R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection

by Lisa Smedman; Phillip Athans; Paul S. Kemp

  Inthracis knew that the day would come when he would face a challenge from Bubonis, when he would himself challenge Kexxon. For the hundredth time in the past twelve hours, he wondered if the time had come. The thought of throwing Kexxon’s corpse down the Infinite Deep amused him. The Infinite Deep descended to the center of creation, and its rocky sides were so sheer, so unbroken by any shelf or ledge of significance, that when things fell there, they fell forever.

  Without warning, darkness descended on the library, darkness so intense that even Inthracis’s eyes could not penetrate it, though he could see in virtually all spectra. Sound quieted; the wind seemed to offer its wail as though from a great distance. Inthracis could hear the walls squirming in the darkness. His hearts beat faster.

  He was under attack, he realized. But who would dare? Bubonis?

  The words to a series of defensive spells rose to the front of Inthracis’s mind and he whispered the syllables in rapid succession, all while weaving his fingers through the air in a series of intricate gestures. In the span of three breaths, he was warded with spells that would protect him against mental, magical, and physical attacks. He slid from his cloak a metal wand that fired a stream of acid upon command. Then he levitated toward the high ceiling and listened.

  The walls of Corpsehaven rustled with a wet susuration. Decayed hands reached down from the ceiling to paw his robes, as though seeking reassurance. Their touch gave him a momentary start. He heard nothing save his own soft breathing.

  It occurred to him then that someone or something had managed to penetrate the intricate wards set about Corpsehaven without triggering any alarms. He knew of no one, not even Kexxon himself, who could have done so.

  Worry took hold of him. His grip on the wand tightened.

  Within the darkness, a sudden heaviness manifested, a palpable presence of power. Inthracis’s ears popped; his head throbbed; even the corpses in his walls uttered a cracked scream.

  The darkness seemed to grow substantive, to caress him, its touch lighter than that of the corpses, more seductive but also more threatening.

  Something was in his library.

  Despite himself, Inthracis’s three hearts hammered in his chest.

  With sudden certainty, he realized that he shared the darkness with a divine power. Nothing else could have so easily invaded his fortress. Nothing else could have so terrified him.

  Inthracis knew that he was overmatched. Fighting would be pointless. A god, or perhaps a goddess, had come for him.

  He lowered himself to the floor. While it was not quite in him to abase himself, he managed to offer the darkness a stilted bow.

  “Your respect is insincere,” said a soft, oily male voice in High Drow.

  At the sound of the voice, another irritated rustle ran through the corpses, another moan escaped their decayed lips.

  “Their respect, however, is genuine,” said the voice.

  Inthracis did not recognize the speaker by voice, but given the word on the wind outside, given the speaker’s use of High Drow, Inthracis could infer the speaker’s identity. He chose his next words with care.

  “It is difficult to offer the proper respect when I do not know to whom I am speaking.”

  A chuckle. “I think you know who I am.”

  At that, the darkness lightened somewhat, enough that Inthracis’s eyes could pierce it. Sound too returned, and the howl of the wind rose.

  A masked male drow sat atop Inthracis’s basalt table, legs dangling off the edge and not quite reaching the floor. Shadows alternately lightened and darkened around the drow’s lithe form, swallowing parts of him in blackness for one moment before coughing them back up to visibility the next. A short sword and dagger hung from his belt, and leather armor peeked out from under his tailored, high-collared cloak. Long white hair, highlighted with red, surrounded an angular, vengeful face. He wore a haughty smile on his thin lips, but it did not reach the holes of his eyes, which were visible even through his black mask.

  Inthracis’s eyes registered the arcane power emitted by the drow’s blades, the armor, his very flesh. He recognized the avatar, and it was as he had suspected.

  “Vhaeraun,” he said, and was irritated that he did not quite keep the awe from his voice.

  He looked upon Vhaeraun the Masked God—Lolth’s son and Lolth’s enemy. His hearts hammered still more, and his legs felt weak though he managed not to show it. In the flitting shadows around the drow, he saw that the avatar’s hand was severed at the wrist. The stump seeped blood onto the table.

  Inthracis did not care to contemplate how a god might have been so wounded. He also did not care to contemplate why Vhaeraun would be manifesting in Corpsehaven. Inthracis rarely had contact with drow, living or dead, mortal or divine. Drow souls did not typically end up in the Blood Rift.

  Vhaeraun hopped off the table and sniffed the air. His dark eyes narrowed.

  “Even the air here stinks of spider,” the god said.

  To that, Inthracis said nothing. He dared not speak until he knew exactly what was happening. A dozen possibilities danced through his mind, none of them desirable.

  “I require a service, yugoloth” Vhaeraun said, and the whisper of his voice went hard.

  Inthracis stiffened. Not a favor, not a request—a service. It was worse than he had feared. He ran his long forked tongue over his lip ridges while he tried to formulate a suitably vague response.

  The darkness swallowed Vhaeraun, and in the next heartbeat the avatar stood behind Inthracis, his breath hot in the ultroloth’s upper left ear.

  “Would you refuse me?” Vhaeraun asked, his soft words dripping menace.

  “I would not, Masked Lord,” Inthracis answered, though he would have if he could have. While yugoloths were mercenaries, even they had their limits when it came to patrons. Inthracis had no desire to get involved in whatever divine conflict Vhaeraun may have been engaged in with his mother.

  The next moment Vhaeraun was no longer behind him but across the room near one of Inthracis’s bookshelves. The corpses in the wall recoiled as much as their contorted forms allowed at the nearness of the god. Dead eyes stared out of the wall in horror. Even those dead whose hands and arms formed the bookshelf tried to squirm back into the wall, and a score of priceless tomes clattered to the floor. Vhaeraun eyed them and tsked.

  Inthracis wondered how his corpses perceived Vhaeraun’s appearance. Surely not that of a drow male.

  Vhaeraun looked up and said, “Listen.” He cocked his head to the side and his eyes went hard. “Do you hear it?”

  The wind outside rose and fell, carrying its message of Lolth’s Chosen. The corpses near Vhaeraun moaned again.

  Inthracis nodded. “I hear it, Masked Lord. Yor’thae. It says Yor—”

  Vhaeraun hissed and held up a hand, silencing Inthracis. The eyes of the corpses in the walls went wide at the demonstration of divine pique.

  “Once is enough, ultroloth,” said Vhaeraun. “So you hear the word, but do you know its meaning?”

  Inthracis nodded slowly, fear growing in his gut, but Vhaeraun went on as though he had answered in the negative.

  “The Yor’thae is the chosen vessel of the Spider Bitch. And this, all this—” With alarming suddenness, the avatar again stood behind Inthracis, hissing angrily in his ear as the fortress shook once more—“is the effort of the Queen of the Demonweb Pits to summon her Chosen and transform herself.”

  Inthracis gulped, sensing the god’s rage, sensing the danger he was in.

  Vhaeraun reappeared in the shadows across the room, and Inthracis allowed himself a breath. Vhaeraun reached out with his good hand and ran his fingertips along the bodies in the wall. They squirmed, moaning anew. Vhaeraun’s fingers came away glistening, and he smiled.

  “What do you want of me, Masked Lord?” asked Inthracis, though he knew he would not like the answer.

  In an instant, Vhaeraun stood before him, teeth bare, face hot with rage.

  “What I want, y
ou insignificant insect, is my mother’s heart fed to demons and shat out for my amusement! What I want, you speck of a creature—” he brandished the stump of his wrist before Inthracis’s face—“is Selvetarm’s obsequious brain torn from his foul head so that I can use his empty skull as a piss pot.”

  Inthracis said nothing, merely stared, stood rigid, and held his breath. He was an instant from death. Even the corpses stood still and silent, as though too terrified even to moan.

  Vhaeraun took a breath, visibly calmed himself, and offered Inthracis an insincere smile.

  “But first things first, Inthracis the ultroloth. Let me be direct: there are three potential candidates for Yor’thae. See them now.”

  “Wait, Masked Lord—”

  But Vhaeraun did not wait. The avatar closed his eyes, and pain knifed through Inthracis’s brain. Through the pain an image of three drow females formed in his head, and three names: Quenthel Baenre, Halisstra Melarn, and Danifae Yauntyrr.

  The pain subsided, though the image remained, burned into his brain with a divine brand.

  Vhaeraun said, “Each of the three are trying to find their way to the city of the Spider whore. My mother is calling them, you see, drawing them to her, testing them as they come. One will be Chosen, one will be her—”

  The wind howled anew, and another tremor shook the plane. The word Yor’thae sounded once more through the chamber.

  “Yes,” Vhaeraun said, and an irritated tic caused his eye to spasm. He focused on Inthracis and said, “What I require of you is that you kill all three of the candidates.”

  Once again, Vhaeraun was suddenly across the library, behind a large lectern.

  Inthracis could do nothing else, so he nodded. Privately, he wondered why Vhaeraun could not kill the three drow mortals himself.

  The answer occurred to Inthracis a moment after the question: since the so-called Time of Troubles, the Overgod had forbade the gods from directly affecting the existences of mortals. Thus, Vhaeraun needed an ally unbound by the Overgod’s edict, a non-divine ally.

  The mercenary in Inthracis started to overcome his fear. He saw opportunity and took it.

  “And for me, Masked Lord?” he asked, with the proper amount of deference.

  Vhaeraun vanished from behind the lectern to appear beside him. Inthracis looked straight ahead, not daring to face the god.

  Whorls of shadows curled around them both, black snakes that slithered along Inthracis’s leathery skin. Vhaeraun held his unwounded hand before Inthracis’s face, and Inthracis saw that the arm was as incorporeal as a shadow up to the elbow. With a smile, Vhaeraun reached into Inthracis’s body and clutched one of his three hearts. It stopped cold.

  Agony raced through Inthracis; his breath caught, and his muscles spasmed. He arched his back, gritted his teeth, but dared not move farther or protest.

  “For you?” Vhaeraun whispered in his ear. “For you this: my gratitude, something that is beyond price.”

  Vhaeraun clutched Inthracis’s second heart, stopping it.

  Inthracis’s vision went blurry. He struggled to draw breath.

  “Oh,” Vhaeraun said, “and also the destruction of Kexxon and your ascendance to the position of Oinoloth and Archgeneral.”

  Hearing those words, Inthracis could not contain a grin.

  Despite the agony, he managed to hiss, “You are most gracious, Masked Lord.”

  Still wearing the same smile, Vhaeraun set Inthracis’s hearts again to beating with two flicks of his forefinger and withdrew his arm, which became instantly corporeal. Inthracis inhaled sharply, sagged, and kept his feet only through sheer pride.

  After he had recovered himself, Inthracis located Vhaeraun— across the room at the desk again—and asked, “What size force is appropriate, my lord?”

  “An army,” replied Vhaeraun with a derisive wave. “Muster on the new Demonweb Pits, on the Ereilir Vor, the Plains of Soulfire. My mother is not yet sensate enough to muster her own forces to stop you.”

  Inthracis debated with himself before asking, “And what of Selvetarm, Masked Lord?”

  Vhaeraun’s face twisted in anger, and he said, “He will not trouble you. My mother has removed the Pits to their own location in the multiverse and sealed them against entry by the divine—any divine. Events there are beyond the reach of other gods, now. I cannot enter to destroy her, but neither can Selvetarm enter to protect her. Unless he has guessed at my ploy—” Vhaeraun’s contemptuous tone indicated that he did not think Selvetarm could guess the sum of two and two— “you will face the mortals alone.”

  Inthracis dared one more question: “What will occur if the Yor’thae reaches the Spider Queen?”

  Vhaeraun’s eyes narrowed. “Because they will not reach her,” he replied, “the answer is irrelevant.”

  Inthracis said nothing but took Vhaeraun’s reply to mean that even the god did not know what would occur. That did not bode well.

  He bowed and said, “It is my pleas—”

  Vhaeraun vanished without further words.

  The red light of the Blood Rift refilled the room. Inthracis took several deep breaths. Even the corpses in the wall seemed relieved. All that remained of Vhaeraun’s presence in the room was a smear of blood on the basalt table and lectern. Inthracis summoned an invisible servant armed with a cloth, caused it to absorb the blood, and teleported the cloth to his laboratory. He was certain he could use divine blood as a component for one spell or another. The exercise helped calm him.

  He gathered himself and prepared to send word to his generals to sound a muster. Vhaeraun had said to assemble an army. Inthracis would use his best shock troops, the Black Horn Regiment.

  Despite the underlying fear of what might occur should he fail Vhaeraun, the ultroloth felt a certain exhilaration. If he was successful, and if Vhaeraun kept his word—a large if—Kexxon would be destroyed and Inthracis would unseat him as the Archgeneral of the Blood Rift.

  Even as those seductive thoughts coursed through his mind, a more sober voice advised caution. It occurred to him that all of Vhaeraun’s scheming might have been in accordance with Lolth’s plan. The Masked God had said that Lolth was testing her priestesses as she called them toward the Pits. Perhaps Inthracis and Vhaeraun would be doing nothing more than creating another challenge for the Yor’thae to overcome? Or perhaps Vhaeraun was mistaken and none of the three priestesses was to be the Yor’thae at all?

  Perhaps, Inthracis thought and sighed.

  Caught between one god and another, though, he knew he had no choice but to obey. He would do as Vhaeraun had demanded because to do otherwise would result in certain death. Or worse.

  Outside, the wind howled its message.

  chapter

  two

  An unbroken line of drow souls extended before and behind Halisstra as far as she could see, a ribbon of Lolth’s dead stretching across the infinite, featureless gray aether of the Astral Plane. With Lolth’s power apparently returned, the souls were at last free to float toward the Spider Queen’s plane, where they would spend eternity.

  One after another the souls streamed along in a procession as straight as that of marching soldiers. The orderliness of the line struck Halisstra as strangely incongruous for souls heading into the arms of a goddess who embodied chaos.

  Formerly as drab as the gray aether in which they floated, Lolth’s reawakening had sent a surge of power through the line of souls, through the Astral Plane, and perhaps through all of the other planes as well. The Spider Queen’s stirring had painted the dead in hues reminiscent of life, had reawakened

  the souls even as Lolth had herself reawakened from her Silence. By reinfusing them with color and purpose, Lolth had marked each of the souls as irrevocably and irretrievably hers.

  The words bobbed uncomfortably in Halisstra’s consciousness: Irrevocably and irretrievably Lolth’s . . .

  Floating in the same gray aether, as anchorless as the souls drifting past, Halisstra looked at her slim black hand
s. On them, she saw the blood of the countless screaming victims she had sacrificed in Lolth’s name. Did not their blood mark Halisstra as irretrievably Lolth’s, the same as the souls around her? Wasn’t her soul too colored, stained crimson?

  She clenched her fists, and looked past the souls and out into the gray nothingness. The same hands that had murdered in Lolth’s name were to wield the Crescent Blade of Eilistraee. With it, Halisstra was to kill Lolth.

  Kill Lolth. The thought excited her, repulsed her.

  Halisstra saw her course clear before her, a path as straight as the line of souls, but she still felt lost. She was marked by a goddess, by two goddesses, and at the moment she was not certain whose mark she preferred.

  The feeling shamed her.

  She felt both Lolth and Eilistraee pulling at her, tugging her in opposite directions, stretching her as thin as parchment. Lolth’s reawakening had roused in Halisstra something she had meant to leave for dead in the silver moonlight of the World Above, when she had given herself to the Dancing Goddess.

  But it had not died, not really. Could it ever? Lolth’s inexplicable pull on Halisstra remained, a troublesome, seductive memory of power, blood, and authority. Halisstra had only her infant faith in Eilistraee with which to shield herself from a lifetime of indoctrination. She did not know if it would be enough. She did not know if she wanted it to be enough.

  She had spent her life in service to the Spider Queen— killing, ruling—and had turned her back on all of it in less than a fortnight. How could that have been a genuine conversion? She had been Houseless, her city destroyed, everything she knew gone. Turning to Eilistraee had been an impulse, almost flippant, and driven by fear of an uncertain future.

  Hadn’t it?

  She did not know, and the uncertainty shook her.

  Even while Eilistraeen prayers filled Halisstra’s mind, she found herself looking longingly at the manifestations of Lolth’s reawakened power that surged through the endless gray of the Astral.