Spinner of Lies

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ITHIMIR ISLE

20 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

Chenraya Xorlarrin touched the dagger tip to the whimpering genasi’s chest. He was one of the few miners still alive. The torture hadn’t managed to kill him like the others. She’d thought his mind was shattered, but by the way he jerked against the bonds he’d apparently retained enough sense of self-preservation to realize what was in store for him. The culmination of the ritual she’d been murmuring and chanting the last half hour approached. His eyes sought hers above the muffling gag, wide with appeal. As if that would sway her not to sacrifice him.

The imbecile’s soul would be consumed by Lolth. He should be grateful. How many creatures on or beneath Toril could claim such exaltation? The priestesses of House Xorlarrin had been commanded by Matron Mother Zeerith to avoid any communion with Lolth during the next half year. Zeerith, who was rumored to be profaning her body by lying down with a man, had the right to make such a request as Matron Mother of the house. Just as Chenraya had the right to ignore it.

It was time to inform Lolth that House Xorlarrin was about to grant the goddess a wonderful boon, and more important, that Chenraya was responsible. Lolth wanted her daughters to gather certain things: blueflame items, the remains of powerful wizards once precious to Mystra, and relics of immense power. It was the latter that Chenraya was about to gain for Lolth. But if allowed, Matron Mother Zeerith would claim the glory for herself. Chenraya’s station wouldn’t advance the width of a spider’s shadow. It was a gamble. Lolth could choose to punish Chenraya for impudence in attempting direct contact. The possibility was real. Chenraya could be transformed into a mindless servitor, a brute drider, or some other humiliating creature.

But the Spider Queen sometimes rewarded initiative among her followers. And of all the drow scurrying across Faerun to find the elements or to retake the surface lands Lolth desired, Chenraya judged herself closest to succeeding. She’d finally uncovered the relic!

Chenraya pushed harder on the dagger and chanted the last words of the ritual. The skin of the sacrifice dimpled, then split. Blood welled in the wound, glowing with the power of her arcane working. She drew the dagger up toward the ceiling, and a line of blood followed, more like a web than fluid. She pulled the dagger through the air in a clockwise motion, creating a circle of glowing blood in empty space. When she completed the design, she uttered the final word of her spell and plunged the dagger straight through the sacrifice’s heart. His last sound was a gurgle. The man’s soul energized the annulus. Through it, Chenraya could see a misty expanse and something huge and black. Perhaps a spider the size of a small village? Communion was imminent!

Chenraya realized her mouth was so dry she couldn’t wet her lips. She was more nervous then she’d admitted to herself. She cleared her throat, then said in a hoarse voice, addressing the floating portal, “Lolth, Spider Queen and Queen of the Demonweb Pits, I-”

“WHO?” A voice thundered into Chenraya’s consciousness. It battered aside her defenses, all her layers of ego and experience, and raked her naked soul. It was the Demon Queen Lolth, or actually, the priestess understood, a splinter of the Spider Queen’s divine attention. Chenraya tried and failed again and again to formulate an answer. Chenraya realized she might have just made her very last mistake.

Lord Pashra swept into the cave. His huge frame threw a shadow across the limp body on the altar and across the floating annulus hung in midair. The moment the oni’s shadow bisected the floating circle, it collapsed into a splatter of blood across the dead genasi’s chest. The overwhelming presence pinning Chenraya’s mind like a moth on a placard whispered away in the same instant.

The priestess slumped, catching herself on the edge of the altar.

“Chenraya!” said Pashra. “They’re here! On the island!”

“Who … who’s here?” What was the oni talking about? She was having difficulty focusing. Her mind felt as if it’d barely withstood the impact of a sledgehammer. It hadn’t shattered, but tiny cracks splintered all through it.

“Who do you think? The spies who found us at the warehouse, who ventured into the Demonweb. The white-haired man, the windsoul, and a few others. They threw our greeting force back down the main shaft and sealed it! Only one drider survived the fall.

What should we do?”

The image of the pale-haired man with tattoos the color of gray clouds gave her something to focus on. That one was dangerous. Something about him raised the hairs on her neck like flexing spider legs …

She pushed away from the altar and straightened. Pashra’s intrusion would normally have thrown her into a rage. However, given that the oni’s interruption had probably saved her from the direct attention of a vengeful goddess, Chenraya decided to defer punishment for a later date. For now …

“I’ll prepare an ambush with the full force of my harem and slaves,” she said. “You see about unsealing the main shaft. It’s time for you to carry your weight in this partnership.”

The oni frowned. “Without me, you’d never have known the relic existed, let alone its location.”

She shrugged. “That’s in the past; we’re in the present, dear Pashra. See that you clear our exit. I’ll make certain our troublesome guests find the end they so obviously crave. If my slave-soldiers and harem can’t eliminate them, half the weight of a collapsing island falling on them will.”

Pashra growled but kept his thoughts to himself as he departed.

Chenraya stood in the silence of her cave for a moment, looking at the failed results of her ritual. Then she made a fist and slammed it down on the immobile body.

“All for nothing!” she screamed. If retrieving the relic hidden in this clot of alien landscape wasn’t enough to garner Lolth’s favor, what would be? The priestess smashed the corpse one more time for good measure, then turned to leave.

That’s when she heard a tiny voice in her head. So small at first she thought she imagined it. But when the meaning finally penetrated, fear as cold as the wind off the great glacier chilled her blood.

“I’m watching you, daughter. Do not disappoint.”

Riltana hated being underground. The air was lifeless. It barely stirred itself to her desire, and even then, only with dragging petulance. It smelled faintly of sulfur and … urine? Was that even possible? Probably-who knew how many excavators had been here, relieving themselves in dark corners. Her nose wrinkled. Mine air was bad air, through and through. The stone walls were chipped and ridged with the cuts of picks, shovels, and magical blasts. Every so often they came across a hair-wide seam of silvery mineral. Queen Arathane said it was low-grade arambarium, not worth digging out when higher-grade ore was more easily extractable in other places. Wood spars at irregular intervals marked their progress. Except they’d been down here for what felt like hours already. She’d lost track of time and spars.

“How far now?” she asked.

Demascus shrugged as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Right; she knew better. Well, she hoped she knew better.

Jaul’s head was bent over a sheaf of parchment in his hands, where he was sketching tunnels on a crude map. “We’re close,” he said.

“You said that an hour ago.”

“This time, we are.”

She sighed and bottled up an acid comeback. Probably not the time to risk precipitating violence. The queen already didn’t think the windsoul was a good friend for her niece. Riltana didn’t want to add fuel to that fire by acting out too much. Arathane likely wouldn’t go back on her promise to intercede on Riltana’s behalf, but why be needlessly stupid?

Instead Riltana rubbed her palms together and pictured a small yellow sphere. The Prisoner’s Stone fell out of glovespace into her hand. She rolled it between her fingers. Its slight weight was reassuring. If worse came to worst, it might allow her to get out of the mine. Its power to break bonds of every other sort had always functioned when she needed it. Though she wasn’t quite sure how the magic worked. Would the stone’s power to break artificial bonds of imprisonment allow her to squirm free from tons of entombing rock, too? Her stomach churned at the thought.

A click-click sound made her pause.

“Does anyone else hear that?” she said. She squeezed the Prisoner’s Stone back into glovespace.

“Shhh,” hissed Demascus, his head cocked. He’d heard it, too. The clicking sound continued, occasionally breaking off for several long moments before resuming. It came from the tunnel ahead. It might be the sound of two rocks knocking together … or two mandibles! It was too faint to be sure.

Jaul’s eyes locked on hers-wide with alarm but also with triumph. He’d led them to something, at least. Demascus took the lead, motioning for everyone else to follow. The light of Chant’s sunrod slid off the deva like water, as if he was already transitioning into a halfshadow state. Riltana followed, but not too close, in case the deva fully woke his power. She worried he’d accidentally kill her one day while he was enveloped in the vestige of what he’d once been.

The tunnel descended in a series of tight switchbacks dropping them a hundred or more yards before opening into an enormous cavern lit with a hovering pillar of purple flame. Splintered planks from an elevator lay scattered across the stone floor. Tether cord was splayed in hundred-yard loops across the room like spilled blood. Riltana realized it must be the platform Demascus had cut loose. She sucked in a breath. The driders had come up from this chamber! Where were they now?

A few dozen cocoons swayed on lines descending from the ceiling. She spied no spiders, no dark elves, no driders. She didn’t feel any relief. If their foes weren’t here, where were they?

The floor was a checkerboard of vertical lifts and drops, each level a random distance above or below its neighbor. Narrow planks connected some of the surfaces above dark crevices. Other level areas were isolated miniature mesas. Webs clogged many of the pits.

Jaul pointed straight across the cavern. “The mine face is the far wall,” he whispered, remaining quiet, it seemed, more out of awe than stealth.

Riltana squinted. The purple illumination made visibility tricky, but she made out a shape curling out of the rock. Half was free of entombment, apparently thanks to the careful work of picks and chisels. It glowed silver even in the bluish-red light.

“The arambarium mother lode?” she asked.

Arathane studied the object for a few moments. “It must be,” she finally replied.

“It’s big as a house,” said Chant. “And it looks like … Wait. That can’t be right.”

“What can’t be?” said Jaul.

“The chunk of mineral. Does it look like … a disembodied hand to you?”

asked Chant.

“Lords of shadow!” exclaimed Demascus.

Riltana agreed. The damn thing was a hand, ten feet across if it was an inch. Surely it was part of a sculpture. A piece of some really old statue. Unless it was the lopped-off limb of some ancient god or primordial …

The clicking resumed as a procession entered the vault, emerging from behind a fold of rock in the opposite corner of the cavern. The first few creatures resembled a cross between gangly humans and bloated spiders. They had long, slender arms and legs protruding from rounded, fleshy bodies. Bulbous black eyes blinked from their spider heads.

Riltana ducked behind a knob of basalt. Her companions scurried to follow her lead.

“More spider hybrids,” hissed Demascus.

“Ettercaps,” replied Chant softly. “They’re ettercaps.”

Riltana didn’t give a flying piss whether they were called ettercaps or bumbledorks. Either way, they were bad news.

The creatures pulled a sledge into view. Instead of runners, the transport slid on air itself. Three creatures rode on the sledge: a drider, a blue ogre with horns, and an ebony-skinned woman with hair like spun ice and an outfit composed of equal parts armor and bared skin. Though Riltana had never seen one before, she knew the woman was a drow.

“Oh, shit,” she breathed. The tinkle of a silly child’s rhyme started up unbidden in her head, in time to the clicking, about fat spiders and playing hide and seek in the trees.…

“The drider greeters told you to leave,” the drow said, facing their direction. She didn’t yell, but her voice carried across the irregular chamber with perfect resonance.

“She knows we’re here!” whispered Jaul. Chant shushed him.

“But you didn’t listen,” the drow continued. “So you’ve made your choice.”

Demascus sighed. He straightened and stepped forward several paces, up a plank and out onto one of the mesa-like platforms.

“You’re Chenraya Xorlarrin, with whom Master Raneger made an alliance?” the deva said, his voice loud enough to carry. Lord Pashra and the drider tensed, but the drow murmured something to them Riltana couldn’t hear.

“You’ve followed us far,” she said, her voice again as audible as if she were standing next to them. “Even onto the Demonweb. Very rash. Lolth knows your scent.”

Demascus waved his hand as if the drow’s words were irrelevant. “So Raneger remains your ally?”

She laughed. “Of course not! No priestess of Lolth would long pollute herself pretending to treat another as an equal. Especially that overinflated worm.” She sniffed. “But the fool Raneger served his purpose. If not for the blind of his warehouse, I might’ve learned too late that someone else had discovered my interest in this ridiculous country.”

Queen Arathane broke cover and joined Demascus. Her bodyguard hustled to follow her.

“You’ve made your last mistake, Mistress Xorlarrin,” announced Arathane. “I rule this ‘ridiculous country,’ as you name it. I’m more than capable of ending your threat to Akanul’s sovereignty.”

Chenraya was too far away for Riltana to make out any expression on the dark elf’s face, but her momentary stillness spoke volumes. The drow was surprised, perhaps even suddenly afraid to find the monarch of Akanul was there. Some of the tension that had been building in the windsoul’s jaws and throat eased. Not that she was yet ready to stand up and expose her position; she remained huddled behind cover with Chant and Jaul.

Finally Chenraya said, “I don’t doubt you are strong. But I’m under Lolth’s protection. The Demon Queen gave each of her daughters-all the drow, in fact, even the sniveling husbands and sons of the drow-a challenge. Mine is to recover this piece of ejecta from the forgotten twin of Toril, for Lolth’s coming transformation. You’ll not stop me.”

Chant whispered, “Arathane’s got the drow talking-we should attack while she’s distracted. Or better yet, run.”

“Shhh. I want to hear what she’s saying,” Riltana said. She was no intellectual, but if Lolth was mobilizing the drow for some sinister scheme, it probably wasn’t a bad idea to find out why.

Chant sighed, but lapsed back into silence.

The dark elf was still speaking, “… this relic limb of the dead primordial Arambar, slain in the ancient wars before Abeir-Toril became two. I have as much right to it as anyone. Indeed, I found the mother lode first, despite all your feeble scratching in the earth to collect its residue. It’s mine.”

Arathane shook her head. “Whether it’s a mineral deposit or a relic of some long dead creature, it’s the property of Akanul-we’ve claimed this isle for decades, and have worked the stone, extracting its resources. And regardless, you’ve slain my people who labored here under my protection. There’s no scenario under which you’ll leave this place alive and unpunished.”

“So much for the diplomatic option,” Chant murmured.

“Then come stop me, genasi,” purred Chenraya. The drow and her party stepped off the sledge. She glanced at the cluster of ettercaps. “Remove the Hand of Arambar from the stone and secure it.”

Demascus glanced at Arathane and her remaining bodyguard, then back at Riltana and the others. His slow grin of excitement spoke volumes. The idiot was eager to fight.

Dozens more ettercaps crawled up from web-clogged pits scattered across the vault floor. They were accompanied by spiders of every size, including one as large as a half-grown dragon. The cocoons hanging from the ceiling jerked and writhed, then disgorged bloated mine workers like hatching insects. The miners dropped to the stone floor. Only about half staggered back to their feet. Then the undead corpses, the spiders, and the newly revealed ettercaps surged across the vault toward the queen’s party.

“Too many!” Riltana yelled. She leaped into the air, trusting that it would catch her. It did, and she soared higher on wings of wind. “How’d they all get out here to the island?”

“The Demonweb?” asked Chant. He brought up his crossbow and began firing.

“Jaul, stay behind me!” Riltana’s retort was lost in the attacking throng’s scream. Like an advancing army, the creatures squealed battle cries with hard mandibles and dead lips.

From her floating vantage, the thief saw the first wave of spiders pour onto the platform where Demascus and the queen stood. The deva’s twin swords moved in a complicated hourglass pattern, creating an alternating red and white glow that burned the smallest spiders to cinders and dazed the ettercaps and corpses, making them stumble and sway when they came into its light.

The queen whirled her spear over her head, then plunged it into an ettercap that had slipped around the sword of her bodyguard. The creature lit up from the inside, lightning-bright, then disappeared with a ripping pop.

Something sticky brushed Riltana’s face, and she wiped it quickly away. Gore? No-an ettercap was trying to lasso her with a web line! A veritable blizzard of webs sleeted the air toward her. She swallowed a curse and dropped beneath the canopy of lofting nets, coming too close to the irregular ground for her comfort. Chant shouted something, but Riltana couldn’t make it out over the din. She skimmed only a few feet above the swarming attackers.

A genasi corpse with clear fluid sopping his shirt saw her. It tried to bash her head in with a broken pickaxe. Riltana bobbed under the blow, caught his arm, and broke it with a rising knee. The corpse staggered back too far and dropped off the platform into one of the surrounding pits.

Demascus, the queen, and her swearing bodyguard advanced along a plank to another stony rise, closer to Chenraya. Riltana snarled and flung herself once more into an updraft she coaxed into being with-

Something grabbed one of her rising boots.

“Get off me, you leech-son!” she snarled, and kicked at the ettercap trying to pull her back down. For its trouble, the thing got a steel-toed kick to the crown of its head. It made a sighing noise as it dropped back into the press of spiders. The windsoul used the momentum of her blow to whirl back above the fray. A cresting wave of spiders rolled toward Demascus and Arathane.

The lone drider that had been on the far side of the vault appeared between the deva and the queen in a shadowy blast tinged with purple light. The queen’s elite bodyguard yelled, pressing the drider with a flurry of attacks. The drider drew back before the peacemaker’s glinting sword … until one of the drider’s coal-dark legs slashed down and cut him from neck to navel with a clawed tip.

Arathane fended off another clawed leg with her spear.

Riltana realized Demascus was plastered in webbing.

“Half-wit deva!” she cursed.

The thief arrowed downward at an angle, holding her sword like a spike. She plunged it into the bulbous thorax of the drider even as it reared up over Demascus.

It screeched. Its legs convulsed. One knocked the queen over the crumbling edge, more by accident than design. Another struck Riltana, smashing her out of the air. She rolled a few times along the stone in the opposite direction, gathering bruises, and dropped her sword in glovespace just in time to free her hands. She clung to the powdery lip of the mesa. The pit beneath her crawled with spiders on sticky webs-she did not want to fall down there.

Riltana contracted her arms and kicked high. She got a boot heel over the edge, and pulled herself up. The drider had jumped to a neighboring platform. In its free human hand, it gathered a ball of purplish black light.

“Demascus!” she yelled. Where’d he go? The webs that caught him fluttered, but he was no longer visible. Had he been knocked into one of the pits?

Arathane hurled her spear at the drider. It became a jagged streak of light in midflight and played across the drider’s form like lightning prodding a prairie. When the crackling radiance died away, the drider swayed, leaking ichor from several char spots on its skin and exoskeleton. The spear appeared back in Arathane’s hand with the sound of distant thunder.

The drider was hurt but not finished. It raised high the vile mass of light still squirming in its hand and screamed, “Lolth, I summon thee.”

“Oh, fist!” said Riltana. Was it really calling a demon goddess? “Lolth, turn your visage upon this-”

A shadow swept across the drider, moving so swiftly that Riltana could barely track it. Where it passed, a line of fresh ichor gushed. When it stopped next to the massive bulk of the drider, she saw it was Demascus, cloaked in gloom. His weapons blazed out of the dimness, casting just enough light across his face for Riltana to recognize the cruel, gleeful lines of the Sword of the Gods. A line of greenish fluid trailed from a perfect cut across the drider’s neck. Its incantation was ruined. Good! But … goose bumps speckled her arms.

Demascus gestured as if casting an invisible shroud across the drider’s bulk, even as the spider-thing whirled to get a glimpse of its attacker. Before it had completely turned, Demascus charged, and with a dual, scissors-like swing, decapitated the dark elf torso from the spider body. The drider fell in two parts, dead.

“Good job, Demascus!” Riltana yelled. She came down next to him. Her boot heels rang on the stone.

The deva glanced at her. His scarf had come loose in the fight and hovered around him like a cobra’s hood, lending him a more dramatic air of menace than usual. His blank eyes were holes in shadow. She stepped back without realizing it.

Demascus fixed his eyes across the chamber. The original ettercaps who’d pulled the sledge into the chamber had taken up picks and hammers and were excavating the hand. Chenraya and Lord Pashra seemed content to monitor the dig.

It struck Riltana as slightly odd that they hadn’t reacted with alarm when the drider had fallen. In fact, it almost seemed to her that a big blue smirk hovered at the edges of Pashra’s lips. The drow was too far away to make out her expression. But her posture suggested she was waiting for something.

Demascus laughed and stepped into shadow. He stepped out twenty paces farther into the room, bypassing a good portion of Chenraya’s massed might.

“Demascus, wait!” she yelled.

The deva found another door through obscurity. He reappeared dozens of yards farther into the vault. He’d spanned about three-fourths of the distance to the mine face, where ettercaps dug at the entombed hand like ferrets drunk on glitter weed.

Chenraya smiled. It must’ve been a wide smile for Riltana to notice it from so far.

Oh shit! she thought. “Demascus, get-”

The ceiling fell. Tons of stone simply dropped. It smothered the center of the vault. Riltana’s last glimpse of Demascus was his raised arms, as if he had a hope in heaven of protecting himself from the rock fall. Then the stone ground him down, and an explosive plume of rock dust covered everything like a shroud.