R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation

by Richard Lee Byers; Thomas M. Reid; Richard Baker

  Greyanna and half a dozen of her minions confronted Sabal in the fungus garden, where the topiarist had trimmed the phosphorescent growths into fanciful shapes, fertilized in some cases with the ripe, diced remains of expired slaves. Sabal’s final moments might have seemed pitiful, had Greyanna been susceptible to that crippling emotion. Her addled, desperate twin tried to use the platinum amulet against its maker, but Greyanna dispelled its powers with a thought. Then Sabal endeavored to cast a spell, but she couldn’t recite the lines with the proper cadence or execute the gestures with the necessary precision.

  Laughing, Greyanna and the other waylayers closed in on their victim, and they didn’t even have to strike a blow. Their mere proximity made Sabal wail, clutch at her heart, and fall over dead as a stone. Weak to the last.

  For a moment, Greyanna felt a bit cheated, but she shook the feeling off. Sabal was dead, that was the main thing, and with a bit of luck, she would still have Pharaun to torture.

  Chanting words that sent a cold, charnel breeze moaning through the garden, she reanimated Sabal’s corpse. She had use for it, first as a lure then as an instrument of humiliation. She hoped that before his extermination, her brother might be induced to spend one more tender interlude with it.

  When Pharaun returned to House Mizzrym an hour later, his hair and garments were as immaculate as ever, but he reeked of wine and walked with a slightly weaving and excessively careful tread. Evidently he’d been drinking his troubles away. Perfect.

  As it had been instructed, the zombie stepped out of a doorway at the other end of the hall. Its arms were extended in a beseeching gesture.

  Pharaun took a few steps toward it and faltered. Drunk or not, he had finally noticed that, despite Greyanna’s efforts to keep it warm, it was moving stiffly, awkwardly, as Sabal, even in the throes of her illness, never had. But he’d spotted the anomaly too late. He’d already advanced to the very center of the trap.

  Greyanna whispered a spell of paralysis. Pharaun staggered as his muscles all clenched at once. The fighters swarmed out of their hiding places, surrounded him, clubbed him repeatedly, and threw him down beneath them.

  She laughed with delight. Then her henchmen, more or less clumped in a pile on the floor, cried out in surprise and consternation. They started to stand up, and she saw that Pharaun did not lie crushed, bloody, and helpless on the floor beneath them. Impossible as it seemed, somehow he’d resisted the paralysis, then used his wizardry to extricate himself from the midst of his attackers.

  Knowing that Sabal was dead, Pharaun must likewise assume that without the aegis of a high priestess he could no longer survive in House Mizzrym. Certainly he couldn’t count on his vicious mother, who hadn’t bestirred herself to save one daughter from another, to do more for a paltry son. He was surely running back toward the exit.

  “That way! Fast!” Greyanna shouted, pointing, goading her agents into motion.

  When they rounded a corner, they saw Pharaun sprinting along ahead of them, his piwafwi billowing out behind him. He wasn’t weaving or stumbling—evidently desperation had cured his intoxication—but he was clutching his head, and leaving a trail of bloody drops on the polished floor. Evidently all the bludgeoning had done at least a little good.

  Greyanna’s minions shot their hand crossbows, but the darts bounced off the wizard’s cloak, which had obviously been enchanted to serve as armor. She stopped running long enough to conjure a blaze of fire under Pharaun’s feet. Her assassins cried out and shielded their eyes against the glare. Though surely burned, her brother stayed on his feet and kept going. The flames winked out behind him as suddenly as they’d appeared.

  The chase rounded another corner. Ahead of Pharaun was an adamantine double door, which swung open seemingly of its own accord. In reality, Greyanna knew, the wizard had used his silverand-jet Mizzrym House token to open it. She tried to use her own insignia to slam it shut again, but she was just out of range.

  Pharaun plunged through the exit. He was on the landing, a sort of balcony from which the occupants of the stalactite castle that was House Mizzrym could look down on the city. As was the custom, a company of guards stood watch there, and Greyanna screamed for them to stop the mage.

  They no doubt intended to be obey. She was a high priestess and he, a mere male, and manifestly trying to run away to boot. But alas, since their primary function was to look for miscreants trying to enter the castle, Pharaun had taken them by surprise. He had time to conjure some sort of hindering spell and dash on.

  When Greyanna made it to the door, she saw what manner of hindrance the fugitive had chosen. The guards were all bewildered, some standing stupefied or milling aimlessly about, a couple fighting with each other.

  A clattering, followed a heartbeat later by grunts and cries of pain, snapped her head around to the right. At the far end of the landing, a second contingent of sentries also looked at least temporarily incapacitated, these because Pharaun had pelted them with a conjured barrage of ice. He disappeared down the exit they’d been guarding, the winding crystal staircase, gorgeous with magical luminescence, which connected House Mizzrym with the cave floor below.

  Greyanna felt a twinge of annoyance, but only that. Apparently she wasn’t going to get a chance to torture Pharaun, but he was unquestionably going to die. He really had nowhere to run, and if the wretch weren’t mired in a blind panic, he’d know it.

  At least she could deliver the stroke that would seal his doom. She hurried to the edge of the landing, saw that the blistered, bloody-headed fool was better than halfway down the radiant diamond steps, and pronounced, as quickly as possible, the long, awkward arcane word that would make the staircase vanish. That alone wouldn’t kill him unless he lost his head. The ability to levitate granted by the same brooch that allowed him to pass through the House’s doors would keep him from falling. Limited to strictly vertical movement, however, he ought to make an easy mark for spells and arrows.

  She spoke the final syllable. Just as the steps seemed to pop like a bubble, Pharaun leaped, his long legs making him look like a pair of scissors spread to the maximum possible width. He barely made it onto the flattened apex of the gigantic stalagmite that served as the stair’s lower terminus.

  Greyanna was impressed. That jump was an impressive display of athleticism for a battered scholar of hedonistic habits. Not that it would do him any good. He really had run to the end of his race. She leaned out and shouted for the foulwings to kill him. Winded, still stumbling off-balance from hurdling across the empty space, Pharaun surely couldn’t fend off both of them at once.

  Grotesque winged predators that commonly reeked of their caustic ammonia breath, the foulwings bespoke the Mizzrym’s power and magical prowess and lent the first step on the path to their citadel a certain style that mere soldiers could not match They also made terrifying watchbeasts. With a snap of their clawed, batlike wings, in no wise hindered by their lack of legs, they spun their long-necked bodies around to loom over Pharaun. Forked snouts with fanged jaws at the end of either branch came questing hungrily down. From her perch, Greyanna looked on with a rapacity no less keen than theirs, albeit a rapacity of the soul.

  Pharaun shouted something. Greyanna couldn’t quite make it out, but it didn’t seem to be a magical word, just a cry of fear or a desperate plea for mercy—a plea the giant beasts would not heed.

  Except that they did. They hesitated, and he lifted his hands. Their deadly jaws played delicately about his fingers, taking in his scent.

  She cried again for the brutes to kill him. They twisted their heads around to look at her, but he spoke to them once more, and they ignored her command.

  Greyanna stared in amazement. Pharaun had no doubt had some limited contact with the foulwings, for after all, he lived in the same castle with them, but she knew he’d never ridden one. Only the females of House Mizzrym enjoyed that privilege, and it was only by riding that you established genuine mastery over the creatures. How, then, could he possibly enj
oy a rapport with them deeper than her own?

  Pharaun scrambled onto a foulwing’s back, and both it and its fellow sprang into the air. Obviously her brother had managed to dissolve the enchantment that made the beasts want to sit contentedly at their post.

  The wizard managed his mount more deftly than Greyanna herself could have done without benefit of saddle, bridle, and goad. He shot her a mocking grin as he turned to flee. The other, riderless foulwing soared and swooped aimlessly, enjoying its liberty.

  Greyanna shook off her stunned disbelief. She still desperately wanted to know how Pharaun had learned to ride the creatures— probably Sabal had taught him, but how had they managed it without anyone else finding out?—but she wasn’t going to stand there pondering the question. The answer was less important than the kill.

  She turned and looked around. Those guards whom Pharaun had addled were disoriented still, but some of the soldiers he’d battered with hailstones appeared to have regained their composure.

  “Shoot him!” she shouted, pointing at the rapidly receding target. “Shoot!”

  With commendable haste, they obeyed. They took up their crossbows, aimed, and the bolts leaped forth in a ragged clatter.

  Pharaun’s foulwing lurched, then plummeted down and down and down, crashing to earth somewhere amid the hollowed stalagmite edifices of the city.

  “Got him,” said the captain of the guard.

  Bigger and stronger than he, Greyanna had no difficulty knocking the male to the floor.

  “You got the foulwing,” she said. “We don’t know that you hit Pharaun at all. We don’t know that he didn’t use his wizardry or his levitation to cushion his fall. We don’t know that he isn’t down there alive and well laughing at us. I need to see his corpse, and one way or the other, you will fetch it for me. Turn out every available priestess, wizard, and warrior—drow or slave. Jump!”

  Jump he did. It was the last bit of satisfaction that was to come her way.

  Her mortal agents flooded the streets, while she remained in her personal sanctum in House Mizzrym, summoning spirits and casting divinations to aid the search. Astonishingly, maddeningly, it was all to no avail. When light flowered in the base of Narbondel, signaling the advent of the new day, she was forced to admit that at least for the time being, Pharaun had eluded her.

  A month later, she learned that her brother had somehow made his way all the way up to Tier Breche and begged the Archmage of Menzoberranzan himself for a place in Sorcere, and, remembering the wizardly talent the younger male had demonstrated throughout his training, Gromph had seen fit to take him in.

  The news came as a considerable relief. She’d feared her brother had fled Menzoberranzan and placed himself permanently beyond her reach. Instead, he’d simply hopped up on a shelf above the city. He was bound to hop down again eventually, and she would have him.

  Or so she thought, until her mother sent for her. Possessed of the same intelligence concerning her fugitive son’s whereabouts, Miz’ri had formed a very different idea of what ought to be done about it: Nothing.

  Even though they were only males, the Masters of Sorcere possessed both a degree of practical autonomy and an abundance of mystical power, and, always weaving her labyrinthine schemes to elevate the status of House Mizzrym, Mother had decided not to unnecessarily provoke the wizards. Which was to say, as Pharaun had obtained a place in that cloistered, many-spired tower, he was more significant in exile than he had ever been at home, and Greyanna would have to let him live. She had achieved what ought to have been her primary goal, preeminence among her sisters and cousins, but her vengeance would remain unfinished.

  Through all the decades that followed, it galled her. A hundred times she planned to defy her mother’s command and kill Pharaun anyway, only to abandon her stratagems just short of implementation. As fiercely as she hated him, she feared Miz’ri’s displeasure even more.

  Was it possible that at long last the matron mother had changed her mind? Or was this some new cruelty, was Miz’ri perhaps going to somehow force Greyanna into an odious proximity with a brother who was still untouchable?

  “It might be nice to see Pharaun again,” the younger female said in the blandest tone she could muster.

  Miz’ri laughed. “Oh, I daresay it would, to see him and kill him, isn’t that the way of it?”

  “If you say so. You know our history. We played out the whole sava game under your nose.” I imagine you relished every moment of it, she thought.

  “Yes, you did, and so I know this will interest you. Sadly, a problem has arisen that even supercedes my desire to get along with the mages of the Academy. While you were away, males continued to desert—”

  “Pharaun ran off from Sorcere?” Greyanna interrupted, her eyes narrowed. “Were they finally going to punish him for getting those novices killed?”

  “No, and no! Shut your mouth, let me tell the tale, and we’ll come to your little obsession in a moment.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Males continue to elope, and despite our warning him off, Gromph still intends to investigate the matter. Hoping to escape our notice and displeasure, he decided to do so by proxy, and summoned a suitable agent to his office to discuss the matter. Happily, we members of the Council possess a scrying crystal with which we recently managed to pierce the obscuring enchantments shrouding the room. Some of them, anyway. We still can’t see in, but we can hear what goes on, and that sufficed to reveal the archmage’s plan as well as the identity of his minion. Now, if you must, you may excitedly babble your brother’s name.”

  “I imagine Gromph told him this is his one big chance to redeem himself.”

  “Exactly. The question is, how shall we priestesses respond?”

  “I gather there’s a reason you don’t just tell Gromph you’re on to his plan.”

  “Of course, several. For one, our first confrontation with him was courteous and mild, but who knows, a second might be less so. As things stand, we hesitate to push him very hard. For another, we don’t want him to know we can eavesdrop on him. He’d either block us out or hatch his plots elsewhere. It’s better all around simply to take his pawn out of play. Given that Pharaun is a secret operative, whatever may befall him, the archmage can hardly take exception to it. The catch being that dealing with your brother is a formidable undertaking, arguably on any occasion but certainly at the moment.”

  Greyanna nodded. “Because he’s a wizard, and we are . . . what we are.”

  “So where, the Council wondered, can we find a priestess so bold, so motivated, that even now she’ll be eager to hunt the male when he descends to the city. I told the others I thought I knew of a candidate.”

  “You were right.”

  “The beauty of it is that you do have a personal score to settle. If people see you do something unpleasant to Pharaun, they won’t have to wonder what the reason is.”

  “Yes, I see that. May I draw on all the resources of our House to aid me in my efforts?”

  “I can only give you a few helpers. If people saw you descend on the city with House Mizzrym’s entire army at your back, they wouldn’t assume it’s a personal matter. You can have your pick of magic weapons from the armory. Don’t waste them, though. Expend only what you need.”

  Greyanna inclined her head. “I’ll start preparing right away.”

  Miz’ri finally smiled, and somehow, in defiance of any reasonable expectation, it made her face more threatening, not less.

  chapter

  four

  The Silken Rack was not, as visitors to Menzoberranzan sometimes assumed, a fine cloth emporium. It was, technically, a massage parlor, but only a vulgarian would call it that. Rather, it was a palace of delight, where the most skilled body servants in the Underdark provided what many dark elves considered to be most exquisite of all pleasures.

  Waerva Baenre was herself of that opinion. She had already soaked her pampered, voluptuous form in warm, scented oil, and she would have liked no
thing better to lose herself utterly in the touch of her masseur.

  But that, alas, was not possible. She’d come to this shrine of the senses on business, business that could be conducted far more safely and discreetly there than in the Baenre citadel or the ambassador’s residence in West Wall. That was why she, by nature gregarious, had hired a cozy private room containing only two contoured couches and a pair of hulking deaf-mute human masseurs in preference to her supremely gifted Tluth.

  Happily, the tongueless slave she’d chosen for herself was also highly competent. He kneaded her neck muscles in a way that was pain and bliss at the same time, wringing a groan of sweet release out of her. Naturally, it was at this somewhat undignified moment that Umrae came though the door.

  Not that Waerva’s momentary discomposure made Umrae smile. The Baenre couldn’t imagine what it would take to accomplish that. A rather gaunt, homely female, her skin the unhealthy dull gray-black color of charcoal, the cut of her nondescript garments subtly divergent from the styles of Menzoberranzan, Umrae always arrived at these clandestine meetings stiff and awkward with nervous tension. Waerva supposed that was the difference between commoners and nobles. No matter how perilous the situation, an aristocrat always managed a certain grace.

  “She’s looking at maps!” declared Umrae. Her voice matched her appearance. There was no music in it.

  “I’m not surprised,” Waerva replied. “Your mistress is reasonably clever. I never thought she would remain complacent forever.” The body servant dug his fingertips into Waerva’s upper back, and she shivered. “We’ll talk about it, but first, please, set my mind at ease. Tell me that no one who matters saw you enter this particular room.”

  Umrae scowled, apparently irked by the very suggestion. “No, of course not.”

  “Then for pity’s sake, take off your clothes. You supposedly came here for a deepstroke, and you want to look as if you’ve had one when you get back home. Besides, these fellows are worth the rent.”