Windwalker (5 page)

“You see?” the male said. “So very beautiful.” He took two gliding steps forward, one hand reaching out to her.

Shakti’s first response was irritation. Before she could crudely suggest that the male attempt to procreate without benefit of partner, her robes shifted and parted as if in anticipation—a telltale bit of magic she had experienced once before.

Terror and loathing swept through Shakti in chilling waves. She seized her treacherous garment and tugged it back into place, crossing her arms over her chest so that one hand was hidden beneath the folds. A quick glance at the reflecting pool assured her that her expression of lofty disdain had not faltered.

“Be gone,” she said coldly. Her hidden hand began to shape the warding that repelled unwanted advances of seductive demons.

The crimson eyes of the drow-shaped incubus tracked the subtle gesture and filled with rage. An inhuman roar exploded from the creature’s throat as it leaped, changing form in midair. A hideous winged demon hit Shakti full force and bore her to the ground. They hit the silver puddle together, shattering the mir-rorlike surface into a thousand watery shards.

“I can save you,” the creature gloated in a voice that was like a chorus of the damned. “You were a high priestess once. Shall we enact the ritual anew?”

Shakti writhed and kicked, raking the now-scaly skin with her nails. “I am a priestess of Lolth, and you, whatever else you may be, are nothing but a male!”

As she shrieked out the last words, a jolt of power seared through her. Something stirred between them, and suddenly the incubus was rearing back, shrieking in agony.

Shakti scrambled away and staggered to her feet. To her astonishment, a skeletal snake head rose to regard her, black eyes glowing like living obsidian in the once-empty sockets. The snake’s fanged jaws parted, and it spat.

The priestess regarded the bloody trophy, then threw back her head and laughed with triumph and delight. She raised her whip high and lashed forward. All five skeletal heads dived in for the kill, their fangs bright, sharp, and eager in their bony jaws.

She worked her whip until her shoulders sang with pain, until the incubus huddled and cowered before her, flayed of every inch of its hide.

“Death,” it pleaded.

“This is the Abyss,” Shakti said coldly. “We’re already dead.”

She turned on her heel and marched off, feeling better than she had since her defeat at Liriel’s hands. In that battle, Lolth had chosen to honor the Baenre brat, but the pleasant rasp of bone as the undead snakes wound themselves around her was like a hymn of dark redemption. Her priestess whip had been restored to life—or something close to it. Surely that was a sign of Lolth’s favor!

Drunk on this triumph, the drow passed a giant mushroom without giving it much heed. She did not notice until too late that the thing crouched and clenched itself like a hideous fist. The cap suddenly unfurled, and greenish spore exploded toward the drow in a noxious, stinging cloud.

Mushroom spore burned down her throat and into her chest, searing her like droplets of black dragon venom. Shakti fell to her knees in a paroxysm of coughing. She fumbled for her whip and silently commanded the reptilian skulls to tear the mushroom to shreds.

They rose but did not strike. As soon as she could, Shakti wiped her streaming eyes and struggled to her feet.

She immediately fell back to her knees.

The “mushroom” had taken new form. A tall creature resembling nothing so much as a column of melted wax regarded her with blood-red eyes the size and shape of dinner plates. It possessed no other recognizable features, but the fluid, rippling undulation of its body suggested that it could take any form it fancied.

“Yochlol,” Shakti breathed, naming the creature that served as handmaiden to the Spider Queen. Their appearances were few and usually limited to the great priestesses. Never in her life had Shakti aspired to this honor. So far, her death showed far more promise!

You are not dead.

The yochlol’s voice sounded in Shakti’s mind, feminine and somehow familiar. She recalled vaguely a theology class at Arach Tinileth, the priestess academy, concerning the nature and origin of yochlol. That had been an academic debate, something of little interest to the practical Shakti. Now she wished she had paid closer attention.

“I am in the Abyss,” Shakti said carefully, not wishing to openly contradict the handmaiden. “I challenged another priestess and lost. If I am not dead, what am I?”

Here, the yochlol responded. You are here, no more or less. Even in the Abyss, there are many ways of being or not being. Before you stands the glorious form to which a priestess of power and prestige might aspire!

Beneath the proud words lay a level of irony, and beneath that, despair. Shakti’s suspicions hardened into certainly.

“You are not long dead,” she ventured. “You still remember your life and your name.”

In time, all this will fade, the yochlol recited. The priestess will be forgotten. Only Lolth will remain.

“Her name be praised and feared,” Shakti said, adding slyly, “as is the name of the House she honors above all.”

The yochlol’s form shifted and flowed, taking on an oddly wistful expression—and the faint outline of the face it had worn during its mortal existence. The next moment, its countenance snapped back into formless glob, and its red eyes reclaimed their intense focus.

You did not destroy the incubus. We wonder why, when there is pleasure in destruction—pleasure, and the blessing of the goddess.

“There is little pleasure of any kind to be had in this place,” Shakti said curtly. “I would just as soon put my efforts toward a better result.”

The incubus might seek vengeance.

“It is more likely to seek refuge,” Shakti retorted. “Such demons know the way to and from the Abyss, and given its weakened state and vulnerable flesh, it is likely to flee the scavengers that haunt this place. When it goes, I will follow, like a hunting lizard who has a taste of its quarry’s blood.”

She lifted her hand, showing the magical symbol traced there with the demon’s blood—a spell that would enable her to follow the wounded creature wherever it went. It was one of many spells she had made a point of learning during her hunt for Liriel Baenre.

A cruel and far-sighted plan, the yochlol observed. Lolth is pleased.

Shakti’s gaze dropped to her skeletal snakes, which were wrapped companionably around her arms and waist. For a long moment she struggled to contain the central question of her existence. It burst out of her, regardless.

“If Lolth is pleased, why did she favor Liriel Baenre over me?”

A lesser goddess has shown favor to this girl. That, Lloth cannot abide.

A shiver of dread raced down Shakti’s spine. After all, she herself had a foot in two divine camps! As she considered this answer, however, it seemed that the whole story had not been told.

“Other drow follow other gods. I have never heard that Lolth pursues and rewards these heretics. Why grant such gifts to Liriel, when better, more loyal priestesses would gladly receive them?”

The yochlol’s face twisted in unmistakable scorn. Do you think the goddess answers your prayers out of love? Like most priestesses, you crave Lolth’s power. Liriel Baenre does not. Indeed, it is a torment to her.

Understanding began to edge into Shakti’s mind. Underlying the cruelty and chaos of the drow was a certain grim practicality. Whatever else a drow’s actions might be, they were certain to be self-serving.

Suddenly Shakti knew the true reason for Lolth’s interest in the runaway Baenre princess.

“So Liriel has been chosen to bear Lolth’s power because she is willing to relinquish it!”

And what of you? the yochlol countered. Destroying the incubus would have been a pleasant diversion, yet you resisted in favor of a larger goal. What more would you be willing to relinquish?

A merchant bred and born, Shakti new better than to hand a blank note to any drow, living or dead, mortal or divine. “What does Lolth ask of me?” she parried.

Your burning desire to destroy the Baenre princess—could you bear to subject that to the will of Lolth?

For a long moment Shakti stood silent as pragmatism battled mightily against hatred. Her snakehead whip unwound itself from her and writhed about in a frenzied dance, giving silent testament to its mistress’s agitation and indecision.

Finally the skeletal dance subsided, and the priestess lowered her head in submission to Lolth’s handmaiden.

“Speak,” she said grudgingly, “and I will do.”

PROMISES

Liriel stood at the rail of Leaping Narwhal, the sea breeze on her face and her white hair streaming behind her. The sunset colors had all but faded, and a rising moon silvered the waves. Her friend Fyodor was at her side, his back to the rail and his keen-eyed gaze following the on-duty crew as they prepared the ship for the coming of night.

“Lord Caladorn seems a capable sailor,” he observed, nodding toward the tall, auburn-haired man lowering the foresail.

The drow reluctantly dragged her attention from the splendors of the sea to the human nobleman. “Hrolf didn’t trust him.”

“True, but Hrolf believed Lord Caladorn to be an enemy of the sea elves,” Fyodor reminded her. “Had the captain lived, he would have learned his error.”

She shrugged this aside. The pirate known as Hrolf the Unruly had, in a very short time, become more of a father to her than the drow wizard who’d sired her. Hrolf’s death was a wound too new and raw to bear the weight of words.

“Ibn likes this Caladorn well enough. At least, he likes the color of the man’s coins and the ‘lord’ before his name! It’s lucky for us his lordship wanted passage to the mainland. Ibn never would have bestirred himself on our account.”

Fyodor nodded and turned a troubled gaze toward Narwhal’s new captain, a man of middle years and narrow mind, hunched over the wheel with a grim concentration that reminded Liriel of a duergar “enjoying” his morning gruel.

Though Liriel would never admit it, she shared Fyodor’s unspoken concern. Ibn had been Hrolf’s first mate, and he’d been a pebble in her boot from the moment they’d met. Most Northmen were wary of elves, but Ibn, despite his years aboard Hrolf’s ship Elfmaid and the assistance of the sea elves who’d watched over the jovial pirate, distrusted all elves with a fervor bordering on hatred.

Well, there was no help for it. Fyodor had pledged to return the Windwalker to the witches of Rashemen. Liriel had promised to accompany him. It was an impulsive decision that she had questioned many times during their westward voyage, but Fyodor had steadfastly assured that she—a drow and a wizard—would be accepted in a land that hated both. Before they faced that particular battle, they would have to survive a journey that spanned hundreds of miles inhabited by surface dwellers who had reason to fear and hate dark elves. Considering the larger picture, what was one elf-hating sailor?

A subtle movement caught the drow’s attention—a slender blue hand edging over the rail. Liriel watched in fascination as a peculiar creature slid soundlessly onto the ship. Elflike in feature and lavishly female in form, she was nonetheless as alien as any creature Liriel had ever beheld.

The newcomer’s skin shimmered with tiny aqua scales, and her long, silvery blue hair undulated as if in a gentle current. She wore ropes of pearls and a short, wet, clinging gown. Liriel’s sharp eyes noted the weapon sheathes cleverly hidden among the wet folds. Her native curiosity, however, was stronger than her impulse to shout an alarm.

Liriel watched as the creature’s blue-green eyes scanned the ship, settled upon the man at the wheel, and took on a predatory gleam. She started toward Ibn purposefully.

The drow elbowed Fyodor and nodded toward the creature. “A water genasi,” she said, speaking just above a whisper. “I’ve never actually seen one before. Drow keep trying to breed them. You don’t want to know what we get instead.”

“Is she a friend?” Fyodor asked, eying the beautiful creature uncertainly.

“That depends. Does your social circle usually include other-planer half breeds?”

Fyodor, his gaze intent on the genasi, let that pass. “She’s after the captain,” he said, noting the creature’s approach on the unwitting Ibn. He placed one hand on his sword hilt and started forward.

His determined stride faltered after a pace or two, and he stood watching the genasi with fascination. Several other men left off their chores and drifted closer. Their wonder-struck eyes drank in the beautiful blue face. Several of them darted envious, even murderous, glances at the unsuspecting Ibn.

A charm spell, Liriel surmised, eyeing the blue female with new respect. For a moment she was tempted to let the genasi’s enchantment run its course. Liriel’s people had a thousand ways to weed out the foolish and the weak, and the ship would probably be the better for a cleansing battle. That accomplished, she could subdue the blue wench and restore order—and, not incidentally, put a more congenial captain in Ibn’s place.

As she settled back to enjoy the show, a small voice in the back of her mind inquired, Yes, but what would Fyodor think of this plan?

Irritation swept through her. Such intrusions on her drow practicality were becoming annoyingly frequent.

“At the moment, he’s not thinking at all,” she muttered. “At least, not with anything that lies between his ears.”

Fyodor, the voice said implacably. Honor.

The drow hissed in exasperation then gave way with an ungracious shrug.

“Hoy, Ibn! Who’s your lady friend?” she sang out, pointing. “Nice legs. Too bad about her choice in men.”

The captain’s head whipped toward the genasi. He let out a yelp of outrage—proving, no surprise to Liriel, that his bigotry was stronger than the genasi’s magic.

“Another damn sea elf! Git off my ship, you long-eared fish!”

Astonishment froze the genasi in mid-slink, and fury twisted her azure face.

“Now you’ve done it,” Liriel murmured happily. According to drow lore books, a sure way to infuriate any genasi was to mistake it for a “lesser creature.”