Behind him, Halisstra finally chopped a large enough hole through the globe of ice that the rest of the barrier collapsed around her.
Too, Jeggred uttered a soft growl. Apparently, he was returning to sensibility, at least inasmuch as he was ever sensible. “Turn and face me, Baenre bitch,” Halisstra challenged from behind.
Spellcasting sounded from behind—it was Halisstra. Pharaun listened to the words and nodded—a strike of flame.
Almost absentmindedly, he voiced the words to a counterspell and foiled her casting.
He could imagine Halisstra’s consternation.
“Stop, Baenre!” Halisstra roared her voice desperate, angry. “Face us and let’s see which goddess is the stronger.”
Quenthel ignored her. She and Pharaun reached the very threshold of the Pass of the Soulreaver. The hole in the rock was as black and impenetrable up close as it had been from afar. Souls entered it and vanished one by one.
Halisstra sped after them, her boots crunching against the rock.
From behind, Quenthel seemed almost in a trance. To Pharaun she said, “The Reaver exists at the sufferance of Lolth. It is bound within and does her bidding.”
Pharaun eyed the tunnel entrance as the souls continued to stream into it.
“What is her bidding?” he asked.
Quenthel did not look at him when she replied, “As it always is, male. To test those she wishes to test. Some souls pass through unchallenged. Some do not.”
She turned to look him in the face, though her eyes remained unfocused.
“I will be tested,” she continued, then nodded back at Danifae. “And if she dares enter, so too will she. As for you and my nephew, the challenge of the pass is not for you. Though I expect the Reaver will take his tithe nevertheless.”
“Mistress, why don’t we simply kill her?” Pharaun asked, meaning Danifae. “And your nephew?”
Quenthel’s eyes were distant, her mind already on the challenge of the pass.
“They no longer matter,” she said.
Before Pharaun could ask anything more, Quenthel stepped into the black hole. The darkness swallowed her utterly. Souls continued to stream around him and enter the pass. They too vanished.
Halisstra was closing, ten strides away, eight.
“Face us, coward!” Halisstra challenged.
Pharaun stood there for a moment, staring into the darkness, undecided. Finally he took a breath and stepped into the Pass of the Soulreaver. He felt a slight resistance as he broached it, as diaphanous as a spiderweb.
Halisstra watched as first Quenthel then Pharaun stepped into the tunnel and vanished. She ground her teeth in anger, clutching the Crescent Blade in a white-knuckled hand.
She halted her charge and stared at the hole in the mountain. She could see nothing beyond the darkness.
Breathing heavily, she exhaled rage and frustration with each breath.
Souls streamed around her, Lolth’s dead.
Quenthel and Pharaun had escaped. Uluyara was dead, sacrificed. Feliane was—
Feliane!
She whirled around and saw to her relief that the magical hand had disappeared. Feliane walked a weaving line toward her, cradling her ribs.
Danifae had walked over to Uluyara, and crouched over her, concern in her eyes. She met Halisstra’s gaze.
“I could not save her, Mistress,” she said.
Halisstra could only nod.
“I tried to assist you, Mistress,” Danifae said and walked to Halisstra’s side. “But the wizard twice countered my spells. Next time, I will better serve you.”
Halisstra was too tired to speak.
A scrabbling from her right drew her eye. The draegloth was climbing to his feet. His red eyes burned with anger, and Feliane watched him warily.
The draegloth eyed Danifae then the slight elf, and growled.
Halisstra looked the fell creature in the face and said, “Your mistress has abandoned you for the wizard. She has left you to me. And I’ll have your heart for killing Ryld Argith.”
The draegloth smiled a mouthful of daggers, looked at Halisstra, and said, “My mistress has not abandoned me, heretic.”
Before Halisstra could answer, Danifae slammed the head of her morningstar into Halisstra’s back. Ribs cracked, and flesh punctured. Her breath went out in a whoosh. Blood poured down her back. She stumbled forward and fell.
Halisstra understood it all then.
Danifae had manipulated her, feigned a calling by Eilistraee. Danifae had simply wanted Halisstra to kill Quenthel for her. And Danifae had arranged for the draegloth to kill Ryld.
Halisstra had been blind, seeing what she had wanted to see.
Now she would suffer the consequences.
“Halisstra!” exclaimed Feliane and ran toward her.
Standing over Halisstra, Danifae said, “Jeggred, kill that tiny elf bitch.”
The draegloth roared and charged at Feliane, cutting her off before she reached Halisstra.
Wracked with pain, weighed down by the burden of her own stupidity, Halisstra nevertheless managed to get to her hands and knees. In her mind, a series of words kept repeating, words aimed at Eilistraee:
You could have warned me. You could have warned me.
Halisstra looked up as the draegloth tore into Feliane, his claws slashing and stabbing. Feliane answered with her own blade but Halisstra saw the fear in the small elf ’s eyes.
“Don’t,” she tried to say to Danifae, but the word barely made a sound. She had no breath in her lungs.
Danifae again slammed her morningstar into Halisstra’s back. Her armor absorbed much of the blow, but pain still knifed through her, and she fell back to the ground.
Her former battle-captive grabbed Halisstra by her hair and jerked her head back. Halisstra tried to bring the Crescent Blade to bear, but Danifae tore it from her grasp and cast it aside.
“You have something to say, Mistress Melarn?” Danifae hissed into her ear. “No? Then watch,” she commanded.
Halisstra closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Watch!” Danifae ordered and shook her head by the hair.
Halisstra opened her eyes as the draegloth tore a claw across Feliane’s face. The elf staggered back but spun away from the draegloth’s follow up strike. The elf ’s blade opened a gash on the half-demon’s stomach, but it did little damage.
Roaring so loud it hurt Halisstra’s ears, the draegloth rushed Feliane. She answered valiantly, but she was too small, too slow, too weak. The draegloth tore a gash in her chest, nearly jerked an arm from its socket, and finally knocked her to the ground.
Feliane lay there, breathing heavily but stunned, unmoving.
Halisstra suddenly remembered Feliane’s words to her atop the tor: I’m afraid.
The draegloth loomed over her. Without preamble, he pinned her arms to the ground and began to feed. Her screams of pain were lost in the half-demon’s hungry snorts.
Halisstra bowed her head. Tears leaked from her eyes, angry tears, tears of regret. She could not find her breath.
Danifae saw them and mocked her. “Tears, Halisstra? For the weakling little elf?”
She slammed her fist into Halisstra’s temple. Sparks exploded in her head. Unconsciousness threatened but did not come.
Danifae kicked Halisstra over onto her back. She lay there on the ground of Lolth’s Demonweb Pits, bleeding, gasping, her former battle-captive standing over her.
Danifae spat on Halisstra’s breastplate, fouling Eilistraee’s holy symbol. Halisstra did not care. Eilistraee had fouled her own symbol by failing to warn Halisstra. Her priestesses had been no match for the servants of Lolth.
Eilistraee was weak. And Halisstra was foolish to have followed a weak goddess. She looked up at the blurry image of Danifae above her.
“Why?” she mouthed.
Danifae’s mouth curled with contempt. “Why?” She reached under her cloak and withdrew a chunk of amber in which was encased a spider—her ho
ly symbol of Lolth. She held it before Halisstra’s face. “This is why, Melarn. You were always weak. It’s fitting that you served a weak goddess in the end. I, however, do not.”
Halisstra stared hate at Danifae and managed, “You are still a Houseless battle-captive”
Danifae sneered, stepped back, and raised her morningstar for a killing blow. When it came, Halisstra summoned all of her strength and rolled aside.
The head of the weapon smashed into the rocks.
Halisstra found her knees and scrabbled after the Crescent Blade. She couldn’t see clearly, and the pain in her ribs sent stabs through her.
The morningstar slammed into Halisstra’s ribs and sent her sprawling to the rock. The pain was nearly unbearable.
Danifae loomed over her again, holding her morningstar high.
Sickening sounds came from behind Halisstra—the draegloth feeding on Feliane, lapping her blood, chewing her flesh.
“Why do you toy so with your food, Jeggred?” Danifae said, smiling. “The Pass of the Soulreaver and the vintage blood of Quenthel Baenre await.”
At that moment, Halisstra wanted death, wanted it more than anything. She closed her eyes and waited for it.
Eilistraee had failed her.
Halisstra had killed them all.
“Good-bye, Halisstra,” Danifae said, and smashed her morningstar down on her former mistress’s face.
Halisstra felt a flash of pain then nothing.
Danifae stared down at the bloody body of her former mistress. She had made her sacrifice, and so she could enter the pass.
“Praise Lolth,” she said, and gave Halisstra a final kick. She looked to Jeggred, who was feeding on the elf priestess’s flesh. The elf ’s hand closed, opened. Soft moans escaped her. Danifae smiled at the pain she must have been enduring.
“Come, Jeggred,” she said. “It is time to follow after your aunt.”
The draegloth looked up from his feast. Blood soaked his muzzle. Shreds of flesh hung from his teeth.
“Yes, Mistress,” he said.
He rose and loped to her side, obviously reluctant to leave off his still living meal.
“How long before you kill her?” Jeggred asked. “Her and the mage?”
“In due time,” Danifae answered.
Together, they walked into the Pass of the Soulreaver.
chapter
fourteen
Gromph stood on the portico outside the temple’s doors and used a divination to analyze Geremis’s personal protections. One after another, Gromph moved gently through the mage’s protective spells: elemental wards, a spell that made the Dyrr wizard’s flesh as hard as stone, a death ward, and . . . a feedback ward. Gromph raised his eyebrows at that last. The archmage rarely saw feedback wards; the lichdrow must have taught it to Geremis himself.
The feedback ward would turn back on Gromph the effect of any directly offensive spell he cast on the Dyrr wizard. The archmage would have to get rid of it.
Unfortunately, casting a spell on Geremis would cause Gromph to become visible—a foible of the invisibility spell—so he moved off to the side of the doors, amidst shadows that would camouflage him when the magic was terminated. From there, he quietly whispered the words to a dispelling dweomer, targeting only the feedback ward.
When the magic took effect, Gromph felt a tingle over his skin as he became visible. Safely hidden in darkness, a shadow within shadow, Gromph guided his magic against Geremis’s feedback ward.
As delicately as a cutpurse lifting a coin pouch, the archmage assaulted Geremis’s ward. Gromph’s counterspell met the magic of the Dyrr wizard and oozed over it.
In the span of only two breaths, Gromph’s magic prevailed. Geremis’s ward winked out.
I have you, the archmage thought.
While drow were inherently spell resistant, almost no dark elf in Menzoberranzan could resist the power of Gromph’s spells without augmentation to their natural resistance. He had detected no such augmentation on Geremis. The Dyrr mage was vulnerable.
Geremis raised his bowed head and spared another glance behind him. Though he looked over and past Gromph, suspicion was writ clear on his face. He reached into his pocket to search for something, no doubt a spell component.
Gromph prepared to cast his own spell but cursed when he realized that he would need a pinch of dust to cast it. He didn’t make it a habit to carry mere dust as a component because it was always readily available—at least when he could touch the corporeal world.
With nothing else for it, Gromph called upon the power of the shapechanging spell and transformed himself into the form of a drow male, though not his own form. His flesh hardened, his body grew heavy, and soon he felt his feet on the floor. Sound and smell returned to him. The stink of stale incense wafted through the temple doors. Larikal voiced her prayers to Lolth in a low tone.
Gromph crouched low in the shadows outside the temple’s doors, and Prath’s piwafwi hid him almost as well as his shadow form.
Moving slowly, he removed a small lodestone from his robe, gathered a pinch of rock dust from the temple’s portico, and quietly recited the words to a powerful spell. He infused a bit of additional Weave energy into the casting, to make it more difficult for Geremis to resist.
The Dyrr wizard pulled a clear lens from his pocket and raised it to his eye. He looked at the temple doors, right at Gromph, and the lens fell from his hand.
“M-mistress!” he sputtered, stumbling to his feet and beginning to cast. “We are not alo—”
Gromph finished his spell. A green beam shot from his finger and hit Geremis in the chest. The mage’s warning died on his lips as the spell engulfed him in a green outline and reduced him to dust. Larikal stood and whirled just in time to see Geremis obliterated. She already had her mace in hand.
To her credit, she did not cry out for aid. Instead, she put her off-hand to the platinum spider holy symbol at her neck and started to cast. The symbol glowed briefly at her touch, as did her eyes. As she chanted her spell, she scanned the doorway with her obviously enhanced vision and fixed her gaze on Gromph.
She saw him. She could not recognize him as the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, of course, but she knew him to be an enemy. She probably thought him a Xorlarrin mage.
With no time to sift through his pockets for the gem he ordinarily would have used as a component, Gromph snatched the ocular from his inner pocket—it was ready to hand—and uttered the words to a spell.
Larikal charged down the aisle, mace at the ready, while continuing to cast a spell that Gromph recognized. It would charge her hand with death-dealing energy. She would have but to touch him with it and he would likely die.
He held his ground and hurried through his own spell.
Larikal finished first. A globe of sizzling black energy formed around her off hand, and she closed on him.
He backstepped away from the doors and finished his own spell just as she lunged through the threshold and reached forward to touch him.
The magic of Gromph’s spell transferred his soul into the gem at the end of the ocular’s chain just as Larikal closed her hand over his wrist.
With his essence in the gem that had become a magic jar not unlike the lichdrow’s phylactery, the death spell could not affect him. His soulless body would appear dead, though, so Larikal would surely believe she’d slain him.
Her guard would be down.
Within the gem, Gromph possessed only one sense—a visceral ability to detect nearby life-forces. He sensed Larikal near him, no doubt bending over his apparently dead body.
The magic of the spell allowed him to attempt, through sheer force of will, to displace a soul in a nearby living body and force it to take his place in the gem. He had taken a risk in casting it, but he needed to get through the wards quickly.
Extending his consciousness, the archmage reached out for Larikal and sought her soul.
He caught her by surprise. He sensed her alarm. She resisted his attempt, but he press
ed, and pressed, fought through the resistance, and at last . . .
Sensation returned to him. He was looking down at the body of a drow male—his transformed body—and in his hand he clutched the ocular, which sparkled softly, alight with Larikal’s soul.
“Thank you, priestess,” he said to the gem and was surprised to hear the feminine lilt in his voice.
The spell allowed only the caster to displace other souls. Larikal could do nothing but stew inside the gem. She would be trapped until Gromph allowed her to escape.
While occupying yet another new form—especially a female one—was disconcerting, Gromph retained all of his mental faculties, including his spellcasting ability. And he had full use of Larikal’s stronger physique. That pleased him. It would assist him when he faced the golem.
He spared a glance around and saw no one. The nearby Dyrr structures appeared empty. No doubt most of the House was occupied with the defense of the walls.
His smile of satisfaction vanished when the spell that had allowed him to change shape expired. His soulless body reverted back to its normal form. He was looking at his own face through Larikal Dyrr’s eyes, staring at the vacant, stolen eyes of a Dyrr son.
Gromph cursed. Prath too would have reverted back to his normal form, or soon would.
Yasraena would be searching for him, if she wasn’t already. He had little time.
Moving quickly, he took the duergar axe from his belt and removed his robe, loaded with his spell components, and his ring of regeneration. He donned the robe, the ring, belted the axe, and cast two spells on his soulless body. The first spell shrank his body to the size of his hand. The second turned it invisible to normal sight, though he could still see it through his magically enhanced vision. Gromph dared not carry his body, which still held the tiny ocular gem, through the warded doorway for fear of triggering the words with his Baenre flesh. Instead, he hid it off to the side of the door, in a crack in the stone of the portico. He would have to hope that it was overlooked.
He turned and—
The amulet on Larikal’s body—on his body—caught his attention. He held it in his hand—it was electrum, with amethysts inset in a spiral. He knew it for what it was—a telepathic amulet.
R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection Page 91