Authors: Richard Baker
“This intrigues me. Go on,” Horgar said.
“The soldiers of Menzoberranzan expect that an army approaching along this road must be delayed by the effort to take Rhazzt’s Dilemma, giving the city time to man the choke point at the Pillars of Woe in sufficient strength to defeat any further attack. I suggest you allow the outpost to make its report and alert the rulers of Menzoberranzan to the presence of your army. Before the matron mothers can muster an army to face you, we will take Rhazzt’s Dilemma by storm. We will be waiting to intercept the drow march at the Pillars of Woe.”
“Your plan has two fundamental flaws,” said Borwald, sneering in contempt. “First, you presume that the outpost can be taken whenever we wish. Second, you seem to think that the matron mothers will choose to send out their army instead of standing fast to await a siege. I would give much to know how you intend to engineer these two feats.”
“Easily done,” the assassin replied. “The outpost will fall because much of its garrison has been withdrawn to keep order in the city. Of those soldiers that remain, many are Agrach Dyrr. That is why I urged you to choose this road for your attack. The outpost will be betrayed into your hands when the time is right.”
“You knew this before we set out,” Horgar said. “In the future, you will share such information in a more timely manner. What would we have done if you’d met some accident of the march? We must know exactly what kind of help you will lend us, and when you will be able to do so.”
Nimor laughed coldly and said, “It would be good for our continued friendship, Prince Horgar, if you find yourself wondering from time to time exactly how helpful I might turn out to be.”
Halisstra roused herself from her Reverie to find that she was cold and wet. During the night, a light dusting of wretched stuff that she guessed must be snow had fallen over the forest, bedecking every branch with a thin coating of brilliant white. The novelty of the experience had worn off quickly for her, particularly after she realized that it had soaked her clothing and piwafwi with frigid water. The reality of snow on the surface was far less appealing than any account of the phenomenon she’d read in the comfort of her House library.
Overhead, the sky was sullen and gray again, but brighter than the previous daybright enough to cause no little discomfort to the drow travelers. Since Quenthel didn’t choose to drive them out into the sunlight after Pharaun had rested and studied his spells, they passed most of the day’s bright hours sheltering deep in the cavern away from the light. The company didn’t prepare to break camp until late in the day, when the sun was already beginning to sink into the west.
“Remind me to conduct some research into methods by which that infernal orb might be extinguished,” remarked Pharaun, squinting up into the snow-laden sky. “It’s still up there behind all those blessed clouds, burning my eyes.”
“You’re not the first of our kind to find its light painful,” Quenthel replied. “In fact, the more you complain about it, the more it troubles me, so keep your whimpering to yourself and get about the business of casting your spell.”
“Of course, most impressive Mistress,” Pharaun said in an acerbic voice.
He turned away and hurried off across the snow-covered rocks and boulders before Quenthel could make a proper retort. The Baenre muttered a black curse under her breath and turned away as well, busying herself with watching Danifae as the battle captive stuffed Quenthel’s bedroll and blankets into her pack. The rest of the company kept to a studious silence and pretended not to notice the interplay, either between Quenthel and Pharaun, or Quenthel and Danifae. They gathered up their own belongings and broke camp.
Halisstra picked up her own pack and followed Pharaun across the floor of the sinkhole, scrambling up after him along the hidden path that ascended to the forest floor. Standing in the clearing surrounding the sunken spot where the cavern mouth had undermined the hillside, she found that the forest was very dense and pressed in close on all sides. Everywhere she looked, the wall of trees and brush was the same, a verdant barrier with no landmarks at all, no distant mountains by which she could orient herself, not even an orderly plan of sand-covered streets to follow. Even in the most twisted caverns of the Underdark, one usually was offered only a handful of choices at a timeforward or back, left or right, up or down. In the forest, she might simply walk off in any direction she liked and eventually arrive somewhere. It was an unsettling and unfamiliar feeling.
She finished her careful examination of the forested hillside, and faced Pharaun again. The rest of the company watched him as well, variously standing or squatting on their heels and shading their faces with their hands as they awaited the wizard’s guidance.
“If I say anything,” said Pharaun, staring into the trees and speaking over his shoulder, “anything at all, mark it carefully. I may or may not understand exactly what it is I see.”
He extended his arms wide and closed his eyes, whispering harsh syllables of arcane power over and over again as he turned in a slow circle.
The eldritch sensation of magic at work tugged at Halisstra, a feeling that was almost palpable, yet maddeningly distant. A strange, cold breeze arose, sighing in the treetops as it bent them first one way, then another, growing stronger moment by moment. Boughfuls of snow shifted and fell as the weird wind increased to a wild, shrieking gale. Halisstra raised a hand to shield her eyes from flying dust and grit. Through it all, she heard Pharaun’s voice growing deeper, more powerful, as the spell took on a life of its own and seemed to drag itself from his throat. She lost her footing and slid awkwardly to one knee, her hair whipping around her head like something alive.
The magic of Pharaun’s divination bore him aloft. Arms still outstretched, he revolved in the air as the winds circled with him. His eyes were blank and silver, cast upward to the heavens. A nimbus of green energy began to coalesce around the wizard’s body, and he gave out a great howl of anguish. Bolts of emerald fire exploded from his halo to scour and blast at the boulders nearby. Each green ray sliced into rock like a rapier into soft flesh, causing the stones to split and flake with deafening cracks. Where each green bolt played, a black rune or pattern formed in the damaged stone, appearing as if etched by acid in the exposed rock. The designs made Halisstra’s eyes ache to look at them, and from the air in the center of the clearing, Pharaun began to mutter in a horrible voice that somehow carried through the wind and thunder.
“Five days west lies a small river,” the wizard intoned. “Turn south and follow its dark swift waters upstream another day, to the gates of Minauthkeep. The Masked Lord’s servant dwells there. He will aid you and betray you, though neither in the manner you expect. Each of you save one will commit betrayal before your quest is done.”
The spell concluded. The wind died away, the green energy dissipated, and Pharaun came slumping down from his lofty perch as if he’d been dropped from a rooftop. The wizard struck the hard earth awkwardly and crumpled, huddling with his face in the cold slush covering the ground. As the reverberations of the spell’s violence fell away in the snowy wood, the black-etched runes carved into rocks and boulders faded as well, flaking away in tiny bits of ebon dust that evaporated within the space of moments.
The rest of the company straightened and exchanged dark looks.
“I can see why he’s slow to cast that spell,” Ryld remarked.
He moved forward and caught Pharaun by one feebly waving arm, turning him over and checking for any obvious signs of injury. Pharaun looked up and managed a weak grin.
“Good news and bad, I suppose,” he said. “Tzirik seems to be alive and well, at least.”
“The directions are clear,” Valas said with care. “I think I can keep us heading west easily enough.”
“What did you mean by that last bit?” Jeggred said to Pharaun, ignoring Valas. “About the betrayal?”
The draegloth tightened his fists.
“About each of us betraying someone? Why, I couldn’t begin to guess,” the wizard said. He coughed and sat upright, waving away Ryld’s help. “It’s the nature of the magic to offer cryptic predictions like that, threatening little riddles that you have little hope of solving until it suddenly becomes obvious that the event you feared has come to pass.” He offered a wry chuckle. “If only one of us doesn’t have some shocking act of treachery to pull off in the near future, I must say I’d like to know who’s sleeping on the job. He’ll tarnish our reputation if he’s not careful.”
Halisstra studied the rest of the company, noting the impassive faces, the thoughtful eyes. Danifae met her gaze with a slight smile and the merest flicker of her gray eyes toward Quenthel, a gesture so small and secret that no one save Halisstra could note it.
Despite the wizard’s easy dismissal of the exact words of the divination, she wasn’t pleased to learn that every one of her companions would at some point in the future commit some kind of treacherous act or another. Or, more likely, all but one of her companions. Just because Halisstra planned no immediate act of betrayal didn’t mean she might not choose to take advantage of an opportunity arising later. She had not held her rank as First Daughter of House Melarn without developing a certain ruthless instinct for such things. If ruin had not come to Ched Nasad, Halisstra didn’t doubt that at some point in the fullness of time she would have seriously plotted against her own mother to claim leadership of the house. Matron Melarn had unseated Halisstra’s grandmother in the same manner and for the same reasons many hundreds of years past. It was no more or less than the Spider Queen’s way.
“Well,” Pharaun said as he pushed himself to his feet, still shivering. The wizard accepted his pack from Ryld, moving gingerly. “It seems I have provided a destination. So which way is west, Master Hune?”
Valas nodded toward the near side of the clearing and said, “There are a couple of game trails leading more or less toward the setting sun.”
“Come,” said Quenthel. “The sooner we set out, the sooner we arrive. I have no wish to spend one hour more than we must in this light-seared land. Master Hune, you will take your customary place as our guide. Master Argith, you will accompany him. Halisstra, you will bring up the rear and keep an eye behind us.”
Halisstra frowned and shifted uncomfortably. That struck her as a job suitable for a male. In their travels over the past few days Jeggred had customarily brought up the rear. It didn’t escape Halisstra that changing the order of the march kept Jeggred close by Quenthel, where the draegloth could protect the Baenre priestess from any attack. She likewise noted that Quenthel had referred to both Valas and Ryld as “master,” while calling her only Halisstra.
There was no point in protesting, of course, so she only waited as the rest of the company filed off into the woods, following Valas’s path. She unslung her crossbow and made sure the weapon was ready for quick use. After allowing the rest of the company a lead of about fifty yards, Halisstra set off after them.
ELEVEN
The surface woodland proved to be a strange and disquieting place. As the party moved away from the clearing’s edge, the tangled underbrush vanished, leaving only an endless green hall of round trunks rising to the forest roof above, like the pillars of some dark elven hall somewhere in the Lands Below. Old, fallen logs lay scattered here and there, covered in bright green moss. Some were so large that the company had to detour hundreds of feet around them, or scramble awkwardly over or under. A dusting of snow had filtered to the ground, and cold water dripped steadily from the branches above. Unlike the lifeless desolation of Anauroch, the forest was filled not only with mighty trees and twining brambles, but all manner of small birds and animals. After a dozen heart-stopping starts, Halisstra soon learned to identify a number of discrete birdcalls and animal sounds and relegate them to the realm of the insignificant.
She had at first feared that she would easily lose sight of the company ahead, but away from the crowded foliage by the infrequent clearings, the underbrush consisted of ferns and other green plants rarely more than waist high. As darkness fell over the forest floor, her vision improved, and Halisstra felt more and more comfortable.
The drow marched on through the night, halting a little before daybreak to set up camp in an old ruined tower whose broken white stones were covered by moss. Smooth and delicately veined, the place showed remarkable elegance of form, and the lintel of its long-vanished door was carved in a flowering vine designclearly the work of surface elves. After Pharaun checked the place for lingering spells that could be dangerous to drow, the company made camp to pass the painful bright hours of the day. Quenthel ordered Jeggred and Pharaun to keep watch, and the others enjoyed the shade and safety provided by the partial floors and graceful walls of the ruined tower.
At sundown they ate, broke camp, and set off again, in the same order as before, marching again through the night. They passed the next two days and nights in much the same way, resting while the sun was out and traveling by night. Valas even managed to shoot a small, hoofed animal a little before dawn at the end of their third night of travel, and Halisstra was surprised to find that its meat was light and succulent, better than that of a young rothe.
Toward the end of the day the clouds returned, darker and thicker than before, and as the daylight failed and the dark elves made ready for their fourth march on the surface, a soft snow began to fall, wet and heavy. It was eerily silent, as if the entire forest held its breath to keep from intruding on the moment. Halisstra watched vigilantly behind the company, taking a dozen steps forward and turning to scan the trail behind them, sometimes walking backward for several minutes at a time, glancing to the front only to be sure of her footing. If Pharaun’s divinations were accurate, they should reach the stream at the end of that night or perhaps the next, which meant that House Jaelre and the Vhaeraunite priest were only a day beyond.