At least now they will serve a purpose, thought the cambion. They will die so that I will live.
He took up his goblet and offered a mock toast.
My gratitude, Horgar, you little vermin, he thought. May you find an ugly death, since you were so ugly in life.
He drained the glass and smiled. Only then did his mind turn again to Aliisza.
Did her silence mean that she was leaving him?
He snorted derisively and shrugged. He did not care if the alu-fiend left him—their relationship had been one of convenience—but he would miss her physical gifts. He did wonder at her motives, though. Could she be in love with this drow mage she had spoken of? He dismissed the possibility and settled on a more likely solution: her fascination with the Master of Sorcere had grown into infatuation. She often fancied weak things, the same way a human woman might a pet.
She would be back eventually, he figured. She had left him before, even for decades at a time. But always she came back to him. Randomness was in her nature; structure in his. She was drawn to him, though, so she would not be away long. She simply wanted a new plaything for a time. Vhok did not begrudge her that.
He smiled and wished the Master of Sorcere well. Aliisza could be exhausting.
Of course, the mage must have had something of substance to him, since it appeared that he and his ragtag bunch had managed to wake up Lolth. Kaanyr had thought their quest a fool’s errand until it had actually worked.
He sighed, stood, strapped on his rune-inscribed blade, and called out of the tent, “Rorgak! Attend me.”
In moments, his tusked, towering, red-scaled lieutenant parted the curtains and entered the tent. Blood still streaked Rorgak’s plate armor. He wore a collection of drow thumbs on a thin chain of hooks around his thick neck. Kaanyr counted six.
“Lord?” Rorgak asked.
Kaanyr gestured Rorgak close and said in Orcish, “Lolth has returned. Soon the spells of her priestesses will strengthen the city’s defenses.”
Rorgak’s black eyes went wide. Despite his brutish looks, he was reasonably intelligent. He understood the implication of the words. He asked, “Lord, then what do we—”
Kaanyr silenced him with an upraised hand and a soft hiss. “We are removing our headquarters back to Hellgate Keep,” he said. He could not quite bring himself to call the withdrawal a retreat. “Inform the officers. Make it appear to the drow as though it is a tactical withdrawal to consolidate forces for a counterattack.”
Rorgak nodded and asked, “And the duergar?” His tone suggested that he already surmised the answer.
Kaanyr validated his guess by answering, “Kill the hundred or so intermixed with our forces, but be certain to allow no word of it to travel back to Horgar and the main body of his forces. Let them continue with their attack on Tier Breche.”
“Horgar and the dwarflings will be slaughtered when the priestesses of Arach-Tinilith join their spells to the forces defending the Academy,” Rorgak said.
Kaanyr nodded, smiled, and said, “But that final battle will occupy the drow long enough for the legion to move far from Menzoberranzan. Go. Time is short.”
Rorgak thumped the breastplate of his plate armor, spun on his heel, and hurried from the tent.
For an instant, Kaanyr wished that Aliisza stood near him. He could have used some comforting.
It took Pharaun a moment to realize what was ensnared in the web.
One of the souls, a drow soul.
Presumably, the other wriggling forms were more trapped drow souls. They must have ventured too low, or the web’s creator might have been able to snatch them from the sky. And perhaps the same creature could snatch Pharaun himself from the sky just as easily.
Pharaun didn’t like the mental image that last idea evoked.
He cleared his head and scanned the outcropping for the spider or spiderlike creature that had spun the web but saw nothing other than the doomed spirits.
Still, something had affected his mind . . .
The trapped soul near him, perhaps sensing his presence, struggled against the web and freed more of its face. It was a drow male. Opening his mouth in a soundless wail, the soul pinioned Pharaun with his terrified eyes. He wriggled more and set the entire web atop the tor to vibrating.
As though agitated by the movement, the other cocooned souls too wriggled more. All to no avail. The webs held them fast.
Another shout from below drew his attention, but he ignored it.
Fascinated and horrified, Pharaun called upon the power of his Sorcere ring to allow him to see emanations of magic and invisible things. As he’d expected, the web glowed a soft red in his sight. The corporeal web possessed magical properties that allowed it to trap and hold incorporeal souls. He wondered at the arcane mechanism behind that spell when his augmented sight revealed an otherwise invisible creature crouched in the center of the web, near one of the bound souls. Except for the eight black eyes in the center of its face and the fangs poking out from under its lips, it appeared vaguely reminiscent of a drow whose body had been crossed with a spider and stretched thin on a torturer’s rack to twice its normal length. It crouched, watching him, on the web strands, naked, its clutching fingers half as long as Pharaun’s forearm. Patches of short, bristly hairs jutted in patches from its skin. Periodic tremors coursed along its body, as though it was wracked by pain. A horrid fluid leaked from its mouth. Spinneret holes opened in its legs.
I see you, Pharaun thought as he called to mind a spell.
He must have stared a moment too long. The creature realized that it had been seen. It opened its mouth and coursed over the web toward him. As it moved, a voice sounded in Pharaun’s head, a reasonable, persuasive voice augmented by magic.
Here is comfort, here is warmth. Come closer.
Pharaun felt the suggestion sink into his brain and pervert his will, but he resisted its pull and floated backward, incanting a spell the while.
The creature bounded forward, hissing. When it reached the end of the web, it spun a flip and turned its legs toward Pharaun. Web filaments shot from its spinnerets and hit Pharaun in the chest. He barely felt the impact on his flesh, but the webs seemed to reach through and into him.
His breath nearly left him. He felt himself separating in two, like curdled rothé milk. The web was pulling his soul from his body. The creature hissed again and began to pull.
More shouts from below. Quenthel’s voice, angry.
Pharaun maintained his concentration—barely—and finished his spell in a whisper. The magic powered his voice, gave it strength, potency, and with it he uttered a single word of power.
The magic of the spell shredded the web strands attached to Pharaun and struck the creature like a hammer blow. The force blew it backward along its webs where it lay still.
The trapped souls struggled for freedom from the partially destroyed webs. The male drow nearest him managed to squirm himself free of the web. The soul did not so much as look at Pharaun. Instead, he simply headed skyward to join the other souls on their way to Lolth.
“Thanks are unnecessary,” Pharaun shot after him, in a voice more like his own.
Below him, Quenthel was still shouting.
Pharaun shook his head to clear it and checked his body to ensure that he had suffered no permanent damage. Satisfied that he had not, he removed a leather glove from his cloak and voiced another spell.
An enormous hand of magical force took shape before him. At his mental command, it retrieved the stunned body of the arachnoid creature and gripped it tightly, taking care to ensure that the hand’s grip covered the creature’s spinnerets. Pharaun voiced another spell, temporarily dispelling the creature’s natural invisibility.
Pharaun descended, trophy in hand, so to speak. He did not spare even glance at the other trapped souls.
The moment his boots touched stone, an impatient Quenthel demanded, “What in the Nine Hells were you doing?”
She had barely looked at the creature
enwrapped in the huge fingers of his magical spell.
“Investigating, Mistress,” Pharaun answered.
Before Quenthel could reply, Danifae threw back her hood and said, “I did not hear you ask for permission to investigate, male. Nor to kill one of Lolth’s creatures.”
Pharaun glared at Danifae and might have advanced on her had Jeggred not offered a threatening growl.
“I have not been in the habit of asking your permission, battle-captive. And this creature attacked me.”
“Relearn your habits, Master Mizzrym,” Danifae snapped, her eyes narrow and cold. “You are a resource of a priestess of Lolth, nothing more. Your disobedience borders on impudence and heresy.”
To Pharaun’s surprise, Quenthel said, “She is correct. The next time you divert our mission without my command, you will be punished. Lolth awaits her Yor’thae. We will not waste time with your trivial investigations.”
As if to emphasize her point, the serpents extended to twice their ordinary length and flicked their tongues against Pharaun’s flesh.
The Master of Sorcere swallowed his anger, stifled his pride, and set out to control the damage.
He offered Quenthel a bow and said, “Of course, Mistress. Forgive my presumption.” To Danifae, he said, “And I was not aware that you now spoke for the Mistress.”
Quenthel’s jaw clenched at that. She glared first at Pharaun, then at Danifae.
“No one speaks for me,” Quenthel said, and Pharaun lowered his gaze.
Danifae said, “I seek only the Spider Queen’s will, Mistress of Arach-Tinilith.”
“As do I,” Quenthel said, and turned away to study the route ahead.
When she did, Pharaun met Danifae’s eyes. She offered him a small smile—no doubt she thought she had driven some wedge between Quenthel and Pharaun by pointing out that the mage had acted without the high priestess’s permission. Her gaze promised Pharaun an ugly death should the wedge result in a wide enough gap.
Pharaun smiled back at her. He felt reasonably comfortable that he had mitigated the damage by suggesting that Danifae had acted presumptuously by speaking for Quenthel. And if blades came to blood, it would be Danifae who would suffer the ugly death.
The thought gave him a momentary start. Kill a priestess of Lolth? True, Danifae was Houseless but she was still a priestess. Such a thing would not even have occurred to Pharaun before Lolth’s Silence. He realized that while Lolth might have returned, her Silence had changed something fundamental about the relationship between male and female drow—for at least some males, priestesses would no longer seem so untouchable. Their weakness during the Silence, albeit temporary, had removed some of the social controls that underlaid their rule. He wondered how that would play out in future years.
The creature held in his magical fist stirred and groaned. Pharaun’s spell had left it only temporarily stunned.
“As is her wont,” Pharaun said to Quenthel. “Mistress Danifae has misconstrued the situation. I have not killed one of Lolth’s creatures. I have merely brought it to you, Mistress, to do with as you wish. Perhaps to question it?”
Quenthel belted her whip and turned. Pharaun saw approval in her eyes. The serpents of the whip went slack. She eyed the creature closely for the first time then stepped forward, took its fanged jaw in her hand, and squeezed.
“Speak,” she said to it. “What are you?”
“Be wary, Mistress,” Pharaun warned. “It has the ability to implant a suggestion. That is how it lures souls to its web, offering them comfort.”
Quenthel squeezed, and the creature wailed. Danifae smirked at its pain. Jeggred eyed it as if trying to determine how it might taste.
“If you attempt it,” she said. “I will squeeze your head until it bursts.”
“Not do,” the creature whimpered in a high pitched voice. It spoke in an archaic form of Low Drow. “Not do. Mistook him for a soul. But not a soul. Living.”
Quenthel shook its head and asked again, “What are you?”
The creature attempted to shake its head but Quenthel’s strength held it immobile. Spittle and hisses rained from between its lips.
“The cursed of the Spider,” the creature said at last, its voice difficult to understand.
“The cursed of Lolth?” Quenthel asked, eyebrows raised. “You do not serve the Spider Queen?”
Phlegm and drool leaked down the creature’s face. Its forehead furrowed.
“The Spider hates me, but I feed on her souls. Eat many.”
Quenthel relaxed her grip on the creature and looked to Danifae, then to Pharaun.
“This useless creature has nothing to tell us,” she said. “Kill it, Master Mizzrym.”
Pharaun did not hesitate. He caused his magical hand to squeeze, and squeeze. The creature screamed, bones cracked, and drool and blood exploded from its mouth.
“The Teeming will take you,” it wailed, then it burst into a shower of gore.
“The Teeming?” Pharaun asked while he dispelled his magical hand and let the bloody pile fall to the ground.
Neither priestess responded to his question or seemed interested in the creature’s threat, so he said, “It appears that the Spider Queen is not without a sense of irony. She rewards her followers for a lifetime of service by allowing them to be captured on the way to her and made food for whatever spun those webs.”
Quenthel scoffed, eyeing him with contempt. The serpents of her whip lazily flicked their tongues at him.
“Master Mizzrym,” Quenthel said. “You understand as little as most males. Faithful worship in life is not a guarantee of safety in death. This whole plane is a test for Lolth’s dead. Surely even you can see that?”
Danifae looked at Quenthel and said, “Then does that not make this creature a servant of Lolth after all, Mistress Quenthel?”
Silence fell. Quenthel seemed dumbfounded by the question.
Before the high priestess could reply, Danifae looked to Pharaun and said, “Lolth winnows the weak always, even among her dead. If a soul is weak or stupid, it is annihilated.”
Pharaun shrugged and said, “How pleasing for her.”
Quenthel whirled on him. “Pleasing indeed, wizard. Are you concerned for the safety of your own hide?”
At that, Jeggred smirked.
Pharaun almost laughed at the absurdity of the question. He was always concerned for his own hide.
Instead of answering Quenthel directly, he said, “One might think the Spider Queen would make an exception to her tests for the Yor’thae and her escort, at least.”
“Exactly the contrary,” Danifae said and tucked her hair behind her ears.
She held her hand before her face and watched a small red arachnid with overlarge mandibles crawl along her fingers. She kneeled and let it scurry safely onto a rock; only then did Pharaun see the pinprick of blood on her hand from where the spider had bitten her. She had not even winced.
Danifae rose and said, “Lolth subjects herself to the same laws to which she subjects her servants, mage.” She eyed Quenthel with a sly smile. “Only the strong or the intelligent will survive. Only one who is both can be her Yor’thae.”
Quenthel answered the former battle-captive’s stare with an icy glance.
Returning her gaze to Pharaun, Danifae continued, “Were Lolth to select an unworthy priestess as her Yor’thae, no doubt something unfortunate would happen to the failed candidate. And her escort.”
Quenthel’s whip was in her hand, the serpents fully awake.
“It is well that she will not choose wrongly then,” Quenthel said.
The serpents of Quenthel’s scourge rose up, and five sets of small red eyes fixed Danifae with a hateful glare. Quenthel cocked her head and nodded, as though the whips had spoken to her.
“Has she not yet chosen, then?” Danifae asked, all innocence.
Quenthel’s eyes flashed, perhaps in anger at herself for such a poor choice of words. She walked toward Danifae and stomped on the red arachnid th
at Danifae had just released onto the rocks.
Danifae’s eyes flashed surprise, and she took a backward step. Even Jeggred seemed aghast.
“To kill that cursed creature is no crime,” Danifae blurted, indicating the twisted form on the ground, “but to kill a spider is blasphemy.”
Quenthel scoffed, ground her boot against the stone, and said, “That was no spider. It only appeared to be one. That is how it survived. For a time, at least.” She eyed Danifae with meaning and said, “Killing those things that pretend they are more than they are is consistent with Lolth’s will.”
Danifae’s mouth tightened as she took the sense of Quenthel’s insult. Without a word, she snapped up the hood of her cloak, turned, and walked away. Jeggred glared at Quenthel and stalked after Danifae.
Quenthel smiled at their backs and Pharaun could not help but wonder why she left Danifae alive—there would be no consequences for her murder. Danifae did not belong to any of the Houses of Menzoberranzan, and Lolth reveled in internecine slaughter between her priestesses.
“Come,” Quenthel said to him. “More obstacles await us before we reach the mountains.”
And in those words, Pharaun heard Quenthel’s explanation.
If indeed the whole of Lolth’s plane was a test, as both priestesses had averred, then likely more challenges awaited, challenges that might require allies to overcome, even for Lolth’s Yor’thae. Quenthel did not kill Danifae for the simple reason that she might need her later.
He hurried after the Mistress. As he walked past where Quenthel had been standing, he caught sight of a small red arachnid that looked very similar to that which Quenthel had squashed.
Had she only pretended to squash it?
He could not be certain, but her words to Danifae sounded in his head: Killing things that pretend they are more than they are is consistent with Lolth’s will.
Who is pretending? he wondered.
He pushed the question from his mind and followed after.
R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection Page 73