Tangled Webs (24 page)

And then the lights and the sound were gone.

The Elfmaid was surrounded by swirling gray mists, by heavy air as dank and foul as that of a despoiled crypt. Although she’d been temporarily blinded by the fireballs, Liriel had her other senses in full measure, and she caught the familiar scent of giant fungi and a whiff of sulfur and brimstone. Faintly, as if from some unfathomable distance, came the echoes of roars too terrible to have come from mortal throats and of shrieks that spoke of torment and despair. Liriel’s eldritch senses were fully aware, too, and she sensed the palpable cloud of terror and gloom that pressed heavily upon all those unfortunate enough to enter these realms. She also sensed the core of dark fire that was the heart of this fell domain, felt the frigid obsidian hand that reached out to touch her and to claim the offered prize.

Lloth had answered her prayer.

Relief mingled with horror in the young drow’s heart. She and her friends would escape their deaths, but oh, the price! In that desperate moment, Liriel had pledged herself as priestess to Lloth, and she had been accepted.

A mere novice in Menzoberranzan, Liriel had not been required to make such a pledge, but considering the many challenges she faced, it was a step she logically should have taken long before this. Not a problem, the drow told herself; and nothing outside the realm of her experience and expectations. She had merely agreed to become a conduit for the Spider Queen’s power, as had her foremothers for centuries untold, and vowed to work for the glory of Lloth. Power was power-she would accept what she was given and make the best use of it that she could. And yet, as the oppressive gloom of the Abyss crept into her soul, Liriel wondered for the first time what the price of this power might be.

And then the mist parted to reveal a sparkling night sky and a calm, black-satin sea. Liriel turned her eyes upon the humans. To a man, they were frozen in place and looked as if they’d been chilled to near-death by the touch of a vengeful wight. She fervently hoped they did not realize where they had been.

Finally Olvir managed a weak grin. “And I thought the last magical trip was bad! Don’t get me wrong-I’m glad to have come out of that with my hide in one piece-but give me a choice, and I’ll take a stormy sea anytime.”

“Aye!” Hrolf agreed, his voice less hearty than usual. “Don’t exactly know why, but Umberlee take me if I don’t feel like I just slept with a lichwoman!”

The analogy was apt, and it sent visible shudders running through the men of the Elfmaid. But the matter was over, and the sailors shook off the eerie lethargy and went about their tasks with a gusto that spoke loudly of their pleasure to be back upon the open sea.

But Fyodor was more perceptive of magical matters than the Northmen. He came to Liriel’s side and knelt beside her on the deck. “Where were we?” he asked in a low voice. “Never have I felt such power in a place… or such sorrow.”

The weary drow tried to answer him and found she could not. Liriel was drained, empty, numb-and utterly defenseless against the despair that was the Abyss and the churning chaos that marked the touch of Lloth. She had never expected to feel so horrified by something that should have been a matter of course-indeed, the greatest honor a drow could know. Her darkelven assumptions were profoundly shaken, her drow magic temporarily exhausted, her natural resilience stretched to the breaking point. It was all too much. An unfamiliar moisture gathered in the comer of her eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks. For the first time in her life, Liriel wept.

For a moment Fyodor merely stared at her, utterly dumbfounded. Then he swept the drow into his arms and carried her down into the privacy of the hold. She buried her face against his chest, clinging to her friend as if borrowing his strength until the silent tears had run their course. By the time Fyodor reached her cabin, Liriel was asleep in his arms, her thin body still shaking from the convulsive sobs.

Fyodor stayed with her a long time, for her fingers gripped his hand as if it were a lifeline. In truth, he would have stayed regardless. During their travels he had frequently watched over her so, for Fyodor was often unable or unwilling to sleep. In slumber Liriel looked tiny, fragile-utterly unlike the fierce, powerful being who channeled such fearsome magic. At such moments she was his alone. He needed that feeling tonight, and he clung to her hand as fervently as she clasped his.

Yet try as he might, Fyodor could not conjure the wistful deception. Liriel knew things, experienced things, that were far from his understanding. She was as much a mystery to him, and as far beyond his reach, as the mighty Witches who commanded his land. He sensed that something of great and dire import had happened this night, something that took the girl still further from him. The pain this brought him was as nothing, however, compared to his concern for her.

The fey gifts that were the inheritance of the Rashemi had granted Fyodor a bit of the Sight, and the things he had glimpsed in that dreadful place had chilled him to the soul. He could not help but wonder what the more magically sensitive drow had felt and seen. As he watched over Liriel’s sea-deep slumber, he thanked the ancient gods that drow did not dream.

Rethnor lowered his eyeglass, and a smile of grim satisfaction crossed his black-bearded face as he savored the scene of destruction he had just witnessed. The strange curtain of darkness was gone, and the troublesome Elfmaid was no more. Perhaps Rethnor had not bested the young berserker himself, but the man was dead for all that.

In his mind, all was well enough.

“Turn her about,” he ordered the helmsman who stood at the wheel of the Cutlass. “We return to Trisk at once.” But Shakti whirled on him, her scarlet eyes blazing. “We were to capture the ship! What of the prisoners? Yours, mine?”

“There is no more ship, and anyone we might have captured is now food for the sea creatures. I am satisfied with the conclusion. If your prize has been destroyed, what is that to me?” he taunted.

To Rethnor’s surprise, the elf woman laughed in his face. She snatched the eyeglass from his hand and smacked him in the chest with it.

“Fool!” she spat out, punctuating the remark with another sharp blow. “Look again. There is nothing but a cloud of steam, caused when rebounded fireballs struck the water. If the ship had exploded, there would be more heat lingering in the air, and burning wreckage and blood to warm the waters. Fool!” she repeated scathingly as she hauled back the eyeglass for another attack.

The captain reflexively seized her wrist, and he stared at her in disbelief. “You can see heat?”

“You cannot?” she retorted and pulled free ofhim with an expression that suggested his very touch was distasteful. Rethnor was not accustomed to such insolence from a mere female, and his black brows pulled down into a stern V of disapproval. “Mind your tongue, woman.”

The drow glowered at him. “Your eyes are worse than I had suspected, if you mistake me for a woman! I am Shakti, matron heiress to House Hunzrin. You should know the name of the person who brings your death, and I swear by the Mask ofVhaeraun that I will kill you if you presume to lay hands-hand,” she sneered pointedly, “upon me, ever again.”

He shrugged off this warning. “You are certain the ship has escaped? But how is this possible?”

“The drow I seek is a wizard. She is… powerful,” Shakti admitted from between gritted teeth, and then she struck the ship’s rail with her balled fists and let out a string of what Rethnor took to be drow curses.

“The wench is not out of reach, not even on Ruathym,” the captain said, surprised to find himself giving assurance to the angry elf. “You will have your prisoner yet.”

The drow stopped in midtirade and eyed him warily, as if weighing his words on some scale of her own. He returned her stare, letting her measure him as she would. “I had never given thought to how persons might be shaped by the world around them,” she mused. “The underground home of the drow is complex, riddled with layers and full of unexpected twists and turns. And you-you are as cold and as deep as this sea, are you not?” she said with obvious approval.

“But little good will that do me!” she mused, her mood turning dark once again. The drow snatched Rethnor’s left sleeve, and before he could guess her intent, she lifted the maimed limb mockingly high, as if raising an imaginary sword in a gesture of challenge.

“You wish to kill the man who took your hand,” she scoffed, “yet you have not bothered to have it replaced! Only a fool would go into battle without his sword hand!” Again Rethnor stared at the drow, this time with a stirring of fascinated interest. “Replaced?”

“Or improved, if you prefer,” Shakti said smugly. “In my homeland, our priestesses could regenerate a limb to its original state, only younger and stronger. or our artisans could build you a new one-or several, each to suit a different purpose-of steel and mithril that is nonetheless as supple as flesh. Of course, if we were in my homeland, you would by now be either dead or enslaved.”

The captain ignored this taunt. “Could you do this?” “Not here,” she admitted. “The needed tools and magic remain in the Underdark. But I could replace your hand with that of another human.”

“No man would consent to such a thing!”

“I never imagined that one might,” Shakti said dryly, not understanding the captain’s horrified reaction. “But there are human slaves in Ascarle, are there not? And I assume a slave’s consent would hardly be needed. When we return, choose one that pleases you, and I will see to the rest.” Rethnor fell silent as he pondered the drow’s macabre suggestion, and he wondered what kind of being could speak of such things so casually. He had heard there were spells like this-usually wielded by necromancers, those wizards who dealt in death. He’d even heard rumors of a hideous slave trade in which healthy men were captured and sold for such purposes, their bodies auctioned off piece by piece as if they were mere swine to be divided into hams and chops and bacon. This notion went against all Rethnor’s Northman sensibilities, for how could a man unwhole hope to enter the halls of a warrior god? And the very thought of integrating the flesh of another man with his own utterly appalled him.

And yet…

“The hand,” he began tentatively. “How much skill will it hold? Will I be able to wield a sword again? Not just lift it and flail about, but will I be a master?” he demanded, his voice gaining passion as he spoke.

The drow eyed him with a dour expression. “It depends. How skilled were you before?”

“Very. The best.”

“Good,” she said flatly. “You would be amazed at how many restored fools ask if they’ll be able to play the harp now and, when advised they can, admit they were unable to before. Even among the drow, there are those who cannot open their lips but a bad jest emerges. Bah!”

“I do not care much for jests of any sort,” Rethnor said by way of reassurance. “But puzzles intrigue me, and so I cannot help but wonder why you would offer to do this for me.” Shakti smiled in grim approval, shielding her eyes against the starlight with one hand and turning her gaze far out over the dark waters. “You doubt my motives. That is good.”

He waited, but the drow did not add to this. “You consider it wise to go into battle with only strong allies,” he guessed.

Her eyes darted, like two mocking red flames, to his face. “If you like. That explanation will do as well as any.” Although Rethnor was not accustomed to verbal fencing, he was a skilled swordsman, and he knew a parry in any form. A familiar exhilaration came over him as he met the challenge in the elf woman’s crimson eyes. He had not had a good battle for many days, and he hungered for the thrust and retreat, the bold attack and the clever treachery that made for a truly good match. Here, in a guise stranger than any he had ever imagined possible, was a foe truly worthy of battle.

And perhaps, he thought as he considered the ample curves beneath the elf woman’s somber dark robes, this one was worthy of conquest, as well.

“How do you propose to capture the wizard?” Shakti demanded, shattering his pleasantly salacious musings and returning him to the task at hand.

“She will no doubt head for Ruathym. I have spies on and around the island.” He hesitated, not sure how much he should reveal. Enough, he decided, to gain this one’s confidence. There was a new hand to be gained and perhaps a bit more.

“There is a portal between Ascarle and Ruathym,” he said. “Recently discovered, it is an ancient magical path, probably conjured by the elves who once lived in both lands. Messengers use the portal to carry orders. When your enemy reaches the island, we will know of it.”

Shakti stared at him as she absorbed this. “Why doesn’t the illithid use this portal to launch an attack?”

“You have much to learn of the Kraken Society,” he told her. “Information is the weapon it provides, not warriors. Vestress asserts that it is better for all if Ruathym appears to collapse largely under the weight of its own lawlessness.” The drow sneered. “And you believe that? There is one reason alone why the illithid does not use the portal for conquest: she cannot.”

Rethnor did not dispute her words, for he himself had occasionally wondered why his Kraken contact-whom until recently he had visualized as the woman in his lost scrying ring-had insisted that the portal could be used only by her fey messengers.

“What type of beings carry your orders?” the drow demanded, her words echoing his unspoken thoughts. “Nereids. They are vain and malicious creatures from another world-“

“The elemental plane of water,” she interrupted. “Yes, I know all about those. But what about mortal beings? Humans, elves? The illithid’s sea ogre troops? Can they pass through?”

Rethnor considered this. “I do not know.”

Shakti gave a derisive sniff. “Perhaps we should find out.” She jolted suddenly as if a new and illuminating thought had struck her.

“Liriel has proven herself skilled at managing portals,” she mused. “If she can move an entire ship, surely she could find a way to pass through the gate that leads from Ruathym to Ascarle.”

“Ah,” Rethnor said, smiling a little as he nodded his approval. “You plan to lure this drow through the portal to Ascarle.”