Spinner of Lies frotg-1

by Bruce R Cordell

  She squinted up against the flickering, smoke-obscured ceiling of the massive cavern. Lord Pashra stood over her, yelling something and brandishing his cleaver at the genasi soldiers and war wizards who’d engaged them.

  Chenraya had thought crushing the final knot of defenders would be easy. Of course the oni had told her otherwise, that the remaining defenders were strongest and would prove blah, blah, blah … She’d ignored him. Genasi were no more special than any other slave race, she’d said. They’d succumb to Lolth’s will. So she’d selected only herself, Pashra, and an exploratory force of arachnids to deal with the problem.

  Lying in the rubble while gasping in pain from the last genasi stroke was bad. But being proved wrong by the oni was far worse. It was a slight that couldn’t be forgiven.

  However, given that her exploratory force had been turned into smoking carcasses, she now had other priorities. Beginning with the fact that she could barely feel her extremities. The defending war wizard’s lightning bolt had been even more potent than she’d realized.

  Pashra dragged her by her cloak behind one of her fallen arachnid behemoths. She was too surprised by his impudence to resist.

  “Are you hurt?” he yelled. His voice was oddly muted, as if her head was covered in a layer of webs.

  She shook her head, and her ears began to ring.

  The final genasi defenders were barricaded against the mine face that contained the mother lode. The genasi couldn’t retreat-they could only fight. And fight they did, with the strength and cunning of those with no other options.

  She, the oni, and her force had dashed against them and broken like waves on the shore. Which hardly seemed fair, given how easily everything else had gone. Genasi on the surface hadn’t expected claim jumpers, probably because an attack had never happened before. The upper island defenses had fallen immediately a few tendays ago. Since then, she and Pashra had surreptitiously moved several shipments of arambarium back through Airspur and, from there, into the Demonweb for final transfer to Menzoberranzan.

  But the defenders down here had held out that entire time, despite being bottled up and unable to call for help. Their numbers were depleted, but they held fast. They knew the moment Chenraya broke them, the mother lode would be lost. They were well-trained, loyal subjects of the Throne of Akanul.

  That was about to change; soon, they’d just be corpses.

  “Lolth, hear your daughter’s prayer,” she whispered. “Lend me your grace, as I accomplish your will. Blood will be spilled and souls reaped for your glory.” New strength flowed into her as she spoke. The ringing in her ears subsided, the pain in her chest faded, and feeling returned to her fingers and toes.

  Chenraya rose and stood next to Pashra. “If you can fight, show me. We don’t have time for this conflict.”

  The oni growled, swinging two vicious tusks her way. Would he actually be stupid enough to attack her?

  No. Instead, he drew a glamour over himself. A moment later, a genasi male stood where Pashra had been. He was dressed in a close approximation to the uniforms worn by the mine defenders-the armor and sash of an Akanul elite peacemaker.

  The genasi said in Pashra’s voice, “I’ll create a distraction on their flank, Chenraya. I trust you’ll take advantage.”

  Then he faded into invisibility.

  The drow priestess was reluctantly impressed. The ogre magician had his uses. If he could deliver on his promise to distract the defenders, maybe she wouldn’t sacrifice him. At least, not immediately.

  Chenraya considered using her most potent charm, or calling on her most powerful prayer. The charm was shaped like a yochlol, a demon servitor of Lolth. The prayer, when spoken, would literally dissolve and disintegrate the flesh of friends and foes alike … but she had only one yochlol bead, and the vile prayer was too potent for her to use more than a few times. Better to hold onto those trump cards until nothing else would serve. Instead she settled on something less catastrophic and invoked a prayer of flame.

  A pillar of purple fire crashed down from the ceiling as if it’d bored straight through all the rock between the sky and this buried cavern. She’d called it down on the heads of the defenders, but they’d somehow managed to deflect it to one side. But a few still got caught in the flames and died screaming.

  The rest returned fire. Arrows, quarrels, and a few screaming bolts of magic arced toward her. She ducked back down behind the arachnid carcass and waited for Pashra’s distraction.

  She didn’t have to wait long. A new scream of outrage and pain echoed across the cavern. Chenraya leaped from cover and dashed forward as the defenders behind the barricades contracted in violent confusion.

  The floor of the cavern was strewn with open cavities, forming a crude checkerboard of pits. Chenraya thudded across a plank that bridged a rough-sided mine scar. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw a shape move in the darkness below. She glanced down and caught the faintly illuminated shape of a drake-like figure made of stone rising beneath her. She leaped to one side as it burst up from the pit and tried to bite her head off. Failing, it still struck her hard enough that instead of falling into the pit, she tumbled to a halt several feet past its lip. Face down in the dirt for the second time in almost as many heartbeats.

  Her attacker was a stone elemental in the shape of a minor dragon, glimmering with arambarium stains. A genasi defender rode on its back, controlling it. Unlike the obsidian entity she’d subverted beneath Airspur, this one was already fully activated-and she was its target.

  A stone claw descended on her but she rolled to one side, then back the other way as the other claw raked at her. The genasi rider, an earthsoul, of course, was crowing in victory.

  Chenraya broke the yochlol charm’s leather thong with a jerk and threw the yellowish item one way as she scrambled the other.

  A flash of mustard-colored light bloomed. Chenraya kept rolling until she was several feet from the drake, which suddenly had more immediate problems to deal with than her.

  Then she was up again, her heels to another pit, readying another prayer of purple fire.

  Consternation was visible in the earthsoul rider’s face as his elemental faced down a creature of Abyssal phlegm, with spastic tentacles and roving eyes in an amorphous yellow body. It was the yochlol she’d summoned, a gift from Lolth sent to protect her.

  The yochlol spoke, its voice a shockingly seductive contralto, more beautiful than any normal drow woman’s. “The Spider Queen watches you, Chenraya. You’re so pretty. I wish I could stay. I’d dearly love to get to know you better.”

  “I … I am honored, handmaiden,” Chenraya replied.

  “Of course you are, little one.” The yochlol laughed. Unlike its speaking voice, the demon’s mirth was nightmarish. Chenraya avoided cringing by clenching her teeth as hard as she could.

  Then the stone drake pounced on the yochlol. The yellow body splattered beneath the granite bulk like a popped fruit. Strands of yellow ichor spewed up as tentacles and coiled around the drake.

  The elemental beast shuddered as the yochlol’s arms tightened. The earthsoul leaped clear, even as drake and yochlol glimmered like a heat mirage.

  The yochlol said, “You and I will meet again, Chenraya Xorlorrin. You’ve incurred a debt.” Then demon and elemental seemed to flatten, losing dimension, until the intertwined image folded away and was gone. Lolth’s handmaiden had returned to the Abyss and brought an elemental drake morsel back with it.

  Chenraya wasted a moment wondering if the demon handmaiden had lied. Or had some kind of debt really been incurred? That was the problem dealing with demons-one moment they followed instructions as they should, but the next, they were feasting on your entrails. Demons just didn’t follow rules of any sort. Just like their mistress, Lolth herself …

  The priestess clamped off that potentially blasphemous line of thought. Instead she focused on the brown-hued genasi thrown from his stone saddle. He was already casting some kind of spell. Which meant he was one
of the war wizard defenders. A geomancer, probably, summoning another rocky beast to inflict on her.

  But he was cut off from the rest of the genasi, who by the sound of it were having trouble dealing with the disguised oni’s “treachery.”

  Chenraya pointed at the geomancer and loosed a venom bolt. The ray caught the man full in the face. He gagged, shook with palsy as the poison coursed through his blood, but tried to finish his spell nonetheless. It was a close call. She readied herself.

  However, the genasi slumped to the cavern floor, blackened and shriveled, before he could choke out the final phrase.

  She murmured a prayer for his soul. If she was lucky, she’d just consigned his spirit to Lolth’s tender mercies instead of wherever it should normally have gone. The little things were what sometimes made life worth living.

  The priestess turned her attention back to the genasi barricade. None of the defenders were paying attention to her. They’d all hunkered down, watching each other with wary eyes, wondering which one among them had suddenly gone crazy and started killing his compatriots.

  Chenraya decided to take advantage of the confusion and risk drawing attention to herself. She whispered a short prayer of amplification. Then she bellowed at the top of her lungs, “Descend, my army-join me, my harem! Find me, slothful mercenaries of Bregan D’aerthe! Why’ve you left your mistress alone so long?”

  Her voice bounced back and forth across the great chamber, blasted down the side tunnels, and rose like an explosive plume up the access shafts to the surface. The defenders clamped hands over their ears to block out the fury of the sound.

  In truth, the mercenaries should have already joined her, without her having to summon them. Surely the fact that she, Pashra, and the exploratory force of arachnids hadn’t returned after more than an hour should’ve drawn her supposed allies to make certain all was well. Perhaps the genasi were not the only ones dealing with treachery …

  A flash of violet light presaged the appearance of the Bregan D’aerthe laggards. A handful of dark elf silhouettes with drawn swords and wands engaged the defenders before the genasi realized the equation had changed.

  With Pashra already behind the enemy barricade, she and the mercenaries made quick work of the last stubborn stragglers over the course of ten heartbeats filled with screams and blood.

  At last, the mine was completely under her control. All its tunnels, its hollow pits, and its mineral resources were hers to do with as she wished.

  For starters, she’d fortify the vast cavern so that, unlike the genasi before her, she wouldn’t lose control of the mother lode. She studied the ceiling and nodded. If anyone came from Akanul to reclaim their arambarium, she’d bring the entire island down on his or her head.

  “Can you feel it?” came Pashra’s voice, uncharacteristically hushed with awe.

  Chenraya turned round to see the oni pointing at the blank cavern wall. But she knew the blankness was just a facade. Standing so close, it was impossible to ignore the way her hair stood on end and her skin prickled. Something truly ancient lay trapped behind the stone. Something powerful beyond accounting.

  The arambarium mother lode. Or, as Pashra claimed, a relic carved from a dead primordial of sundered Abeir that had fallen to Faerun like a dead star.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SOMEWHERE IN THE DEMONWEB

  19 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

  The wonderful thing about a circular floor plan, thought Demascus, was that if you went around long enough, sooner or later you circle around back to where you started. As long as your pursuers didn’t immediately realize the same thing. They might have split their number, sending one group down the scent trail and another down the counterclockwise path. That would be bad. Demascus shrugged. The situation couldn’t be helped. They could only go forward.

  The chamber ahead was a clutter of wizardly paraphernalia, ominous in its dusty immobility. “Be careful,” he whispered. “Don’t knock anything over. But go quick.” He adjusted his twin swords sheathed through his belt on either hip. Hopefully their ends wouldn’t swing into anything as he passed. Vampiric victory screams shivered the air. The Norjah pursuers had found their odor. Now we race.

  “Go!” he said, still whispering.

  Riltana lunged for the far door, beneath the grim wall of urns. Chant pushed Jaul ahead of him. Demascus wasted a moment to quietly close the door they’d entered through, casting about in his mind for some method of obscuring their passage or obliterating their scent. He came up with nothing. His memory was doing its best blank-slate impression. Useful skills from previous incarnations only flowed when he worked himself up into an echo of the Sword of the Gods. He frowned. He’d rather avoid doing that unless absolutely necessary-he didn’t trust himself. That version of himself. When he was the Sword, his joy was at its zenith. Existence was too fluidly wonderful, where everything and anything seemed possible. Even doing something wildly at odds with common sense and his own goals. Right now, he had to focus on getting everyone to safety. Then, maybe, he’d unleash the Sword on the vampires …

  He skirted a black cauldron that smelled of feet and rotten earthworms. He steadied a clay jar Jaul accidentally set wobbling as he passed. The moment Demascus touched it he realized it was a funerary urn. The name inscribed on it read, “Kurwen, Master of Dark Spells.”

  He snatched his hand back. The last thing they needed was to sensitize yet another necrotic threat to their presence. He took it as given that the ashes of dead “Dark Spell” wizards should remain undisturbed.

  The next chamber was another decomposing sitting room, vampire free and empty of any other obvious threat. Riltana was already across it and easing open the far door. Demascus winced when Jaul stumbled over a chair, which produced a scratchy squeal as it slid three feet across the dusty floor.

  They all stopped, faces taut.

  “Just go!” said Demascus.

  Riltana ducked into the exit closest to the curved wall. Demascus followed, and they entered cramped quarters overflowing with junk. They carefully picked their way through a morass of tapestries, rugs, and heaped rags that smothered a collection of broken swords-It didn’t matter what the contents were. Nothing jumped them. The next two shadow-swathed chambers proved equally nerve-wracking on entry, but ultimately unthreatening.

  Finally, they burst into the room where they’d first entered the castle. The scribbled door marker was swallowed once again by an open portal that looked out into a corridor composed of spider silk. The woman with scarlet nails stood smack in the middle of the opening, blocking their exit and using the point of her black iron sword as a hinge-stop in the door to prevent it from closing. She cracked a fanged smile at him. By all that was holy and sovereign, he thought, I really really hate vampires.

  “What an interesting set of paths you’ve discovered. An entrance to the fabled Demonweb! House Norjah will thank you for showing them the way. Ordinarily, they might even pay you a finder’s fee.”

  “Listen,” said Demascus. “We’ll give the painting back. It was a mistake.”

  “You mean paintings, plural,” said the vampire.

  “No, we took … I mean, Riltana took just one.”

  “Two of the Whispering Children from the collection went missing the night we chased this one,” the vampire pointed at the windsoul.

  He shot the thief a look of surprise. She’d stolen two?

  “I only took one!” insisted Riltana.

  The woman’s predatory smile widened. “Liar. You know what happens to liars, my dear?”

  “They get pudding?” said Riltana.

  The vampire screamed, “Return to me, hunters! They’re here!” The vampire pulled her sword from the hinge. The door slammed in their faces.

  A bolt from Chant’s crossbow thudded into the frame a bare instant before the door closed on it, preventing it from shutting completely and trapping them in the dark tower with the vampires. Demascus’s shoulder hit the door a moment
later. He smashed through the opening, back out into the Demonweb. The swinging door knocked the red-nailed woman backward, giving Demascus time to draw his weapons. Vampire screams funneled through the opening behind him. The hordes had heard their mistress and were hurtling back from wherever they were in the darkling dimension.

  “Chant, Jaul, Riltana, get out of here!” he yelled. He deflected a slanting neck slash from the vampire’s black iron blade with an outward sweep of his white sword. He followed up with a backhand slash of his red-runed sword to her neck. The vampire easily clanged her blade into his while simultaneously shifting to his left. Her blade came down again, this time toward his extended arm. He flinched more than retracted his arm, and her attack only managed to cut a thin line through his armor instead of lopping off a limb. She was moving too fast! Faster than a human or genasi or any mortal creature could. Maybe even as fast as him, when he was able to summon the ghost of his office. He reached for that feeling of sublime jubilation-

  Her front kick was like a shot from a ballista fired from the vampire’s hip. When it connected with his stomach, he staggered and dropped one sword. The vampire howled with hungry anticipation, but then Riltana and Chant were between her and the deva. Riltana’s short sword flashed. Chant fired what appeared to be a continuous volley of quarrels. And the woman snarled as she dissolved in a frenzy of a hundred black wings. She re-formed several yards into the temple, glaring with burning eyes. Jaul scurried out of the portal, a cacophony of predatory calls breaking on him like waves. He yanked his father’s quarrel from the frame and slammed the door. The pursuing screams instantly ceased.

  “Way to go!” Demascus told Jaul. The hunting horde caught on the other side would find it difficult to open a portal reduced to a childish scrawl on wall and wainscoting. The deva retrieved his dropped sword. The vampire’s shockingly strong kick had winded him, but that didn’t matter. The scales were balanced again. Without her horde, she could be beaten. He’d beat her before, in his own house, with just Riltana to help him.