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

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

  The demon served Quenthel unswervingly, and at a word from her, he would gladly attempt to rip the wizard—or anyone else in the group, for that matter—limb from limb with malice-laden glee. Thus far, that word had not come, but Pharaun did not relish the possibility of having to defend himself from the fiend’s assault, especially in such close quarters where he would have a hard time getting clear to exercise his own allotment of spells. He would prefer a large cavern to make his stand against Jeggred, but unfortunately, there was only this cramped passage, with no room to stay clear of the brute’s claws.

  Despite her current foul humor and the very ungainly way she had recently been bearing the load on her back, Quenthel somehow managed to look regal as she pushed herself away from the wall and stalked across the corridor toward Pharaun, her piwafwi swishing about her. He understood that she wasn’t merely ignoring his jibes. She had waited until her faithful servant had moved into position to back her up before confronting the mage.

  “I know very well what I said and did, and I do not need you mimicking my words back to me like some idiot savant, displayed in a gilded cage for all to look upon and laugh at.” She focused her stare on him and held it there. “We are on a diplomatic mission, wizard, but those goods do belong to my House, and they will be returned there. I’ll see to that. If I can’t hire a caravan to carry them back, then you’ll do it for me. Jeggred will make certain of it.”

  She held his gaze imperiously for a moment as Jeggred smiled carnally beside her. Finally, she straightened, made a subtle motion to the draegloth, and the fiend moved off to lick the gore from his claws.

  “Find us a way around this . . . thing,” Quenthel said, jabbing her finger toward the massive growth before she turned and strode back to her own pack and sank down to the floor.

  Pharaun sighed and rolled his eyes, knowing he had pushed the high priestess too far. He would suffer more later for his little jibes. He looked over at Faeryl to gauge her reaction to the confrontation. The ambassador from Ched Nasad merely shook her head at him, scorn plain on her mien.

  “I would think you, of all people, would be more than a little disgruntled that she’s planning to strip your mother’s mercantile company bare,” he said quietly to her.

  Faeryl shrugged and said, “It’s no concern of mine. My House merely works for her—for House Baenre and for House Melarn. They own Black Claw together, so if she wants to steal from her partners, who am I to stop her? As long as I get home . . .”

  Pharaun was surprised to actually see a wistful look on the ambassador’s face.

  The Master of Sorcere grunted at Faeryl’s response and turned once more to inspect the material that blocked their way. He was both fascinated at seeing it in person for the first time and desperate to seek a possible way around it. He knew that the Araumycos filled countless miles of caverns in this part of the Underdark, but travelers had sometimes been able to find ways around or through it.

  Valas was already climbing up the surface of the growth, pressed tightly against it, working his way toward the upper reaches. Pharaun could see that the passage they had followed opened into what must be a larger cavern, for the ceiling, like the passage itself, rose abruptly. He could see that the scout was making his way toward a narrow gap between the growth and the side of the cavern, perhaps hoping that there was a way to squeeze through, though to where, Pharaun had no idea.

  Pharaun considered the diminutive mercenary from Bregan D’aerthe to be a bit uncouth, but nonetheless, he was glad the wiry guide was along for the trip.

  “How long do we have before that gives out?” Faeryl asked, staring back the way they all had come, back toward the inky blackness.

  Pharaun was surprised that she spoke to him. She was emboldened, the wizard supposed, from their earlier conversation. Not bothering to look at the ambassador, Pharaun continued his inspection, producing a tiny flame at the tip of his finger with which he began scorching the fungus. Where the fire touched the growth, it blackened and withered, but it did not burn a hole through to anywhere.

  “Not long,” he said.

  He sensed rather than saw her discomfort at his offhand comment. The wizard smiled despite himself as he worked, bemused at the irony of Faeryl’s situation. It had not been that long ago that she had been desperate to make this journey, to return to her home city. Desperate enough to try sneaking out of Menzoberranzan and crossing Triel Baenre, the most powerful matron mother in the city, in the process. Faeryl had failed, of course. She had been captured at the gates, and she had wound up as Jeggred’s imprisoned plaything to boot. Pharaun could only imagine what the draegloth might have been doing to her in the name of sport, but somehow the Zauvirr had earned a reprieve from Triel and had been assigned to participate in this little excursion to Ched Nasad.

  In the end, Faeryl had achieved what she wanted, but the wizard wondered if she was still glad of it, despite her previous remarks. Even if she did get home, she was faced with the prospect of informing her mother, the matron mother of House Zauvirr, that Quenthel was coming to take everything. Absolutely everything. Regardless of the feasibility of such a move and the contingent’s ability to actually pull it off unmolested by House Melarn, Faeryl and her mother would be the ones caught in the middle. He did not envy her position.

  Plus, every time Jeggred so much as turned his gaze in her direction, she flinched and moved away. The fiend seemed to enjoy this, taking every opportunity to enhance the ambassador’s discomfort through a suggestive smile, a lick of his lips, or a studied examination of his razor-sharp claws. It was clear to Pharaun that Faeryl was close to fully losing her composure. If that happened, he supposed they might have to actually let the draegloth have her and be done with it.

  Then, of course, there was the matter of the supplies. Faeryl, like the rest of the members of the small excursion, had been forced to carry her own belongings for the better part of a tenday, something no high-born dark elf was accustomed to. Sedan chairs borne by slaves and porters was more her style, as it was Quenthel’s. Leaving those thralls behind to stave off pursuit had been regrettable but necessary, and even with Jeggred’s ability to carry a substantial portion of the load, the rest of them still had sizable burdens. He could hardly blame Faeryl if she was wondering whether this journey was nothing more than a huge mistake.

  From Quenthel’s demeanor it seemed she already knew that, or perhaps didn’t care if Lolth’s silence extended as far as Ched Nasad at least and that their journey of exploration had become more akin to a raid. That was fine with Pharaun, but still he suspected there would be more to take from Ched Nasad than a store of magical trinkets.

  Glancing at his pack once more and feeling the tension in his own shoulders, Pharaun wished for maybe the tenth time that day that he could summon a magical disk to bear their supplies. So many of the drow noble Houses made steady use of such a handy spell that the matron mothers generally insisted their House wizards learn it while attending Sorcere, the arcane branch of the Academy. Pharaun had never bothered to familiarize himself with it, though, since he had his haversack with its magically roomy interior. Even loaded up with all of his grimoires, scrolls, and more mundane supplies, it weighed a fraction of what a normal pack would. Besides, back at the Academy, if he had ever had cause to transport something with the magical disk, there was always a ready supply of students on hand who could have performed the task for him. Still . . .

  Pharaun dismissed the notion, reminding himself for the tenth time that his magic was an all-too-precious commodity. With the goddess Lolth still strangely silent, none of her priestesses could gain the favor of her divine magic, leaving both Quenthel and Faeryl severely hampered and limited in power. The wilds of the Underdark were no place to be while vulnerable. Besides, there was no small amount of satisfaction in watching Quenthel, the High Priestess of Arach-Tinilith, the clerical branch of the Academy, labor with her burden.

  Quenthel sniffed, startling Pharaun out of his reverie. The high pr
iestess gestured toward where the scout was still climbing. Only his legs were still visible. The rest of him disappeared into the crevice formed between the wall of the cavern and the fungus.

  She turned to Ryld and said, “Your friend is looking for a way through. Stop daydreaming and help him.” Turning then to Pharaun, she added, “You, too.”

  Deciding that he had tormented her enough for the moment, especially with Jeggred so near, Pharaun smiled and bowed low, flourishing his piwafwi, then continued to examine the Araumycos.

  As Ryld joined him, the wizard muttered, “It’s times like these when I find her most charming, eh?”

  “You shouldn’t taunt her,” Ryld murmured back, sliding along in front of the fungus and reaching for his short sword. “All you’re going to do is cause us anguish later.”

  He took an experimental swipe and sliced a section of the growth away from the main body. It fell to the floor at his feet, and he bent to pick it up, but it was already beginning to blacken and decay.

  “Oh, I think you mean ‘me,’ my stout friend,” the wizard replied, removing a small vial of acid from a hidden pocket in his piwafwi and pouring the contents on the surface of the fungus. “I’ll be inundated with enough anguish for the lot of us before we ever reach Ched Nasad, I fear.”

  Where the liquid coated the growth, the fungus began to sizzle and blacken.

  Ryld paused and cast a glance over at his friend. The warrior looked taken aback. Despite their many years of friendship, Pharaun knew that even Ryld still occasionally found the wizard’s behavior uncouth.

  It’s the price I pay for my winning personality and clever wit, Pharaun told himself wryly.

  He watched as a reasonably sized hole was eaten through the fungus. There was only more fungus beyond it.

  “We could try to hack or burn our way through this stuff forever,” Ryld grumbled, moving farther along the face of the blockage to a point directly beneath where Valas had ascended. “There’s no telling how deep or how thick it is.”

  “True, but it’s fascinating, nonetheless. Thus far, I have discovered that it can be damaged by acid, fire, and physical cuts. Regardless, the pieces I remove simply dissolve into a dark, decayed mass. Remarkable! I wonder if—”

  “I certainly hope you don’t mean to tell me that you’re exhausting all of your potent wizardly forces on this thing,” Ryld asked, glancing back at the still-darkened curtain of magic behind them. “We may need your tricks far more desperately in a moment.”

  “Don’t be dull-witted, my blade-wielding companion,” Pharaun answered, tucking a piece of rosy stone back into a pocket. “With my talents, I have more than enough to go around for everyone, even our charming pursuers.”

  Ryld grunted, and at that point a large hunk of fungus hit the floor of the cavern at Ryld’s feet, already in the process of blackening. Ryld took a single step back, out of the line of fire, as several more pieces plopped down where he had been standing.

  “It would appear that Valas is cutting his way through to somewhere,” Pharaun observed, peering up to where the scout had, until recently, been visible. “I wonder if he’s just experimenting or if he has actually discovered a means of egress.”

  The wizard craned his neck, trying to get a clearer view.

  “There’s a way through up here,” Valas said, reappearing in full. “Come on.”

  “Well, that answers that question. Time to go,” Pharaun said, turning to the rest of the group. He directed Quenthel and Faeryl upward, pointing to where the scout was visible. “We only have a few more moments before my wall of force wears off.”

  The other drow and the draegloth began floating upward, able to ascend through the magic of their House insignias. One by one, they disappeared through some unseen hole until only Pharaun was left. He began to magically rise up himself, realizing for the first time just how glad he was that they were not turning back to fight more of the tanarukks.

  Aliisza smiled as she watched the last of her tanarukk charges tremble and lie still. The black tentacles that had destroyed them still curled and flailed, looking for anything new to latch onto. The alu-fiend was careful to stay out of reach of the grasping black appendages, though she knew that she could have removed them magically, if necessary. In fact, she could have intervened and dismissed the wizard’s spell, rescuing her charges, but she had decided against it, and it wasn’t because she feared to waste the spell. She was more curious than anything.

  Aliisza knew that the dark elves and their demon would be more than capable, as drow tended to be. She moved back along the passage through which she and her squad of tanarukks had followed the drow, knowing that at least two of them had seen her. Yet they continued to turn away, as though they were running. Aliisza doubted the drow were there for any reason related to Kaanyr Vhok.

  The alu wasted no time returning to the point at which she had set out with only the single squad, rejoining the larger force of which they had been a part, the force she commanded.

  “They have moved into higher halls,” she announced to the milling tanarukks, directing them along a new route. “We will cut them off at Blacktooth Rock. Do not tarry. They move fast.”

  With barely more than a grumble, the horde of humanoids set off, and it didn’t take them more than a moment to reach the great intersection known to the Scourged Legion as Blacktooth Rock. It was a large, multi-leveled chamber where many different passages connected, and Aliisza wasn’t even sure what the dwarves who’d cut the chamber once used it for. Much of it had been filled with the fungus colony the stoutfolk called Araumycos. There were still enough open passages there, however, that patrols of the Scourged Legion passed through frequently, and she knew that unless they utilized some magic to change their course, the passage the drow had taken to escape would ultimately lead them there as well.

  The alu-fiend was still considering what she would do upon confronting the drow when her small battalion of tanarukks intercepted a second contingent of the humanoids, one she had sent to cut off escape along another route.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked the sergeant, though she was actually glad for the reinforcements. “I assigned you to the Columned Chamber to watch for anything coming from the north.”

  “Yes,” the sergeant answered. He was a hulking specimen who stood a good head taller than any of his fellows, his speech thick due to his prominent tusks. “But we got word that a large force of gray dwarves was spotted moving through the south part of Ammarindar, and a second patrol, one that had been stationed farther to the north and east, has completely disappeared.”

  “By the Abyss,” Aliisza whispered. “What is going on?”

  She considered for a moment, then issued orders for a small squad of tanarukks to return to Vhok’s palace to report the news, while she and the remainder of the force continued to pursue the drow.

  They know something about all this, she told herself as they set out, and I’m going to find out what it is.

  Pharaun no longer jumped whenever Ryld silently returned after skulking along the group’s back trail, so he showed no reaction when the warrior suddenly materialized in the group’s midst. Splitter was still sheathed across the master of Melee-Magthere’s back, so Pharaun knew that they were in no immediate danger. Nonetheless, he paid careful attention as his old friend began to convey a report to Quenthel in the silent hand language of the drow.

  Our pursuers are on our trail again, the burly warrior signaled. Several squads, all closing the gap.

  The snake heads hissed, echoing their mistress’s irritation at this news before Quenthel quieted them with a whispered word.

  How long before we are overtaken? she responded.

  In the darkness, Pharaun saw Ryld shrug. Moments, no more.

  Quenthel replied, We must rest, at least for a few moments longer. Besides, Valas has not yet returned. Figure out which way he went.

  She gestured at the intersection. Ryld nodded and moved to examine the walls near th
e three-way tunnel. If Valas had left some sign of the direction he’d taken, Ryld would find it, and they could continue.

  Pharaun sighed, regretting ever having suggested they come this way to reach Ched Nasad. Passing through the domain of Kaanyr Vhok had been a risky choice, but one that Quenthel had finally insisted on, preferring speed over safety. So, the group moved through the Ammarindar, the ancient holdings of an even more ancient dwarven nation, long since wiped out.

  Pharaun knew that Kaanyr Vhok had laid claim to the area since the fall of Hellgate Keep, which stood somewhere overhead in the World Above. Vhok, a marquis cambion demon, was an intensely unpleasant host, as Pharaun recalled. Most caravans generally avoided his little patch of the Underdark, so the passages they traversed had been little traveled, which Pharaun had hoped would help maintain the group’s secrecy.

  Even moving as surreptitiously as possible, the team was unable to avoid attracting the attention of Vhok’s minions, and several of the cambion’s patrols were once again relentlessly pursuing them. Pharaun had hoped that sneaking through the Araumycos would have thrown the tanarukks off, but he realized that they—or rather, the she-fiend, he supposed—knew exactly where the expedition was headed, even if they themselves did not. He had no doubt that even more were moving to outflank them, cut them off before they could move out of the region and beyond Vhok’s reach. The question was, could they stay ahead of the patrols this time?

  The Menzoberranyr couldn’t afford to have to deal with the demon lord. With the news they carried, avoiding drawing attention to themselves from any of the great races of the Underdark was paramount. And yet, Pharaun had the sinking feeling that was going to be no easy matter. No part of the journey to Ched Nasad was going to be easy, he was certain. There was risk in every move, just like on the sava board.

  In its own way, Quenthel’s decision to relieve the group of extra baggage—and baggage bearers—had been fortuitous. They could set a faster pace without all the extras the high priestesses had initially insisted they bring along. The mage glanced at Quenthel, knowing she struggled between the notion of setting a faster pace and being sick to death of carrying a load that made her shoulders slump when she thought no one was watching. Pharaun suspected they could have gotten by with even less, and Quenthel might yet lighten her load, discarding more unnecessary provisions, before they reached the City of Webs. If they found themselves in another running fight with Vhok’s hordes, it might be sooner rather than later.