F O U R (55 page)

"I don't know that, either," said the Mistress of Arach-Thave an idea, but wasn'                inilith. She actually did t  sure of it yet. "Let's  move on."Fifteen minutes later

,  a runner,  dispatched from  a squad stationed in the thirdleg of the spider, found Quenthel to report that one of her comrades had gone

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mad.  Quenthel  went  to  see  for  herself,  half  expecting  more  gouged  eyes  and

bloody writing.But the new dem

entia took a somewhat different form. The victim  had taken

shelter,  if that was the right word for it, in a small library devoted, for the most

part, to musty treatises on warfare in all its aspects. She sat on the  floor  in  the

herself.corner defined by two tall sandstone bookshelves, rocking and whimpering to

Quenthel stooped, jammed her fist under the girl's  chin and forced up her head.

Rilrae'"Rilrae Zolond! What ails you? What happened?"s face was blank and seemingly devoid of comprehension. Tears flowed

down her cheeks. She smelled of mucus, and the breath snuffled in her nose.  She

didn't answer Quenthel's  question, just made a feeble, ineffectual  effort  to  turn

her face away.The mistress sighed and let her go. She'd seen cases like Rilrae before,

generally in some  dungeon or torture  chamber.experienced som                  The junior priestess had

ething sufficiently unpleasant to drive her deep inside her own

mi

the proper equipmnd. Had Quenthel still possessed her Loent, she might have been able to shake Rilrae out of her lth-granted powers, or been carrying delirium

,  but as mainformation. Annoyed, the mtters stood, the useless creature wouldn'i             t be providing any

Ril             stress nearly vented her frustration by giving rae  a  stroke  from her  whip,  but  she  didn't  want  to  appear  rattled  or  upset  in

the eyes of her followers.She led the patrol on and eventually found a suicide sprawled in the corrid

or

with froth on her lips and an empty poison bottle still clutched in her hand.

down. Glaring and twitching, she unrolled a parchmOne of the second-year students reeled from  a doorway a few yards farther ent, possibly one Quenthelherself had dispensed from  the tem

ple armoThe Baenre recognized the trigger phrase of a spell intended try, and began shouting the words.

o summon a certain

type of plague demon.She snatched out her hand crossbow and pulled the trigger

.  Others did the

same. The flurry of poisoned darts punctured the scroll and the novice as well.

She  fell  onto  her  back,  cracking  her  head  against  the  calcite  floor.

a syllable or two from  activation, dissipated its power in a h    The spell, still armless sizzle of redlight.

Quenthel reflected that a pattern was becoming clear. Some  power struck afem

ale and more or less drove her mad. She then separated herself from  her

companions, either making an excuse or just running off, the better to manifest

her lunacy in one bizarre behavior or another.It was odd that the girls'

companions never even noticed the attack occurrin

odd, too, that the demon assaulted only one m              g,ember of a group and  not all—orthat it attacked any

,  given that the previous intruders had only attacked  thoselesser priestesses who attem

pted to hinder them.The unseen demon's search pattern was equally peculiar

.  The location and

sequences of its attacks seemed to indicate that the being was bouncinerratically around from  one end of the tem                g

ple to the other."Mistress," said Yngoth, "I know what'

s  happening."

"As do I," Quenthel said. "I've me         ing it." She turned toMinolin. "Fey-Branche."       rely been confirm

"Yes?" Minolin asked.

"You're in command of these others. You will all evacuate the temple. Get the

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sane people out, and the mad ones, too, but only if you can do it quickly."

she said. "WThe Fey-Branche princess blinked. "Mise're not afraid to stand with you."tress, we believe in your authority,"

"I'm  touched," Quenthel sneered, "but this isn't a test. I want you to

g°-""Exalted Mother," Jyslin said, "what's happening? Which demon inv

aded

the temple tonight? The assassin? Did it poison our sisters to make them goinsane?"

"No," the Baenre said, "not in the way you mean.""Then—"

"Go!" Quenthel raged. "Minolin, I told you to take them out of here.""Y

The Fey-Branche hastily formes, Mistress!"        ed them  up and led them  away. The corridor

seemed very quiet once they'd  disappeared.

"Y"Mistress," said Hsiv, "was it wise to send them  away?"

The viper flinched. "No!"ou question my  judgment?" Quenthel asked."You sought to protect m

e, so I'll let it go. This time. I dism

because they can't  help m                  issed the girls e, and I'd like to have some  underlings left when thisnonsense is over "

.

"They might have guarded you from  another would-be mortal killer.""We can hope that if Minolin gets everyone out, there won't be any m

ore.

Besides, why in the name  of the Demonweb did I create
 
you?"
Greenish candlelight rippling on black  scales, Yngoth reared and twisted a

round

to look Quenthel in the face."Mistress," the viper hissed, "we are  rebuked. W

e'll keep watch. What w

do?"                               ill you

"Wait, and prepare myself."

She found a classroom  possessed of a reasonably comfortable instructor's

chair,  the high limestone back carved in

spider               to the stylized shape of a stubby-legged white bone from. She sat down, laid the whip at her feet, rem her pouch, and set it in her lap, holding it at either end.oved a thin shaft of polished

Closing her eyes, she commenced a breathing exercise. Within a heartbeat ortwo, she slipped into a m

editative trance. She thought she would need the utmost

clarity to contend with the night's  demon, because Jyslin had  guessed  wrong.  The intruder didn't encapsulate the art of the assassin,

for that m                  nor the spirit of the drow race, atter.  It embodied the concept of evil.

The traitor elves of the World Above professed to hate evil. In reality

Quenthel thought, they feared what they didn't understand. Thanks to the , tutelage of Lolth, the drow did, and having understood it, they emb

raced it.

For evil, like chaos, was one of the fundamental forces of Creation, manifestin both the m

acrocosm  of the wide world and the microcosm  of the individual

soul. As chaos gave rise to possibility and imagination, so evil engenderedstrength and will. It m

ade sentient beings  aspire to wealth and  power. It enabled

them  to subjugate, kill, rob, and deceive. It allowed them  to do whatever was

required to better themselves with never a crippling flicker of remorse.Thus, evil was responsible for the existence of civilization and for every g

reat

deed any hero had ever performed. Without it, the peoples of the world wouldlive like animals. It was amazing that so

many races, blinded by false religions

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and philosophies, had lost sight of this self-evident truth. In contrast, the darkelves had based a society on it, and that was one of th

e points of superiority that

served to exalt them  above all other races.

Paradoxically, though, a touch of the pure black heart of this darkest of allpowers could be deadly, just as the highest expression of comforting w

armth

was the fire that consumed. Even folk who spent their lives in the adoration of

evil generally had no real comprehension below and beyond the m        of the endless burning sea of it raging

aterial world, and that was just as well. Even a fleeting

glimpse could convey secrets too huge and fearsome for the average  mind.  Its

touch  could  annihilate  sanity  and  even  identity.  The  threat  was  suff

that  the                           iciently  grave majority  of  spellcasters  hesitated  to  regard  the  force  directly.  They

preferred  to  treat  with  evil  at  one  remove,  by  dealing  with  the  devils  and  undead that embodied it.

But it appeared that Quenthel's  unknown enemy was the exception. He'd

therein.dipped right into the virulent fountainhead  and drawn forth a power that dwelled

That demon was presently intangible, a creature of pure mi

it seemed to move and act so erratically; it was passing not through physical nd. That was why

space, a medium  in which it didn't exist, but from  consciousness to consciousness, head to head. And sim

ply through that intimate contact it poisoned its hosts, even if it didn't particularly intend to. It suffused them  with a

darkness too big and too powerful for their little minds to sustainIt was searching for Quenthel all the  while, to show her the m

ost profound

malevolence of all.

She prayed she could endure the venom  for just a second, until she worked theXorlarrin'