“No,” the scout said, “but there are only a few deserts in Faerûn, especially at so northerly a latitude, so it is a very good bet that Anauroch is where we must be. There is a range of snow-capped mountains perhaps forty or fifty miles to our west, which you can see quite clearly in the daylight. Those I believe to be the Graypeak or Nether Mountains. They could be the Ice Mountains, but if we were so far north as to see them, I would think we would be in the High Ice, and not in this sandy and rocky stretch of the Great Desert.” “I’ve come to trust your sense of direction, but I can’t say I relish the prospect of marching half a thousand miles across the surface lands to get home,” Ryld Argith said, rubbing his hand over his short-cropped hair. He moved stiffly in his armor, bruised and battered beneath the mail from their desperate fight to escape Ched Nasad. “Citadel Adbar, Sundabar, and Silverymoon would all stand in our way, and they have very little love for our kind.”
“Let them try to stop us,” growled Jeggred. “We’ll travel by night, when the humans and the light-elves are blind. Even if someone should stumble into us, well, the surface dwellers are soft. I don’t fear them. Neither should you.”
Ryld bridled at the draegloth’s remark, but Quenthel silenced him with a raised hand.
“We will do what we have to do,” she said. “If we have to spend the next two months creeping across the surface realms under cover of night, we will do exactly that.”
She turned gracefully and paced away, gazing thoughtfully at the ruined court around them.
The party fell silent as each of the dark elves watched Quenthel’s back. Pharaun pushed himself erect and wrapped his piwafwi closer around his lean torso. The black cloak flapped in the bitter wind.
“The question that vexes me,” the mage said to no one in particular, “is whether we have accomplished what we set out to do. I do not relish the idea of crawling back to Menzoberranzan with nothing more to show for months of effort than news of Ched Nasad’s fall.”
“No priestess of the Spider Queen holds the answers we seek,” said Quenthel. “We will return to Menzoberranzan. I can only trust that the goddess will make clear the meaning of her silence when it suits her.”
Pharaun grimaced and said, “Blind faith is a poor substitute for a plan by which you might win the answers you seek.”
“Faith in the goddess is the only thing we have,” Halisstra snapped. She shifted half a step closer to the master of Sorcere. “You have forgotten your place if you address a high priestess of Lolth in such a manner. Do not forget it again.”
Pharaun opened his mouth to frame what would no doubt have been an even more inflammatory retort, but Ryld, sitting next to him, simply cleared his throat and scratched at his chin. The wizard paused a moment under the eyes of his companions, and shrugged.
“All I meant was that it seems clear to me that the Spider Queen means for us to puzzle out her silence for ourselves.”
“How do you suggest we should do that?” Quenthel asked. She folded her arms and pivoted to glare at Pharaun. “In case you have forgotten, we’ve toiled for months to discern the cause of the Silence.”
“But we have not exhausted all avenues of investigation, have we?” Pharaun said. “In Ched Nasad, we spoke of seeking the assistance of a priest of Vhaeraun, possibly Master Hune’s acquaintance Tzirik. We drow have other deities beside Lolth, after all. Is it so unreasonable to speculate that another god might be able to explain Lolth’s unusual silence?”
The circle fell still. The wizard’s words were not ones commonly heard in Menzoberranzan. Few dared utter such thoughts in the presence of the Spider Queen’s clergy.
“I see no need to go begging favors of a male heretic worshiping a miserable whelp of a god,” Quenthel said. “I doubt that Lolth has deigned to confide her purposes in any lesser powers.”
“You are probably correct,” said Pharaun. “She certainly hasn’t confided them in you, after all.”
Jeggred snarled at the wizard, and Pharaun raised his hands in a placating gesture, rolling his eyes.
Valas licked his lips nervously and offered, “Most of you have spent the great majority of your lives in Menzoberranzan, as is fit and proper for drow of your respective stations. I have traveled more widely, and I have visited places that secretly—even openly, in some cases—permit the worship of gods other than Lolth.” He noticed the gathering thunder in Quenthel’s face, mirrored in Halisstra’s. The scout winced but pressed on. “Under the wise rule of the matron mothers, the worship of drow gods other than Lolth has hardly flourished in Menzoberranzan, and so you may not hold a high opinion of the practice, but I can attest to the fact that the priests of the lesser gods of our race can call upon spells and guidance from their deities, too.”
“Where might we find Tzirik?” Ryld asked Valas.
“When last I met him, he lived among outcasts in a remote region known as the Labyrinth, south and west of the Darklake by perhaps a hundred miles. This was some time ago, of course.”
“Outcasts,” snorted Halisstra.
She was not the only one to express disgust. In the endless game played between the great Houses of the drow, of course there were losers. Most died, but some chose flight over death, taking up a hardscrabble and ignominious existence in the remote stretches of the Underdark. Others abandoned their home cities for different reasons—including, Halisstra supposed, the veneration of gods other than Lolth. She found it hard to believe that anyone so weak as to have been run out of her home city could offer much help at all.
“We’ll solve our own problems,” she said.
Pharaun glanced up at Halisstra, cold humor dancing in his eyes.
“I forgot that you now have some experience with the peculiar misfortune of being deprived of a home city,” he remarked. “And I applaud your celerity in including yourself in ‘our’ discussions and ‘our’ problems. Your selflessness is laudable.”
Halisstra shut her mouth, stung by the words. There would be many hundreds, even thousands of survivors from Ched Nasad scattered in as many tunnels and bolt-holes in the black caverns and passages around the city. Most of those would end their lives in the jaws of mindless monsters, or perhaps fall into wretched slavery as captives of drow from other cities, duergar, or even more horrible Underdark races like the mind flayers or the aboleths. And a few might hope to find some kind of life for themselves through their own wits and resourcefulness. It was not unknown for a House to take into its ranks a defeated enemy who had demonstrated her usefulness. House Melarn was dead. Wherever Halisstra journeyed next, she would be starting from square one. The advantages of her birth, the wealth and power of her city, all that meant nothing anymore.
She considered her reply carefully, conscious of the acute interest of the other drow around her, and said, “Spare me your pity.” She spoke in a murderous hiss, putting iron in her voice that she did not feel. “Unless I miss my guess, Menzoberranzan doesn’t stand so very far from Ched Nasad’s fate, else you never would have come to seek our aid. Our difficulties are your difficulties, are they not?”
Her words had the desired effect. The wizard looked away, while the other Menzoberranyr shifted nervously, studying each other’s reactions. Quenthel visibly flinched, her mouth tightening into a fierce scowl.
“Enough, both of you,” she said, turning to Valas. “This outcast priest of Vhaeraun—why would he aid us in any way? He is not likely to entertain an especially charitable attitude toward our cause.”
Valas replied, “I couldn’t say, Mistress. All I can do is bring you to him. What happens after that depends on you.”
The ruined courtyard fell silent. The sun was a double handspan into the sky, and blinding shafts of pure light sliced through the darkness of the ruined court from crumbling embrasures in the high walls. The ruins were apparently not as desolate as Halisstra had thought. She could hear the furtive sounds of small creatures scrabbling across sand and rubble, faint and small in the distance.
“The Lab
yrinth lies only a hundred miles from the Darklake?” Quenthel asked. The scout nodded once. The priestess folded her arms and thought. “Then it’s not very far from our homeward course, in any event. Pharaun, do you command any magic that might speed our travel? Fighting our way home across the surface realms appeals to me no more than it does the weapons master.”
The wizard leered and rose to his feet, preening under Quenthel’s request for help.
“Teleportation is risky,” he said. “First, the faerzress of the Underdark makes it dangerous to attempt transport spells. More to the point, I have never visited the Labyrinth, and so have no idea where I would be going. I would almost certainly fail. I know a spell to transform myself or others into different shapes more suited for travel, though. Perhaps if we were dragons or giant bats or something that would fly well by night. . . .” The wizard tapped his chin, considering the problem. “Whomever we press into service as a mount would have to stay in that shape until I changed him back, of course, and we’d still be looking at a couple of tendays of travel. Or . . . I know a spell of walking through shadows. It’s dangerous, and I couldn’t take us straight to the Labyrinth, as I have never been there and the spell is best employed to reach places you know well. I could take you to Mantol-Derith, though, which is hard by the shores of the Darklake. It would shorten our journey considerably.”
“Why didn’t you mention that before, when we were discussing months of marching across the surface?” said Jeggred, shaking his head in irritation.
“If you recall, we had not yet decided where we were going,” Pharaun replied. “I intended to offer my services at the appropriate time.”
Ryld said, “You could have transported us from Menzoberranzan to Ched Nasad in the first place. Why in the world did we walk?”
“Because I have good reason to fear the plane of shadow. As a younger and more impulsive mage I learned—the hard way—that
shadow walking confers no special protection against the attentions of those creatures that dwell in the dark realm. In fact, I was very nearly devoured by something I would not care to meet again.” The wizard offered a wry grin and added, “Naturally, I now regard shadow walking as an option of last resort. I only suggest it now because I deem it slightly less dangerous than tendays of travel across the surface world.”
“We will exercise all due caution,” Quenthel said. “Let’s be about it, then.”
“Not so fast. I must prepare the spell. I will require about an hour to make ready.”
“Do so without delay,” Quenthel said. She glanced around at the ruins, and shaded her eyes. “The sooner we are back below ground, the better.”
chapter
T WO
While Pharaun retired to a dark, quiet chamber to study his grimoires and ready his spells, the rest of the party gathered their gear and prepared to leave. They were woefully unprepared for a long journey on the surface; Halisstra and Danifae had no packs or supplies of any kind. The Menzoberranyr had wisely recovered their packs before escaping Ched Nasad, but their long journey to the City of Shimmering Webs had depleted their stores.
While they waited for Pharaun, Halisstra studied the ruins in more detail. She had something of a scholarly inclination, and deliberately taking an interest in the ancient city was as good a way as any of keeping her mind from dwelling on the last awful hours of her home city. The others busied themselves with the small tasks of breaking camp, or waited patiently in the deepest shadows they could find. Halisstra gathered the few things she had brought and set out from the ruined court. Her eye fell on Danifae, who knelt quietly in the shade of a broken arch, calmly watching her leave. Halisstra paused, and called, “Come, Danifae.”
She didn’t like the idea of leaving her servant alone with the Menzoberranyr. Danifae had served her well for years, but circumstances had changed.
The maidservant stood smoothly and followed. Halisstra led her through the crumbling shell of the palace surrounding the courtyard, and they emerged onto a wide boulevard arrowing through the heart of the old city. The air had warmed noticeably in the hour or more since sunrise, but it was still bitterly cold, and the brilliance of the day seemed almost enhanced by the crystal clarity of the skies. Both women stood blinded for several long moments in the sunshine.
“This is no good,” muttered Halisstra. “I’m squinting so hard I can’t see my hand in front of my face.”
Even when she managed to open her eyes, she could see little more than bright, painful spots.
“Valas says it’s possible to get used to daylight, with time,” Danifae offered. “I find that hard to believe, now that I have experienced it myself. A good thing we mean to return to the Underdark soon.” Halisstra heard a small tearing sound from beside her, and Danifae pressed a strip of cloth into her hand. “Tie this over your eyes, Mistress. Perhaps it will help.”
Halisstra managed to arrange the dark cloth as a makeshift veil. It did indeed help to abate the fierce glare of the sun.
“That’s better,” Halisstra said.
Danifae tore another small strip and bound it around her own eyes as her mistress examined the ruins. It seemed to Halisstra that the palace they’d taken shelter in was one of the more prominent buildings, which only made sense. Magical portals were not easy to make, and were often found in well-hidden or vigilantly guarded locations. A colonnade stood along the front of the palace, and across the boulevard was another great building—a temple, or perhaps a court of some kind. There was something familiar about the architecture of the buildings.
“Netherese,” she said. “See the square column bases, and the pointed arches in the windows?”
“I thought Netherese cities floated in the air, and were completely destroyed by some magical cataclysm,” Danifae replied. “How could anything like this still stand?”
“It could have been one of the successor states,” Halisstra said, “built after the great mythallars of the old Netherese cities failed. They would share many of the same architectural features, but would have been more mundane, less magical.”
“There’s writing up there,” Danifae said, pointing at the facade of a crumbled building. “There . . . above the columns.”
Halisstra followed Danifae’s gesture. “Yes,” she said. “That’s Netherese.”
“You can read it?” Danifae asked.
“I have studied several languages—the common tongue of the surface, High Netherese, Illuskan, even some of the speech of dragons,” Halisstra replied. “Our libraries contain fascinating histories and potent lore recorded in languages other than drow. I developed the habit of studying such things over a century ago, when I believed I might find some forgotten spell or secret that might prove useful against my rivals. As it turned out, I found little of that sort of thing, but I did find that I enjoyed learning for its own sake.”
“What does it say, then?”
“I’m not sure of some of the words, but I think it reads, ‘High Hall of Justice, Hlaungadath—In Truth’s Light No Lies Abide.’ ”
“What a simpleminded sentiment.”
Halisstra indicated the ruins around them and said, “You can see how far it got them. I know that name, though, Hlaungadath. I have seen maps of the surface world. Valas’s estimate of our location was accurate.”
“Even a male can do something right from time to time,” Danifae said.
Halisstra smiled and turned away to scan the ruins for any other sites of interest.
Something tawny and quick ducked swiftly out of sight. Halisstra froze on the instant, staring hard at the spot where she’d seen it, a gap in a masonry wall a short distance away. Nothing moved there, but from another direction came the sound of rubble shifting. Without looking away, she touched Danifae’s arm.
We’re not alone here, she signed. Back to the others—quickly.
Together, they backed away from the court of justice and out into the street again. As they turned to retrace their steps, something long and low, covered wit
h sand-colored scales, slid out into the boulevard. Its stubby wings clearly could never support it in flight, but its powerful talons and gaping jaws were much more developed. The dragon paused and raised up its head for a better look at the two drow on the street before it, and it hissed in delight. It was easily fifty feet from nose to tail, a hulking, powerful creature whose eyes gleamed with cunning and malice.
“Lolth protect us!” Danifae gasped.
The two women backed away in a new direction, at a right angle to the palace where their companions waited. The dragon followed leisurely, sinuously winding from side to side as it paced after them.
“It’s herding us away from the others,” Halisstra snarled.
She sensed hard stone behind her, and risked a quick glance backward. They were pinned against a building, sliding alongside it as they tried to keep their distance from the monster. A dark alleyway gaped just a few feet away. Halisstra hesitated for a heartbeat, then grasped Danifae by the wrist and darted into the narrow opening at the best speed she could manage.
Something waited for them in the shadows of the alley. Before Halisstra could skid to a stop, a tall golden creature reared up before her, half lion, half woman, beautiful and graceful. With a cold, cruel smile, the lion-woman reached out her hand and caressed Halisstra’s cheek. Her touch was cool, soothing, and in an instant Halisstra felt her fear, her determination, her very willpower drain softly away. Vaguely she reached up to push the creature’s hand away from her face.
“Don’t be afraid,” the creature said in a lovely voice. “Lie down and rest here a while. You are among friends, and no harm will come to you.”
Halisstra stood paralyzed, recognizing that the creature’s words made no sense, but empty of the willpower she needed to resist. Danifae whirled her away by her arm and slapped her hard across the face.
“It’s a lamia!” she snapped. “It seeks to beguile you!”
The lamia snarled in anger, its beautiful features suddenly hard and cruel.
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 76
