Spider and Stone
Page 1
ALSO BY JALEIGH JOHNSON
THE HOWLING DELVE
MISTSHORE
UNBROKEN CHAIN
UNBROKEN CHAIN: THE DARKER ROAD
SPIDER AND STONE
©2012 Wizards of the Coast LLC.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Cover art by: Raymond Swanland
eISBN: 978-0-7869-6466-6
64049785000001 EN
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v3.1
For my mother.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Other Books by This Author
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Epilogue
About the Author
Welcome to Faerûn, a land of magic and intrigue, brutal violence and divine compassion, where gods have ascended and died, and mighty heroes have risen to fight terrifying monsters. Here, millennia of warfare and conquest have shaped dozens of unique cultures, raised and leveled shining kingdoms and tyrannical empires alike, and left long forgotten, horror-infested ruins in their wake.
A LAND OF MAGIC
When the goddess of magic was murdered, a magical plague of blue fire—the Spellplague—swept across the face of Faerûn, killing some, mutilating many, and imbuing a rare few with amazing supernatural abilities. The Spellplague forever changed the nature of magic itself, and seeded the land with hidden wonders and bloodcurdling monstrosities.
A LAND OF DARKNESS
The threats Faerûn faces are legion. Armies of undead mass in Thay under the brilliant but mad lich king Szass Tam. Treacherous dark elves plot in the Underdark in the service of their cruel and fickle goddess, Lolth. The Abolethic Sovereignty, a terrifying hive of inhuman slave masters, floats above the Sea of Fallen Stars, spreading chaos and destruction. And the Empire of Netheril, armed with magic of unimaginable power, prowls Faerûn in flying fortresses, sowing discord to their own incalculable ends.
A LAND OF HEROES
But Faerûn is not without hope. Heroes have emerged to fight the growing tide of darkness. Battle-scarred rangers bring their notched blades to bear against marauding hordes of orcs. Lowly street rats match wits with demons for the fate of cities. Inscrutable tiefling warlocks unite with fierce elf warriors to rain fire and steel upon monstrous enemies. And valiant servants of merciful gods forever struggle against the darkness.
A LAND OF
UNTOLD ADVENTURE
GUALLIDURTH, THE UNDERDARK
10 UKTAR, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
S HOW ME YOUR FACE, ZOLLGARZA.”
The request echoed in the dark tunnel and surprised the young drow lurking there. Irritation stabbed him. He’d thought his movements had gone undetected by his prey.
Zollgarza stepped from a niche in the wall behind a wide stalagmite and faced Derzac-Rin, a male not much older than Zollgarza but taller and well built. His chiseled features showed signs of strain.
“How did you know?” Zollgarza asked.
Derzac-Rin drew his rapier and raised it, poised like the sharpest needle. “I knew you’d track me. All Fizzri’s lovers meet the same fate. Pride made me believe I would be different. As soon as she cast me out, I knew she’d send you to finish me. May I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
Derzac-Rin tightened his grip on the rapier hilt, as if to pour all of his pent-up hatred and rage into the weapon, that sheer force of willpower might save him when his skill surely could not. “Why does she favor you so?” he demanded.
Zollgarza shrugged. “You should have asked her. I am nobody special.”
“Precisely.” Bitterness thickened the drow’s voice, making the word almost unintelligible. “You are less than nothing, a male with neither exceptional skills nor charm enough to make you a novelty. What have you to recommend yourself to the mistress mother?”
“I’m skilled enough to deal with you,” Zollgarza said. “At the moment, that’s all that matters.”
“Your features,” Derzac-Rin continued as if Zollgarza hadn’t spoken, “are so … misplaced. The crooked nose, lips too thick, as if the sculptor were merely a stuttering novice when he crafted you. I see nothing but contradictions and flaws.”
The mistress mother often spoke of Derzac-Rin’s vanity. Zollgarza supposed that explained his inability to comprehend the defects in Zollgarza’s own appearance.
Zollgarza shifted his stance, the barest motion his opponent would not perceive. Cave breezes stirred his hair. In addition to all the other faults Derzac-Rin had mentioned, Zollgarza’s hair was flat black—an aberration among the drow—with only the barest strands of white at the roots.
Calmly, Zollgarza drew his curved dagger. Attached to the pommel, a second smaller blade curved in the opposite direction, and affixed to the hilt was the figure of a silver spider. A fierce weapon, as beautiful as its wielder was not—at least in Derzac-Rin’s estimation.
“Are you ready to fight?” Zollgarza asked.
Derzac-Rin hadn’t finished his rant. “Where is your passion as you close in for the kill?” he shouted. “Where is the burning spark in your eyes? You refuse even to revel in my death! What moves you, Zollgarza, or should I say, what moves her to tolerate you? I must know this! You cannot—”
“Enough.” Zollgarza glided forward, brought his blade up, and caught the half-crazed drow’s rapier. Derzac-Rin shoved against him, but the frenzied move only put him off balance. Zollgarza pivoted, grabbed Derzac-Rin’s rapier hand, and held it extended. With his other hand, he reversed his dagger and touched one of the spider’s hollow legs on the hilt an instant before he stabbed Derzac-Rin in the flank.
The weapon failed to penetrate the drow’s armor as d
eeply as Zollgarza had intended, but poison would take care of the rest. As Derzac-Rin doubled over, the catch Zollgarza had touched in the spider’s leg released a watery green liquid that flowed down the blade to mingle with Derzac-Rin’s blood. Zollgarza yanked the dagger out, stepped forward, and spun quickly to face his opponent again, but Derzac-Rin did not attempt another attack. The green liquid smeared in his wound took up all his attention.
“The first leg, the one closest to the center of the blade, contains a paralytic,” Zollgarza explained. His voice didn’t burn with the passion and excitement of the kill, as Derzac-Rin had rightly observed. Instead, he spoke in a detached, analytical way. “A fungi-based poison I designed myself—the brewing required no exceptional alchemical skill, but the results are unquestionable. There is something to be said for efficiency over beauty.”
Derzac-Rin collapsed on his side, limbs jerking as he tried to maintain control of his body, to protect himself from Zollgarza’s impending strike. He failed. The poison froze him in a rigid fetal position, skin stretched taut over his handsome features.
Not so handsome now, Zollgarza observed silently.
Zollgarza bent over the drow and calmly finished his task.
When Derzac-Rin was dead, Zollgarza cleaned the blood and poison off his blade using a specially treated cloth. Then he laid the weapon aside in order to free both his hands. He knelt next to the body, removed Derzac-Rin’s spider silk breastplate, and pulled down the drow’s tunic to expose the obsidian flesh beneath. Finally, he took up his dagger again and laid the tip of the smaller blade against Derzac-Rin’s bare chest.
“For you, Mother Lolth,” Zollgarza whispered and began to carve the Spider Queen’s symbol into the drow’s chest. “His life, my life, my purpose—all for you and all return to you.”
Had Derzac-Rin been alive to hear Zollgarza’s prayer, he might have marveled at the love and loathing that threaded the drow’s voice, how his hands shook with rapture and disgust as he carved the image of the spider into the male’s chest, his passion awakened at last.
After Zollgarza disposed of the body, he returned to his quarters in the city to find a summons from the mistress mother awaiting him. She expected him even then, though she must have known that dealing with her former lover would detain him for a time. Perhaps she’d known that Derzac-Rin would present only a halfhearted challenge. Zollgarza himself had expected the battle to last much longer, but he had taken Derzac-Rin easily, as if fighting in a dream.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. Even if he’d won the fight, where could Derzac-Rin go—a lone male cast from his own House to take refuge in the mistress mother’s arms? That final sanctuary lasted but a month.
Zollgarza did not bother to hurry. The mistress mother would punish him for being late or she wouldn’t, depending on her mood. He washed the blood from his hands, replenished the poison in the spider’s leg on his dagger, and walked across the open plaza to the temple, where worshipers had already begun to gather for the evening services.
“Look there—the mistress mother’s pet. Do you know they call him the Black Creeper?”
“I suppose that means he slides along on his belly like a worm when he comes to her bed.”
Zollgarza heard the sneering insult, but it was impossible to locate its source in the thick crowd of drow assembled before the Spider Queen’s temple. He kept walking, never breaking stride as he made his way to Mistress Mother Fizzri Khaven-Ghell’s private audience chamber.
Situated on the temple’s second level, the mistress’s chamber was only accessible—for those without the magical means to reach it—via two crystal ramps that ascended from the east and west corners of the temple and crossed at the top like the interconnected strands of a spiderweb.
The crystals Zollgarza trod upon were worth a fortune, rare, glittering white clusters with specks of red in their hearts. By no coincidence was Guallidurth called the Temple City of Lolth.
He reached the top and turned to look out on the vast cavern that housed the rest of the temples and great manor houses. Hatred surged within him, a vile burn that made his limbs ache. Priestesses could ascend on their drift disks to the temple, and wizards had their own spells. Divine and arcane dominated, while Zollgarza, an unremarkable male warrior, had to walk the spider’s web to reach the mistress mother.
Pushing his emotions aside, he entered the audience chamber. The mistress sat on a maroon silk cushion arranged on a raised bench made of the same rare crystal as the ramps. Ringing her were six elite warriors of House Loor’Tchaan, scouts who often ventured off on long missions into the deep Underdark. Off to one side stood a trio of wizards from the same House, males who spoke among themselves in hushed tones. Zollgarza knew all the assembled drow individually, but to see them here together meant that something momentous had occurred.
Perhaps the mistress intended to send him on a mission for the city, finally, rather than a personal vendetta. There could be few other reasons for her to summon him to a gathering such as this. Usually, she preferred to keep her pet hidden away where no one could see him.
“How very good of you to join us, Zollgarza,” said Mistress Mother Fizzri Khaven-Ghell.
Her cold voice echoed softly, underscored by a faint hiss. Wound around a lock of her white hair was a tiny serpent, a blind creature of the Underdark cave pools, its body no thicker than the female’s smallest finger. As far as Zollgarza knew, Fizzri was never without the tiny beast. She wore it coiled in her hair or on the snake-headed whips that the priestesses used to punish males and slaves. He’d never seen it strike, but he’d heard rumors that the snake’s venom caused intense pain that ultimately resulted in infertility in males. The mistress mother used the threat of the serpent to discourage potential lovers from taking advantage of her in a vulnerable moment. Zollgarza had no doubt the rumors were true, but having just disposed of Fizzri’s latest conquest, he wondered how eager her next potential suitor would be.
“I’ve come as requested, Mistress. I apologize for the delay.” Bowing, Zollgarza took his place at the rear of the chamber, to Fizzri’s left. He felt the burning gazes of the wizards and scouts follow his movements. He could guess their thoughts. Like the unnamed drow outside in the crowd, they knew him only as the Black Creeper, the mistress mother’s pet.
He held no official rank in House Loor’Tchaan, though most of the household assumed he was the mistress’s lover. None of them knew where he came from, or how he’d earned Fizzri’s favor. The not knowing bothered them the most, made him more of a threat in their eyes. Zollgarza assumed it was only a matter of time before one or more of them decided to strike, to remove the impediment, real or imagined, that kept them from rising in power. They had no idea that Zollgarza disdained the notion of becoming Fizzri’s lover, no matter what status it might bring. He walked the spider’s web, but he would not become its prey.
Rather than meet the gazes of the watching drow, Zollgarza put his hand on the curved dagger at his belt. Let the weapon and its poisoned spider speak for him. He was no castrated dog.
“We are discussing a matter of great importance to Guallidurth—to all drow who faithfully serve the Spider Queen.” The mistress mother addressed the assembled drow, but her gaze lingered on the three wizards, and Zollgarza saw the flash of distaste in her eyes. “Change is coming. No doubt, you have all heard the whispers, the rumors that Lolth has tasked her priestesses with a vital mission.”
Her words caused a minute stirring among the wizards. Fists clenched and expressions darkened—spasms of fury quickly hidden. Zollgarza alone noticed the unrest and only because he looked for the reaction.
“She requires ancient and powerful magic, artifacts of Mystra, the dead goddess of magic,” Fizzri continued. “As we gather these artifacts, Guallidurth will prosper and expand its territory. The city of Iltkazar is our first target. We are going to claim it and its magic, once and for all, for the glory of Lolth.”
This time, an audible murmur went throu
gh the crowd. Zollgarza raised an eyebrow but otherwise made no comment. Iltkazar was a relic of old Shanatar, the ancient civilization of the dwarves. The drow had been trying to conquer the city and surrounding territory for centuries, and though they’d slowly worn down the dwarves’ impressive defenses, Zollgarza thought the mistress mother a bit premature in her declaration of victory.
That aside, he was more interested in the reaction of the three wizards to this news. Levriin Soltif was the elder amongst them. He bowed at Fizzri’s announcement, but a gleam of triumph burned in the ancient male’s eyes. Zollgarza recognized it, for a similar stirring had taken root in his breast, a flare of passion dredged up from somewhere deep inside him. True, he was no wizard, but he was male, and he comprehended as well as Soltif what the mistress mother’s announcement truly meant, no matter how she couched it as the edict of the priestesses.
In the past few months, Lolth’s commandments to her faithful had caused increasing unrest in the city. Traditionally, arcane magic was the purview of the males of drow society, but though they might attain great power in the Art, they would never rise above the female clerics of Lolth. The Spider Queen loved chaos and rewarded her most loyal followers, but she had never favored her male children as much as she did the females.
For the first time, the balance of power appeared on the verge of shifting. The dark goddess required ancient magic, and she called on the practitioners of the arcane arts to serve, to raise themselves as equals to their sisters in the eyes of their goddess.
No matter what the benefits were to Guallidurth, Zollgarza knew that Mistress Fizzri privately seethed at this turn of events.
“I want reconnaissance reports on the city’s outer defenses,” the mistress mother instructed. She hid her distaste behind a stern mask of command. “You scouts bring me numbers. I want to know how many soldiers we can expect. Our first strikes will be to their outposts. Draw them from their stronghold, strike from the shadows, and cull their numbers while we plan a larger assault. Fear will weaken them, and the dwarf city will fall.”