk of exposing the plight of the priestesses of Lolth was far too great to risk by such a method. The she-fiend had discovered their identity in some other way. Her broadening smile and sparkling green eyes told him that he had confirmed her suspicions.
“Oh, don’t get too lathered up about it,” she said, laughing. “Your secret’s safe with us—at least, for the time being,” she added, the smile gone. “But it brings me to my reason for being here. The Sceptered One, Kaanyr Vhok, Master of the Scourged Legions, lord of the portion of the Underdark through which you currently trespass, would delight in having an audience with you. I’m here to extend that invitation.”
Almost as if on cue, there was a shout, dimly echoing, from far below. Without thinking, Pharaun turned and gazed over the edge of the precipice to the cavern floor below. There, Quenthel and the others had been in the process of crossing to a lower tunnel, one without switchbacks. Valas was rushing back from the mouth of the egress, apparently to join them. Behind him, a flood of tanarukks emerged from the passage and from others flanking it.
Observing the scene had taken but an instant, but it had been enough for the she-fiend to expend some sort of magical energy, which Pharaun could see radiating around her. He was on his guard, expecting an attack, but she did not move. Her green eyes, however, smoldered. Whether it was with lust or anger, he wasn’t sure.
“I think you should accompany me back to the palace,” the demon said, her voice husky. “You will like it there. Very much.”
She began to saunter toward him as she spoke, and he could sense the energy flow over him. She was hoping to magically coerce him, somehow, the mage supposed. He backed up a step and put on his best apologetic smile.
“That, I’m afraid, is very much out of the question, at least for the moment. My companions need me.”
The she-fiend’s smile faded, and she pursed her lips in irritation.
“They are surrounded, you know,” she said, pausing in her advance. “This is, at least for the moment, still an amicable offer. Go to them, convince them to return with me to Kaanyr’s palace, and I promise you that the meeting will be cordial. My forces below have been instructed merely to hold their positions and prevent you and your friends from departing until I have a chance to make the offer to you. Will you do that?”
Pharaun smiled. “How well do you know Kaanyr Vhok?” he asked, his tone suggestive.
Her smile deepened, and her eyes glittered with what was definitely lust.
“Quite well,” she answered, “but then again, he’s terribly busy, so not as well as I would like. Come back to his palace with me.”
Pharaun’s own smile widened, and he asked. “What’s your name?”
The she-fiend giggled once in amusement and said, “I almost forgot to tell you! I’m Aliisza. Now, will you come with me?”
“It’s a delight to meet you, Aliisza, I’m Pharaun, and I’d love to accompany you, but for the moment, duty call
s. Am I to assume that we will meet with resistance down there? Or has our discussion set your mind at ease to such an extent that we might pass out of Ammarindar unhindered today?”
Aliisza grinned and said, “I had my orders, dear. You were not to pass beyond the borders without a fight, but I tell you what . . . I’ll give you a sporting chance, just because I like you.” Her voice had turned husky again. “Just this once, I’ll stay out of it. A few hundred tanarukks shouldn’t cause you undue trouble, should they?”
Pharaun cocked his head to one side, as if considering that, then said, “Well, they will be a substantially greater difficulty than if we could move on unmolested, but as you say, it’s a sporting chance. Until the next time we meet, then.”
In answer, Aliisza nodded and smiled.
The mage leaned backward and dropped over the side of the precipice.
At Valas’s distant shout, Quenthel looked up from where she had been staring absently at Jeggred’s back, following the draegloth through the massive chamber. She spied the scout hurrying back from where he’d ventured ahead, and the high priestess spotted the hordes of tanarukks behind him, emerging from the sculpted tunnel wall. She swore under her breath, and the five snakes on her whip writhed in mimicry of her displeasure.
“We are cut off again, Mistress!” K’Sothra hissed. “Perhaps there is another way?”
“No, let us destroy them; taste their flesh and be done with them,” Zinda argued, her own long black body straining forward eagerly.
“That’s enough,” Quenthel snapped, starting forward again to join with Valas.
The vipers quieted somewhat, but they still strained to pay attention to their mistress’s surroundings, trying to sense any other possible dangers.
The tanarukks did not follow the scout but instead fanned out into a defensive formation. It seemed they were content to wait until the drow came to them.
So much the better, Quenthel thought grimly. They can line themselves up so that the wizard can decimate them most efficiently.
“What are they about?” Faeryl asked, trotting beside Quenthel. “Why aren’t they chasing the male?”
She gestured toward Valas, who was only perhaps fifty paces from them.
“Why should they?” Quenthel countered, letting her long strides quickly close the gap between herself and Valas. “They somehow know we must go that way. It seems they’re content to wait until we come to them.”
Faeryl sniffed at this but said nothing more.
“We should wade through them and slice them, let their blood stain our feet as we tread upon their corpses,” Jeggred suggested, his own long strides easily matching Quenthel’s quicker ones.
The Mistress of Tier Breche looked over at the draegloth and saw him lick his feral lips in anticipation.
“Nonsense,” she said crisply. “There’s no need to get messy when they seem willing to oblige us by standing over there and letting Pharaun dispatch them with a well-placed spell or two. Right, wizard?”
When there was no answer, Quenthel spun to face him—only to discover that he was not behind her. Only Ryld kept pace with the two females and the draegloth.
“Where in the Abyss is that damnable mage?” Quenthel growled at Ryld, who raised an eyebrow in surprise and turned to look back.
“He was right behind me,” the warrior replied, letting his gaze sweep back and upward, toward the tunnel through which they had originally entered. “I don’t know—there!”
The weapons master pointed high up the wall, and Quenthel had to stop in order to turn around sufficiently to see where Ryld was pointing. When she spotted Pharaun, she muttered an invective under her breath. He wasn’t alone. There was someone, a woman, in conversation with him.
“Who is that with him? What is he doing?” the high priestess asked no one in particular.
Ryld shrugged and said, “I have no idea, Mistress. I never heard him stop.”
“Well, get him down here, now! I need him,” Quenthel ordered.
Ryld made as if to protest, then shrugged, turned back, and broke into a rapid jog back along the thoroughfare. When she turned back, Valas had reached their position.
“So?” she asked the scout.
Valas took one deep, calming breath and explained, “They’ve cut off our route again, and they’ve made sure this time that we won’t go around their flank.”
The scout pointed to several other exits from the large chamber.
Quenthel could see already that more of the tanarukks were there, each group similar in size to the one directly in front of them. They were gathering on the ledges and ramps, just on their side of the tunnel openings. It wasn’t hard to see that they were intentionally halting the drow’s progress, trying to force them to turn back.
“Obviously, they aren’t here merely to attack us,” she said, thinking aloud, “so they must want something else.”
“Perhaps I can explain,” Pharaun said, materializing out of a shimmering blue doorway that hung in the open air only a few feet away. The portal snapped out of existence as the wizard primped himself a bit, straightening his piwafwi and adjusting his pack. “We’ve been invited to join Kaanyr Vhok, the master of those fellows, for a discussion.”
“What are you talking about? Who was that woman you were speaking with back there?” Quenthel demanded, seething at how Pharaun seemed so full of himself all the time.
The fact that he could still freely use his magic, while she could not, continually galled her. Though he might never say anything, she knew he loved flaunting the fact of it in front of her every chance he could. To add insult to injury, he seemed taken with showing unbridled politeness toward her. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. He wanted something, she was sure.
“We thought you were in trouble. I sent Ryld back to look into it,” Quenthel said. She jabbed a single finger outward, pointing at the distant figure of the weapons master. “Now I’ll have to send Jeggred to catch up with him while you stay here and explain to me what this is all about.”
Before the high priestess could direct the draegloth to do her bidding, though, Pharaun cut in. “Oh, that’s not necessary. Allow me but a moment.” The wizard turned and faced Ryld, pointed his finger, and began to whisper. “Ryld, my dear friend, I appreciate your concern for me, but I am quite fine and standing here among our esteemed companions. You can return from your quest to rescue me.”
In the distance, Quenthel saw the warrior start and straighten. He turned around as Pharaun spoke. Ryld seemed to shake his head in consternation, and Quenthel thought she heard him sigh, though of course it was only a whisper. By the time the mage was finished, Ryld was already trudging back in their direction.
“Very clever, mage,” Quenthel said, clenching her teeth. “Now why don’t you be as useful in other ways and tell me what you were doing up there.”
“Of course. That was Aliisza, a charming and somewhat gregarious representative of Master Vhok’s. She was lurking in the shadows back when we ran into them—” he gestured into the distance at the tanarukks—“in the previous tunnel. They answer to her, and she answers to Vhok.”
“Well, how interesting,” Quenthel said, folding her arms. “And just what did you two have to talk about for so long? You weren’t, perhaps, coming to some sort of an agreement with her, were you?”
Pharaun looked genuinely pained and said, “High Priestess, I only listened politely while she extended her offer. I could not, of course, give her any sort of proper answer without first conversing with you. I suspected what your answer would be before I even mentioned the invitation, but I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t at least deliver the message.”
“Indeed,” Quenthel said. She knew good and well that the flamboyant wizard before her wouldn’t have given a second thought to betraying her and the rest of them if it presented him with some worthwhile benefit. “Interesting that she chose you to be her messenger boy.”
Pharaun grimaced, but only slightly.
&
nbsp; “We share a common, uh . . . appreciation for the arcane arts,” he said at last. “We spent a few moments in idle conversation about the difficulties of traveling with those who don’t share that appreciation.”
Quenthel snorted. “I’m sure you were interested in more than her wizardly skills.”
The mage’s grin didn’t change, but his eyes hardened the slightest bit. Good, she thought. Remind him that you see right through him.
“Very well,” she said. “We’re certainly not going to go back with the brutes to see Vhok, so the question is, how do we get through them and on our way?”
“There’s no way to get around them,” Valas said, “unless the ambassador knows this area and has a notion of another route we can take,” he finished, looking at Faeryl.
The Zauvirr priestess shook her head.
“We’re still too far away from the proper outskirts of Ched Nasad for me to recognize any features with certainty,” she said.
“Then we must slay them,” Jeggred announced. “Let me engage them and cut a path for you, Mistress.”
“No, Jeggred, there’s no need, however much fun you might think it would be. Pharaun, here, is going to get us through this. Aren’t you?”
The mage grinned bemusedly and said, “I might have an incantation or two that will allow us to make our way through to the tunnel. Aliisza has assured me that, in good sporting fashion, she will stay out of it. Slaying these creatures should be minimal trouble.”
“I’m not concerned with that. Just clear a path for us,” Quenthel commanded.
“Very well,” he said as he began to move forward, weaving the beginnings of a spell as he did so.
chapter
four
Aliisza wasn’t sure how Kaanyr would receive her latest news, but it didn’t slow her steps. Tarrying to deliver it served no purpose. He would find out eventually, and she might as well pass it to him and get on to other, more interesting things. Besides, she wasn’t really troubled by the prospect of the cambion’s anger. He might fly off the handle from time to time, but he knew better than to direct it at her. Whether or not he flew into a rage this time, she had an idea that might just soothe his ruffled feathers and give her a bit of fun, besides.
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 44