Dissolution

by Byers, Richard Lee

  Like every princess of a great House, Quenthel had a working knowledge of military matters, and she watched the attempt to create order with a jaundiced eye.

  “I could wish for a proper army,” she muttered.

  She hadn’t meant for anyone to hear, but Pharaun nodded.

  “I understand your sentiments, Mistress, but they’re all we have, and I’m sure that if we’ve trained them properly, we have a chance.” He coughed. “Against the thralls, anyway.”

  “Your meaning?”

  “The greatest danger of all is this pall of smoke. I think Syrzan, for all its cunning, miscalculated. If the mages we left upstairs don’t extinguish the flames, we’ll all suffocate, female and male, elf and orc alike, leaving the alhoon a necropolis to rule. Still, I suppose we must concentrate on our task and not fret about the rest.”

  “What alhoon?” she demanded.

  He hesitated. “It really is a long story, Mistress, and not crucial at this moment.”

  “I will decide what is crucial, mage,” she said. “Speak.”

  Before Pharaun could begin she saw the First Sword approaching, presumably to inform her that the company was ready to set forth.

  As they started to march, she listened to the mage’s tale of the undead mind flayer and its designs for Menzoberranzan. There was more, she was sure, that he was holding back, but she could always torture it out of him later.

  Along the way, the teachers and students found their way littered with mangled dark elf corpses, some headless, some partially devoured, firelight gilding their sightless eyes. The rich smell of blood competed with the acrid foulness of the smoke.

  Or course, no drow objected to the spectacle of violent death, but the ubiquity of the ravaged shapes, combined with the glare of the flames and the uncanny sight of burning stone, made it seem as if Menzoberranzan itself had become a sort of hell, and that was, for Quenthel at least, unsettling.

  The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith thought that were she a weaker person, she might have felt as if she were moving through a nightmare, or interpreted the carnage as proof positive that Lolth had turned her back on Menzoberranzan for good and all. She consoled herself with the thought that at least this time she was marching against an enemy she could see and smite.

  Periodically the scholars saw small groups of undercreatures looting, slaughtering hapless commoners, or even flinging stones and arrows at the column. The younger students sought to attack the thralls, and the teachers bellowed at them to desist. The Academy had to act as a unit and stick to a plan if it hoped to win the day.

  Malaggar raised his hand, signaling a stop.

  We’re close, I think, he reported in the silent drow sign language.

  They stood in place until a flying scout, a brother of the pyramid possessed of a cloak that converted into batlike wings, swooped down and gave his report.

  Mistress, Malaggar signed, may I suggest that ten squads keep on straight, and the rest of us circle around that block of houses. We’ll take the orcs from two sides.

  Very well, Quenthel replied as she surveyed her army. All of you from the head of the column to the mouth of that alley, follow me. The rest of you, go with Master Faen Tlabbar. Everyone, quietly as you can.

  Hands lifted at intervals down the column to relay the orders to those who couldn’t see her.

  The company divided, then Quenthel’s troops crept on, toward a clamoring mob that quite possibly outnumbered them. Fortunately, the slaves hadn’t noticed the Academy’s arrival, and she meant to take full advantage of their ignorance. She quickly arranged her troops in a ragged but serviceable formation, then bade them attack as one.

  Power howled and flashed, burning, blasting, and devouring masses of goblins. Darts leaped through the air to pierce orcs and bugbears. Undercreatures fell by the score.

  Yet after that first volley, scores remained, and they flung themselves at the scholars in a yammering frenzy. The drow hastily abandoned their crossbows for swords and spears. Hidden behind lines of warriors, mages and priestesses peered, trying to see what was going on in the midst of the savage melee so they could target their spells without harming their own comrades.

  Quenthel could have cowered behind her own rank of protectors—perhaps, as high priestess and leader, she should have—but she thought it might stiffen the spines of the first- and second-year students if she led from the front, and in any case, she wanted to kill up close and see the pain and fear in her victims’ faces. Her vipers rearing and hissing, she shoved her way to the front.

  She slew several goblinoids, and dazzling yellow light flashed and crackled around her. The fire magic did her no harm—her mystical defenses held—but several of the folk around her, drow and undercreature alike, shrieked and fell.

  For a moment, everyone, every survivor in the immediate vicinity, was stunned. Then orcs scrambled forward at the gaps the blaze had created in the drow line, and scholars darted forward to fill them. No one paid any heed to the burned comrades beneath their feet, save to curse them if she tripped.

  Quenthel stepped back, letting a student warrior from House Despana take her place, then cast about, seeking the source of the burst of flame. She had a vague sense that the magic had plunged down from above, so she looked there first, at the upper stories of the buildings to either side.

  She blinked in surprise. Like true arachnids, driders were scuttling about the walls and rooflines. Many such debased creatures retained their spellcasting abilities, and one of them must have conjured the fire.

  Quenthel had no idea how the thralls and outcasts could have conspired together, nor did she have time to stop and ponder the question. She had to stop the driders before they destroyed her company from above. She levitated upward through the smoky air, meanwhile looking about for the mage who’d created the flame.

  Barbed arrows and bolts of light streaked at her from all directions. She shielded her face with a fold of her piwafwi, and the missiles rebounded or dissolved when they encountered her layers of enchanted protection. The impacts stung but did no serious damage.

  When she’d ascended to their level, she recognized certain snarling faces even with the fangs, driders whom she herself had helped to make. Perhaps it explained why they’d throw magic at her despite the inevitable damage to the mob of orcs.

  She quickly unrolled another scroll and read the trigger phrase therein. Blades appeared, floating among the driders in front of her, then began to revolve around a central point. The razor-sharp slivers of metal sped along so fast they were invisible, and their orbits curved through the bodies of their foes. The blades sliced and pierced the half-spiders without even slowing down, reducing the brutes to scraps of meat and splashes of blood.

  Quenthel laughed and started to twist around to face the driders atop the stalagmite buildings on the opposite side of the street. A length of something sticky lashed her and looped tightly about her torso, binding her free hand to her chest.

  It was webbing. She knew that some driders could spin the stuff. As they sought to reel her in, she levitated once more, resisting the pull like a fish on a line. Meanwhile, she struggled to reach another scroll despite the constriction of her arm. The vipers bit and chewed at the cable.

  Pharaun levitated into view, and sizzling white lightning leaped from his fingertips. It stabbed one drider, then leaped to the next, then another, until the twisting, dazzling power linked all the half-spiders like beads on a chain. They danced spasmodically until the magic ended, then instantly collapsed. Stinking smoke rose from the remains.

  Pharaun smiled at Quenthel and said, “I’ve often wondered why the goddess doesn’t transform our misfits into something harmless,” he said. “I suppose driders are another tool for culling the weak.”

  Ignoring his blather, Quenthel peered down to see what was transpiring on the battlefield.

  Malaggar’s contingent had arrived and was tearing into the enemy’s flank. At virtually the same instant, the Auvryndar threw open
their gates, and, mounted on their lizards, charged forth in a sortie.

  Teeth gritted, Quenthel pulled the gummy web off her person and floated down to rejoin her troops on the ground. Contemptuous of the enemies’ arrows, Pharaun continued to hang above the warriors’ heads from which point it was no doubt easier to aim his magic.

  The scholars only had to fight for a few more minutes then, hammered on three sides, the mass of goblins collapsed in on itself, the implosion laying a carpet of corpses in its wake.

  Quenthel allowed her troops only a few minutes to collect themselves, then she formed them up and marched them on toward the next of the goddess only knew how many battles.

  “Out!” Greyanna shouted. “Now!”

  The canoe maker gawked at her and sputtered, “Wh-what about my stock?”

  The items in question sat about the floor of the workroom or hung cradled in straps hooked to the ceiling.

  “The goblins will destroy them,” the scar-faced princess said. “Like this.” She smashed a half-finished kayak, a fragile-looking construction of curved bone ribs and hide, with a sweep of her mace. “Afterward, you’ll make more, but only if you live. Now get moving, or I’ll kill you myself.”

  The craftsman scrambled off his stool, and she chivvied him out the door. Up and down the street, her half dozen minions were rousting out the occupants of other manufactories and shops.

  A mob of hairy hobgoblins, all well-armed and many a head taller than the average dark elf, slouched around a corner onto the thoroughfare. They spotted the drow, bellowed their uncouth battle cries, and charged.

  After the disastrous encounter with Ryld Argith, one of the twins was dead. The other, and Relonor, lay grievously wounded, as they still did in House Mizzrym. There they would live or die without recourse to further doses of healing magic, since Miz’ri declined to squander the House’s limited resources on such incompetents. Greyanna had entirely agreed.

  After taking the wounded home, Greyanna, with the questionable aid of Aunrae, had selected five new males to join her in the hunt. This time, they’d stalk Pharaun on foot, Greyanna having belatedly realized that foulwings weren’t lucky for her.

  She and her band had been wandering the streets seeking word of their quarry when the rebellion erupted. Once she’d grasped the magnitude of the disturbance, she wondered if it was the raid on the Braeryn that she had engineered, that brutal attempt to flush her brother out of hiding, that had inspired the thralls to revolt. In a mad, dark way, the possibility pleased her, but she decided not to share her hypothesis. Few would see the humor.

  Most of her thinking, however, was given over to practical considerations. She thought her hunting party could help put down the undercreatures, but only if it could combine forces with a bona fide army. Otherwise, the larger mobs would overwhelm it.

  In those first minutes of slaughter and destruction, she watched for some noble clan to ride forth from their castle and drive the goblins before them. To her consternation, none did, at least not in her immediate vicinity. Her little troop was on its own.

  Life then became an infuriating business of running and hiding from orcs of all things, of watching beasts no better than rothé destroy beauty and sophistication they couldn’t even perceive. Occasionally, she and her companions slew a small group of goblinoids wandering on their own, but it meant nothing, would do nothing to arrest the dissolution of all that was finest in the world.

  Where was the Spider Queen? Perhaps she was bored with her toy Menzoberranzan, magnificent though it was. Perhaps she intended to break it to make space for a new one.

  In time, Greyanna’s dodging and backtracking brought her to a street she recognized, a double row of prosperous shops—to be precise, establishments owned by tradesmen under the patronage of House Mizzrym. She herself had called hereabouts, collecting rents and fees, occasionally chastising a fool who was late paying on a loan or had otherwise displeased Matron Mother Miz’ri.

  It occurred to Greyanna that if the merchants perished, they’d contribute no more gold to Mizzrym coffers. Whereas if she conducted them to safety, she might curry some favor with her mother. Miz’ri had grown impatient with her continuing failure to kill Pharaun and had even hinted that another might carry the mantle of First Daughter with more grace.

  At the very least, preserving Mizzrym assets would feel more constructive and less frustrating than simply skulking about, and so Greyanna instructed her followers to extract the frightened traders and artisans from their homes.

  She loosed a crossbow bolt at the hobgoblins, and her soldiers did the same. Her wizard conjured a cold, towering shadow like the silhouette of a mantis, which mangled several thralls in its oversized pincers before melting out of existence. In all, at least a dozen brutes fell, but others shambled forth from the smoke and fiery glare to take their place.

  Voices of torment, she thought, how many undercreatures were there in Menzoberranzan?

  Until that day, Greyanna had never really noticed. She guessed no one else had, either.

  The hobgoblins charged.

  The Mizzrym princess shouted, “Dark wall!”

  Three of her retainers, those closest to the onrushing thralls, stooped and touched the ground, conjuring a curtain of shadow between themselves and the undercreatures, then fell back.

  One of the Mizzrym warriors herded the shopkeepers farther from the threat. The rest, Greyanna included, scrambled to form a line at a narrow place three yards behind the intangible barrier. The princess pulled a little silver vial from her belt pouch and guzzled the bitter, lukewarm contents down. She shuddered and doubled over as her muscles cramped, and the discomfort gave way to a tingling warmth.

  Hobgoblins strode from the darkness. They’d dwelled among dark elves too long for the trick to deter them more than a few seconds.

  At least the blinding veil precluded their advancing in anything resembling a coherent formation. They screamed and charged in a gapped and formless wave, which looked murderous even so.

  The first hobgoblin to lunge at Greyanna was particularly large and, in marked contrast to his fellows, hairless from the shoulders up. A mistress or master had depilated the slave to prepare the canvas for a work of art, hundreds of tiny round burn scars arranged in a complex swirling pattern.

  The thrall cut at Greyanna’s head. Under other circumstances, she would have retreated out of range, but that would break the line. Wishing she’d brought a shield to the revel, she lifted her mace in a high parry. The hobgoblin’s broadsword rang against the stone haft of the war club and skipped off.

  At once she riposted with a strike to the flank, and the undercreature whipped his targe around to block. The blow bashed a dent in the round steel shield and knocked the hobgoblin reeling back, his slanted eyes wide with surprise. He didn’t know about the potion that had lent her an ogre’s strength.

  Greyanna struck to the side, slaying the slave who was menacing her neighbor, then her own bald adversary came edging back. He hovered a second, then feinted to the flank and finished with a cut to the chest. Discerning the true threat, she half-stepped inside the arc of the attack and swung at his jaw. The blow crunched home, and he toppled backward with a shattered, bloody chin and a broken neck.

  She killed two more hobgoblins, then something prodded her shin, a thrust that failed to penetrate her boot. She looked down, and it was a kobold, armed with a fireplace poker, who had apparently been scurrying about the feet of the larger slaves. Greyanna killed the reptilian imp with a roundhouse kick.

  She cast about for her next adversary. She didn’t seem to have one. The fight was over, and the few surviving hobgoblins were running away.

  “Form up!” she shouted. “I want a column with the traders in the middle. Fast!”

  Once the procession was under way, Aunrae, striding along at Greyanna’s side, asked, “May I know where we’re going? An ally’s castle?”

  “No,” Greyanna replied. “I suspect we couldn’t get in. We’re goin
g to hide our charges in Bauthwaf.”

  The column crept past corpses and burning stone, and as they made their way to the cavern wall, other commoners came running out of their homes to join the procession. Greyanna’s first impulse was to turn away those without ties to House Mizzrym, but she thought better of it. Many of the newcomers carried swords, and she could press the dolts into martial service if needed.

  Occasionally someone collapsed, coughing feebly, poisoned by the stinging smoke. The rest stepped over her and pressed on.

  Someone gave a thin, high cry, as if at an unexpected pain. Greyanna spun around. The goblins weren’t attacking. Her client the canoe maker had simply seized his opportunity to knife another male in the back.

  “A competitor,” the craftsman explained.

  The labyrinthine fortress known as the Great Mound contained a number of magically sealed areas. Unbelievably, the rebellious slave troops penetrated everywhere else. The Baenre fought the goblinoids in the stalagmite towers, across the aerial bridges that connected them, and through the tunnels beneath them, even along the balconies and skywalks of the stalactite bastions, reclaiming their domain a bloody inch at a time.

  The thralls made their final stand in the courtyard, a spacious area surrounded by a weblike iron fence. The barrier was a potent magical defense, and, as the Baenre had just discovered, of no use whatsoever if one’s foe was already inside the compound.

  Triel floated down from the battlements above to take a hand in the last of the fighting. Jeggred, who’d stood beside her since the battle commenced, drifted down as well. Both mother and demidemon son wore a copious spattering of blood, none of it their own.

  In truth, Triel could have left the task of clearing the yard to her warriors, but she was enjoying herself. Partly, it was simple drow bloodlust, but she’d also found a directness, a simplicity, in slaughtering goblins that was sadly lacking in the complex task of ruling the city. For the first time since ascending to her mother’s throne, she felt she knew what she was doing.