Spider and Stone

by Jaleigh Johnson

  Restlessness again took hold of the wizards. Zollgarza shared their curiosity. What magic could the dwarf city, even one as ancient as Iltkazar, hold that would draw the eye of the Spider Queen? That, the mistress mother had not revealed.

  What could she want with me? Zollgarza wondered.

  Mistress Fizzri dismissed them, and the scouts bowed and filed out of the audience chamber. The wizards followed a moment later.

  “Stay, Zollgarza,” Fizzri said when Zollgarza turned to follow them. “I have more to say to you.”

  Zollgarza came forward and stood before the mistress, keeping his eyes downcast. He waited, but the silence stretched in the chamber. He felt the female’s gaze hard upon him, appraising him, studying his features as Derzac-Rin had done.

  “I want you to infiltrate the city of Iltkazar,” she said at last.

  A smile ghosted across Zollgarza’s lips. “Is that all my mistress wishes?” he asked. “Has she tired of my services so soon that she sends me to my death at dwarf hands?”

  “Be silent! Look up at me.”

  Zollgarza looked up, beholding Fizzri’s red eyes. The serpent glided from her hair to rest on her shoulder. “I jest, of course,” he said with faint mockery.

  “You will infiltrate the city,” she repeated. “I know you are capable. Your task is to seek out the city’s ruler, King Mith Barak the Clanless. He has held the throne of Iltkazar for centuries and is in possession of the oldest magic in the city.”

  “Am I to kill this King Mith Barak?” Zollgarza inquired.

  “Perhaps you won’t have to,” Fizzri replied. “According to intelligence we have already gathered, Mith Barak is not always the leader of the city. He goes to the stone for seventy-five out of every one hundred years of his reign.”

  “I don’t understand,” Zollgarza said. “Is that a dwarf expression?”

  The mistress’s lips pulled back in a sly smile. “You might well think so, but in this case, I’m being quite literal. Mith Barak spends seventy-five years seated on his throne in the form of a mithral statue.”

  “If that’s true, he is no ruler.” Zollgarza shook his head in disgust. The ways of stone-shapers and dirt-scrapers made no sense to him. “Why has no one killed him before now?”

  Fizzri waved her hand dismissively. “I couldn’t say, but if that is the state you find him in, your task will be simpler.” Again, she flashed that sly smile. “You can manage to swing a hammer, can’t you?”

  “Mithral is not so easily destroyed, as you know, and nor do I expect I’ll find the king unguarded in such a state, but I understand your meaning,” Zollgarza said. “His death is all that is required, then?”

  “Not quite.” The mistress mother rose from the bench and approached Zollgarza. Her black silk gown trailed behind her like a shimmering stain. She held up her hand, palm out toward him, and spoke a word that sent an electrical charge arcing from one of her rings through the air between them. The snake recoiled, burying itself in the female’s hair.

  A silvery-blue sphere appeared in the air above her palm. Inscribed upon the surface of the sphere scrawled writing Zollgarza could not read.

  “Beautiful,” he said in that same detached, analytical voice.

  “Yes, it is.” With her free hand, Fizzri traced the air around the sphere in a covetous gesture. “Every night when I go to sleep, this object haunts my dreams. It whispers to me.” Her eyes took on a dreamy glaze.

  “Is it in the king’s possession?” Zollgarza asked, unnerved by the sudden change in Fizzri’s demeanor.

  “Not for long.” Fizzri’s expression hardened. “It is called the Arcane Script Sphere. There is old magic in the city, but none is nearly as powerful as this artifact. See and remember it.” She clenched her fist, and the illusion disappeared. “I want you to kill Mith Barak if possible, but no matter what, you must retrieve this artifact. If it comes down to a choice between slaying the king and retrieving the sphere, you will get the sphere. Is that understood?”

  Zollgarza bowed. “May I ask what interest the sphere has for the Spider Queen? Why do we seek a dwarven relic for her glory?”

  “It is not and never was a dwarven relic,” Fizzri said. “More than that, I won’t tell you.”

  “Then I will leave you,” Zollgarza said. He bowed and turned to go.

  Fizzri laid a hand on his arm, her nails digging into his flesh. Zollgarza looked up and met the female’s gaze. Were those hints of silver he saw in her red eyes? He’d never noticed those hints before, and for a moment, he stood frozen, staring into that hypnotic silver light.

  “Is that all?” the priestess asked softly. Emotion deepened her voice. Gone was the hissing undertone of the serpent. “So cold you are, Zollgarza. Why do I favor you so? 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?”

  “What?” Zollgarza tried to step away, to escape those eyes, which were full silver now, gleaming with anger and frustration. She’d echoed Derzac-Rin’s words exactly. “What are you talking about?”

  The female’s grip on his arm tightened, threatened to crush his bones. Zollgarza cried out in pain. Suddenly, her hands were everywhere, pinning his arms, driving him to his knees. He couldn’t move. What was happening? Had she poisoned him, used magic to bind his limbs?

  Tell me why she sent you, the mistress mother snarled. Her voice was no longer the husky purr of a drow female. The voice that invaded Zollgarza’s mind was ancient, male, and filled with a shattering power that made him tremble. It had to be more than the sphere, more than my death, the voice cried. What do you want with Iltkazar? What is your power?

  Zollgarza screamed. Fizzri’s audience chamber blurred and darkened. A wave of dizziness sickened him, cut off his scream. When his head cleared, he found himself in a small prison cell, his back numb against a cold stone floor. Chains bound him at the hands and feet.

  Bent over him was an ancient dwarf, thinner than most creatures of his kind and not so muscular, but his spotted, calloused hands betrayed a strength Zollgarza couldn’t doubt. He gripped Zollgarza’s upper arms with such force that he thought his bones would snap. Between those hands flowed a silver beard that turned yellowish around his thick lips. His face bore the crags of the mountains spoken of in hundreds of dwarven tales, and a scar beneath his left eye made him look just as fierce as those tales portrayed the stout folk.

  Those eyes—those silver eyes—Zollgarza felt himself falling into them again, spiraling back into his memories of that day in Guallidurth, when the mistress gave him his mission to infiltrate Iltkazar. Mith Barak—he recognized the dwarf king now—was making him relive the scene, reaming his mind for information.

  With an effort, Zollgarza tore his gaze away from those stunning silver orbs. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, hoping the pain would clear his head.

  “You’re strong willed,” the dwarf king said. His deep voice washed over Zollgarza, rough and gravelly with age but bearing an underlying power that Zollgarza felt through his whole body. “Do you remember where you are?”

  “Iltkazar,” Zollgarza whispered. His throat burned from thirst. He swallowed several times to return moisture to his mouth.

  King Mith Barak leaned back and reached for something in a corner of the cell. He brought a ladle of water to Zollgarza’s lips. “Drink,” he commanded, and Zollgarza obeyed without thinking. The king’s influence was strong. Whatever spell he’d used on Zollgarza lingered in him, forcing him to obey.

  Mith Barak cast the ladle aside and lifted Zollgarza by the shoulder, forcing him to sit up against the wall. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  “You captured me,” Zollgarza said. “That much I understand.”

  “I could have killed you, you know.” The king stood up, crossing his arms. “That’s what you came to do to me. Are you still wondering where the sphere is, Zollgarza?”

  “You have the informa
tion you wanted,” Zollgarza said. He couldn’t risk looking directly into the king’s eyes again. “Why haven’t you killed me?”

  “It’s true your mind is wide open to me, yet there are still … gaps,” Mith Barak said carefully. “What is your family name, Zollgarza?”

  The weight of the dwarf’s compulsion flowed through him, but when Zollgarza opened his mouth to speak, no words came. He swallowed, tried again. Nothing.

  Grunting, the dwarf scratched his beard. “Who sired you? Where were you born? Who was the last person you killed, before Derzac-Rin?”

  The questions pounded in Zollgarza’s mind, strengthened by dwarf magic. He focused on the first, the one that disturbed him most due to his inability to answer it: his family name. Such a small thing, but when he searched for it, there was only blackness, an impenetrable shroud.

  “What did you do to me?” he snarled. It had to be the dwarf’s magic that clouded his memories.

  The king shook his head. “I did nothing except search your mind for those same answers. They aren’t there,” he said. “Someone has used magic—stronger than any I’ve ever encountered—to wall off parts of your memories. They’ve even denied you access to them. I want to know why.”

  Zollgarza heard the threat in the dwarf’s voice, but he paid no attention. More questions swirled in his thoughts. His knowledge of poisons: Where had he learned those skills? Where had he come by the dagger with the spider on the hilt? He served Mistress Mother Fizzri, but what had he done before that? No one knew his place in House Loor’Tchaan.

  Except Fizzri.

  “Fizzri,” Zollgarza growled, straining suddenly against his chains. What had that bitch done to him?

  Mith Barak chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “If your mistress did this to you, then she had help, I can tell you that.”

  “What do you mean?” Zollgarza demanded, hating himself for appealing to the dwarf.

  “I mean if it was her who cleaned out your memories, she did it with her goddess’s blessing and power,” Mith Barak said. “Divine magic—Lolth’s magic—is all over you, in your mind and in your body as well. It’s penetrated your flesh down to the bone. Whatever happened to you, you’ve been completely remade.”

  “You’re lying.” He said it automatically, the denial rising easily to his lips. He looked down at his body, fettered by chains and bleeding from wounds he’d received during his capture. Nothing had changed there. He was himself. He was Zollgarza.

  Your features are misplaced, the voice of dead Derzac-Rin taunted him. The sculptor was merely a stuttering novice when he crafted you.

  “No!” The word tore from Zollgarza’s throat. He stared hatefully up at the king. “Why haven’t you killed me?” he repeated.

  “Oh, you’ll die soon enough, but not before I’ve turned you inside out a few more times.” The king rapped on the door to the cell and a guard stepped inside. “We’re done here,” he said. “Make sure he’s fed, and fetch more water. I don’t want him too weak.”

  “What do you want with me?” Zollgarza said, louder.

  The king ignored him and followed the guard out of the cell.

  Zollgarza lunged forward, straining against his chains. He landed on his face as the cell door slammed shut. “Why don’t you kill me!” he screamed, his face pressed against the dirty floor.

  Silence answered him.

  ILTKAZAR, THE UNDERDARK

  13 UKTAR

  KING MITH BARAK ENTERED HIS AUDIENCE CHAMBER, A cavernous hall with barrel-vaulted ceilings and towering stone columns inscribed with centuries of Dwarvish runes, names of kings and scholars, miners and smiths. His footsteps echoed the long, lonely distance to his mithral throne, where two other figures stood. They heard the heavy tread and turned.

  “My king,” they said, more or less in unison, bowing deeply to him.

  Mith Barak waved away the gesture. Instead of seating himself upon the throne, he stood before his counselors, though that wasn’t exactly the right word for them. They held no official rank in his court or among the regency when Mith Barak was in his mithral form, but they were the closest a king could have to friends, the two dwarves Mith Barak trusted most.

  He allowed himself a heavy sigh. To no other would he show his weariness, certainly not to the damned drow he had caged, and who had been vexing him with his mysteries.

  “He told me nothing new,” the king said in response to the dwarves’ unspoken questions.

  “The drow will attack in force,” Joya said. “That hasn’t changed. They’re already invading our outposts, as their mistress commanded.” She touched the holy symbols of Moradin and the lost Haela Brightaxe that hung around her neck. The hammer and the anvil, overlaid by the flaming sword—the symbols looked right together. Mith Barak knew Joya touched the symbols not out of fear, but as a way to draw strength from the presence of one god and the memory of another. Every time he saw the gesture, it reminded Mith Barak how much he loved the girl.

  “Yes, they will attack,” Mith Barak said, “but if I squeeze that drow long enough, maybe he’ll tell me when and how big an army to expect.”

  The other dwarf, Joya’s father, had been silent, and Mith Barak knew what that silence meant, but he waited for the Blackhorn family patriarch to give voice to his disapproval.

  “You said yourself you learned nothing new, my king. It’s time to prepare our own forces and put an end to the drow,” the dwarf said. Torchlight reflecting off the walls cast his features into shadow, but the runes tattooed on his left cheek showed clearly, as did the plaited strands of his gray beard. Chips of white stone hung from those plaits, with more runes inscribed upon them in black rivers. “Give the word, and I will see to it.”

  “You were never so bloodthirsty before, Garn,” the king said. “What makes you so eager now to kill the drow?”

  “Besides the obvious,” Garn said grimly, “that his people are poised to invade my home and slaughter my kin, we still don’t know why he’s been altered. I don’t want the hand of the spider bitch in my city any more than you do … my king,” he said.

  Mith Barak nodded. “Do you agree with him, Joya? What does Moradin reveal of this matter?”

  “You know I don’t speak for the Soulforger,” Joya replied with a faint smile, but the humor disappeared quickly. Joya was fair-haired, the blond strands cropped close to her chin. Round faced, pretty, and sweet tempered, her dark blue eyes alone betrayed the infinite grief she bore. “I watched him while he was unconscious, dreaming, and while you probed his mind. It’s as you said—the Spider Queen’s power is all over him and terribly strong. It would take an incredible feat of magic to break down the barriers in his mind. I can think of none in this city capable of it. Whatever secrets he’s hiding, someone wanted them buried deeply.”

  “If we can’t hope to uncover his secrets, then all the more reason to destroy him,” Garn said vehemently.

  Joya shook her head. “If this drow’s purpose is to bring destruction to the city with his dark magic, who is to say his death will eliminate the threat? What if his death triggers the magic? What if it dooms you, my king? You were his target.”

  “And the Arcane Script Sphere,” Mith Barak reminded her. “The artifact is of greater importance to the drow than my death.” Damn the thing, anyway. He hadn’t realized how far the sphere’s call echoed through the Underdark until he’d seen the image of Fizzri mooning over it in Zollgarza’s memories. “It’s trying to free itself,” he said.

  “I know,” Joya said quietly. “Its call is strong, enticing. It whispers to me in my dreams as well, begging me to take it up into the World Above.”

  “Really? It never speaks in my dreams,” Mith Barak said, though that hardly surprised him. When he slept at all—which was rare—darker voices filled his dreams, waking him in terror. Even if they hadn’t, the sphere knew its appeals were wasted on him. He couldn’t let the artifact go, couldn’t risk it landing in the hands of the drow, especially one so warped by Lolth’s
magic as Fizzri Khaven-Ghell. Yet if he killed his drow prisoner now, he might never learn Fizzri’s intent for the sphere and Zollgarza.

  “Your daughter is right, Garn, as she usually is,” Mith Barak said. “We can’t risk killing the drow until we know more about Guallidurth’s plan.”

  “We’ve got bigger problems anyway,” Garn said, sighing. “There’s a good chance we don’t have the numbers for this fight, my king. If the drow are mustering more than one House against us, we’re in trouble. You know I’d be the last to say it if it weren’t true.”

  “I know,” Mith Barak said. “We need to pull back from our outposts, close off as many extraneous routes to the surface as we can. The weaker the drow make us, the more susceptible we’ll be to attack from other quarters. The surface dwellers will take advantage of weakness.” His fists clenched. “They always do.”

  THE VILLAGE of THARGRED, TETHYR

  20 UKTAR

  Arowent Martran did not consider himself a complex soul. He ran a small inn and general store in a village that was little more than a way station north of the city of Saradush. Loving his work as he did, he always chatted with the folk who passed through, whether they were merchants replenishing caravan supplies or adventurers come to purchase one of his own hand-drawn maps of the area.

  He prided himself on knowing exactly what sort of folk had walked into his place before they even spoke a word. Tethyrian wine merchants—he could spot them in a breath; escaped Calishite slaves—he’d seen more than one and given them aid; Flaming Fists of Baldur’s Gate—he’d dealt with them too. He was not a complex soul, but he saw clearly all the people who came into his inn.

  Maybe that was why the young girl standing before him irritated Arowent so much—he couldn’t immediately see who she was. Well, clearly, she was an adventurer—Arowent wasn’t stupid, after all—but she was so young and yet … not … so fresh, naive looking and yet … she smiled as if she knew something he didn’t—such a damned mystery.