Tangled Webs (47 page)

A grim smile spread across the High Captain’s bearded face, and he signaled the helmsman to pull in close to the beleaguered warship. He would have his revenge, but first he would see what price the elf wench might be willing to pay for the young man’s life.

Liriel floated high over the ruins of Inthar, her keen elven eyes taking in the battle raging below. To her surprise, her very presence seemed to have a rallying effect on some of the fighters. On a nearby ship, a scarlet-clad warrior pointed to her and shouted to his men that the Raven had taken flight, the better to guide the souls of their enemies into death. The drow recognized the voice of Glammad, First Axe of Hastor. Once she had saved his life from the sahuagin; twice he had spoken for her. Liriel was more than happy to even the score. She sent a stream of fireballs hurtling toward the warships that pressed in on either side of the ships from Hastor. The men cheered her wildly as the Luskan fighting ships exploded into smoldering kindling.

The drow did not pause to savor this triumph. With wizardly spells she had summoned a water weird, a creature from the elemental plane that could seize control of water elementals. At her command, the serpentine creature had turned the elementals against one Luskan ship, then destroyed another. But the effort of keeping such a creature on this plane was draining; Liriel could feel herself slipping down toward the stony cliff She quickly dispelled the water weird, on the condition that it take the other creatures back to the elemental plane with it. The sea serpent eagerly agreed and fled back to its watery home.

But that did not solve the source of this problem: somewhere nearby was a creature powerful enough to command the beings of the elemental plane. Liriel had to seek out and destroy that creature. She unknotted the white shawl from her waist and shouted a command to the nereid who cringed in the water below. The creature emerged, gesturing wildly toward the shore nearby.

Liriel looked, her amber eyes widening with surprise. Dancing along the shore and, like some delighted child, clapping her glassy hands at each new destruction was the strangest creature the drow had yet seen. Although shaped like a woman, the beautiful thing encased a bubbling fountain within her glossy; transparent skin. Liriel had read about water wraiths—they were flighty, capricious creatures, often acting as messengers for the gods—but none of these sources gave any hint as to how such creatures could be fought. Inspiration came to the drow in the form of a remembered party trick, one of the mischievous cantrips that Menzoberranzan’s dark elves loved to cast to tease and taunt each other.

“Take my regards to Umberlee,” the drow murmured wrathfully. She cast a small spell and drew in a long, deep breath. Cupping her hands to her lips, Liriel sent a single note, as pure and highpitched as that of an elven flute, soaring out over the waves.

The water wraith looked up, her beautiful, glassy face contorted with surprise and pain. Her form began to shudder as the magically enhanced sound resonated through her. The bubbles within roiled frantically, building up in force and speed. Finally the creature exploded in a spray of water and glassy fragments.

Liriel’s keening song ended in a burst of wild laughter. Even to her own ears, the sound held a touch of hysteria. She was nearing the limits ofher power, and the battle was nowhere near its end.

Even as the thought formed, the sound of clashing blades rang through the ancient stone keep below her. A handful of battered sea elves staggered out of the tower, only to fall under the surging charge of wave after wave of well-armed merrow.

Liriel knew a moment’s despair. The battle for Ascarle had been lost; the invaders had broken through. The sea

ogres swept down the hillside toward nearby Ruathym village, where no warriors awaited them. The drow had seen the destruction ogres could accomplish, had heard stories of how they treated the women and young ones who fell into their taloned hands. To prevent such a thing, she would do whatever needed to be done.

Liriel’s shaking fingers fumbled for her obsidian pendant, and she steeled her will and numbed her soul to accept what she must once again become.

Fyodor swung out. high, his sword blocking the downward sweep of a Luskar battle-axe. With his free hand he punched forward and spattered the warrior’s nose across his bearded face. The enormous man let out an incongruous whimper and then fell face first to the deck.

The young berserker stepped over the fallen man and looked around for his next fight. Beneath his tunic the Windwalker amulet seemed to burn with cold fire against his skin-painful, yes, but the drow’s magic held true. For the first time in many months, Fyodor was in full control ofhis fighting power. Yet he took no joy in battle, nor did he exult in the deaths of those who fell before his black sword. It was a necessary thing, to protect the land that had sheltered him and Liriel and to lead the berserker brothers who trusted in his strong arm and quick wits.

The young man nimbly sidestepped an onrushing warrior. The Northman’s enormous broadsword plunged deep into the ship’s mast and stayed there, quivering slightly. Fyodor backhanded the weaponless warrior and sent him sprawling. The man spit teeth, lurched to his feet, and came in again. Suppressing a sigh, Fyodor seized the hilt of the impaled sword and pulled it back toward him in a curving arc. With a swordsmith’s sure instincts, he released the weapon a moment before it would have shattered. The sword sprang back into place with an audible twang-at the precise moment that its owner stepped into its path. The flat of the sword caught the man at waist level. His feet flew up, his arms went wide, and his head hit hard as he measured his length on the ship’s deck. This time, he stayed down.

Next Fyodor ran to the aid of a Holgerstead berserker whose axe was hard pressed by four Luskar swordsmen. He fell in at his brother’s back, parrying a sword strike as he tapped the man’s hip in a prearranged signal. Once, twice more Fyodor parried the Northman who engaged his blade, taking care that the strikes were loud enough to ring above the clamor of battle. Then he lunged, running the Northman through and heaving him off the blade with one quick movement. In the next breath, Fyodor spun, swinging his black sword with all the force of his Rashemi might and magic.

As he did, the Holgersteader went down on one knee. Fyodor’s blade whistled over his brother’s head-and through the necks of all three men who had faced him. There was no time for any of the Northmen to raise a parrying sword, no arm with the strength to stop such a blow. Three heads tumbled to the deck, still wearing the triumphant leers of men who had been sure of their prey. The Holgersteader lunged upward, arms spread wide, catching the headless bodies as they fell and then hurling them into the paths of two approaching fighters. The Luskar warriors instinctively veered away from the horror; the berserker coolly advanced upon the unnerved men, his dripping axe held high.

Seeing that matters here were well in hand, Fyodor turned his attention to the battle beyond the Holgerstead ship. Another warship approached them at ramming speed. Standing in the bow, his black-bearded face suffused with an unholy glee, was someone Fyodor knew. The faces of the slain had fled from his dreams, but for good or ill, the memory of each of his battles was his again. He remembered fighting this man, remembered severing the man’s sword hand. Yet the man gripped his sword with obvious anticipation, and his eyes burned into Fyodor’s as the warship closed the distance between them.

The young First Axe shouted an alarm, sending Holgerstead archers to the port rail to meet the new attack. Fyodor had no doubt that he would meet this man in battle before the fighting was through.

At that moment a thunderous explosion sent waves rocking out to sea with a force that defied the sea’s natural rhythm. Fyodor grabbed for a handhold and turned his gaze toward the shore. What had been two Luskar warships now littered the sea as bits of smoking flotsam. For a moment he knew mingled joy and relief; this could only be Liriel’s work. She had returned, triumphant, from Ascarle! But as his eyes followed the trail of shining magic, they lifted to the skies above Inthar and to the tiny, gallant figure that floated there. Before his disbelieving and horrified gaze, Liriel took on size and power, much as a berserker did at the onset of a fury. But never in his life had Fyodor sensed such a cloud of evil as that which surrounded the drow, crackling with dark energy and malevolent delight. At that moment, Fyodor knew that confrontation between him and Liriel, so long in coming and so painfully denied by them both, was at hand. How she would choose, he could not begin to say.

The Northwoman burst from the watery portal like a breaching dolphin and hurled herself, knife leading, at the back of the merrow who had preceded her. She clung to the creature as it leaped, howling, over the wall of the little pool. The sea ogre whirled, swatting frantically at the woman who clung like a burr just beyond the reach of its black-taloned hands. She stabbed again, driving the knife in viciously. The merrow slipped in its own blood and fell to the stone floor. Xzorsh climbed from the water, astonished at the woman’s fury. Her cold blue eyes settled upon him, and she seized his wrist, hurling the much slighter elf into the path of a merrow who was turning, an aggrieved expression on its hideous face, to see why its comrade had tripped and jostled it. Xzorsh reacted with an elf’s quick reflexes. He brought up his knife and braced his elbow against his side, letting the force of the Northwoman’s swing drive the knife home. The astonished merrow wheezed as the blade went in, sending a burst of foul breath over the sea elf. Xzorsh yanked the knife free and sidestepped the falling ogre. “I’Who are you?” he demanded of the woman in a wondering tone.

“Ygraine, oldest daughter of Ulf the shaman,” the girl gritted out. “I’I will not see those creatures enslave my village as they did me. Will your sea people fight?”

“They will, with you to inspire them,” the sea elf said with deep admiration, ready to yield his command to one whose passion and commitment outstripped even his. He motioned for her to wait, and together they helped the rest of the freed slaves from the portal. When the last of them had emerged, y graine of Ruathym led the charge down the hillside toward the village. Her fierce, keening battle cries roused and rallied the women waiting below.

They poured out of their cottages to meet the attacking sea ogres. Few of them owned swords or knew the art of fighting, but all had chopped kindling and knew the handling of an axe; all had slaughtered hogs with the coming of autumn and could wield a butcher’s knife with swift authority; all had turned the soil with pitchforks, and speared fish with lightning-fast thrusts. These homely tools came into play now as Ruathym’s women remembered their warrior heritage.

With a fierce intensity that would have given pause to many of their battle-seasoned menfolk, the women fell upon the invaders. And at their sides fought the sea elves. The Northwomen did not seem to remember or care that they had accounted the elves enemies earlier that same day;

The sound of pounding on the door of a familiar wooden building drew Xzorsh’s attention. The sea elf ran to the prison that had once held him and his treacherous friend. He recognized the voice within and quickly threw back the bolt that kept Caladorn ofWaterdeep imprisoned. The tall fighter pried a sword from the fist of a fallen merrow and leaped into the fray. Behind him, reluctantly at fIrst but with growing fervor, the two surviving seal hunters fought their way deeper into the frenzied, terrifYing, exhilarating melee that swept through the village like a wave of death. And in the frenzy, no one noticed that the disgraced daughter of Ulf crept from the prison and made her way to the fisherfolk’s cove.

When at last no more elves emerged from the tower, Liriel began to chant the words to a spell that would close the portal for all time. It was a difficult spell, made more taxing by the impatient, insistent power that coursed through her in a dark and pulsing tide. The Lady of Chaos had little love for the orderly discipline of wizardly magic. But Liriel pressed on, summoning all the power she could call her own, channeling it into one final, desperate spell. At last the ancient tower began to shake. Cracks rippled upward from the base, and the keep that had withstood the centuries collapsed into a pile of dust and rubble. Liriel coughed, choking on the clouds of roiling dust, and instinctively moved farther out to sea. She felt her innate levitation magic slip away, and she recognized, dimly, that there was nothing between her and the jagged rocks below but the power of a capricious goddess.

The girl’s hand lifted, without act of will, and spat dark fire at a Luskan ship. The oiled canvas of the sail turned into a sheet of flame. Nearby a small Ruathen ship tossed wildly, rocked by the hands of a score of vengeful nereids. Pulses of energy coursed from Liriel’s outstretched fingers into the sea near the beleaguered ship, heating the water around it to an instant boil. The screams of the scalded nymphs could be heard even over the sounds of battle and the crackle ofburning ships.

But to Liriel’s ears, the only sound was the wild, exultant laughter that rang through her benumbed mind. Her defenses down, her strength spent, the young drow was utterly open to the power that held her in its demented hands. She felt with horrifying clarity each death, and Lloth’s delight in it.

She had promised the Spider Queen a victory, but the chaotic goddess seemed to have lost sight of this goal amid the wondrous carnage of the moment. It did not seem to matter to the blood-drunk Lloth whether the slain were invaders or defenders, merrow or sea elves. There was no purpose to the killing, and no apparent end.

Liriel knew the depths of her own folly and bitterly regretted the course she had taken. Fyodor had warned her that there was a price for power; she should have realized that Lloth’s would have to be paid in blood.

Despite the force of the battle rage that coursed through him, Fyodor could not take his eyes from the drow who floated above the haunted ruins. Never had she appeared so beautiful… or so deadly. She was no longer just Liriel, but a conduit for sheer, evil power. Many times he had seen her channel magic that seemed a burden too heavy for one so seemingly frail. This time, he knew with the surety of Sight, that unless he could stop her, Liriel would be consumed by the dark flame.