The scribe hesitated, then said, “Matron Baenre has people watching the residence. Someone is watching us right now.”
“Perhaps,” Faeryl replied.
Umrae swallowed. “So you can’t harm me. Or they’ll harm you.”
Faeryl laughed. “Rubbish. Triel’s agents won’t reveal their presence just to keep me from disciplining one of my own retainers. They won’t see anything odd or detrimental to Menzoberranzan’s interests in that. Now, be sensible and surrender.”
After another pause, Umrae said, “Give me your word you won’t hurt me. That you’ll set me free and help me flee the city.”
“I promise you nothing except that your insolence is making me angrier by the second, and a quick capitulation is your only hope. Tell me, who turned you, and why? What does anyone hereabouts have to gain by persecuting an envoy, one who stands apart from the feuds and rivalries among the Menzoberranyr Houses?”
“You must understand, I fear to betray them and remain. They’ll kill me if I do.”
“They won’t get the chance. I’m the one pointing a poisoned dart at you. Who are your employers?”
“I won’t say, not without your pledge.”
“Your friend didn’t slander me to Triel until after I started contemplating a return to Ched Nasad. Was that the point of the lie? To keep me from venturing out into the Underdark? Why?”
Umrae shook her head.
“You’re mad,” Faeryl said. “Why would you condemn yourself to perpetuate someone else’s existence? Ah well, you’re plainly unfit to live, so I suppose it’s for the best.”
She made a show of sighting down the length of the crossbow.
“No!” Umrae cried. “Don’t! You’re right, why should I die?”
“If you answer my questions, perhaps you won’t.”
“Yes.”
Trembling a little, her nerve having been broken, the clerk raised her hand to her face, perhaps to massage her brow. No—to lift a tiny vial to her lips!
Faeryl pulled the trigger and her aim was true, but by the time the quarrel pierced Umrae’s stomach, the secretary’s form was changing. She grew even thinner, shriveling, but taller as well. Her flesh cooled and stank of corruption, leathery wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, and her eyes sank into her head. Even her garments altered, blurring and splitting into moldering rags. No blood flowed from the wound the poisoned dart had made, and it didn’t seem to inconvenience her in the slightest. She didn’t even bother to pull the missile out.
Faeryl was furious at herself for allowing Umrae to trick her. Next time, she’d remember that even a dark elf devoid of beauty, grace, and facile wit, seemingly undone by fear, was yet a drow, born to guile and deception.
The potion had temporarily transformed Umrae into some sort of undead, in which form she likely wouldn’t suffer at all from her usual clumsiness. Had Lolth not forsaken her priestesses, Faeryl might have controlled the cadaverous thing with her clerical powers, but that was no longer an option. Nor were any of her other retainers likely to notice her plight and dash to her rescue. She had them all too busy packing up the house.
It was unfortunate, because like most undead, except for the lowly corpses and skeletons spellcasters reanimated to serve as mindless thralls, Umrae in winged-ghoul form could probably do grievous harm with any strike that so much as grazed the skin, and Faeryl didn’t even have a shield to fend her off. How was she to know the spy would possess such a potent means of defense?
Umrae took a shambling step, then, with a clap of her wings, bounded forward. Faeryl hastily retreated, dropped the useless crossbow, and opened the clasp of her cloak. Pulling the garment off her shoulders with one hand, she unsheathed a little adamantine rod with the other. At a snap of her wrist, the harmless-looking object swelled into Mother’s Kiss, the long-hafted, basalt-headed warhammer the females of House Zauvirr had borne since the founding of their line.
Perhaps an enchanted weapon would slay Umrae where the envenomed quarrel had failed.
Faeryl would have to hope so. Even if she were willing to stand meekly aside and let the traitor fly away, Umrae, her thoughts perhaps colored by the predatory guise she’d assumed, plainly wanted a fight, and the envoy could see no way to evade her. It would be stupid to evoke darkness and run. In undead form, Umrae would likely manage better in the murk than its maker did. It would be even more pointless to try to levitate or ascend through the use of the air-walking charm when the shapeshifter could simply spread her ragged wings and follow.
Faeryl waved her piwafwi back and forth at the end of her extended arm, to confuse Umrae and serve as some semblance of a shield. No one had ever taught Faeryl to fight thusly, but she’d observed warriors practicing the technique, and she tried to believe that if mere males could do it, it would surely present no difficulty to a high priestess.
Umrae lunged, Faeryl lashed the cloak in a horizontal arc. Possibly thanks to luck as much as skill, the garment blocked Umrae’s hands. Her talons snagged in the weave.
Surprised, Umrae faltered in the attack and struggled to free her hands. Faeryl stepped through and smashed the pointed stone head of her hammer into the center of the servant’s carious brow. Bone crunched, and Umrae’s head snapped backward. A goodly portion of her left profile fell off her skull.
Certain the fight was over, Faeryl relaxed, and that was nearly the end of her. Transformed, Umrae could evidently endure more damage than almost any creature with warm flesh and a beating heart. She opened her mouth, exposing long, thin fangs, and what was left of her head shot forward over the top of the cape. The ambassador only barely managed to fling herself back out of the way in time.
The piwafwi was stretched taut between the two combatants, as if they were playing tug-of-war. Both yanked on it simultaneously, and Faeryl was the luckier. The cloak tore free of Umrae’s grasp, but despite the garment’s reinforcing enchantments, it returned to the ambassador with long rips the ghoul’s claws had cut. A few more such rendings and it would be useless.
The cape’s sudden release also sent Faeryl stumbling backward. With another beat of her festering wings, Umrae hopped and closed the distance. Her clawed hands shot forward.
Crying out in desperation, Faeryl managed to plant her feet and arrest her helpless stagger. She lashed out with the hammer and clipped one of Umrae’s hands. The imitation ghoul snatched it back and gave up the attack. Instead, she began to circle. Just as a living creature would, she shook her battered extremity several times as if to dislodge the pain, then lifted it back on guard.
Faeryl turned to keep the foe with her crushed, half-flayed head in view. What is it going to take to stop this thing? the ambassador wondered. Can I stop it?
Yes, curse it!
When she was a child, her cousin Merinid, weapons master of House Zauvirr, dead these many years since her mother tired of him, had told her that any opponent could be destroyed. It was just a matter of finding the vulnerable spot.
Umrae lunged. Once again, the ambassador snapped out the folds of her frail, flapping shield. The cloak entangled one of the servant’s hands. The other raked, rasping and snagging, across Faeryl’s coat of fine adamantine links. The winged ghoul’s touch sowed cramping sickness in its wake, but the claws hadn’t quite sheared through the sturdy mail, and the sensation only lasted an instant.
Faeryl swung at Umrae’s withered chest in its covering of filthy, crumbling cloth. If she couldn’t slay the ghoul-thing with a strike to the head, then the heart must be the vulnerable spot, just as with a vampire. Or at least she hoped so.
To her surprise, Umrae denied her the chance to find out one way or the other. It looked as if the traitor had so committed to her attack that she would find it impossible to defend against a riposte. Yet she interposed her withered arm to take the shock of the warhammer, then stooped to claw at Faeryl’s unarmored knee.
The envoy avoided that potentially crippling attack with a fast retreat, meanwhile ripping the cloak away from h
er foul-smelling adversary. The garment was starting to look more like a bunch of ribbons than one coherent piece of silk.
The duelists resumed circling, each looking for an opening. Occasionally Faeryl let the tattered piwafwi slip or droop out of line, offering an invitation, but Umrae proved too canny to attack when and how her opponent wished her to.
Faeryl realized she was panting and did the best to control her breathing. She wasn’t afraid—she wasn’t—but she was impressed with her servant’s potion-induced prowess. Formidable from the moment she imbibed it, Umrae was truly getting the hang of her borrowed capabilities as the battle progressed.
While still maneuvering and keeping an eye on Umrae, Faeryl nevertheless entered a light trance. With a sense that was neither sight, hearing, nor any faculty comprehensible to those who’d never pledged her service to a deity, she reached into that formless yet somehow jagged place where she had once been accustomed to touch the shadow of the goddess.
The presence of Lolth had absented itself from the meeting ground, leaving a vacancy that somehow throbbed like a diseased tooth. Still, it seemed an appropriate domain in which to pray.
Dread Queen of Spiders, Faeryl silently began, I beg you, reveal yourself to me. Restore my powers, even if only for a moment. Has Menzoberranzan offended you? So be it, but I’m not one of her daughters. I’m from Ched Nasad. Make me as I was, and I’ll give you many lives—a slave every day for a year.
Nothing happened.
Umrae sprang in, clawing. Faeryl jerked the part of her spirit that had groped in the void back into her body. Retreating, she blocked the undead creature’s claws with her cloak and struck a couple blows with the warhammer. She didn’t withdraw quickly enough to take herself completely out of harm’s way, nor did she settle into a strong stance and swing as hard as she could have. She wanted the ghoul to feel on the brink of overwhelming her opponent and keep coming. If Umrae grew too eager, she might open herself up for an effective counterattack.
Umrae’s talons whizzed through the air, tearing scraps from the sheltering cloak until it was the size of a ragged hand towel. Unexpectedly, the spy beat her riddled wings, hopped in close, and struck at Faeryl’s face. The noble recoiled, but even so the claws streaked past a fraction of an inch before her eyes, so close she could feel the malignancy inside them as a pulse of headache.
Still, it was all right, because she thought Umrae was finally open. She sidestepped and swung her stone-headed hammer at the ghoul’s rib cage—
—to no avail, even though Faeryl had been correct, Umrae couldn’t swing her hands around in time to block the blow. Instead, she took another stride, slapped the ambassador with a flick of her wing, and sent her reeling.
Faeryl’s head rang, and the world blurred. As she struggled to throw off the stunning effects of the blow, she thought fleetingly how unfair it was that Umrae, who had long ago forsaken combat training as a humiliating exercise in futility, was demolishing a female who still doggedly reported to her captain-of-the-guard for practice once a tenday.
After what seemed a long time, her head cleared. She whirled, certain that Umrae was about to attack her from behind. She wasn’t. In fact, the animate corpse was nowhere to be seen.
Plainly, Umrae had taken to the air. Had she finally done the sensible thing and fled? Faeryl couldn’t believe it. Umrae hated her. The envoy didn’t know why, but she’d seen it in the traitor’s eyes. Such being the case, Umrae wouldn’t break off when she had every reason to believe she was winning and close to making the kill. No drow would, which meant she was still hovering somewhere overhead, poised to swoop down and, she undoubtedly hoped, catch her mistress by surprise and smash her to the ground.
Her heart pounding, Faeryl peered upward and saw nothing. She listened for the beat of the creature’s wings but heard only the eternal muffled whisper of the city as a whole. She wasn’t entirely surprised. The undead were famously stealthy when stalking their prey.
A black sliver momentarily cut the line of violet luminescence adorning a spire of the castle of House Vandree. The obstruction had surely been the tip of one of Umrae’s wings.
Faeryl stared for another moment, then jumped when she finally spotted Umrae. Her tattered cloak flapping between her wings, the transformed secretary was already hurtling down like a raptor from the World Above diving to plunge its talons into a rodent.
Hoping Umrae hadn’t seen her react to the sight of her, Faeryl kept turning and peering. When she felt the disturbance in the air, or perhaps simply the urgent prompting of her instincts, she jumped aside, pivoted, and swung the warhammer in an overhand blow.
Under those circumstances, she had little chance of smashing the thing’s heart, but she’d seen that Umrae could suffer pain. Perhaps the initial blow would freeze the undead thing in place for an instant, affording Faeryl the opportunity for what she prayed would be the finishing stroke.
The ambassador had timed the move properly, and the weapon’s basalt head smashed into Umrae’s flank. Deprived of her victim, unexpectedly battered, the ghoul slammed into the smooth stone surface of the street with a satisfying crash. Scraps of flesh broke away from her raddled body, releasing a fresh puff of stench.
Faeryl marked her target, the place on Umrae’s chest beneath which her heart ought to lie, and swung Mother’s Kiss back for the follow-up attack. The traitor rolled and scrambled to her knees. Faeryl struck, and Umrae lashed out with a taloned hand. The ghoul caught the warhammer in mid-flight, tore it out of the ambassador’s grip, and sent it spinning to clack down on the ground ten feet away.
Faeryl felt a crazy impulse to turn and go after the thing, but she knew Umrae would rip her apart if she tried. She backstepped instead. The inhumanly gaunt spy leaped to her feet—she looked like a pile of sticks spontaneously assembling themselves into a crude facsimile of a person—and pursued.
While retreating, Faeryl started edging around in a looping course that might ultimately bring her to the spot where the hammer lay. Leering, Umrae moved sideways right along with her in a way that demonstrated she knew exactly what her mistress had in mind and would never permit it.
Well, the aristocrat still had one weapon—pitifully inadequate to the situation though it was—a knife hidden in the belt that gathered her light, supple coat of mail at the waist. The gold buckle was the hilt, and when she pulled on it, the stubby adamantine blade would slide free. She started to reach for it, then hesitated.
Against Umrae’s talons, long reach, and resistance to harm, the dagger really would be useless … unless Faeryl could get in close enough to use it, and unless she attacked by surprise.
But how in the name of the Demonweb was she to accomplish that? Umrae was rapidly closing the distance, snapping her wings every few steps to lengthen a stride, and for three unnerving backward paces, Faeryl’s mind was blank.
Then she remembered the cloak, or rather, the remnants of it, still clutched in her off hand. Perhaps she could employ it to conceal her drawing of the knife. The piwafwi was just a sad little mass of tatters, and she was no juggler adept at sleight-of-hand, but curse it, if clumsy Umrae had palmed a potion vial without her mistress noticing until it was too late, surely the mistress could do as well.
Faeryl had been reflexively moving the cloak around the whole time, so it shouldn’t look suspicious for her to cover her waist with it. At the same time, she hooked the fingers of her weapon hand in the oval hollow at the center of the buckle and pulled. She had never before had occasion to employ this last desperate means of defense, but in the sixteen years since an artisan had made it to her specifications, she had always kept the knife and scabbard oiled, and the blade easily slid free.
She studied Umrae. As far as the envoy could tell, the imitation ghoul hadn’t seen her bare the dagger, but she doubted she could keep it hidden for more than a second or two. She had to manufacture a chance for herself quickly if she was to have one at all.
She pretended to stumble. She hoped her unstea
diness looked genuine. Umrae had touched her, after all, so it might seem credible that her strength was failing.
The ghoul took the bait. She leaped forward and seized Faeryl by the forearms. This time, her claws punched through the envoy’s layer of mail and jabbed their tips into her flesh. At once, a surge of nausea wracked Faeryl, then another. Retching, she wasn’t sure she could still use the knife in any sort of controlled manner. Perhaps she’d just served herself up to her foe like a plate of mushrooms.
Umrae grinned at Faeryl’s seeming—or genuine—helplessness. The envoy felt the clerk’s fingers tense, preparing to flense the meat from her bones, even as she pulled the noble closer and opened her jaws to bite down on her head.
Fighting the sickness and weakness, Faeryl tried to thrust her hand forward. The effort strained her flesh against the ghoul’s talons, tearing her wounds larger and bringing a burst of pain—but then her arm jerked free. The blade rammed into Umrae’s withered chest, slipping cleanly between two ribs and plunging in all the way up to Faeryl’s knuckles.
Umrae convulsed and threw back her head for a silent scream. The spasms jerked her hands and threatened to rip Faeryl apart even without the traitor’s conscious intent. Umrae froze, and toppled backward, carrying her assailant with her.
In contradiction of every tale Faeryl had ever heard, the shapeshifter didn’t revert to her original form when true death claimed her. Still horribly sick, the envoy lay for some time in the ghoul’s fetid embrace. Eventually, however, she mustered the trembling strength to pull free of the claws embedded in her bleeding limbs, after which she crawled a few feet away from the winged corpse.
Gradually, despite the sting of her punctures and bruises, she started to feel a little better. Physically, anyway. Inside her mind, she was berating herself for an outcome that wasn’t really a victory at all.
Given that she needed to learn what Umrae knew, not kill her, she’d bungled their encounter from the beginning. She supposed she should have agreed to the traitor’s terms, but she’d been too angry and too proud. She should also have spotted the vial and fought more skillfully. If not for luck, it would be she and not her erstwhile scribe lying dead on the stone.
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