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

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

  Ryld followed, somewhat more awkwardly. He could manage it, barely, but he was lucky to have the magic of his insignia to fall back on if his footing or grip failed him.

  Valas moved confidently forward, following the seam as it descended sharply and disappeared around a sharp bend overlooking a side cavern.

  Ryld scrambled down after him, cursing silently as his foot dislodged some loose rock and sent it clattering down the clifflike wall. The forges and hammers of Gracklstugh covered the sound fairly well, though, and they were still above Laduguer’s Furrow. The rock skittered into the abyss and vanished.

  Valas glanced back from his perch at the bend.

  Carefully, he signed. Come up here and see this.

  Ryld worked his way up beside the scout, finally stretching out on his belly to stay on the ledge. The seam ran down to a side cave and turned in sharply. From their vantage a hundred feet or more above the floor, they could see a good-sized cavern, perhaps three or four hundred yards long and about half that wide. The walls were hewn into barracks rooms, enough to house quite a large number of soldiers, but the floor of the place was level and open, a good drilling ground for bodies of troops.

  From end to end, it was crowded with wagons and pack lizards. Hundreds of duergar swarmed over the scene, securing great panniers to the ugly reptiles, loading wagons, and preparing siege engines for travel. The noxious reek of the city’s smelters didn’t suffice to mask the heavy smell of animal dung in the large chamber, and the lizards’ hisses and rasping croaks filled the air.

  Valas began counting wagons and pack beasts, trying to estimate the size of the force that might be on the march. After a long moment, he finally tore his eyes away.

  Somewhere between two and three thousand? Ryld said.

  The scout frowned and replied, I think somewhat more, maybe four thousand all together, but there may be more trains gathering in other caverns nearby.

  Is there any reason to think they’re not bound for Menzoberranzan? Ryld asked.

  We’re not their only enemies. Still, I don’t like the timing.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, either,” Ryld whispered. He carefully began to worm his way back from the edge, taking great pains to dislodge no more rocks. “I would suggest checking the other caves for more soldiers, but I think we’ve seen more than the duergar would want already, and I don’t feel like pressing my luck. We’d best get back and report this to the others.”

  chapter

  eight

  “We should just leave,” growled Jeggred. His white fur was streaked with red wine, and hot grease from a roast of rothé meat stained his muzzle. The draegloth didn’t take well to long waits, and two days of confining himself to the Cold Foundry had been hard for him. “We could be out of the city before they knew we’d gone.”

  “I fear it wouldn’t be as simple as you make it sound,” Ryld said. He knelt by his pack, stuffing sacks with the least perishable items from the buffet. He dropped the sacks into a yawning black circle beside him—a magical hole that could be picked up and carried as if it was nothing but a piece of dark cloth. It could hold hundreds of pounds of gear and supplies, but weighed nothing at all. “You may not have noticed, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who marked the spies watching this inn. We wouldn’t make a quarter mile before we were swarmed under duergar soldiers.”

  “So?” the draegloth demanded. “I fear no dwarf!”

  “Duergar aren’t goblins or gnolls, too stupid to use their numbers well, too clumsy and crude to stand a chance in a one-on-one duel. I’ve met duergar swordsmen nearly as good as I am. I have no doubt that a number of such formidable fellows would be banded together against us, and the duergar count skilled wizards and clerics among their ranks, too.”

  “We should have known better than to march into a duergar city,” Halisstra said. “What a miserable piece of timing.”

  She hurried to don her armor, a suit of highly enchanted chain mail that carried the arms of House Melarn on its breast. She wondered if the best strategy would be to simply wait a few more days and allow the gray dwarves to relax their vigilant stance. On the other hand, if they delayed too long, there was always the chance that the merchant she’d charmed to part with Danifae’s new arms would recover his wits and report the incident to the authorities. Had they simply murdered the merchants . . . but no, if they’d been caught at that, they would already have paid with their lives.

  She tugged at the long hem of the mail hauberk and wriggled to settle it better on her shoulders.

  “Master Argith, how long will it take the duergar army to march?” Halisstra asked.

  “Soon,” Ryld said. “They can’t keep that many pack lizards in harness for long. The question is how long after the army sallies before they allow travel to resume. If we wait them out, we might be delayed for days.”

  “Delayed—or disposed of,” Danifae warned.

  “We will set out at once,” Quenthel said, putting a halt to the debate.

  The Mistress of the Academy dressed for battle, her face set in a black scowl, her whips writhing in agitation.

  “That begs the question that was raised a moment ago—which way do we go?” asked Ryld.

  The weapons master finished with his supplies and picked up the hole, rolling it tightly and slipping it into his pack.

  “I can retrace our steps back to Mantol-Derith,” Pharaun offered, “but it will be difficult to move forward from here. I don’t know the way to the Labyrinth, so any stroll we took on the Plane of Shadow would doubtless lead us to a strange and cheerless end. There are too many of you for me to teleport us all together, so unless someone feels like answering to the gray dwarves for the rest of the company’s sudden departure, I suppose that’s out as well.”

  “What about a spell to conceal our identities?” Ryld asked.

  “Regrettably,” the wizard replied, “gray dwarves are notoriously resistant to illusions of any kind.”

  Halisstra added, “If only one saw through a disguise and saw a party of dark elves. . . .”

  “Better to simply render us all invisible,” the Master of Sorcere said. “Yes, that would be the most expedient solution to this little conundrum. It quite reminds me of a time when—”

  “Enough.” Quenthel shifted in her seat and asked Valas, “Do we need to set out for the Labyrinth from here, or could you find a way around Gracklstugh if we retraced our steps a bit?”

  “It will take several more days to circle the city,” the scout answered, “but I could guide you past Gracklstugh’s borders.”

  “Fine,” Quenthel said. “We will head back for the docks and make use of Coalhewer’s boat. It’s the most direct route out of the city from here, and unless I miss my guess, the lakeside will be less heavily guarded than the tunnels. Is everybody armed?” She looked around quickly. No one requested more time to prepare, so the Baenre priestess nodded with a small gesture of approval and turned to Pharaun. “What must we do for your spell to succeed?”

  “Join hands and stay close to me,” Pharaun said, “or wander off if you like, in which case you will find yourself inconveniently visible. I will not be held responsible for any difficulties that ensue.”

  Fully armed and armored, packs shouldered, all but Valas joined hands and waited. The Master of Sorcere, standing in their center, hissed out a sibilant string of arcane words and wove his hands in mystic passes. They all vanished from view. Halisstra could feel Danifae’s hand on her left shoulder, and she clasped Ryld’s cuirass with her own right hand, but as far as her eyes could tell, only the scout was in the room.

  “Are you ready, Master Hune?” Pharaun asked, unseen.

  Valas offered a small nod. He was dressed in what passed for his own finery, a simple vest of chain mail over a good shirt of spider silk and dark breeches, his piwafwi thrown over one shoulder in a rakish fashion. Odd badges and tokens pinned here and there to his clothing, the defenses and charms of half a dozen races, completed his ens
emble.

  “I’ll dawdle in the courtyard a moment. Make sure you’re all out swiftly; it will look less suspicious if I don’t stand around for long. I’ll join you at Coalhewer’s boat well within the hour.”

  “You’ll be tailed,” Ryld said.

  Valas Hune seemed honestly offended.

  “No one alive can follow me when I do not wish to be followed,” he said.

  Valas went out into the courtyard, throwing open the door to their room and taking a long moment to stretch. Halisstra felt Ryld shuffle forward, and she did likewise, crowding close behind him as Danifae pressed up behind her. The girl’s breath was warm at her neck.

  While the Bregan D’aerthe scout casually strolled out of the inn’s gate and turned left toward the city’s central district, Halisstra and the others bent around in an awkward circle and headed right, back to the docks. The streets were not deserted, but neither were they busy. Most duergar were back in their drab residences after a long day in the city’s forges and foundries. Had the company been forced into flight at the beginning or the end of the workday, their deception might have been given away by the sheer accident of a busy gray dwarf bumping into their invisible chain as they skulked down the street.

  Halisstra risked one more glance over her shoulder at Valas, who strolled quickly down the street in the opposite direction, looking a little furtive himself—a better disguise than complete nonchalance, which would have been jarring in a place like Gracklstugh. She also noted a gray dwarf porter who hefted a small cask of brandy to his shoulder as the scout passed and turned to follow, seemingly nothing more than a common laborer hired to carry goods from one part of the city to another. Valas could not have missed him, she decided. The mercenary is too sharp to miss a straightforward tail like that.

  Though Halisstra expected a hue and a cry at any moment from hidden watchers, their progress was unimpeded until they reached the docks. As they hurried across the stone quays toward the strange vessels moored there, Ryld suddenly halted, surprising her. Halisstra walked into his back before she realized he’d stopped. Danifae bumped into her as well, as the whole column came to a halt.

  “Trouble,” whispered Pharaun. “A patrol of duergar soldiers in the crown prince’s colors just came around the corner of the next street over. They’re invisible, too, and there’s a wizard-looking fellow leading them in our direction.”

  “They see us?” Jeggred rumbled. “What use are you, mage?”

  “There are spells that allow one to see the invisible,” Pharaun replied. “I’m using one right now, in fact, which is why I can see the guards, and you cannot. I suppose that begs the question, what use are y—”

  “You there! Dismiss your spell, and lay down your weapons!” the leader of the duergar patrol called. A clatter of arms echoed across the silent street, though Halisstra still could not make out any of the gray dwarves. “You are under arrest!”

  “Jeggred, Ryld, Pharaun—deal with them,” Quenthel ordered. “Danifae, Halisstra, stay with me.”

  She dashed off down the pier, ghosting into visibility as she left Pharaun’s magical influence behind. Jeggred and Ryld charged in the opposite direction, Splitter appearing in the weapons master’s hand as if he had worked an enchantment of his own. Pharaun snarled out a short phrase of words that seemed to shiver the very air of the quay, and a moment later a ripple of light washed over the opposite side of the street, revealing the armored duergar where they stood. The wizard followed instantly with another spell, becoming visible himself as he pointed a black ray at the wizard among the gray dwarf soldiers. The purple lance struck the duergar mage in the center of his chest, and the enemy wizard collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

  “Next time, strike first and issue challenges later,” Pharaun remarked. He started to work another spell as the draegloth and the weapons master crashed into the ranks of the patrol, hewing and slashing with abandon.

  Halisstra followed Quenthel as she ran down the pier and leaped onto Coalhewer’s boat. The massive undead skeletons stood motionless in their well in the center of the hull, nothing more than inert machinery awaiting command. Beneath the bridge, the duergar smuggler stirred and sat up from a thin bedroll, snatching up a hand axe close by his sleeping place.

  “Who goes there?” he roared, scrambling to his feet. “Why, ye—”

  He was cut off by the impact of Quenthel’s boot in the center of his chest, slamming him back down to the deck.

  The Baenre raised her whip to finish the smuggler, but Halisstra called, “Wait! We may need him to run this thing.”

  “You believed that story of his?” Quenthel said, not taking her eyes from the dwarf. “Of course he wanted us to think we needed him to run the boat.”

  “True or not, now is not the time to gamble on our escape,” Halisstra said. “We’d look damned foolish if we fought our way through a patrol of the prince’s soldiers and couldn’t leave the pier.”

  “Fell out of the crown prince’s favor, did ye?” Coalhewer said. He stood slowly and offered a fierce grin. From the end of the pier a sudden bright glare of lightning and a booming thunderclap announced the arrival of duergar reinforcements. “If ye kill me, ye’ll never escape. Now, what’s a fair price fer taking you off this pier, I wonder?”

  Quenthel bristled and doubtless would have struck him down then, but Halisstra stepped between them.

  “If we get caught here,” the Melarn priestess said, “we’ll implicate you in whatever charges are brought against us, dwarf. Now get us underway.”

  Coalhewer stared up at the three dark elves, his face contorted with fury.

  “I dealt fairly with ye, and this be my thanks?” he snarled. “I should’ve known better than to traffic with yer kind!”

  He whirled to cast off the lines securing the macabre vessel to the quay, barking orders at the hulking skeletons in the center of the boat.

  Quenthel looked at Halisstra with narrowed eyes and asked, “Why spare the dwarf? You know he’s lying about commanding the boat.”

  Halisstra shrugged and said, “You can always kill him later, if you’re so inclined.”

  As the wheels at the side of the vessel began to churn in the water, Ryld and Jeggred sprinted up, clambering aboard. Blood dripped from both the half-demon’s talons and Splitter. Pharaun bounded up a moment later, after sealing the end of the pier with a wall of roaring flame to keep the soldiers at bay.

  “That won’t hold them for long, I’m sure,” the wizard said. “There must be three or four mages back there, and they’ll extinguish that wall quickly enough. Best we get well away from here before they can fling their spells against our humble conveyance.”

  Ryld studied the wall of fire at the pier’s end and scowled.

  “You realize you’ve also blocked Valas’s escape with that spell,” he grated. “We need him, Pharaun. We can’t leave him here.”

  “I’m flattered, Master Argith.”

  From the shadows of the vessel’s stern, Valas stood up and adjusted his piwafwi.

  “Where in Lolth’s dark hells did you come from?” the weapons master said, blinking and rubbing his eyes.

  “I boarded just a few steps behind the three ladies,” the scout said. He glanced around, savoring the open surprise on the faces of his companions, then made a small bow and a gesture of selfdeprecation. “As I said, I am not easily followed or marked when I do not wish to be. Besides, it seemed that the three of you had the crown prince’s soldiers in hand.”

  The Master of Melee-Magthere snorted, and returned Splitter to its sheath across his back. He turned to the city’s waterfront, which was receding quickly into the darkness. Fire still glowed along the piers, illuminating the bizarre profiles of more duergar vessels whose crews swarmed the decks, shouting orders at each other and scurrying to obey the crown prince’s soldiers. “I hope our vessel is faster than theirs,” Ryld said.

  “Not to worry,” Coalhewer called from his perch. “This be the fastest vess
el on the Darklake. None of those scows can catch us.”

  He snapped out another order to the hulking skeletons driving the boat, and the undead monstrosities redoubled their efforts, driving their crankshafts faster and faster, until a froth of white foam boiled at the paddlewheels. The duergar city faded into the darkness behind them, marked by nothing more than a red glare on the cavern ceiling.

  “A dire development all this,” Quenthel mused. “Menzoberranzan hardly needs a war with the duergar now.”

  “Do we alter our course?” Ryld asked. “Menzoberranzan must be warned of the duergar army.”

  The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith stood in thought for a moment, then said, “No. What we’re doing is more important, and if I am not mistaken Pharaun possesses the means to pass a warning to the archmage. Is that not so, wizard?”

  The Master of Sorcere simply smiled and spread his hands.

  Nimor’s soft footfalls echoed in corridor after empty corridor as he made his way through the crown prince’s fortress. At odd intervals he passed pairs of scowling guards in heavy armor, halberds held upright, and he wondered if they ever tired of looking at the blank stone walls in the course of their duties.

  Most likely not, he decided. Duergar were simply insensitive to that sort of thing.

  In his hand, Nimor idly flipped a small envelope from finger to finger. The Lady Aliisza of the Sceptered One’s Court (an inventive title if Nimor had ever heard one) had invited him to join her for dinner in her chambers, observing that the gray dwarves had so far failed to invite her to any kind of banquet or dinner. Nimor didn’t expect that companionship for dinner was the only thing on her agenda.

  Arriving at the rooms assigned to the Sceptered One’s envoy, he tucked his invitation back into his breast pocket, and rapped twice at the door.

  “Enter,” called a soft voice.

  Nimor let himself in. Aliisza waited by a table spread with quite an impressive meal, complete with a bottle of wine from the World Above and a pair of glasses already poured. She wore a flowing skirt of red silk with a tight-fitting corselet trimmed with black lace. The colors suited her, he noted, and even went well with her soft black wings.