F O U R (3 page)

well."

"Even now, the Academy is warded by all the old enchantments."

"I'

1 won’ll dissolve the barriers for you.

"Nonsense. Yt go! ou've submitted and must obey.  Stop blathering before I lose

m

He hefted the athamy  patience."    e, and Beradax seemed to slum

"Very well, wizard, send m          p.e  and be damned. I'll kill her as I will one day

butcher you.""You can't  go quite yet. For all your bluste

r,  you're the lowliest kind of nether

spirit, a grub crawling on the floor of Hell, but tonight you'll wear the form  of a genuine demon, to m

ake the proper impression on the residents of the

temple."

"No?

Gromph lifted his staff in both hands  and shouted words  of power.  Beradax howled in agony as her mass of eyeba

quite diff              lls flowed and humped into something erent.Afterward, Gromph descended to his office. He had an a

different kind of agent.                  ppointment with a

As Pharaun Mizzrym and Ryld Argith strolled through the cool air,  fresher than that pent up in Melee-Magthere, the latter looked about Tier Breche, realized he hadn't bothered to set foot outside in dawas as spectacular as ever      ys, and rather wondered why, for the view .Tier Breche, home to the  Academy since that institution's founding, was a large enormous stalagmites and other masses of cavern where the labor of countless spell casrocks into thters, artisans, and slaves had turned T                        ree extraordinary citadels. o  the east rose pyramidal Melee-Magthere, where Ryld and others like him turned callow young drow into warriors.spired tower of Sorcere, where Pharaun  and his colleagues taught wizardry By the western wall stood the many,  while to the north crouched the largest and most imposing school of all, Arach-Tinilith,

Richard Lee Byers

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War Of The Spider Queen

Book 1

Dissolution

a temple built in the eight-limbed shape of a spider. Inside, the priestesses of Lolth, goddess of arachnids, chaos, assassins

maidens to serve the  deity in their turn.   , and the drow race, trained dark elf

And yet, magnificent as was Tier Breche, was only a detail in a scene of far great  considered in the proper context, it

cavern, a mere nook opening pa    er splendor. The Academy sat in a side primary chamber was two miles wide and a thousand feet rtway up the wall of a trulhigh, and filling all that y prodigious vault. The

space was Menzoberranzan.On the cavern floor

calcite, shone blue, green, castles, hewn like the  Academy from natural protrusions of mansions served to delineate the plateau , and violet amid the darkness. The phosphorescent of Qu'ellarz'

o

those Houses nearly as powerful made their homes; the Wrl, where the Baenre and est Walesser but still well-established noble             ll district, where

dwellers on Qu'ellarz'        families schemed how to supplant the orl; athe inhabitants of W   nd Narbondellyn, where parvenus plotted to replace

est Wall. Still ot

the lofty ceiling.          her palaces, cut from stalactites, hung from The nobles of Menzoberranzan had set

immensity, their graceful lines, and the ornamentation sculptedtheir homes glowing to display their about their walls. Most of the carvings featured spiders and webs, scarcely surprising, R

yld supposed, in a realm where Lolth was th

clergy ruled in the temporal sense as well as the spiritual one.e only deity anyone worshiped, and her

so he shifted his attention toFor some reason, Ryld found the persistence of the motif vaguely oppressive,

make out the frigid depths  of the lake called Donigarten other details. If a drow had good at the narrow eastern end eyes, he could of the vault. Cattle-like beasts called

them lived on an island in  the center of the lake.rothe and the goblin slaves who herded

And there was Narbondel itself, of course. It was the only piece of un-worked

stone remaining on the cavern floorway to the ceiling. At the start of ever, a thick, irregular column extending all the

cast a spell into the base of it, heating  it until the rock glowed. Since the radiance y day,  the Archmage of Menzoberranzan rose through the stone at a constant rate,

city to tell the time.          its progress enabled the residents of the

nowhere near as grand a sightIn their way,  the Master of Melee-Magthere supposed, he a as the vista before them   nd Pharaun were, if virtue of the contrasts between them.  W      , at least a peculiar one by

foppish, elegant attire, and intricate coif ith his slender build, graceful manner,a sophisticated noble and  wizard should be. Rfure, the Mizzrym mage epitomized what

yld, on  the other hand was an

burlyoddity, broad-shouldered frame better suited to. He was huge for a member of his  sex, bigger than many females, with a a brutish human than a dark elf. He

preference to light, supple mail. The armocompounded his strangeness by wearing a dwarven breastplate and vambraces in askance, but he'd  found that it maximized  his efr sometimes caused others to eye him fectiveness as a warrior

he'd  always believed, was what really mattered.           , and that,

Ryld and Pharaun walked to the edge  of Tier Breche and sat down with their

legs dangling over the sheer drop-off. Thof the staircase that connected the Academy with the cityey were only a few yards from the head below

those steps, beside the twin pillars, a            ,  and at the top of Melee-Magthere—stood watch.  R    pair of sentries—last-year students of

yld thought that he and Pharaun were distant enough for privacy if they kept their voices low

.

Low,  but not silent, curse it. Ever the sensualist, the mage sat savoring the

Richard Lee Byers

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War Of The Spider Queen

Book 1

Dissolution

panorama below him, obviouslywhere R

yld's  mouth had begun to tighten

prolonging his contemplawith impatience, and never mind that tion well past the point

on the walk up, he'd  admired the view himself."We drow don't love one another

,  except in the carnal sense," Pharaun remarked at last, "but I think one could almost love Menzoberranzan itself, don'

t

you? Or at least take a profound pride in it."R

"Yyou sound less than rhapsodic. Feeling mld shrugged. "If you say so."       o

"I'                  rose again today?"m  all right. Better

"Y        ,  at least, now that I see you still alive."ou assumed Gromph had executed me? Does my  offense seem

then? Have you never annihilated a single specim       so grievous, ecadets?"                     n of our tender young

inherently dangerous. Accidents happen,"That depends on how you look at it," Ryld replied. "Combat training is they were accidents occurring during the c but no one has ever questioned that ourse of Melee-Magthere'

s  legitimate

business. The goddess knows, I never lost sefrom  Houses with seats on the Council. How does such a thing happen?"ven in a single hour, two of them

"I needed seven assistants with a degree of magical expertise to help me

perform  the summwould have joined the experimoning ritual. Had I called upon full-fledged wizards, they

ent as equal partners. They would have emer

from  the ritual possessed of the sam                 ged e

equally able to conjure and control the  Sarthos demnewly discovered secrets as mon. Naturally I wished to yself, avoid such a sharing, so I opted to use apprentices instead."

Pharaun grinned and continued, "In retrospect, I must admit that it mahave been a good idea. The fiend didn't even require seven heartbeats to smy not ash

them  all."

An updraft wafted past Ryld's  face, carrying the constant murmur of the

metropolis below.  He caught its scent as  well, a complex odor made of cooking

smoke, incense, perfume, the stink of

things.               unwashed thralls, and a thousand other "Why perform  such a dangerous ritual in the first place?" he asked.

Pharaun sm

"To becom iled as if it was a silly question. Perhaps it was.e  more powerful, of course,"  the wizard answered. "At present, I'm

one of the thirty most puissant mages in the city. If I controlled the Sarthos demon, I'd be one of the five. Perhaps  even the first, mightier than dreary old

Gromph himself."

I see.

Ambition was an essential part of the drow character, and Ryld sometimes

envied Pharaun his still-passionate investmewarrior supposed that he him       nt in the struggle for status. The

self had  achieved the pinnacle of his ambitions

when he became one of the lesser masters of Melee-Magthere, for certainly he,

born a commoner,  could never climb any higher.  From          d

stopped peering hungrily upward and concentrated on looking down, to guard that day forward, he'against all those who wished to kill him

Pharaun was a Master of Sorcere as R in hopes of ascending to his position.

but perhaps, being of noble blood, Pharaun really did aspire to assassinate the yld was a Master of Melee-Magthere, formidable Gromph Baenre and seize his office. Even if he didn't, wizards, by

the nature of their intricate and clandestine art, maintained a rivalry that

encompassed more than who was a master

House, and who was neither. They also  cared about such things as who could , who was chief wizard in a great

Richard Lee Byers

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