R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation (44 page)

The clanging impact startled a response out of him, but at least it was a composed attack. Feint to the chest, feint to the flank, cut low and hack the opponent’s legs out from underneath him. Even as he flowed into the final count, he remembered Ryld teaching him the sequence, and sure enough, the instructor wasn’t fooled. He parried the genuine low-line attack, then riposted to Houndaer’s wrist. The broadsword bit through his gauntlet and into the flesh beneath.

Ryld pulled his weapon free in a spatter of gore. He drove deeper, cutting at Houndaer’s torso. The Tuin’Tarl floundered backward out of the distance, meanwhile heaving the greatsword back into a threatening position.

His bloody wrist throbbed, and the huge blade trembled. It was brutally hard to hold it up, its enchantments notwithstanding. He choked up on it, his weakened hand clutching the ricasso, but that only helped a little. He listened for the sound of another party of rogues rushing to his aid. He didn’t hear it.

“Well done, Master Argith!” Houndaer declared. “I declare myself beaten. I yield.”

Ryld stalked forward, broadsword at the ready.

“Please!” said the Tuin’Tarl. “We always got along, didn’t we? I was one of your most dutiful students, and I can help you get out of here.”

The teacher kept coming, and Houndaer saw that his face wasn’t empty or expressionless after all. It might be devoid of emotion, but it revealed a preternatural, almost demonic concentration, focused entirely on slaughter.

Houndaer saw his own inescapable death there, and, suffused with a strange calm, he lowered the greatsword. Ryld’s blade sheared into his chest an instant later.

The echoing metallic crash startled Quenthel. It was well that she’d spent a lifetime learning self control, for otherwise, she might have cried out in dismay.

She and her squad were patrolling the temple. After the events of the past four nights it would have been mad to relax their vigilance, but as the hours had crept uneventfully by, her troops began to speculate that the siege was over. After all, it was supposed to be.

The bone wand had supposedly turned the malignancy of the past night’s sending back on she who cast the curse.

Yet Quenthel had found she wasn’t quite ready to share in the general optimism. Yes, she’d turned an attack back on its source, but that didn’t necessarily mean her faceless enemy had succumbed to the demon’s attentions. The spellcaster could have survived, and if so, she could keep right on dispatching her unearthly assassins. From the sound of it, another such had just broken in, and Quenthel didn’t have another little bone wand.

For a moment, the Baenre felt a surge of fear, perhaps even despair, and she swallowed it down.

“Follow me,” she snapped.

Perhaps her subordinates would prove of some use for a change. Their tread silent in their enchanted boots, the priestesses trotted in the direction of the noise. Greenish torchlight splashed their shadows on the walls. Parchment rattled as one novice fumbled open a scroll. Female voices began to shout. Power reddened the air for an instant and brushed a gritty, pricking feeling across the priestesses’ skin.

“It’s not a demon,” said Yngoth, twisting up from the whip handle to place his eyes on a level with Quenthel’s own. Her stride made his scaly wedge of a head bob up and down.

“No?” she asked. “Has my enemy come to continue our duel in person?”

She hoped so. With her minions at her back, Quenthel would have a good chance of crushing the arrogant fool.

But alas, it wasn’t so. Her course led her to the entry hall with the spider statues. The poor battered valves hung breached and crooked once again. This time the culprit was a huge, disembodied, luminous hand, floating open with fingers up as if signaling someone to halt. A lanky male in a baggy cloak had taken shelter behind the translucent manifestation from the spears and arrows that several priestesses were sending his way.

Quenthel sighed, because she knew the lunatic, and he couldn’t possibly be her unknown foe. By all accounts, he’d been too busy down in the city the past few days.

She gestured with the whip, terminating the barrage of missiles. “Master Mizzrym,” she called. “You compound your crimes by breaking in where no male may come unbidden.”

Pharaun bent low in obeisance. He looked winded, and, most peculiarly for such a notorious dandy, disheveled.

“Mistress, I beg your pardon, but I must confer with you. Time is of the essence.”

“I have little to say to you except to condemn you as the archmage should have done.”

“Kill me if you must.” The giant hand winked out of existence and he continued, “Given my recent peccadilloes, I half expected it. But hear my message first. The undercreatures are rebelling.” 

Quenthel narrowed her eyes and asked, “The archmage sent you here with this news?”

“Alas,” the mage replied, “I was unable to locate him but knew this was something that must be brought to the attention of the most senior members of the Academy. I realize no one ever dreamed it could happen, but it has. Walk to the verge of the plateau with me, and you’ll see.”

The Baenre frowned. Pharaun’s manner was too presumptuous by half, yet something in it commanded attention.

“Very well,” she said, “but if this is some sort of demented jest, you’ll suffer for it.”

“Mistress,” Minolin said, “he may want to lead you into—” Quenthel silenced the fool with a cold stare, then turned back to Pharaun.

“Lead on, Master of Sorcere.”

In point of fact, the high priestess didn’t have to walk all the way to the drop-off to tell that something was badly wrong in the city below. The wavering yellow glare of firelight and a foul smoky tangin the air alerted her as soon as she stepped outside the spidershaped temple. Heedless of her dignity, she sprinted for the edge, and Pharaun scrambled to keep up with her.

Below her, portions of Menzoberranzan—portions of the
stone
, how could that be?—were in flames. Impossibly, even the Great Mound of the Baenre sprouted a tuft of flame at its highest point, like a tassel on a hat. Once Quenthel’s eyes adjusted to the dazzling brightness, she could vaguely make out the mobs rampaging through the streets and plazas.

“You see,” said Pharaun, “that’s why I ran halfway across the city, dodging marauders at every turn, to reach you, my lady. If I may say so, the situation’s even worse than it may look. By and large, the nobles haven’t even begun reclaiming the streets. They’re bogged down on their estates fighting their own household goblins. Therefore, I suggest you—” The mage was smart enough to stop talking at the sight of Quenthel’s glare.

“We will mobilize Tier Breche,” she said. “Melee-Magthere and Arach-Tinilith can fight. Sorcere will divide its efforts between supporting us and extinguishing the fires. You will either find my brother Gromph or act in his stead.”

Pharaun bowed low.

Quenthel turned and saw that her priestesses and novices had followed her out onto the plateau. Something in their manner brought her up short.

“Mistress,” said long-eared Viconia Agrach Dyrr, one of the senior instructors, rather diffidently, “it makes perfect sense for Melee-Magthere and Sorcere to descend the stairs, but . . .” 

“But you ladies have lost your magic,” Pharaun said. The sisters of the temple gaped at him.

“You know?” Quenthel asked.

“A good many males know,” the mage replied, just a hint of impatience peeking through, “so there’s no point in killing me for it. I’ll explain it all later.” He turned back toward the rest of the clerics. “Holy Mothers and Sisters, while you may have lost your spells, you have scrolls, talismans, and the rest of the divine implements your order hoards. You can swing maces, if it comes to that. You can fight.”

“But we’ve lost too many sisters,” Viconia said to Quenthel.

“The demons killed a couple, and you, Mistress, by summoning the spiders, slew more. We don’t dare risk the rest. Someone must endure to preserve the lore and perform the rituals.”

“That’s far too optimistic,” Pharaun said.

Viconia scowled. “What is, boy?”

“The assumption that, should you remain up here, annihilation will pass you by,” the wizard replied. “It’s more plausible to assume that if the orcs triumph below, they’ll climb the stairs to continue their depredations up here. You profess devotion to Arach-Tinilith. Surely it would be more reverent to engage the undercreatures in the vault below and thus deny them the slightest opportunity to profane your shrines and altars. Similarly, it would be better strategy to fight alongside allies than to wait till they perish and you’re left to struggle alone.”

“You’re glib, wizard,” the Agrach Dyrr priestess sneered, “but you don’t know our efforts are needed. Flame and glare, they’re only goblins! I think you’re just a scareling.”

“Perhaps he is,” Quenthel said, “but how dare we seek the Dark Mother’s favor if we decline to defend her chosen city in its hour of need? Surely, then, we never would hear her voice again.” 

“Mistress,” said Viconia, spreading her hands, “I know we can find a better way to please her than brawling with vermin in the street.” 

Quenthel lifted her hand crossbow and shot her lieutenant in the face. Viconia made a choking sound and stumbled backward. The poison was already blackening her face as she collapsed. “I thought I’d already demonstrated that
I
rule here,” the Baenre said. “Does anyone else wish to contest my orders?” 

“If so,” Pharaun said, “she should be aware that I stand with the mistress, and I have the power to scour the lot of you from the face of the plateau.”

Ignoring the boastful wizard, Quenthel surveyed her minions.

It appeared that no one else had anything much to say.

 “Good,” the Baenre said. “Let us rouse the tower and the pyramid.”

With Quenthel in the lead, the Academy descended from Tier Breche like a great waterfall. Some scholars tramped after her on the staircase, while others floated down the cliff face. A few, possessed of magic that enabled them to fly, flitted about like bats.

“Perhaps Mistress would care to bide a moment,” said Pharaun. At some point he had slipped off to his personal quarters long enough to wash his face, comb his hair, and throw on a new set of handsome clothes. He returned alone, still claiming ignorance of Gromph’s whereabouts. “This is as good a spot as any to spy out the lay of the land. We’re below some of the smoke but still high enough for an aerial inspection.”

Since Gromph was still either unavailable or uninterested, the Mizzrym was—with obvious relish—acting in the archmage’s stead. It was arguably an affront to House Baenre as much as the archmage, but Quenthel had given the order anyway. Until her brother returned or the crisis abated, she needed someone to speak for Sorcere, and she was sure it would upset Gromph in an amusing way to have this dandy taking his place for so important a task.

She halted, and her minions came to a ragged, jostling stop behind her. The whip vipers reared to survey the cityscape along with her. From the corner of her eye, she saw Pharaun smile briefly as if he found the serpents’ behavior comical.

“There,” said Quenthel, pointing, “in Manyfolk. It looks as if House Auvryndar may have finished exterminating their own slaves, but a mob keeps them penned within their walls.”

“I see it, Blessed Mother,” said Malaggar Faen Tlabbar from the step behind her. The First Sword of Melee-Magthere was a merrylooking, round-faced boy with a fondness for green attire and emeralds. “With your permission, that might be a good place to start. We’ll lift the siege and add the Auvryndar to our own army.”

“So be it,” Quenthel said

The residents of the Academy reached the floor of the lower cavern, whereupon the instructors, particularly the warriors of the pyramid, set about the business of forming the scholars into squads, with swordsmen and spearman protecting the spellcasters. Then they had to arrange the units into some semblance of a marching order.

Like every princess of a great House, Quenthel had a working knowledge of military matters, and she watched the attempt to create order with a jaundiced eye.

“I could wish for a proper army,” she muttered.

She hadn’t meant for anyone to hear, but Pharaun nodded. “I understand your sentiments, Mistress, but they’re all we have, and I’m sure that if we’ve trained them properly, we have a chance.”

He coughed. “Against the thralls, anyway.”

“Your meaning?”

“The greatest danger of all is this pall of smoke. I think Syrzan,

for all its cunning, miscalculated. If the mages we left upstairs don’t extinguish the flames, we’ll all suffocate, female and male, elf and orc alike, leaving the alhoon a necropolis to rule. Still, I suppose we must concentrate on our task and not fret about the rest.”

“What alhoon?” she demanded.

He hesitated. “It really is a long story, Mistress, and not crucial at this moment.”

“I will decide what is crucial, mage,” she said. “Speak.”

Before Pharaun could begin she saw the First Sword approaching, presumably to inform her that the company was ready to set forth.

As they started to march, she listened to the mage’s tale of the undead mind flayer and its designs for Menzoberranzan. There was more, she was sure, that he was holding back, but she could always torture it out of him later.

Along the way, the teachers and students found their way littered with mangled dark elf corpses, some headless, some partially devoured, firelight gilding their sightless eyes. The rich smell of blood competed with the acrid foulness of the smoke.

Or course, no drow objected to the spectacle of violent death, but the ubiquity of the ravaged shapes, combined with the glare of the flames and the uncanny sight of burning stone, made it seem as if Menzoberranzan itself had become a sort of hell, and that was, for Quenthel at least, unsettling.

The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith thought that were she a weaker person, she might have felt as if she were moving through a nightmare, or interpreted the carnage as proof positive that Lolth had turned her back on Menzoberranzan for good and all. She consoled herself with the thought that at least this time she was marching against an enemy she could see and smite.