A click-click sound made her pause.
“Does anyone else hear that?” she said. She squeezed the Prisoner’s Stone back into glovespace.
“Shhh,” hissed Demascus, his head cocked. He’d heard it, too. The clicking sound continued, occasionally breaking off for several long moments before resuming. It came from the tunnel ahead. It might be the sound of two rocks knocking together … or two mandibles! It was too faint to be sure.
Jaul’s eyes locked on hers-wide with alarm but also with triumph. He’d led them to something, at least. Demascus took the lead, motioning for everyone else to follow. The light of Chant’s sunrod slid off the deva like water, as if he was already transitioning into a halfshadow state. Riltana followed, but not too close, in case the deva fully woke his power. She worried he’d accidentally kill her one day while he was enveloped in the vestige of what he’d once been.
The tunnel descended in a series of tight switchbacks dropping them a hundred or more yards before opening into an enormous cavern lit with a hovering pillar of purple flame. Splintered planks from an elevator lay scattered across the stone floor. Tether cord was splayed in hundred-yard loops across the room like spilled blood. Riltana realized it must be the platform Demascus had cut loose. She sucked in a breath. The driders had come up from this chamber! Where were they now?
A few dozen cocoons swayed on lines descending from the ceiling. She spied no spiders, no dark elves, no driders. She didn’t feel any relief. If their foes weren’t here, where were they?
The floor was a checkerboard of vertical lifts and drops, each level a random distance above or below its neighbor. Narrow planks connected some of the surfaces above dark crevices. Other level areas were isolated miniature mesas. Webs clogged many of the pits.
Jaul pointed straight across the cavern. “The mine face is the far wall,” he whispered, remaining quiet, it seemed, more out of awe than stealth.
Riltana squinted. The purple illumination made visibility tricky, but she made out a shape curling out of the rock. Half was free of entombment, apparently thanks to the careful work of picks and chisels. It glowed silver even in the bluish-red light.
“The arambarium mother lode?” she asked.
Arathane studied the object for a few moments. “It must be,” she finally replied.
“It’s big as a house,” said Chant. “And it looks like … Wait. That can’t be right.”
“What can’t be?” said Jaul.
“The chunk of mineral. Does it look like … a disembodied hand to you?”
asked Chant.
“Lords of shadow!” exclaimed Demascus.
Riltana agreed. The damn thing was a hand, ten feet across if it was an inch. Surely it was part of a sculpture. A piece of some really old statue. Unless it was the lopped-off limb of some ancient god or primordial …
The clicking resumed as a procession entered the vault, emerging from behind a fold of rock in the opposite corner of the cavern. The first few creatures resembled a cross between gangly humans and bloated spiders. They had long, slender arms and legs protruding from rounded, fleshy bodies. Bulbous black eyes blinked from their spider heads.
Riltana ducked behind a knob of basalt. Her companions scurried to follow her lead.
“More spider hybrids,” hissed Demascus.
“Ettercaps,” replied Chant softly. “They’re ettercaps.”
Riltana didn’t give a flying piss whether they were called ettercaps or bumbledorks. Either way, they were bad news.
The creatures pulled a sledge into view. Instead of runners, the transport slid on air itself. Three creatures rode on the sledge: a drider, a blue ogre with horns, and an ebony-skinned woman with hair like spun ice and an outfit composed of equal parts armor and bared skin. Though Riltana had never seen one before, she knew the woman was a drow.
“Oh, shit,” she breathed. The tinkle of a silly child’s rhyme started up unbidden in her head, in time to the clicking, about fat spiders and playing hide and seek in the trees.…
“The drider greeters told you to leave,” the drow said, facing their direction. She didn’t yell, but her voice carried across the irregular chamber with perfect resonance.
“She knows we’re here!” whispered Jaul. Chant shushed him.
“But you didn’t listen,” the drow continued. “So you’ve made your choice.”
Demascus sighed. He straightened and stepped forward several paces, up a plank and out onto one of the mesa-like platforms.
“You’re Chenraya Xorlarrin, with whom Master Raneger made an alliance?” the deva said, his voice loud enough to carry. Lord Pashra and the drider tensed, but the drow murmured something to them Riltana couldn’t hear.
“You’ve followed us far,” she said, her voice again as audible as if she were standing next to them. “Even onto the Demonweb. Very rash. Lolth knows your scent.”
Demascus waved his hand as if the drow’s words were irrelevant. “So Raneger remains your ally?”
She laughed. “Of course not! No priestess of Lolth would long pollute herself pretending to treat another as an equal. Especially that overinflated worm.” She sniffed. “But the fool Raneger served his purpose. If not for the blind of his warehouse, I might’ve learned too late that someone else had discovered my interest in this ridiculous country.”
Queen Arathane broke cover and joined Demascus. Her bodyguard hustled to follow her.
“You’ve made your last mistake, Mistress Xorlarrin,” announced Arathane. “I rule this ‘ridiculous country,’ as you name it. I’m more than capable of ending your threat to Akanul’s sovereignty.”
Chenraya was too far away for Riltana to make out any expression on the dark elf’s face, but her momentary stillness spoke volumes. The drow was surprised, perhaps even suddenly afraid to find the monarch of Akanul was there. Some of the tension that had been building in the windsoul’s jaws and throat eased. Not that she was yet ready to stand up and expose her position; she remained huddled behind cover with Chant and Jaul.
Finally Chenraya said, “I don’t doubt you are strong. But I’m under Lolth’s protection. The Demon Queen gave each of her daughters-all the drow, in fact, even the sniveling husbands and sons of the drow-a challenge. Mine is to recover this piece of ejecta from the forgotten twin of Toril, for Lolth’s coming transformation. You’ll not stop me.”
Chant whispered, “Arathane’s got the drow talking-we should attack while she’s distracted. Or better yet, run.”
“Shhh. I want to hear what she’s saying,” Riltana said. She was no intellectual, but if Lolth was mobilizing the drow for some sinister scheme, it probably wasn’t a bad idea to find out why.
Chant sighed, but lapsed back into silence.
The dark elf was still speaking, “… this relic limb of the dead primordial Arambar, slain in the ancient wars before Abeir-Toril became two. I have as much right to it as anyone. Indeed, I found the mother lode first, despite all your feeble scratching in the earth to collect its residue. It’s mine.”
Arathane shook her head. “Whether it’s a mineral deposit or a relic of some long dead creature, it’s the property of Akanul-we’ve claimed this isle for decades, and have worked the stone, extracting its resources. And regardless, you’ve slain my people who labored here under my protection. There’s no scenario under which you’ll leave this place alive and unpunished.”
“So much for the diplomatic option,” Chant murmured.
“Then come stop me, genasi,” purred Chenraya. The drow and her party stepped off the sledge. She glanced at the cluster of ettercaps. “Remove the Hand of Arambar from the stone and secure it.”
Demascus glanced at Arathane and her remaining bodyguard, then back at Riltana and the others. His slow grin of excitement spoke volumes. The idiot was eager to fight.
Dozens more ettercaps crawled up from web-clogged pits scattered across the vault floor. They were accompanied by spiders of every size, including one as large as a half-grown dragon. The c
ocoons hanging from the ceiling jerked and writhed, then disgorged bloated mine workers like hatching insects. The miners dropped to the stone floor. Only about half staggered back to their feet. Then the undead corpses, the spiders, and the newly revealed ettercaps surged across the vault toward the queen’s party.
“Too many!” Riltana yelled. She leaped into the air, trusting that it would catch her. It did, and she soared higher on wings of wind. “How’d they all get out here to the island?”
“The Demonweb?” asked Chant. He brought up his crossbow and began firing.
“Jaul, stay behind me!” Riltana’s retort was lost in the attacking throng’s scream. Like an advancing army, the creatures squealed battle cries with hard mandibles and dead lips.
From her floating vantage, the thief saw the first wave of spiders pour onto the platform where Demascus and the queen stood. The deva’s twin swords moved in a complicated hourglass pattern, creating an alternating red and white glow that burned the smallest spiders to cinders and dazed the ettercaps and corpses, making them stumble and sway when they came into its light.
The queen whirled her spear over her head, then plunged it into an ettercap that had slipped around the sword of her bodyguard. The creature lit up from the inside, lightning-bright, then disappeared with a ripping pop.
Something sticky brushed Riltana’s face, and she wiped it quickly away. Gore? No-an ettercap was trying to lasso her with a web line! A veritable blizzard of webs sleeted the air toward her. She swallowed a curse and dropped beneath the canopy of lofting nets, coming too close to the irregular ground for her comfort. Chant shouted something, but Riltana couldn’t make it out over the din. She skimmed only a few feet above the swarming attackers.
A genasi corpse with clear fluid sopping his shirt saw her. It tried to bash her head in with a broken pickaxe. Riltana bobbed under the blow, caught his arm, and broke it with a rising knee. The corpse staggered back too far and dropped off the platform into one of the surrounding pits.
Demascus, the queen, and her swearing bodyguard advanced along a plank to another stony rise, closer to Chenraya. Riltana snarled and flung herself once more into an updraft she coaxed into being with-
Something grabbed one of her rising boots.
“Get off me, you leech-son!” she snarled, and kicked at the ettercap trying to pull her back down. For its trouble, the thing got a steel-toed kick to the crown of its head. It made a sighing noise as it dropped back into the press of spiders. The windsoul used the momentum of her blow to whirl back above the fray. A cresting wave of spiders rolled toward Demascus and Arathane.
The lone drider that had been on the far side of the vault appeared between the deva and the queen in a shadowy blast tinged with purple light. The queen’s elite bodyguard yelled, pressing the drider with a flurry of attacks. The drider drew back before the peacemaker’s glinting sword … until one of the drider’s coal-dark legs slashed down and cut him from neck to navel with a clawed tip.
Arathane fended off another clawed leg with her spear.
Riltana realized Demascus was plastered in webbing.
“Half-wit deva!” she cursed.
The thief arrowed downward at an angle, holding her sword like a spike. She plunged it into the bulbous thorax of the drider even as it reared up over Demascus.
It screeched. Its legs convulsed. One knocked the queen over the crumbling edge, more by accident than design. Another struck Riltana, smashing her out of the air. She rolled a few times along the stone in the opposite direction, gathering bruises, and dropped her sword in glovespace just in time to free her hands. She clung to the powdery lip of the mesa. The pit beneath her crawled with spiders on sticky webs-she did not want to fall down there.
Riltana contracted her arms and kicked high. She got a boot heel over the edge, and pulled herself up. The drider had jumped to a neighboring platform. In its free human hand, it gathered a ball of purplish black light.
“Demascus!” she yelled. Where’d he go? The webs that caught him fluttered, but he was no longer visible. Had he been knocked into one of the pits?
Arathane hurled her spear at the drider. It became a jagged streak of light in midflight and played across the drider’s form like lightning prodding a prairie. When the crackling radiance died away, the drider swayed, leaking ichor from several char spots on its skin and exoskeleton. The spear appeared back in Arathane’s hand with the sound of distant thunder.
The drider was hurt but not finished. It raised high the vile mass of light still squirming in its hand and screamed, “Lolth, I summon thee.”
“Oh, fist!” said Riltana. Was it really calling a demon goddess? “Lolth, turn your visage upon this-”
A shadow swept across the drider, moving so swiftly that Riltana could barely track it. Where it passed, a line of fresh ichor gushed. When it stopped next to the massive bulk of the drider, she saw it was Demascus, cloaked in gloom. His weapons blazed out of the dimness, casting just enough light across his face for Riltana to recognize the cruel, gleeful lines of the Sword of the Gods. A line of greenish fluid trailed from a perfect cut across the drider’s neck. Its incantation was ruined. Good! But … goose bumps speckled her arms.
Demascus gestured as if casting an invisible shroud across the drider’s bulk, even as the spider-thing whirled to get a glimpse of its attacker. Before it had completely turned, Demascus charged, and with a dual, scissors-like swing, decapitated the dark elf torso from the spider body. The drider fell in two parts, dead.
“Good job, Demascus!” Riltana yelled. She came down next to him. Her boot heels rang on the stone.
The deva glanced at her. His scarf had come loose in the fight and hovered around him like a cobra’s hood, lending him a more dramatic air of menace than usual. His blank eyes were holes in shadow. She stepped back without realizing it.
Demascus fixed his eyes across the chamber. The original ettercaps who’d pulled the sledge into the chamber had taken up picks and hammers and were excavating the hand. Chenraya and Lord Pashra seemed content to monitor the dig.
It struck Riltana as slightly odd that they hadn’t reacted with alarm when the drider had fallen. In fact, it almost seemed to her that a big blue smirk hovered at the edges of Pashra’s lips. The drow was too far away to make out her expression. But her posture suggested she was waiting for something.
Demascus laughed and stepped into shadow. He stepped out twenty paces farther into the room, bypassing a good portion of Chenraya’s massed might.
“Demascus, wait!” she yelled.
The deva found another door through obscurity. He reappeared dozens of yards farther into the vault. He’d spanned about three-fourths of the distance to the mine face, where ettercaps dug at the entombed hand like ferrets drunk on glitter weed.
Chenraya smiled. It must’ve been a wide smile for Riltana to notice it from so far.
Oh shit! she thought. “Demascus, get-”
The ceiling fell. Tons of stone simply dropped. It smothered the center of the vault. Riltana’s last glimpse of Demascus was his raised arms, as if he had a hope in heaven of protecting himself from the rock fall. Then the stone ground him down, and an explosive plume of rock dust covered everything like a shroud.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SOMEWHERE IN THE ASTRAL SEA
A LONG TIME AGO
The peak shivered beneath a sky of endless silver.
The mountain was a divine domain, an island of tranquility adrift in the Astral Sea. A god’s benevolence suffused each new day with peace. Or once had. Trouble had come to this particular paradise. A devilish entity determined to claim godhood for itself assaulted it.
The summit shuddered as if waking from sleep. It groaned as if finally letting go of a burden carried for too many years. Then the mountain roared in full-throated agony. As a wave breaks, the pinnacle broke, and an avalanche of snow and stone splashed downward, enrobing the mountain in a lengthening garment of roiling mist.
Not nearly fa
r enough down that slope, Demascus fought. Golden light leaked from the Whorl of Ioun on Demascus’s left thumb. Exorcessum flashed in his grip. The Veil wrapped his left forearm, and a dozen god-given charms dangled from his braided hair. He was the Sword of the Gods. His role was to terminate those who had been selected by gods and fate to die.
However, that day his burden was not to slay; it was to save.
Demascus stood beneath the lintel of a silver gate that opened into the mountain’s heart. The gate trembled with the domain’s turmoil. But while he stood in its mouth, the gate could not collapse. The arch-shaped charm he wore in his hair prevented it. The gate had already suffered a dozen voracious assaults from lesser cataclysm dragons roused by devilish pacts. And he had broken each new attack on the length of his blade.
Terrified souls streamed from the gate’s mouth. Dressed in sheer robes of white and gold, and having spent uncounted years in the warm embrace of their divine benefactor, they were unprepared for cataclysm. Yet they grasped at even the smallest chance for survival. Demascus was providing that opportunity. As the refugees reached the gate, they were pulled up into the sky by servitor angels and ferried away like a cloud of dandelion seeds in the wind. Most would escape. But only if Demascus proved his worth.
A louder roar pierced all the others. The deva’s eyes rose to the tumbling line high above. The distant avalanche was approaching with alarming speed, for it contained another cataclysm dragon-on an order of magnitude more dangerous than those he’d so far reduced to rubble. It writhed within the mountainside on the move, a part of the greater disaster surrounding it. Its wings were the vanguard of pounding stone, its voice the bellow of suffocating rock, and its lashing tail the enveloping pall of dust that would eventually settle on the defeated. Draconic only in broad outline, it was an animate collection of jagged stone, snow, and packed ash. The dragon’s eyes, fangs, and claws were diamond crystals, flashing with static discharge.
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