Ryld frowned, puzzled, as he examined the footprints in the slush. He was still on the animal’s trail—he was certain of that—but its footprints had suddenly changed. In one spot where the beast had paused, the track became more like the print a bare drow foot would make, but with deep gouges at the front of each toe that must have been claw marks. They reminded Ryld, at least a little, of the footprints of an orc but the stride, when the animal had continued from that spot, was all wrong. The beast had risen to walk on two feet, not four. The pattern of its footprints, however, was still more like the lope of a quadruped.
Short sword in hand, Ryld continued following the tracks. The animal-thing had tried to conceal its trail by walking along rocks or logs and wading up a stream, but Ryld had no difficulty following it. He was used to tracking opponents across the bare stone of caverns and tunnels. Even with it melting, the slush made tracking anything the work of a child.
Eventually he spotted a small structure deep in the forest. Made from rough-hewn logs, the one-room building had a slumped appearance, as if it was about to collapse at any moment. Its door hung at an angle, attached to the frame by a single rusted hinge, and the roof was thick with moss and larger, leafy surface plants sprouted from it in spots. Firewood that had once been stacked against one wall lay tumbled across the ground, dotted with a sprouting of fungus, and a hole in the building’s roof marked where a chimney had once stood. Surrounded by a litter of broken bottles and rusted pots that had obviously been dragged out by scavengers long before, the shelter looked utterly abandoned.
But something was moving inside it.
Ryld drew his piwafwi around himself and crept closer through the trees. He felt something soft under his boot, and the stink of fresh excrement rose to his nostrils. His lip curled. Even in the warrens of Menzoberranzan, people didn’t defecate so close to their homes. Whoever was living in the little shelter was no better than an animal, the weapons master thought, angrily scraping his boot.
He looked up just in time to see a small black shape streaking toward him from the cabin. It was the same sort of animal he’d been tracking—but not the same one. As the beast sank its teeth into the wrist of his sword hand, Ryld’s warrior’s instincts took over.
He grabbed the creature by the scruff of the neck with his free hand and used its own momentum to slam it into a tree. Dazed, it staggered to the side, shaking its head.
Ryld whipped his sword around in a slash at the animal’s throat—but it proved quicker than he expected. His blade slammed into the tree behind it as the beast rolled out of the way.
Yanking his sword free, Ryld rounded on the creature—only to see it rearing up on two legs. It held its forepaws out in an unmistakable gesture of surrender. Its mouth worked, forming words that were half yip, half speech.
“Wait!” it gasped in oddly-accented Low Drow. “Friend.”
Ryld hesitated, but kept his sword ready.
“You can speak?” the weapons master asked.
The creature nodded urgently, then it closed its eyes as a shudder coursed through it. Bald patches appeared in its fur and spread, exposing pale skin, and its muzzle shrank and flattened. The quadruped legs rearticulated themselves with a soft crackle of cartilage, and paws transformed into hands and feet.
When the transformation was complete, a naked human youth stood where the animal had been. Were he a drow, Ryld would have guessed his age at about twenty, but humans matured faster than that. The boy was probably no more than a dozen years old. His hair was black and tangled, his hands and feet as filthy as those of an urchin from the Stenchstreets.
“What sort of creature are you?” Ryld asked.
The boy uttered a word that Ryld didn’t recognize, speaking one of the languages of the World Above. Seeing that Ryld didn’t understand, he switched to Low Drow.
“A blend of wolf and human,” he answered. “I shift between the two.”
“Wolf?”
“The furred animal that walks on four legs,” the human replied.
The weapons master nodded.
“Where is the other wolf-human?” Ryld asked it. “The gray one.”
He kept a wary eye on the structure and surrounding forest, furious at himself for having let his attention wane a moment before.
“There’s no one here but me.”
“Liar,” Ryld spat. He stepped forward, menacing the boy with his sword. “Is the larger one your parent? Is that why you’re trying to protect it?”
“I have no parents. They were killed in a hunt the year I was born,” the boy explained. He not only stood his ground but glared back at Ryld, showing an amazing amount of mettle for a mere boy. “They were killed by your people.”
Ryld considered that and said, “Is that how you learned to speak Drowic? Were you a slave?”
“My grandfather was, but he fought back.”
“The gray wolf?” Ryld guessed. “That’s your grandfather? Where is he?”
“He’s not here,” the boy replied, glancing into the forest in the opposite direction of the little building, though too casually.
The look told Ryld what he needed to know. The lie was as transparent as glass.
The weapons master reached down and grabbed the boy by the hair.
“I see,” said Ryld. “Let’s go talk to him.”
He half-dragged, half-marched the boy to the shelter.
Pausing just outside the door, he held his sword to the chest of the squirming boy and called, “If you want the boy to live, show yourself. Give me some information and I’ll spare his life, and yours.”
There was no answer from inside the shelter, save for a low groan. As it sounded, the boy twisted in Ryld’s grasp, trying desperately to squirm free. Ryld hurled him to the ground and slammed a boot into his chest. He raised his sword, too furious to care about getting information any longer.
“Stop!” a male voice gasped. “I’ll tell you . . . whatever you want . . . to know.”
Ryld looked up and saw a human with gray hair and a beard that hung to his chest, leaning in the doorway of the shelter with a dirty blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His face had a haggard expression, and his right calf was bruised and swollen to twice its normal size. The foot below it was a shredded, bloody mess, as if it had been impaled on spikes, then torn free.
The boy screamed something at his grandfather in a language Ryld didn’t understand, but his gestures made it obvious he was urging the old man to flee.
The gray-haired man—he looked several centuries old, but was probably less than fifty—glanced down at his ruined foot.
“Run?” he asked the boy—speaking in Drowic, obviously for Ryld’s benefit. “How can I?” Then he met Ryld’s eye and asked, “What do you want . . . to know?”
“The priestesses of Eilistraee,” Ryld said. “Do they have a temple in this wood?”
The boy suddenly stopped squirming and looked up at Ryld.
“You’re not part of the hunt?” he asked.
A grim smile appeared on the older man’s face.
“He’s not. Or he wouldn’t be asking.” Then, to Ryld, he said, “Let my grandson go . . . and I’ll tell you where the temple is.”
Ryld removed his foot from the boy’s chest. Instantly, the boy sprang to his feet. He stood warily, hunched over slightly with arms bent as if contemplating a shift into wolf form.
The gray-haired man chuckled, then waved at the boy.
“Yarno, leave him be. You can see by the look in his eyes. He’s an enemy of the temple. And the enemy of our enemy . . .”
“Is your friend,” Ryld completed.
The old man nodded and asked, “Have you any healing magic . . . friend?”
“Answer my questions, first,” Ryld said. “And I’ll see about healing you.”
The old man surprised him by chuckling.
“Not for me,” he said. “For you. Your wrist.”
Ryld glanced down at the spot where the boy had bitten him. The boy�
�s incisors had broken the skin, and a trickle of blood ran down the back of Ryld’s hand.
“It’s only a scratch,” he said.
The old man shook his head.
“Tell him, Yarno. He . . . he doesn’t know.”
“Tell me what?” Ryld asked, suspicious.
“We’re werewolves,” the boy said. “Most of the time we shift forms because we want to, but whenever there’s a full moon we become wolves whether we want to or not. We can’t control ourselves when that happens. We attack everyone. Even our friends. When we wake up in the morning, we don’t know what we’ve done.”
“Your family is cursed?” Ryld asked, not bothering to inquire as to what a “full moon” might be.
“Not cursed,” the old man said. “Diseased. And it’s a disease that can be spread . . . through bites.”
“They call us ‘monsters,’ ” Yarno added in a pained whisper. “They hunt us.”
Ryld nodded, understanding the boy’s pain. Life as a werewolf in that forest would be much like living in the slums of Menzoberranzan. He recalled his own childhood, always dreading the next group of drunken nobles who found “sport” in raging through the narrow streets, blasting the screaming wretches of the Braeryn with bolts of magic, slashing as they rode past on their lizards, leaving their victims to bleed to death on the dirty stone of an alley.
The boy, Yarno, was staring intensely up at Ryld, his eyes filled with a lingering, unsalved hurt. Human the boy might be, but looking into his eyes was like staring into a mirror. Ryld’s lips parted, and he nearly spoke the words aloud: I was hunted, too. I understand . . . Then the boy’s grandfather interrupted.
“I have belladonna,” he said. “Yarno’s parents planted it in the woods, hoping it would . . . spare their son. This was once their home.” He paused to catch his breath, then went on. “The herb will make you sick, but if you eat it . . . you might avoid the disease.”
Ryld nodded and sheathed his sword.
“Tell me where the temple is, and I’ll see what I can do to clean your wound, and set those bones. Then I’ll think about trying that belladonna.”
chapter
twelve
Valas awoke to the feel of something soft and slimy stroking the left side of his face. Jerking his head back, he saw it was a tentacle—one of four that grew from the body of an enormous, fishlike creature with three slitted eyes.
Thrashing away from it through the water, Valas found his back up against the bars of a cage. He stared out through the front of the enclosure at the aboleth that was lazily withdrawing its tentacle. The creature had a body half a dozen paces long, with a wide fluked tail. Its rubbery looking skin was blue-green with gray splotches and covered in a thick coating of slime. Its belly was greenish-pink, with an enormous mouth that opened and closed like that of a fish. Three eyes—red and slitted—were lined up in a vertical row on its forehead. The tentacles, each half as long as the body, sprouted from a point just behind the head. They drifted lazily, leaving a smudge of slime in the water.
Valas could feel the slime on his face where the tentacle had touched him, and he could smell the clot of it that clogged his left nostril. He exhaled through his nose, blowing it violently away.
He checked his weapons and saw that his kukris were still in their sheaths. A quick glance told him his talismans were still pinned to his shirt. Reassured and ready, he looked around at his prison.
The cage was made from stout iron and had no door that he could see. Its floor rested on the bottom of the lake, on top of waist-high kelp that had been mashed flat by its weight. Beyond the cage, tiny glowing fish darted in and out of the gently waving strands. In the distance, stalagmites rose to meet the surface of the water, high overhead. The sides of those rock formations were punctuated by round openings through which aboleth swam. Valas realized the stalagmites must be the buildings of Zanhoriloch.
The aboleth was making no move to attack; it simply stared, like a visitor at a zoo. Valas spoke to it in sign, hoping it would understand.
Why am I a prisoner?
The answer came in a voice that sounded like bubbles erupting into water: “You trespass.”
The words were spoken in Undercommon, a language comprised of a blend of simple words and phrases from several different Underdark tongues.
For good reason, Valas signed back. With his lungs filled with water, the scout couldn’t speak. I am searching for something. A ship of bone and flesh, made by demons.
“You hunger for this knowledge.”
Yes. Have you seen such a ship?
“I have not consumed it.”
Valas frowned, puzzled. The slime the aboleth had smeared across his face was back in his left nostril again. He pinched the other one shut and blew.
You have seen this ship—but not eaten it? he signed again.
The aboleth fluttered its tentacles in what might have been a sign of irritation—or the equivalent of a drow shrug.
“I have not seen it. Nor have I consumed any knowledge of it.”
Consumed? Valas didn’t like the sound of that.
How do you consume knowledge? he asked.
“From our parents, after we hatch. From other creatures, such as yourself. We consume them.”
You . . . eat them? Valas asked. Are you going to eat me?
“That is not my privilege,” the aboleth said. Then, “Do you have knowledge of this ship?”
Valas quickly shook his head and backed it up with an emphatic sign.
No. I was told that the aboleth knew of such a ship, so I came here to learn if it was real or rumor.
“Where are you from?” the aboleth asked. “How did you come here?”
Valas considered how to answer that. Was the aboleth trying to find out whether he had come to Lake Thoroot alone—or was it weighing the potential information stored in Valas’s mind, prior to devouring him? He tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t make him sound like an appealing snack, at the same time sizing up his chances of escape. The fact that he was in a cage—that the aboleth hadn’t consumed him immediately—was promising. Valas thought that perhaps he was being saved for some other aboleth, one with more “privilege.”
At least, that’s what he hoped was true. If the aboleth left to report the results of its initial questioning to its superior, Valas could use the star-shaped amulet that was still pinned to his shirt to escape.
I am from Menzoberranzan, Valas signed. I am a soldier in service to one of the Houses of that city. The matron mother used her magic to send me here, to inquire about the demon ship. Shortly she will use that same magic to summon me home again.
Thus explaining my impending disappearance from the cage, Valas thought. And, hopefully, causing the aboleth to think that any search for me will be futile.
Once again, he noticed that his nostril had filled with mucus, and he blew it out. He scrubbed his face furiously with a sleeve, but it only served to spread the tentacle slime across his face. Growing worried, Valas stopped scrubbing. The image of the drow-thing that had been herding the jellyfish loomed large in his mind. Was his left ear tingling? He resisted the urge to reach up and touch it, fearful that it might already be melting away.
“You will not return to your city,” the aboleth said.
Valas shuddered, fighting down the sick feeling that filled his stomach.
Am I to be made a slave? Does your city have no matron mother—no ruler whom I can appeal to?
A ripple passed through the aboleth’s body. Valas wondered whether it was a sign of annoyance or pleasure.
“It has been many flows since Oothoon met with one of the dry folk. You are merely a servant among your people and do not warrant her attention. As for your question, you are a slave to Oothoon already. When your transformation is complete, you will begin to serve her.”
This time, Valas did touch his ear. Its tip was still pointed, but it was definitely tingling, as was the left side of his face, and his left hand and wrist. Th
e fingers of that hand felt sticky. Trying to spread them, he found that his forefinger was starting to fuse with the one beside it, and the little finger with the finger beside it. A web of grayish skin was growing between the two malformed digits and was already up to the first knuckle.
How long will the transformation take? he asked, his left hand already clumsy.
“No longer than three boorms,” the aboleth said. “When it is finished, I will return to release you.”
With a powerful flick of its tail, it swam away.
Valas had no idea how long a “boorm” was. It might be as long as one cycle of Narbondel—in which case, he still might have time to make it back to the others if Pharaun’s spell didn’t run out first. Or, for all he knew, a boorm might be as short as a heartbeat. Glancing at his left hand, he shuddered. The sooner he started back, the better. The aboleth was swimming strongly back toward the city, no longer looking at him.
Valas touched the nine-pointed star on his chest and felt the familiar wrench of its magic. He found himself standing in the spot he’d chosen—a good hundred paces away—but the cage had been transported there with him. It landed on a fresh patch of kelp, raising a knee-high cloud of dirt and scattering a school of tiny, frightened fish.
Had part of his body touched the cage—was that why it had slid sideways between the dimensions with him? The cage was far too heavy to have been included in the talisman’s magic, but it was the only explanation Valas could think of.
Sculling, he positioned himself exactly at the center of the cage, and tried again—a shorter hop. Once again, the cage came with him.
Valas frowned. The cage was obviously somehow enchanted to contain him no matter where he went. If his brooch had been more powerful, he might have used its magic to transport himself across the lake in a series of short hops—following the predominant current of the lake back to the waterfall that must be its source. But the brooch’s magic was limited. After two more hops like the first one, it would fall dormant for a full cycle.
Meanwhile, the slime left by the tentacle was creeping across his face and up his left arm. He breathed in a deep lungful of water, then blew it out through his nose, clearing his nostrils. How much longer did he have? As least his mind was still his own, and he suspected that it was one thing he would probably retain. The drow-thing had exhibited free will. It had been able to warn Valas away from Zanhoriloch—for all the good that had done.
R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection Page 11