by Lisa Smedman
Knowing that she was about to be devoured, she tried to bring her hands up to her belt. At the very least, she would spill the stone she’d found from her pouch where a patrol could find it. She strained until tears welled in her eyes, but her arms refused to move.
The carrion crawler advanced, its body undulating, its clawed feet making soft clicking noises on the stone floor. Thaleste watched in horror as the crawler reared above her then descended. Its mouth enveloped her head, and its teeth lanced into her shoulders. The pain was intense. She let out a suffocated gurgle that would have been a scream had her vocal cords not also been paralyzed. The crawler’s teeth sawed back and forth, ripping apart Thaleste’s chain mail tunic. There was more pain, and blood, flowing down her body in hot streams that soaked her shirt and trousers. Then a sharp pain, deeper than anything she had experienced before, and—
Thaleste blinked. The pain, the stench—all sensation was gone. She drifted on a gray, featureless plain, cradled in soothing song. Moonlight fell gently on her from above. She raised something—arms? No, that wasn’t quite it. She could no longer feel her body, but the moonlight understood. The song intensified, the moonlight lifted her toward its source: a swirling dance that filled the air above.
“Eilistraee,” she sighed.
The soul of the drow who had once been called Thaleste joined the dance and found peace.
CHAPTER FIVE
Deep in the Underdark below the Misty Forest, the judicator Dhairn stood in a vast cavern whose walls were honeycombed with tunnels that had been bored out centuries ago by a long since vanished purple worm. Above him, webs crisscrossed the ceiling. Cocooned corpses hung from them, dripping putrid liquid onto the floor, and a rancid smell thickened the air. Dozens of faces peered down at Dhairn from the tunnels, faces with ebon-black skin and glowing red eyes. Driders—drow from the waist up, but with the eight-legged lower thoraxes and bulbous abdomens of spiders.
Dhairn himself was a drow—a race the driders would ordinarily attack on sight, but his sudden entrance had given the creatures pause, as had his appearance. His scalp was shaved, save for the circle of hair at the back of his head that was braided into a long strand, the end of which was crusted solid by repeated drippings in blood. His black skin was webbed with lines of glowing white, the hallmark of the deity he served. His eyes had no color, only black dots where the pupils were. Anyone looking closely might have seen the faint yellow lines that formed a web pattern across the white of each eye and noted that his pupils were not truly round but shaped like spiders.
The driders weren’t getting that close, however, not after having noted the massive two-handed sword the judicator carried. The hilt of the magical weapon had two guards, each shaped like a spider. One of these had its legs clenched tightly around Dhairn’s right fist. He wore no sheath, and he could let go of the weapon with his left hand but never with his right.
Dhairn swept back his cloak with his free hand, revealing red robes and an adamantine breastplate embossed with Selvetarm’s holy symbol: a crossed mace and sword, overlaid with a spider. The magical cloak had allowed him to effect an unexpected appearance in the driders’ cavern by stepping out of solid stone. As they hissed at him from above, trying to work up the courage to attack, he spoke.
“Spawn of Lolth!” he shouted. “Exiles from Eryndlyn, from Ched Nasad, from Menzoberranzan, by Selvetarm’s will, you are to be outcasts no longer! There is a place for you in the ranks of the Selvetargtlin, if you would take it!”
From above him came a rustling and the hiss of whispered speech. One of the driders sprang out of a tunnel and descended toward Dhairn, head-down, on a strand of web. The drider was male, his long, uncombed hair hanging from his scalp like scraps of cobweb. His face was pinched and thin, his eyes narrowed in what looked like a permanent wince. A curved fang protruded from each of his cheeks, its hollow point oozing venom. He turned slowly on the strand of webbing, twisting his head so that he could keep Dhairn in sight. “You serve Lolth’s champion?”
Dhairn’s sword swept out, severing the strand. The drider hovered in mid-air a moment too long before falling to the ground, confirming Dhairn’s suspicion. The dangling drider had been an illusion. Dhairn followed through with his swing, spinning around to slice through seemingly empty air behind him. His blade bit into something solid. A drider’s head flew in one direction, while the suddenly visible body crumpled. Dark blood rushed from the severed neck like wine from a ruptured wineskin. The drider had a glove on one hand that glowed with an intense magical aura. The puddle of blood in which that hand had landed sizzled, disintegrating into nothing.
Dhairn looked up at the remaining driders as his sword drank in the blood that coated its blade. Eyes blinked. Several of the driders drew back into their tunnels. The one Dhairn had just slain had probably been their wizard. A pity, that. His talents would have been useful.
“We are all Lolth’s champions,” Dhairn told the driders, “drow and drider alike.”
“That’s not what her priestesses say.” The voice was female, probably their leader. Dhairn glanced from hole to hole, trying to spot her.
“We are the damned,” she continued. “We failed Lolth and were marked for our weakness. This is Lolth’s punishment.”
Dhairn spotted her. The female had reared up on her spider legs and held her arms wide. She might have been beautiful once. Her ears were delicately pointed, her eyes slanted to match. Her upper body was shapely above a slender waist. Even the venomous fangs that protruded from her cheeks did little to spoil her appearance, but life as an exile had left her no pride. Her hair was tangled, and her body fouled with the stinking drippings of the corpses the driders loved to eat. Her dark skin was streaked with smudges of rock dust.
“Has it never occurred to you,” Dhairn asked, “to wonder why Lolth should have altered your bodies into a semblance of the holiest of creatures? Do you honestly conceive of your half-spider forms as a punishment? No, I say it again. You are her champions, as much as Selvetarm is.”
He stood, waiting, letting the driders consider what he’d just told them.
Their leader frowned down at him and said, “Lolth’s priestesses—”
“Lied to you,” Dhairn said in a cold voice, “as Lolth herself orders them to. It is all part of the Spider Queen’s plan. Your exile has made you stronger, more cunning. By preying upon the drow, you cull from our ranks the weak, the incapable. You make our race stronger.” He paused to let that sink in. “If you had truly fallen from the goddess’s favor, then why did she grant you such power? You have been stripped of your House insignia, but you can still levitate. You are no longer drow, but you can still cloak yourselves in darkness and reveal hidden enemies by limning them in magical light. You have powers that Lolth bestows only upon the most favored of her drow children, the ability to recognize your enemies by their auras and to magically spy on them from a safe distance while you plot your ambushes. Lolth has transformed you into the perfect weapon, a creature endowed with a drow’s cunning, and a spider’s venom and stealth. What you lack is the hand to wield you.”
“And you are to be that hand?” the leader asked, a hint of bitterness in her voice.
Dhairn lifted his chin. “Selvetarm is to be that hand,” he told her. “I am but his judicator.” He lifted his sword. “Come and be welcome in his faith. It is time to reclaim your place among the drow.”
It took a moment more, but the leader jumped from her tunnel and descended on a strand of web. As her spider legs touched the floor of the cavern, other driders followed her lead, some descending on strands, others scuttling down the walls. Soon Dhairn was surrounded by several dozen of the creatures, the majority of them male. None approached within sword range, and all had wary, distrustful expressions, but their eyes also held a cautious hope. They had lost their possessions, their status within their Houses, their ability to carve out their own destinies after their transformation and exile, and something more—the greatest sting of all
. They bore the painful stigma of thinking they had been judged by their goddess and found wanting, of thinking that this failure had been branded upon their bodies for all the Underdark to see.
But someone had come to tell them that it was all part of the Spider Queen’s plan, that Lolth still carried them close to her dark heart, that there was a place for them in the web of life. And it was not just anyone who told them that, but a powerful cleric of Selvetarm, Lolth’s champion, a demigod whose form was similar to their own.
Dhairn could see that the driders ached to believe him, but they needed something more before they would allow themselves to accept his words as truth. Dhairn would give it to them—a bloody victory.
“There are indeed drow who are an abomination in Lolth’s eyes,” he told them, “drow who have strayed far from the web of life that Lolth intended us to weave, drow who live on the World Above and practice a blasphemous worship. This is to be your task: to be the scourge that either drives these blasphemers back into Lolth’s embrace—or that flays their traitorous flesh from their bones. It will be your chance to prove yourselves, a test you will not fail.”
He held his sword before him. Its blade was clean, the wizard-drider’s blood completely absorbed by its steel. He glanced from one drider face to the next. “Who of you will be the first to join the ranks of the Selvetargtlin?”
The driders hesitated, looking to their leader. She met Dhairn’s eye, taking his measure. Then she stepped forward, her spider legs clicking on the stone floor, and kneeled. “Chil’triss, of House Kilsek.”
Dhairn nodded. It was probably the first time in decades that she had used her House name.
“Chil’triss of House Kilsek,” he repeated, touching the tip of his blade to her cheek. Slowly, he drew the blade down her face, cutting a thin but bloody line diagonally from cheek to jawline. He repeated it, turning the line into an X. Two more lines, one horizontal, one vertical, completed the pattern: the radiating support lines of a web. “I welcome you to the ranks of the Selvetargtlin.”
When it was done, she smiled through the blood that dribbled down over lips and chin. Her fangs twitched with excitement, and a determined fire had rekindled in her eyes.
“Kneel,” she shouted at her people. “Join the swarm.”
Dhairn smiled.
Q’arlynd sat some distance from the campfire, cross-legged on the damp forest floor. Well inside the forest, almost at the shrine, there was a chill in the air. The mist that gave the forest its name clung to the ground in patches, leaving a thin sheen of moisture on everything it touched, but at least it was a little less bright under the trees. Their spreading branches filtered out the worst of the moonlight.
He drew his quartz from a pocket of his piwafwi and peered through the magical crystal at the surrounding forest. All was as it appeared. There were no hidden watchers lurking in these misty woods. Flinderspeld and the two clerics sat a short distance away, next to a fire, warming themselves. The freshly killed and gutted body of a small woodland creature hung over the flames from a hook, slowly roasting.
Q’arlynd spoke a word and rendered himself invisible. He removed his belt, laid it across his knees by feel, and placed the magical crystal on the inside of the broad strip of leather close by the buckle. Though the rest of the belt remained invisible, the section of it that was immediately under the crystal became visible. On it were words written in tiny glyphs: Q’arlynd’s spells. Holding the belt close to his eyes so he could read the script, he moved the crystal slowly across the belt, committing his “spellbook” to memory again.
Halfway through, he paused and looked up. Flinderspeld had been talking with the two priestesses as they waited for their end-of-night meal to cook, but he had gone to lean toward Leliana in a conspiratorial pose, one shoulder twisted slightly forward.
Q’arlynd attempted to listen in on Flinderspeld’s thoughts, but the link wouldn’t come. His eyes narrowed. The deep gnome was certainly close enough for Q’arlynd’s rings to have worked their magic upon him. The priestesses must have done something to block the link. That was something Q’arlynd would have to deal with in future, but for the time being he let them think they had their privacy. He had other means, honed over a lifetime of peering around corners and into locked rooms. He cast a spell that would allow him to observe and listen from a distance.
Flinderspeld had removed his gloves. Leliana held his hand and studied the slave ring on his finger.
“… remove it,” she was saying. “When we reach the shrine, I’ll ask Vlashiri to do it. She knows the prayer you need.”
Q’arlynd nodded to himself. Such treachery was to be expected, especially of slaves. Nevertheless, it irritated him. The ring on Flinderspeld’s finger was the last of Q’arlynd’s slave rings. The other four that had formed a set with his master ring had been buried—together with the bodies of the slaves who had worn them—when Ched Nasad collapsed. Q’arlynd would not let the last slave ring be taken from him as well.
Leliana dropped Flinderspeld’s hand and leaned closer to the other priestess. Her voice dropped to a low whisper that Flinderspeld wouldn’t be able to hear but that Q’arlynd’s magic conveyed quite nicely.
“I’m going to have a word with this ‘master’ of his. He’s not acting much like a petitioner, if you ask me.”
Rowaan looked startled. “But he bears a sword-token,” she whispered back.
Leliana looked unimpressed. “So what?” she hissed. “Our tokens have fallen into the wrong hands before. You heard him when I said the name of the priestess who went to Ched Nasad was Milass’ni—he didn’t correct me.”
Rowaan shrugged. “Some people simply aren’t good with names.”
“He’s not that stupid. He’s a wizard, and the academies don’t accept dullards.”
Flinderspeld had risen to his feet as the priestesses whispered together. He backed out of the circle of firelight slowly, trying not to draw attention to himself. He eased down into a crouch and started to blur …
Leliana whirled to face him. “Hold it right there!” She’d drawn her sword, and it was in her fist. Ready.
Q’arlynd scrambled to his feet, one hand darting to his pocket for a spell component.
Flinderspeld halted. He returned to normal again, paler by several shades.
“You’re going to answer some questions, too,” Leliana told him.
Q’arlynd paused, component in hand. It looked as though Leliana wasn’t about to hack his slave in two after all. She just wanted some answers, and if all went well, Flinderspeld would tell her exactly what she hoped to hear. Q’arlynd put the spell component away.
Instead of questioning the deep gnome, however, Leliana did the unexpected. She spun her sword above her head it in a tight circle until it hummed through the air. Then she halted the blade over Flinderspeld’s head.
“Tell me how your master came to have Eilistraee’s token,” she demanded.
Q’arlynd cursed. Leliana had obviously just cast a spell on his slave, and Q’arlynd could guess what its effects would be. As Flinderspeld opened his mouth to answer, Q’arlynd once again tried to slip into his slave’s mind. Finally, it worked. Whatever magical shield the priestesses had placed between the two rings had lapsed. Q’arlynd heard Flinderspeld mentally rehearsing the story he’d been coached with before they’d stepped through the portal. Flinderspeld was about to say that he’d seen a priestess of Eilistraee give his master the token, but the words never made it from mind to mouth. The deep gnome instead began to babble something else entirely.
“We found the token in the rubble. My master told me to say—”
Furious, Q’arlynd seized hold of his slave’s body. Flinderspeld’s jaw snapped shut so quickly his teeth nipped his tongue. Q’arlynd forced the deep gnome’s face into a smile, preventing him from wincing at the pain that flared in his tongue.
“To tellanyone … that … he … foundthetoken. The … priestess … toldhimshe … didn’t … wantanyoneto … kno
w … she … hadcometo … Ch-Ch-Ched … Nas-Nas …”
Q’arlynd frowned. Why was he being so difficult? Even with a truth spell in effect, he should have been able to control Flinderspeld, yet the words staggered out of the deep gnome’s mouth one moment, spilled out in a rush the next. All the while, Flinderspeld’s mind screamed like a shrieker, desperately fighting Q’arlynd’s hold on his body while trying to blurt out the truth.
Rowaan stared at Flinderspeld, her mouth open. Leliana was quicker on the uptake. “The wizard’s controlling him,” she hissed at her companion. “He must be close by. Find him.”
Rowaan touched her pendant, whispering the words of a prayer.
Q’arlynd withdrew from Flinderspeld’s mind. The deep gnome continued babbling the rest of his answer to Leliana’s question, but Q’arlynd was no longer concerned with what Flinderspeld might be telling the priestesses. The damage had been done, and if Leliana worked her truth-compelling magic on Q’arlynd and learned what he’d done, things would only get worse. The killing of a fellow priestess—even by accident—was something no drow female would forgive.
Q’arlynd’s hopes of meeting Qilué had just burned up as quickly as a torch-touched web. It was time to end his little jaunt through the World Above and return to Ched Nasad.
But not without his slave.
Who, strangely enough, stood stock still, instead of backing slowly away as he usually did when trouble reared its head.
Q’arlynd cursed, realizing that Flinderspeld must be magically held. Q’arlynd paused just long enough to fasten his belt around his waist then teleported to the deep gnome’s side. A second, quick teleport would—