Realms of the Underdark a-4

by Mark Anthony

  "A few," Liriel admitted. "Surface raids often go wrong-the humans or faerie elves sometime learn of the attack in time to prepare, or they fight better than expected, or in larger numbers. And it is likely that from time to time a drow dagger slips between a youngling's ribs," she said matter-of-factly. "In those rites that are taken Below, sometimes initiates become lost in the wild Underdark, or stumble upon some monster that is beyond their skill with magic and weapons."

  "And sometimes, they are slain by the very things they hunt," Gromph said.

  This was a given, the girl shrugged, as if to ask what the point was.

  "I do not desire to see any harm come to you. Xandra Shobalar may not share my good wishes," he said bluntly.

  Liriel suddenly went cold. Many emotions simmered and danced deep within her, waiting for her to reach in and pluck one free-yet she truly felt none of them. Her tumultuous responses remained just beyond her touch, for she had no idea which one to chose.

  How could Gromph suggest that Xandra Shobalar could betray her? The Mistress of Magic had raised her, lavishing more attention and indulgent favor upon her than most drow younglings ever dreamed of receiving! Apart from her own mother-who had given Liriel not only life, but a wonderful five-year cocoon of warmth and security and even love-Liriel believed that Xandra was the person most responsible for making her what she was. And that was saying a great deal. Although Liriel could not remember her mother's face, she understood that she had received from Sosdrielle Vandree something that was rare among her kindred, something that nothing and no one could take from her. Not even Gromph Baenre, who had ordered her beloved mother's death twelve years ago!

  Liriel stared at her father, too dumbfounded to realize that her churning thoughts were written clearly in her eyes.

  "You do not trust me," the archmage stated in a voice absolutely devoid of emotion. "This is good-I was beginning to despair of your judgment. It may be that you will survive this ritual, after all. Now listen carefully as I describe the steps needed to activate the vial of holding."

  Chapter Four: The Blooding

  The Blooding ritual took place on the third darkcycle after Liriel's meeting with her father. She was returned to House Shobalar as the day grew old, for all such rituals began at the dark hour of Narbondel.

  When the great timepiece of Menzoberranzan dimmed to mark the hour of midnight, Liriel stood before Hinkutes'nat Alar Shobalar, the matron mother of the clan.

  The young drow had few dealings with the Shobalar matriarch, and she felt slightly unnerved by the dark and regal figure before her.

  Hinkutes'nat was a high priestess of Lloth, as befitted a ruling matron, and she was typical of those who followed the ways of the drow's goddess, the Spider Queen. Her throne room was as grim and forbidding a lair as anything Liriel had ever seen. Shadows were everywhere, for the skulls of many Shobalar victims had been fashioned into faintly glowing lanterns that threw patterns of death upon every surface and cast ghastly purple highlights upon the dark faces assembled before the matron's throne.

  A large cage stood in the middle of the chamber, ready to receive the prey for the Blooding ceremony. It was surrounded on all four sides by the giant, magically bred spiders that formed the heart of the Shobalar guard. In fact, giant spiders stood guard everywhere- in every corner of the chamber, on each of the steps that led up to the throne dais, even suspended from the chamber's ceiling on long, glistening threads.

  In all, the throne room was a fit setting for the Shobalar matriarch. Cold and treacherous, the matron resembled a spider holding court in the center of her own web.

  She wore a black robe upon which webs had been embroidered in silver thread, and the gaze that she turned upon Liriel was as calm and pitiless as that of any arachnid that ever had lived. She was spiderlike in character, as well: even among the treacherous drow, the Shobalar Matron had earned a reputation for the tangled nature of the deals she spun.

  "You have prepared the prey?" the matron inquired of her third-born daughter.

  "I have," Xandra said. "The youngling drow who stands before you shows great promise, as one would expect of a daughter of House Baenre. To offer her less than a true challenge would be an insult to the First Family."

  Matron Hinkutes'nat lifted one eyebrow. "I see," she said dryly. "Well, that is your prerogative, and within the rules set for the Blooding ritual. It is unlikely that recourse will be taken, but you understand that you will bear the brunt of any unpleasantness that might result?" When Xandra nodded grim acceptance, the matron again turned to Liriel. "And you, Princess, are you ready to begin?"

  The Baenre girl dipped into a deep bow, doing her best to dim her shining eyes and school her face into expressionless calm.

  Three days in Gromph's household had not quite destroyed her eagerness for this adventure.

  "This, then, will be your prey," Mistress Xandra said. She lifted both arms high, and brought them down to her sides in a quick sweep. A faint crackle vibrated through the damp and heavy air of the chamber, and the bars of the cage flared with sudden fey light. Every eye in the room turned to behold the ritual quarry.

  Liriel's heart pounded with excitement-she was certain that everyone could hear it!

  Then the light surrounding the cage faded, and she was equally sure that all could feel the hard, cold hand that gripped her chest and muffled its restless rhythm.

  Within the cage stood a human male garbed in robes of bright red. Liriel had seldom encountered humans and had few thoughts concerning them, but suddenly she found that she had no desire to slaughter this one. He was too elflike, too much like a real person!

  "This is an outrage," she said in a low, angry voice. "I was led to believe that my Blooding would be a test of skill and courage, a hunt involving some dangerous surface creature, such as a boar or a hydra!"

  "If you misunderstood the nature of the Blooding, it was through no fault of mine," Mistress Xandra retorted. "For years you have heard tales of surface raids. What did you think were slain-cattle? Prey is prey, whether it has two legs or four. You have attended the ceremonies, you know what has been required of those who have gone before you."

  "I will not do this thing," Liriel said with a regal hauteur that would have done justice to Matron Baenre herself.

  "You have no choice in the matter," Matron Hinkutes'nat pointed out. "It is the part of the mistress or matron to chose the prey, and to name the terms of the hunt.

  "Proceed," she said, turning to her daughter.

  Mistress Xandra permitted herself a smile. "The human wizard-for such he is-will be transported to a cavern in the Dark Dominions that lie to the southwest of Menzoberranzan. You, Liriel Baenre, will be escorted to a nearby tunnel. You must hunt and destroy the human, using any weapon at your disposal. Ten dark-cycles you have to accomplish this, we will not seek you before this time is up.

  "But you must take this key," Xandra continued as she handed a tiny golden object to the girl. "I have strung it upon a chain-keep it on your person at all times. It is not our purpose that you come to grief: with this key, you can summon immediate aid from House Shobalar, should the need arise. You have much talent, and you have been well trained," the Mistress added in a less severe tone. "We have every confidence in your success."

  The older female's apparent concern for her well-being gave Liriel a glimmer of hope.

  "Mistress, I cannot slay this wizard!" she said in a despairing whisper, letting her eyes speak clearly of her distress. Surely Xandra, who had trained and fostered her, would understand how she felt and would lift this burden from her!

  "You will kill, or you will be killed," the Shobalar wizard proclaimed. "That is the challenge of the Blooding, and it is the reality of drow life!"

  Xandra's voice was cold and even, but Liriel did not miss the glint in the wizard's red eyes. Stunned and enlightened, Liriel stared at her trusted mentor.

  Kill or be killed. There could be little doubt which outcome Xandra preferred.

>   Liriel tore her gaze away from the vindictive crimson stare and did her best to attend to the ceremony that followed. As she stood silently through the matron's ritual blessing, the girl was struck by a strange and very vivid mental image: somewhere deep within her heart, a tiny light flickered and died-a harbinger, perhaps, of darkness to come. A moment of inexplicable sadness touched Liriel, but it was gone before she could marvel at so strange an emotion. To a young dark elf, such a vision seemed right and fitting-a cause for elation rather than regret. Soon, very soon, she would be a true drow indeed!

  Chapter Five: Kill or Be Killed

  On silent feet, Liriel eased her way down the dark tunnel. One of the gifts her father had given her were boots of elvenkind, wondrous treasures crafted of soft leather and dark-elven magic. With them, she could walk with no more noise than her own shadow.

  She also wore a fine new cloak-not a piwafwi, for that uniquely drow cloak was usually worn only by those who had proven themselves by this very ritual. Of course, there were exceptions to this rule, and Liriel did indeed possess one of the magical cloaks of concealment-it played a significant role in her frequent escapes from House Shobalar-but youngling dark elves were not permitted to wear them during the Blooding. The advantage of invisibility removed most of the challenge, and was therefore deemed inappropriate for the first major kill.

  Thus Liriel was plainly visible to the heat-perceptive eyes of the Underdark's many strange and deadly creatures, and therefore in constant danger.

  The young drow kept keenly alert as she walked. Yet her heart was not in the hunt. She was not entirely certain she still had a heart: grief and rage had left her feeling strangely hollow.

  Liriel was accustomed to betrayals both large and small, and she was still trying to assimilate her realization that she must shrug them off and move ahead — albeit with caution. So it had been with Bythnara, whose snippy comments and small jealousies had once pained her deeply. So it had been even with her father, who twelve years earlier had wronged Liriel more deeply than any other person had before or since.

  But it would not be so with Xandra Shobalar, Liriel vowed grimly. Xandra's betrayal was different, and it would not go unremarked — or unavenged.

  Vengeance was the principle passion of the dark elves, but it was an emotion new to Liriel. She savored it as if it were a goblet of the spiced green wine she had recently tasted — bitter, certainly, but capable of sharpening the passions and hardening resolve. Liriel was very young, and willing to accept and overlook many things in her dark-elven kindred. This, however, was the first time she had seen the desire for her death written in another drow's eyes. Liriel understood instinctively that this could not go unpunished if she herself hoped to survive.

  But at a deeper, even more personal level, the girl bitterly resented Xandra for forcing her to disregard her own deep instincts and act against her will.

  Liriel rebelled bitterly against the need to submit to her Mistress's demands, yet what else could she do if she was to be accounted a true drow?

  What else, indeed?

  A smile slowly crept over Liriel's dark face as a solution to her dilemma began to take shape in her mind. There is much more to being a drow, her father had admonished her, than engaging in crude slaughter.

  The painful weight on the young drow's chest lifted a bit, and for the first time she realized a very strange thing: she did not fear the dreaded wild Underdark. It seemed to her that this wilderness was a wondrous, fascinating place full of unexpected turns and twists. There was danger and adventure and excitement in the very air and stone. Unlike Menzoberranzan, where every bit of rock had been shaped and carved into a monument to the pride and might of the drow, out here everything was new, mysterious, and full of delightful possibilities. Here she could carve out her own place. Liriel fell suddenly, deeply, and utterly in love with this vast and untamed world.

  "A grand adventure," she said softly, repeating without a trace of irony the words of her own discarded dream. A sudden smile brightened her face, and as she bestowed an affectionate pat upon an enormous, down-thrust spire of rock, she added, "The first of many!"

  Without warning, a bright ball of force rounded the sharp corner of the tunnel ahead and hurtled toward her.

  The battle had begun.

  Training and instinct took over at once: Liriel snapped both hands up, wrists crossed and palms out. A field of resistance sprung up before her an instant before the fireball would have struck. The girl squeezed her eyes shut and tossed her head to one side as the brilliant light exploded into a sheet of magical flame.

  Liriel dropped flat and rolled aside, as she'd been taught to do in such attacks. The magical shield could not withstand more than one or two impacts of such power, and it was prudent to get out of the line of fire. To her astonishment, the second blast came in low and hard-and directly toward her. Liriel leapt to her feet and dived for the far side of the tunnel. She managed to put the large stalagmite between herself and the coming blast.

  The explosion rocked the tunnel and sent a shower of rock fragments cascading down upon the young drow. She coughed and spat dust, but her fingers darted undeterred through the gestures of a spell.

  In response to her magic, the dust and the sulfurous smoke swirled to a central spot of the tunnel and gathered into a large globe. Liriel pointed grimly in the direction of the unseen wizard, and the floating globe obediently rounded the corner toward its prey.

  She waited, hardly daring to breathe, for the next attack to come. When it did not, she began to creep slowly and cautiously around the bend. There was no sound in the tunnel ahead, other than the distant drip of water. This was promising: the globe of hot, smoky vapor had been enspelled to seek out and surround its source of origin. If all had gone well, the human wizard would have been smothered by the sulfurous by-products of his own fireball. Liriel picked up her pace. If this were so, she would have a limited amount of time to find and revive him.

  The tunnel grew ever brighter as she made her way down its twisting length. Suddenly the path dipped dramatically, and Liriel saw laid out before her a cavern that was stranger than any she had ever seen or imagined.

  Luminous fungi covered much of the stone and filled the entire cave with a faint, eerie blue glow. Stalagmites and stalactites met in long, irregular pillars of stone, and large crystals embedded in them tossed off glittering shards of light that stabbed at her eyes like tiny daggers.

  At once, a brilliant ball of light flashed into being in the center of the cavern. Liriel reeled back, clutching at her blinded eyes. Her keen ears caught the whine and hiss of an approaching missile, she dropped flat as yet another fireball blazed toward her.

  The fireball missed her, but barely. Heat assailed Liriel with searing pain as it passed over her, and the smoke and stench of her own scorched hair assaulted her like a blow to the gut. Coughing and gagging, she rolled aside. She blinked rapidly as she went, trying to dispel the lingering sparks and flashes that obscured her vision.

  Think, think! she admonished herself. So far she had only reacted: along that path lay certain defeat.

  To give herself a bit of time, Liriel called upon her innate drow magic and dropped a globe of darkness over the magic light ahead of her. That leveled the field of battle, but it did not steal the human wizard's visual advantages: there was still plenty of light in the cavern to allow him to see. She had not yet seen him, however.

  A suspicion that had taken root in Liriel's mind with the wizard's first attack suddenly blossomed into certainty. He had anticipated her responses, he seemed to know precisely how she would react. Perhaps he had been trained to know. Setting her jaw in grim determination, Liriel set out to learn just how well he'd been prepared.

  Her hands flashed through the gestures of a spell that Gromph had taught her-a rare and difficult spell that few drow knew of and fewer still could master. It had taken her the better part of a day to learn it, and now the effort was repaid in full.

  Sta
nding in the center of the cavern, ringed and partially shielded by a circle of stone pillars, stood the human. A stunned expression crossed his bearded face as he regarded his own outstretched hands. The reason for this was all too apparent: a piwafwi, which should have granted him magical invisibility, appeared suddenly on him and hung in glittering folds over his red-robed shoulders. He had not only been prepared, but equipped!

  The human wizard recovered quickly from his surprise. He drew in a deep breath and spat in Liriel's direction. A dark bolt shot from his mouth, and then another. The drow's eyes widened as she beheld the two live vipers wriggling toward her with preternatural speed.

  Liriel pulled two small knives from her belt and flicked them toward the nearest snake. Her blades tumbled end-over-end, crossing the viper's neck from either side and neatly slicing the head from its body.

  The beheaded length of snake writhed and looped for several moments, blocking the second viper's path long enough for Liriel to get off a second volley.

  This time she threw only one knife. The blade plunged into the viper's open mouth and exploded out the back of its head with a bright burst of gore. Liriel allowed herself a small, grim smile, and she resolved to properly thank the mercenary who'd taught her to throw!

  It was a moment's delay, but even that much was too long. Already the human wizard's hands were moving through the gestures of a spell-a familiar spell.

  Liriel tore a tiny dart from her weapons belt and spat upon it. In response to her unspoken command, the other needed spell component-a tiny vial of acid- rose from her open spell bag. She seized it and tossed both items into the air. Her fingers flashed through the casting, and at once a luminous streak flew to answer the one flashing toward her. The acid bolts collided midway between the combatants, sending a spray of deadly green droplets sizzling off into the cavern.

  The human flung out one hand. Magic darted from each of his fingertips, spinning out into a giant web as it flew. The weird blue light of the cavern glimmered along the strands and turned the sticky droplets that clung to them into gemlike things that rivaled moonstones and pearls. Liriel marveled at the web's deadly beauty, even as it descended upon her.