Dissolution

by Richard Lee Byers

Chapter Eleven

 

  Quenthel's patrol had stalked the shadowy, candlelit passages of Arach-Tinilith for hours, until spaces she knew intimately began to seem strange and subtly unreal, and her subordinates' nerves visibly frayed with the waiting. She called a halt to let the underlings rest and collect themselves. They stopped in a small chapel with the images of skulls, daggers, and spiders worked in bas-relief on the walls and the bones of long-dead priestesses interred beneath the floor. Rumor whispered that a cleric had cut her own throat in this sanctuary and her ghost sometimes haunted it, but the Baenre had never seen the apparition, and it wasn't in evidence then.

  The priestesses and novices settled on the pews. For a while, no one spoke.

  Eventually Jyslin, a second-year student with a heart-shaped face and silver studs in her earlobes, said, "Perhaps nothing will happen. "

  Quenthel stared coldly at the novice. Like the rest of the party, the younger female cut a warlike figure with her mace, mail, and shield, but her dread showed in her troubled maroon eyes and shiny, sweaty brow.

  "We will face another demon tonight," Quenthel said. "I feel it, so it's pointless to hope otherwise. Instead I suggest you concentrate on staying alert and remembering what you've learned. "

  Jyslin lowered her eyes and whispered, "Yes, Mistress. "

  "Wishful thinking is for cowards," Quenthel said, "and if you fools are lapsing into it, we've lingered here too long. Up with you. "

  Reluctantly, someone's links of supple black mail chiming ever so faintly, Quenthel's minions rose. She led them onward.

  In light of the two previous intrusions and the obvious uselessness of the wards the mages of Sorcere had created, Quenthel had placed Arach-Tinilith on alert and organized her staff and students into squads of eight. Most of the units would stand watch atset locations, but several would patrol the entire building. The Baenre princess had opted to lead one of the latter.

  She'd also decided to throw open the storerooms and armories and dispense all the potent enchanted tools and weapons still deposited there. Even the first-year students bore enchanted arms and talismans worthy of a high priestess.

  Not that the gear had done much to bolster Jyslin's morale, nor that of many another novice. Had Quenthel not been suffering her own carefully masked anxieties, their glumness might have amused her. The girls had seen demons throughout their childhoods. They'd even achieved a certain intimacy with them in Arach-Tinilith, but this was the first time such entities had posed a threat to them, and they'd realized they hadn't truly known the ferocious beings at all.

  No doubt some of the females had also been perceptive enough to recognize that they themselves had been in comparatively little danger until Quenthel mustered them in what was more or less her personal defense. If so,their resentment, like their uneasiness, was irrelevant. They wereher underlings, and it was their duty to serve her.

  "It's the wrath of Lolth herself," whispered Minoiin Fey-Branche, a fifth-year student who wore her hair in three long braids. Obviously, she didn't intend for her voice to carry to the front of the procession. "First she strips us of our magic, then sends her fiends to kill us. "

  Quenthel whirled. Sensing her anger, her whip vipers rose, weaving and hissing.

  "Shut up!" she snapped. "The Spider Queen may be testing us, eliminating the unfit, but she has not condemned her entire temple. She would not. "

  Minoiin lowered her eyes. "Yes, Mistress," she said tonelessly.

  Quenthel noticed that no one else looked reassured, either.

  "You disgust me," the Baenre said. "All of you. "

  "We apologize, Mistress," said Jyslin.

  "I remember my training," Quenthel said. "If a novice showed a hint of cowardice or disobedience, my sister Triel would make her fast for a tenday, and eat rancid filth for another after that. I should do the same, but unfortunately, with Arach-Tinilith under siege, I need my people strong. So all right, though it should shame you take it, you can have another rest. You'll fill your bellies, and it had better stiffen your spines. Otherwise, we'll see how many of you I have to flog before the rest cease their cringing and whining. Come. "

  She led them on to a classroom where the kitchen staff had set a table. She'd ordered them to prepare a cold supper and leave it at various points around the temple, so that the weary sentinels could at least refresh themselves with food, and the cooks had done a decent job of it. On a silver salver lay pink and brown slices of rothe steak steeped in a tawny marinade, their aroma competing with Arach-Tinilith's omnipresent scent of incense. Other trays and bowls held raw mushroom pieces with a creamy dipping sauce and a salad of black, white, and red diced fungus, while the pitchers presumably contained wine, watered as per her command. Quenthel hoped the alcohol would hearten those residents whom Lolth's absence and the incursions of the past two nights had terrified, but she didn't want any of the temple's defenders sloppy drunk and incapacitated.

  Some of Quenthel's minions fell to as if they expected this to be their last meal. Others, likely as certain of their fate, seemed too tense to do more than pick at the viands.

  The mistress of the Academy supposed that, though she intended to survive the night, in a sense, she belonged to the latter party. Her stomach was somewhat queasy, and the long hours of edgy anticipation had killed her appetite.

  Come on, demon, she thought,let's get this over with. . . .

  The entity failed to respond to her silent plea.

  She decided her throat was a little parched, caught Jyslin's eye, and said, "Pour me a cup. "

  "Yes, Mistress. "

  The second-year novice performed the service with commendable alacrity. She filled the silver goblet too high for gentility's sake, but Quenthel expected no better from a commoner. The Baenre accepted the cup with a nod and raised it to her lips.

  Her whip of fangs hung from her wrist by the wyvern-hide loop that pierced its handle. She felt a thrill of alarm surge across the psionic link she shared with the vipers. At the same instant, the snakes reared and dashed the goblet from her grasp. She stared at them in amazement.

  "Poison," Yngoth said, his slit-pupiled eyes glinting in their scaly sockets. "We smelled it. "

  Quenthel looked around. Her followers had heard the serpent's declaration and were gawking at her and the reptiles in consternation. They appeared to be in perfectly good health, but she trusted the vipers and knew it wouldn't last.

  "Purge yourselves," she said. "Now!"

  They never got the chance. Almost as one, they succumbed to the toxin, swaying, staggering, and collapsing. Some retched involuntarily as the sickness hit them, but it didn't help. They passed out like the rest.

  Quenthel shifted the whip back to her hand, peered in all directions, and bade the vipers do the same.

  She'd realized her demonic assailants were supposed to suggest the several dominions of the goddess, and therefore an "assassin" of some sort would turn up sooner or later. Still, she foolishly assumed that being would attack in some obvious way just as the "spider" and "darkness" had. She hadn't expected it to employ stealth and attempt to poison her, though in retrospect, that tactic made perfect sense.

  The question was, had the demon doneall it planned to do, or, since its first ploy had failed, would it strike at her in some other way?

  Off to the west, someone screamed, the sound echoing down the stone halls. Quenthel had her answer, and it was the one she'd expected.

  Her heart beat faster, her mouth felt drier still, and she realized she wasn't eager to confront this new intruder, certainly not without the support of her personal guards. Yet she was mistress in these halls, and it was unthinkable to turn tail and let an invader make free with her domain.

  Besides, if she fled, the cursed thing would probably track her anyway.

  Leaving her fallen patrol with their useless magical treasures strewn about them on the floor, she strode toward the noise. She shouted for other underlings
to attend her, but no one responded.

  In a minute or so, she entered a long gallery, where wall carvings told the history of Lolth as it had occurred and as it was prophesied: her seduction of Corellon Larethian, chief deity of the contemptible elves of the World Above, their union and her first attempt to overthrow him, her discovery of her spider form and her descent into the Abyss, her conquest of the Demonweb and her adoption of the drow as her chosen people, and her future triumph over all other gods and ascendancy over all creation.

  A silhouette appeared in the arched entry at the far end of the hall. It changed color and shape - humanoid, quadruped, blob, worm, cluster of spikes - from one instant to the next. Somehow perceiving Quenthel, it let out a cry. Its voice sounded like a wavering, cacophonous jumble of every noise she'd ever heard and some she hadn't. Within the first discordant howl she caught the shrill note of a flute, the grunt of a rothe, a baby crying, water splashing, and fire crackling.

  Quenthel recognized the demon for the profound threat it was, but for a moment, she was less concerned for her safety or fired with a fighter's rage than she was surprised. Poison surely suggested an assassin, yet the demon before her was plainly an embodiment of chaos.

  The spirit started down the gallery, and the walls bulged, flowed, and changed color around it. Quenthel reached into the leather bag hanging from her belt and brought out a scroll, then something hit her hard in the back of the neck.

  Ryld peered about the room. Judging from the sunken arena in the center of the floor, the ruinous place had, in another era, served as a drinking pit - one of those rude establishments where dark elves of every station went to forget about caste and grace for a few hours, guzzle raw spirit, and watch undercreatures slaughter one another in contests that were often set up in such a way as to give them a comical aspect.

  In other words, it would have been a crude sort of place by the standards of elegant Menzoberranzan, but it had grown cruder since the goblinoids had taken it over. Scores if not hundreds of them packed into the space, and the mingled stink of their unwashed bodies, each race malodorous in its own particular fashion, was sickening. The loud gabbling in their various harsh and guttural languages was nearly as unpleasant. It all but drowned out the rhythmic thuds that filtered through the ceiling, but of course the shaggy gnoll drummer on the roof wasn't playing for the folk already inside but to guide others still in transit.

  To Ryld's surprise, a fair number of the creatures assembling there hailed from outside the Braeryn. He observed plain but relatively clean and intact garments suggestive of Eastmyr, and even liveries, steel collars, shackles, whip marks, and brands - the stigmata of thralls who'd sneaked away from their mistresses' affluent households. Obviously, those who'd come from beyond the district couldn't have heard the drum through the magical buffers. Some runner must have carried word to them.

  Still magically disguised as orcs, though not the same ones who'd tricked the two bugbears, the masters of Tier Breche had squeezed into a corner to watch whatever would transpire.

  Certain no one would hear him over the ambient din, Ryld leaned his head close to Pharaun's and said, "I think it's just a party. "

  "Do you see them celebrating?" Pharaun replied. His new porcine face had a broken nose and tusk. "No, not as such. They'd be considerably more boisterous. They're waiting for something, and eagerly, too. Observe those female goblins chattering and passing their bottle back and forth. " Pharaun nodded toward a trio of filthy, bandy-legged creatures with flat faces and sloping brows. "They're aquiver with anticipation. If they're still as giddy after the gathering breaks up, we may want to seek solace for our frustrations in their hairy, misshapen arms. "

  Certain his friend was joking, Ryld snorted . . . then realized he wasn't quite sure after all.

  "You'd have relations with agoblin?"

  "A true scholar always seeks new experiences. Besides, what's the point of being a dark elf, a lord of the Underdark, if you don't exploit the slave races to the utmost?"

  "Hmm. I admit they might be no worse than one of those priestesses who demand you grovel and do exactly as you're - "

  "Hush!"

  The drum had stopped.

  "Something's happening," Pharaun added.

  Ryld saw that his friend was correct. A stir ran through the crowd and they started to shout, "Prophet! Prophet! Prophet!"

  The master of Melee-Magthere didn't know what he expected to see next, but it certainly wasn't the figure in the nondescript cloak and hood whose upper body appeared above the heads of the crowd. Perhaps he'd climbed up on a bench or table, or maybe he'd simply levitated, for this "Prophet," plainly beloved of the lower orders, appeared to be a handsome drow male.

  The Prophet let his followers chant and shout for a minute or so, then he raised his slender hands and gradually they subsided. Pharaun leaned close to Ryld again.

  "It's possible the fellow's not really one of us," the wizard said. "He's wrapped in a glamour somewhat like ours, but his spell makes every observer perceive him in a favorable light. I imagine the goblins see him as a goblin, the gnolls, as one of their own, and so forth. "

  "What's inside the illusion?"

  "I don't know. The enchantment is peculiar. I've never encountered anything quite like it. I can't see through it, but I suspect we're about to learn his intentions. "

  "My brothers and sisters," the Prophet said.

  His voice sparked another round of cheering, and he waited for it to run its course.

  "My brothers and sisters," he repeated. "Since the founding of this city, the Menzoberranyr have held our peoples in bondage or in conditions equally degraded. They work us until we die of exhaustion. They torture and kill us on a whim. They condemn us to starve, sicken, and live in squalor. "

  The audience growled its agreement.

  "You witness our misery everywhere you look," the hooded orator continued. "Yesterday, I walked through Manyfolk. I saw a hobgoblin girl-child, surely no older than five or six, trying to pick up a scrap of mushroom from the street. With her teeth! Her hands wouldn't serve. Some drow had magically fused them together behind her back so she would live and die a cripple and a freak. "

  The crowd snarled in outrage, even though their races commonly engaged in tortures equally cruel, albeit far less varied and imaginative.

  "I walked through Narbondellyn," the Prophet said. "I saw an orc, paralyzed in some manner, lying on the ground. A dark elf slit his chest, spread the flaps of skin, cut some ribs with a saw, and whistled his riding lizardover to feed on the still-living thrall's organs. The drow told a companion that he gave the reptile one such meal every tenday to make it a faster racer. "

  The audience howled its wrath. One female orc, transported with fury, gashed her cheeks and brow with a piece of broken glass.

  The Prophet's litany of atrocities ran on and on, and Ryld gradually felt a strange emotion overtaking him. He knew it couldn't be guilt - no dark elf experienced that ridiculous condition - but perhaps it was a kind of shame, a disgust at the sheer waste and childishness manifest in Menzoberranzan's abuse of its undercreatures and a desire to rectify the situation if he could.

  The feeling was irrational, of course. The goblins and their kin existed only to serve the pleasure of the drow, and if you ruined one, you just caught or bought another. The weapons master gave his head a shake, clearing it, then turned to Pharaun.

  Even through his orc mask, the wizard's amusement was apparent.

  "Resolved to mend your wicked ways?"

  "I gather you feel the influence, too," said Ryld. "What's happening?"

  "The Prophet has magic buttressing his oratory, again, in a sort of configuration I don't quite understand. "

  "Right, but what's the point of all this bellyaching?"

  "I assume he'll get around to telling us. "

  The speaker continued in the same vein a while longer, goading the crowd to the brink of hysteria.

  At l
ast he cried, "But it does not have to be that way!"

  The undercreatures howled, and for a moment, until he pushed the feelings away, Ryld felt his magically induced disgust blaze up into savage bloodlust.

  "We can be avenged! Repay every injury a thousandfold! Cast down the drow to beour slaves! We'll wrap ourselves in silks and cloth-of-gold and make them run naked, feast on succulent viands and feed them garbage! We'll sack Menzoberranzan, and afterward those of us who wish it will return to our own peoples laden with treasure, while the rest of us rule the cavern as our own!"

  Not likely, thought Ryld. He turned to say as much to Pharaun, then blinked in surprise. The wizard looked as if he was taking this diatribe seriously.

  "They're just venting their resentment in the form of a fantasy," the warrior whispered. "They'd never dare, and we'd crush them in a matter of minutes if they did. "

  "So one would assume," Pharaun replied. "Come on, I want a closer look. "

  They started working their way forward through the agitated throng. Some of their fellow spectators plainly resented their shoving. Ryld had to toss one hobgoblin down onto the floor of the sunken arena, but no one seemed to think it odd that they wanted to get closer to the charismatic leader. Others were doing the same.

  The Prophet continued his oration.

  "I thank you for your work and your patience, which soon will reap their reward. Word of our revolt has reached every street and alley. We have warriors everywhere, and each understands what he is to do when he hears the Call. Meanwhile, the drow suspect nothing. Their arrogance makes them complacent. They won't suspect until it's too late, until the Call comes and we rise as one - until we burn them. "

  Ryld and Pharaun had forced their way close enough to see the Prophet pick up a sandstone rod and anoint the end with an oil from a ceramic bottle. The rod burst into yellow, crackling flame as if it were made of dry wood, that exotic combustible product of the World Above. The master of Melee-Magthere squinted at the sudden flare of light.

  "Eyes of the Goddess!" Pharaun exclaimed.

  "It's a neat trick," Ryld said, "but surely nothing special by your standards. "

  "Not the fire, those two bugbears standing behind the Prophet. "

  "His bodyguards, I imagine. What of them?"

  "They're Tluth Melarn and one Alton the cobbler, two of our runaways. They're wearing veils of illusion, too, but of a simpler nature. I can see past theirs. "

  "Are you serious? What are drow, even rogues, doing aiding the instigator of a slave revolt?"

  "Perhaps we'll find out when we tail the Prophet and his entourage away from here. "

  "I taught you how to use the fire pots," the orator continued, "and my friends and I have brought plenty of them. " He gestured toward several hovering floatchests. "Take them and hide them until the day of reckoning. "

  The bright notes of a brazen glaur horn blared through the air. For a moment, confused, Ryld thought "the Call" - whatever that was - had arrived, then a thrill of panic, or at least the memory of it, reminded him what the trumpet truly portended. Judging by the goblins' babbling and frantic peering about, they knew, too.

  "What is it?" Pharaun asked.

  "You're nobly born," said Ryld, hearing a trace of an old bitterness in his voice. "Didn't you ever go hunting through the Braeryn, slaying every wretch you could catch?"

  The wizard smiled and said, "Now that you mention it, but it's been a long time. It occurs to me that this is probably Greyanna's doing. Not a bad tactic, really, even though it involves a lot of waste motion. Once I shielded us our hunters couldn't pinpoint our location, but they knew our mission would bring us to the Braeryn so they organized a hunt for a party of nobles. The idea is that all the turmoil is likely to flush us out and send us scrambling frantically through the streets, at which point they'll have a better chance of spotting us. "

  "What's more," said Ryld, making sure his swords were loose in their scabbards, "your sister gives us the choice of retaining our veils of illusion and being harried by our own kind, or casting them off and facing the wrath of the undercreatures. Either way, someone might do her killing for her. "

  The Prophet raised his hands for calm, and the undercreatures quieted a little.

  "My friends, in a moment we will scatter as we must, for a little while longer, but before you go, take the fire pots. Once the danger is past, share the weapons and news of our gatheringwith all those who were unable to attend. Remember your part in the plan and wait for the Call. Now, go!"

  Some of the rebels bolted without further delay, but at least half lingered long enough to take a jug or two from the hovering boxes. One orc lost his footing in the press, then screamed as other goblinoids trampled him in their haste. Meanwhile, the Prophet and his bodyguards slipped out a door in the back wall.

  "Shall we?" said Pharaun, striding after them.

  "What of Greyanna and all the hunters?" asked Ryld.

  "We'll contend with them as necessary, but I'll be damned if I hide in a hole while two of the boys we worked so hard to find vanish into the night. "

  The masters stalked out onto the street. The Braeryn already echoed with more trumpeting, the sporting cries of dark elves, and the screams of undercreatures.

  The teachers shadowed the Prophet and the rogues for half a block. The trio moved briskly but without any trace of panic. Evidently they were confident of their ability to elude the hunters. Ryld wondered why.

  Then the night gave him other things to think about.

  He and Pharaun skulked by a house where several shouting goblins pounded on the granite front door. As was the common practice during a hunt, the inhabitants refused to admit them. They wouldn't let in anyone but folk who actually lived there. Otherwise, a rush of terrified refugees flooding into the already crowded warren might trample or crush some of the residents - or the influx might make the house a more provocative target. It had happened before.

  Finally Ryld heard the small, long-armed creatures turn away from the structure. They cried out, then broke into a run, their rapid footsteps drumming on the ground.

  Ryld had no idea why the goblins were charging him and Pharaun. Perhaps the creatures had mistaken them for tenants of the house that had denied them entry and thus appropriate targets for revenge. Maybe they simply wanted to take their frustrations out on someone.

  Not that it mattered. The brutes were no match for masters of Tier Breche. The dark elves would kill them in a trice.

  Ryld drew Splitter from its scabbard and came on guard, meanwhile taking in his assailants' pitiful makeshift weaponry and lack of armor. It was pathetic, really, so much so that the next few seconds would almost be a bore.

  Two goblins spread out, trying to flank him. He stepped in and swung Splitter left, then right. The undercreatures fell, one dropping its crowbar to clang against the ground and the other keeping hold of its mallet.

  The next two bat-eared creatures hesitated. They should have turned and run, because Ryld couldn't stand and wait for them to ponder whether they still wanted to fight. The Prophet and the rogues were getting farther away by the second.

  He stepped in and cut downward. A goblin, this one possessed of a short sword - -a proper warrior's weapon, and some martial training to go with it - lifted the weapon to parry. It didn't matter. Splitter sheared right through its blade and streaked on into its torso.

  Knife in hand, the fourth goblin dodged behind its foe. Sensing its location, Ryld kicked backward. His boot connected solidly, snapping bone, and when he turned the creature lay motionless on the ground, likely dead of a broken back.

  Ryld turned to survey the battlefield. His eyes widened in shock and dismay.

  Pharaun too was on theground. Three goblins crouched over him on their bandy legs. One scabrous creature had blood on the iron spike that served it as a poniard.

  Ryld bellowed a war cry, sprang at them, and struck them down before they could do any more damage
. He kneeled beside his friend. Beneath the elegantpiwafwi, Pharaun's equally gorgeous robe had two punctures in it, and was dark and wet from breastbone to thighs.

  "I heard them corning a moment after you did," the wizard wheezed. "I didn't turn around fast enough. "

  "Don't worry," said Ryld. "It's going to be all right. "

  In reality, he wasn't at all sure of that.

  "The goblin thrust through the gap between the wings of my cloak. The little bastard hurt me when Greyanna and her followers couldn't. Isn't that silly?"