Realm Of The Underdark Part 15

A smile of malevolent satisfaction crossed the Red Wizard's face. He trusted no oath from any drow, but he knew that this one's battle spells were nearly exhausted. Nor was he was surprised that she had lost heart for the battle.

The girl was pathetically young- she looked to be about twelve or thirteen by the measure of humankind. Despite her fell heritage and magical prowess, she was still a callow la.s.s and thus no match for such as he!

"Toss the key to me," he told her.

"The monster," she pleaded.

Mulander hesitated, then shrugged. Even without the magical construct, he was more than the equal of this elven child. With a flick of one hand, he sent the monster back into whatever nightmares had sp.a.w.ned it. But with the other, he summoned a fireball large enough to hurl the drow against the far wall of the cavern and leave nothing of her but a grease spot. He saw by the fear in her eyes that she understood her position.

"Here-it's in here," the girl said frantically, reaching into a pouch at her waist and fumbling about. Her efforts were hampered by her own fear: her breath came in exhausted little gasps and sobs; her thin shoulders shook with terrified weeping.

Finally she took out a tiny silken bag and held it high. "The key is in here.

Take it, please, and let me go!"

The Red Wizard deftly caught the bag she tossed him, then shook a small glistening sphere into his palm. It was a protective bubble-a bit of magic easily cast and easily dispelled-which contained a delicate vial of translucent green gla.s.s. And within that was the tiny golden key that promised freedom and power.

Had he glanced at the drow child, Mulander might have wondered why her eyes were dry despite her weeping, why she no longer seemed to have any difficulty maintaining her ability to levitate. Had he taken his gaze from that longed-for key, he might have recognized the look of cold triumph in her golden eyes. He had seen that expression once before, briefly, on the face of his own apprentice.

But pride had blinded him to treachery once before, and had lured him into a mistake that had condemned him to a sentence of death, a sentence that had been commuted into lifelong slavery.

When the understanding of this finally came, Mulander knew that this mistake would truly be his last.

Chapter Seven.

Ritual.

Liriel Baenre returned to Menzoberranzan after a mere two days, battered and bereft of a bit of her abundant white hair, but grimly triumphant. Or so everyone a.s.sumed. Not until the ceremony was she required to give formal proof of her kill.

All of House Shobalar gathered in the throne room of Matron Hinkutes'nat for the coming-of-age ceremony. It was required, but most came anyway for the vicarious pleasure to be had in witnessing the grisly relics, and to relive the pride and pleasure of their own first kills. Such moments reminded all present of what it meant to be drow.

At Narbondel, the darkest hour, Liriel stepped forward to claim her place among her people. To Xandra Shobalar, her Mistress and mentor, she was required to present the ritual proof.

For a long moment, Liriel held the older wizard's gaze, staring into Xandra'scrimson orbs with eyes that were cold and fathomless-full of unspoken power and deadly promise. This, too, was something she had learned from her dreaded father.

When at last the older wizard's gaze faltered uncertainly, Liriel bowed deeply and reached into the bag at her waist. She took from it a small green object and held it high for all to see. There were murmurs as some of the Shobalar wizards recognized the artifact for what it was.

"You surprise me, child," Xandra said coldly. "You who were antic.i.p.ating a 'gallant hunt,' to trap and slay your prey with such a device!"

"A child no more," Liriel corrected her. A strange smile crossed her face, and with a quick, vicious movement, she threw the vial to the floor.

The crystal shattered, a delicate, tinkling sound that echoed long in the stunned silence that followed-for standing before the Mistress of Magic, his green eyes glowing with malevolence, was the human wizard. He was very much alive, and in one hand he held the golden collar that had imprisoned him to Xandra's will.

With a speed that belied his years, the human conjured a crimson sphere of light and hurled it, not at Xandra, but at the dark-elven male who stood guard at the rear door. The hapless drow shattered into b.l.o.o.d.y shards. Before anyone could draw breath, the bits of elven flesh whirled into the air and began to take on new and dreadful shapes.

For many moments, everyone in the throne room was busy indeed. The Shobalar wizards and priestesses hurled spells, and, with arrows and swords, the fighters battled the winged creatures that had been given birth by their drow comrade's death.

At last, there was only Xandra and the wizard, standing nearly toe to toe and blazing with eldritch light as their spells attacked and riposted with the speed and verve of a swordmasters' dual. Every eye in the throne room, drow and slave alike, was fixed upon the deadly battle, and all were lit with vicious excitement as they awaited the outcome.

Finally, one of the Red Wizard's spells slipped past Xandra's defenses: a daggerlike stab of light sliced the drow's face from cheekbone to jaw. The flesh parted in a gaping wound, deep enough to reveal the bones beneath.

Xandra let out a wail that would have shamed a banshee, and with a speed that rivaled that of a weapon master's deathblow, she lashed back. Pain, desperation, and wrath combined to fuel a blast of magic powerful enough to send a thunderous, shuddering roar through the stohe chamber.

The human caught the full force of the attack. Like a loosed arrow, his smoking body hurtled up and back. He hit the far wall near the ceiling and slid down, leaving a rapidly-cooling streak on the stone. There was a hole the size of a dinner plate where his chest had been, and his sodden robes were a slightly brighter shade of crimson.

Xandra, too, crumpled, utterly exhausted by the momentous spell battle, and further weakened by the copious flow of blood that spilled from her torn face.

Drow servants rushed to attend her, and her sister clerics gathered around to murmur spells of healing. Through it all, Liriel stood before the matron's throne, her face set in a mask of faint, cynical amus.e.m.e.nt, and her eyes utterly cold.

When at last the Mistress of Magic had recovered enough breath for speech, she hauled herself into a sitting position and leveled a shaking finger at the young wizard. "How do you dare commit such an outrage!" she sputtered. "The rite has been profaned!"

"Not so," Liriel said coolly. "You stipulated that the wizard could be slain with any weapon of my choice. The weapon I chose was you."

A second stunned silence descended upon the chamber. It was broken by a strange sound, one that no one there had ever heard before or had ever expected to hear: The Matron Mother Hinkutes'nat Alar Shobalar was laughing.

It was a rusty sound, to be sure, but there was genuine amus.e.m.e.nt in the matron's voice and in her crimson eyes."This defies all the laws and customs," Xandra began angrily.

The matron cut her off with an imperious gesture. "The rite of blooding has been fulfilled," Hinkutes'nat proclaimed, "for its purpose is to make a true drow of a youngling dark elf. Evidence of a devious mind serves this purpose as well as b.l.o.o.d.y hands."

Ignoring her glowering daughter, the matron turned to Liriel. "Well done! By all the power of this throne and this house, I proclaim you a true drow, a worthy daughter of Lloth! Leave your childhood behind, and rejoice in the dark powers that are our heritage and our delight!"

Liriel accepted the ritual welcome-not with a deep bow this time, but with a slight incline of her head. She was a child no longer, and as a n.o.ble female of House Baenre, she was never to bow to a drow of lesser rank. Gromph had schooled her in such matters, drilling her until she understood every shade and nuance of this complicated protocol. He had impressed upon her that this ceremony marked not only her departure from childhood, but her full acceptance into the Baenre clan. All that stood between her and both these honors were the ritual words of acceptance that she must speak.

But Liriel was not quite finished. Following an impulse that she only dimly understood, she crossed the dais to the place where a defeated Xandra sat slumped, submitting glumly to the continued ministrations of the House Shobalar priestesses.

Liriel stooped so that she was at eye level with her former mentor. Slowly she extended her hand and gently cupped the older drow's chin-a rare gesture that was occasionally used to comfort or caress a child, or, more often, to capture the child's attention before dictating terms. It was unlikely that Xandra, in her pain-ridden state, would have consciously attached this meaning to her former student's gesture, but it was clear that she instinctively grasped the nuance. She flinched away from Liriel's touch, and her eyes were pure malevolence.

The girl merely smiled. Then, suddenly, she slid her palm up along the jawline of Xandra's wounded cheek, gathering in her cupped hand some of the blood that stained the wizard's face.

With a single quick movement, Liriel rose to her feet and turned to face the watchful matron. Deliberately she smeared Xandra's blood over both hands, front and back, and then she presented them to Matron Hinkutes'nat.

"The ritual is complete; I am a child no more, but a drow," Liriel proclaimed.

The silence that followed her words was long and impending, for the implications of her action went far beyond the limits of propriety and precedence.

At last Matron Hinkutes'nat inclined her head-but not in the expected gesture of completion. The Shobalar matriarch added the subtle nuance that transformed the regal gesture into the salute exchanged between equals. It was a rare tribute, and rarer still was the amused understanding-and the genuine respect-in the spidery female's eyes.

All of which struck the young drow as highly ironic. Although it was clear that Hinkutes'nat applauded Liriel's gesture, she herself was not entirely certain why she had done what she did.

This question plagued Liriel throughout the celebration that traditionally followed the rite of pa.s.sage ceremony. The spectacle provided by her Blooding had been unusually satisfying to the attending drow, and the revelry that it inspired was raucous and long. For once Liriel entered into festivities with less than her usual gusto, and she was not at all sorry when the last bell signaled the end of the night.

Chapter Eight.

Her Father's Daughter.

The summons from the Narbondellyn district came early the next day. This time, Gromph Baenre sent word that Liriel's belongings were to be packed up and sent after her.

The young drow received this information stoically. In truth, Liriel did notregret her removal from House Shobalar. Perhaps she did not understand the full meaning of her own Blooding ceremony, but she knew with certainly that she could no longer remain in the same complex as Xandra Shobalar.

Liriel's reception at the archmage's mansion was about what she had expected.

Servants met her and showed her to her apartment-a small but lavish suite that boasted a well-equipped library of spellbooks and scrolls. Apparently her father intended for her to continue her wizardly education. But there was no sign of Gromph, and the best the servants could do for Liriel was to a.s.sure her that the archmage would send for her when she was wanted.

And so it was that the newly initiated drow spent her first darkcycle alone, the first of what she suspected would be many such days and nights. Liriel found that the solitude was painfully difficult, and that the silent hours crept by.

After several futile attempts at study, the weary girl at last took to her bed. For hours she stared at the ceiling and longed for the oblivion of slumber. But her mind was too full, and her thoughts too confused, for sleep to find her.

Oddly enough, Liriel felt less triumphant than she should have. She was alive, she had pa.s.sed the test of the Blooding, she had repaid Xandra's treachery with public humiliation, she had even devised a way to keep from slaying the human wizard.

Why was it, then, that she felt his blood on her hands as surely as if she'd torn out his heart with her own fingernails? And what was this soul-deep sadness, this dark resignation? Though she had no name to give this emotion, Liriel suspected that it would ever after cast a shadow upon her blithe spirit.

The hours pa.s.sed, and the distant tolling of Narbondel signaled that the darkest hour was once again upon Menzoberranzan. It was then that the summons finally came; a servant bid Liriel to dress and await the archmage in his study.

Suddenly Liriel was less than anxious to face her drow sire. What would Gromph have to say about her unorthodox approach to the Blooding hunt and ceremony?

During her three days of preparation, the archmage had repeatedly expressed concern about her judgment and ambition, p.r.o.nouncing her too trusting and carefree, and he had wondered at the strange bias of her character. It seemed likely to her that he would not approve.

Liriel did as she was bid and hastened to her father's sanctum. She had not long to wait before Gromph appeared, still wearing the wondrous, glittering piwafwi that held an a.r.s.enal of magical weapons, and that proclaimed his power and his high office. The archmage acknowledged her presence with a curt nod and then sat down behind his table.

"I have heard what transpired at your ceremony," he began.

"The ritual was fulfilled," Liriel said earnestly-and a trifle defensively. "I might not have shed blood, but Matron Hinkutes'nat accepted my efforts!"

"More than accepted," the archmage said dryly. "The Shobalar matron is quite impressed with you. And more importantly, so am I."

Liriel absorbed this in silence. Then, suddenly, she blurted out, "Oh, but I wish I understood why!"

Gromph lifted one brow. "You really must learn to speak with less than complete candor," he advised her. "But in this case, no harm is done. Indeed, your words only confirm what I had suspected; you acted partly by design, but partly by instinct. This is indeed gratifying."

"Then you're not angry?" Liriel ventured. When the archmage sent her an inquiring look, she added, "I thought that you would be furious upon hearing that I did not actually kill the human."

Gromph was silent a long moment. "You did something far more important: you fulfilled both the spirit and the letter of the Blooding ritual, in layers of subtle complexity that did credit to you and to your house. The human wizard is dead-that much was a needed formality. Using Xandra Shobalar as a tool was a clever twist. But was.h.i.+ng your hands in her blood was brilliant!""Thank you," Liriel said, in a tone so incongruously glum that it surprised a chuckle from the archmage.

"You still do not understand. Very well, I will speak plainly. The human wizard was never your enemy; Xandra Shobalar was your enemy! You recognized that, you turned her plot against her, and you proclaimed a blood victory. And in doing so, you demonstrated that you have learned what it is to be a true drow."

"But I did not kill," Liriel said thoughtfully. "And why is it that, although I did not kill, I feel as if I had?"

'^fou might not have actually shed blood, but the ritual of the Blooding has done its intended work all the same," the archmage a.s.serted.

Liriel considered this, and suddenly she knew her father's words as truth. Her innocence was gone, but pride and power, treachery, intrigue, survival, victory- all of these things she knew intimately and well.

"A true drow," she repeated in a tone that was nine parts triumph and one portion regret. She took a deep breath and looked up into Gromph's eyes-and into a mirror.

For the briefest of moments, Liriel glimpsed a flicker of poignant sorrow in the archmage's eyes, like the glint of gold s.h.i.+ning through a deep layer of ice. It came and departed so quickly Liriel doubted that Gromph was even aware of it; after all, several centuries of cold and calculating evil lay between him and his own rite of pa.s.sage. If he remembered that emotion at all, he was no longer able to reach into his soul and bring it forth. Liriel understood, and at last she had a name to give the final, missing element that defined a true drow: Despair.

"Congratulations," the archmage said in a voice laced with unconscious irony.

"Thank you," his daughter responded in kind.

SEA OF GHOSTS.

Roger E. Moore

The disaster went unrecognized that evening by all who dwelt on the plains of the Eastern Shaar, who heard only the rattling of pottery on wooden shelves or soothed only the skittishness of tethered horses. A hunter lowered his bow, head c.o.c.ked to catch a rumbling that frightened off his prey. A sorceress in a stone tower frowned, distracted from a mildewed tome by a vibration that caused the candle flames in the room to dance. An old shepherd sitting cross-legged on a rock looked up from the flute he had carved, surprised by distant thunder from an empty red sky. The sun flowed beneath the horizon.

An hour later, all was forgotten.

Far beneath the lazy gra.s.s of the Eastern Shaar, unseen by the rising moon, was a measureless maze of dripping caverns and dusty halls. Through this stupendous realm, a subterranean river hurled along a pa.s.sage it had carved through a thousand miles of cold rock. Called the River Raurogh by dwarves who, over long centuries, had mapped its dark twists and turns, the channel descended through layer after layer of stone at a steady pace toward an unknown end.

Cautious dwarves slowly charted the river's course, probing for whirlpools, low ceilings, rapids, flesh-eating emerald slime, and unwholesome beasts that welcomed a change in their diet of blind, transparent fish. Foolish dwarves cast off in heavy rafts with magical lights fore and aft, determined to learn the river's secrets in a fraction of the time. Four out of five cautious dwarves came home to make their reports; only one in three foolish dwarves did the same. The cautious dwarves drew reliable maps. The foolish dwarves gave birth to legends.

It was a foolish dwarf, battered and wet, who returned to tell of the Deepfall at the Raurogh's end, which had claimed his eight companions and their raft.

It had undoubtedly claimed many rafts before theirs. Other dwarves soon dug out a pa.s.sage from a nearby cavern to the Deepfall, where they put down their tools and marveled at the sight. The long tunnel carved by the River Raurogh here opened into a t.i.tanic domed chamber splashed in scarlet and ocher hues. Athousand long stalact.i.tes and glittering mineral curtains hung from the dome like diamond chandeliers in an emperor's palace. The ancient silo, well over two hundred feet across, dropped away into nothingness. No sounds arose from the black depths to indicate that the cascade had found its bottom.

Seeing a natural ledge leading into the silo by the chiseled opening, a foolish dwarf soon edged out on hands and knees, bearing a short staff upon which a light-bearing spell had been cast. He looked up first, noting that between the brilliant formations on the ceiling was a dense network of narrow cracks looking a bit like a crude giant spider's web. Most of the cracks were filled in with mineral draperies, but their cause was still apparent. The entire ceiling, to an unknown height, had begun to separate from the rock above it.

The dwarf judged after a minute that the roof was still centuries away from yielding to gravity, and he worried about it no more.

The dwarf then looked over the ledge, his illuminated stick held aloft, and stared down into the abyss. His wisdom overcome by curiosity, he cast the enchanted staff over the edge and watched it fall until it was a spray-dimmed twinkle that was gone from view between one eye blink and the next. He lost track of the time over which the light fell; the depth into which he peered was beyond imagining. When the dwarf returned to his companions, it was deemed best to depart from the region in haste, in case an unwelcome being far down the shaft made its way up to investigate the source of the falling light.

Nothing ever did, for which all were thankful, but the legend of the Deepfall spread and bewitched many a dwarf who heard of it.

In a short time, a hundred dwarves migrated from the crowded caverns of Glitterdelve, discontent with local taxes, and chiseled out new homes near the great shaft's dome. Coa.r.s.ely woven nets strung across the river caught blind fish and crustaceans for the dwarves' food. Wastes and offal were cast into side pa.s.sages where edible fungi and molds for potions were cultivated.

Magical lights of golden hue soon filled the colony of Raurogh's Hall, as the cave village came to be known, though all light was carefully s.h.i.+elded from the silo's top to avoid alerting anything living far down the falls. The surrounding rock was solid, local predators were quickly dispatched, and the river's bounty was endless. Life was good for seventeen years and a hundred twelve days.

The derro waited for Wykar where they had agreed, toying silently with a long knife among the blue glow-fan fungi.

Wykar stopped and did not move a muscle after he eased around the entrance to the blue-lit cavern chamber and saw the derro. The hunched gnome warily embraced the chamber with his senses to discover if Geppo had unwisely brought friends along to the hidden garden of luminescent fungi, but he sensed nothing amiss. He nonetheless kept his gray hands free, ready to seize from his vest, belt, or boots whatever weapon was called for.