“Then you passed the test?” Syrzan asked.
“Alas, no,” Pharaun laughed. “The examiners deemed the results inconclusive and accordingly asked a higher power to make the determination. They laid me on an obsidian altar, performed a dancing, keening, self-mutilating ritual together, and the torture chamber faded away. You’d think I would have been glad of it, wouldn’t you, but my new surroundings were no less ominous.”
Pharaun’s captors had ignored his silver ring, obviously thinking it mere jewelry, if they noticed it at all. As soon as he’d looked at Syrzan, he’d discovered its magic operated even within the confines of the lich’s phantasmal creation. He forced an idea into his subconscious and continued to prattle.
“The priestesses had drugged me to prevent my resisting their attentions, then used me with considerable brutality. It took me a while just to lift my battered head and look around. When I did, I perceived that I lay atop an enormous object with the shape of a staff or length of cord made of a substance that gave ever so slightly but was as strong as adamantine nonetheless. Otherwise, it would have disintegrated under its own weight. Far ahead, my perch fused at right angles with another such object, which connected with still others, the pattern spreading out to form, I suddenly realized, a spiderweb of insane complexity, huge enough to make a world. If it was attached to anything, the anchor points were too distant for me to see. Perhaps it just went on and on forever.”
“The Demonweb,” Syrzan said.
Pharaun surreptitiously examined his captor’s talismans, using the magic in the silver ring, trying to figure out which one would allow an illithid to send a psionic “Call” to every orc and goblin in Menzoberranzan.
“Very good,” the mage said. “I see you were paying attention when your teachers discoursed on the sundry planes of existence. I was indeed exiled to that layer of the Abyss where Lolth holds sway. I remembered hearing that the strands of the web were hollow and that much of the life of the place existed inside. Well, I certainly couldn’t see any source of food or water on the outside, let alone a portal to take me home, so, still dazed and sick from the clerics’ attentions, I started crawling and searching for a means of entry.
“Eventually, I might have found one, but I ran out of time. The strand I was traversing began to tremble. I peered about and saw her scuttling toward me.”
“Lolth?” Syrzan asked.
“Who else? Her priestesses say she travels her domain in a mobile iron fortress, but she must have left it behind that day. I beheld the goddess herself in the guise of a spider as huge as the Great Mound of the Baenre. She’s appeared to others in the same shape only smaller, but she was colossal when she came for me.
“I was terrified, but what was one to do about it? Run? Fight? Either effort would have been equally absurd. I exercised the only sensible option. I huddled atop the thread and covered my eyes.
“Alas, she denied me the comforts of blindness. Her will took hold of me and forced me to look up. She was looming over me, staring down with a circle of luminous ruby orbs.
“I felt as if her gaze was not merely piercing but dissolving me. The sensation was intolerable, I wanted to die, and in a way, she granted my wish.
“Her legs were immense, but they tapered to points at the ends, and, moving with a dainty precision, she used the two front-most members to dissect me. Did the process kill me? I don’t know. By all rights, it should have, but if I lost my life, my spirit lingered in my divided flesh, still suffering the horror and pain.
“My soul was conscious, too, of its own destruction. Somehow, as the Spider Queen picked apart my flesh and bones, she was filleting my mind and spirit as well. It irks me that I can’t describe how it felt. I hail from a race of torturers and spellcasters, but I still lack the vocabulary. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t pleasant.
“In the end, every aspect of my self lay in pieces before her—for inspection, I realize now, though I was in too much agony and dread to work it out at the time. When she’d looked her fill, she put me back together.”
Still careful not to betray himself, keeping his mind focused on the story, Pharaun decided it was the triangle that would power the alhoon’s Call. The question then was what to do about it. The real brooch hung on the chest of Syrzan’s physical body, back in the material world. The one inside his mind was a sort of echo. An analogue. Would depriving Syrzan of it accomplish anything?
Pharaun continued, “Do you think she reconnected every subtle juncture of my intellect and spirit exactly as they’d been before? Over the course of the next few years, I invested a fair amount of time brooding over that particular question, but it’s unanswerable, so let it not detain us.
“After the Mother of Lusts cobbled me together, she tossed me back to my native reality, back onto the altar, in fact, thus indicating she found me acceptable. I imagine the clerics were disappointed. I’ve never known an inquisitor to rejoice in a suspect’s acquittal.
“Perhaps they took a bit of solace in the discovery that I’d gone altogether mad. They carted me back to my family, who strapped me to a bed and debated whether it wouldn’t be more convenient all around to smother me with a pillow. Sabal was my advocate and guard. She couldn’t afford to lose her staunchest ally.
“Let’s skip over all the raving and hallucinations, shall we? Eventually my wits returned, and as I reflected on my experiences in the Abyss, I realized that while Lolth was infinitely dreadful and malign, she was transcendently beautiful as well. I’d simply been too distraught to recognize it at the time.”
The magic of both the ring and the brooch had accompanied the dreamers into the dream. Otherwise, Pharaun wouldn’t be able to see the triangle glowing. So perhaps if he disposed of the talisman in this place, its counterpart in mundane reality would lose its enchantments.
Possibly not, also, but the Master of Sorcere felt he had to take a chance. He doubted he’d get another.
“Certainly she exemplified that supreme power to which all dark elves, particularly we wizards, aspire,” the drow rambled on. “I felt inspired that she was our patron. She’s worthy of us, as we are worthy of her.”
“She impressed you,” Syrzan said, its mouth tentacles wriggling, “as even the pettiest deity can overawe a mortal. Still, you’re a scholar of the mysteries. You should know there are powers greater than Lolth, entities who, if they saw fit—”
Pharaun snatched the triangular ivory brooch off the undead mind flayer’s soiled and shabby robe and slammed it down on the convoluted parapet at the edge of the bridge. The ornament didn’t break. In desperation, he pulled back his arm to throw it. Perhaps the illithilich would have difficulty retrieving it from the murky pool below.
A cold, rough hand grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him down. He was powerless to resist. In the reality Syrzan had created for itself, it was as strong as a titan.
The lich ripped the brooch from Pharaun’s grasp and thrust it into a pocket. It clutched the dark elf with both hands, leaned its head close, and wrapped its dry, flaking mouth tentacles over the mage’s skull. Pharaun knew this was how mind flayers fed. They wormed their members into whatever orifices were most convenient and yanked out their victim’s brain.
He wondered what would happen when Syrzan subjected his dream self to such treatment. Would his physical body perish, or would it survive as a living but mindless shell?
“Didn’t you like my story?” Pharaun gasped. The lich’s grip was squeezing the breath out of him. “You seemed quite engrossed. That was why I dared to hope I could catch you by surprise.”
“You put your hands on me! I do not permit that!”
The mellifluous voice of the Prophet was roughening into an ugly combination of hisses and buzzes. The tentacles squeezed tighter
“Technically, these aren’t my hands,” Pharaun said. Goddess, it felt as if his skull was going to shatter! “Since this is all imaginary.”
“You will tell me how you knew which charm to grab.”
>
“My ring. It allows me to see and interpret patterns of magical force. No wizard should be without one.”
“You were a fool to try to thwart me here in my private world. Don’t you understand that inside this construct, I’m a god.”
“I’m dead regardless,” replied Pharaun, “and when a drow knows his life is forfeit, he bends his thoughts to revenge.”
“But you’re mistaken.” Syrzan loosened the grip of the tentacles and said, “I’m not going to kill you. That would be wasteful. As you observed, my objective is to enslave all Menzoberranzan. Certainly you, with all your talents, will make a useful thrall. Had you not manhandled me, your bondage might have been relatively light, for I enjoy the society of other mages. Now I’m afraid you aren’t going to enjoy it in the slightest.”
Pain ripped through Pharaun’s head. He screamed.
chapter
twenty
“Let me do it,” Houndaer growled.
His scimitar at the ready, he stalked toward Ryld.
The Master of Melee-Magthere tried and failed to rise. As a
student at the Academy and in all the years since, he’d studied techniques for transcending pain, but he’d never felt anything comparable to the invisible blow the undead illithid had struck him. It had been like a spear driving through his mind.
Syrzan emerged from its momentary trance and said, “No.” Houndaer turned. “No?” he asked. “You were right about them.
Obviously.”
“And I trust,” said the lich, its mouth tentacles wriggling, “that you’ll remember whose judgment is superior. Now that they’re here, however, they might as well serve our cause as you hoped they would. It’s just a matter of reshaping their minds.”
The bard lifted an eyebrow and asked, “Can you do that?”
“Yes,” said Syrzan, “but not instantaneously, and not now. I need my strength to give the Call.”
It pulled Pharaun’s silver ring off the unconscious drow’s finger.
“Lock them up for the time being,” the alhoon ordered.
“All right,” said Tsabrak. “I hope you’re going to fix it so we can all control them.”
He too advanced on Ryld.
The weapons master struggled once again to rise. Someone lashed him over the head with the flat of a blade, and all the strength spilled out of him like wine from an overturned cup.
The next few moments were a blur. Houndaer, Tsabrak, the bard, and another renegade carried their captives to a cell. It had the same grime and air of desolation as much of the rest of the castle, but someone, exhibiting a proper dark elf ’s sense of priorities, had gone to the trouble to refurbish the locks and restraints.
The rogues divested Ryld of his cloak and armor, then chained him to the wall. As he’d expected, the conspirators took more elaborate precautions with the wizard, even though Pharaun had suffered a violent seizure shortly after Syrzan stunned him, had apparently passed from that into complete unconsciousness, and showed no sign of rousing any time soon. In addition to shackling him, the rogues locked a steel bridle around his head, forcing the bit into his mouth to keep him from enunciating words of power or anything else. They inserted his forearms into the two ends of a hinged metal tube, a sort of muff or double glove that would make it impossible for him to gesture or crook his fingers into a cabalistic sign.
By the time they finished, Ryld’s strength had begun to return, enough, at least, to permit him to speak.
“It’ll get you, too,” he croaked.
Houndaer turned, scowling. “What?”
“The lich. It doesn’t want to share power. It’s planning to turn every Menzoberranyr, including you, into its mind-slave. That’s what illithids do.”
“Do you think we trust the beast?” the Tuin’Tarl sneered.
“We’re not idiots. It’ll serve its purpose, and we’ll dispose of it.”
“So you intend, but what if Syrzan’s already working on subjugating you, so subtly you don’t even know it? What if, when the time comes—”
Houndaer punched his former teacher in the mouth, dashing his head against the calcite wall.
“Shut up,” the noble said. “You fooled me once and made me look like an imbecile. It’s not going to happen again.”
The rogues made their departure. With his spidery lower body, Tsabrak had to squeeze through the door. The last one out, the bard gave Ryld a wry smile and a shrug. The door slammed shut.
Ryld licked the salty taste of blood from his gashed lower lip.
“Pharaun,” he said in a low tone. “Are you truly unconscious, or is it a trick?”
Slumped with the steel harness clamped around his head, the Master of Sorcere didn’t respond. If not for the rise and fall of his chest, Ryld would have feared him dead.
The swordsman tried to go to Pharaun, but his chains were too short. He undertook an examination of the shackles. The cuffs fit tightly, and the locks were strong. The links were heavy, well forged, and anchored securely in the wall. Ryld had broken free of bonds a time or two in his turbulent early years, but without tools or a miracle, he wouldn’t be sundering these.
Nor, denied the use of his voice and hands, was Pharaun likely to fare any better. Still, Ryld suspected the mage was his only hope. Pharaun was clever. Perhaps he could think of a workable ploy, if only he was conscious.
“Wake up!” Ryld roared. “Wake up, curse it. You’ve got to get us out of here!”
To add to the din, he beat a length of chain against the wall.
To no avail. He shouted until his throat was raw, but Pharaun didn’t stir.
“Bleed it!” the weapons master swore.
He hunkered down on the floor and tried to work up some saliva to wash away the dryness in his mouth. As the renegades hadn’t bothered to provide a water jug, spit was the best he could do.
“You have to wake up,” he said in a softer voice. “Otherwise, they’ve beaten us, and we’ve never let anyone do that. Do you remember when we hunted that cloaker lord? We found out too late that it had sixty-seven other chasm rays in its raiding party, many more than our little band of third-year students was prepared to confront. But you said, ‘It’s all right, it just takes the proper spells to even the odds.’ First you conjured a wall of fire . . .”
Ryld rambled on for hours, talking his throat raw, recounting their shared experiences as they occurred to him. Perhaps the stories would strike a spark in Pharaun’s unconscious mind, and in any case, it was better than just sitting and wondering what life would be like after Syrzan corrupted his mind.
Finally the wizard’s chin jerked up off his chest. His eyes were wild, and he tried to cry out. The bit turned the sound into a strangled gurgle even as it cut into the corners of his mouth. Beads of blood blossomed from the wounds.
“It’s all right,” Ryld said. “Whatever the lich did to you, it’s over.”
Pharaun took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Rationality returned to his eyes. Ryld got the feeling that if not for the harness, the wizard would have smiled his usual cheery smile. He nodded to the weapons master, thanking him for the reassurance, then he inspected the sheath constraining his hands. He bashed it on the floor a few times to see if he could jolt the catches open. They held with nary a rattle. He shook his head, sat still for a moment, then closed his eyes and settled back against the wall, no doubt pondering their plight.
After several moments, the wizard straightened up. He started scraping the heel of one boot against the side of the other.
Ryld felt a stir of excitement. He could only assume his fellow master had a talisman hidden inside the footwear. It was odd the wizard hadn’t remembered until then, but perhaps it was a result of the seizure.
Like all drow boots, Pharaun’s were high and fit snugly. By the time it slid off the mage’s foot, Ryld was avid with curiosity to see . . . nothing. Nothing but trews and a stocking.
Pharaun set to work shoving off the other boot. Ryld wished he knew what his
friend had in mind, but knew it would be pointless to ask. With his hands concealed, the spellcaster couldn’t answer even in the silent drow sign language.
Eventually the second boot slipped free, whereupon Pharaun pushed off his socks. His bare feet were of a piece with his hands, slender and long, the digits included.
The wizard lifted his right foot, stared at it intently, and started curling and crossing the toes. He fumbled through a sequence of moves, then repeated it. It took Ryld another few moments to comprehend, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
In point of fact, the Underdark abounded in creatures, Syrzan included, whose extremities differed notably from a dark elf ’s, yet who worked magic nonetheless. So maybe Pharaun had a chance. Maybe he could cast one of those spells that only required movement, not an incantation or material components.
But only if he could shift his feet and toes through the proper patterns, those precise and intricate passes he’d spent years learning to execute with his hands.
When the toes of his right foot grew tired, he started working with those of his left. After that, he shifted his weight back, lifted his legs, and practiced twining them together. Ryld might have found it quite a comical spectacle had his life not depended on the mage’s success.
Soon Pharaun began to sweat and occasionally to tremble, which always forced him to stop and rest for a bit. After an hour, he moved on to the next phase of his experiment: putting the elements of the spell together, moving everything at the same time with the proper sequence and timing.
Ryld watched the process intently. He was no wizard, but to his untutored eye, it appeared that after a while, Pharaun was producing exactly the same pattern two times out of three. The rest he fumbled in one way or another.
Finally, breathing hard, he looked at the weapons master and shrugged.
“That’s all right,” the swordsman replied. “Two out of three is good odds.”
Pharaun slumped back and spent the next few moments resting. When he sat up and, heedless of the fresh blood that started from the corners of his mouth, he growled through the mask. He banged the box encasing his hands twice against the floor, then looked at Ryld.
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 31
