R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation (19 page)

She wished she could have ordered a retainer or two up there to help her keep her vigil, but it would have been ill-advised, considering that any of her minions might be the object of her hunt.

She also wished she had more cover. Except for a few token walkways and crenellations so small as to be essentially ornamental, the apex of the stalagmite keep was bare of fortifications or even level places to stand. If Faeryl looked closely, she could see subtle signs that at one time, when the keep had served another purpose, such defenses had existed in abundance, but subsequently, a wizard had melted the ramparts back into the rest of the calcite. It made sense. The Menzoberranyr would see no reason to gift an outsider with any notable capacity to resist a siege.

Faeryl perched on the northeast side of the roof. Outlined in blue, green, or violent phosphorescence, the homes of her wealthier neighbors glowed all around her. Had she looked from a distance, she would have observed her own residence shining in the same way. Fortunately, the luminescence only defined the silhouette of the tower and picked out several spiders sculpted in bas-relief. As long as she stayed away from the images, kept silent, and enjoyed a measure of luck, it shouldn’t reveal her presence.

A soft, indefinable sound rose from the northwest. Grateful that she at least still had the brooch that would make her weightless, she scuttled quickly along the sloping pitch of the roof, fearless in the knowledge that even if she lost her footing, she needn’t fall.

In a few moments, she reached the northwest aspect. She peered over the drop and discovered the source of the sound in the plaza below.

Bare to the waist, rapiers in one hand and parrying daggers in the other, two males circled one another. They stood straight and stepped lightly in the manner of well-trained fencers. Their discarded
piwafwis
, mail, and shirts lay where they’d tossed them on the ground along with a pair of empty wineskins. A third male looked on from beneath an overhanging balcony some distance away, where the combatants quite possibly hadn’t noticed him.

Faeryl sighed. This little tableau was mildly intriguing, but it clearly had nothing to do with her own situation.

After her frustrating interview with Matron Mother Baenre, she’d realized she had an opponent. Someone who’d traduced her, possibly to keep her from departing Menzoberranzan, though she couldn’t imagine why. From that inference, it was a small step to the suspicion that the enemy had an agent inside her household. It was what any intelligent foe would try to arrange, and it arguably explained how Faeryl’s intention to go home had been discerned and countered with a word in Triel’s ear.

Seething with the need to outwit those who had made a fool of her, Faeryl devised a ruse to unmask the spy. She surprised her retainers with the order to pack. They were slipping out of Menzoberranzan that very night. She thought her loyal vassals would obey, but the traitor would try to sneak away to report the household’s imminent flight. Crouched on the roof, Faeryl would spot her when she did.

That was the plan, anyway. The ambassador could think of several reasons why it might fail. The residence had means of egress on all four sides, but she couldn’t survey all four at once, not unless she floated well above the roof, and that option presented problems of its own. Most dark elf boots possessed a virtue of silence, and their mantles, one of obscuration. The traitor might even have some more potent means of escaping notice, such as a talisman of invisibility. Were she any higher above the ground, Faeryl might have no hope at all of detecting the spy’s surreptitious exit.

Of course, the traitor might also have a means of communicating with her confederates via clairaudience, or a charm of instantaneous transit, in which case the envoy’s scheme was doomed no matter what. She’d cling to the roof until someone in authority, a company of Baenre guards, perhaps, showed up to take her and her entourage into custody, but she’d had to try something.

She crawled on. Below and behind her, one of the duelists groaned as his foe’s blade plunged through his torso. Magic flickered and sizzled, and the victor dropped as well. The wizard who’d been watching from a distance strolled forward to inspect the steaming corpses.

Faeryl wondered if the three had been siblings, and the wizard was the clever one. She’d had a brother like that once, until an even trickier male turned him to dust and absconded with his wands and grimoires. A minor setback for her House, but interesting to watch.

Overhead, something snapped. She glanced up. Four or five riders on wyvern-back were winging their way east. Above them, projecting from the cavern ceiling, the stalactite castles shone with their own enchantments, a far lovelier sight, in her opinion, than the miniscule monochromatic stars that speckled the night sky of the so-called Lands of Light.

Then, so faintly that she wondered if she’d imagined it, something brushed against something else. The sound had issued from the southwest.

Faeryl scurried over to that part of the roof and peered down. At first glance, nothing appeared changed since the last time she’d checked that way. Perhaps her nerves were playing tricks on her, but she kept on looking anyway.

Octagonal steel grilles protected the round windows cut in the wall below her, but if a drow knew the trick, she could unlatch one and swing it aside for an entrance or exit via levitation. Apparently, someone had, for after a few more moments, Faeryl noticed that one of the web-pattern shields hung ever so slightly ajar. With that sign to guide her, she spotted the shrouded figure skulking toward the mouth of an alleyway.

The noble of Ched Nasad was a fair hand with a crossbow. She might have been able to shoot down the traitor from behind, but that would gain her few answers. She didn’t happen to possess a scroll with the spell for interrogating the dead. She needed to catch up with the spy and take the wretch alive.

She read from a scroll she did have, then she stepped away from the top of the tower into empty space.

Except that it wasn’t empty for her. The air was as firm as stone beneath her soles. For two paces, she strode on a level surface, and, because she willed it so, the unseen platform dipped into an equally invisible ramp. She sprinted down with no fear of blundering off the edge. Wherever she set her foot, the incline would be there to meet it. That was how the magic worked.

Her progress entirely silent, she dashed unnoticed above the traitor’s head, then with a thought dissolved the support beneath her boots. Her crossbow ready, she dropped the last few feet to the ground and landed in front of the spy.

Started, the traitor jumped. Faeryl felt her own pang of surprise, for though she liked to think she maintained a proper suspicion of everyone, in truth, she never could have guessed the pinched, sour face she saw half hidden inside the close-drawn cowl could be the spy’s.

“Umrae,” the ambassador said, aiming her hand crossbow.

“My lady,” the secretary answered, bending with her usual stiffness into an obeisance.

“I know all about it, traitor. I’m not actually planning to leave tonight. My pretending so was a trick to see who would slip away to play informer.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I just wanted to buy some items for the journey. I thought that if I hurried over to the Bazaar, I could find one of those merchants who stays open late and be back before anyone missed me.”

“Do you think I haven’t realized I have an enemy here in Menzoberranzan, someone with access to Matron Baenre? Two tendays ago, Triel considered me loyal. She approved of me. She granted a good deal of what I asked on behalf of our people. Now, she doubts me, because someone has persuaded her to question my true intentions. What did my foe offer to lure you to her side? Don’t you realize that in betraying me, you betray Ched Nasad itself?”

The scribe hesitated, then said, “Matron Baenre has people watching the residence. Someone is watching us right now.”

“Perhaps,” Faeryl replied.

Umrae swallowed. “So you can’t harm me. Or they’ll harm you.”

Faeryl laughed. “Rubbish. Triel’s agents won’t reveal their presence just to keep me from disciplining one of my own retainers. They won’t see anything odd or detrimental to Menzoberranzan’s interests in that. Now, be sensible and surrender.”

After another pause, Umrae said, “Give me your word you won’t hurt me. That you’ll set me free and help me flee the city.”

“I promise you nothing except that your insolence is making me angrier by the moment, and a quick capitulation is your only hope. Tell me, who turned you, and why? What does anyone hereabouts have to gain by persecuting an envoy, one who stands apart from the feuds and rivalries among the Menzoberranyr Houses?”

“You must understand, I fear to betray them and remain. They’ll kill me if I do.”

“They won’t get the chance. I’m the one pointing a poisoned dart at you. Who are your employers?”

“I won’t say, not without your pledge.”

“Your friend didn’t slander me to Triel until after I started contemplating a return to Ched Nasad. Was that the point of the lie? To keep me from venturing out into the Underdark? Why?”

Umrae shook her head.

“You’re mad,” Faeryl said. “Why would you condemn yourself to perpetuate someone else’s existence? Ah well, you’re plainly unfit to live, so I suppose it’s for the best.”

She made a show of sighting down the length of the crossbow.

“No!” Umrae cried. “Don’t! You’re right, why should I die?”

“If you answer my questions, perhaps you won’t.”

“Yes.”

Trembling a little, her nerve having been broken, the clerk raised her hand to her face, perhaps to massage her brow. No—to lift a tiny vial to her lips!

Faeryl pulled the trigger and her aim was true, but by the time the quarrel pierced Umrae’s stomach, the secretary’s form was changing. She grew even thinner, shriveling, but taller as well. Her flesh cooled and stank of corruption, leathery wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, and her eyes sank into her head. Even her garments altered, blurring and splitting into moldering rags. No blood flowed from the wound the poisoned dart had made, and it didn’t seem to inconvenience her in the slightest. She didn’t even bother to pull the missile out.

Faeryl was furious at herself for allowing Umrae to trick her. Next time, she’d remember that even a dark elf devoid of beauty, grace, and facile wit, seemingly undone by fear, was yet a drow, born to guile and deception.

The potion had temporarily transformed Umrae into some sort of undead, in which form she likely wouldn’t suffer at all from her usual clumsiness. Had Lolth not forsaken her priestesses, Faeryl might have controlled the cadaverous thing with her clerical powers, but that was no longer an option. Nor were any of her other retainers likely to notice her plight and dash to her rescue. She had them all too busy packing up the house.

It was unfortunate, because like most undead, except for the lowly corpses and skeletons spellcasters reanimated to serve as mindless thralls, Umrae in winged-ghoul form could probably do grievous harm with any strike that so much as grazed the skin, and Faeryl didn’t even have a shield to fend her off. How was she to know the spy would possess such a potent means of defense?

Umrae took a shambling step, then, with a clap of her wings, bounded forward. Faeryl hastily retreated, dropped the useless crossbow, and opened the clasp of her cloak. Pulling the garment off her shoulders with one hand, she unsheathed a little adamantine rod with the other. At a snap of her wrist, the harmless-looking object swelled into Mother’s Kiss, the long-hafted, basalt-headed warhammer the females of House Zauvirr had borne since the founding of their line. Perhaps an enchanted weapon would slay Umrae where the envenomed quarrel had failed.

Faeryl would have to hope so. Even if she were willing to stand meekly aside and let the traitor fly away, Umrae, her thoughts perhaps colored by the predatory guise she’d assumed, plainly wanted a fight, and the envoy could see no way to evade her. It would be stupid to evoke darkness and run. In undead form, Umrae would likely manage better in the murk than its maker did. It would be even more pointless to try to levitate or ascend through the use of the air-walking charm when the shapeshifter could simply spread her ragged wings and follow.

Faeryl waved her
piwafwi
back and forth at the end of her extended arm, to confuse Umrae and serve as some semblance of a shield. No one had ever taught Faeryl to fight thusly, but she’d observed warriors practicing the technique, and she tried to believe that if mere males could do it, it would surely present no difficulty to a high priestess.

Umrae lunged, Faeryl lashed the cloak in a horizontal arc. Possibly thanks to luck as much as skill, the garment blocked Umrae’s hands. Her talons snagged in the weave.

Surprised, Umrae faltered in the attack and struggled to free her hands. Faeryl stepped through and smashed the pointed stone head of her hammer into the center of the servant’s carious brow. Bone crunched, and Umrae’s head snapped backward. A goodly portion of her left profile fell off her skull.

Certain the fight was over, Faeryl relaxed, and that was nearly the end of her. Transformed, Umrae could evidently endure more damage than almost any creature with warm flesh and a beating heart. She opened her mouth, exposing long, thin fangs, and what was left of her head shot forward over the top of the cape. The ambassador only barely managed to fling herself back out of the way in time.

The
piwafwi
was stretched taut between the two combatants, as if they were playing tug-of-war. Both yanked on it simultaneously, and Faeryl was the luckier. The cloak tore free of Umrae’s grasp, but despite the garment’s reinforcing enchantments, it returned to the ambassador with long rips the ghoul’s claws had cut. A few more such rendings and it would be useless.

The cape’s sudden release also sent Faeryl stumbling backward. With another beat of her festering wings, Umrae hopped and closed the distance. Her clawed hands shot forward.

Crying out in desperation, Faeryl managed to plant her feet and arrest her helpless stagger. She lashed out with the hammer and clipped one of Umrae’s hands. The imitation ghoul snatched it back and gave up the attack. Instead, she began to circle. Just as a living creature would, she shook her battered extremity several times as if to dislodge the pain, then lifted it back on guard.