Two gargoyles sat on guard at the bottom of the stairs. Bat winged, stone skinned, and hideous, the two monsters tore the carcass of a halfling between them, squabbling over the spoils. They were still fighting as a little figure popped into view beside them and cleared its throat.
Small, blonde, and dainty, Escalla posed on the path, gave a little wave, and interrupted the guardians.
“Hey, guys? I just wanted to say that you got me! I’m caught! Damn! There’s just no way past real professional guards like you, so I’m giving up! I’ll come quietly. I mean, if anyone gets to reap the huge rewards for bringing me in to the boss, then I want it to go to two professionals!”
The two gargoyles stared for an instant, gore dripping from their open mouths, then pounced on Escalla. One caught her in its stony fist, while the other tried to grab her feet. The two creatures snarled and squabbled with one another, cuffing each other across the scales. Finally Escalla managed to bring peace to the fight, waving her arms to keep the gargoyles apart.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Enough! All right! The guy who is holding me can keep holding me. That’s fair, right? The other guy, he can go upstairs and report that you’ve got a prisoner. Right? Happy?” The faerie chased one of the gargoyles away. “So go! Go on! Report upstairs! Open the front gate and go!”
A gargoyle shambled up the steps to the locked front door of the fortress. The creature disabled a guard spell and gave a password to someone on the far side of the door, snarling and gabbling in rage. Relaxing in her captors claws, Escalla watched the whole process with approval.
“Wow! Now that’s partnership. Two guys workin’ as one.” The girl leaned her elbow on her captor’s fist. “It’s great to have a partner, eh? Someone you can trust. I mean, you two guys, you obviously work as a team. And why? Trust, that’s why! I mean, he can trust you to sit here on your arse looking after the prisoner, while he goes and makes the report. And you! You trust him to tell them all about you both catching me. Equal shares plus equal rewards equals equal promotion!” The girl gave an admiring sigh. “Partnership. I tell you, it’s beautiful to watch.”
Escalla’s captor blinked, turned to watch his partner disappearing into the spider palace, and then screeched in rage. He pelted up the stairs, wrenched the other gargoyle about, and another furious argument began. Escalla was shaken about as she was used as a prop for the argument. The two gargoyles finally came to a decision. Escalla swapped from one gargoyle to the other, and her original captor now proceeded into the palace.
Eating a piece of garlic sausage, Escalla watched the other gargoyle go.
“Yeah. He’s right. I mean, he should go. He’s the one that caught me, so he should make the report. It’s only fair. I mean, the boss knows your pal is the brains of the outfit. If you go in there, it’s only going to look suspicious, right? I mean, give your partner credit where credit’s due. If he carries the load, then he ought to get the reward!”
With a howl, the gargoyle ran after its partner. The two creatures screamed, leaped, flapped, and squabbled. Finally, they came to another decision. Both gargoyles totally abandoned their guard post and went to make their report together, with Escalla held between them in their claws.
Locks and bolts opened from the inside. One of the gargoyles grabbed Escalla and pushed his partner towards the doors, yelling at him to open the way. Escalla joined in the general shower of abuse.
“Yeah! You open those doors! And don’t even suspect that your friend might sneak in a bite now your back is turned. Because he’s a great guy! Your friend through and through!”
In homicidal fury the gargoyle at the doors whirled and flung itself at its partner. Escalla was hurled aside as both monsters fought. The faerie sat on a balustrade, pulled out more sausage, and ate while strips of gargoyle flesh flew all over the stairs. She looked at the carnage and sighed.
“Tragically, the faerie is forever condemned to face inferior intellects.”
The Justicar stamped irritably out from behind a boulder, crossed the open ground, and mounted the stairs. Both gargoyles now lay in a single bleeding heap. Jus was not amused.
“I thought I told you just to sneak up and find a way past the guards.”
Escalla had her mouth full of sausage.
“Sho I got ush pasht the guardsh! No prob’em!” Escalla wiped her lips and jumped down onto the stairs. “See! I even got the door open! Come on! Let’s go.”
She scampered on ahead. Growling, Jus turned and signaled the others to make a run for the stairs. He turned back just in time to see Escalla disappearing through Lolth’s front door. From inside the spider palace, the faerie gave a happy little cry.
“Oh! Hey, guys! Yep! You got me! So which one of you wants to go and report that you just got a prisoner?”
Enid looked at Jus, and the two of them charged headlong up the stairs and through the door.
The inside of Lolth’s palace was shocking and surprising. Beyond the entrance alcove, with its dead gargoyles and guards, there was an area of clean white walls—a wide room with a rug upon the floor and paintings on the wall, all tasteful and incredibly beautiful.
Behind a desk sat a slim, cool woman with bobbed black hair. Her six arms were busy all over the desk, writing, sorting, doodling and filing all at once. Long snake coils draped elegantly over a perch that was half office chair and half shoe tree. As Jus cautiously edged into the room, she turned her back to him and deliberately concentrated on her files.
“Greetings, Justicar. Come in.” The demon spoke in a very, very ordinary voice—officious and beautifully spoken. “You’ve done well. She still doesn’t know you’re here.”
Escalla became visible. She ambled into the room, looking eagerly at the furnishings. Enid flowed through the door, her eyes on the tanar’ri woman and her claws unsheathed. Polk and Henry stood in the doorway and simply stared.
The six-armed tanar’ri never once looked at her visitors. Instead, she concentrated on her files.
“You may call me Morag. That is my common name, not my true name. Lolth has my true name. She has it written down. While she holds it, I must obey her to the letter. I must always answer her with the truth. If she wants to, she can use it to destroy me.”
Looming huge and dark, the Justicar thoughtfully regarded the tanar’ri girl, then said, “If Lolth dies, the name is lost, and you are free.”
“Yes.”
“Why should we help you?”
Morag kept her back to him, sitting straight and stiff.
“You are not helping me. I have never discussed plans with you. Therefore, when asked by Lolth, I will say I have never conspired against her.” One slim hand motioned to a large book upon the table. “Your names are penciled into the appointment list for the day. Therefore, there are no intruders in the palace. My duties will shortly call me away from this room.” The woman made a careful entry into a ledger. “I can even say that I have not seen any intruders. I have never laid eyes upon you.”
Escalla had been poking about the room. Perched on the desk was a painted portrait of a tanar’ri male—a handsome creature with a longing, slightly wistful expression. Escalla took one look at the picture and whistled in glee.
“Hubba-hubba! Oh, wow! Is he yours?”
“Give me that!” Morag snatched the picture away and hugged it against her breast. “And no, he is not mine. He… he…” A blush actually crept up the tanar’ri’s cheeks. “He’s an acquaintance.”
“Oh…” Walking along the desk, Escalla cast a sly little eye backward at the tanar’ri. “But, ah, an acquaintance who’s pretty nice to you. I mean, I can tell! He has great eyes.” Escalla looked at the rugs, the paintings, and tapped her index fingers together “You really caught something special in that painting. You did all these, too?”
Morag straightened, tugging at her neat little black skirt.
“Yes. Yes, I painted them.”
“And I bet you write, too!” Escalla was now sitting on the edge of the desk c
ompanionably next to the tanar’ri. “You do history, right? But there’s a novel you’ve been working on, too?”
“It’s a trilogy!” The tanar’ri sat up, and then subsided into misery. “We… I’m Lolth’s secretary. Her vassal. Her… her slave.” Morag swallowed. “I’m not supposed to… to waste time, to form attachments.”
“Wow! You poor thing!”
Escalla was quite distraught. She looked up to see Jus looking patiently irritable at her. The girl waved her hand, shooing him away. “What? Hey, just because she’s a tanar’ri, we can’t both talk like girls?” The faerie snapped her fingers at her man. “We have a problem here! Helping ladies in distress is in the line of Justice! This is right up your alley!”
Morag was still hugging her portrait of her paramour. Escalla cleared her throat and came a little closer, staying out of view.
“Um, right. So this fella of yours… I mean, you’d like the chance to know him better, huh? You made a dumb mistake with Lolth, and now you’re stuck! Regrets lead to frustration. Frustration leads to anger. I mean, we have to catch this problem now before it ruins your life forever!”
Morag hung her head. All six hands clenched tight. “Yes.”
“Hoopy. Well, girl to girl, I’m glad to help.” Escalla waggled her little bare feet. “So tell me: How do we get Lolth? What’s the secret?”
“I can’t tell you. Not… not directly.”
“Hints are fine.” Escalla lounged on the tabletop. “Shoot!”
Morag slithered from her chair. She gathered files and folders, checked the set of her curved swords, and tugged her skirt down straight. She headed for a door, then paused to speak into thin air.
“When thinking of Lolth, remember this: Power breeds superiority. Superiority breeds contempt. Contempt breeds a need to control.” The tanar’ri exited through a door, her beautiful coils shimmering as she moved. “I believe it was Saint Cuthbert who said, ‘Evil is a stain. The darker the evil, the more pure the waters must be to wash it clean.’”
Morag swept majestically out of the room. “The ship is powering up. We leave for the Flanaess within the hour.”
The door closed with a bang, and Escalla sat up, scowling.
“Actually, I was hoping more for something on the lines of Two doors on the left, her bedroom’s just great! You can ambush her there. Lolth goes shut-eye at eight.” The girl shrugged. “Ah, well…”
“It could have been worse.” The Justicar came over to Escalla’s side to examine the desk. “It could have been a poem.”
Polk shambled forward, his belt fur dragging. “It should have been a poem, damn it! Don’t that snake know anything about adventuring? It should have been a rede!”
Escalla recoiled. “A reed? What? Like a bull rush?”
“No, a rede, girl! A rede! A saying! A phrase put into rhyme so it won’t be forgotten!”
“The Flanaess has been literate for a couple of thousand years now, Polk. Some might think rote-learning is a tad old fashioned.” Escalla was happily poking about in the desk. “Huh! What do you know? Some old decorator’s plans for the palace. They even wrote in the titles of the rooms so workmen knew what furniture went where.” The girl flipped out the map. “Morag is so careless. This should have been filed!”
The spider palace was laid out in a series of decks—engine rooms in the belly, a control room in the head. The rest of the place seemed to be palatial audience chambers, throne rooms, and guards quarters. Perfectly able to read any language ever written or devised, Enid took charge of the charts, smoothing them flat upon the floor. One big lion claw traced scribbles in the tanar’ri script written over some of the rooms.
“Let me see. The private chambers are right at the very top. Handmaiden chambers, guard chambers…” The sphinx gave a pretty scowl. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“Lolth.” The Justicar’s hand scratched as it ran over the stubble of his chin. He pondered Morag’s words carefully and thoroughly. “Superiority breeds contempt. Contempt breeds a need to control…”
“Easy!” Escalla was changing entries in Lolth’s appointment book, booking up her lunchtimes for the next seventeen years. “Contempt! She’s a goddess. She won’t see us as a threat, so if we challenge her, we can draw her into a trap! You know—slap Enid’s stun symbol over a door, then I moon Lolth and we beat her when she runs through the door and gets hit by the spell!”
With a sigh, the Justicar regarded the faerie. “Lolth’s magic resistant.”
“Well… then we attack from behind the door!” Escalla shadowboxed back and forth between the legs and tails of her friends. “We bind her in the magic rope, use a silence spell to stop her casting magic, and give her the fist-beating of a lifetime!” The faerie was overjoyed. “This is gonna be simpler than I thought! Hey, Cinders! Fetch!”
She threw a pencil. All eyes followed it as it clinked onto the floor and rolled. Cinders wag-wag-wagged his tail, his teeth gleaming in the overhead lights.
What?
Everyone looked wearily at the faerie. Escalla shrugged.
“I’m lookin’ for an instinctive reaction. I’m gonna sneak it up on him!” The faerie slapped Jus on the shoulder. “All right, big J! Got a route? Let’s go!”
The Justicar was not yet ready to move. He stood over the map, one hand resting on Enid’s warm shoulder as he looked down at the diagrams.
“Wash away evil. Wash it clean… ?” The Justicar tapped Benelux’s wolf-skull pommel. “It’s a clue. Enid, you’re our riddle consultant. Any ideas?”
“Um, not really. Unless the washing-thing is a clue to a room we should use?”
Jus scratched the stubble of his chin. “Is there a bath house on the map?”
“There’s this!” The sphinx carefully read Morag’s beautiful round handwriting. “It says, ‘Black Dragon Lair. Please grout tiles properly.’”
“That’s not it.” The ranger heaved a frustrated sigh. “Escalla? Henry? Any ideas?”
Henry could only shrug helplessly. Escalla merely cocked her frost wand and stuck her lich staff through her belt like a dagger.
“We’ll keep an eye out as we go. What’s to worry? You’re all stoneskinned up, we have a map, and the faerie’s taking point! What could possibly go wrong?”
They moved onward into the palace, and Enid leaned closer to Henry as they walked. “Henry, I get such a shiver down my spine whenever she says that.”
“Absolutely.”
Inside the palace were Lolth’s private quarters—her treasury, audience chambers, and carefully prepared lines of defense. She would have long ago planned her retreat and her tactics in case of invasion. The Justicar looked at his map then chose a door. Above him, Cinders looked slyly left and right and made a happy growl.
We go find spider lady?
“No. No, we make the spider lady come to us.”
Burn spiders! Wheee!
Cinders’ grin turned to the palace above, and the party walked into the spider’s lair.
* * *
Lolth stood in the center of her audience chamber, arranging one of her nasty little triumphs of ingenuity. The floor was a dead, leaden gray, made from quicksand gathered from the swamps of the Abyss. Lolth had a secret bridge running across the floor, hidden an inch or two beneath the sand. Anyone crossing the floor without knowledge of the secret path would end up dead and drowned! The goddess watched her giants bring in the last buckets of quicksand, and she flicked out her long hair in glee.
“Excellent.”
A door opened, and Morag cruised serenely into the chamber. She saw the arrangements and flipped open a notebook, jotting down an estimate of the costs. Lolth saw her at work and raised a droll little smile.
“Morag! How good of you to join us at last. All your little files and folders stowed away?”
“Yes, Magnificence.”
“Ah.” The spider goddess walked the length of her hidden bridge. The aura about her made the air crackle with power. “Have you s
een any intruders, Morag?”
Morag tucked her pen behind one ear. “I have seen no intruders, Magnificence.”
“Yes.” The goddess stood, held her arms outstretched, and horrible amorphous handmaidens oozed from under a door and removed their mistress’ lounging clothes. Lolth allowed herself to be accoutered for war. Her handmaidens stripped her naked—all except for the delicately engraved gems she always wore about her neck. “Yes, Morag. Still, I have a little inkling that something might be wrong. Have you any thoughts upon that matter?”
“Your intuition is divine, Magnificence.” The secretary flipped open her notebook. “I will rouse the palace guards and have them begin an immediate search. The webs, the palace, the boulder fields. It will delay our departure for at least two hours.”
“No delays!” The goddess whirled, scornful and magnificent. “We will return to the Flanaess! I have to renew the spells that bind my armies. Have you any idea what those fools will be doing without my genius to guide them?” Lolth shoved her handmaidens aside and strode along the rim of her quicksand pool. “I can’t trust any of you idiots to do anything right. How long until we leave?”
The secretary coolly pulled out a little timepiece—handcrafted modron work that she greatly admired. “Thirty minutes, Magnificence. Web fluid is still being loaded into the palace tanks. We still have only three boilers on line.”
“Tell them to hurry!”
“I will tell them, Magnificence.” Morag closed her book. “But we may find that water will only heat so fast. There are laws of physics in operation, even here.”
Lolth stabbed a look of pure calculation at Morag. The goddess tapped at the gems hanging from her neck.
Queen of the Demonweb Pits Page 23