Of course, Pharaun silently muttered. Leave it to Valas to put it back the way he found it.
Shrugging, the wizard dug around in the pockets of his piwafwi yet again, drawing forth a pinch of clay and a small vial of water. Sprinkling the water over the clay, he invoked the Weave and completed the spell. A portion of the wall next to the door began to sag, transforming from solid stone to thick, viscous mud. The wall oozed down into a puddle, and Pharaun stepped back to avoid soiling his boots. When the opening was wide enough, the Master of Sorcere nimbly leaped through into the room beyond, avoiding the mess he’d made.
Pharaun spied Quenthel’s backpack, filled with extra supplies, on a table near the Reverie couch. Some of Faeryl’s things, including the ambassador’s haversack, were on the other table. The wizard hefted the high priestess’s pack and grunted.
So, the mage thought with a wry grin, she finally figured out a way to make me carry her possessions.
He slung the backpack over his shoulder, grabbed up the second one, Faeryl’s, and turned to go.
A crossbow bolt smacked into Pharaun’s chest, somehow managing to slip through the part in the piwafwi’s fabric, and embedded itself in his shoulder. The Master of Sorcere grunted and stumbled back into the room, spinning away so that his back was to his assailant and he was more completely protected by the piwafwi. He looked down to see that it was a drow bolt, and he realized his magical invisibility had worn off.
Pharaun staggered over to the opposite side of the room, dropping the two satchels as he scrambled to find cover. There were really only two good places he could go: behind the Reverie couch or into an armoire. As he rushed past the armoire, he grabbed the door and yanked it open, then shoved it shut again as he slumped behind the Reverie couch. The door to the oversized cabinet slammed shut just as two pairs of boots darted into the room, which Pharaun observed from beneath the couch. The mage stayed low, on his knees, watching under the couch as the two pairs of boots spread apart, both slowly headed toward the armoire, their owners presumably covering the room.
“He went into the cabinet,” one of the creatures said in the language of the drow.
The crossbow bolt set his shoulder throbbing, but Pharaun quietly watched for his assailants to appear. He blinked, unable to focus clearly, and he suddenly began to feel lightheaded. He kept thinking that if he could just cast a spell, this would all be over, but a decision about which one or how to go about doing it eluded him. The crossbow bolt wound had begun to burn, and Pharaun realized that he was growing weak. The bolt had been coated with poison. He would have to hurry to get back to the others before it overwhelmed him, and he only hoped they had a means of treating the toxin.
As his foes both came into Pharaun’s line of view, crossbows held up and ready, he could see why they’d attacked him on sight. They were both dark elves, and they wore the livery of House Zauvirr. Mentally kicking himself for not considering the possibility that Ssipriina might send someone to their inn on the expectation that he or others in the group might return, Pharaun tried to phrase the arcane words of a spell, but they wouldn’t come. The two drow were grinning as they sighted down their crossbows at him.
Pharaun closed his eyes, wondering if it would hurt much to die, and pondered whether or not he could work his rapier free, when he heard a noise. The expected twang of crossbows being fired it was not. Instead, he heard a woman’s voice—a familiar voice—uttering a quick phrase. The wizard squinted, his vision blurry, as a spray of intertwined, multicolored beams of light cascaded over his two foes.
Both drow reeled backward from the sudden, bright assault, crying out and flinging up their hands to cover their eyes. The first one spasmed as crackles of electricity raked over his body from the yellow ray of light, while the second drow was engulfed in flames upon coming into contact with the red beam.
Pharaun watched as the two soldiers crumpled to the ground. Whether either or both of them were dead or not, he didn’t know, nor did he care. He was growing intolerably weak from the effects of the poison.
“Hello, Pharaun,” the voice purred.
With an effort, Pharaun opened his eyes again and looked up, realizing who it was.
“Aliisza,” he slurred, relaxing as the alu came around the couch toward him. “How did you find—”
The fiend’s slap across Pharaun’s face stung immensely and he jerked, alert, his eyes watering.
“What the—” the wizard grunted, rubbing his cheek as Aliisza squatted down beside him, her hand upraised. “What’s the matter with you?”
He again wondered if he could produce the rapier.
“How dare you!” the alu growled, one eyebrow arched, but without the accompanying smile. “How could you be interested in that trollop after sharing my bed?”
Pharaun blinked, thoroughly confused. Trollop?
“Who in the blazes are you talking about?” he demanded, feebly raising his good arm to ward off the impending slap.
“Don’t you play dumb with me, you wretched excuse for a dark elf. You know the one I mean. The pretty you pulled from that collapsing house. I should have gouged her eyes out!”
“Oh, by the Dark Mother,” Pharaun muttered, understanding at last. “It’s not what you think. . . .”
“Ooh! You males always say that. According to your gender, it never is. I don’t want to hear it.”
Aliisza reached down, grabbed the wizard by both lapels of his piwafwi, and drew him up to her. She crushed his mouth to hers in a rough kiss, biting his lip so hard he was sure she drew blood. In fact, he decided, it felt not so much like a kiss as like the fiend was marking her territory.
“That’s so you won’t forget me so easily. If you stray, I’ll know it. I’ll smell her on you, and I will not be happy. I’m not through with you yet, wizard,” Aliisza warned, looking him in the eyes.
She blinked, and that sardonic smile was back.
“Well, I guess I’d better get you to some help,” she said lightly, hefting Pharaun up and slinging him over her shoulder, careful of his chest, where the crossbow bolt still protruded.
The wizard felt the utter fool, being toted like a sack of mushrooms, but he could hardly protest. His entire body felt . . . well, “fuzzy” was the best word he could think of to describe it.
“The satchels,” he mumbled into the alu’s shoulder. “Don’t forget the satchels.”
Scooping up both Quenthel’s and Faeryl’s bags, Aliisza carried Pharaun across the room, out the hole he’d made in the wall, down the hallway, and back into his own room. She set the wizard down on the Reverie couch. Taking the satchels, she moved to the window and leaned out, bracing her feet against the rock wall of the chasm. Pharaun watched helplessly as she tossed the packs onto the roof.
The alu returned and scooped the wizard up once more and hauled him out into the gap between the building and the wall, shoving him upward above her. He felt the bolt in his shoulder ram against the side of the inn, but the pain was strangely diminished. Still, it was forceful enough to make him grunt.
“By the Abyss, can’t you help at all?” she puffed, working the mage to the roof.
Pharaun didn’t answer. His face was going numb, and everything was fading to black.
Ryld was sitting on the roof of a building that bordered the alley, with his legs dangling over the side, his crossbow in his hands, watching parts of Ched Nasad burn. Finally having a chance to really study the layout of the city, he could see what was happening with greater clarity. The fighting had diminished in the highest reaches, though he could still hear the sounds of combat from a couple of streets over. It was mostly the lower sections of the city that seemed to be receiving the worst of it, those areas where the lesser races were most numerous. He supposed that the violence down there took the form a general rioting, just a byproduct of the tensions of the city coupled with the more severe military maneuvers that had played out higher up. Of course, he supposed, having a large chunk of the city fall from above wasn’t
going to help calm things.
Halisstra sat down beside the weapons master and stared forlornly out at her homeland.
“Valas has gone to see what chance we have of getting out through any of the city gates,” she told Ryld. “I told him about one or two places where we might be able to depart unseen, and he’s going to see if they’re secure.”
Ryld only nodded. If anyone could sneak through the city unchallenged, it was the Bregan D’aerthe scout. He doubted seriously if any exits had been left unguarded, though.
“How could this have happened?” Halisstra muttered softly. “So much destruction.”
“We have grown complacent,” the Master of Melee-Magthere answered. “The drow race has been squabbling in a controlled manner for so long, we never expected that our own little games would get out of hand. And they—” the weapons master gestured downward, in the direction of the slums—“just feed off of it, now.”
“But the fire. How is it possible to burn down a city made of stone?”
“Alchemy, I suppose. We saw the same thing in Menzoberranzan. It’s more devastating here, because your whole city is suspended on stone webbing. They were very clever to bring the firepots here.”
“Of course,” the drow maiden breathed. “Set the webs on fire, and everything attached to them falls to its destruction. Including House Melarn.”
Ryld glanced over at the dark elf beside him. Her face was one of sorrow, and her red eyes glistened with uncharacteristic tears. It was not often that he saw a drow cry. It was considered a sign of weakness. He found it refreshingly honest in the priestess.
“I am sorry for your loss. Perhaps we will learn from this. If we survive.”
Something caught Ryld’s eye, and he had his crossbow up and was sighting down the shaft in an instant. A winged figure, bobbing and weaving haphazardly, emerged from the smoke, coming for their position. It was a drow, possibly, though it had wings, and it bore a rather large bundle. The warrior could tell something was wrong by the erratic way it was flying. Suddenly, he recognized it—the demon from Ammarindar!
He had his finger on the trigger, ready to fire a bolt through her heart, before he realized she was carrying Pharaun.
As the demon closed in on the edge of the building, she seemed to lose her balance, and Ryld literally had to reach out and grab her as she went by. All three of them tumbled to the stone in a heap at Jeggred’s feet. The draegloth stepped between the beautiful creature and the rest of the team.
“You!” Quenthel hissed, her scourge raised, ready to strike. “What are you doing here?”
The fiend, whom Pharaun referred to as Aliisza, Ryld remembered, eyed both Jeggred and the high priestess warily as she panted where she’d fallen. She made no move to defend herself.
“Bringing your precious wizard back to you, drow,” she muttered. “I know how fond you are of him.”
“He’s hurt,” Ryld said, turning the mage over.
Everyone but Jeggred gathered around as the weapons master began to examine Pharaun. It didn’t take him long to find the puncture wound in the wizard’s shoulder, a portion of a crossbow bolt still lodged in it. Most of the shaft had snapped off during his crash landing.
“The bolt is poisoned,” Quenthel said, standing over Pharaun’s prone body. “Healing him won’t do a bit of good unless we get the poison out of his blood first. If we don’t, he’ll die.”
“I could have told you that,” Aliisza said, sitting up, though she was still breathing heavily from her ordeal. “Here . . . he insisted we bring these.”
She tossed two backpacks at Quenthel’s feet.
“So, how do we remove the poison?” Ryld asked Quenthel, looking up from where he was tending to the Master of Sorcere. “Do any of you have the magic to do so?”
Quenthel shook her head.
“Yngoth can sense it in his body,” she said, patting the whip that was once again hanging from her hip, “but my spells are, of course, lost.”
Ryld looked at both Halisstra and Danifae.
“How about either of you?”
Both females shook their heads.
“I dabble in a bit of arcane magic,” Halisstra confessed, “but I am not yet powerful enough to eliminate poison.”
Jeggred continued his vigil over Aliisza but said, “Perhaps our good friend the ambassador had some means of aiding him.” The draegloth nudged the satchel at his feet.
“You’d better hope she did,” Ryld muttered at the unconscious Pharaun, sliding the pack over toward Quenthel. “There’s nothing else we can do for you, my friend.”
Pharaun was sweating profusely. Ryld knew the wizard might be their single best chance to escape the city. If they lost him, they might very well be trapped, unless Valas could find a way out.
Quenthel began rummaging through Faeryl’s things, flinging clothing and personal items to the side. As she dug her way toward the bottom, Ryld thought he heard the high priestess mutter something disparaging about the ambassador and a comment about her being a waste of space then her face brightened as she pulled a thick tube free.
“Ah ha!” she said triumphantly. “Let’s hope these are spells.”
She opened the tube, slid out a handful of parchment pages and unfurled them, scanning their contents quickly.
“Oh, how delightful,” she said. “Faeryl, you clever girl, where in the Underdark did you steal these from?”
Both Halisstra and Danifae crowded around the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith, each of them trying to get a glimpse of what was on the pages. The weapons master could see looks of elation on their faces.
“Is there anything helpful?” Ryld demanded. “Something to neutralize the poison?”
“I don’t know, yet,” Quenthel snapped. “Give me a moment.”
She continued to scan the pages, leafing through them rapidly.
“Several of these could prove quite helpful,” she said, “but I don’t see—oh, wait. Yes! Pharaun Mizzrym, you are in luck. Give me some room,” she said, motioning for Ryld to move out of the way.
The weapons master did so, sliding off to the side as Quenthel knelt beside the wizard. Laying one hand atop the wound, the high priestess began chanting, reading through the words on the scroll in her hand. There was a tiny flash of light as the handwritten text vanished from the page, and a soft glow passed through Pharaun’s body, emanating from the point where Quenthel’s hand touched him.
Almost immediately, the Master of Sorcere’s breathing slowed, and he seemed more relaxed. His eyes were still closed, but he was smiling.
“My thanks, Mistress Quenthel,” he said, and he sounded about as sincere as Ryld had ever heard him. “I ran into a spot of trouble at the inn, you see. A couple of fellows in the employ of Matron Mother Zauvirr were decidedly unhappy that I paid the place a visit. They caught me off guard.”
“I find that terribly difficult to believe,” Ryld said, eyeing Aliisza, who was still sitting on the opposite side of Jeggred.
“Yes, well, I’m sure you could have given them a lesson or two on how to more accurately find the most vulnerable point in a wizard’s defenses.”
“All right,” the high priestess said, standing again. “Get that out of his shoulder, and I can heal him.”
She went over to her own pack, where she tucked the scrolls, back in their protective tube, into a pocket. She began fishing around in another section of the container and produced a wand, which Ryld recognized from before.
The weapons master turned his attention back to the broken end of the bolt. He checked to see if it was lodged against any bone, and when he was satisfied that it was not, he gave a fierce shove, pushing the head through Pharaun’s shoulder and out the back side.
Pharaun arched his back and cried out in pain.
“Damn it, Master Argith,” he muttered finally, breathing fast. “You certainly know how to welcome a friend back.”
The wizard closed his eyes, still grimacing.
“I think the greeting w
as entirely appropriate for someone who managed to get himself shot,” Ryld replied, once more making room for Quenthel to work her own magic.
The high priestess waved her wand over the freshly bleeding puncture and muttered a trigger word. The flesh that was exposed began to knit itself together, closing the hole and forming a pale gray scar on his jet black flesh. Pharaun sighed as Quenthel stood up once more.
“There,” she said, returning the wand to her pack. “Now, try to avoid crossbow bolts. There’s only so much of that to go around.”
Ryld threw a glance at Halisstra and saw the drow priestess looking jealous as she watched Quenthel store away the wand.
To the victor goes the spoils, he thought grimly. You bowed your head to her and named her your mistress . . . don’t expect any generosity in return.
Pharaun was sitting up, helped by Danifae. He looked around. When he spotted Aliisza, still being guarded by the draegloth, he grimaced and pulled his hand free from the battle captive’s. Ryld glanced over and saw that the dark-haired beauty was frowning severely.
Uh oh, Ryld thought. This smacks of a jealous lover. Surely the wizard isn’t that big a fool, to lie with a demon. . . .
Pharaun managed to get to his feet and move over to where the demon sat.
“It’s all right,” he said to Jeggred as he passed. “You can stand down. She’s not going to bite.”
Jeggred studiously ignored the wizard and maintained his position.
“Look, I owe you for this,” he said, speaking low but not so quietly that Ryld couldn’t hear the conversation.
To his utter surprise, the demoness grabbed hold of Pharaun, her hands to either side of his head, and kissed him savagely. The wizard didn’t do anything to resist, though the warrior could see his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“Remember what I said,” Aliisza said, pressing her mouth to the mage’s ear, but speaking loudly enough that everyone could hear. “I will know.”
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 70
