«Have a care,» the ambassador said with as much nonchalance as she could muster. «If your son kills me quickly, won't that spoil the fun?» Jeggred made a low, grinding sound. Faeryl couldn't tell if he was growling or laughing. Triel said, «You underestimate him. True, I've watched him butcher eight prisoners in as many seconds, but I've also seen him spend days picking one little faerie child apart a mote of flesh at a time. It depends on his humor, and, needless to say, my instructions.» «Of course,» Faeryl said. The shallow gash in her cheek began to sting. Jeggred traced the edges of her lips with his claw, not quite cutting, not yet. «I hope the traitor whelp appreciated the honor.» «It was hard to tell,» she said. «What about you? Will you savor it?» «Alas, Exalted Mother,» Faeryl said, «your daughter can take no pleasure in an honor she didn't earn.» Still stroking the prisoner's features with the claw, Jeggred lifted one of the smaller hands that, save for their dusting of fine hair, looked no different than those of an ordinary dark elf. He caught hold of Faeryl's ear and twisted it, and she gasped at the brutal stab of pain. When he finally let go, the organ kept on throbbing and ringing. She wondered if the draegloth had inflicted permanent damage, though it really didn't matter. In the hours to come, deafness would be the least of her problems. «I wish you wouldn't deny your guilt,» sighed the dainty little Baenre matriarch. «I always find that dull.» «Even when it's true?» Faeryl felt a fresh cut bleeding under her eye. Apparently, when Jeggred had abused her ear, she'd bucked against his claw. «Don't be tiresome,» Triel said. «You were fleeing, and that confirms your guilt.» «All it confirms is my certainty that someone has poisoned your mind against me,» Faeryl retorted. Jeggred caught hold of a lock of her hair and gave it a vicious tug. «My aversion to being condemned unjustly.» «Did you think to escape by running back to Ched Nasad?» Triel asked. «My word is law there, too.» «How do you know?» Faeryl asked. Jeggred slapped her with one of his enormous fighting hands, bashing her head sideways. For a moment, the shock froze her mind. When her senses returned, she tasted blood in her mouth. The draegloth crouched, placing his bestial face directly in front of her own, and growled, «Respect the chosen of Lolth.» «I mean no disrespect,» Faeryl said. «I'm just saying that for all we know, anything could be happening in Ched Nasad. Cloakers could have overrun the city, or it may have drowned in tides of lava. I doubt it, I pray not, but we don't know. We need to find out, and that's why I was sneaking away. Not to betray the weakness of Menzoberranzan's clergy to some enemy or other. Mother of Lusts, it's my weakness too! To gather intelligence, to reestablish communication—» «I told you I have been in communication with Ched Nasad,» Triel said. «To reestablish trustworthy communication. .» Faeryl persisted, «to make myself useful and so demonstrate I'm your loyal vassal, never a traitor.» Triel made a spitting sound, then said, «My loyal servants obey me.» Faeryl wanted to weep, not from fear, though she was experiencing plenty of that, but from sheer frustration. Jeggred ran his claw along her carotid artery.
«Matron,» the Zauvirr said, «I beg you. Let me confront the person who traduced me. Give me that one chance to prove my fidelity. Is it so hard to imagine someone telling you a lie? Don't your courtiers slander one another all the time as a means of vying for your favor? Is it impossible that someone or something in Ched Nasad is lying to you even now—telling you all is well while days, then tendays, then months go by without a single caravan?» Triel hesitated, and Faeryl felt a thrill of hope. Then the ruler of Menzoberranzan said, «You're the liar, and it will do you no good. If you want me to show any mercy at all, tell me whose creature you are. The svirfneblin? The aboleths? Another drow city?» «I serve only you, Sacred Mother.» Faeryl said the words without hope, for she saw that she would never convince the Baenre of her innocence. It was too hard for Triel to measure up to her predecessor, too hard, to rule in these desperate times, too hard to make decisions. She wasn't about to rethink one of the few she'd managed to squeeze out, no matter how foolish it was. Jeggred slapped Faeryl and kept on slapping until she lost count of the blows. Finally time seemed to skip somehow, and he wasn't hitting her anymore. Why should he bother? He'd already battered all the strength out of her. She would have fallen if not for the ropes holding her up. A broken tooth had lodged under her tongue, and it was all she could do just to spit it out. «I told you,» the draegloth snarled, «respect!» «I am respectful,» Faeryl wheezed. «That's why I give the truth even when it might be easier to lie.» Triel peered up at her son and said, «Princess Zauvirr will not distract you from your duties.» Jeggred inclined his head. «No, Mother.» «But at such times as I do not require you,» the matron continued, «you may use the spy as you see fit. If she tells you anything of interest, pass it along, but the point of your efforts is chastisement, not interrogation. I doubt she has anything all that important to confide. We already know who our enemies are.» «Yes, Mother.» The half-demon crouched, leered into Faeryl's face, and said, «I can make the fun last. You'll see.»
He stuck out his long, pointed tongue and licked blood from her face. The member was as rough as a beast's.
The figure in the chapel doorway had a bulbous head with huge, protruding eyes, dry, wrinkled hide, and four wriggling tentacles surrounding and obscuring the mouth. It had gnarled three-fingered hands, a body with contours and proportions different than those of a drow, and an assortment of talismans and amulets burning with strange enchantments. Syrzan, Pharaun had no doubt, was a member of the psionically gifted species called illithids. Specifically, it was one of the few such creatures to follow the path of wizardry and ultimately transform itself into an undead entity known as an alhoon. The thing was surely prodigiously powerful, immune to the ravages of time, and still entirely capable of reading the masters' minds and discerning the treachery therein. Like Pharaun, Ryld had sprung up from his bench. The hulking warrior flung himself at Houndaer, no doubt in an attempt to get his weapons back. Pharaun, who thought he needed his spell components just as badly, scrambled after his friend. The weapons master threw a punch, knocked Houndaer backward off his bench, and snatched up Splitter. He whirled, looking for the next threat, and almost whacked his fellow teacher with the blade.
Pharaun reached for his cloak, then realized Houndaer's unassuming companion was singing a wordless arpeggio. Had Pharaun already been wearing the piwafwi with all its protective enchantments, he might have resisted the song, but instead its power stabbed into his mind. He laughed convulsively, uncontrollably, and staggered backward. Finally, he fell to his knees, his stomach muscles clenching and aching. He'd suspected the nondescript little male was more than he'd seemed, a formidable combatant employing a bland appearance to throw his adversaries off guard, and he'd been right. The «craftsman» was in reality a bard, a spellcaster who worked his wonders through the medium of music. Teeth gritted, Pharaun shook off the compulsion to laugh. Gasping, he lifted his head and looked around. The bard was simultaneously drawing his enchanted dagger and starting another song, this time pitched falsetto. Houndaer was on his feet battling Ryld, their swords ringing. At the end of the room, Tsabrak, shifting his eight legs in agitation, aimed an arrow at Pharaun, while in the doorway the alhoon simply stood with only its mouth tentacles moving, seemingly content to let its compatriots do the righting. Pharaun threw himself sideways. The arrow missed him and clacked and skipped across the floor. The mage slapped the stone, and a wall of sheltering darkness sprang up between him and the foe. Moving with a practiced, silent grace, he scrambled on.
Something clamped down on Pharaun's mind, smothering his will and robbing him of the ability to move. The undead mind flayer hadn't been idle after all. Syrzan had simply utilized its psionic strength in preference to its wizardry and thus hadn't needed to whirl its three-fingered hands in arcane passes. The wall of shadow no impediment, the Prophet had reached out, found Pharaun's intellect, and struck a crippling blow. The barricade of darkness disappeared. Syrzan must have employed a bit of countermagic to dispel it and in so doing, afforded Pharaun a
view of the space beyond. Rather to his surprise, Houndaer was still alive, perhaps because Tsabrak had discarded his bow, drawn a broadsword, and come to fight alongside him. The two conspirators were trying to catch Ryld between them, generally an effective tactic, but thus far the teacher's piwafwi, dwarven armor, and prowess had preserved him from harm.
The Tuin'Tarl made a halfhearted slash, and Ryld, recognizing the feint for what it was, didn't react. The pale phosphorescence of the carvings gleaming on his naked limbs, Tsabrak spat venom onto his blade. The bard brought his shrill singing to a crescendo, crossed his legs, and wrapped his arms tightly around his torso, all but tying himself in knots. With the aid of his ring, Pharaun saw a glittering pulse of magic fly from the singer to Ryld. He could even tell what it was intended to do. His friend was supposed to contort his own body in helpless imitation of the bard's constrictive posture. But, strong of spirit, Ryld resisted the compulsion without even realizing he was doing it. The weapons master faked a cut at Houndaer's head, then whirled and dived. He slid between Tsabrak's legs, breaking away from the drider and Houndaer, too, leaped up, and charged Syrzan. He recognized the alhoon as the most dangerous of his foes, even though the illithilich hadn't attacked him yet. Syrzan reached into a pocket and produced a small ceramic vial. When it swung the bottle from right to left, a dozen orbs of bright flame materialized in its wake. They shot at Ryld in one straight line and exploded one after the other, banging rapidly like some hellish drum roll.
The glare was dazzling. For a moment, Pharaun couldn't see anything, and he made out Ryld through floating blobs of afterimage. His friend appeared unscathed. He was still charging and almost in sword's reach of the alhoon. Syrzan used its mind flayer talents. Even though the lich hadn't directed the attack at him, Pharaun felt the fringe of it. It was like a sprinkle of hot ash burning his brain. Ryld dropped. Syrzan gazed down at the warrior for a moment, evidently making sure he was truly incapacitated, then walked over to Pharaun. Despite the long skirt of its robe, there was something noticeably strange about its gait, as if its legs bent in too many places. Up close, it exuded a faint stink not unlike rotten fish. Its garments, once of princely quality, were frayed and stained. It touched a finger to Pharaun's brow, and they were elsewhere.
NINETEEN
The Underdark was boundless, its mysteries infinite, and despite centuries of following wherever his curiosity led, Pharaun had never seen an illlthid city. Save for a dearth of inhabitants, he thought he'd just stepped into one. Artisans had carved the walls and columns of the vault into spongiform masses like brain tissue, then covered the convolutions with lines of graven runes. Pools of warm fluid dotted the floor. Redolent of salt, the ponds crawled and throbbed with a mental force that even a non-psionic intelligence dimly sensed as a whisper of alien, incomprehensible thought at the back of the mind. Pharaun recognized that the cavern was in some sense an illusion, but that didn't make it any less interesting. He would have liked nothing better than to explore every nook and cranny. It was an inclination rooted in a profound sense of well-being, a blithe unconcern no more genuine than the landscape, but seductive all the same. He would have to fight it.
He turned, saw Syrzan standing a few feet away, and cast darts of force, a spell requiring only words of power and a flourish of the hands. Halfway to their target, the streaking shafts of azure radiance stopped dead in the air, fell to the ground, and turned into limbless things like leeches or tadpoles, which, squealing telepathically, slithered toward the nearest pool. «Your spells won't work here,» said Syrzan in the Prophet's rich, compelling tones. «I suspected as much, but I had to try. Are we inside your mind?» «More or less.» Syrzan strolled closer. Off to the side, liquid splashed and plopped as the tadpoles wallowed. «We're conversing in my special haven,» the undead mind flayer said, «but we're also still in the heretic's chapel. In that reality I'm rebuking Houndaer for fetching you after I told him it was dangerous, and you're insensible.»
«Fascinating,» Pharaun said, «and I suppose you spirited me into the dream for a private tete-a-tete.» «Essentially,» the alhoon said. Even in this phantasmal domain, it smelled faintly of decaying fish. «This is actually a form of mind-reading. You wont be able to lie.» The Master of Sorcere chuckled. «Some people would say that so handicapped, I won't be able to speak at all.» The mages began stroll along side by side. The atmosphere felt quite congenial. «How is it,» Syrzan asked, «that you came looking for my associates and me?» Pharaun explained. He didn't see how it could do any harm. When he was finished, the illithilich said, «You couldn't wield my particular sort of power.» «I understand that now. You enthrall the undercreatures through a deft combination of wizardry and mind flayer arts, and I lack the innate capacity to master the latter. What's more, you conspirators know nothing about the priestesses' difficulties.» Pharaun cocked his head. «Or perhaps you do, Master Lich.»
«No,» said Syrzan, its mouth tentacles coiling and twisting. «Like the others, I know what's happened but not why.» «So none of what I sought was ever here for the finding.» Pharaun laughed and said, «My sister Sabal once told me that a clever drow's wits can lead him into follies no dunce would dare to undertake. . but that's blood down the gutter. What of you? What in the wide world prompted a creature such as yourself to throw in with a band of Menzoberranyr malcontents?» «You seek information you can use against me.» «Well, partly. .» Pharaun had to pause for a second when a wave of psionic force from one of the larger pools dizzied him and threatened to wash his own thoughts away. «In the unlikely event I'm ever afforded the chance. Mostly, though, I'm just curious. You're a mage. Surely we share that trait even if little else.» Syrzan shrugged, the narrow shoulders beneath its faded robes hitching higher than would a drow's.
«Well,» the alhoon said, «I suppose it can do no harm to enlighten you, and it's been a long while since I've had the opportunity to converse with a colleague of genuine ability. Not that you're my equal—no elf or dwarf could ever be—but you're several cuts above any of Houndaer's allies.» «Your kind words overwhelm me.»
The two wizards stepped onto a bridge, a crooked limestone span arching over one of the briny pools. «Dark elves will abide a lich,» the alhoon said, a brooding note entering its musical and almost certainly artificial voice. «Illithids won't. By and large, they hate the idea of sorcery, a foreign discipline as potent as the psionic skills that constitute our birthright. Still, they'll tolerate a limited number of mortal mages, those of us drawn to wizardry despite the stigma, for the advantages we bring. But the thought of undying wizards enduring for millennia, amassing arcane power the while, terrifies them.» «So on the day you achieved your immortality,» Pharaun said, «you forsook your homeland forever, or at least until the day when you could conquer it.» The two mages stopped at the highest point on the bridge and looked out over an expanse of warm, briny fluid. Pharaun noticed that the stuff rippled and flowed sluggishly, as if it was thicker than water. «Indeed,» Syrzan said. «I hoped to manage my departure circumspectly, but somehow the folk of Oryndoll sensed my metamorphosis. For decades, they hunted me like an animal, and I existed like one in the wilds of the Underdark. Those times were hard. Even the undead crave the comforts of civilization. Finally Oryndoll forgot me or gave up on me. That was an improvement, but still I had no home.» «I've heard,» said Pharaun, «that one or two secret enclaves of illithiliches exist. Didn't you search for one?» «I searched for ninety years and found one,» Syrzan replied, sounding slightly miffed that its prisoner had jumped ahead in the story. «For a time, I dwelled therein but I quarreled with the eldest alhoons, who considered themselves the leaders of the rest. I conducted certain investigations they had, in their ignorance and timidity, forbidden.» The Master of Sorcere laughed and said, «If you can't find it in your heart—assuming an illithilich retains the organ—to consider us equals, you must at least concede we're kindred spirits. You weren't angling for the Sarthos demon, were you?» «No,» said Syrzan curtly. «Suffice it to say that
if not for some bad luck, I would have usurped the place of the eldest lich of all, but as matters fell out, I had to flee into the wilderness, a solitary wanderer once more.» «Surely you found someone to enslave.» Pharaun noticed the air in the dream cavern had grown cooler. Perhaps it was responding to its maker's somber reflections. «I found small encampments,» Syrzan said. «A family of goblins here, a dozen troglodytes there. I used them, used them up, each in its turn, but no little hole infested with a handful of brutes could give me what I truly craved. I yearned for a teeming city, full of splendors and luxuries, over which I would rule, and from which I could conquer an empire. But the taking of such exceeded even my powers.» «Or mine,» Pharaun said, «hard as that is to credit. So, lusting for what you couldn't have, you spied on the cities of the Underdark, didn't you, or one of them, anyway. You kept your eye on Menzoberranzan.»
«Yes,» Syrzan said, «I've watched your people for a long while. I discovered the cabal of renegade males some forty years ago. More recently, I observed the priestesses' debility; no mere dark elves could hide such an enormous change from an observer with my talents. I remembered the would-be rebels and arranged for them to make the same discovery, then I emerged from the shadows and offered them my services.»
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