Andzrel Baenre, weapons master of House Baenre, stood in the cavern directing his troops. Runners continually came and went through the half-dozen tunnels that connected to the cavern, car-rying news of the battle for the approaches to Menzoberranzan. Soldiers from House Baenre were holding the northern exit from Ablonshier's Cave.
Faintly, from the connecting tunnel, Andzrel could hear the clash of steel on steel as drow sword met tanarukk battle-axe. A group of duergar had tried to force theirway through a tunnel that circled past that exit, only to become tangled in the webs cast by the wizard attached to Andzrel's company. The latest report indicated that the webs were on fire. The half-orc, half-demon tanarukks, apparently, were trying to burn their way through - at the expense of their gray dwarf allies caught in the sticky strands. The reek of burned hair and flesh drifted down the tunnel.
In the caves to the west of where Andzrel stood, Baenre troops had forced a group of duergar back into afaerzress and hurled light pellets in after them. The resulting pyrotechnic display had ap-parently been quite spectacular, according to the slingers who had triggered it - slingers who had been struck blind as a result. More House Baenre fighters, waiting in the wings around a bend of the tunnel, had rushed past the slingers to deliver the coup de grace to the blinded duergar.
Andzrel itched to be a part of it. To be crawling the jagged twists and turns of the Dark Dominion's narrow passageways, sword in hand, fighting his enemy face-to-face in the tight confines of the tunnels. In-stead he was perched on a column of broken stalagmite, directing the troops that flowed past him into battle while he remained behind. He tried picturing himself as a spider at the center of the web - sensitive to the vibrations of battle coming from all directions and responding to them - but it didn't help. He wanted an excuse to draw his sword, for Lolth's sake, to engage the enemy in glorious battle as he had at the Pillars of Woe, when he'd snatched victory from the fangs of deceit.
But the defense of the tunnels was going too well. Alerted by Triel's warning, the matron mothers had poured troops into the Dark Dominions southeast of the city, forcing the enemy advance to grind to a halt. The duergar seemed to have withdrawn, leaving only the tanarukks to fight. And while the Scoured Legion might have thousands of troops, forcing an army through those narrow tunnels was like trying to shove a melon through the neck of a bottle. Yet they continued to send troops forward. It was almost as if they'd expected the tunnels to be undefended.
Sighing, Andzrel allowed his attention to wander. His eye settled on one of the wisps of smoke that had had been drifting in for some time from the tunnel to his left. It rose steadily upward, drawn by air currents that were surprisingly swift, toward a narrow crack that ran the length of the ceiling. Then it slipped inside the crack and was gone.
It was followed, a moment later, by another drift of smoke - one that was curiously shaped, with tendrils that looked like arms andlegs. It, too, vanished into the crack. Then a third puff of smoke appeared, one with a bulge at the front of it that looked, for all the world, like a shaggy -
Suddenly realizing what he was seeing, Andzrel barked an order at the junior officer who stood beside him.
"Lieutenant! The smoke . . . shoot it!"
With a swiftness born of strict training and absolute obedience, the lieutenant whipped up his arm and fired his wrist crossbow in the direction indicated. A poisoned bolt whizzed through the air toward its target.
Instead of passing through the "smoke" and striking the stone behind it, the bolt sank into something soft, with a dull thud. An in-stant later, a tanarukk materialized out of thin air. It tumbled, arms and legs thrashing, toward the floor of the cavern, the battle-axe it had been carrying landing with a loud clang beside it. The tanarukk was dead even before it slammed into the stone floor, the virulent drow poison having done its work.
The lieutenant immediately fitted another bolt into the crossbow at his wrist and scanned the ceiling.
"Master Andzrel," he croaked, "where did it come from?"
Andzrel peered down the corridor from which the two-dimensional tanarukk had come. No more wisps of "smoke" appeared. The dead one seemed to have been bringing up the rear.
Short and stocky, with a prominent lower jaw and curving tusks, the tanarukk had a ridge of horn across its forehead that gave it a thick, unintelligent look. The trick it and its fellows had played on the drow, however, was anything but stupid.
"The mote important question, lieutenant, is where the tana-rukks were headed," Andzrel said, "and how many have slipped past us already. If I remember my geography correctly, that crack leads to the main cavern."
A runner emerged from a side tunnel.
"Good news, sir," the man panted. "We're not only holding them . . . they seem to be falling back. The enemy has all but dis-appeared."
As Andzrel cursed - surprising the runner, who'd obviously ex-pected elation on his commander's part - the forefront of a company from House Barrison Del'Armgo trotted into the room. They were reinforcements sent in at last by the Second House, only after House Baenre's troops had secured the tunnels.
Leaping down from the broken stalagmite, Andzrel strode toward the captain who commanded them, a slender female in adamantine armor with white hair drawn up in a topknot.
"Captain!" he barked, foregoing the usual bow that was a rank-ing officer's due - and the Barrison Del'Armgo captain, being female, certainly did outrank him. "Turn your company around. March back to the main cavern at once."
The captain's eyes blazed an even deeper red as her cheeks flushed with anger. She jerked to a halt, and the soldiers following her did the same.
"Who in the Nine Hells do you think you are?" she said, glaring down at him. "You may be weapons master of House Baenre, but you're only a - "
"This isn't the time for arguments," Andzrel said in a tense voice, his intensity making up for his lack of height. "The enemy has slipped past us and are about to enter the city. House Barrison Del'Armgo lies directly in their path. Is your pride really worth your House, captain?"
The other captain hesitated,sword gripped in her hand, then she spun on her heel.
"Turn about!" she barked. "Back to the main cavern. Double speed!"
The look she gave Andzrel over her shoulder as she sped away behind her company, however, was as sharp as a dagger point. When the fight with the tanarukks and duergar was over, win or lose, Andzrel knew he would have a second battle to face.
He spun to face the House Baenre lieutenant and said, "You're in charge. Order half of our company to fall back to the main cavern, while the other half continue to hold the tunnels."
The lieutenant's white eyebrows lifted. "And you, sir?" he asked. "Where will you be?"
Then, realizing his impertinence, he dropped his gaze to the floor.
"I'll be making sure that Barrison Del'Armgocaptain follows her orders," he said with a grin. He drew his sword. "And hopefully, I'll be giving the tanarukks a taste of this."
Triel, flanked by her House wizard and the priestess currently serving as her personal attendant, stood on the balcony that encircled the Great Mound atthe point where stalagmite and stalactite met. From far below, at the base of the Qu'ellarz'orl plateau, came the clash of troops in battle. A band of tanarukks had somehow slipped past the troops she'd ordered into the tunnels and had reached the mushroom forest. The wide caps of the mushrooms prevented Triel from seeing much, but every now and then one of the puffballs would explode as a sword or axe struck it, filling the air with a cloud of luminescent blue spores.
Among the combatants, Triel could pick out the silver uniforms of her own troops. The House Baenre company under Andzrel, together with a company from House Barrison Del'Armgo, were fighting a containing action, preventing the tanarukks from ad-vancing farther into the main cavern. As the foot soldiers repeat-edly charged the tanarukks, trying to drive them back through the fence, two squadrons of House Baenre's mounted troops made an assault on the enemy flanks, their lizards scurrying along the walls.
The enemy was gradually forced back against the wall of the great cavern. But just when Triel was certain they would either be shoved back into the tunnel like a cork into a bottle or smashed flat where they stood, the tanarukks closest to the tunnel mouth parted. Triel strained forward, expecting to see a tanarukk general stride through the gap in their ranks, but what emerged instead from the tunnel mouth made her chuckle.
It was a jade spider. Three times the height of a drow, the magi-cal construct was one of those that guarded each of the entrances to Menzoberranzan. Made from magically treated jade, it moved with fluid grace. It was as captivating in its beauty as it was deadly.
"Now we'll see some fun," said the plump wizard standing next to Triel.
Triel acknowledged him with a curt nod. She didn't much care for Nauzhror, her first cousin once removed. He had only been promoted to the position of Archmage of Menzoberranzan because Gromph was missing, but he wore the archmage's robes with a stuck-up snobbishness, as if he'd earned them. Triel instead directed her comment to Wilara, the priestess who stood on her left.
"The spiders will put the fear of Lolth into them," she chuckled.
Wilara laughed politely along with her mistress. Her laughter ended abruptly a moment later, however, when the jade spider, instead of attacking the tanarukks, strode through the gap they'd created in their ranks.
"What in the Spider Queen's name. . . ." the priestess whispered.
Wilara's unfinished question was answered a moment later as the spider crashed headlong into the House Baenre soldiers. Pluck-ing one of them from the ground with its mandibles, it scissored the soldier in half. Then, letting the pieces fall to either side, it con-tinued to race forward, smashing its way through mushrooms and drow alike.
"Lolth help us," Nauzhror said in a strangled voice. "They've managed to get control of one of the constructs."
As the jade spider advanced, the drow fell back in confusion. One or two prostrated themselves before it - only to receive the same treatment as the first soldier.
The spider continued its relentless advance, and soon several drow layin bloody heaps behind it. Within moments, the spider had carved a gap through both the mushroom forest and the troops - a gap the tanarukks were quick to exploit.
"Attack, curse you!" Triel cried as the enemy surged forward.
The drow soldiers were too far away to have heard her, but thankfully one of their officers - probably Andzrel, judging by the black armor and cloak - rallied them. They fell upon the tanarukksfrom either side and quickly closed the gap the spider had opened. But even as the enemy was driven back once more toward the cavern wall, the jade spider continued to advance. Leaving the struggling foes and the mushroom forest behind, it scaled the slope that led from Qu'ellarz'orl up to the House Baenre compound. It moved swiftly and in a few moments more was at the barrier.
It hesitated just outside the high fence that enclosed the com-pound as if contemplating the magic that flowed through the barrier's glowing silver strands, then it turned toward one of the sta-lagmites to which the fence was attached. As the House guard on the balconies above watched in confusion, the construct scaled the stone as easily as a living spider, climbing to a point just above the fence.It leaped down over the barrier, then began moving toward the center of the compound.
Triel's eyes narrowed as she saw where it was headed. The jade spider was making its way to House Baenre's central structure - the great domed temple of Lolth.
Wilara gasped as she, too, calculated the spider's course.
"They dare attack our temple?" the priestess cried.
Nauzhror, with a sidelong look at Triel, exploded with appropri-ate rage.
"The insolence!" the interim archmage fumed. "May Lolth's webs strangle them!"
His familiar - a fist-sized, hairy brown spider - scuttled from one of his shoulders to the other, disturbed by the mage's violent motion.
Triel pursed her lips, saying nothing. The temple might be the target, but an attack on it was not the enemy's chief aim. There was little a single jade spider - or even a dozen of them for that matter - could do to harm the building itself. Triel was sure that the incursion was intended to be a demonstration, made where all could see it, that Lolth had turned her face away from her chosen people. The spider would have to be stopped - but anyone doing so outside the doors of a building consecrated to Lolth would incur the goddess's wrath.
In ordinary times, at least.
Triel longed to cry out to Lolth, to plead for the goddess to tell her what to do, but she knew what the answer would be: silence. The Matron Mother of the First House was on her own - and if the jade spider wasn't stopped, Menzoberranzan's weakness would be plain for all to see. The males of House Baenre, fighting so val-iantly to force the enemy back into the tunnels, might falter. If they became convinced that Triel and the other ranking females had lost Lolth's favor for some fault of their own or that the goddess had turned away from all drow forever, they might even turn against their matron mothers.
That could not be.
"The enemy knows our weakness," Triel said in a tense voice. "They must believe that Lolth has fallen silent forever and hope to make it plain for all to see."
Beside her, Wilara stiffened. Then amazingly, she contradicted her matron mother.
"No," the priestess said, shaking her head and causing the long braid that hung down her back to ripple like a snake. "The goddesswill answer. Shemust."
The vipers in Triel's whip hissed their annoyance, but Triel ignored them. Under the circumstances, she could allow Wilara's outspokenness.
"Lolth may awaken yet," she said, speaking as much to steady herself as for the lesser priestess's benefit. "My sister Quenthel has not yet given up, so neither should we. But in the meantime, we have to rely upon ourselves. And upon other forms of magic."
She turned to Nauzhror and asked, "Do you know the spell that will transform stone to flesh?"
"I do, Matron Mother," he answered, "but if we transform it to flesh, the statue will become a living spider. The problem remains. We just can't. . . kill it."
"Quite so," Triel said. As she spoke, she unfastened one of the wand cases hanging from her belt. "But by the time we're finished, it won't be a spider." She drew out a slender iron wand, tipped with a chunk of amber whose depths held the remains of a desiccated moth. "As soon as you cast your spell, I'll polymorph it into some-thing else - something large and dangerous enough to have torn a hole through our ranks. Something our troops won't have any prob-lem attacking."
Nauzhror smiled and said, "A deceitful plan, Matron Mother. One worthy of Lolth herself."
Glancing down, Triel saw that the spider had nearly reached the temple.
"Quit fawning," she ordered. "Teleport us down there at once."
Nauzhror spoke the words of his spell, and an instant later the balcony seemed to lurch sideways as he and Triel squeezed between the dimensions. In the blink of an eye they were standing in front of the doors to the great temple. Two dozen House guards who had been milling about uncertainly a moment before gasped as their matron mother suddenly appeared before them. Some bowed, and others glanced between Triel and the jade spider that was rapidly approaching, its stone legsclick-clickingas it scurried across the Nauzhror, his face paling to gray as the enormous stone spider rapidly closed the gap, began chanting a spell. He pointed a finger, from which an intense, narrow beam or red light sprang, but the trembling or his hand made the beam waver, causing it to miss the spider by several paces.
Triel grabbed Nauzhror's hand, steadying it. The beam connected - and jade became flesh. Triel activated her wand.
The spider shifted into the form she held in her mind; a two-legged creature with powerful muscles, enormous claws and man-dibles, and a rounded, insectoid head. Its body was covered in chitin-ous plates, and feelers sprouted from cracks near its head where the sections met. Startled by its sudden transformation, the creature stumbled to a halt, feelers waving frantically as its mandibles clacked shut.
"Matron Mother," Nauzhror gasped. "An umber hulk?"
"Convincing, isn't it?" Triel said with a wry smile. She turned to the dozen or so soldiers who stood gaping nearby and ordered, "Soldiers of House Baenre, you have been fooled by an illusion. Defend me!"
To aman, the soldiers leaped forward, swords in hand. The transformed statue fought back, its mandibles tearing one soldier in half and neatly scissoring the head off another. Then a lieutenant of the House guard - a small male with white hair plaited in two braids that were tucked behind his pointed ears - leaped directly into thepath of the umber hulk. He wore no armor, and his only weapon was a small crossbow strapped to his left wrist. He aimed deliberately as the umber hulk staggered toward him - still uncertain of its footing with only two legs, instead of eight - and he fired.
The bolt struck the umber hulk in the throat, in a spot where two of its armor plates met. It buried itself to the fletching in soft flesh - then exploded with magical energy. Sparks raced in brilliant streaks across the umber hulk's body, then shot up its feelers, sizzling them like burned hair. The umber hulk faltered, then fell.
The lieutenant - whom Triel belatedly recognized as one of her nephews, a male named Vrellin - dropped to one knee in front of her.
"Matron Mother," he said, never once lifting his eyes. "I failed to recognize the threat. My life is yours,"
Closing his eyes,he raised his head, baring his exposed neck.
Triel laughed.
The noise startled Vrellin. Uncertain, he looked up - but not quite into Triel's eyes. Vrellin was a male who knew his place.
"Matron Mother, do you mock me?" he asked in a strained voice. "Is my life worth so little you deem it not worth taking?"
Triel spread her fingers and brushed them across the lieutenant's head - a touch as light as a spiderweb.
"For what you have done, lieutenant, the goddess will reward you - in this life, or the next."
As she spoke, she wondered if that was true. Then something caught her eye in the distance, on the opposite side of the great cav-ern: streaks of dull red light, arcing up into the air and down again. They seemed to be coming from the rear of the Tier Breche cavern, from somewhere between and behind Sorcere and Arach-Tinilith.
She swore softly as she realized their point of origin - the tun-nel that gave access to Tier Breche from outside Menzoberranzan - and what the source of the light must have been: pots of magical fire, capable of burning even stone, like those that had destroyed Ched Nasad.
Stonefire bombs.
Menzoberranzan was under attack on a second front. And, judging by the pinpoints of fire blossoming on the buildings in the distant cavern, the stonefire bombs were being used to good effect against Menzoberranzan's three most cherished institutions: Sorcere, Melee-Magthere - and Arach-Tinilith, the most holy of the temples to Lolth.
Tearing her eyes away, Triel glanced down at the base of the Qu'ellarz'orl plateau. The drow had finally beaten the tanarukks back into the tunnels. All that was visible of the conflict were a few scattered corpses.
"Abyss take them," Triel swore under her breath. "Itwas just a feint."
Aliisza lounged on one of the plush carpets that had been thrown down on the floor of the cavern and sipped her glass of lacefungus wine. Kaanyr had been pacing back and forth across the cavern that served as his quarters in the field. He paused next to his "throne" - an enormous chair that had been lashed together from the bones of his enemies, a hideous piece of furniture he'd insisted on carrying with him on campaign. Snarling, he kicked over the enormous bra-zier that stood next to it.
"Abyss take Nimor!" he shouted, his skin blazing with radiant heat. "He promised the drow would be in disarray, unable to mount a coherent defense. Now my army sits stalled and impotent, while the duergar claim all the glory."
Glowing red coals scattered across the rugs, which began smoldering. Aliisza picked up one of the coals and juggled it back and forth across her palm. Its heat tickled her skin.
"So why not march your troops north and join the duergar attack?" she suggested, her black wings framing the question with a shrug.
"And give the drow an opportunity to attack us from the rear, and in territory they know well?" Vhok shook his head andadded, "Your grasp of tactics - or lack thereof - astounds me. Sometimes I wonder just whose side you're on, Aliisza."
Setting her glass aside, Aliisza rose to her feet. She stood on tip-toe and locked her hands behind Kaanyr Vhok's head. Drawing his mouth down to hers, she kissed him.
"I'm on your side, darling Kaanyr," she murmured.
The half-demon broke off the kiss.
"This Nimor begins to annoy me," he grumbled. "He promised us the spoils of the noble Houses - an empty promise. Even without Lolth, Menzoberranzan is proving to be, as Horgar so aptly noted, a tough stone to crack. And if Lolth suddenly returns . . ."
He paused, lost in thought as he stared at one of the small fires that had erupted in the carpet at his feet.
"That group of drow you were spying on, back in Ched Nasad . . ." he said.
Aliisza was busy nuzzling the cambion's coal-hot neck.
"Mmm?" she purred.
"What were they doing?"
Aliisza pouted but asked, "Does it matter?"
"It might," Vhok said. "Which is why I have another little job for you. I want you to find them - and, more importantly, learn what they're up to. If I'm right, we may need to rethink our alliance."
Aliisza cocked her head andsmiled - not at the treachery Kaanyr Vhok was hinting at, but at the thought of seeing Pharaun again.
He certainty was delicious.
