Realms of the Underdark a-4

by Mark Anthony

  Chapter Eight: Her Father's Daughter

  The summons from the Narbondellyn district came early the next day. This time, Gromph Baenre sent word that Liriel's belongings were to be packed up and sent after her.

  The young drow received this information stoically. In truth, Liriel did not regret her removal from House Shobalar. Perhaps she did not understand the full meaning of her own Blooding ceremony, but she knew with certainly that she could no longer remain in the same complex as Xandra Shobalar.

  Liriel's reception at the archmage's mansion was about what she had expected. Servants met her and showed her to her apartment-a small but lavish suite that boasted a well-equipped library of spellbooks and scrolls. Apparently her father intended for her to continue her wizardly education. But there was no sign of Gromph, and the best the servants could do for Liriel was to assure her that the archmage would send for her when she was wanted.

  And so it was that the newly initiated drow spent her first darkcycle alone, the first of what she suspected would be many such days and nights. Liriel found that the solitude was painfully difficult, and that the silent hours crept by.

  After several futile attempts at study, the weary girl at last took to her bed. For hours she stared at the ceiling and longed for the oblivion of slumber. But her mind was too full, and her thoughts too confused, for sleep to find her.

  Oddly enough, Liriel felt less triumphant than she should have. She was alive, she had passed the test of the Blooding, she had repaid Xandra's treachery with public humiliation, she had even devised a way to keep from slaying the human wizard.

  Why was it, then, that she felt his blood on her hands as surely as if she'd torn out his heart with her own fingernails? And what was this soul-deep sadness, this dark resignation? Though she had no name to give this emotion, Liriel suspected that it would ever after cast a shadow upon her blithe spirit.

  The hours passed, and the distant tolling of Narbondel signaled that the darkest hour was once again upon Menzoberranzan. It was then that the summons finally came, a servant bid Liriel to dress and await the archmage in his study.

  Suddenly Liriel was less than anxious to face her drow sire. What would Gromph have to say about her unorthodox approach to the Blooding hunt and ceremony? During her three days of preparation, the archmage had repeatedly expressed concern about her judgment and ambition, pronouncing her too trusting and carefree, and he had wondered at the strange bias of her character. It seemed likely to her that he would not approve.

  Liriel did as she was bid and hastened to her father's sanctum. She had not long to wait before Gromph appeared, still wearing the wondrous, glittering piwafwi that held an arsenal of magical weapons, and that proclaimed his power and his high office. The archmage acknowledged her presence with a curt nod and then sat down behind his table.

  "I have heard what transpired at your ceremony," he began.

  "The ritual was fulfilled," Liriel said earnestly-and a trifle defensively. "I might not have shed blood, but Matron Hinkutes'nat accepted my efforts!"

  "More than accepted," the archmage said dryly. "The Shobalar matron is quite impressed with you. And more importantly, so am I."

  Liriel absorbed this in silence. Then, suddenly, she blurted out, "Oh, but I wish I understood why!"

  Gromph lifted one brow. "You really must learn to speak with less than complete candor," he advised her. "But in this case, no harm is done. Indeed, your words only confirm what I had suspected, you acted partly by design, but partly by instinct. This is indeed gratifying."

  "Then you're not angry?" Liriel ventured. When the archmage sent her an inquiring look, she added, "I thought that you would be furious upon hearing that I did not actually kill the human."

  Gromph was silent a long moment. "You did something far more important: you fulfilled both the spirit and the letter of the Blooding ritual, in layers of subtle complexity that did credit to you and to your house. The human wizard is dead-that much was a needed formality. Using Xandra Shobalar as a tool was a clever twist. But washing your hands in her blood was brilliant!"

  "Thank you," Liriel said, in a tone so incongruously glum that it surprised a chuckle from the archmage.

  "You still do not understand. Very well, I will speak plainly. The human wizard was never your enemy, Xandra Shobalar was your enemy! You recognized that, you turned her plot against her, and you proclaimed a blood victory. And in doing so, you demonstrated that you have learned what it is to be a true drow."

  "But I did not kill," Liriel said thoughtfully. "And why is it that, although I did not kill, I feel as if I had?"

  "You might not have actually shed blood, but the ritual of the Blooding has done its intended work all the same," the archmage asserted.

  Liriel considered this, and suddenly she knew her father's words as truth. Her innocence was gone, but pride and power, treachery, intrigue, survival, victory- all of these things she knew intimately and well.

  "A true drow," she repeated in a tone that was nine parts triumph and one portion regret. She took a deep breath and looked up into Gromph's eyes-and into a mirror.

  For the briefest of moments, Liriel glimpsed a flicker of poignant sorrow in the archmage's eyes, like the glint of gold shining through a deep layer of ice. It came and departed so quickly Liriel doubted that Gromph was even aware of it, after all, several centuries of cold and calculating evil lay between him and his own rite of passage. If he remembered that emotion at all, he was no longer able to reach into his soul and bring it forth. Liriel understood, and at last she had a name to give the final, missing element that defined a true drow:

  Despair.

  "Congratulations," the archmage said in a voice laced with unconscious irony.

  "Thank you," his daughter responded in kind.

  SEA OF GHOSTS

  Roger E. Moore

  The disaster went unrecognized that evening by all who dwelt on the plains of the Eastern Shaar, who heard only the rattling of pottery on wooden shelves or soothed only the skittishness of tethered horses. A hunter lowered his bow, head cocked to catch a rumbling that frightened off his prey. A sorceress in a stone tower frowned, distracted from a mildewed tome by a vibration that caused the candle flames in the room to dance. An old shepherd sitting cross-legged on a rock looked up from the flute he had carved, surprised by distant thunder from an empty red sky. The sun flowed beneath the horizon.

  An hour later, all was forgotten.

  Far beneath the lazy grass of the Eastern Shaar, unseen by the rising moon, was a measureless maze of dripping caverns and dusty halls. Through this stupendous realm, a subterranean river hurled along a passage it had carved through a thousand miles of cold rock. Called the River Raurogh by dwarves who, over long centuries, had mapped its dark twists and turns, the channel descended through layer after layer of stone at a steady pace toward an unknown end.

  Cautious dwarves slowly charted the river's course, probing for whirlpools, low ceilings, rapids, flesh-eating emerald slime, and unwholesome beasts that welcomed a change in their diet of blind, transparent fish. Foolish dwarves cast off in heavy rafts with magical lights fore and aft, determined to learn the river's secrets in a fraction of the time. Four out of five cautious dwarves came home to make their reports, only one in three foolish dwarves did the same. The cautious dwarves drew reliable maps. The foolish dwarves gave birth to legends.

  It was a foolish dwarf, battered and wet, who returned to tell of the Deepfall at the Raurogh's end, which had claimed his eight companions and their raft. It had undoubtedly claimed many rafts before theirs. Other dwarves soon dug out a passage from a nearby cavern to the Deepfall, where they put down their tools and marveled at the sight. The long tunnel carved by the River Raurogh here opened into a titanic domed chamber splashed in scarlet and ocher hues. A thousand long stalactites and glittering mineral curtains hung from the dome like diamond chandeliers in an emperor's palace. The ancient silo, well over two hundred feet across, dropped away into not
hingness. No sounds arose from the black depths to indicate that the cascade had found its bottom.

  Seeing a natural ledge leading into the silo by the chiseled opening, a foolish dwarf soon edged out on hands and knees, bearing a short staff upon which a light-bearing spell had been cast. He looked up first, noting that between the brilliant formations on the ceiling was a dense network of narrow cracks looking a bit like a crude giant spider's web. Most of the cracks were filled in with mineral draperies, but their cause was still apparent. The entire ceiling, to an unknown height, had begun to separate from the rock above it.

  The dwarf judged after a minute that the roof was still centuries away from yielding to gravity, and he worried about it no more.

  The dwarf then looked over the ledge, his illuminated stick held aloft, and stared down into the abyss. His wisdom overcome by curiosity, he cast the enchanted staff over the edge and watched it fall until it was a spray-dimmed twinkle that was gone from view between one eye blink and the next. He lost track of the time over which the light fell, the depth into which he peered was beyond imagining. When the dwarf returned to his companions, it was deemed best to depart from the region in haste, in case an unwelcome being far down the shaft made its way up to investigate the source of the falling light. Nothing ever did, for which all were thankful, but the legend of the Deepfall spread and bewitched many a dwarf who heard of it.

  In a short time, a hundred dwarves migrated from the crowded caverns of Glitterdelve, discontent with local taxes, and chiseled out new homes near the great shaft's dome. Coarsely woven nets strung across the river caught blind fish and crustaceans for the dwarves' food. Wastes and offal were cast into side passages where edible fungi and molds for potions were cultivated. Magical lights of golden hue soon filled the colony of Raurogh's Hall, as the cave village came to be known, though all light was carefully shielded from the silo's top to avoid alerting anything living far down the falls. The surrounding rock was solid, local predators were quickly dispatched, and the river's bounty was endless. Life was good for seventeen years and a hundred twelve days.

  The derro waited for Wykar where they had agreed, toying silently with a long knife among the blue glow-fan fungi.

  Wykar stopped and did not move a muscle after he eased around the entrance to the blue-lit cavern chamber and saw the derro. The hunched gnome warily embraced the chamber with his senses to discover if Geppo had unwisely brought friends along to the hidden garden of luminescent fungi, but he sensed nothing amiss. He nonetheless kept his gray hands free, ready to seize from his vest, belt, or boots whatever weapon was called for.

  Geppo noticed the deep gnome after a few moments but did not seem startled. Head bowed in concentration on his knife, he peered up at the little intruder through his thick, pale eyebrows. A smile tugged at his thin lips. With skin as white and dirty as a toadstool cap, Geppo could easily pass for a true dwarfs corpse in his sleep. The orbs of his large, milky eyes each showed only a black dot for a pupil, little holes in moist white stones. His emaciated face was framed by long, matted hair of a filthy sulfur hue. An unkempt beard and mustache hid his sunken cheeks and narrow lower jaw.

  Though Geppo was a head taller than the three-foot gnome, he seemed much the weaker of the two. The derro's skeletal frame had not fleshed out after his long, hard-lived enslavement by the drow. Except for a change of clothing and a few obviously scavenged tools and weapons now strapped to his person, he looked exactly the same as when Wykar had known him as a fellow prisoner. The faint blue light from the glowfan fungi added an air of unreality to the derro's presence, as if he had recently left his own grave.

  Geppo wore a dark, muddy tunic of rough fabric, under which a darker outfit showed at the collar. Wykar guessed that leather or hide armor lay beneath. A finely tooled black belt bearing many small pockets and pouches was pulled tight at his thin waist. It looked like a drow's belt, but it was unlikely the derro had taken it from the bodies of their former masters. The Underdark held the remains of many failed plans and dreams, and one could get anything if one knew where to look.

  After a long moment, Geppo's gaze dropped. He resumed scraping the edge of his long knife across the scar-crossed back of his right hand. "Late," he grunted, his voice as rough as a broken rock.

  Wykar saw the butt of a weapon lying within reach of Geppo's left hand, almost hidden by the curled edge of a glowfan fungus. The bent gnome stepped closer, his movements relaxed and slow. The weapon looked like a crossbow, a little two-shot repeater type favored by the drow-a lucky find. When he was ten feet from Geppo, Wykar crouched on the balls of his boots and rested his elbows on his thighs, letting his thick hands dangle. "Long walk home," he replied.

  Geppo snorted faintly, as if he recognized the lie. He lifted the knife blade, eyed its bright edge, then carefully slid it home in a crude sheath strapped to his belt. His thin arms then rested on his knees, hands limp. After a short glance around Wykar, he nodded. "Alone," he rasped approvingly.

  "Alone," agreed Wykar. He detected no heat-glow but Geppo's, heard no sound but Geppo's breathing, smelled nothing other than the earthy scent of the glowing fungus and a sour, unwashed body odor that had to be the derro's. Didn't they ever bathe? It must be easy for Underdark predators to track them, little wonder most derro were so insanely paranoid.

  Geppo nodded and seemed to relax. He reached over and gently broke a piece from a nearby glowfan. He popped the luminescent tidbit into his mouth and chewed.

  Wykar saw disease-blackened teeth through the forest of filthy whiskers. The gnome swallowed and covered up his disgust. He never touched glowing fungus, much less ate it, many species of it were poisonous. Geppo seemed to enjoy fungus of any sort, though. The drow had fed him nothing else.

  Wykar let it go. He inhaled slowly as he looked the derro over. "I was surprised to see you here," he said at last. "I didn't know if you would make it very far after…"

  The derro smiled with the look of a wicked boy who is proud of something. "S'prise you, s'prise Geppo," he said. "You run much, walk much? You strong, hey. Geppo… mmm, no. Not strong." He held out his thin arms and turned them over, shaking his head and frowning in disapproval. "Not strong, hey? Sick much, sick much." He dropped his arms and shrugged, then leaned forward and stared into Wykar's cool gray eyes, a smirk on his ravaged face. "Hey," he whispered, his white eyes narrow. "Geppo sick much but"-his voice dropped further, as if telling a little secret-"laughing ones sick more now, hey?"

  He pulled back before Wykar could reply. "Laughing ones sick more," he repeated with a quick nod. "Sick more than Geppo." The derro thumped his chest with a bony fist when he spoke his name.

  Wykar's cheek twitched as he nodded in response, remembering. "Very sick," he said softly. He shivered, though he was not cold in the slightest.

  Geppo's smirk faded. After a moment, he nodded and made a gesture of dismissal. "Laughing ones no laughing, all good. You say, see me here, then you run. You here now." He stopped, waiting.

  The deep gnome looked into the derro's white eyes. This could work, he thought. He's still the same, or looks it. If he's the same old Geppo, this could really work.

  Wykar swallowed. He sensed that he should speak only the truth at this point. Being caught in an important lie would lead straight to serious trouble, especially with a derro-even this one.

  "When we… escaped, we left some unfinished business behind us," he said, making no pretense of talking down to the derro. Despite the derro's pidgin-talk, Geppo was intelligent and caught on to whatever was said to him. Some kind of innate derro trait, Wykar guessed. "I came here because I want to finish it. I need your help with things." Wykar swallowed, risking a small untruth. "I will ensure that you are well rewarded for whatever assistance you can give me."

  The derro smiled again but did not look Wykar in the eye. "Ah," he said casually. He seemed to have anticipated the topic. He inhaled deeply as his left hand drifted up to his throat and gently rubbed the skin there. "Need Geppo's hel-"
he began, but his voice suddenly broke before he could say more. He coughed and tried to clear his throat, then began coughing again, grimacing with pain.

  Wykar could not see Geppo's neck through his rat's nest of a beard, but he doubted the derro's old wounds had healed yet. A fun-loving young drow had tried to strangle him as a joke, using a long, thin metal wire. The gnome waited for Geppo to recover his voice, wondering if the wounds had become infected from the filth that was encrusted over the derro's faded hair and skin. It would not be surprising.

  The derro made a hand gesture of apology-something he had learned from Wykar during their captivity-then pointed at the gnome. "You," he wheezed faintly. Wykar's large ears could barely catch his tortured words. "You tell me what you do, hey?"

  "Yes," said Wykar. It was time to face the issue and see what came next. He thought about the crystal-nosed darts just inside his vest, and the speed at which he would have to get to them if things went badly-if Geppo reverted to the derro norm, that is, and tried to threaten or kill him. "I came back because of that egg," he said. "I want to destroy it. I need someone to go along with me for protection. You can have whatever gold and gems they brought with them, but I want to see the egg destroyed. That's all I want." That and the death of every drow alive, but I can be reasonable, he thought.

  The derro straightened and looked at Wykar in surprise. "Egg?" he said, his large eyes wider now. "You want big egg in chest, not-?" He shook his head with disbelief and stared at the gnome without further comment. Then he shrugged acceptance, and his eyes slowly narrowed, another topic obviously on his mind. He actually seemed to be considering the proposition then and there, with barely an argument. Several minutes passed. Wykar was patient but alert.