R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation (11 page)

Pharaun noticed a blindfolded orc juggling daggers for the amusement of the crowd and paused for a moment to watch the show. Ryld heaved a sigh, signaling his impatience at the interruption in their deliberations.

The wizard counted five sharp knives, which the slave’s scarred hands caught and tossed with flawless accuracy. A laudable performance, even if it lacked a certain elan. Pharaun tossed a coin to the orc’s owner, then strolled on. Ryld tramped along beside him.

“So,” said the weapons master, “Tathlyn gets a thrashing, the brothel enjoys a glut of patrons, and you see a connection. What?”

“What if all those boys endured a beating, or at least some sort of unpleasantness, at the hands of their female relations? What if that’s the reason they flocked to their sad little sanctuary, to lie low, lick their wounds, and kick around one of Nym’s captives in their turn?”

Ryld frowned, pondering the notion. “You’re guessing that priestesses in a diversity of Houses have grown more harsh and unreasonable. Obviously, that could provoke a spate of runaway males, but what could make the dispositions of all those priestesses curdle in unison?”

“I have a hunch that when we figure that out, we’ll be getting somewhere.”

The two masters circled around a colossal snail pulling a dozen-wheeled cart. The creature’s mouth opened into an
O
and Pharaun—who had once only narrowly survived an encounter with such a giant mollusk in the wild—nearly sacrificed his dignity by flinching, even though he knew this particular specimen had undoubtedly been divested of its ability to spew a caustic sludge. Sure enough, nothing flew from the draft creature’s maw except a few clear, harmless droplets. The wagoner lashed the hostile snail with his long-handled whip.

“What did you learn downstairs?” asked Ryld.

“Nothing, really,” said Pharaun, “nothing we hadn’t already inferred. Still, I was able to oblige an old comrade. That was pleasant in its own way.”

“If neither of us discovered anything substantial, our visit to the Jewel Box was a waste of time.”

“Not a bit of it. The bloodshed perked you up, didn’t it? You’ve pretty much been smiling ever since.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I admit it was an interesting little scuffle . . .”

Ryld began to recount the battle one action at a time, with comprehensive analysis of the alternative options and underlying strategy. Pharaun nodded and did his best to look interested.

Triel, Matron Mother of House Baenre and a diminutive ebony doll of a dark elf, marched briskly down the corridor, covering ground rapidly despite her short stride. Eight feet tall, his two goatlike legs more nimble even than most drow’s, Jeggred had no difficulty keeping up with his mother. The scurrying, frazzled drow secretary, though, looked as if she was in imminent danger of dropping her armload of parchment.

When Triel heard voices conversing a few yards ahead, she wanted to move faster still. Only a sense that a female in her august position ought not to compromise her dignity by running held the impulse in check.

“I think it’s a test,” said one soft female voice.

“I worry it’s a sign of disfavor,” answered the other, a hair deeper and a bit nasal. “Perhaps we’ve done something to offend—”

Triel and her companions rounded a corner. There before them loitered a pair of her cousins. Their mouths fell open when they saw her.

Triel looked up at her son’s face, which, with its slightly elongated muzzle, mouthful of long, pointed fangs, slanted eyes, and pointed ears, seemed a blend of drow and wolf. That wordless glance sufficed to convey her will.

Jeggred pounced, his long, coarse mane streaming out behind him. With each of his huge, clawed fighting hands, he grabbed a cousin by the throat and hoisted her up against the calcite wall. His two smaller, drowlike hands flexed as if they too wished to get in on the violence.

Perhaps they did.

Triel had conceived a child in a ritual coupling with the glabrezu demon Belshazu. The result was Jeggred, a half-fiend known as a draegloth, a precious gift of the Spider Queen. His mother was quite prepared to believe that cruelty and bloodlust burned in every mote and particle of his being. Only his reflexive subservience, tendered not because Triel had borne him but because she was first among the priestesses of Lolth, kept him from immediately slaughtering his prisoners, or, indeed, pretty much anyone else with whom he came in contact.

Occasionally Triel’s lack of height was an advantage. It didn’t feel awkward or claustrophobic to step inside the circle of Jeggred’s two longer arms and stand before the cousins. Up close, she could smell the sweat of their fear just as easily as she could hear the little choking sounds they were making or the thuds as their heels bumped against the carved surface behind them.

“I forbade you to speak of the situation in public,” she snarled.

The cousin on the left started making more noise, a tortured gargling. Perhaps she was trying to say that she and the other one had been alone.

“This is a public part of the castle,” Triel said. “Anyone, any
male
might have come along and overheard you.”

She swung her whip of fangs, aiming low to ensure she didn’t accidentally lash Jeggred’s hands or arms. The five writhing adders gashed their targets but not enough to satisfy their mistress. She struck again and again. Her anger rose and rose until it became a kind of rapture, a sweet simplicity in which nothing existed but the cousins’ thrashing, the smell and feel of their blood spattering her face, and the pleasant exertion of her snapping arm.

She never knew what brought her out of that joyous condition. Perhaps it was simply that she was winded, but when she came to her senses, the two babblers were dangling limp and silent in Jeggred’s grip.

Both the draegloth and the scribe were smiling. They’d thoroughly enjoyed the cousins’ excruciating torture, but there were things still to be done, and she’d wasted time losing her temper.

Which was bad. Matron Mother Baenre, de facto ruler of the entire city of Menzoberranzan, should be able to govern herself as well.

Triel’s emotional volatility was of comparatively recent origin. She’d been calm and competent all the while she served as Mistress of Arach-Tinilith. That role, arguably second only to her mother’s in prestige, had suited her well, and she’d never aspired to anything more.

Nor had she truly believed that more was even possible. Her mother seemed immortal. Indestructible. But then, suddenly, she was gone, and the ambition that at one time or another goaded every dark elf awoke in Triel’s breast. How could she
not
strive to ascend to her mother’s throne? How could she let Quenthel or one of her other kin climb over her head to order her about forever after?

She managed to claim the title of Matron Mother, and though she soon came to feel somewhat overwhelmed by the scope and intricacies of the position, at first it wasn’t so bad. Things were relatively normal and didn’t require some dramatic intervention from on high to set them right.

Moreover, she had Quenthel and Gromph to advise her. True, her sister and brother invariably disagreed, but Triel could review their competing proposals and pick the one that suited her. It was considerably easier than having to come up with the ideas herself.

But she had a crisis to manage, perhaps the greatest crisis in the long history of the dark elves, and apparently she would have to do it alone. She obviously couldn’t confide in Gromph, and insolent Quenthel claimed she had to attend to the security of Tier Breche before she could focus on anything else.

Triel gave her head a shake, trying to dislodge her doubts and worries.

“Let them down.”

Jeggred obeyed, and she turned to the secretary.

“When you get a chance,” she said, raising her voice over the choking gasps of the two cousins, “have somebody haul them out to Arach-Tinilith to be patched back together, and have someone wash away the blood. But for now, we’d best get moving. I think we’re late.”

The trio moved on. A final turn brought them to the door. Behind it was the dais overlooking the largest audience chamber in House Baenre. A pair of sentries guarded the entry to ensure that no one would sneak through to stab the matron mother in the back. They snapped to attention when they saw her coming.

Triel swept on through the entry with Jeggred and the clerk in tow. The hall on the other side glowed with soft magical light to facilitate the examination of documents. A sweet perfume scented the air, and a fresco of Lolth adorned the ceiling. The guards along the walls—dark elves near the dais, ogre and minotaur slaves farther down—saluted, while the supplicants and petitioners made the obeisance proper to their stations, anything from a dignified inclination of the head and spreading of the hands to an abject grovel flat on the floor.

Looking down on them from the elevated platform, Triel reflected that it was astonishing just how many such folk turned up each and every tenday. She’d thought people were always demanding her attention when she ruled the Academy, but she’d had no conception of the hordes of idiots who constantly sought Matron Baenre’s ear, often to resolve trivial if not nonsensical concerns.

She sat down on her mother’s throne, an empress’s ransom in gold with a flaring back shaped to resemble an arc of spiderweb. Her predecessor had been a relatively large female, and her successor always felt a bit childlike and lost in the chair. She had enough of a sense of irony to comprehend the accidental symbolism.

She surveyed the waiting throng and discovered Faeryl Zauvirr at the very front with some long, bulky rolled papers tucked under her arm. The matron mother smiled, for at least she knew how to deal with this one particular petitioner. For a blessed change, Waerva, one of the lesser females of her House, had made herself useful. She’d come up with some significant information and a sensible idea of what to do about it.

Triel decided she might as well start out feeling dominant and shrewd. Perhaps it would set the tone for the rest of the session. She waited for the herald to conclude the ceremonials and the crowd to rise. Then, still spattered with blood, and with Jeggred looming reassuringly behind her throne, she motioned for Faeryl to step forward.

Faeryl was pleased to be chosen first. In retrospect, she thought the same thing would have occurred even if she hadn’t made sure of a position immediately in front of the dais. The haughty Menzoberranyr often feigned disinterest in their client city, but she knew they understood the importance of Ched Nasad.

It was hard not to hurry, but she forced herself to approach the throne with a stately tread consonant with the dignity of her position, the stature of her House, and the grandeur of her homeland. It was also difficult to offer a second graceful obeisance without dropping her roll of maps, but she accomplished that as well.

“Ambassador,” said Triel without any extraordinary warmth.

Perhaps she considered Faeryl’s presence inappropriate. “Matron Mother,” Faeryl replied. Tall, broad-shouldered and thick-waisted by the standards of her slender race, she would have dwarfed the Baenre had the two of them been standing side by side. “I know we sometimes meet in private, but after tendays of deliberation I arrived at a conclusion, one that compelled me to confer with you at the earliest opportunity.”

“What conclusion?” Triel asked.

She still seemed unconcerned if not downright cold. Perhaps she was preoccupied with her affliction.

Faeryl had of course fallen prey to the same malaise, but to her own surprise, she’d discovered she was at least as worried about something else: the well-being of House Zauvirr and the magnificent city in which it amassed its wealth, fought its covert battles, and worked its magic.

“I keep track of the caravans arriving from Ched Nasad,” the ambassador said. “For the past six tendays, none has. None. As the Matron Mother is undoubtedly aware, several major trade routes converge in the City of Shimmering Webs, which then funnels the merchants on to Menzoberranzan. At least half the goods that reach your cavern come through us. Except that now, they aren’t reaching you. The steady flow has dried up. Except in time of war, that’s unprecedented.”

“It’s an odd coincidence, certainly, all the merchant clansmen choosing other destinations, but I’m sure they’ll decide to head for Menzoberranzan next trip, or the trip after that.”

Faeryl had to make a conscious effort to compose her features. Otherwise she would have scowled. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought Triel was being deliberately obtuse.

“I suspect it may be more than a coincidence,” the ambassador said. “A thousand thousand dangers haunt the Underdark, and the philosophers tell us new ones are spawning all the time. What if something has cut the route between Menzoberranzan and Ched Nasad? What if it’s killing everyone who tries to pass through?”

“More than one tunnel connects the cities,” rumbled the draegloth unexpectedly, and despite the perfume wafting through the air, Faeryl caught a whiff of the creature’s putrid breath. “Is that not so?”

“Exactly!” Triel reached back around the edge of her golden chair and gave the half-fiend an approving pat on the leg. “Your theory doesn’t stand up, Ambassador.”

Not for the first time, Faeryl wished that Triel’s mother was still leading House Baenre. The greedy, vicious old autocrat could be hard to contend with, but though she would have cherished a draegloth as a mark of Lolth’s approval and delighted in the demidemon’s gift for slaughter, she wouldn’t have tolerated it speaking unbidden at a formal conference, any more than she would have borne such disrespect from anyone else.

“If the threat consists of more than one beast,” the emissary said, “or more than one manifestation of a phenomenon, it could cut more than one passage.”

Triel shrugged. “If you say so.”

“I hesitate to mention it,” said Faeryl, “lest I be thought an alarmist, but it’s even possible that some misfortune has befallen Ched Nasad itself.”

“A misfortune so abrupt and all-encompassing that your folk never even had a chance to dispatch a messenger to Menzoberranzan?” Triel replied. “Nonsense. Even Golothaer, home of our ancestors, didn’t perish in an hour. Besides, I am personally aware of several communiqués having reached here from Ched Nasad in only the past few days.”