"Little ones," the silver dragon said, "how dare you enter my lair?"
Montaron's fingers almost flickered into a rough try at a salute. "Followin' after Benrulon, yer worship. Ma'am and all that." Ye didn't like licking boots, be they Zhent lord or bloodsucker or bloody dragon. "The young half-hin fellow sent your way. Travelling with a wizard in fancy red robes, priest in armour, whining human girl. Pair of whining human girls."
"To destroy him or befriend him, frail one?" The dragon's eyes were moonstone-white instead of metal-silver like her body; milky and watery and about two-thirds as high across as he was. A huge thing, bigger than the shadow dragon; and they'd not had to face that one in a fight.
Ye saw a dragon, long polished claws and scales and forefeet and chest; then your eyes travelled higher and higher to see that the thing was the size of a mountain; then the mighty wings, stretched across twice as wide as the body itself, folded bribed up in harsh bone and diamond-sharp scale between them; and ye begged to all the Nine Hells that the mad wizard wasn't thinking anything close to, Let's get ourselves messily killed trying to kill a silver dragon, Monty! Or in any way letting his aims out to the dragon its—herself, as it were, and that changed nothing on how deadly she was.
The Light One, the gnomes called her; and he wished they hadn't troubled to rescue the innkeeper's son for the favour of the meeting.
"Got separated from them back in the asylum way." Best to gamble that the boy's ways got him well with the silver dragon; svirfneblin words were that he acted like he'd got over the giant-monster-creature and turned back to something like his useless self. "Ye have the way to the surface? If we could pass, we'd bother ye no longer."
"The dark one among you serves Shar," Adalon said. Viconia's lips thinned and she folded her arms like a housewife would've covered some indecent exposure.
"She's not from around here. Not any more," Montaron said. The fool mad wizard was humming under his breath; it was near as distracting as the dragon herself. As long as he wasn't trying some spell.
"Mean him no harm, lady. Volunteered to help you, did he? Good for him and we've no wish likewise to be troublesome."
"The spawn of Bhaal is retrieving my eggs." The dragon's head suddenly leaned forward. Her teeth were larger and brighter than those of the shadow dragon below the Umar Hills. "I do you vast honour to speak at all! You will be silent and listen. The yochlol have come to the city."
Xzar stopped the humming and started listening. Viconia startled and raised her hands. Word meant something to them—
"They seek renegades to their vile goddess. They seek my children to be their sacrifice. You will aid the Bhaalspawn in removing them, or I will have your heads. I will freeze your bodies in ice and bury you unmarked in stone. I trust none of you; but you will serve for my purpose. Speak now if you wish to be eaten first."
"Shar will protect me from the Spider Queen," Viconia whispered, and clutched her symbol.
"Remain still and feel my breath," Adalon said.
Masked wizard and bloodsucker had stolen her eggs, and Montaron didn't care one bit. The drow folk had gotten to move free up to the surface and raid the other pointy-ears up there for the masked mage's army, and Montaron didn't give a damn for either side. Bhaalspawn brat had his soul sucked away, and Montaron couldn't have cared less for how fool-addled it'd turned him. Adalon did a freakish transmutation spell on them that made it feel as if his bones turned to water and melted away, then stretched out painful as if he were drawn on a rack. His armour grew with him like a second skin, and the ground and the pit of his stomach fell deep down alike. His feet prickled as if the hair had turned to grow inside them. It was done at last and he could have screeched and damned the dark back of his palms. He looked like one of them now, curse the day; no choice but to join them or never get out of these caves.
"My hands are not mine!" the mad wizard shrieked. "The bunnies have eaten my real hands!"
"Come now, mad mage," Montaron growled. He grabbed an arm. It was easier when they were close on the same height; Xzar had gone shorter than when he was human. The mage-drow wore no markings on his face and had a spider border to his robes and wore a long slit in their side, though the mad stare was the same as always. Viconia's clothes were different, armour laced with dark red instead of purple, and her eyes bright scarlet in place of dull red-brown. He'd be blackskin all over himself, still pointy-eared, and a few inches taller than Viconia. They left Adalon's lair all but falling over each other.
"Shar has a purpose," Viconia said to herself. "Shar always has a purpose. Shar must have meant me to be guided here. Dragged here by a fool of a mad male slave." She aimed a sharp kick at Xzar's shin and made the mad wizard fall, whining of the pain. "Yochlol are the Spider Queen's handmaids," she said louder, explaining it to them. "They are demons of the Abyss. They alter shape, from priestess to black widow spider to their true forms of the seeming of melted wax. They are hunters, and once they taste your scent they do not allow you to go free even in death. They root out all heretics and unbelievers; and after they kill you your soul is their slave ever after, your ghost eaten by their children over and over again. I did not have them pursue me before. I thought that I was fortunate.
"But Shar will protect me if I have faith in her," she said again.
And she was wrong, Montaron reckoned. Gods up there weren't paying attention to every mortal's fool move. Not like Shar'd reach a hand down and snatch up the drow—the realdrow—when she stuck a foot wrong. Oh, he'd say a prayer or two to Mask and even spend a few days on his knees if he thought it'd help save them—but, Mask give him shadows to hide and kidneys to drive his blade deep in, ye shouldn't count on finger-wiggling and chants.
"It's a transmogrification, mad mage, ye could cast 'em yourself," he said to stop the crazy wizard complaining of what he'd become. Speaking the words felt different once they left his mouth; the language had changed away from Common without him knowing it.
"Oh, Monty, too right. She must be expert in magic. Some dragons are like that. I need to think about her." Xzar's hands scraped along his robes trying to fix the fit and he got up again. "Dragon eggs would burst scales on toast soldiers."
"You resemble male drow, but males are still slaves; so do not believe for one instant that you have been raised any higher than your nature," Viconia said. "You will both be my slaves taken in battle with a rival House, for neither of you behave as if you were a relation of mine—or look so, for that matter. By Shar," she continued, "most certainly not." Her right hand snaked up and grabbed Montaron's ear. "We drow are the noblest race upon Faerun: graceful, neither too tall nor too short, smooth-skinned, eternally young, clean and proud—and you two—"
She hauled him to a shallow pool not far between the rocks, faintly lit by glowing moss. He'd the face of a dark-elf pretty-boy in the reflection, damn it; short white hair upturned and tousled behind his head, scowling, the scars on his face gone faint, dark armour covering him, the female drow bending his ear. "A few minutes in drow form and hopelessly unkempt already. You could wrinkle a new set of clothing by looking at it, male."
"Shame you're short for a drow, isn't it? Ye've said women are meant to be high-ups."
"Size means nothing. Your shoulders were slightly broader in your own shape, slave." She let go of the ear and in the reflection of the pond she ran her hands along the warrior drow's muscles. "I wonder how easily they scar in this form."
"Like I haven't killed longlimb pointy-ear before. I know how they bleed."
"Do it upon my orders, slave," she said. "You'll do everything upon my orders, here."
—
"—Three drow up ahead. Two female, one male, armed. Crest's a spider crossed with two swords." Montaron stepped back behind the rocks. Less easy to hide taller, and it was too easy to forget the heights that were enough to get behind.
"Drow magic. You can do all sorts of things down here that none in the surface world know of; magical lore, the deep caverns of the bunnies, darkness-spells and levitation-spells and dweomered-adamantite..." Xzar rubbed his hands together in enthusiasm, talking in their hiding-place.
"Most of our arcane magic fails to continue to work in the surface world, so you will find them useless," Viconia said. "And I think you should simply not talk at all here, hmm? Except when you are ordered to cast a spell."
"You're quite clever, and I believe you on your home territory," the mad mage said. "But—that's where we differ. If magery is an art then knowledge must be learned even if it does not serve an immediate purpose."
And that was why the mad wizard was worthless, for he wasted time. Viconia's contempt was glass-twinned to his own. "What am I seeing, woman?" Montaron said.
"Members of the Fighters' society. A patrol, perhaps. We near Ust Natha," Viconia said. "It would appear weak to ask for escort; but to greet them might gather some information. The heretics to the Queen of the Demonweb Pits I seek," she went on, "are more likely in higher levels of society: the rot of disloyalty setting in as redmoss on mushrooms, or as a slight small crack that will ruin the finest of jars or vases, or indeed a single foolish slave blaspheming a spider's web by faintest touch..."
In the darkness he saw the flicker behind them too. "Yes, mistress," Montaron said smartly. "Whatever ye wish."
"I," said another female voice, "demand your immediate aid."
The woman stepped out from the shadows, carrying a long black blade with a spider's fangs pointing over the hilt.
"For what purpose, female? I, Veldriss, cannot accept a role without understanding how it serves our mistress," Viconia said calmly, showing the other drow that she'd sensed the approach.
"As a foreigner you are dregs in Ust Natha, and so it well becomes you to honour my demands," the other drow said. "But I will tell you that Solaufein of the Male Fighters' Society is the male servitor dispatched to retrieve the high priestess Phaere; for the Matron Mother we aid him; and you travellers happen upon exactly the correct path."
"We simply approached the city, warrior. There we intend to meet with the mercenary Veldrin," Viconia said.
"'Veldrin'—I see." The female drow shrugged her shoulders. "Taking a regrettably long time among the kuo-toa. Perhaps they are less capable mercenaries than they impressed Matron Ardulace. Are you one of them?"
"Only a fellow traveller who desires to meet with them. Among others," Viconia said. "What did you have in mind for the aid you need, female?"
"The aid that should lift but one or two drops of sweat from my forehead; for foreigners like you are so easy for use," the other drow said. "Bring your slaves. Solaufein is our caster and he holds the devourers to this plane. You may help us to kill them."
"Squidfolk," Montaron said. "Yer taking us to tangle with squidfolk." That ate your brains from inside your skull.
"Your slave forgets his place," the other drow said, looking funny at him.
"Yes, he does, and if he does not perish in battle then for a while afterward he will wish that he had," Viconia said. He'd the strong suspicion she meant it. "On the other hand, it is my preference to keep useful slaves. Let us fight without wasting further time on pathetic males."
The male drow had worn a cloak and light armour in place of a mage's robe, carrying two curved swords on his belt like he thought he was bloody do'Urden or somesuch. His hands were raised in the air and he started a chant that Xzar watched too closely until Montaron dragged him back.
Viconia started chanting up, and sticks rose up from the ground; sticks-and-stones, old bones. The mad mage did alike, for critters without brains were best to sic on the likes of squidmouths. Must've been killings aplenty here before. The three females unsheathed blades in the same movement without looking at each other. He glanced at Viconia to see if she'd noticed it—no doubt the mad mage couldn't—but she gave no sign. They stood behind the undead in a perfect formation. The Sharran glared at him to step forward the same. Falzress; Beliavor; Lalrichten. Mistresses all, he thought sourly. Squidfolk; they messed with your head with shocks and confusions and the whips out of their heads. They were supposed to bleed like any other, and they favoured going after mages and the like for the grey stuff inside their skulls.
The caster drow made more cries into things only he could see, and then Montaron saw the illithids slip out of thin air with another drow between them. They were taller than drow, taller than him; manlike in robes that covered everything with dark blue tentacles coming out of their heads like long beards. The middle female drow cast a spell that settled over her and her friends' heads in a raddled blue glow. He felt Xzar fling some added speed over him.
The undead were supposed to be first, but the squids tried to get past them. They attacked with their tentacles that left marks on the bones, and almost stupidly fast the three female drow dived into the fight. They grouped on top of the first squidmouth and sliced it to fish-pieces.
Tentacles lashed out toward his head. Montaron got his sword up in time, then wound the mass of squid mouth in a ring around the blade as if he was looping a coil of rope. Then he was close, and stabbed down with the other short sword into the chest at the same time as the first point went into the face. The blood was red as any other creature, fountaining out in a river. He'd wounded most of the tentacles, but it still tried to reach him. Xzar aimed a row of missiles into its hide and the illithid went still. He went for the next one, cursing that the height of a drow gave them more to aim at. The squidmouths' drow captive on the ground spoke a few words and one of them exploded in dark fire—a lesson that not one of 'em was helpless. She pulled herself to her feet and made her hands glow red.
Another of the illithids looked like it was casting; Montaron went for it. The gestures stopped and this time one of the tentacles scalded his forehead. He felt his mind go blank—
Curse it—turning to the mad wizard—forgot what—drow pretty blade sharp—
Chanting, cool and clear, broke through. "Recover yourself, slave! Don't dare to babble!" Viconia cried.
—Yeah, she can't risk me talking—
He planted a blade into the squidmouth's groin, but it acted as if they'd no parts. But there was blood enough in the throat, and from behind one of the skeleton warriors brought a heavy blade down on the mindflayer's skull. The female fighters had finished the others off, and Solaufein the caster lowered his hands and smirked as if it'd been all his work. Montaron wiped the blood from the swords.
"Who are these commoners, Solaufein?" the rescued drow said, a hand on her hips and no gratitude for being rescued. "Your arrival was late. Ardulace should not have sent such a pathetic male."
He gave her a fancy bow. "You're welcome, lady Phaere. Common mercenaries."
"I am already weary of the sight of you, male. I will return to the city; you may do as you wish with these bodies." She turned off with the same high head as Viconia.
"Lady Phaere, it is dangerous," the mage-drow protested, "oh, for—for widow's sake— Thank you for your aid, mercenaries. I will follow after her lest another disaster befall her and Ardulace has my head."
"Devourer bodies mean nothing to us. We do the same, Solaufein of Ust Natha; and we ask the foreigners to follow likewise," the one called Falzress said.
The paths widened and Montaron saw a large black bridge made of some ironlike stuff showing the way through two huge gates to the drow city. They were guarded by a pair of male drow in heavy armour, standing lookout. The three fighting women swaggered like mercenaries everywhere. The same, more or less, that he put on and exaggerated in his own shape, because it took time and learning at blade's point for them not to step over the halfling. Had to tone it down.
"Your warrior slave is quite well-muscled," said the one called Beliavor. "And moderately competent in the field."
"I prefer the look of your mage, Veldriss," the drow called Lalrichten said. "Scrawny, but wiry. And such a wild wanton look in his eyes." Xzar didn't look at them.
The three of them were pretty women by anyone's standards; a touch stinking from squidfolk blood and sweat, on the flat-chested side, but delicate-featured as any other elf. And still he could've done without their eyes looking him and Xzar over, not only for one mistake before their cover was blown.
"Will you need any help disciplining the fighter, Veldriss?" Falzress said. "I can direct you to a stallkeeper with some elegant whips and other devices. Was it you who gave him the scars I can see?" And she moved in for a grope, as if it were him feeling up a whore. But it was cold and more like a slaver checking merchandise than lust. It tempted him to slam an elbow to the bitch's face.
"It was," Viconia said. "Maungrin can be a slow learner, female. But he and Zavor are loyal to me since the destruction of their House."
"Which would that have been?" Falzress said, shifting place to chat to Viconia.
"De'Glabizu," she reeled off, and the name seemed to pass muster well enough.
"Then you are from Menzoberranzan. I heard of that two hundred years ago," Falzress said. "It was never stated who completed that one."
"That would be revealing too many secrets," Viconia said, teeth flashing white in the dark of the place. "Various alliances; various independents. All irrelevant detail, of course. And your House?"
"We are but mercenaries fortunate enough to bear a contract from the Female Fighters' Society," Falzress said. "I would suggest a glass of morimatra with us in our lodging there, female; you can have found nowhere to stay as yet."
"Your generosity is too simple, when I would impinge by interrogating you upon the history of Solaufein and the Matron Mother's daughter," Viconia said.
"We have fought together, sister. Come," Falzress said, and her smile stretched wide.
They passed through the gates with a sharp-barked order from Falzress. The tilings of the city had an old look to them, the paint and ridges on them worn off by time. Drow and others roamed the streets, more others that he'd expected: deep-gnome and duergar and dwarf and the odd human, goblin and gnoll and other monsters, fetching and carrying and begging. More slaves than drow, it seemed. Female drow wore priestess robes or armour, male armour or plain cloth. The gates and walls were tall and practically unclimbable, he calculated, too much slippery metal and sharp spikes. No way out of this until they'd done as asked. Xzar watched the city, seeing gods knew what in his madman's visions.
"Maungrin," he said quietly, "is it just me, or is the lady Beliavor of arcane arts as well as martial?"
Seemed he hadn't expected an answer. The stupid drow mage robe shifted to show more of the mad wizard than he'd ever wanted to see. Montaron turned his head quickly to eye a group of female soldiers patrolling the streets. There were noises and a crowd like a marketplace was here, close to the gates—like trading parties came often enough. That'd mean opening and closing of gates and confusion enough for any half-decent rogue to get through the crowds.
"A transparent device, slave," Beliavor said. "You seem to pretend to worthless powers over death. A pointless specialisation if your priestess is powerful, no?"
Which would be subtle drowspeak for 'we're thinking of killing you pitiful worms'. "Different emphasis," Xzar said, waving his hands in the air and trying to salvage it. "Many things divine ch...divine usage does that I think are conceptually complicated beyond the present arcane grain of control; but the unravelling processes are different when enemies are encountered. The school emphasises the gathering of arcane knowledge..."
"Some of your spells seem to be of an interesting style," Beliavor said.
"As do some of yours." The mad mage managed to smile at her.
"A boot-licking compliment? You begin to bore me, male," the drow said, and shoved him away from her with a swift push. Montaron didn't move to stop Xzar from swaying, but grabbed him after. Xzar stopped and stared at something else, a large tank set up in a street corner like some drow was selling fish or an aquarium or sea-devil slaves, depending.
"Silence, males," Viconia said. "Don't add to your due punishments."
There was a grey-haired dwarf being whipped on the market streets, full in the open; a drow male carried one of the snake-headed whips. The dwarf fell and didn't rise again, as if the poor bastard was dead at last. A heavy smell hung on the air and Montaron recognised it as much the same dung ye found on the surface: the source being slaves caged up in dirty straw and sold in the open market. Besides gnolls and trolls he spotted a bunch of chained drow who looked half-starved.
"You show an interest in acquiring new slaves, sister?" Beliavor said. Viconia watched the drow on offer, then turned her head.
"They appear weak and no doubt they are," she said. "I have no use for meat I'd have to pamper and feed for months before it was fit for the slightest service. You keep no slaves of your own, Falzress?"
"She wore out a human barbarian last night," Lalrichten said, smirking. "I think the ones with too many muscles are deceptive. You think you're getting far more than you are."
Viconia picked up her pace of walking away. "It is muscles and defiance both that in my experience are best," she said, running on about things he'd heard her say before. "Without the latter the former is worth less than nothing. Breaking in the large ones can be enjoyable if you choose carefully; with the proper spirit they do last longer than the physically weak ones in the main."
"Perhaps I will buy a surface elf, if Matron Mother Ardulace succeeds enough in her raids to bring some in chains," Falzress said. "I haven't had the chance before. It is meant to be the experience of our race."
"I have, once; novelty and nothing else," Viconia said. "They cannot bear the dark, poor things."
The four drow shared a short laugh.
"The Female Fighter Society is two streets from here," Falzress said. "It is the tall one."
Like layers of mushroom-head piled on each other, Montaron thought. Guarded by a pack of female drow in glittering armour. It rose up from the streets much less shabby than the places around it; must still be some poor quarter of the city, whatever Falzress liked to boast about it. Outside a nearby tavern a male drow had been shouting about gladiator contests and male pleasure slaves.
He studied the three of them again, trying to figure what they knew and didn't. Falzress seemed the leader, tallest and wearing her hair back in two braids, pointy-chinned and the one who'd walked through the shadows to spot them. Beliavor was a caster, plump-cheeked for a drow and thinner-lipped than Viconia. Lalrichten was shorter but broader-built, long-nosed and light-eyed. They'd the same design of sword and same trick of all moving their heads or blades at the same time when things were happening. He might've picked them for sisters or half-sisters, though in drow they might as well be mother and daughters.
"Come for a glass with us," Falzress repeated, and brought them up stairs to a room with a view out over the city. The door she closed behind was thick stone that was barred on the inside.
"If you don't mind me practising a few of my priest's incantations," Viconia said pleasantly.
"Lloth watches best over those who watch themselves," Falzress said, and pulled out a bottle and glasses from a cupboard on the wall. The room was bare aside from a stone table and metallic stools. A tapestry hung on one wall that showed the spider-crest of the drow goddess, and the opposite wall was blank aside from a silvery mirror that looked to have a watery film across its glass. The cupboard was wood, which'd mean expensive down here; but either these mercs hadn't picked up jobs lately or liked to save it all. Montaron watched for what he ought to be doing, hand around glasses like some fool butler; Viconia gave him a signal and he thought he was fast enough to stop suspicion going on. The mad mage stood quietly in a corner, eyes darting between that mirror and the open window every so often. Ye could leap down there and live, though you'd like as not break a bone or two.
"To the Spider Queen," Viconia promised cheerfully enough, and tasted her glass only after Falzress had done it first. It wasn't like they'd offer any to him or Xzar. "You must allow me to entertain you in the tavern on the morrow."
"That we may," said Lalrichten, glancing briefly across at that unnatural mirror. "Of course; that is only if Lloth grants us all another day, isn't it?"
—