There had been no time, however, to learn whether that was a situation of Lolth’s own choosing. As Pharaun had expected, Tzirik betrayed them, using his magic to gate in the god he served. Vhaeraun had attacked the stone face and nearly succeeded in breaching it when Lolth’s champion—the god Selvetarm—appeared to defend it.
Realizing that Tzirik had no intention of letting them return, Pharaun had ordered Jeggred to kill Tzirik—telling the draegloth the order came from Quenthel. The priest’s death had ejected Quenthel’s group out of the Demonweb Pits, leaving only the gods behind. For all Pharaun knew, Selvetarm and Vhaeraun were battling there still.
If Vhaeraun won and succeeded in destroying Lolth, it would be the beginning of a new era for the drow. The Masked Lord favored males opposed to the matriarchy; his victory would no doubt spur the disenchanted males of Menzoberranzan to an even greater insurrection than the one that city had recently seen. But if Selvetarm succeeded in defending the Spider Queen, Lolth might one day return and restore her web of magic, lending power to her priestesses’ spells once more. Whatever happened, Pharaun wanted to be on the winning side—or appear to be serving its interests, anyway.
“As I was saying,” Pharaun continued, “not only is House Jaelre seeking us, but this forest is infested with wood elves. The sooner we get below ground, the better.”
He paused to glance at the forest, squinting against the sunlight that bounced harshly off the white, slushy snow that covered trees and ground alike. The wizard regretted his decision to teleport the group there. His spell had allowed them to escape House Jaelre’s keep, but the portal he’d hoped to use to put even more distance between them only functioned in one direction. They were trapped on the surface at the mouth of a shallow, dead-end cave.
“I wonder if any of the others have found a way down yet,” Pharaun muttered.
As if in answer, Valas Hune appeared from out of the forest, emerging from a tangled clump of underbrush with a silence that was only in part due to the enchanted chain mail the scout wore. A pair of magical, curved kukri daggers hung at his hip, and to his vest was pinned a miscellany of enchanted talismans fashioned by more than one Underdark race. The mercenary, his amber eyes watering slightly as he squinted against the sunlight, had a squared-off jaw that seemed permanently clenched. He habitually held himself tensed and ready, as if he expected to take a punch. His ebony skin was crisscrossed with dozens of faint gray lines, fading legacies of two centuries’ worth of battles.
Valas jerked his head in the direction from which he’d just come and said, “There’s a ruined temple a short distance away. It’s built around a cave.”
Quenthel’s eyes glittered, and the serpents in her whip froze in rapt attention.
“Does it lead to the Realms Below?” she asked.
“It does, Mistress,” Valas said, offering a slight bow.
Pharaun strode forward and clapped an arm around the scout’s shoulders.
“Well done, Valas,” he said in a hearty voice. “I always said you could smell a tunnel a mile away. Lead on! We’ll be back in Menzoberranzan in no time, quenching our well-earned thirst with the finest wines that—”
“I think not.” Quenthel stood with hands on her hips, the serpents in her whip matching her venomous stare. “The goddess is missing, possibly under attack. We must find her.” Her eyes narrowed. “You are not suggesting, are you, Pharaun, that we turn our backs on Lolth? If so, I’m sure the matron mother will see to it you receive proper punishment.”
Valas glanced between Pharaun and Quenthel, then took a slight step to the side, dislodging Pharaun’s arm from his shoulder.
“Turn my back on Lolth?” Pharaun asked, chuckling to hide his nervousness. “Not at all. I’m merely suggesting we follow the matron mother’s orders. She bade us find out what’s happened to Lolth, and we have. We may not have all of the answers yet, but we have some pretty important pieces of the puzzle. The matron mother will no doubt want us to report what we’ve found out so far. Since the archmage is no longer answering my sendings, we can’t be certain he’s receiving our reports. I assumed we would report in person.”
“Only one of us need go,” Quenthel said. “But it won’t be you. There are other, more important things for you to be doing.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “You have the ability to summon demons, do you not?”
Pharaun raised an eyebrow.
“I have summoning spells, yes,” he said. “But what does that have to do w—”
“We will return to the Demonweb Pits—in the flesh, this time,” answered Quenthel. “And with a more trustworthy guide than Tzirik.”
Valas shuddered and asked, “A demon?” The normally taciturn scout saw Quenthel’s glare, seemed suddenly to realize he’d spoken aloud, and bowed. “As you command, Mistress.”
Pharaun was more blunt.
“Assuming I do summon a demon, how can we possibly hope to prevent it from tearing us limb from limb, let alone coerce it into becoming a tour guide for some little jaunt to the Abyss? Even Archmage Gromph wouldn’t think of whistling up a demon without a golden pentacle to bind it. We’re in the wilderness—in the Realms of Sunlight, in case you hadn’t noticed. Where am I supposed to get the spell components to—”
“Jeggred.”
Pharaun blinked, wondering if he’d heard Quenthel correctly.
“Jeggred,” she repeated. “We’ll use his blood. You can draw the summoning diagram with that.”
“Ah . . .” Pharaun cursed silently as he realized that Quenthel was, unfortunately, right. The blood of a draegloth could indeed bind a demon, but only one: the demon who had sired Matron Mother Baenre’s half-demon son. The demon that was Jeggred’s father.
Pharaun had no desire to meet him, in the flesh or otherwise, but he could see he had little choice in the matter. Not if he wanted to maintain his delicate balancing act of apparent loyalty to Lolth—necessary if he was to keep his position as Master of Sorcere. Just as Valas had done, Pharaun bowed.
“As you command, Mistress,” he said—with just enough of a sarcastic twist on the final word to remind her that her title was a hollow one. Mistress of Arach-Tinilith she might be, back in Menzoberranzan, but he was hardly one of her quivering initiates. He swept a hand in the direction Valas had indicated earlier. “Let’s do the spellcasting below ground, shall we? I’d like to get out of this wretched sunshine.”
As Valas and Quenthel set off, Pharaun pretended to follow them. He paused, picked up a twig, and used it to collect a bit of spiderweb from the trail. Lolth might be silent, but the sticky nets woven by her children were still useful; spiderweb was a component in more than one of his spells. Tucking the web-coated twig into a pocket, he hurried after the others.
chapter
two
Halisstra stood on top of the bluff, staring out across the forest. Snow-blanketed trees stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, here and there dimpled by a lake of an impossibly bright blue or divided by a road as neat and straight as a part through hair. For the first time, Halisstra understood what the word “horizon” meant. It was that distant line where the dark green of the forest met the eye-hurting, white-streaked blue of the sky.
Beside her, Ryld shivered.
“I don’t like it up here,” he said, holding a hand to his eyes to shade them. “It makes me feel . . . exposed.”
Halisstra glanced at the sweat trickling down Ryld’s ebony temple and shivered herself as the chill winter wind blew against her face. The climb had been a long, hot one, despite the age-worn stairs they’d found carved into the rock at one side of the bluff. She couldn’t explain what had compelled her to lead Ryld up there, nor could she explain why she felt none of the apprehensions the weapons master did. Yet despite his anxiety, Ryld—who stood fully as tall as Halisstra herself, even though he was a male—was in every respect a warrior. He wore a greatsword strapped across his back; a cuirass with a breastplate wrought of dwarven bronze; and vambrace
s, articulated at the elbows, that sheathed his lean, muscled arms in heavy steel. A short sword for fighting at close quarters hung in a scabbard at his hip. His hair was cut close to his scalp so that enemies could not grab it during combat. Only a fine stubble remained: hair as white as Halisstra’s own shoulder-length locks.
“There was a surface dweller—a human mage—who dwelt for a short time in Ched Nasad,” Halisstra said. The vastness of the sky above them made her speak softly; it felt as if the gods were lurking up there just behind the clouds, watching. “He spoke of how our city made him feel like he was living in a room with too low a ceiling—that he was always aware of the roof of the cavern over his head. I laughed at him; how could anyone feel enclosed in a city that was so loosely woven—a city balanced on the thin lines of a calcified web? But now I think I understand what he meant.” She gestured up at the sky. “This all feels so . . . open.”
Ryld grunted and asked, “Have you seen enough? We’re not going to find an entrance to the Underdark up here. Let’s climb back down and get out of the wind.”
Halisstra nodded. The wind found its way inside the armor she wore, even through the thickly padded chain mail tunic that covered her from neck to knees, and from shoulders to elbows. A silver plate attached to the tunic’s chest was embossed with the symbol of a sword, standing point-up across a full moon surrounded by a nimbus of silvery filaments. It was the holy symbol of Eilistraee, goddess of the surface-dwelling drow. The padding of the chain mail still smelled of blood—that of the priestess Halisstra had dispatched. The smell haunted the armor like a lingering ghost, even though the blood was several days old.
Halisstra had not only claimed the armor from Seyll after her own armor was stolen, but also Seyll’s shield and weapons— including a slender long sword with a hollow hilt that had holes running the length of it—a hilt that could be raised to the lips and played like a flute. A beautiful weapon, but it hadn’t helped Seyll any—she’d died before getting a chance to draw it. Lulled by Halisstra’s feigned interest in her goddess, Seyll had been utterly surprised by Halisstra’s sudden attack. And despite Halisstra’s treachery, Seyll had told her, “I have hope for you still.” She’d said it with such certainty, as if, even in her final, dying moments, she expected Halisstra to save her.
She’d been a fool. Yet Halisstra could no more get the priestess’s dying words out of her mind than she could get the smell of blood out of the armor she’d claimed.
Was this what guilt felt like: a lingering stench that wouldn’t go away?
Angered by her own weakness, Halisstra shook the thought out of her head. Seyll had deserved to die. The priestess was stupid to have trusted a person who was not of her faith—even more foolish to trust a fellow drow.
Still, Halisstra thought, as she paused to let Ryld descend the stairs first, Seyll had been right about one thing. It would be nice not to always have to watch your back.
Ryld descended the stairs in silence, listening to the faint clink of Halisstra’s chain mail and trying in vain to pull his mind away from the shapely legs he would see if he would just turn around. Where was his concentration? As a Master of Melee-Magthere, he ought to have more control, but Halisstra had ensnared him in a web of desire stronger than any Lolth’s magic could spin.
At the bottom of the stairs, away from the chilling wind of the open bluff, Halisstra paused to finger a crescent shape that had been carved into the rock.
“This was a holy place, once,” she said, looking over the scatter of broken columns that lay among the snow-shrouded trees.
Ryld scowled. In the World Above, vegetation covered everything like an enormous mold. He missed the clean rock walls of the caverns, empty of the smells of wet loam and leaf that choked his nose. He scuffed at the snow with his boot, uncovering a cracked marble floor.
“How can you tell?” he asked.
“The crescent moon—it’s the symbol of Corellon Larethian. The elves who once lived in these woods must have worshiped here. Their priests probably climbed these stairs to work their magic under the moon.”
Ryld squinted up at the ball of fire that hung in the sky.
“The moon’s not as bright as the sun,” he said, “at least.”
“It casts a softer light,” Halisstra replied. “I’ve heard that this is because the gods who claim it as their symbol are kinder to those who worship them—but I don’t know if that’s true.”
Ryld stared for a while at the ruined masonry then said, “The gods of the surface elves can’t be very strong. Corellon let this temple fall into disrepair, and Seyll’s goddess was powerless to save her from you.”
Halisstra nodded and replied, “That’s true. Yet when Lolth tried to overthrow Corellon and establish a new coronal in his place all those millennia ago, she was defeated and forced to flee to the Abyss.”
“The Academy teaches that the goddess left Arvandor willingly,” Ryld said. Then he shrugged. “More of a strategic retreat.”
“Perhaps,” Halisstra mused. “Still, I can’t help but think that what we saw in the Demonweb Pits—that black stone in the frozen image of Lolth’s face—was a lock, a seal that made Lolth’s own temple a prison. A prison fashioned by some other god’s hand. Will Lolth eventually emerge from behind it—or will she remain trapped for eternity, her magic forever stilled?”
“That’s what Quenthel means to discover,” Ryld said.
“As do I,” Halisstra answered. “But for different reasons. If Lolth is dead, or trapped in eternal Reverie, what point is there in following Quenthel’s orders?”
“What point?” Ryld exclaimed. He was beginning to see the dangerous fork in the road down which Halisstra’s musings had taken her. “Only this: spells or no spells, Quenthel Baenre is both Mistress of Arach-Tinilith and First Sister to the Matron Mother of House Baenre. Were I to defy Quenthel, I’d lose my position as Master of Melee-Magthere. The moment Menzoberranzan learned of my treachery, everyone in the Academy would have their daggers out and be thirsting for my blood.”
Halisstra sighed and said, “That’s true. But perhaps in another city—”
“I have no desire to beg for scraps at someone else’s table,” Ryld said bluntly. “And the only city in which I might have made a home for myself—with the sponsorship of your House—has been destroyed. With Ched Nasad gone, you have no home to return to. All the more reason to get in Quenthel’s good favor, so that when we return to the Underdark you can find a new home in Menzoberranzan.”
After a long moment of silence, Halisstra said, “What if I don’t?”
“What?” Ryld said.
“What if I don’t return to the Underdark?”
Ryld glanced at the forest that hemmed them in on every side. Unlike the solid, silent tunnels he was used to, the wall of trees and underbrush was porous, filled with rustling and creaking, and the quick, tiny movements of animals flitting from branch to branch. Ryld couldn’t decide which was worse: the shrinking feeling he’d experienced under the empty expanse of the sky; or the feeling he had then—as though the woods were watching them.
“You’re mad,” he told Halisstra. “You’d never survive out here alone. Especially without spells to—”
As anger blazed in Halisstra’s eyes, Ryld suddenly regretted his rash words. With all Halisstra’s talk of surface gods, he’d forgotten, for a moment, that she was also a priestess of Lolth and a female of a noble House. He started to bow deeply and beg her pardon, but she surprised him by laying a hand on his arm.
Then she said something, in a low murmur he had to strain to hear: “Together we’d survive.”
He stared at her, wondering if his ears were playing tricks on him. All the while, he was overwhelmingly aware of her hand upon his arm. The touch of her fingers was light, but it seemed to burn his skin, flushing him with warmth.
“We might survive up here,” he admitted, then wished he hadn’t spoken when he saw the gleam in Halisstra’s eyes.
The alliance he�
�d just unintentionally committed to would probably be no more solid than his friendship with Pharaun. Halisstra would maintain it as long as it furthered her goals, then would drop it the instant it became inconvenient. Just as Pharaun had abandoned Ryld, leaving him to face impossible odds, when the pair of them were trying to escape from Syrzan’s stalactite fortress.
Ryld’s meditative skills had saved his life then and allowed him to fight his way free. Later, when he’d met up with Pharaun again, the mage had clapped him on the back and pretended that he’d fully anticipated, all along, that Ryld would survive. Why else would he have abandoned his “dearest friend?”
Halisstra gave Ryld a smile that made her look both cunning and beautiful in one. “Here’s what we’ll do . . .” she began.
Inwardly, Ryld winced at the word “we,” but he kept his face neutral as he listened.
Danifae watched from behind a tree as Halisstra and Ryld stood in the ruined temple, talking. It was clear they were plotting something. Their voices were pitched too low for Danifae to hear, and they leaned in toward one another like conspirators. It was also clear, from the quick kiss Ryld gave Halisstra as the conversation ended, that they had become, or would soon become, lovers.
Watching them, Danifae felt a cold, still anger. Not jealousy—she cared nothing for either Ryld or Halisstra—but frustration born of the fact that she had not seduced Ryld first.
Danifae was more beautiful than her former mistress by far. Where Halisstra was lean, with small breasts and slim hips, Danifae was sensuously curvaceous. Halisstra’s hair was merely white, whereas Danifae’s had lustrous silver tones.
As for Halisstra’s face, well, it was pretty enough, with its slightly snubbed nose and common, coal-red eyes, but Danifae had the advantage of skin softer than the blackest velvet, lips that curled in a perpetual pout, and eyebrows that formed a perfect white arch over each of her strikingly colored, pale gray eyes. An advantage she should have used earlier, judging by the display of mawkish sentimentality Danifae had stumbled upon.
R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection Page 2