F O U R (23 page)

War Of The Spider Queen

Book 1

Dissolution

had roused her from  her trancelike state of  repose. She'd opened her eyes  and  seen

nothing. Evidently someone had conjured a patch of darkness around her,  or worse, cursed her with a blindness spell. She opened her m

whip snakes, and som                 outh to speak to the ething cold and thick jammed itself inside.Her throat clogged, she was suffocating. Meanwhile, som

ething else,

something that  felt like  the  cool,  dexterous  tip of a  demon's  tentacle,  slid around

her wrist.

She yanked her hand away just before the unseen member could lock around it and thrashed to keep her limbs free of th

them. None of it helped her breathe.   e other tendrils that began to grope after

She battered furiously at the space around her.had to be there, but her fists m          Logic told her that her attacker

erely swept through em

with the need for air               pty space. Her chest ached ,  and she felt unconsciousness nibbling at her mind.

At first, she couldn'She did the only thing left. She bit down.t penetrate the mass,  but she strained, snarled in her throatwith effort, and her teeth sank into som

ething leathery and oily.

In an instant, it vanished. It didn't yank itself free, it just melted away.Quenthel'

s  teeth snapped together with a clack.

Scrambling to her knees, she sucked in  a couple deep breaths, then called

"Whip!"                                ,"Here!" Yngoth cried from

somewhere on the floor. "We didn't see the demon

until the last second. It is the darkness!"

"I understand."

At least she wasn't  blind. She'd heard of demons made of darkness itself,

though she had never had occasion to summto catch and even harder to bind.      on one. They were said to be hard

"Guard!" she called.

This time she didn't hear an answer and wasn't  surprised. The invader's

presence suggested the sentry was either a traitor or dead.Quenthel sensed som

ething rushing at  her.  She flung herself sideways, and

something  crashed  against  the  patch  of  wall  immediately  behind  the  space  she'd

just vacated. The stone floor chilled her through her gauzy wisp of a chemise.As planned, she fetched up against the stand where she kept certain s

mall

pieces of her regalia. She leaped up and groped about the rectangular stonetabletop. T

o  her disgust, a couple items rattled to the floor, but then her fingers

closed on a medallion of beautifully cut glass.

Squinting, she invoked the trinket's     . A dazzling glare blazed ththe room. Quenthel had to shield her own eyes, hoping the terrpower         ibl    rough

e light would

destroy a living darkness altogether.The m

agic light and the equally supernatural darkness ma

when the lighting in the room  was as it  was before the creature had entered. At de for a split second least Quenthel could open her eyes.

fected by  the light, was a ragged central blot

with long, tattered armHer assailant, seemingly unafs  snaking throughout the room, ubiquitous as smoke.

flat-looking. It thrust a long, thin probeDrinking in all the glow, reflecting  none, it was dead black and deceptively at the medallion and Quenthel  j erkedthe token aside. The shaft of blackness  veered,

compensating, and struck the

medallion hard enough to knock it out of her hand. The light died instantly

when the glass medallion shattered on the  floor.Fortunately, the illumination had lasted long enough for her to note the

Richard Lee Byers

60

War Of The Spider Queen

Book 1

Dissolution

locations of several other objects on
tentacle swept over her head and tousled
the stand. She instinctively ducked,
 
the her hair

before, she would regret expending any of     , and she grabbed a scroll. As d regret dying even m           the spells contained therein, but she'

ore.

Conversant with the contents of the parchment, she didn't need to see the triggerphrase to "read" it. She recited the words,  and a shaft of yellow flame r

oared down

from  the ceiling through the spot where the  core of the dem

The firelight showed that it was still there. The blaze pa  on had been floating. ssed right through it,  and all its arm

s  and streamers of murk convulsed.

The column of flame vani

drow had taken to shield her eyes, a haze shed after a moment, leaving, despite the care the took her a second to realize that dull, wa  of afterimage bisecting her vision. It

see. The darkness had survived. It had clvering stripe was the only thing she could otted its essence around her to seal her

eyes once more.You're a tough one, she thought, sending the unspoken words to the mind of the

dem

and the consciousness of the demThere was no response, and Quenthel fe

on as she, a divine emissary of Lolth, was trained to do.lt no connection m

ade between her mind

on. This was no servant of Lolth's.

Alive and impossible to command, it would surely grab or strike at her,  and this

time intuition was failing her.  She had no

so she didn't know which way to dodge to evidea from where the attack would come, ade it. She simply had to guess, jump

somewhere and not let blindness and indecision delay her.  She pivoted, and

something struck her shoulder.

wet blood flowed. Either the darkness could At first it was just a startling jolt, then  pain burned at the point of imharden its m       pact, and embers into claws or else

it had picked up a blade from somewhere in the chamber.Quenthel was glad her teachers had taught her to suffer a wound without the

attack. She kept mshock of it freezing her in her tracks, heoving, m       lpless to avert her  adversary's follow-up aking herself,  she hoped, a more difficult target.Som

ething hissed. The source of the sound was almost under her feet.

about endeavoring to locate her in the Evidently, dragging the whip handle behind dark. She stooped, fumthem, her vipers had been slithering bled about their cool, sinuous lengths for a m

oment, achieved the proper grip, and lifted the

weapon.
The serpents reared, hissed, and peered,  each in a diff

realized they could see what she could not. The darkness was perent direction. Quenthel reparing  toattack.

The priestess deepened her psionic link with her snake-demon servants. She stillcouldn't see where her adversary's tentacles

them. That would have to do.        were poised, but she had a sense of

The darkness reached for her

repeatedly. Her aim  was inexact, but the vipers twisted in the air to c,  and, turning and turning, she swung the whip orrect it.T

oward the end, she was breathing harder, and her actions were getting bigger

slower, and wilder                           ,, as any combatant's  will if she performs too ma

pause. Then som                       ny without a ething long and pointed plunged into the back of her thigh.  hi

s

puncture wound was worse than the gash inQuenthel knew at once from  the flare of pain and the gush of blood that t her shoulder.  She staggered a step, and her leg began to fold. The whip vipers hissed in alarm

.

She shouted to focus her will and quell the agony, to force the limb to obey.Throbbing, it straightened.

Richard Lee Byers

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War Of The Spider Queen

Book 1

Dissolution

before it could do the samShe spun and struck at the tentacle that had stabbed here  again. At that same  instant, her serpent fam,  lashing it to pieces iliars

detected hands reaching for her neck. She last the shadow stopped attacking.     spun, destroyed those as well, and at

Feeling the blood stream  down her leg  to pool on the floor, her mind raciQuenthel considered her situation. She m st be causing the dem       ng,

u          on pain—if not it

would attack relentlessly,  never faltering until she fell—but that  didn't  necessarily

mean  she  was  well on  her way  to  killing  it.  From  what  she  knew  of  such  entities,

it seemed entirely possible that she would have to do more harm  to the nucleus at

the end of the tendrils to accomplish that. Assuming she could reach or even

locate it amid the obfuscating gloom.

It might be better not to try,  to take  advantage of this momentary respite and

make a run for it, but she knew that if she moved the demon would move with

her,  which would mean she'

wasn'          d still be scurrying sightlessly along. In her suite, that t  an enormous problem—she knew  every inch of the space by heart—but

outside, she could  easily  take  a  hard, incapacitating fall. If that happened or if her

leg gave out before she found help, her foe would have little diffher off.                          iculty finishing

No, she  would kill the  cursed  thing by  herself, quickly, while  she  was still  on her feet. The only question was, how?

One of the weapons in her hidden closet  might do the trick, but she had no waof reaching them. The demon would slay her while she fumbled in the dark to y

manipulate the hidden lock. She would have to make do with the resources in

her hands, which meant using another scroll spell and taking a gamble as well.The demon renewed the attack. Quenthel struck and deflected a tentacle with