R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation (75 page)

Danifae lined up another blow with the mace.

“Then Ssipriina is lying! I can free the high priestess and get her to prove my innocence.”

Halisstra felt elation for the first time since the catastrophic day had begun.

“Possibly,” the battle captive answered dryly, taking another whack at the restraints, “but I doubt many of the matron mothers will choose to believe her. She may still be guilty of her crimes, even if you are innocent of yours. Enough of the matron mothers have an agenda that precludes you walking free from this. More likely—
ah ha!
”

The link Danifae had been pounding on finally crimped enough to separate the manacles.

Helping Halisstra to her feet, the battle captive continued, “More likely, they’ll simply accuse you of trying to help her escape and offering that as a cover story.”

Halisstra eyed the steel restraints still on her wrists, already finding them annoying, but they would have to wait. Free, at least for the moment, Halisstra’s fear melted away. She was furious, and she couldn’t decide who bore the majority of her anger.

“Well, I’m not just going to sit here while everyone else brings down House Melarn around my ears. Help me get ready, and let’s go find that Baenre.”

“As you wish,” Danifae said, moving rapidly with the decision having been made.

With her servant’s help, Halisstra quickly began to dress, first attiring herself in a set of plain but functional clothes, then donning her armor, a fine suit of chain mail bearing the coat of arms of House Melarn and several enchantments. Once that was on, Danifae handed Halisstra her mace and shield and scurried about the room to gather up other things Halisstra normally had with her when out in the city or beyond.

When Halisstra was dressed, Danifae grabbed her morning star, each of them wrapped themselves in a
piwafwi
marked with the insignia of House Zauvirr, and they were ready.

Outside Halisstra’s rooms, the halls were quiet. No one had yet been sent to hunt for her, it appeared, for which the priestess was silently thankful. Once away from her private quarters, Halisstra began to breathe a little easier. No one would question two House guards moving through the halls.

That’s when the two of them came around a bend in the hallway and spied three strange drow, two of them bruised and bleeding, creeping through the gloom. They were definitely not members of the household, but it took Halisstra another moment or two before she realized they were the three Menzoberranyr.

“Damn,” one of them said, reaching inside his
piwafwi
as the other two brandished weapons and advanced warily.

Matron Mother Zauvirr wasn’t merely angry. Angry was for subordinates who knew to hold their tongues in the presence of their superiors despite their feelings. Angry was for those times when you had to slap a child because it didn’t know any better. No, angry wasn’t nearly strong enough a word to describe what Ssipriina was feeling. Someone was going to pay for this foolishness. Someone was going to
die.

She stormed through the hallways of her own House Zauvirr, having slipped out of Drisinil’s manor during the confusion and magically transported herself back home. There was something she wanted to get, something she needed, though she hadn’t expected to, when the day started. She almost hoped that someone would cross her path as she marched along, that someone would make the mistake of accosting her, of interrupting her train of thought for some idiotic and perfectly pointless reason. She really hoped they would . . . it would be fun, in a distracting sort of way, to watch some hapless male bleed out as she ripped him up. She was furious enough to do it with her bare hands.

A guard would do nicely, she thought. Any foolish boy who even looks at me.

All of her planning, wasted. All of the careful manipulation, the bribes, the theft, the smuggling of valuables and troops, even the fortuitous arrival of the damnable Menzoberranyr and her clever scheme to fit them into the plan was for naught. Someone had blundered, and she would have his head.

I had them in the palm of my hand, Ssipriina thought. They were ready to anoint me. Even after that ridiculous story the wizard made up.

That obvious attempt to derail her plans wouldn’t have stopped her. No one would have believed him, even after her foolish daughter reacted. Ssipriina thought Faeryl had sounded like the petulant child that she still was.

I should never have brought her in on this.

Ssipriina realized her mind was wandering. It was the fury, keeping her from thinking straight.

Faeryl I can deal with later. There’s nothing to be done except to fight and win, but it would have been so much easier if the gray dwarves had remained out of sight. Who told them to move out?

As the matron mother arrived at her rooms, she decided that ferreting out the guilty party would also have to wait until later. Her full attention was needed elsewhere. She was about to spring something on the entire city. Something very special. Ssipriina grinned when she imagined it.

Faeryl stumbled and fell against the corridor wall when House Melarn first began to shake.

The servants were screaming, and from somewhere she heard, “Mistresses! It’s duergar! Hundreds of them, surrounding us . . . they’re attacking!”

A second shock wave rumbled through the House. “They burn the stones themselves, Mothers. The city is burning!”

With a sinking feeling, Faeryl knew it for the truth. She had lived through this experience before, though it had been in the bowels of House Baenre, chained to a column. Even so, she remembered the rumbles from above, felt the vibrations in the ground. When she had been freed by Triel Baenre and invited to join the mission to Ched Nasad, she had gotten all the details of the insurrection in the streets of Menzoberranzan from others. Their descriptions of the jugs of fire, the fire that burned stone itself, were vivid. She could only imagine what it would feel like on a web street of Ched Nasad.

Faeryl groaned. Her mother’s plan was falling apart. The duergar weren’t supposed to appear unless the negotiations with the other matron mothers went badly. Despite that idiot Pharaun’s asinine claim of her involvement in the conspiracy, the situation was far from out of hand.

Mother pulled the trigger too soon, the ambassador decided. She must have gotten cold feet and didn’t bother to tell me. How typical.

Shaking her head, Faeryl scrambled up to her feet again as the room was enveloped in a thick, murky fog. She knew who was most likely behind it. As much as she wanted to slice Pharaun into a thousand tiny pieces, there was too much confusion.

Besides, the ambassador grudgingly admitted, he and his boys are not to be trifled with. I’ll let mother’s wizards take care of them. I’ve got to get rid of Quenthel and that loathsome beast.

Faeryl felt her way along the wall, stumbling as yet another blast rocked House Melarn. The mist cleared, and she could hear the sounds of combat on the far side of the room. She resisted the temptation to look, as much as she hoped to catch a glimpse of the wizard’s demise. Instead, she managed to make her way to a door just as several dozen House soldiers came in, jostling her aside in their efforts to defend the audience chamber.

“Fools!” Faeryl hissed at them.

Almost shaking with rage, she departed the audience chamber and hurried toward the lower levels. She passed few other drow in the corridors, all of them looking confused. None of them seemed to know the origin of the disturbances, and at one point the ambassador overheard at least three priestesses discussing an earthquake as they passed her, going the opposite direction.

Faeryl didn’t care to explain to them what was really happening. It was not her House. Turning a final corner, the ambassador hurried into the torture chamber where she had left Quenthel and Jeggred. They were not there. The room was not empty, however. One of the House torturemasters was methodically straightening tools that had been upset with the booming thumps from outside.

“Where are they?” Faeryl demanded, gesturing to the rack where Quenthel had been restrained.

The torturemaster turned and looked at her vacantly, not understanding.

Growling in exasperation, the ambassador repeated herself.

The other drow looked at her, then comprehension lit his features.

“Oh, they’re not here,” he said.

Faeryl rolled her eyes and said, “I can see that, you foolish boy. Where
are
they?”

“That ugly drow, Zammzt, ordered them taken to a cell,” the torturemaster replied. “I saw to it personally.”

Another severe blast rocked the room, and tools were scattered everywhere. Faeryl managed to grab hold of the column where Jeggred had been chained for support, but the other drow was not so lucky. He went down in a pile—and even more unfortunately, one of the many braziers of hot coals tipped over onto him, showering him with burning cinders. Screaming, the drow scrambled away from the embers, but he was already a conflagration, his clothes ignited and smoking as he flailed helplessly about.

Faeryl bit her lip in irritation.

Now, why do you suppose he would have moved them, and to where? she thought, turning to leave.

She decided she’d have to ask someone to show her, and she departed.

Pharaun faltered for only a moment at the sight of the two drow priestesses before him. One, quite simply, was beautiful. The other, while lacking the graceful curves and fluid motion of the first, was obviously nobly born and not unpleasant to look at, either. Then, getting a closer look, the wizard recognized her. She was the drow who had been in chains in the audience chamber only moments before. In fact, he realized, she still wore the manacles she’d been shackled with, though the connecting chain between them had been severed. Neither of the females looked happy to see him, Ryld, or Valas.

“Damn,” Pharaun muttered, returning to his senses.

He reached inside his
piwafwi,
fumbling quickly for the wand he’d used to dispatch the drow soldiers not too long before. In front of him, Ryld went on guard, raising Splitter into an aggressive position as he advanced warily. Valas slipped to the opposite side of the hallway, automatically fanning out with Ryld to come at the adversaries from either flank.

The lovely creature who’d first caught the mage’s eye hissed in vexation and brought a morning star out in front of her. She had a buckler on her other arm held to the side where Valas was closing.

“It’s them!” she snarled, taking up a position in front of the other drow as though to defend her.

Both dark elves seemed quite capable of taking care of themselves, and Pharaun noted the finely tooled chain mail each of them wore. The one to the rear actually sported the House Melarn insignia on hers, and the wizard guessed she must be one of the dead matron mother’s daughters.

Pharaun had his wand out, but before he could invoke the trigger words to use the thing, Ryld stepped in and launched a short series of strikes at the dark elf in front of him, who managed with some difficulty to parry the attacks with both her weapon and her buckler. The Master of Sorcere knew that Ryld was not really pressing his attack yet. The weapons master was attempting to size up the skill of his competition with a few well-placed feints before closing in to finish the job efficiently.

Valas continued to creep in from her other side, and she backstepped more than once to prevent the scout from getting behind her. Pharaun aimed the wand and prepared to recite the activation phrase, when the other drow, the daughter of House Melarn, spoke up, causing him to falter.

“Hold, Danifae.”

The drow in front retreated another couple steps, but she did not drop her guard.

“We have no quarrel with you,” the still-unnamed Melarn said. “I know you don’t have reason to trust us, but we’re not the enemy . . . They are.”

She gestured upward, to the floors above.

Ryld took a threatening step forward then he too stopped and held his guard. Valas was watching both sides with glittering eyes, kukris at the ready.

“How convenient,” Pharaun said, smiling coldly. “The imperiled daughter, implicated in her mother’s treason and with no friends, making a peace offering. At least until we let down our guard, right? Then you turn us over to Matron Mother Zauvirr, claim you captured us, and hope she lets you off the hook.”

“I could easily say the same about you, but I won’t,” the Melarn daughter replied. Without taking her eyes off Pharaun, she added, “Danifae, I said stand down!”

Pharaun raised an eyebrow at her tone of command. Danifae nodded in acquiescence, stepping farther back until she was side by side with her mistress.

“Well, you’re right about that,” Pharaun said. “We don’t have any reason to believe you. If you’re on the outs with Mistress Zauvirr, what are you doing down here, all decked out in your finest armor?”

“We’re trying to save our own skins,” the daughter said, a bit more testily than Pharaun thought necessary, considering she was trying to broker some sort of truce, albeit temporary. “I think we both might have been played by Ssipriina Zauvirr. If you come with us, help us, we might be able to get you information that will help prove it.”

“Lower your weapons to the ground,” Ryld said, “and we’ll consider listening to you.”

“I think not,” the daughter countered. “At least, not until we have some assurances that you won’t attack us the moment we do. I don’t know for sure that you
weren’t
in league with my mother.”

Ryld snarled, raising Splitter and advancing again. Valas was doing likewise, still looking to maneuver around to the priestesses’ left side.

“Ryld, Valas, wait,” Pharaun called out quietly.

He had no doubt that the two warriors could dispatch the drow females with relatively little difficulty, as long as the wizard was backing them up with a careful selection of spells, but he was intrigued. Ryld cast a quick glance back over his shoulder at the wizard then shrugged and held his ground.

“I can assure you that we have never met your mother and had no dealings with her, ever. That wild tale in the audience chamber above was merely a contrivance to stall for time—ruffle everyone’s feathers, so to speak. You seem to know who we are,” Pharaun said, addressing the daughter of House Melarn, “but we are at a disadvantage. Who are you, and what is this information you are planning to use to buy our trust?”