Its eight long legs, each as thick as the kender’s arm, scraped against the passage walls as the huge creature slowly burst its way through the web. Delbin found himself paralyzed, not with fear, which he had experienced only occasionally, but with a trancelike fascination for what was happening. The multiple eyes of the spider seemed to entice him to a warm, safe place where he could sleep snugly, wrapped in his blanket.
He dropped the candle.
The spider scurried back, and Delbin’s mind cleared. The horror was only a few feet away from him. He tried to turn, but to his amazement, his feet were bound together—By webbing, of course, he thought, as he went crashing down on the steps. Recovering from its fright, the spider once again scuttled forward toward its helpless victim.
A roar—a war cry—ripped through the musty passage, and suddenly a huge figure bathed in light stood behind the giant arachnid. In one hand, nearly scraping the ceiling, was a magnificent battle-axe that no man could have wielded with such ease.
The spider hesitated, caught between desire and confusion. Delbin watched in open-mouthed awe as the axe rang down and bit into the monster. Ichor spilled out, splattering the kender and the walls, as the great weapon fairly cleaved the spider in two. It refused to die immediately, its tiny brain lagging behind reality. The light in its eight eyes slowly dimmed as it wobbled in the direction of Delbin. The axe came down once more.
The monstrosity finally collapsed at the kender’s bound feet.
“Delbin!” His axe dripping with the spider’s life fluids, Kaz stepped over the creature’s remains and kneeled down beside his companion. Behind him, carrying a torch, hurried Tesela. There were other sounds in the passage, running feet that undoubtedly belonged to Darius and Argaen.
“Delbin, you little fool!” Kaz muttered. He looked down at the kender’s feet. “What is that stuff?”
“It’s webbing,” Tesela remarked. “What else would a spider use?” She handed the torch to Kaz and brought her medallion in contact with the webbing. The sticky, ropelike substance melted away.
“That thing’s pretty handy.”
“Yes, isn’t it.” She leaned back and spoke to the kender. “Do you feel any dizziness or have bruises? You must’ve fallen.”
“How’d you do that?” Delbin was touching the remains of the webbing. “Could I do that, too? Does it just work for spiders? Well, at least I don’t think I’m hurt. You should’ve seen it, Kaz, though I guess you did, but it just seemed to come right out of nowhere, and all I was doing was thinking that the web looked like a giant spider, and—”
Kaz briefly put a hand over the kender’s mouth and looked at Tesela. “I think he’s all right.”
“Paladine’s Sword! What happened here?” Darius, blade in one hand and a candle in the other, came running up the stairs behind Delbin. “Is that a—a—”
“A spider, yes.” Argaen joined them from the steps above. While both he and Darius had obviously run, only the knight seemed at all winded. “I cannot say I’ve come across one that big before. Not in a place like Vingaard Keep.”
Kaz wiped his axe blade off on the spider. The stench from the bodily fluids of the monster was becoming noticeable. “Have you ever been in these passages?” he asked the elf.
“When I first found those parchments—and, believe me, that was purely accidental, for they were extremely well hidden—I decided to traverse the entire library system. I came across many spiders, of course, but nothing like that.”
“Delbin says that it seemed to come out of nowhere, that he was just thinking how the web looked like one spun by a giant spider.”
The elf frowned. “I do not like the sound of that. Things grow ever worse. I fear that the kender himself may have somehow created that monster—by magic.”
The kender was silent, but there was a gleam in his eyes that Kaz did not like.
“What do you mean?” the minotaur asked Argaen, “when you say that Delbin ‘created’ it?”
“That may be a poor choice of words. What I meant applies to us all, including what happened to you when you first entered Vingaard Keep. You recall the knight you told me of, or the sound of men and animals, yet there were none?”
“The knight was real,” Darius stated flatly.
“Perhaps. Your knight vanished, real or not. This spider of the kender’s imagination did not, however.” Argaen studied Delbin intently in the torchlight. Kaz noticed his companion shiver.
“Let this be a lesson to you, Delbin,” the minotaur chided the kender kindly. “Don’t go running off on any adventures without me.”
“Exactly how did you find the entrance you used, kender?” the elf asked with great interest. “Even I would have trouble finding them without help, and knowing how to open them.…”
Delbin grinned. “It’s easy. All you have to do is know where to look, and the locks weren’t really hidden all that great. They were kind of fun, but my uncle Kebble showed me lots of tricks. A lot of the other kender think he’s the greatest, which he is, but—”
“Delbin’s a kender,” Kaz interrupted quickly. “That should be sufficient answer. He could go on for hours. I for one, however, would like to leave this place. This overgrown bug-eater stinks to high heaven, and I’ve seen less dust in a desert.”
The elf nodded rather absently. “Surely. The nearest exit is the one you came through.”
Kaz stepped back over the remains of the spider. Tesela helped Delbin rise to his feet. The kender seemed a bit unsteady. The cleric made a move to help him, but Argaen was suddenly there. He took hold of one of Delbin’s arms.
“Allow me, human.” Argaen smiled politely at her. Tesela automatically stepped away. The elf helped the kender over the spider. Tesela blinked and followed hastily after them, not wanting to be left alone with the horrid remains. Spiders had always scared her as a small child.
* * * * *
The day, like all other days he could remember, dwindled away. Nothing changed … ever. No end seemed in sight.
Lord Oswal sat in the central chamber, where he and his numerous predecessors, including his late brother, had held court. The throne room was a place of power, designed to accentuate the Grand Master’s status as supreme commander and voice of Paladine. The chair on which the Grand Master sat was a level higher than the next closest. Anyone seeking an audience would be forced to look upward. Behind the high-backed throne, further emphasizing who ruled here, was a great representation of the Solamnic symbol. The kingfisher was larger than a man.
Once guards would have stood on both sides of the throne. More would have lined the hall, and there would have been still more at the great doors. Now, as Oswal slowly raised his head, he saw but a handful of knights, little more than a dozen, he supposed, and it was questionable how much he could rely on them. These men were filthy, unbathed, hardly typical of the knighthood as once he had cherished it. They were mad, of course, and it was a madness forced on them by him. He was lucky that he himself had not fallen victim to the tremendous power of that one, though each day it grew a little harder to resist. Each hour it grew so much easier to just let one’s mind drift … to …
The bell sounded, snapping him from his reverie. His eyes widened, and a smile played across his cracked lips. Perhaps his men had thought it part of his madness when the Grand Master had ordered at least one man stationed at the bell at all times. Certainly his command that the bell be rung at random hours had been met with looks of pity from men who had once respected him. Lord Oswal knew what he was doing, however. The loud ringing of the bell stirred his mind whenever he was sinking too deep into madness. The ringing—and his own power as a cleric of Paladine, something that even most of his fellow knights did not know.
What was going on outside? he wondered. Where was Bennett? Where was Arak Hawkeye, head of the Order of the Crown? Where was Huma? Rennard? Where …
He cursed the one who traveled in the darkness as he realized with a jolt that some of the men he was waiting fo
r were long dead. There were others, though.…
“Contemplating your mortality, Grand Master?” a voice like a hiss asked him suddenly.
Oswal was well beyond the point of being startled when he manifested himself. “Come out from behind me, coward.”
A blur of darkness formed before the throne of the Grand Master, but none of the guards noticed. “Are you blind?” he wanted to scream at them. “The enemy is before you!”
The other knights continued to stare without reaction. They were caught in a bizarre world of fanaticism in which the performance of their duties was all they existed for. They were being the best, most alert sentries that they could possibly be, yet they could not see the figure cloaked in shadows.
Oswal refused to consider the possibility that it might be himself who was mad, and that the one before him did not, in truth, exist anywhere but in the Grand Master’s mind.
“Shall I tell you what this day will bring?” the shadow mocked him. “Would you like to know what new atrocities are being performed in the name of Paladine and the Knights of Solamnia?”
It was a game he played each day at some point. Lord Oswal trembled in growing rage and uncertainty. Solamnia was in ruins. The knights were plundering the very people they were supposed to protect. Former allies were now hunted enemies.
All at the Grand Master’s command.
“You can tell me nothing new, mage, and I will tell you nothing new, either.” He said the last with some satisfaction. He could no longer summon up the strength to fully utilize the gifts of Paladine with which he, as a cleric and a Lord Knight, was endowed. How had that come about?
“I can save your people from your madnessssss.” Oswal had struck a nerve. “You merely have to tell me a few simple things. The longer you delay, the worse you make your own position. Do you know that your keep lies open, defenseless, and that other than the few men you have here, there are only two or three dozen remaining in all of Vingaard?” The shadow chuckled. “Soon the Knights of Solamnia will cease to exist, and all for naught.”
“To the Abyss with you!” the Grand Master shouted as he rose from his throne. The knights guarding the chamber turned to look at him fleetingly, but noting that nothing was apparently wrong, they turned back to their “duties.” “If you could take what you wanted, you would have taken it long ago! I have seen it in a vision! Paladine has guided me from the first! It is only a matter of outlasting you, specter! Your own time is limited! I will prevail!”
“You will do nothing. You are impotent, Grand Master. Shall I tell you a secret? Ssssoon, very ssssoon, what I want will be mine.”
“Takhisis take your murky hide!” Oswal slumped back onto the throne.
“She already hasss, asss you can sseee.…” The shadow began to fade into nothing, but not before the Grand Master was allowed a glimpse of a face. It was a human face, but only barely, for the hair lay flat against the skull and the face was overly elongated, like that of some reptile. The skin added to the effect, showing a layer of scale or scab. It was hard to tell which.
Long after the shade had vanished, if indeed it had ever been there, he finally succeeded in whispering the name that accompanied that horrid, less-than-human visage.
“Dracos!”
CHAPTER 13
The light of day was fading swiftly. Around the Grand Master’s stronghold, Kaz and the others saw the few remaining knights of Vingaard Keep begin what seemed to be automatic rituals. With slow deliberation, a group of some three or four passed among the others, lighting and distributing torches to each. Their pace never faltered, yet never varied, either. Kaz was reminded of folktales about the undead shambling out of their graves. Beside him, Darius watched, his hands clutching the base of the window, his knuckles white. The knights, once all were equipped with burning torches, shifted into a protective shield around the entrance of the building, each man facing the darkness without. Neither the minotaur nor Darius had seen any visible threat. It was almost as if the knights were seeking to hold back the coming darkness. The bell rang its single note for at least the thirteenth time today, though Kaz had lost count.
“How long can this go on?” he muttered.
Vingaard Keep, Kaz mused, was like a limbo of some sort, an unreal place, where everything seemed to slow down, seemed never really to change. There were no conclusions here, just one perpetual emptiness. The knights changed guard several times during the day, but they did nothing else. A few wandered briefly along the walls of the keep, supposedly on sentry duty, but Kaz knew that an enemy horde could stroll in undetected.
“What are we waiting for?” he groused at his companions. Darius nodded agreement with that sentiment. He was all for making some grand plan. The minotaur grimaced slightly. Darius was a good, brave soul, as humans went, but like many of his fellow knights, he seemed to think that what was called for was a glorious attack straight into the teeth of danger. Kaz knew that he himself was guilty of overzealousness at times, but experience had mellowed him somewhat.
Tesela was quiet. She sat on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed. Kaz could not say for certain whether she was performing some ritual or was just plain bored, like he was. He suspected that she herself was not quite certain what to do.
Sensing his eyes on her, she opened her own and met his gaze. Something was troubling her, the minotaur felt instinctively. “What’s wrong?”
The cleric shook her head. “I can’t really say. I’ve been trying to clear my mind and have been asking Mishakal for guidance all day, but I still can’t determine what it is that disturbs me … only that it concerns Argaen.”
“The elf?” Darius grumbled.
“I’ve prayed to Mishakal for guidance, but where the elf is concerned, I feel nothing. It’s as if there is a—a blockage.”
“And your goddess is not strong enough to remove the obstacles?”
Her glare burned holes into the knight’s eyes, making him turn red. “I don’t snap my fingers and have every request taken care of instantly, Knight of Solamnia! Mishakal, like all the other gods, has concerns that go beyond mortal ken. I am not her sole concern, though I feel her love. There may be a hundred different reasons why I can’t see what I want to see. For that matter, where is your Paladine? Why has he not helped his own people?”
Kaz, perhaps the only one of the party who had ever actually met a god—unfortunately, it had been Takhisis—smiled slightly. Gods, in his opinion, had more limitations than people imagined.
Rising from the chair where he had sat polishing his axe and trying to figure out some way to repair the one chipped edge, the minotaur stalked slowly toward the window. Other than the wind and an occasional sounding by the bell, things had been too quiet. On the night they had come here, dark, otherworldly things had been manifest. Now, save for the emptiness and the perpetual cloud cover, things were almost … ordinary.
Kaz did not like that one bit. In his experience, when things turned calm and ordinary, something unusual was about to happen.
“It’s almost as if we’re waiting for a signal,” the minotaur whispered to himself.
“What’s that?” Tesela called.
“Nothing. A whole lot of nothing, it seems.”
“Ah! There you are!” Argaen came stomping in as if he had been searching the entire library for them. The elf always seemed to be at least a little astonished that they were still here, which made Kaz uneasy. It was as if they were temporary diversions from his normal scheme of things and one day would simply cease to exist. No doubt, then Argaen Ravenshadow would probably forget they had ever been here.
“I’ve brought you food!” The elf carried a plate of bread and a pot of thick vegetable soup to the table.
“Most kind of you, Master Ravenshadow,” Darius said politely.
“Where do you get your supplies?” Tesela asked, sniffing the soup. Delbin was trying desperately to pull the pot from her hands. Argaen reached over and pried the kender away with a shake of his head. Delbin smil
ed and kept his hands at his sides, but his eyes kept drifting to the food.
“There are wells in the keep, and one of them nearby serves as one of the knighthood’s storage areas. Because it is partly underground, it helps to preserve the food. I am afraid that the meat spoiled long ago, but plants can last for months. As for the preparation of the food, you can thank what little sorcery I have. I’ve grown fond of human foods. Elven dishes are too ethereal for my tastes these days.” Argaen gave another broad smile.
“The supplies in Vingaard could help some of those villages to the south,” Tesela said rather harshly.
“You are welcome to try, cleric. I am only one person and the immediate need, if you will pardon me for saying so, is here.”
Tesela’s expression indicated that she did not share the elf’s view. For the past few years, the elf had been working here uselessly while other people were barely surviving. But what could she expect from an elf?
“How do your studies go, Argaen?” the minotaur asked. “Have you discovered something?”
The elf gave him a crooked smile. “I may have learned something that will change the entire situation. You will know before long, I promise you that. Please, eat.”
The smell of the soup was mouth-watering. Kaz, used to rations and living off the land, forgot all his worries and took the pot from Tesela, who was beginning to look as if she was never going to get around to eating. Darius took out a knife and cut the bread into equal pieces. Delbin hopped up and down with anxiousness.
Argaen looked down at the kender. “Delbin, before you eat, could I ask a favor of you?”
Kaz the Minotaur Page 15