F O U R (6 page)

confused.

The blaring stopped. Either the demon had given up attempting to force its wain, or else it had breached  every single ward. Quenthel susp          y

ected  the latter  was  the

case, and when the screaming started, she knew she was right."Do you know what'

s  breaking through?" she panted.

"No," hissed Yngoth, perhaps the wisest  of the whip vipers. "The intruder hasshielded itself from  the Sight."

"Wonderful."

black mThe echoing cries led Quenthel into a spacious candlelit hall filled with towering arble sculptures of spiders, set  there to make the temple's  entryway as

impressive  as  possible.  The  battered  valves  of  the  great  adamantine  double  door  in

the curved south wall gaped crookedly,  half ofplateau outside. Several priestesses lay battered and insef their hinges, afnsible on the floorfording a glimpse of the . For a

moment, Quenthel couldn't make out what

scuttled                  had caused the mess, then the culprit across  her  field  of  vision  toward  another  hapless  servant  of  Lolth.

The intruder was a gigantic spider bearing a close resemblance to the gleamiblack effigies around it, and upon seeing it,  Quenthel scowled at  an unfamiliar and ng

unwelcome  pang of doubt.

and stafOn the one hand, the demon, if that was  what it truly was, waf, but on the other                s attacking her pupils ,  it was a kind of spider, sacred to Lolth. Perhaps it was

even her emissary, sent to punish the weak and heretical. Maybe Quenthel should

simply step aside and permit it to continue its ram

It sensed her som             page. ehow, turned, and rushed  toward her as if it had been looking for

Richard Lee Byers

14

War Of The Spider Queen

Book 1

Dissolution

her all along.  Though maexceptional beyond the point of deformny spiders possessed several eyity     es, this one, she observed, was

.  The head behind the jagged mandibles

was virtually nothing but a maand there about the creature's shiny black bulb of a ss of bulging eyes, and a scatter of others opened here body

.

Its peculiarities notwithstanding, the spider's  manifest hostile intent resolvedQuenthel'

s  uncertainty in an instant. She would kill the freakish thing.

The question was, how? She did not feel weak—she never had and never would—but she knew it was scarcely the optimal time for her to fight such a battle.

On top of any other disadvantages, she  wasn't  even wearing her mail tunic or

piwafwi.  She  rarely  did  within  the  walls  of  Arach-Tinilith.  For  the  most  part,  her

minions feared her too much to attempt an assassination, and she had always been

confident that she  wouldn't need armo

As she backed away from the charging spr to disappoint any who did not. ider, her slim, gleamopened the pouch at her belt, extracted a roll  of vellum      ing obsidian hands

all with practiced ease and likewise with  a certain annoyance, for the m,  and unrolled it for her scrutiny,awas a treasure, and she was about to use it up. But it was necessary, and the parchmgical scroll

ent

was scarcely the only magical implement hoarded within those walls. Rapidly, but with perfect rhythm  and

golden characters vanishing from  the page as she spoke the wpronunciation, she read the verses, the ords. Dark, heatlessflame leaped from the vellum to  the floor and shot across  that polished surface faster

than a wildfire propagating itself across a stand of dead, dry fungus, defining a path

that led from  herself to the demon.

The black conflagration washed over the demon'have driven the m              s dainty bladed feet. It should also

any-eyed  creature helplessly backward, but it  didn't.  The arachnid

kept coming nimbly as before, which was to  say,effort of a drow                considerably faster than the best

.

"The spirit has defenses against the magic!" cried K'Sothra, perhaps the leastintelligent of the whip vipers and certainly  the one m

ost inclined to belabor the

obvious.

Quenthel  wouldn't  have  time  to  attempt  another spell  before  the spider  reached  her,

nor could she  outrun it.  She  would have  to  outmaneuver it

useless sheet of parchment, she turned and dived beneath the belly of one of the instead. Dropping the

statues.  Unless  it  had  the power  to  shrink  or  shape  shift,  the  invader  wouldn't  be

able to negotiate the same low space. She slid on the floor

when its scaly    , rubbing her elbows hot. One of the snakes cursed foully ,saw that she had only bought herself a mo wedge-shaped head rapped against the stone. She rolled over and ment. No, the de

mon  couldn't slip under

the statue but, clustered eyes glaring, it  was rapiUp close, it had a foul, carrion smell.       dly clambering over the top of it.

Quenthel knew that if she permitted the spider to pounce down on her,  the

monster would hold her down and snip her apart with its ma

her feet and swung her whip.               ndibles. She sprang to

plunged deep and ripped downward, teariThe vipers twisted in flight to bring their fangs to bearng gashes in som. Those poisonous spikes e  of the demon's bulging, clustered eyes before yanki

collapsed, and the serpents thrashed in joyng free. The organs gushed fluid and .Quenthel could feel their exultation through the psionic link they sh

ared, but she

knew it was premature. The spider had plenty  of other eyes,balked it for an instant. It was still going to spring.       and the stroke had only

Richard Lee Byers

15

War Of The Spider Queen

Book 1

Dissolution

Though caught without certain of her protections, Quenthel was at least wearinthe necklace of dull black pearls. She reached up, slipped one of th     ge enchantedbeads from the specially crafted fine gold chain, and threw it at the spider. White light blazed around her

,  seemingly emanating from  all directions at once.

Thanks be to Lolth, this time her magic  had an effloundered. Encased in an invisible sphere  of magical force it tfect. The spider slipped and hrashed about inpanic.  The  explosion  had  opened  horrid  sores  that  speckled  the  creature's  body. Unfortunatelycontinued scratching at the restraining sphe, it seemed able to ignore  whatever pain those wounds caused it and of its feet, and Quenthel knew i     re. Blue-white sparks flashed at the tips t  was  using mobreak free.                  re than brute force and panic to

Speak to me, Quenthel thought, sure the words would be heard in the spider'smind. She felt a connection, but a tenuous  one,  perhaps  attenuated by the  sphere  of force. creature'The sphere faded as Quenthel swung the s hideous visage and into the brain that presumwhip again, trying to smably lay behind it.ash through the high and landing at the far end of the chThe spider sprang away as explosively as  one of its tiny jumping cousins, arcing amspirit scuttled through the shadows, a   ber behind a rank of sculptures. The intently, in another second she lost track of ind even though Quenthel was watching t.

The reply was a burst of anger fromWhere are you? she sent.        the creature no mere words could convey.Quenthel gave up trying to communicate

Lolth, it should respond to her      with it, though if it was a servant of ."You could get out now, Mistress," said  Hsiv, the first iminside a whip viper                  p Quenthel had bound .  "Fromdoor."            over there,  it couldn't reach you before you run out the person, and I will have m"Nonsense!" she snapped. "The brute disrupted my Academy,  threatened my y  vengeance."   rs reared and hissed until she silenced them with a mental command. Infected with her anger,  the banded vipe

One of the priestesses sprawled on the  floor was moaning in pain. Quenthelstalked over to the spider's  victim  and kicked her in the head, silencing her instantly.

The drow high priestess had eliminated  all extraneous sounds, but it didn't help her locate the spider. Save for the soft  hiss of her own breathing,  the  chamber was silent.

Tuher rning slowly, heart pounding, she inspected the arachnid effigies all around .enough that she couldn' Did that jointed spindle of a leg just twitch? Did that head, coyly turned just t quite get an adequate look at it, possess too maH                               ny eyes? ad  the figure on  the right  shifted  a hair  closer  when  she  wasn't looking? had not. No, no, and no. It was just her imagination, trying to supply what observation

She sniffed repeatedly, but that was no help, either. The spider'sair                            stink hung in the ,  but it seemed no stronger in one direction than another.

Curse it, the demon had to be somewhere! Yes, she realized, but it didn't have to still be on the floor, not if it could skitter up vertical surfaces like its smaller kindred.

Assuming the demon was clinging to the upper walls or ceiling it might have taken it a moment to shake off the shock of the flare and its ugly wounds, but

Richard Lee Byers

16

War Of The Spider Queen

Book 1

Dissolution

surely it was creeping into the best position from  which to leap down on itsadversary

.

of the chamQuenthel peered upward. The artists had decorated the shadowy highest reaches

spiders, providing splendid camber as well. The ceiling was  an octagonal web a crawl with painted in their midst, she couldn't see it. ouflage for  the creature. If it was in fact crouching

Still scanning the ceiling, the whip vipers keeping watch as well, she backed to one of

candle flame leaped up and turned a roiling blthe wall sconces and read the trigger  phrase fromack   another scroll, whereupon the . She  put her arm  into the dark fire, and her flowing gossam

er sleeve caught instantly.

Though they were at the end of what was, thus far,  the non-burning arm,  the serpents hissed and coiled in alarm