Dissolution wotsq-1

by Ричард Ли Байерс

  Its peculiarities notwithstanding, the spider's manifest hostile intent resolved Quenthel's uncertainty in an instant. She would kill the freakish thing. The question was, how? She did not feel weak—she never had and never would—but she knew it was scarcely the optimal time for her to fight such a battle. On top of any other disadvantages, she wasn't even wearing her mail tunic or piwafwi. She rarely did within the walls of Arach-Tinilith. For the most part, her minions feared her too much to attempt an assassination, and she had always been confident that she wouldn't need armor to disappoint any who did not. As she backed away from the charging spider, her slim, gleaming obsidian hands opened the pouch at her belt, extracted a roll of vellum, and unrolled it for her scrutiny, all with practiced ease and likewise with a certain annoyance, for the magical scroll was a treasure, and she was about to use it up. But it was necessary, and the parchment was scarcely the only magical implement hoarded within those walls. Rapidly, but with perfect rhythm and pronunciation, she read the verses, the golden characters vanishing from the page as she spoke the words. Dark, heatless flame leaped from the vellum to the floor and shot across that polished surface faster than a wildfire propagating itself across a stand of dead, dry fungus, defining a path that led from herself to the demon. The black conflagration washed over the demon's dainty bladed feet. It should also have driven the many-eyed creature helplessly backward, but it didn't. The arachnid kept coming nimbly as before, which was to say, considerably faster than the best effort of a drow. «The spirit has defenses against the magic!» cried K'Sothra, perhaps the least intelligent of the whip vipers and certainly the one most inclined to belabor the obvious. Quenthel wouldn't have time to attempt another spell before the spider reached her, nor could she outrun it. She would have to outmaneuver it instead. Dropping the useless sheet of parchment, she turned and dived beneath the belly of one of the statues. Unless it had the power to shrink or shapeshift, the invader wouldn't be able to negotiate the same low space. She slid on the floor, rubbing her elbows hot. One of the snakes cursed foully when its scaly, wedge-shaped head rapped against the stone. She rolled over and saw that she had only bought herself a moment. No, the demon couldn't slip under the statue but, clustered eyes glaring, it was rapidly clambering over the top of it. Up close, it had a foul, carrion smell. Quenthel knew that if she permitted the spider to pounce down on her, the monster would hold her down and snip her apart with its mandibles. She sprang to her feet and swung her whip. The vipers twisted in flight to bring their fangs to bear. Those poisonous spikes plunged deep and ripped downward, tearing gashes in some of the demon's bulging, clustered eyes before yanking free. The organs gushed fluid and collapsed, and the serpents thrashed in joy. Quenthel could feel their exultation through the psionic link they shared, but she knew it was premature. The spider had plenty of other eyes, and the stroke had only balked it for an instant. It was still going to spring. Though caught without certain of her protections, Quenthel was at least wearing the necklace of dull black pearls. She reached up, slipped one of the enchanted beads from the specially crafted fine gold chain, and threw it at the spider. White light blazed around her, seemingly emanating from all directions at once. Thanks be to Lolth, this time her magic had an effect. The spider slipped and floundered. Encased in an invisible sphere of magical force it thrashed about in panic. The explosion had opened horrid sores that speckled the creature's body.

  Unfortunately, it seemed able to ignore whatever pain those wounds caused it and continued scratching at the restraining sphere. Blue-white sparks flashed at the tips of its feet, and Quenthel knew it was using more than brute force and panic to break free. Speak to me, Quenthel thought, sure the words would be heard in the spider's mind. She felt a connection, but a tenuous one, perhaps attenuated by the sphere of force. The sphere faded as Quenthel swung the whip again, trying to smash through the creature's hideous visage and into the brain that presumably lay behind it.

  The spider sprang away as explosively as one of its tiny jumping cousins, arcing high and landing at the far end of the chamber behind a rank of sculptures. The spirit scuttled through the shadows, and even though Quenthel was watching intently, in another second she lost track of it. Where are you? she sent. The reply was a burst of anger from the creature no mere words could convey. Quenthel gave up trying to communicate with it, though if it was a servant of Lolth, it should respond to her. «You could get out now, Mistress,» said Hsiv, the first imp Quenthel had bound inside a whip viper. «From over there, it couldn't reach you before you run out the door.» «Nonsense!» she snapped. «The brute disrupted my Academy, threatened my person, and I will have my vengeance.» Infected with her anger, the banded vipers reared and hissed until she silenced them with a mental command. One of the priestesses sprawled on the floor was moaning in pain. Quenthel stalked over to the spiders victim and kicked her in the head, silencing her instantly.

  The drow high priestess had eliminated all extraneous sounds, but it didn't help her locate the spider. Save for the soft hiss of her own breathing, the chamber was silent. Turning slowly, heart pounding, she inspected the arachnid effigies all around her. Did that jointed spindle of a leg just twitch? Did that head, coyly turned just enough that she couldn't quite get an adequate look at it, possess too many eyes? Had the figure on the right shifted a hair closer when she wasn't looking?

  No, no, and no. It was just her imagination, trying to supply what observation had not.

  She sniffed repeatedly, but that was no help, either. The spider's stink hung in the air, but it seemed no stronger in one direction than another. Curse it, the demon had to be somewhere! Yes, she realized, but it didn't have to still be on the floor, not if it could skitter up vertical surfaces like its smaller kindred. Assuming the demon was clinging to the upper walls or ceiling it might have taken it a moment to shake off the shock of the flare and its ugly wounds, but surely it was creeping into the best position from which to leap down on its adversary. Quenthel peered upward. The artists had decorated the shadows' highest reaches of the chamber as well. The ceiling was an octagonal web acrawl with painted spiders, providing splendid camouflage for the creature. If it was in fact crouching in their midst, she couldn't see it.

  Still scanning the ceiling, the whip vipers keeping watch as well, she backed to one of the wall sconces and read the trigger phrase from another scroll, whereupon the candle flame leaped up and turned a roiling black. She put her arm into the darkfire, and her flowing gossamer sleeve caught instantly. Though they were at the end of what was, thus far, the non-burning arm, the serpents hissed and coiled in alarm. Quenthel brought them to heel with a brutal thrust of her will. Feeling naught but a pleasant warmth, she silently commanded the darkfire. A portion of the magical stuff flowed down her arm and congealed into a soft, semisolid ball in her palm. She threw it, and her magic shot it up like a sling bullet to strike the ceiling fresco where it splashed into a great gout of murky flame. Quenthel followed that first missile with a steady barrage. Where the darkfire had kissed it, the fresco began to burn with ordinary yellow flame, suffusing the air with eye-stinging smoke and a vile stink that was also a sickening, throat-clenching taste at the back of her mouth. She was throwing blindly, but with the blaze above spreading, it shouldn't matter. Surely the spider wouldn't simply sit still and allow itself to burn. The fire ought to spur it into motion and thus into visibility. Unless, of course, the spider wasn't really on the ceiling, which was a real possibility. Maybe it was actually hiding elsewhere. It might even be creeping up on her while she stared at the burning painting and the nervous vipers worried more about their proximity to a darkfire than about keeping watch.

  No, her intuition had pointed her in the right direction. She spotted the spider as it gathered itself to spring down at her, and having flushed it out, she need only survive its renewed attack.

  She dived from beneath its plummeting form and rolled, leaving a trail of black, burning scraps of cloth behind on the floor. The creature with its tatt
ered, oozing eyes landed with a thump, its eight legs flexing to absorb the impact.

  Quenthel scrambled up and backed away from it. Her whole gown was aflame, nearly her entire body shrouded in darkfire. She threw another ball of the stuff, which spattered on the demon's back and streamed down its flanks. To her delight, her magic affected it again. The spider too wore a mantle of shadowy flame, the heat rippling the air above it. That meant it ought to drop, didn't it, or at least flounder about in helpless agony? The fire was surely damaging it, for Quenthel could smell its flesh charring even through the omnipresent reek of burning paint, but the demon turned and scuttled after her. She aimed the next burning missile at the cluster of eyes that seemed in some indefinable way to constitute the very core of the thing. The spider did lurch and falter when the burning darkness splashed over the orbs, but only for a second, and it kept coming. Unable to outrun it, hoping she'd at least softened it up a little, Quenthel shouted her goddess's name and lunged to meet it. Sheathed in darkfire, her whole body was a weapon and would burn the spider wherever it touched. Where the black flame on the monster's limbs was giving way to yellow, it could burn her, too, but not if she didn't let it. Their natural savagery overcoming their fear of fire, the whip vipers lashed and struck in a frenzy of bloodlust. At first, swinging the whip, ducking and dodging, she kept herself clear of the spider's mandibles. She shifted left when she should have jumped right, and the razor-sharp pincers snapped shut around her.

  They stopped short of piercing her flesh. Loath to clasp her blazing body and be seared thereby, the spider faltered for just an instant. Before it could muster the will to proceed, Quenthel struck a final blow. The ophidian lashes crashed through the demon's charred and tattered visage and bit into what lay beneath. The spider jerked, froze, twitched two of its legs in a purposeless way, and the burning hulk of it slowly sank to the floor, just as Quenthel's spell elapsed and all the darkfire still crackling in the chamber winked out of existence. She shouted in exultation. Equally ecstatic, only a little singed, the vipers danced at the end of the scourge. Everyone's good mood lasted just as long as it took for the Baenre priestess, clad primarily in smoke and ash, to turn toward the door. Though she'd been far too busy to notice hitherto, at some point a number of teachers and students had evidently crowded into the space to watch the battle. They were watching Quenthel still, eyes wide, faces uncertain. «It was a desecration,» said Quenthel. «A mockery.» She stared at them with haughty expectation. They peered back at her for a moment, then folded their hands and bowed their heads in obeisance.

  THREE

  Tall and lithe, the left side of her otherwise handsome face creased with an old battle scar of which, she recognized, she was rather foolishly proud, Greyanna Mizzrym entered her mother's presence dirty, sweaty, and still clad in her mail shirt. Greyanna knew Mother didn't like for her daughters and other chattels to come to meet with her fully armed, but she had an excuse. She'd just returned from an inspection tour of Mizzrym operations in Bauthwaf—"around-cloak,» as the dangerous network of tunnels immediately surrounding Menzoberranzan was called—only to hear from a frantic functionary bearing the fresh marks of a whip of fangs that the matron mother wished to see her as soon as possible. Actually, even knowing the articles likely wouldn't save her if things went horribly wrong, Greyanna rather liked having a justification to walk in on her parent with her mace in her hand and her shield on her arm. She couldn't think of any reason why Mother would have decided to kill her at this particular point in time, but one could never be altogether sure, could one?

  Certainly not with Miz'ri Mizzrym, a female regarded even by other dark elves as excessively and capriciously cruel. She sat enthroned in her temple with all of her weapons and protections ready to hand, the six-headed whip and the purple rod of tentacles, the enchanted rings gleaming on her fingers. She might have been considered comely even by the exacting standards of her exquisite race, except that her mouth drew down in an ugly and all but perpetual scowl. She regarded her daughter's martial appointments coldly but without comment. Greyanna lowered her head and spread her hands, offering the proper obeisance, and said, «Matron Mother. You wished to see me?» «I wished to see you yesterday.» «I was off conducting family business.» Of course, Mother knew that as well as she did. «We have to keep up with our duties even now. Especially now—as you yourself have observed on more than one occasion.» «Watch your insolent tongue!»

  Greyanna sighed. «Yes, Mother. I apologize. I didn't mean to speak out of turn.»

  «See that you refrain from doing so again.» Miz'ri fell silent, perhaps to gather her thoughts, perhaps simply in an effort to rattle her daughter's nerves. Such petty, pointless attempts at intimidation were virtually a reflex with her. Greyanna wondered if a servant had been instructed to fetch her a chair for the remainder of the interview. It didn't look like it. That was typical of her mother as well. «Your brother Pharaun …» Miz'ri said at last. Greyanna's eyes opened wide. «Yes?» «I think it might finally be time for the two of you to get reacquainted.» The younger female held her scarred features calm and composed. It was rarely a good idea to show strong emotion to anyone, particularly Mother. If you showed her that something mattered to you, she would find a way to hurt you with it. Even so, Greyanna couldn't quite suppress a shiver of anticipation.

  She and her twin sister Sabal had loathed one another from the cradle onward. Of course, in the noble Houses of Menzoberranzan, rivalry between sisters was expected and encouraged. Certainly Miz'ri encouraged it, perhaps simply for her own amusement. But for some reason—perhaps it had something to do with the fact that outwardly, they were identical—her daughters' enmity far transcended even her expectations. It was more bitter and more personal. Each yearned to injure and thwart the other for its own sake at least as much as to improve her own relative standing in the family.

  All but choking on their loathing of one another, they fought a duel that lasted decades and encompassed every facet of their existence, and gradually, on every battlefield, Greyanna began to prevail. She sabotaged many of Sabal's plans to enhance the fortunes of House Mizzrym and found ways to take credit for those that succeeded. By secretly tainting some of the sacred articles in this very shrine, she ensured that her twin's public rituals would fail to produce even the feeblest sign that the Spider Queen found her worship acceptable. She sowed doubt about Sabal's competence and loyalty in the ears of everyone who would listen. Over time, Greyanna rose to become her mother's most valued aide, while Sabal was seen as a dolt fit only for the simplest of tasks. She was forbidden the use of her family's more powerful magical artifacts, lest she break them or turn them to some ill-conceived purpose. From kin to slave warriors, any member of the household who might once have supported her aspirations shunned her as if she were diseased. At that point, Greyanna could have killed her easily, and she expected she'd get around to it eventually, but Sabal's misery was so satisfying that she put it off. Put if off until Pharaun came home from Sorcere. Before her little brother departed to Tier Breche, Greyanna had barely noticed him. Of course, you didn't pay attention to young males unless you were unlucky enough to be put in charge of them. They were the silent little shadows creeping about the house, cleaning, ever cleaning, straining to master their inherent magical abilities, and learning their subordinate place in the world, all under the impatient eyes—and whips—of their minders. As far as she could remember, Pharaun had been as cowed and pathetic as the rest. The Academy transformed him into something considerably more interesting, though, to say nothing of dangerous. Perhaps it was mastering the formidable powers of wizardry, or maybe it was immersion in an enclave comprised entirely of males, but somehow he emerged from his schooling polished, clever, and bold, possessed of a sharp wit and glib tongue that frequently danced him up to the brink of chastisement and safely back again. Amazingly, he threw in with Sabal, who had all but abandoned hope of ever climbing higher than her current degraded estate. To this day, Greyanna could only explai
n his decision by positing a perverse and unnatural bond between them, but whatever his reasons, with the help of Pharaun's ideas, advocacy, and magic, Sabal essayed new ventures, succeeded brilliantly, and began to scale the ladder of status once more. She did so more quickly than Greyanna could have imagined, and the family came once more to regard the twins as peers, equal in merit and promise. Accordingly, their private war resumed, even more vicious and murderous than before, but this time Sabal—say Pharaun, rather—proved a match for her.