Queen of the Demonweb Pits

by Paul Kidd - (ebook by Flandrel; Undead)

  Jus sat slowly and looked into the dull, thick air. They sat on a terrace hundreds of miles wide, a flat ridge at the edge of a vast chasm. The Abyss yawned before them—an infinite drop into eternity, ringed by six hundred and sixty-six descending rings of hell. The view was numbing—awesome and horrible.

  The air shivered all about them like a dying scream. Locusts made of wormwood and brass skittered and chittered in the dust. The group could only stare at the vast gulf of the Abyss and shiver. Unperturbed, Escalla beat the ashes out of her little skirt and looked around.

  “Hey, guys! It’s the Abyss!” Happy to be making real progress, Escalla clapped her hands. “Well, we’re here!”

  Sadly diminished, Lolth—Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Lady of the Drow, and Mistress of Spiders—walked into the control room of her palace. Two succubi worked the controls. Each one seethed in annoyance at having to work. Lolth was greeted by her pack of pet spiders, scorpions, and miscellaneous arachnids, the creatures stretching up to their mistress for a pat. Mistress of all that she surveyed, Lolth allowed slaves to bring her a throne, and she lazily sat down.

  “Morag?”

  The secretary trailed behind the rest of Lolth’s entourage. Seeing the drab, skinny creature enter, Lolth held a cup out and demanded tea.

  “Morag, what was all that commotion behind us just now?”

  Somewhere in her treasures, Lolth had written down Morag’s true name. An order prefaced with that name would have to be obeyed—even an order to suicide. Morag poured the tea oh-so-nicely, then found an adamantite sugar spoon.

  “Nothing, Magnificence. A brawl in the town ruins.”

  “Something attacked my guards?”

  “No, Magnificence. It was lower creatures having a difference of opinion.”

  Lolth detected no untruths. She pinned Morag with a careful eye then lounged back in her throne, planted her feet on the back of a squatting slave, and drank her tea. She snapped her fingers at the succubi guiding her palace along the paths of the Abyss.

  “Full speed for the Demonweb Pits.” Lolth sipped her tea, found it insipid, and handed it back. “Morag, you bore me.”

  The secretary folded up her hands. “Yes, Magnificence. I will try to be more entertaining in the future.”

  The foul air shuddered with an immense, unending roar. Bruised and dazed, the party crept carefully to their feet. The dirt beneath felt like volcanic cinders—clinking, hollow stuff that leeched the skin of heat. The air brought no sense of life, wafting thick and dull as a mist of powdered lead.

  The shuddering roar came from a titanic waterfall. A river too wide to see across flowed to the lip of the abyss and plunged straight down. Whole oceans of water thundered into the void, crashing into all six hundred and sixty-six layers of the Abyss on its way to the bottom of the pit. The mist of the waterfall was full of wheeling, shrieking shapes—skull-headed ghosts lost in time and mind. The waters stirred as dark shapes looped and slithered in the deeps. Numbed by the sight, Henry let his crossbow slip in his hands.

  “What is that?”

  Enid, Polk, and the Justicar joined him in staring at the river. Behind them, Escalla did up her clothing, sparing a glance to see what everyone else found so fascinating.

  “Oh, that? River Lethe. That’s the little river here in the Abyss. If you wanna see something really impressive, you ought to see the Styx!” Escalla checked the set of her thong—perfect, as usual. “The Lethe flows through about half the outer planes. Crosses whole worlds! This is the muckiest end of it.” The faerie finished tying up her leggings. “There’s another river, about half a dozen realities away: Mnemos. Or maybe it’s actually the underside of the Lethe. It holds lost memories. Sort of the counterbalance to this one. Hoopy scene, though! Look at the size of this thing!” Escalla held up the slow glass gem to scan it slowly across the scene. “There! At least we can watch it all again and laugh in about two weeks.”

  Enid blinked, her gaze still on the river. “Counterbalance? Why does a river need a counterbalance?”

  “Yeah! I told you, this is the Lethe! If a mortal falls in that water, they lose all their memories.” Escalla held one end of a tie between her teeth as she affixed her mail gloves. The roar of the river made it hard to hear. “These are the outer planes! A lot of these places are what you guys think of as ‘the afterlife’. If you die, you get reborn into one of these other worlds here!”

  “Really?”

  “Hey, trust me on this one. I’m a faerie!” Escalla waved a hand. “They’re all out there in the planes: Elysian fields, Hades, Valhalla… and the Abyss! This here is where you go if you’ve been a real arsehole!” The girl waved her slowglass gem at the river. “The river’s like a tool. A lot of gods have their worshipers emerge from the river once they die. You know, a baptismal sort of thing. But what it really does is wipe minds! It makes lost souls into blank slates. Perfect servitors.”

  “Servitors?” Enid seemed bemused. “Whatever do you mean?”

  Escalla exchanged a shared glance with the Justicar then hovered up into the air. “All right, these ‘god’ guys? Hasn’t it struck you that they’re just beings a bit higher up the power scale than you and I? They’re a scam! They’re living egos scrabbling for power. But anyway, if you believe in one, then when you die, you become the god’s little puppy dog! Born into his afterworld. Maybe you get to live in ease, maybe you get to plow the holy fields and sweep the palace floors, or, if you were a bad boy, maybe you end up here as food for demons.”

  “The gods can’t be like that!” The sphinx bridled. “The afterlife is a place of beautiful reward. Dead sphinxes go to the court of Thoth in the deserts of endless dreams!”

  Escalla raised a brow. “And what happens in the palace of Thoth?”

  The sphinx puffed in importance. “Well, there we have access to the riddles of the universe! The library of Thoth. The knowledge of the ages! There we are allowed to file the scrolls, dust the shelves, and issue tomes to visiting…” Enid’s face fell as realization struck her. “Oh, bugger!”

  Escalla tipped her finger to her friend. “Yep! Got it in one.”

  The sphinx hunched, then suddenly shot a concerned look at Escalla. “You don’t have any gods?”

  “None I’d cross the street to say hello to.”

  “What happens to you if you die?”

  Escalla hugged her hands against her face and batted eyelids. “Oh, good little faeries are supposed to turn into forest lights somewhere in the Seelie woods.” The faerie sneered. “Which is why I’m a bad little faerie. I intend to take up a role as a ghost with fashion sense. Not that it matters. None of us are going anywhere!”

  “Eh?”

  Escalla spread her arms to encompass her friends. “Hey! I’m a faerie princess. I don’t let death screw up a perfectly good partnership!” The girl turned a barrel roll in midair, flying with her back to the vast river. “Now come on! Let’s get this spider bitch squashed flat so we can go home and have some fun!”

  They walked to the riverbank, the roar of the waterfall so huge that they all had to shout to be heard. Instinctively they moved upstream, away from the river mists with their looping, screaming ghosts. Escalla kept up a monologue for the uninitiated mortals.

  “This is the Abyss! Six hundred and sixty-six levels straight down! Each level has the surface area of several worlds, and each one is the domain of a lord of the Abyss. They call themselves gods, but they’re just demons with a few ego issues!” Escalla waved her lich staff like a guide, shepherding her friends between the massive footprints left by Lolth’s palace. “We read up on tanar’ri at school. Magic resistant; fire, frost, and lightning resistant. Pains in the arse!”

  Henry hunched forward against the noise, trying to be heard. “How do we take out Lolth?”

  “Steel!” The Justicar took the lead, spying a ragged path to the river. “Ambush and close combat.”

  “Close combat.” Henry listened anxiously. “How do we get close? Do we
have anything we can use?”

  “Yes.”

  The Justicar marched grimly on and said no more. Escalla whirred up and took Henry underneath her arm.

  “Anything we can use? Sure! Jus has a stoneskin spell on him, and I’ve got combat spells up the wazoo! We have a stun symbol from Enid, a portable hole, a tangling rope, a frost wand, a lich staff, Benelux, your bow, your sword, Enid’s claws, and my brain! And a little dog, too!” The faerie slapped Henry between the shoulders, dangling the slowglass gem on its string. “Hey! We’ve even got slowglass so we can watch the action and laugh when it’s all done!”

  Henry reached for the slowglass, dropped it, then almost trod on it. With a screech, Escalla whipped down and snatched the prize to safety!

  “Hey! Watch it! Don’t break the damned slowglass!”

  “Sorry!” Henry looked anxious. “Um, would that be bad?”

  “Bad? Hell yes, breaking it would be bad!” The faerie waved her hands excitedly—almost shattering the slowglass against a pinnacle of rock. “This thing screws up time! You break it, and it’d trap us all in a field of slowtime. Lasts maybe two seconds for us—and half an hour everywhere else! By the time we snapped out of it, there’d be six hundred monsters all around us ready to party-hearty with our spleens!” The girl carefully stuffed the gem down her cleavage. “Definitely non-hoopy!”

  “Oh. Ah, yes.” Henry blinked, looking at the gem nervously. “Definitely.”

  Enid came swiftly to Henry’s rescue. “Henry understands. Now, where is Lolth?”

  “Hmm? Oh, over the river, I guess.” Escalla lofted higher, squinting into the thick, foul air of the Abyss. “All we have to do is cross.”

  As Escalla rose from the path, something streaked from behind a jagged spray of glass and sped straight for her. The Justicar caught the motion from the corner of his eye, drew his blade, and whirled, just managing to clip the creature.

  It was one of the brass locusts, its poisoned stinger held beneath it like a lance. Escalla dived aside and only just managed to swipe the insect with her staff. The locust struck the magic staff and exploded, the blast bowling Escalla through the air. Enid leaped and caught the girl, ducking as a fresh storm of locusts spat like slingstones from the dust. Forewarned, the Justicar shielded Enid, his blade whipping up to send one locust ringing off into the dust. Others hit a wall of flame from Cinders, their wings melting in the heat. The survivors looped back to make another pass, then Henry cut the leader in two with a single shot from his crossbow. The other locusts turned tail and fled, screeching like beaten children.

  The comparative silence was shocking. The attack vanished as fast as it had come. Poison from a dead locust’s stinger leaked into the ash, hissing and melting the dirt into glass.

  The Justicar angrily grabbed Escalla by the feet and shoved her onto his shoulder where she belonged. “Quiet! And keep your eyes open!”

  The locusts had come out of nowhere. The ash, dust, and smoke of the Abyss was thick as fog.

  “All of you! Cover your quadrants, stay together, and keep down!”

  Everything here was deadly—the soil, even the air. The Justicar kept his senses tuned to the hunt.

  “Recca will be through the gate soon. The air here feels like slow poison. We can’t afford to lie in wait to ambush him.” The Justicar looked over the river, a place dotted with islands that Lolth’s vast palace had simply used as stepping stones. “We need to get to Lolth’s palace before he can catch up with us.”

  The sphinx creased her freckled nose. “Will he be fast?”

  “He’s only got one foot again. The spare parts he takes from other creatures don’t seem to re-attach or regenerate.”

  “Oh.” Ever genteel, Enid looked a little ill at the thought. “The ones you cut off when he died?”

  “That’s them.”

  Bad skelly-man walk funny! Cinders grinned, the river light chasing blue patterns through his fur. Cinders burn him good next time. Burn off kneecaps! Burn top of head! Make him go crunchy! Burn! Burn! Burn!

  “Good boy.” Jus seemed wary and disturbed. “But still… his technique is nothing to be trifled with.”

  “Ha!” Escalla had salvaged a piece of smoked fish from the portable hole. “We did better against him this time!”

  “Not well enough.” The Justicar walked onward to the river. “He’s still kicking.”

  * * *

  The poisoned air of the Abyss was hot and thick, and yet the place felt chill. Worst of all was the oppressive sense of evil. The ground seemed hazed with a maze of skeletal shadows—maddening shapes of bones, claws, and screaming skulls that jerked out of view the instant a head turned. The breeze echoed memories of torture and infinite, screaming pain.

  By the river grew great putrid yellow trees with writhing vipers for branches. The trees hissed in hunger, forming a dense thicket that blocked the way to the riverbanks. The ground was covered in a jagged, saw-edged grass through which hissing maggots crawled. The party came to a halt and looked at the air above the river. A flock of wheeling shapes—possibly gigantic abyssal bats, possibly something even worse—kept station high above the isles.

  Across the river—just barely seen—lay a white gleam of spiderweb. The monstrous net rose into the sky, disappearing in a silver haze of magic. Climbing steadily up the web, gleamed a fat brass dot—the spider palace clambering for home.

  Escalla looked over the river and pulled thoughtfully at her chin. “What do you think those flying things are?”

  “Dangerous.” The Justicar looked at the river carefully. “Watch carefully. They keep away from the river.”

  “Hoopy! They avoid the river. Problem solved!” The faerie was overjoyed. “There’s trees here! All we do is make a raft and float across!”

  “Escalla, the trees are made out of snakes.”

  “Well, I can’t think of everything!”

  Wearily, the Justicar pointed at the dark shapes seething beneath the water. “Escalla, the flying things keep away from the water because something in there has teeth.”

  “Hmmm.” The faerie hovered. “Look, if we make a raft out of living trees, then the snakes and vipers will scare away the things in the river!”

  The Justicar gave the girl a scowl. “No rafts.”

  “All right already!” Escalla thought a moment, then clicked all ten fingers on her hands. “I got it! I got it! All right, here’s the plan. We get everyone inside the portable hole, then I change into something that looks amazingly evil, and I fly across the river.”

  Jus definitely didn’t like the plan. “And the flying things?”

  “I just avoid ’em! Easy.” The girl put an arm about Jus’ shoulder, infinitely confident. “Hey, trust me! I’m a faerie!”

  Polk and Enid were already laying out the portable hole, as happy as clams. Henry secured his water bottles, crossbow bolts, and sword and then followed his friends inside. Unwilling to leave Escalla unguarded in the Abyss, the Justicar glowered at the brink of the hole. Escalla gave him a kiss, then tried to push him in.

  “Come on. We have to get moving!”

  Jus watched the girl carefully. “You won’t do anything silly?”

  “Me? Me! Hey! Get real!”

  “If anything wants to fight, you drop onto an island and yell for help.”

  “What? No fights! No one touches the faerie!”

  Sighing, the Justicar looked over the dreadful scenery. Only the fact that there was nothing in the Abyss to touch, borrow, or steal convinced him to go.

  “You go fast and stay away from the water. You fly as fast as you can, and don’t touch anything!”

  “Jus, get in the hole before I pinch you!”

  Escalla tipped him in, turned into a horrific, scaly little skull-faced horror, and flapped up into the air. She grabbed the folded hole in one taloned foot, her lich staff in the other, and flew happily away.

  Inside the hole, Benelux simply glowed with pride. I do so love a woman with true heroism i
n her heart!

  Jus looked up at the closed entrance to the hole, his big hands working with worry. “She has no idea how dangerous this is.”

  “Relax, son! Just watch her and learn!” Polk was busily eating a badly smoked fish, which was stinking up the entire portable hole. “See that girl? Now that’s true heroism! Bravery in the face of danger. Courage in adversity. Total overconfidence no matter what the odds!”

  “Polk, shut up.”

  “Son, that gal’s one of a kind!”

  “Yes.” The Justicar sat hard against a wall and glared. “Thank the great sky-goat for that!”

  * * *

  Disguised as a flying imp, Escalla whistled tunelessly to herself as she whirred high above the river Lethe. Far below, skeletal serpents coiled and slithered in the water. The air seemed to be made from a pattern of old nightmares—broken, jarred, and clattering like glass. Escalla had never before seen a place so absolutely ugly. Annoyed rather than frightened, she flew gaily between geysers of Lethe-water, the cursed drops missing her by inches. Two large bat-shaped creatures chased her, then veered off in panic as she skimmed a wing’s breadth above the churning waters. A bat dived toward her, Escalla kept a sly eye on the water before looping high, and a split second later a hideous rotting sea serpent blasted out of the water. It missed Escalla and clashed its jaws shut upon the bat. Escalla looked back pityingly at the opposition, then gave an expressive little shrug.

  “Gods but it’s good being me!”

  At the far bank, forests of viper trees lunged and uselessly spat venom. Brass locusts launched, screeching for Escalla’s blood. Annoyed, the faerie hovered and smashed the locusts apart with a swarm of her golden bees.

  “Scram! Go on!”

  There was no point dragging the others out of the portable hole. Escalla was clearly right on top of the dangers of the Abyss. Nothing here she couldn’t handle. She followed the clear track of Lolth’s spider palace straight to a vast cleft in the Abyssal wall. The web arose a thousand feet, then simply disappeared into a silvery mist, clearly interfacing with another plane. Lolth’s home plane.