Realm Of The Underdark Part 14

"I will not do this thing," Liriel said with a regal hauteur that would have done justice to Matron Baenre herself.

"You have no choice in the matter," Matron Hinkutes'nat pointed out. "It is the part of the mistress or matron to chose the prey, and to name the terms of the hunt.

"Proceed," she said, turning to her daughter.

Mistress Xandra permitted herself a smile. "The human wizard-for such he is-will be transported to a cavern in the Dark Dominions that lie to the southwest of Menzoberranzan. You, Liriel Baenre, will be escorted to a nearby tunnel. You must hunt and destroy the human, using any weapon at your disposal. Ten dark-cycles you have to accomplish this; we will not seek youbefore this time is up.

"But you must take this key," Xandra continued as she handed a tiny golden object to the girl. "I have strung it upon a chain-keep it on your person at all times. It is not our purpose that you come to grief: with this key, you can summon immediate aid from House Shobalar, should the need arise. You have much talent, and you have been well trained," the Mistress added in a less severe tone. "We have every confidence in your success."

The older female's apparent concern for her well-being gave Liriel a glimmer of hope.

"Mistress, I cannot slay this wizard!" she said in a despairing whisper, letting her eyes speak clearly of her distress. Surely Xandra, who had trained and fostered her, would understand how she felt and would lift this burden from her!

"You will kill, or you will be killed," the Shobalar wizard proclaimed. "That is the challenge of the Blooding, and it is the reality of drow life!"

Xandra's voice was cold and even, but Liriel did not miss the glint in the wizard's red eyes. Stunned and enlightened, Liriel stared at her trusted mentor.

Kill or be killed. There could be little doubt which outcome Xandra preferred.

Liriel tore her gaze away from the vindictive crimson stare and did her best to attend to the ceremony that followed. As she stood silently through the matron's ritual blessing, the girl was struck by a strange and very vivid mental image: somewhere deep within her heart, a tiny light flickered and died-a harbinger, perhaps, of darkness to come. A moment of inexplicable sadness touched Liriel, but it was gone before she could marvel at so strange an emotion. To a young dark elf, such a vision seemed right and fitting-a cause for elation rather than regret. Soon, very soon, she would be a true drow indeed!

Chapter Five.

Kill or Be Killed.

On silent feet, Liriel eased her way down the dark tunnel. One of the gifts her father had given her were boots of elvenkind, wondrous treasures crafted of soft leather and dark-elven magic. With them, she could walk with no more noise than her own shadow.

She also wore a fine new cloak-not a piwafwi, for that uniquely drow cloak was usually worn only by those who had proven themselves by this very ritual. Of course, there were exceptions to this rule, and Liriel did indeed possess one of the magical cloaks of concealment-it played a significant role in her frequent escapes from House Shobalar-but youngling dark elves were not permitted to wear them during the Blooding. The advantage of invisibility removed most of the challenge, and was therefore deemed inappropriate for the first major kill.

Thus Liriel was plainly visible to the heat-perceptive eyes of the Underdark's many strange and deadly creatures, and therefore in constant danger.

The young drow kept keenly alert as she walked. Yet her heart was not in the hunt. She was not entirely certain she still had a heart: grief and rage had left her feeling strangely hollow.

Liriel was accustomed to betrayals both large and small, and she was still trying to a.s.similate her realization that she must shrug them off and move ahead - albeit with caution. So it had been with Bythnara, whose snippy comments and small jealousies had once pained her deeply. So it had been even with her father, who twelve years earlier had wronged Liriel more deeply than any other person had before or since.

But it would not be so with Xandra Shobalar, Liriel vowed grimly. Xandra's betrayal was different, and it would not go unremarked - or unavenged.

Vengeance was the principle pa.s.sion of the dark elves, but it was an emotion new to Liriel. She savored it as if it were a goblet of the spiced green wine she had recently tasted - bitter, certainly, but capable of sharpening the pa.s.sions and hardening resolve. Liriel was very young, and willing to acceptand overlook many things in her dark-elven kindred. This, however, was the first time she had seen the desire for her death written in another drow's eyes. Liriel understood instinctively that this could not go unpunished if she herself hoped to survive.

But at a deeper, even more personal level, the girl bitterly resented Xandra for forcing her to disregard her own deep instincts and act against her will.

Liriel rebelled bitterly against the need to submit to her Mistress's demands, yet what else could she do if she was to be accounted a true drow?

What else, indeed?

A smile slowly crept over Liriel's dark face as a solution to her dilemma began to take shape in her mind. There is much more to being a drow, her father had admonished her, than engaging in crude slaughter.

The painful weight on the young drow's chest lifted a bit, and for the first time she realized a very strange thing: she did not fear the dreaded wild Underdark. It seemed to her that this wilderness was a wondrous, fascinating place full of unexpected turns and twists. There was danger and adventure and excitement in the very air and stone. Unlike Menzoberranzan, where every bit of rock had been shaped and carved into a monument to the pride and might of the drow, out here everything was new, mysterious, and full of delightful possibilities. Here she could carve out her own place. Liriel fell suddenly, deeply, and utterly in love with this vast and untamed world.

"A grand adventure," she said softly, repeating without a trace of irony the words of her own discarded dream. A sudden smile brightened her face, and as she bestowed an affectionate pat upon an enormous, down-thrust spire of rock, she added, "The first of many!"

Without warning, a bright ball of force rounded the sharp corner of the tunnel ahead and hurtled toward her.

The battle had begun.

Training and instinct took over at once: Liriel snapped both hands up, wrists crossed and palms out. A field of resistance sprung up before her an instant before the fireball would have struck. The girl squeezed her eyes shut and tossed her head to one side as the brilliant light exploded into a sheet of magical flame.

Liriel dropped flat and rolled aside, as she'd been taught to do in such attacks. The magical s.h.i.+eld could not withstand more than one or two impacts of such power, and it was prudent to get out of the line of fire. To her astonishment, the second blast came in low and hard-and directly toward her.

Liriel leapt to her feet and dived for the far side of the tunnel. She managed to put the large stalagmite between herself and the coming blast.

The explosion rocked the tunnel and sent a shower of rock fragments cascading down upon the young drow. She coughed and spat dust, but her fingers darted undeterred through the gestures of a spell.

In response to her magic, the dust and the sulfurous smoke swirled to a central spot of the tunnel and gathered into a large globe. Liriel pointed grimly in the direction of the unseen wizard, and the floating globe obediently rounded the corner toward its prey.

She waited, hardly daring to breathe, for the next attack to come. When it did not, she began to creep slowly and cautiously around the bend. There was no sound in the tunnel ahead, other than the distant drip of water. This was promising: the globe of hot, smoky vapor had been enspelled to seek out and surround its source of origin. If all had gone well, the human wizard would have been smothered by the sulfurous by-products of his own fireball. Liriel picked up her pace. If this were so, she would have a limited amount of time to find and revive him.

The tunnel grew ever brighter as she made her way down its twisting length.

Suddenly the path dipped dramatically, and Liriel saw laid out before her a cavern that was stranger than any she had ever seen or imagined.

Luminous fungi covered much of the stone and filled the entire cave with a faint, eerie blue glow. Stalagmites and stalact.i.tes met in long, irregular pillars of stone, and large crystals embedded in them tossed off glitteringshards of light that stabbed at her eyes like tiny daggers.

At once, a brilliant ball of light flashed into being in the center of the cavern. Liriel reeled back, clutching at her blinded eyes. Her keen ears caught the whine and hiss of an approaching missile; she dropped flat as yet another fireball blazed toward her.

The fireball missed her, but barely. Heat a.s.sailed Liriel with searing pain as it pa.s.sed over her, and the smoke and stench of her own scorched hair a.s.saulted her like a blow to the gut. Coughing and gagging, she rolled aside.

She blinked rapidly as she went, trying to dispel the lingering sparks and flashes that obscured her vision.

Think, think! she admonished herself. So far she had only reacted: along that path lay certain defeat.

To give herself a bit of time, Liriel called upon her innate drow magic and dropped a globe of darkness over the magic light ahead of her. That leveled the field of battle, but it did not steal the human wizard's visual advantages: there was still plenty of light in the cavern to allow him to see.

She had not yet seen him, however.

A suspicion that had taken root in Liriel's mind with the wizard's first attack suddenly blossomed into certainty. He had antic.i.p.ated her responses; he seemed to know precisely how she would react. Perhaps he had been trained to know. Setting her jaw in grim determination, Liriel set out to learn just how well he'd been prepared.

Her hands flashed through the gestures of a spell that Gromph had taught her-a rare and difficult spell that few drow knew of and fewer still could master.

It had taken her the better part of a day to learn it, and now the effort was repaid in full.

Standing in the center of the cavern, ringed and partially s.h.i.+elded by a circle of stone pillars, stood the human. A stunned expression crossed his bearded face as he regarded his own outstretched hands. The reason for this was all too apparent: apiwafwi, which should have granted him magical invisibility, appeared suddenly on him and hung in glittering folds over his red-robed shoulders. He had not only been prepared, but equipped!

The human wizard recovered quickly from his surprise. He drew in a deep breath and spat in Liriel's direction. A dark bolt shot from his mouth, and then another. The drow's eyes widened as she beheld the two live vipers wriggling toward her with preternatural speed.

Liriel pulled two small knives from her belt and flicked them toward the nearest snake. Her blades REALMS OF THE UNDERDARK.

tumbled end-over-end, crossing the viper's neck from either side and neatly slicing the head from its body.

The beheaded length of snake writhed and looped for several moments, blocking the second viper's path long enough for Liriel to get off a second volley.

This time she threw only one knife. The blade plunged into the viper's open mouth and exploded out the back of its head with a bright burst of gore.

Liriel allowed herself a small, grim smile, and she resolved to properly thank the mercenary who'd taught her to throw!

It was a moment's delay, but even that much was too long. Already the human wizard's hands were moving through the gestures of a spell-a familiar spell.

Liriel tore a tiny dart from her weapons belt and spat upon it. In response to her unspoken command, the other needed spell component-a tiny vial of acid- rose from her open spell bag. She seized it and tossed both items into the air. Her fingers flashed through the casting, and at once a luminous streak flew to answer the one flas.h.i.+ng toward her. The acid bolts collided midway between the combatants, sending a spray of deadly green droplets sizzling off into the cavern.

The human flung out one hand. Magic darted from each of his fingertips, spinning out into a giant web as it flew. The weird blue light of the cavern glimmered along the strands and turned the sticky droplets that clung to them into gemlike things that rivaled moonstones and pearls. Liriel marveled at theweb's deadly beauty, even as it descended upon her.

A word from the drow conjured a score of giant spiders, each as large as a rothe calf. On eldritch threads, the arachnid army rose as one toward the cavern's ceiling, capturing the web and taking it with them.

Liriel planted her feet wide and sent a barrage of fireb.a.l.l.s toward the persistent human. As she expected, he cast the spell that would raise a field of resistance around himself. She recognized the gestures and the words of power as drow. This wizard had indeed been trained for this battle, and trained well!

Unfortunately for Liriel, the human had been schooled too well. The drow had hoped that her fireball storm would weaken the stone pillars surrounding the wizard, so that they might crumble and fall upon him after the magic s.h.i.+eld's power was spent. But it soon became apparent that he had placed the magical barrier in front of the stone formation, thereby undoing her strategy! His s.h.i.+eld did not give way before her magic missiles: rather, it seemed to absorb their energy, and it grew ever brighter with each fireball that struck. This was a drow counterspell, Liriel acknowledged, but it was one that she herself had never been taught!

Finally Liriel lowered her hands, drained by the sheer power of the fireb.a.l.l.s she had tossed into Xandra's magical web.

At that moment, the drow girl understood the full extent of the Shobalar wizard's treachery.

This human had been trained in the magic and tactics of Underdark warfare, and moreover, he knew enough about his drow opponent to antic.i.p.ate and counter her every spell. He had been carefully chosen and prepared - not to test her, but to kill her! Xandra Shobalar did not content herself with wis.h.i.+ng for her student's failure: she had planned for it!

Liriel knew that she had been well and thoroughly betrayed. Her only hope of defeating the human - and Xandra Shobalar - lay not in her battle magic, but in her wits.

Liriel's nimble mind flashed through the possibilities. She knew nothing of human magic, but she found it highly suspicious that this wizard cast only drow spells. He had to have had prior training in order to master such powerful magic; surely he possessed spells of his own. Why did he not use them? As she studied the human, the reason for this suddenly became apparent to the drow girl. Her fingers closed around the key that Xandra had given her, and with one sharp tug she tore it from the thin golden chain she'd tied to her belt.

Wrath burned bright in Liriel's golden eyes as she reached for the green vial that her father had given her. Trapping the wizard would not be easy, but she would find a way.

Liriel pulled off the stopper and dropped the key inside. But before she put the cap back into place, she snapped off the mithril needle and tossed it aside.

Kill or be killed, Mistress Xandra had said.

So be it.

Chapter Six.

Recurring Nightmares.

Tresk Mulander squinted through his glowing s.h.i.+eld toward the s.h.i.+mmering image of his young drow opponent. So far, all had gone as antic.i.p.ated. The girl was good, just as Mistress Shobalar had claimed. She even had a few unantic.i.p.ated skills, such as her deadly aim with a tossed knife.

Well enough. Mulander had a few surprises of his own.

It was true that Xandra Shobalar had raped his mind, plundered his vast mental store of necromantic spells. There was one spell, however, that the drow wizard could not touch: it was stored not in his mind, but in his flesh.

Mulander was a Researcher, always seeking new magic where lesser men saw only death. Moldering corpses, even the offal of the slaughterhouse, could be used to create wondrous and fearsome creatures utterly under his control. But hisstrangest and most secret creation was waiting to be unleased.

In a bit of unliving flesh-a tiny dark mole that clung to his body by the thinnest tendril of skin, he had stored a creature of great power. To bring it into existence, he had only to make that final separation from his living body.

The wizard worked his thumb and forefinger beneath the golden collar.

Ironically, the enspelled mole was hidden beneath the magical fetter!

Mulander twisted off the bit of flesh, reveling in the sharp stab of pain-for such was a miniature death, and death was the ultimate source of his power. He tossed the tiny mole to the cavern floor and watched with sharp antic.i.p.ation as the contained monster took shape.

Many of the Red Wizards could create darkenbeasts: fearsome flying creatures made by twisting the bodies of living animals into magical atrocities.

Mulander had gone one better. The creature that rose up before him had been fas.h.i.+oned from his own flesh and his own nightmares.

Mulander had begun with the most dreadful thing he knew-a replica of his long-dead wizard mother-and added to it enormous size and the deadliest features of every predator that ever had haunted his dreams. The tattered, batlike wings of an abyssal denizen sprouted from the creature's shoulders, and a raptor's talons curved from its human hands. The thing had vampiric fangs, the haunches and hind legs of a dire wolf, and a wyvern's poisoned tail. Plates of dragonlike armor-in Red Wizard crimson, of course-covered its feminine torso. Only the eyes, the same hard green as his own, had been left untouched. Those eyes settled upon the drow girl-the hunter who had suddenly become prey-and they filled with a brand of malice that was only too familiar to Mulander. An involuntary s.h.i.+ver ran through the powerful wizard who had summoned the monster, a response engraved upon his soul by his own wretched, long-gone childhood.

The monster crouched. Its wolflike feet tamped down, and the muscles of its powerful haunch bunched in preparation for the spring. Mulander did not bother to dispel the magical s.h.i.+eld. The monster retained enough of a resemblance to his mother for him to enjoy its roar of pain as the force field shattered upon impact.

Enjoyable, too, was the wide-eyed shock on the face of the young drow. She regained her composure with admirable speed and sent a pair of knives spinning into the monster's face. Mulander knew a moment's supreme elation when the blades sank into those too-familiar green eyes.

The monster shrieked with rage and anguish, raking its face with owl-like talons in an effort to dislodge the knives. Long b.l.o.o.d.y furrows crisscrossed its face before the drow's knives finally clattered to the cave's floor.

Blinded and enraged, the creature advanced toward the dark-elven girl, its dripping hands wildly groping the air.

The drow s.n.a.t.c.hed a bola from her belt, whirled it briefly and let fly. The weapon spun toward the blinded creature, wrapped tightly around its neck.

Gurgling, the monster tore at the leather thongs. A sharp snap resounded through the cavern, quickly followed by a grating roar. Sniffing audibly as it sought its prey, Mulander's monster dived with outstretched talons toward the drow girl.

But the drow rose into the air, swift and graceful as a dark hummingbird, and the monster fell facedown upon the cavern floor. It quickly rolled onto its back and leapt up onto its feet. A thunderous thumping rush filled the cavern as its batlike wings began to beat. It rose slowly, awkwardly, and began to pursue the drow.

The young wizard tossed a giant web at the monster; the creature tore through it with ease. She bombarded it with a barrage of death darts, but the weapons bounced harmlessly off the creature's plated body.

The drow summoned a bolt of glistening black lightning and hurled it like a javelin. To Mulander's dismay, the bolt slashed downward through one leathery wing.

Shrieking with rage, the monster traced a tight spiral to the cavern floor andlanded with a stone-shaking crash.

No matter: the magical battle had taken its toll on the young elfmaid. She sank slowly toward the cavern floor, and toward the jaws of the wounded but waiting monster.

Her gqlden eyes grew frantic and darted toward Mulander's gloating face.

"Enough!" she shrieked. "I know what you need-dispel the creature, and I will give you what you want without further battle. This I swear, by all that is dark and holy!"