Greyanna regarded the open space in the middle of the ring of aimlessly milling skeletons, and the stirges swooping and wheeling above. A moment before, Pharaun and his hulking accomplice had been standing there, but they were gone. If her eyes had not deceived her, her brother had flashed her that old familiar mocking grin as he vanished. How dare he smirk at her like that when it was she who had driven him from House Mizzrym!
She regarded her iron staff, taller than she was, square in cross-section, graven with hundreds of tiny runes, and warm as blood to the touch. The weapon had failed her. She trembled with the impulse to swing it over her head and smash it against the stone beneath her feet until it was defaced, deformed, and useless.
She didn't, because she knew Pharaun's escape was really her fault, not the staff's. She should have summoned the weapon sooner. She should have been more aggressive with the sack. Damn this degrading and inexplicable season! Because of its vicissitudes, her mother had instructed her to play the miser with every personal resource, even though she was fighting for the welfare of House Mizzrym and all Menzoberranzan.
Well, she wouldn't make the same mistake next time. It was her responsibility to look after her troops and return them to the castle. She dismounted, squared her shoulders, put on a calm, commanding expression, and proceeded with the business at hand.
Neither of the twins were hurt, and her cousin Aunrae merely needed the ball of darkness around her head dispelled. It was Relonor who concerned Greyanna, but fortunately the mage was still alive. A healing potion mended him sufficiently to stand, clutching his sash so it wouldn't slip off and shrugging out of his ice-encrusted cloak.
While the twins helped Relonor hobble about and so restore his circulation, Aunrae came sidling up to Greyanna. To her cousin's admittedly jaundiced eye, in Aunrae the usual Mizzrym tendency to leanness had run to a grotesque extreme. The younger female resembled a stick insect.
"My commiseration on your failure," Aunrae said.
Her expression was grave, but she wasn't really trying to hide the smile lurking underneath.
"I didn't realize just how powerful Pharaun has become," Greyanna admitted. "Before his exile, he was quite competent but nothing extraordinary. It was his cunning that made him so dangerous. I see that all the decades in Tier Breche have turned him into one of the most formidable wizards in the city. That complicates things, but I'll manage."
"I hope the matron will forgive you your ignorance," Aunrae said. "You've wasted so much magic to no effect."
The conjured skeletons and stirges began to wink out of existence, leaving a residue of magic energy. The air seemed to tingle and buzz, though if a person stopped and listened, it really wasn't.
"Is that how you see it?" Greyanna asked.
Aunrae shrugged. "I'm just worried she'll feel you bungled things, that your hatred of Pharaun made you blind and clumsy. She might even decide someone else is more deserving of the preeminence you currently possess. Of course, I hope not! You know I wish you well. My plan for my future has always been to support you and prosper as your aide."
"Cousin, your words move me," Greyanna said as she lifted the staff.
No one could heave such a long, heavy implement into a fighting position without giving the opponent an instant's warning, so Aunrae was able to come on guard. It didn't matter. Not bothering to unleash any of the magic within her weapon, wielding it like an ordinary quarterstaff, Greyanna bashed the mace from the younger priestess's fingers, knocked her flat with a ringing blow to her armored shoulder, and dug the tip of the iron rod into her throat.
"I'd like to confer on one or two matters," said Greyanna. "Do you have a moment?"
Aunrae made a liquid, strangling sound.
"Excellent. Listen and grow wise. Today's little fracas was not in vain. It proved that Relonor can locate Pharaun with his divinations. Even more importantly, the battle enabled me to take our brother's measure. When we track him down again, we'll crush him. Now, do you see that I have this venture well in hand?"
Deprived of her voice, Aunrae nodded enthusiastically. Her chin bumped against the butt of the staff.
"What a sensible girl you are. You must also bear in mind that we aren't hunting Pharaun simply for my own personal gratification. It's for the benefit of all, including yourself. Therefore, this isn't an ideal time to seek to discredit and supplant one of your betters. It's a time for us to swallow our mutual distaste and work together until the threat is gone. Do you think you can remember that?"
Aunrae kept nodding. She was shaking, too, and her eyes were wide with terror. Small wonder; she must have been running short of breath. Still, she had the sense not to try to grab the staff and jerk it away from her neck. She knew what would happen if she tried.
Greyanna was tempted to make it happen anyway. Aunrae's submission was a small pleasure beside the fierce satisfaction that would come from ramming the staff into the helpless female's windpipe. The urge was a hot tightness in her hands and a throbbing in the scar across her face.
But she needed minions to catch the relative she truly hated, and, annoying as she was, Aunrae was game, and wielded magic with a certain facility. It would be more practical to murder her another day. Greyanna was sure she could manage it whenever she chose. Despite her ambitions, Aunrae was no threat. She lacked the intelligence.
Feeling a strange pang of nostalgia for Sabal, who had at least been a rival worth destroying, Greyanna lifted the staff away from her cousin's throat.
"You will whisper no poison words in Mother's ears," the First Daughter of House Mizzrym said. "For the time being, you will leave off plotting against me or anyone else. You will devote your every thought to finding our truant brother. Otherwise, I'll put an end to you."

Ryld had never experienced instantaneous travel before. To his surprise, he was conscious of the split second of teleportation, and he found it rather unpleasant. It didn't feel as if he were speeding through the world but as if the world were hurtling at and through him, albeit painlessly.
Then it was over. He'd unconsciously braced himself to compensate for the jolt of a sudden stop, and the absence of any such sensation rocked him on his feet.
By the time he recovered his balance, he knew more or less where he was. A whiff of dung told him. He looked around and confirmed the suspicion.
Pharaun had dropped the two of them in a disused sentry post on a natural balcony. The ledge overlooked Donigarten with its moss fields, grove of giant mushrooms, and fungus farms fertilized with night soil from the city. Hordes of orc and goblin slaves either tended the malodorous croplands or speared fish from rafts on the lake, while rothé lowed from the island in the center of the water. Overseers and an armed patrol wandered the fields to keep the thralls in line. Additional guards looked down from other high perches about the cavern wall.
Ryld knew Pharaun had transported them about as far as was possible. In the Realms that See the Sun, teleportation could carry folk around the world, but in the Underdark, the disruptive radiance of certain elements present in the rock limited the range to about half a mile—far enough to throw Greyanna and her pack off the scent.
Pharaun held the pilfered golden ornament up, inspecting it.
"It only holds one teleportation at a time," he said after a moment. Even after all his exertions, he wasn't panting as hard as he might have been; not bad for such a sybarite, thought Ryld as he set down his bloody great-sword. "It's useless now, and I lost my dancing rapier, curse it, but I'm not too disconsol—"
Ryld grabbed Pharaun by the arm and flipped him, laying him down hard.
The wizard blinked, sat up, and brushed a strand of his sculpted hair back into place.
"If you'd told me you craved more fighting," Pharaun said, "I could have left you behind with my kin."
"The hunters, you mean," Ryld growled, "who found us quickly."
"Well, we asked a fair number of questions in a fair number of places. We even wanted someone to find us, just not that lot." Pharaun stood back up and brushed at his garments, adding, "Now, I have something extraordinary to tell you."
"Save it," Ryld replied. "Back there in the net, when you and Greyanna were chatting, I got the strong impression that the priestesses weren't just hunting some faceless agent. They knew from the start their target was you, and you knew they knew."
Pharaun sighed. "I didn't know the matrons would choose Greyanna to discourage our efforts. That was a somewhat disconcerting surprise. But the rest of it? Yes."
"How?"
"Gromph has invisible glyphs scribed on the walls of his office. Invisible to most people, anyway. They protect him in various ways. One, a black sigil shaped a little like a bat, is supposed to keep scryers and spellcasters from eavesdropping on his private conversations, but when he and I spoke, it was drawn imperfectly. It still would have balked many a spy, but not someone with the resources and expertise of, oh, say, his sisters ... or the Council."
Ryld frowned. "Gromph botched it?"
"Of course not," Pharaun snorted. "Do you think the Archmage of Menzoberranzan incompetent? He drew it precisely as he wanted it. He knew the high priestesses were trying to spy on him—they surely always have and doubtless always will—and he intended them to overhear."
"He was setting you up."
"Now you're getting it. While the clerics stay busy seeking me, the decoy, my illustrious chief will undertake another, more discreet inquiry undisturbed, by performing divinations and interrogating demons, probably. "
"You knew, and you undertook the mission anyway."
"Because knowing doesn't change my fundamental circumstances. If I want to retain my rank and quite possibly my life, I still have to complete the task the archwizard set me, even though he was playing me for a fool, even with Greyanna striving to hinder the process." Pharaun grinned and added, "Besides, where did all those runaways go, and why do the greatest folk in Menzoberranzan care? It's a fascinating puzzle, even more so now that I've inferred a portion of the answer. Did I leave it unsolved, it would haunt me forevermore."
"You played me for a fool," said Ryld. "Granted, you warned me the priestesses might interfere with us, but you greatly understated the danger. You didn't tell me you were marked before we even descended from Tier Breche. Why not? Did you think I'd refuse to accompany you?"
Most uncharacteristically, the glib wizard hesitated. Far below the shelf, a whip snapped and a goblin screamed.
"No," said Pharaun eventually, "not really. I suppose it's just that dark elves are jealous of their secrets. So are the nobly born. So are wizards. And I'm all three! Will you pardon me? It isn't as if you've never kept a secret from me."
"When?"
"During the first three years of our acquaintance, whenever we fraternized, you kept a dagger specially charmed for the killing of mages ever close to your hand. You suspected I was only seeking your company because one of your rivals in Melee-Magthere had engaged me to murder you as soon as the opportunity arose."
"How did you discover that? Never mind, I suppose it was your silver ring. I didn't know what it was back then. Anyway, that's not the same kind of secret."
"You're right, it isn't, and I regret my reticence but I do propose to make up for it by sharing the most astonishing confidence you've ever heard."
Ryld stared into Pharaun's eyes. "I'll pardon you. With the understanding that if you withhold any other pertinent information, I'll knock you over the head and deliver you to your bitch sister myself."
"Point taken. Shall we sit?" Pharaun pointed to a bench hewn from the limestone wall at the back of the ledge. "My discourse may take a little time, and I daresay we could use a rest after our exertions."
As he turned away from the molded rock rampart, Ryld noticed that the cracking of the whip had stopped. When he glanced down, two goblins were carrying the corpse of a third, hauling it somewhere to be chopped apart and the pieces turned to some useful purpose. Possibly chow for other thralls.
The fencing teacher sat down and removed a cloth, a whetstone, and a vial of oil from the pockets of his garments. He unfastened his short sword from his belt, pulled on the hilt, and made a little spitting sound of displeasure when the blade, which he had been forced to put away bloody, stuck in the scabbard. He yanked more forcefully, and it came free.
He looked over at Pharaun, who was regarding with him with a sort of quizzical exasperation.
"Talk," the warrior said. "I can care for my gear and listen at the same time."
"Is this how you attend to mind-boggling revelations? I suppose I'm lucky you don't have to use the Jakes. All right, here it is ... Lolth is gone. Well, maybe not gone, but unavailable at least in the sense that it's no longer possible for her Menzoberranyr clerics to receive spells from her."
For a moment, Ryld thought he'd misheard the words. "I guess that's a joke?" he asked. "I'm glad you didn't make it while we were in the middle of a crowd. There's no point compounding our crimes with blasphemy."
"Blasphemy or not, it's the truth."
Rag in hand, Ryld scrubbed tacky blood off the short sword. "What are you suggesting," the weapons master asked, "another Time of Troubles? Could there be two such upheavals?"
Pharaun grinned and said, "Possibly, but I think not. When the gods were forced to inhabit the mortal world, the arcane forces we wizards command fluctuated unpredictably. One day, we could mold the world like clay. The next, we couldn't turn ice to water. That isn't happening now. My powers remain constant as ever, from which I tentatively infer this is not the Time of Troubles come again but a different sort of occurrence."
"What sort?"
"Oh, am I supposed to know that already? I thought I was doing rather well to detect the occurrence at all."
"Only if it's really happening."
Ryld inspected the point of the short stabbing blade, then took the hone to it. Bemused by Pharaun's contention, he wondered how his canny friend could credit such a ludicrous idea.
"I want you to think back over the confrontation from which we just emerged," said the Master of Sorcere. "Did you even once see Greyanna or the other priestess cast divine magic from her own mind and inner strength as opposed to off a scroll or out of some device?"
"I was fighting the skeletons."
"You keep track of every foe on the battleground. I know you do. So, did you see them casting spells out of their own innate power?"
Ryld thought that of course he had . . . then realized he hadn't.
"What does that suggest?" Pharaun asked. "They have no spells left in their heads, or only a few, which they're hoarding desperately because they can't solicit new ones from their goddess. Lolth has withdrawn her favor from Menzoberranzan, or ... something."
"Why would she do that?"
"Would she need a reason—or at any rate, one her mortal children can comprehend? She is a deity of chaos. Perhaps she's testing us somehow, or else she's angry and deems us unworthy of her patronage.
"Or, as I suggested before, the cause of her silence, if in fact she is mute when her clerics pray to her and not just uncooperative, may be something else altogether. Perhaps even another happenstance involving all the gods. Since we have only one faith and clergy in Menzoberranzan, it's difficult to judge."
"Wait," Ryld said. He unstoppered his little bottle of oil. The sharp smell provided a welcome counterpoint to the moist stink of the dung fields. "I admit, I didn't see Greyanna or any of the lesser priestesses working magic, but didn't you yourself once tell me that in the turmoil of battle, it's often easier and more reliable to cast your effects from a wand or parchment?"
"I suppose I did. Still, under normal circumstances, would you expect a pair of spellcasters to conjure every single manifestation that way? Just before our exit, I saw Greyanna groping in the ether for a weapon that was slow in coming to her hand. The sister I remember would have said to the Hells with it and dumped some other magic on our heads. That is, unless something had circumscribed her options."
"I see what you mean," Ryld conceded, "but when the clerics lost their powers in the Time of Troubles, it destabilized the balance of power among the noble Houses. Those who believed the change made them stronger in relative terms struck hard to supplant their rivals. As far as I can see, that isn't happening now, just the usual level of controlled enmity."
He laid the short sword aside and picked up Splitter.
Pharaun nodded and said, "You'll recall that none of the Houses attempting to exploit the Time of Troubles ultimately profited thereby. To the contrary, the Baenre and others punished them for their temerity. Perhaps the matron mothers took the lesson to heart."
"So instead of hatching schemes to topple one another, they . . . what? Enlisted every single priestess in a grand conspiracy to conceal their fall from grace? If your mad idea is right, that's what they must have done."
"Why is that implausible? Picture the day—a few tendays past?—when they lost the ability to draw power from their goddess. Clerics of Lolth routinely collaborate in magical rituals, so they would have discovered fairly quickly that they were all similarly afflicted. Apprised of the scope of the situation, Triel Baenre, possibly in hurried consultation with our esteemed Mistress Quenthel and the matrons of the Council, might well have decided to conceal the priesthood's debility and sent the word round in time to keep anyone from blabbing."
"The word would have to pass pretty damn quickly," said Ryld, examining Splitter's edge. As he'd expected, despite all the bone it had just bitten through, it was as preternaturally keen and free of notches and chips as ever.
"Oh, I don't know," the wizard said. "If you lost the strength of your arms, would you be eager to announce it, knowing the news would find its way to everyone who'd ever taken a dislike to you? Anyway, since this is the first we've learned of the problem, the deception obviously did organize in time."
"Or else everything is as it always was, and the plot exists only in your imagination."
"Oh, it's real. I'm sure Triel deemed the ruse necessary to make sure no visitor would discern Menzoberranzan's sudden weakness." He grinned and added, "And to fix it so we poor males wouldn't swoon with terror upon learning that our betters had lost a measure of their ability to guide and protect us."
"Well, it's an amusing fancy."
"Fire and glare, you're a hard boy to convince, and I'll be cursed if I know why. You've already lived through the Time of Troubles, the previous Matron Baenre's death, and the defeat of Menzoberranzan by a gaggle of wretched dwarves. Why do you assume our world cannot have altered in some fundamental way when you've watched it change so many times before? Open your mind, and you'll see my hypothesis makes sense of all that has puzzled us."
"What do you mean?"
"Whatever they're up to, how is it that for the past month an unusual number of males have dared to elope from their families? Because they somehow tumbled to the fact that a priestess's wrath now constitutes less of a threat."
"While the clerics," said Ryld, catching the thread of the argument, "are eager to catch them because they want to know how the males know about the Silence, if we're going to call it that. Hells, if all those males had the nerve to run away, maybe they even know more about the problem than the females do."
"Conceivably," said Pharaun. "The priestesses can't rule it out until they strap a few of them to torture racks, can they? But they don't want Gromph involved with capturing the rogues because . . . ?"
"They don't want him to find out what the runaways know."
"Very good, apprentice. We'll make a logician of you yet."
"Do you think the archmage already knows the divines have lost their magic?"
"I'd bet your left eye on it, but he's in the same cart as the high priestesses. He posits that the fugitives might know even more."
Ryld nodded. "In a war, or any crisis, you have to cover every possibility."
"The notion of the Silence even explains why the Jewel Box was so crowded, and why some of the patrons were in a belligerent humor or even bruised and battered. Females divested of their magic might well feel weak and vulnerable. Consciously or otherwise, they'd worry about losing control of the folk in their household and compensate by instituting a harsher discipline than usual."
"I see that," said Ryld.
"Of course you do. As I said, the one hypothesis accounts for every anomaly. That's why we can be confident the idea is valid."
"How does it account for the relative paucity of goods in the Bazaar?"
Pharaun blinked, narrowed his eyes in thought, and finally laughed. "You know, it's difficult for genius to soar in the face of these carping little irrelevancies. Actually, you're right. At first glance, the Silence doesn't explain the marketplace, but it explains so much else that I still believe the idea correct. Have I persuaded you?"
"I... maybe. You do make a kind of twisted sense. It's just that its a hard idea to take in. The one truth our people have never questioned is that Menzoberranzan belongs to Lolth. Everything in the cavern is as it is because she willed it so, and the might of her priestesses is the primary force maintaining all that we have and are. If she's turned her face from the entire city, or is lost to us in some other way. . . ." Ryld spread his hands.
"It is unsettling, but perhaps, just perhaps, it affords us an opportunity as well."
Ryld extended a telescoping metal probe, attached a cloth to the hook on the end, and started swamping out the blood-clogged scabbard.
The warrior asked, "What do you mean?"
"Just for fun, let's make the same leap of faith—or fear—that Gromph and the Council did. Assume the rogue males can explain the cessation of Lolth's beneficence. Assume you and I will find them and extract the information. Finally, assume we can somehow employ it to restore the status quo."
"That's a lot of assuming."
"It is. Obviously, I'm letting my imagination run amok. Yet I have a hunch—only a hunch, but still—that if two masters of the Academy could accomplish such a triumph, they might thereby win enough power to make my friend the Sarthos demon look like small beer. You wanted to find something to our advantage, as I recall."
"Your sister may find us first. She tracked us once. Do you still think we shouldn't kill her, or her vassals either?"
"That's a good question," Pharaun sighed. "They're attacking us with potent magic. I suspect that leather bag holds nine sets of servant creatures, each deadlier than the one before."
"In that case, why didn't she chuck them all at us?"
"Perhaps, in the absence of her innate powers, she was trying to conserve her other resources. Alas, she may not be so parsimonious next time."
"So what do we do?"
"Well, you know, I truly do want to kill Greyanna. I always have, but I suppose the prudent course is to avoid our hunters if possible. If not, we'll do what we must to survive. I may at least make a point of disposing of Relonor. I suspect he located us with divinatory magic. He was always good at that."
"Can you shield us?"
"Perhaps. I intend to try. Stay right where you are, and don't speak."
Pharaun rose and reached into one of his pockets. Out in the lake, something big jumped. Noticing the splash, an orc on a raft grunted to his fellows, and they readied their barb-headed lances.

NINE
As Drisinil took hold of the door handle, the stump of her little finger throbbed beneath its dressing. The novice still found it difficult to believe that, after fighting for her life against the demon spider, Mistress Quenthel had immediately returned to the matter of the would-be truants and their self-inflicted punishment. It bespoke a calm and meticulous nature. Drisinil admired those qualities, but it didn't make her hate their exemplar any less.
She took a final glance around the deserted corridor. No one was about, and no one was supposed to be, not in that length of that particular wing of Arach-Tinilith at that hour of the night.
She slipped through the sandstone door and pulled it shut behind her. Unlike much of the temple, no lamps, torches, or candles burned in the room beyond the threshold. That was by design, to keep a telltale gleam from leaking out under the door.
Drisinil's sister conspirators awaited her. Some were novices with bandaged hands, just like herself. Others were instructors. Those high priestesses, hampered by their dignity, were having some difficulty making themselves comfortable among the haphazardly stacked boxes and tangles of furniture littering the half-forgotten storeroom. Of course, it didn't help that they hesitated to clear away the shrouds of filthy cobwebs dangling everywhere for fear a living spider remained within.
Drisinil wondered if that particular prohibition made sense any longer. Perhaps spiders were no longer sacred.
Then, angry at herself, she pushed the blasphemous thought away. Lolth abided, beyond any question, and was likely to chastise those who even for a moment imagined otherwise.
Once she wrenched her mind back to immediate concerns, Drisinil was momentarily nonplussed to find the company regarding her expectantly, Did they expect her to preside over the meeting?
But then again, why not? She might be a novice, but she was Barrison Del'Armgo as well, and breeding mattered, perhaps more than ever when even the most powerful priestesses were running out of magic. Besides, the secret gathering had been her idea.
"Good evening," she said. "Thank you all for attending,"—she smiled wryly—"and for not reporting me to Quenthel Baenre."
"We still could," said Vlondril Tuin'Tarl, a strange smile on her wrinkled lips. "Your task is to convince us we shouldn't."
The teacher was so old that she had begun to wither like a human crone. Most folk believed her mystical contemplations of ultimate chaos had left her a little mad. No one, not even another instructor, had opted to sit in her immediate vicinity.
"With respect, Holy Mother," Drisinil said, "isn't that self-evident? The goddess, who nurtured and exalted our city since its founding, has turned her back on us."
Once again, Drisinil couldn't help thinking of other possibilities, but even if she'd seen a point to it, she wouldn't have dared to mention them. No one would, not in her present company.
"And Quenthel is to blame," added Molvayas Barrison Del'Armgo.
Though stockier and shorter than Drisinil, her aunt had the same sort of sharp nose and uncommon green eyes. Richly clad, the elder scion of the House carried an enemy's soul imprisoned in a jade ring, and at quiet moments one could occasionally hear the spirit weeping and pleading for release. Second to Quenthel as Barrison Del'Armgo was ever second to Baenre, Molvayas had helped her niece pass word of the meeting, and her support lent it a certain credibility.
"How do you know that?" asked T'risstree T'orgh.
Deceptively slender, a fully trained warrior as well as a priestess, she was notorious for carrying a naked falchion about in preference to the usual mace or whip of fangs, and gashing the exposed flesh of any student who displeased her with a fast but precisely controlled cut to the face. The short, curved blade lay across her knees.
Drisinil waited a beat to make sure Molvayas intended her to answer the question. Apparently she did, and rightly so, since it was the younger female who had actually conceived the argument.
"When Triel was mistress here," said the novice, "all was well. Shortly after Quenthel assumed the office, Lolth rejected us."
" 'Shortly' being a relative term," said a sardonic voice from somewhere in the back of the room.
"Shortly enough," Drisinil retorted. "Perhaps the goddess gave us time to rectify the error. We failed to do so, so now she's punishing us."
"She's afflicting all Menzoberranzan," T'risstree said, "not just Tier Breche."
"Surely," said Drisinil, "you didn't expect her to be fair. I hope a priestess knows Lolth's ways better than that. Her wrath is as boundless as her might. Besides which, Arach-Tinilith is the repository of the deepest mysteries and thus the mystic heart of Menzoberranzan. It makes perfect sense that whatever befalls us here should touch the city as a whole.
"In any case," the novice continued, "Lolth has shown us her intent. Despite our safeguards, two spirits invaded the temple, the first in the guise of a spider, the second a living darkness. Spider and darkness, reflections of the essence of the goddess. The demons injured those who got in their way. They bruised them and broke their bones, but they didn't try to kill any of us, did they? They were plainly seeking Quenthel, and they sought to kill her and her alone."
Some of the other priestesses frowned or nodded thoughtfully.
"It did seem that way," said Vlondril, "but what do you think is unacceptable about Quenthel? Isn't she doing all the same things Triel did?"
"We don't know everything she does," said Drisinil, "and we don't know what she thinks. Lolth does."
"But you don't know she sent the demons," T'risstree said. Born a commoner but risen to a level of power and prestige, she had evidently shed the habit of deference to the aristocracy. "Perhaps one of Quenthel's mortal enemies sent them."
"What mortal possesses a magic potent and cunning enough to penetrate the temple wards?" Drisinil replied.
"The archmage?" Vlondril offered, picking at the skin on the back of her hand. Her tone was light, as if she spoke in jest.
"Even if he does," Drisinil said, "Gromph is a Baenre, too, and Quenthel serving as mistress strengthens his House. He has no reason to kill her, and if it isn't he, then who? Who but the goddess?"
"Quenthel is still alive," said a priestess from House Xorlarrin. She'd worn a long veil to the conclave, apparently so anyone who noticed her walking the halls would assume she was engaged in a certain necromantic meditation. "Do we think Lolth tried to kill her and failed?"
"Perhaps," Drisinil said. Some of her audience scowled or stiffened at what could be construed as blasphemy. "She is all-powerful, but her agents are not. However, I think she intended the first two assassins to fail. She's giving her priestesses a chance to ponder what's happening. To comprehend her will, perform our appointed task, and earn her favor once more."
Vlondril smiled. "And we do that by murdering Quenthel ourselves? Oh, good, child, very good."
"We kill her ourselves," Drisinil agreed, "or, if that isn't feasible, we at least assist the next demonic assassin in whatever way we can."
T'risstree shook her head. "This is sheer speculation. You don't know the mistress's death will bring Lolth back."
"It's worth a chance," Drisinil said. "At the very least, if we give the demons what they want, they'll stop invading Arach-Tinilith. They haven't slain any of us yet, but if we don't help them, and Quenthel lives on, they may decide to eliminate us, too, for after all, it's a demon's nature to kill."
"The demons may be less dangerous than House Baenre," T'risstree said.
"The Baenre won't know who facilitated Quenthel's demise," Drisinil said. "So what will they do, wreak their vengeance on every priestess in Arach-Tinilith? They can't. They need us to educate their daughters and perform the secret rites."
"If Quenthel dies," said a priestess leaning against the wall, "Molvayas has a fair chance of becoming Mistress of Arach-Tinilith—but how do the rest of us stand to gain?"
"My niece has explained," said Molvayas, "that we'll all renew our bond with the goddess and replenish our magic. Beyond that, I promise that if I become mistress, I'll remember those who lifted me up. High priestesses, you will be my lieutenants, ranking higher than any other instructor. Novices, your time at Arach-Tinilith will be spent far more pleasantly than is the rule. You, too, will exercise authority over your peers. You'll enjoy luxuries. I'll excuse you from the more onerous ordeals and teach you secrets most pupils never learn."
"We'll hold you to that," said another voice from the back, "and expose you if you renege."
"Exactly," said Molvayas. "You'll always be in a position to inform House Baenre of my guilt. Your numbers are too great for me to murder all of you, and so you know you can trust me to keep my pledge. Even if it were otherwise, I'd be stupid to play you false, considering that I'll always need loyal supporters."
"It's tempting," the veiled Xorlarrin said. "I'd take almost any chance to win my magic back. Still, we're talking about the Baenre."
"Damn the Baenre!" Drisinil spat. "Perhaps killing Quenthel is the first rumble of the cave-in that will bury the entire clan."
"What cave-in?" T'risstree asked.
"I don't know, exactly," Drisinil admitted. "Still, consider this: Houses rise and fall. It's the way of Menzoberranzan and the will of Lolth. Thus far, House Baenre has been the exception, perching on the top of the heap for century after century. Perhaps, with the old matron mother's death, the family has finally forfeited the goddess's regard. Why not . . . everyone knows Triel is out of her depth. Perhaps it's time at last for House Baenre to honor the universal law. If so, wouldn't it be glorious to commence the decline in their fortunes here, now, this very minute in this very room?"
"Yes," T'risstree declared.
Surprised, Drisinil turned to face her. "You agree?"
Setting her razor-edged falchion aside, T'risstree rose and said, "I was dubious, but you convinced me." For an instant, she grinned. "I don't like Quenthel anyway. So yes, we'll usher her into her tomb, regain the goddess's approval, and run the academy as we please."
She extended her hands. Drisinil smiled and clasped them despite the twin shooting pains the pressure produced, then she turned to the other females and said, "What about the rest of you? Are you with us?"
They tendered a ragged chorus of assent. She guessed that those who doubted she had hit on the way to propitiate Lolth were nonetheless eager to move up in the temple hierarchy, or at least disliked Quenthel. Maybe they were simply indulging the innate dark elf taste for bloodshed and betrayal.
Drisinil herself truly did believe she'd contrived the proper metaphysical remedy for their woes but deep down, she was even more excited at the prospect of avenging herself on her torturer. How could it be otherwise? For the rest of her life, her self-mutilated hands would announce to any who looked that someone had once defeated and humiliated her.
"I thank you," she said to the other clerics. "Now, let's put our heads together. We have much to plan and only a little time before others will start to miss us."
And plan they did, whispering, bickering, occasionally grinning at some particularly inventive and vicious suggestion. Drisinil knew that some if not all of the scheming would come to nothing—it was too contingent on Quenthel's doing precisely what the plotters wanted exactly when and where they wanted it done—but the effort served to cement their commitment to the conspiracy and to limn at least the bare bones of a strategy.
Finally it was done. The priestesses started to slip out the way they'd come, one and two at a time. The more restless stood in a clump around the exit, awaiting their turns. T'risstree was among them.
Drisinil crossed the floor in as relaxed and casual a manner as she could affect. She didn't want someone to realize her intent, and, surprised, react in some audible way.
No one did. All dark elves were actors in that they were liars, and perhaps she was a better dissembler than most. She sauntered within arm's reach of T'risstree, took hold of the dirk concealed inside her long, fringed shawl, and drove the blade into the high priestess's spine. This time, for whatever reason, the stumps of her severed pinkies didn't hurt a bit.
T'risstree's back arched in a spasm of agony, and, to Drisinil's surprise, her teacher tried to flounder around to face her. Her arm shaking, T'risstree lifted the falchion.
Drisinil turned along with the high priestess, keeping behind her. She grabbed hold of T'risstree's hair, jerked her head back, and sliced open her throat. The instructor collapsed. The sword slipped from her fingers and clanked on the floor.
The onlookers gawked.
"T'risstree T'orgh meant to betray us," Drisinil said. "I saw it in her eyes when I took her hands. We can leave the carcass here for the time being. With luck, no one will discover it until after Quenthel's death."
Either the other conspirators believed her explanation, or, more likely, didn't care that she'd murdered the teacher. A few congratulated her on her finesse, and, utterly indifferent to the corpse sprawled in their midst, resumed their departures.
Drisinil picked up and examined the fallen falchion. Once Quenthel was slain, it ought to look nice on her wall.

Faeryl prowled the rounded, treacherous surfaces at the apex of the ambassadorial residence. She was trying to monitor all four sides of her home, which entailed clambering about with a certain celerity. Yet she was also trying to hide from anyone who might be peering from the window of a neighboring mansion or up from one of the quiet residential boulevards of prosperous West Wall, and the faster she moved, the more problematic stealth became. She'd sneaked up there two hours ago, when everyone else thought she was bundling or burning documents, and she still wasn't sure she'd struck the proper balance between the two necessities.
She wished she could have ordered a retainer or two up there to help her keep her vigil, but it would have been ill-advised, considering that any of her minions might be the object of her hunt.
She also wished she had more cover. Except for a few token walkways and crenellations so small as to be essentially ornamental, the apex of the stalagmite keep was bare of fortifications or even level places to stand. If Faeryl looked closely, she could see subtle signs that at one time, when the keep had served another purpose, such defenses had existed in abundance, but subsequently, a wizard had melted the ramparts back into the rest of the calcite. It made sense. The Menzoberranyr would see no reason to gift an outsider with any notable capacity to resist a siege.
Faeryl perched on the northeast side of the roof. Outlined in blue, green, or violet phosphorescence, the homes of her wealthier neighbors glowed all around her. Had she looked from a distance, she would have observed her own residence shining in the same way. Fortunately, the luminescence only defined the silhouette of the tower and picked out several spiders sculpted in bas-relief. As long as she stayed away from the images, kept silent, and enjoyed a measure of luck, it shouldn't reveal her presence. A soft, indefinable sound rose from the northwest. Grateful that she at least still had the brooch that would make her weightless, she scuttled quickly along the sloping pitch of the roof, fearless in the knowledge that even if she lost her footing, she needn't fall.
In a few seconds, she reached the northwest aspect. She peered over the drop and discovered the source of the sound in the plaza below.
Bare to the waist, rapiers in one hand and parrying daggers in the other, two males circled one another. They stood straight and stepped lightly in the manner of well-trained fencers. Their discarded piwafwis, mail, and shirts lay where they'd tossed them on the ground along with a pair of empty wineskins. A third male looked on from beneath an overhanging balcony some distance away, where the combatants quite possibly hadn't noticed him.
Faeryl sighed. This little tableau was mildly intriguing, but it clearly had nothing to do with her own situation.
After her frustrating interview with Matron Mother Baenre, she'd realized she had an opponent. Someone who'd traduced her, possibly to keep her from departing Menzoberranzan, though she couldn't imagine why. From that inference, it was a small step to the suspicion that the enemy had an agent inside her household. It was what any intelligent foe would try to arrange, and it arguably explained how Faeryl's intention to go home had been discerned and countered with a word in Triel's ear.
Seething with the need to outwit those who had made a fool of her, Faeryl devised a ruse to unmask the spy. She surprised her retainers with the order to pack. They were slipping out of Menzoberranzan that very night. She thought her loyal vassals would obey, but the traitor would try to sneak away to report the household's imminent flight. Crouched on the roof, Faeryl would spot her when she did.
That was the plan, anyway. The ambassador could think of several reasons why it might fail. The residence had means of egress on all four sides, but she couldn't survey all four at once, not unless she floated well above the roof, and that option presented problems of its own. Most dark elf boots possessed a virtue of silence, and their mantles, one of obscuration. The traitor might even have some more potent means of escaping notice, such as a talisman of invisibility. Were she any higher above the ground, Faeryl might have no hope at all of detecting the spy's surreptitious exit.
Of course, the traitor might also have a means of communicating with her confederates via clairaudience, or a charm of instantaneous transit, in which case the envoy's scheme was doomed no matter what. She'd cling to the roof until someone in authority, a company of Baenre guards, perhaps, showed up to take her and her entourage into custody, but she'd had to try something.
She crawled on. Below and behind her, one of the duelists groaned as his foe's blade plunged through his torso. Magic flickered and sizzled, and the victor dropped as well. The wizard who'd been watching from a distance strolled forward to inspect the steaming corpses.
Faeryl wondered if the three had been siblings, and the wizard was the clever one. She'd had a brother like that once, until an even trickier male turned him to dust and absconded with his wands and grimoires. A minor setback for her House, but interesting to watch.
Overhead, something snapped. She glanced up. Four or five riders on wyvern-back were winging their way east. Above them, projecting from the cavern ceiling, the stalactite castles shone with their own enchantments, a far lovelier sight, in her opinion, than the miniscule monochromatic stars that speckled the night sky of the so-called Lands of Light.
Then, so faintly that she wondered if she'd imagined it, something brushed against something else. The sound had issued from the southwest.
Faeryl scurried over to that part of the roof and peered down. At first glance, nothing appeared changed since the last time she'd checked that way. Perhaps her nerves were playing tricks on her, but she kept on looking anyway.
Octagonal steel grilles protected the round windows cut in the wall below her, but if a drow knew the trick, she could unlatch one and swing it aside for an entrance or exit via levitation. Apparently, someone had, for after a few more moments, Faeryl noticed that one of the web-pattern shields hung ever so slightly ajar. With that sign to guide her, she spotted the shrouded figure skulking toward the mouth of an alleyway. The noble of Ched Nasad was a fair hand with a crossbow. She might have been able to shoot down the traitor from behind, but that would gain her few answers. She didn't happen to possess a scroll with the spell for interrogating the dead. She needed to catch up with the spy and take the wretch alive.
She read from a scroll she did have, then she stepped away from the top of the tower into empty space.
Except that it wasn't empty for her. The air was as firm as stone beneath her soles. For two paces, she strode on a level surface, and, because she willed it so, the unseen platform dipped into an equally invisible ramp. She sprinted down with no fear of blundering off the edge. Wherever she set her foot, the incline would be there to meet it. That was how the magic worked.
Her progress entirely silent, she dashed unnoticed above the traitor's head, then with a thought dissolved the support beneath her boots. Her crossbow ready, she dropped the last few feet to the ground and landed in front of the spy.
Started, the traitor jumped. Faeryl felt her own pang of surprise, for though she liked to think she maintained a proper suspicion of everyone, in truth, she never could have guessed the pinched, sour face she saw half hidden inside the close-drawn cowl could be the spy's.
"Umrae," the ambassador said, aiming her hand crossbow.
"My lady," the secretary answered, bending with her usual stiffness into an obeisance.
"I know all about it, traitor. I'm not actually planning to leave tonight. My pretending so was a trick to see who would slip away to play informer."
"I don't know what you mean. I just wanted to buy some items for the journey. I thought that if I hurried over to the Bazaar, I could find one of those merchants who stays open late and be back before anyone missed me."
"Do you think I haven't realized I have an enemy here in Menzoberranzan, someone with access to Matron Baenre? Two tendays ago, Triel considered me loyal. She approved of me. She granted a good deal of what I asked on behalf of our people. Now, she doubts me, because someone has persuaded her to question my true intentions. What did my foe offer to lure you to her side? Don't you realize that in betraying me, you betray Ched Nasad itself?"
The scribe hesitated, then said, "Matron Baenre has people watching the residence. Someone is watching us right now."
"Perhaps," Faeryl replied.
Umrae swallowed. "So you can't harm me. Or they'll harm you."
Faeryl laughed. "Rubbish. Triel's agents won't reveal their presence just to keep me from disciplining one of my own retainers. They won't see anything odd or detrimental to Menzoberranzan's interests in that. Now, be sensible and surrender."
After another pause, Umrae said, "Give me your word you won't hurt me. That you'll set me free and help me flee the city."
"I promise you nothing except that your insolence is making me angrier by the second, and a quick capitulation is your only hope. Tell me, who turned you, and why? What does anyone hereabouts have to gain by persecuting an envoy, one who stands apart from the feuds and rivalries among the Menzoberranyr Houses?"
"You must understand, I fear to betray them and remain. They'll kill me if I do."
"They won't get the chance. I'm the one pointing a poisoned dart at you. Who are your employers?"
"I won't say, not without your pledge."
"Your friend didn't slander me to Triel until after I started contemplating a return to Ched Nasad. Was that the point of the lie? To keep me from venturing out into the Underdark? Why?"
Umrae shook her head.
"You're mad," Faeryl said. "Why would you condemn yourself to perpetuate someone else's existence? Ah well, you're plainly unfit to live, so I suppose it's for the best."
She made a show of sighting down the length of the crossbow. "No!" Umrae cried. "Don't! You're right, why should I die?"
"If you answer my questions, perhaps you won't."
"Yes."
Trembling a little, her nerve having been broken, the clerk raised her hand to her face, perhaps to massage her brow. No—to lift a tiny vial to her lips!
Faeryl pulled the trigger and her aim was true, but by the time the quarrel pierced Umrae's stomach, the secretary's form was changing. She grew even thinner, shriveling, but taller as well. Her flesh cooled and stank of corruption, leathery wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, and her eyes sank into her head. Even her garments altered, blurring and splitting into moldering rags. No blood flowed from the wound the poisoned dart had made, and it didn't seem to inconvenience her in the slightest. She didn't even bother to pull the missile out.
Faeryl was furious at herself for allowing Umrae to trick her. Next time, she'd remember that even a dark elf devoid of beauty, grace, and facile wit, seemingly undone by fear, was yet a drow, born to guile and deception.
The potion had temporarily transformed Umrae into some sort of undead, in which form she likely wouldn't suffer at all from her usual clumsiness. Had Lolth not forsaken her priestesses, Faeryl might have controlled the cadaverous thing with her clerical powers, but that was no longer an option. Nor were any of her other retainers likely to notice her plight and dash to her rescue. She had them all too busy packing up the house.
It was unfortunate, because like most undead, except for the lowly corpses and skeletons spellcasters reanimated to serve as mindless thralls, Umrae in winged-ghoul form could probably do grievous harm with any strike that so much as grazed the skin, and Faeryl didn't even have a shield to fend her off. How was she to know the spy would possess such a potent means of defense?
Umrae took a shambling step, then, with a clap of her wings, bounded forward. Faeryl hastily retreated, dropped the useless crossbow, and opened the clasp of her cloak. Pulling the garment off her shoulders with one hand, she unsheathed a little adamantine rod with the other. At a snap of her wrist, the harmless-looking object swelled into Mother's Kiss, the long-hafted, basalt-headed warhammer the females of House Zauvirr had borne since the founding of their line. Perhaps an enchanted weapon would slay Umrae where the envenomed quarrel had failed.
Faeryl would have to hope so. Even if she were willing to stand meekly aside and let the traitor fly away, Umrae, her thoughts perhaps colored by the predatory guise she'd assumed, plainly wanted a fight, and the envoy could see no way to evade her. It would be stupid to evoke darkness and run. In undead form, Umrae would likely manage better in the murk than its maker did. It would be even more pointless to try to levitate or ascend through the use of the air-walking charm when the shapeshifter could simply spread her ragged wings and follow.
Faeryl waved her piwafwi back and forth at the end of her extended arm, to confuse Umrae and serve as some semblance of a shield. No one had ever taught Faeryl to fight thusly, but she'd observed warriors practicing the technique, and she tried to believe that if mere males could do it, it would surely present no difficulty to a high priestess.
Umrae lunged, Faeryl lashed the cloak in a horizontal arc. Possibly thanks to luck as much as skill, the garment blocked Umrae's hands. Her talons snagged in the weave.
Surprised, Umrae faltered in the attack and struggled to free her hands. Faeryl stepped through and smashed the pointed stone head of her hammer into the center of the servant's carious brow. Bone crunched, and Umrae's head snapped backward. A goodly portion of her left profile fell off her skull.
Certain the fight was over, Faeryl relaxed, and that was nearly the end of her. Transformed, Umrae could evidently endure more damage than almost any creature with warm flesh and a beating heart. She opened her mouth, exposing long, thin fangs, and what was left of her head shot forward over the top of the cape. The ambassador only barely managed to fling herself back out of the way in time.
The piwafwi was stretched taut between the two combatants, as if they were playing tug-of-war. Both yanked on it simultaneously, and Faeryl was the luckier. The cloak tore free of Umrae's grasp, but despite the garment's reinforcing enchantments, it returned to the ambassador with long rips the ghoul's claws had cut. A few more such rendings and it would be useless.
The capes sudden release also sent Faeryl stumbling backward. With another beat of her festering wings, Umrae hopped and closed the distance. Her clawed hands shot forward.
Crying out in desperation, Faeryl managed to plant her feet and arrest her helpless stagger. She lashed out with the hammer and clipped one of Umraes hands. The imitation ghoul snatched it back and gave up the attack. Instead, she began to circle. Just as a living creature would, she shook her battered extremity several times as if to dislodge the pain, then lifted it back on guard.
Faeryl turned to keep the foe with her crushed, half-flayed head in view. What is it going to take to stop this thing? the ambassador wondered, Can I stop it?
Yes, curse it!
When she was a child, her cousin Merinid, weapons master of House Zauvirr, dead these many years since her mother tired of him, had told her that any opponent could be destroyed. It was just a matter of finding the vulnerable spot.
Umrae lunged. Once again, the ambassador snapped out the folds of her frail, flapping shield. The cloak entangled one of the servant's hands. The other raked, rasping and snagging, across Faeryl's coat of fine adamantine links. The winged ghoul's touch sowed cramping sickness in its wake, but the claws hadn't quite sheared through the sturdy mail, and the sensation only lasted an instant.
Faeryl swung at Umrae's withered chest in its covering of filthy, crumbling cloth. If she couldn't slay the ghoul-thing with a strike to the head, then the heart must be the vulnerable spot, just as with a vampire. Or at least she hoped so.
To her surprise, Umrae denied her the chance to find out one way or the other. It looked as if the traitor had so committed to her attack that she would find it impossible to defend against a riposte. Yet she interposed her withered arm to take the shock of the warhammer, then stooped to claw at Faeryl's unarmored knee.
The envoy avoided that potentially crippling attack with a fast retreat, meanwhile ripping the cloak away from her foul-smelling adversary. The garment was starting to look more like a bunch of ribbons than one coherent piece of silk.
The duelists resumed circling, each looking for an opening. Occasionally Faeryl let the tattered piwafwi slip or droop out of line, offering an invitation, but Umrae proved too canny to attack when and how her opponent wished her to.
Faeryl realized she was panting and did the best to control her breathing. She wasn't afraid—she wasn't—but she was impressed with her servant's potion-induced prowess. Formidable from the moment she imbibed it, Umrae was truly getting the hang of her borrowed capabilities as the battle progressed.
While still maneuvering and keeping an eye on Umrae, Faeryl nevertheless entered a light trance. With a sense that was neither sight, hearing, nor any faculty comprehensible to those who'd never pledged her service to a deity, she reached into that formless yet somehow jagged place where she had once been accustomed to touch the shadow of the goddess.
The presence of Lolth had absented itself from the meeting ground, leaving a vacancy that somehow throbbed like a diseased tooth. Still, it seemed an appropriate domain in which to pray.
Dread Queen of Spiders, Faeryl silently began, I beg you, reveal yourself to me. Restore my powers, even if only for a moment. Has Menzoberranzan offended you? So be it, but I'm not one of her daughters. I'm from Ched Nasad. Make me as I was, and I'll give you many lives—a slave every day for a year.
Nothing happened.
Umrae sprang in, clawing. Faeryl jerked the part of her spirit that had groped in the void back into her body. Retreating, she blocked the undead creature's claws with her cloak and struck a couple blows with the warhammer. She didn't withdraw quickly enough to take herself completely out of harm's way, nor did she settle into a strong stance and swing as hard as she could have. She wanted the ghoul to feel on the brink of overwhelming her opponent and keep coming. If Umrae grew too eager, she might open herself up for an effective counterattack.
Umrae's talons whizzed through the air, tearing scraps from the sheltering cloak until it was the size of a ragged hand towel. Unexpectedly, the spy beat her riddled wings, hopped in close, and struck at Faeryl's face. The noble recoiled, but even so the claws streaked past a fraction of an inch before her eyes, so close she could feel the malignancy inside them as a pulse of headache.
Still, it was all right, because she thought Umrae was finally open. She sidestepped and swung her stone-headed hammer at the ghoul's rib cage—
—to no avail, even though Faeryl had been correct, Umrae couldn't swing her hands around in time to block the blow. Instead, she took another stride, slapped the ambassador with a flick of her wing, and sent her reeling.
Faeryl's head rang, and the world blurred. As she struggled to throw off the stunning effects of the blow, she thought fleetingly how unfair it was that Umrae, who had long ago forsaken combat training as a humiliating exercise in futility, was demolishing a female who still doggedly reported to her captain-of-the-guard for practice once a tenday.
After what seemed a long time, her head cleared. She whirled, certain that Umrae was about to attack her from behind. She wasn't. In fact, the animate corpse was nowhere to be seen.
Plainly, Umrae had taken to the air. Had she finally done the sensible thing and fled? Faeryl couldn't believe it. Umrae hated her. The envoy didn't know why, but she'd seen it in the traitor's eyes. Such being the case, Umrae wouldn't break off when she had every reason to believe she was winning and close to making the kill. No drow would, which meant she was still hovering somewhere overhead, poised to swoop down and, she undoubtedly hoped, catch her mistress by surprise and smash her to the ground.
Her heart pounding, Faeryl peered upward and saw nothing. She listened for the beat of the creature's wings but heard only the eternal muffled whisper of the city as a whole. She wasn't entirely surprised. The undead were famously stealthy when stalking their prey.
A black sliver momentarily cut the line of violet luminescence adorning a spire of the castle of House Vandree. The obstruction had surely been the tip of one of Umrae's wings.
Faeryl stared for another moment, then jumped when she finally spotted Umrae. Her tattered cloak flapping between her wings, the transformed secretary was already hurtling down like a raptor from the World Above diving to plunge its talons into a rodent.
Hoping Umrae hadn't seen her react to the sight of her, Faeryl kept turning and peering. When she felt the disturbance in the air, or perhaps simply the urgent prompting of her instincts, she jumped aside, pivoted, and swung the warhammer in an overhand blow.
Under those circumstances, she had little chance of smashing the thing's heart, but she'd seen that Umrae could suffer pain. Perhaps the initial blow would freeze the undead thing in place for an instant, affording Faeryl the opportunity for what she prayed would be the finishing stroke.
The ambassador had timed the move properly, and the weapon's basalt head smashed into Umrae's flank. Deprived of her victim, unexpectedly battered, the ghoul slammed into the smooth stone surface of the street with a satisfying crash. Scraps of flesh broke away from her raddled body, releasing a fresh puff of stench.
Faeryl marked her target, the place on Umrae's chest beneath which her heart ought to lie, and swung Mother's Kiss back for the follow-up attack. The traitor rolled and scrambled to her knees. Faeryl struck, and Umrae lashed out with a taloned hand. The ghoul caught the warhammer in mid-flight, tore it out of the ambassador's grip, and sent it spinning to clack down on the ground ten feet away.
Faeryl felt a crazy impulse to turn and go after the thing, but she knew Umrae would rip her apart if she tried. She backstepped instead. The inhumanly gaunt spy leaped to her feet—she looked like a pile of sticks spontaneously assembling themselves into a crude facsimile of a person—and pursued.
While retreating, Faeryl started edging around in a looping course that might ultimately bring her to the spot where the hammer lay. Leering, Umrae moved sideways right along with her in a way that demonstrated she knew exactly what her mistress had in mind and would never permit it.
Well, the aristocrat still had one weapon—pitifully inadequate to the situation though it was—a knife hidden in the belt that gathered her light, supple coat of mail at the waist. The gold buckle was the hilt, and when she pulled on it, the stubby adamantine blade would slide free. She started to reach for it, then hesitated.
Against Umrae's talons, long reach, and resistance to harm, the dagger really would be useless . . . unless Faeryl could get in close enough to use it, and unless she attacked by surprise.
But how in the name of the Demonweb was she to accomplish that? Umrae was rapidly closing the distance, snapping her wings every few steps to lengthen a stride, and for three unnerving backward paces, Faeryl's mind was blank.
Then she remembered the cloak, or rather, the remnants of it, still clutched in her offhand. Perhaps she could employ it to conceal her drawing of the knife. The piwafwi was just a sad little mass of tatters, and she was no juggler adept at sleight-of-hand, but curse it, if clumsy Umrae had palmed a potion vial without her mistress noticing until it was too late, surely the mistress could do as well.
Faeryl had been reflexively moving the cloak around the whole time, so it shouldn't look suspicious for her to cover her waist with it. At the same time, she hooked the fingers of her weapon hand in the oval hollow at the center of the buckle and pulled. She had never before had occasion to employ this last desperate means of defense, but in the sixteen years since an artisan had made it to her specifications, she had always kept the knife and scabbard oiled, and the blade easily slid free.
She studied Umrae. As far as the envoy could tell, the imitation ghoul hadn't seen her bare the dagger, but she doubted she could keep it hidden for more than a second or two. She had to manufacture a chance for herself quickly if she was to have one at all.
She pretended to stumble. She hoped her unsteadiness looked genuine. Umrae had touched her, after all, so it might seem credible that her strength was failing.
The ghoul took the bait. She leaped forward and seized Faeryl by the forearms. This time, her claws punched through the envoy's layer of mail and jabbed their tips into her flesh. At once, a surge of nausea wracked Faeryl, then another. Retching, she wasn't sure she could still use the knife in any sort of controlled manner. Perhaps she'd just served herself up to her foe like a plate of mushrooms.
Umrae grinned at Faeryl's seeming—or genuine—helplessness. The envoy felt the clerk's fingers tense, preparing to flense the meat from her bones, even as she pulled the noble closer and opened her jaws to bite down on her head.
Fighting the sickness and weakness, Faeryl tried to thrust her hand forward. The effort strained her flesh against the ghoul's talons, tearing her wounds larger and bringing a burst of pain—but then her arm jerked free. The blade rammed into Umrae's withered chest, slipping cleanly between two ribs and plunging in all the way up to Faeryl's knuckles.
Umrae convulsed and threw back her head for a silent scream. The spasms jerked her hands and threatened to rip Faeryl apart even without the traitor's conscious intent. Umrae froze, and toppled backward, carrying her assailant with her.
In contradiction of every tale Faeryl had ever heard, the shapeshifter didn't revert to her original form when true death claimed her. Still horribly sick, the envoy lay for some time in the ghoul's fetid embrace. Eventually, however, she mustered the trembling strength to pull free of the claws embedded in her bleeding limbs, after which she crawled a few feet away from the winged corpse.
Gradually, despite the sting of her punctures and bruises, she started to feel a little better. Physically, anyway. Inside her mind, she was berating herself for an outcome that wasn't really a victory at all.
Given that she needed to learn what Umrae knew, not kill her, she'd bungled their encounter from the beginning. She supposed she should have agreed to the traitor's terms, but she'd been too angry and too proud. She should also have spotted the vial and fought more skillfully. If not for luck, it would be she and not her erstwhile scribe lying dead on the stone.
She wondered if her sojourn in Menzoberranzan had diminished her. Back in Ched Nasad, she had enemies in- and outside House Zauvirr to keep her strong and sharp, but in the City of Spiders none had wished her ill. Had she forgotten the habits that protected her for her first two hundred years of life? If so, she knew she'd better remember them quickly.
The enemy hadn't finished with her. She wasn't so dull and rusty that she didn't recall how these covert wars unfolded. It was like a sava game, progressing a step at a time, gradually escalating in ferocity. Her unknown adversary's first move, though she hadn't known it at the time, had been to turn Umrae and lie to Triel. Faeryl's countermove was to capture the spy and remove her from the board. As soon as Umrae missed some prearranged rendezvous, the foe would know her pawn had been taken and advance another piece. Perhaps it would be the mother. Perhaps the foe would suggest to Matron Baenre that the time had come to throw Faeryl in a dungeon.
But life wasn't really a sava game. Faeryl could cheat and make two moves in a row, which in this instance meant truly fleeing Menzoberranzan as soon as possible, before the enemy learned of her agents demise.
Light-headed and sour-mouthed from her exertions, Faeryl dragged herself to her feet, trudged in search of Mother's Kiss, and wondered just how she would accomplish that little miracle.

TEN
Cloaked in the semblance of a squat, leathery-skinned orc, whose twisted leg manifestly made him unfit for service in a noble or even merchant House, Pharaun took an experimental bite of his sausage and roll. The unidentifiable ground meat inside the casing tasted rank and was gristly, as well as cold at the core.
"By the Demonweb!" he exclaimed.
"What?" Ryld replied.
The weapons master too appeared to be a scurvy broken-down orc in grubby rags. Unbelievably, he was devouring his vile repast without any overt show of repugnance.
"What?"
The Master of Sorcere brandished his sausage. "This travesty. This abomination."
He headed for the culprit's kiosk, a sad little construction of bone poles and sheets of hide, taking care not to walk too quickly. His veil of illusion would make it look as if he were limping, but it wouldn't conceal the anomaly of a lame orc covering ground as quickly as one with two good legs.
The long-armed, flat-faced goblin proprietor produced a cudgel from beneath the counter. Perhaps he was used to complaints.
Pharaun raised a hand and said, "I mean no harm. In fact, I want to help."
The goblin's eyes narrowed. "Help?"
"Yes. I'll even pay another penny for the privilege." he said as he extracted a copper coin from his purse. "I just want to show you something."
The cook hesitated, then held out a dirty-nailed hand and said, "Give. No tricks."
"No tricks."
Pharaun surrendered the coins and to the goblin's surprise, squirmed around the end of the counter and crowded into the miniature kitchen. He wrapped his hand in a fold of his cloak, slid the hot iron grill with its load of meat from its brackets, and set it aside.
"First," Pharaun said, "you spread the coals evenly at the bottom of the brazier." He picked up a poker and demonstrated. "Next, though we don't have time to start from scratch right now, you let them burn to gray. Only then do you start cooking, with the grill positioned here." He replaced the utensil in a higher set of brackets.
"Sausage take longer to fry," the goblin said.
"Do you have somewhere to go? Now, I'm going to assume you buy these questionable delicacies elsewhere and thus can do nothing about the quality, but you can at least tenderize them with a few whacks from that mallet, poke a few holes with the fork to help them cook on the inside, and sprinkle some of these spices on them." Pharaun grinned. "You've never so much as touched a lot of this stuff, have you? What did you do, murder the real chef and take possession of his enterprise?"
The smaller creature smirked and said, "Don't matter now, do it?"
"I suppose not. One last thing: Roast the sausage when the customer orders it, not hours beforehand. It isn't nearly as appetizing if it's cooked, allowed to cool, then warmed again. Good fortune to you." He clapped the goblin on the shoulder, then exited the stand. At some point, Ryld had wandered up to observe the lesson. "What was the point of that?" the warrior asked.
"I was performing a public service," answered the wizard, "preserving the Braeryn from a plague of dyspepsia."
Pharaun fell in beside his friend, and the two dark elves walked on.
"You were amusing yourself, and it was idiotic. You take the trouble to disguise us, then risk revealing your true identity by playing the gourmet."
"I doubt one small lapse will prove our undoing. It's unlikely that any of our ill-wishers will interview that particular street vendor any time soon or ask the right questions if they do. Remember, we're well disguised. Who would imagine this lurching, misshapen creature could possibly be my handsome, elegant self? Though I must admit, your metamorphosis wasn't quite so much of a stretch."
Ryld scowled, then wolfed down his last bite of sausage and bread.
"Why didn't you disguise us from the moment we left Tier Breche?" he asked. "Never mind, I think I know. A fencer doesn't reveal all his capabilities in the initial moments of the bout."
"Something like that. Greyanna and her minions have seen us looking like ourselves, so if we're lucky they won't expect to find us appearing radically different. The trick won't befuddle them forever, but perhaps long enough for us to complete our business and return to our sedate, cloistered lives."
"Does that mean you've figured out something else?"
"Not as such, but you know I'm prone to sudden bursts of inspiration."
The masters entered a crowded section of street outside of what was evidently a popular tavern, with a howling, barking gnoll song shaking the calcite walls. Pharaun had never had occasion to walk incognito among the lower orders. It felt odd weaving, pausing, and twisting to avoid bumps and jostles. Had they known his true identity, his fellow pedestrians would have scurried out of his way.
As the two drow reached the periphery of the crowd, Ryld pivoted and struck a short straight blow with his fist. A hunchbacked, piebald creature—the product of a mating of goblin and orc perhaps—stumbled backward and fell on his rump.
"Cutpurse," the warrior explained. "I hate this place."
"No pangs of nostalgia?"
Ryld glowered. "That isn't funny."
"No? Then I beg your pardon," Pharaun said with a smirk. "I wonder why this precinct always seems so sordid, even on those rare occasions when one finds oneself alone in a plaza or boulevard. Well, the smell, of course. We don't call them the Stench streets for nothing, hut the buildings, though generally more modest than those encountered elsewhere in the city, still wear the same graceful shapes our ancestors cut from the living rock."
The teachers paused to let a spider with legs as long as broadswords scuttle across the street. The Braeryn notoriously harbored hordes of the sacred creatures. Sacred or not, Pharaun reviewed his mental list of ready spells, but the arachnid ignored the disguised dark elves.
"That's a foolish question," said Ryld. "Why does the Braeryn seem foul? The inhabitants!"
"Ah, but did the living refuse of our society generate the atmosphere of the district, or did that malignant spirit exist from the beginning and lure the wretched to its domain?"
"I'm no metaphysician," said Ryld. "All I know is that somebody should clear the scavengers out of here."
Pharaun chuckled. "What if said clearing had occurred when you were a tyke?"
"I don't mean exterminate them—except for the hopeless cases—but why just let them squat here in their dirt like a festering chancre on the city? Why not find something useful for them to do?"
"Ah, but they're already useful. Status is all, is it not? Does it not follow, then, that no Menzoberranyr can find contentment without someone upon whom she can look down."
"We have slaves."
"They won't do. Predicate your claim to self-respect on their existence and you tacitly acknowledge you're only slightly better than a thrall yourself. Happily, here in the Stench streets, we find a populace starving, filthy, penniless, riddled with disease, living twenty or thirty to a room, yet nominally free. The humblest commoner in Manyfolk or even Eastmyr can turn up his nose at them and feel smug."
"You really think that's the reason Matron Baenre hasn't ordered the slum scoured clean?"
"Well, if that conjecture seems implausible, here's another: Rumor has it that from time to time, someone meets the goddess herself in the Braeryn. Supposedly she likes to visit here in mortal guise. The matrons may feel that the neighborhood is, in some sense, under her protection."
The wizard hesitated. "Though if Lolth has gone away for good, perhaps they don't need to worry about it anymore."
Ryld shook his head. "It's still so hard to belie—"
Pharaun pointed. "Look."
Ryld turned.
On a curving wall below a dark elf's eye level was a sketch, this time smeared in blue. It consisted of three overlapping ovals, conceivably representing the links of a chain.
"It's a different mark," said Ryld. "Hobgoblin maybe, though I couldn't tell you the tribe."
"Don't be intentionally dim. It's the same peculiar, reckless, pointless crime."
"Fair enough, and it's still irrelevant to our endeavors."
"It's a dull mind that never transcends pragmatics. Two signs, representing two races, implying two specimens of the lesser races demented in precisely the same way? Unlikely, yet why would a single artist daub an emblem not his own?"
"Coincidence?"
"I doubt it, but as yet I can't provide a better answer."
"It's a puzzle for another day, remember?"
"Indeed."
The masters walked on.
"Still," pressed Pharaun, "don't you wonder how many scrawled signs we passed without noticing and exactly what form they took?"
Ignoring the question, Ryld pointed and said, "That's our destination."

The house's limestone door stood open, most likely for ventilation, for the interior radiated a perceptible warmth, the product of a multitude of tenants crammed in together. It also emitted a muddled drone and a thick stink considerably fouler than the unpleasant smell that clung to the Braeryn as a whole.
Ryld had been born in a similar warren, had fought like a demon to escape it, and he felt a strange reluctance to venture in, as if squalor wouldn't let him escape a second time. Unwilling to appear timid and foolish in the eyes of his friend, he hid the feeling behind an impassive warrior's countenance.
Pharaun, however, freely demonstrated his own distaste. The porcine eyes in his illusory orc face watered, and he swallowed, no doubt trying to quell a surge of queasiness.
"Get used to it," said Ryld.
"I'll be all right. I've visited the Braeryn frequently enough to have some notion of what these little hells are like, though I confess I never entered one."
"Then stick close and let me do the talking. Don't stare at anybody, or look anyone in the eye. They're likely to take it as an insult or challenge. Don't touch anyone or anything if you can avoid it. Half the residents are sick and probably contagious."
"Really? And their palace gives off such a salubrious air! Ah, well, lead on."
Ryld did as his friend had asked. Beyond the threshold was the claustrophobic nightmare he remembered. Kobolds, goblins, orcs, gnolls, bugbears, hobgoblins, and a sprinkling of less common creatures squeezed into every available space. Some, the warrior knew, were runaway slaves. Others had entered the service of Menzoberranyr travelers who picked them up in far corners of the world, took them back to the city, and dismissed them without any means of making their way home. The rest were descendants of unfortunate souls in the first two categories.
Wherever they came from, the paupers were trapped in the Braeryn, begging, stealing, scavenging, preying on one another—often in the most literal sense—and hiring on for any dangerous, filthy job anyone cared to give them. It was the only way they could survive.
This particular lot had likewise learned to live packed into the common space without the slightest vestige of privacy. Undercreatures babbled, cooked, ate, drank, tended a still, brawled, twitched and moaned in the throes of sickness, shook and cuffed their shrieking infants, threw dice, fornicated, relieved themselves, and, amazingly, slept, all in plain view of anyone with the ill luck to look in their direction.
As Ryld had expected, within moments of their entrance, a pair of toughs—in this instance bugbears—slouched forward to accost them.
With their coarse, shaggy manes and square, prominent jaws, bugbears were the largest and strongest of the goblin peoples, towering over the rest—and dark elves, too, for that matter. This pair was, by the standards of their destitute household, relatively well-fed and adequately dressed. They likely bullied tribute out of the rest.
"You don't live here," rumbled the taller of the two.
He wore what appeared to be a severed goblin hand strung around his burly neck. Drow occasionally affected similar ornaments, usually mementos of hated enemies, but they sent them to a taxidermist first. It was too bad the bugbear hadn't done the same. It would have prevented the rot and the carrion smell.
"No," Ryld said, tossing the bugbear a shaved coin, paying the toll to pass in and out of the house. "We came to see Smylla Nathos."
The hulking goblinoids just looked at him, as did several others creatures. A scaly, naked little kobold tittered crazily.
Something was wrong, and the Master of Melee-Magthere didn't know what. He felt a sudden tension and exhaled it away. Looking nervous was a bad idea.
"Isn't this Smylla's house?" he asked.
The shorter bugbear, who still loomed nearly as huge as an ogre, laughed and said, "No, not no more, but she still live here . . . kind of."
"Can we see her?" said Ryld.
"What tor?" asked the bugbear with the severed goblin hand.
The weapons master hesitated. He'd intended to say that he and Pharaun wished to consult Smylla in her professional capacity as a trader in information. It was essentially the truth, though that didn't matter. What did was that he hadn't expected it to provoke a hostile response.
Pharaun stepped up beside him.
"Smylla sold our sister Iggra the secret of how to break into a merchant's strongroom," the wizard said in a creditably surly Orcish rasp. "How to get around all the traps. . . . Only she left one out, see? It squirted acid on Sis and burned her to death. Slow. Almost got us too. It's Smylla's fault, and we come to 'talk' to her about it."
The smaller bugbear nodded. "You ain't the only ones wantin' that kind of talk. Us, too, but we can't get at the bitch."
Pharaun cocked his head. "How come?"
"A couple tendays ago," said the bugbear with the severed hand necklace, "we decided we was tired of her bossing us and her lamps hurting our eyes. We jumped her, hit her, but she chucked one of those stones that makes a flash of light. It blinded us, and she run up to her room." He nodded toward the head of a twisting staircase. "We can't get through the door. She locked it with magic or somethin'."
Pharaun snorted. "Ain't no door my brother and me can't bust through."
The bugbears exchanged glances. The smaller one, who, Ryld noticed, was missing several of his lower teeth, shrugged.
"You can try," the larger one said. "Only, Smylla belongs to us, too. Hit her, bleed her, slice off a piece of her and eat it, but you can't keep her all to yourself."
"It's a deal," Pharaun said.
"Come on, then."
The bugbears led them through the crowded room and onto the stairs, where they still had to pick their way through lounging paupers. Partway up, the brute wearing the decaying hand put it in his mouth and began slurping and sucking on it.
At the top of the steps were a small landing and a limestone door with a rounded top. Two sentries, an orc and a canine-faced gnoll with sores on his muzzle, sat on the floor looking bored.
The disguised teachers made a show of examining the door.
"Can you knock it down?" Pharaun whispered.
"When the bugbears couldn't? Don't count on it. Can you open it with magic?"
"Probably. It's magically sealed, so a counterspell should suffice, but I don't want our friends to observe me casting it. That really would compromise my disguise. Stand where you obstruct their view and do something distracting."
"Right." Ryld positioned himself in the appropriate spot and glowered up at the two bugbears. "We can open it. What loot is inside?"
The larger bugbear scowled and, the odious object in his mouth garbling his speech a little, said, "We made a deal. It didn't say nothing about no loot."
"Smylla took Sis's treasure," Ryld replied. "We want it back, and extra too, for wergild."
"Hell with that."
The bugbear with the missing teeth reached for the knife tucked through his belt. Ryld could see it was a butcher's tool, not a proper fighting blade, but no doubt it served in the latter capacity well enough.
Ryld rested his hand on the hilt of his short sword, the weapon of choice for these tight quarters, and said, "You want to fight, we'll fight. I'll slice your face off your skull and wear it like a breechcloth, but my brother and I came to kill Smylla, not you. Let's talk. If you never get the door—"
"Open," Pharaun said.
White light shone at Ryld's back, making the bugbears wince. Squinting, the warrior whirled and scrambled for the opening.
"Hey!" yelped the smaller bugbear.
Ryld felt a big hand fumble at his shoulder, trying to grab him, but it was an instant too slow. He followed Pharaun over the threshold and slammed the door.
"You need to hold it shut," the wizard said.
"I can't do it for long."
Leaning forward, Ryld planted his hands on the limestone slab and braced himself.
The door bucked inward. For a split second, the dark elf's feet slid on the calcite floor, then they caught, and he held the barrier in place. Barely.
Meanwhile, Pharaun was peering about. He gave a little cry of satisfaction, picked up a small iron bar, and set it so it overlapped the edge of the door and the jamb about halfway up. When he took his hand away, the charm remained in place.
"This is quite a clever little device," the wizard said. "Oh, and you can let go now."

Pharaun turned the mechanical locks his spell of opening had disengaged, snapping each shut in its turn. It was actually the enchanted length of iron that had up to then kept the goblinoids out, but he thought he and Ryld might as well be as secure as possible. It also seemed the courteous thing to do.
His hostess, however, didn't seem to appreciate the gesture.
"Get out!" she croaked. "Get out, or I'll slay you with my sorcery!"
The masters turned. Smylla Nathos had lit her sparsely furnished room with a pair of slender brass rods, the tips of which emitted a steady magical glow. They protruded from the necks of wax-encrusted wine bottles like tapers sitting in candelabra, which they perhaps were meant to resemble. Maybe Smylla missed the spellcaster's traditional mode of illumination but couldn't obtain it anymore.
She herself lay at the limit of the light, on a cot in the shadows at the far end of the room. Pharaun could just barely make her out.
"Good afternoon, my lady," the wizard said, bowing. "It shames me beyond measure to ignore your request. Yet should this gentleman and I pass through your door a second time, the bugbears and their ilk will rush in, and that, I think, is the very eventuality you sought to forestall."
"Who are you? You don't talk like an orc."
"My lady is a marvel of perspicacity. We are in fact drow lords come to consult you on a matter of some importance."
"Why are you disguised?"
"The usual reason: To confound our enemies. May we approach? It's tedious trying to converse across the length of the room."
Smylla hesitated, then said, "Come."
Pharaun and Ryld started forward. Behind them, the bugbears were cursing, shouting threats and questions, and pounding on the far side of the door.
After four paces, the wizard's stomach turned at yet another stench, this one humid and gangrenous. He'd half expected something of the sort, but that didn't make it any easier to bear. Even the phlegmatic Ryld looked discomfited for an instant.
"Close enough," Smylla said, and Pharaun supposed it was.
He had no desire to come any nearer to that wasted form with its boils and pustules, even though the enchantments bound into his mantle and Rylds cloak and dwarven armor would probably protect them from infection.
"Can you help us?" asked Ryld.
The sick woman leered. "Will you pay me with the magnificent great-sword you wear across your back?"
Pharaun was somewhat impressed. The illusion of pig-faced orcishness shrouding his friend made Splitter look like a battle-axe, but Smylla's rheumy, sunken eyes had pierced that aspect of the deception.
When he recovered from his surprise, Ryld shook his head. "No, I won't give you the sword, I worked too hard to get it, and I need it to stay alive, but if you want, I can use it to clear away the goblinoids outside. My comrade and I are also carrying a fair amount of gold."
Her dry white hair spread about her head, Smylla lay propped against a mound of stained, musty pillows. She struggled to hitch herself up straighter, then abandoned the effort. Apparently it was beyond her strength.
"Gold?" she said. "Do you know who I am, swordsman? Do you know my history?"
"I do," Pharaun said. "The gist of it, anyway. It happened after I more or less withdrew from participation in the affairs of the great Houses."
"What do you know?" she asked.
"An expedition from House Faen Tlabbar," the wizard replied, "ventured up into the Lands of Light to hunt and plunder. When they returned, a lovely human sorceress and clairvoyant accompanied them, not as a newly captured slave but as their guest.
"Why did you want to come? Perhaps you were fleeing some implacable enemy, or were fascinated by the grace and sophistication of my people and the idea of living in the exotic Underdark. My hunch is that you wanted to learn drow magic, but it's pure speculation. No outsider ever knew.
"For that matter, why did the Faen Tlabbar oblige you? That's an even greater mystery. Conceivably someone harbored amorous feelings for you, or you, too, had secrets to teach."
"I had a way of persuading them," Smylla said.
"Obviously. Once you reached Menzoberranzan, you made yourself useful to House Faen Tlabbar as countless minions from the lesser races had done before you. The difference being that you were accorded a certain status, even a degree of familiarity. Matron Ghenni let you dine with the family and attend social functions, where you reportedly acquitted yourself with a drowlike poise and charm."
"I was their pet," said Smylla, sneering at the memory, "a dog dressed in a gown and trained to dance on its hind legs. I just didn't know it at the time."
"I'm sure many saw you that way. Perhaps some saw something else. From all accounts, Matron Ghenni behaved as if she regarded you as a ward, just one notch down from a daughter, and with the mistress of the Fourth House indulging you, few would dare challenge your right to comport yourself like a Menzoberranyr noble. Indeed, no one did, until she turned against you."
"Until I fell ill," said the sorceress.
"Quite. Was it a natural disease, bred, perhaps, by the lack of the searing sunlight that is a natural condition for your kind? Or did an enemy infect you with poison or magic? If so, was the culprit someone inside House Faen Tlabbar, who saw you as a rival for Ghenni's favor, or the agent of an enemy family, depriving their foes of a resource?"
"I was never able to find out. That's funny coming from me, isn't it?"
"Ironic, perhaps. At any rate, several priestesses tried to cure you, but for some reason, the magic failed, whereupon Ghenni summarily expelled you from her citadel."
"Actually," Smylla said, "she sent a couple trolls, slave soldiers, to murder me. I escaped them and the castle, too. Afterward, I tried to offer my services to other Houses, noble and merchant alike, but no door would open to a human who'd lost the favor of Faen Tlabbar."
"My lady," said Pharaun, "if it's any consolation, you were still receiving precisely the same treatment we would have given a member of our own race. No dark elf would abide the presence of anyone afflicted with an incurable malady. The Spider Queen taught us the weak must die, and in any case, what if the sickness was contagious?"
"It's not a consolation."
"Fair enough. To continue the tale: Unwelcome anywhere else, you made your way to the Braeryn. Despite your infirmity, some magic remained within your grasp, and you employed it to cow the residents of this particular warren into providing you with a private space in which to live. I daresay that wasn't easy. Then, using divinatory rituals, your natural psionic gifts, and whatever secrets you'd discovered during your time with House Faen Tlabbar, you set up shop as a broker of knowledge. At first, only the lower orders availed themselves of your services, then gradually, as your reputation grew, even a few of my people started consulting you. We wouldn't let you dwell among us, but some were willing to risk a brief contact if they anticipated sufficient advantage from it."
"I never heard of you," said Ryld, "but within the district, your reputation seems to be considerable. We've been asking questions all day, and more than one suggested we seek you out."
The door banged particularly loudly, and he glanced back to make sure the bugbears weren't breaching it.
"That's all I know of your saga," said Pharaun, "but I infer from the hostility of your cohabitants that a new stanza has begun."
"I suppose I couldn't bluff them forever," Smylla said. "My powers, sorcerous and psionic alike, are all but gone, devoured by my malady. Once I acquired my stock in trade primarily through scrying, divinations, and such. In recent years, I've cajoled my secrets from a web of informers, whom I betray one to the other."
The withered creature smirked.
"Well," said Ryld, "I hope you teased out the one we need."
She coughed. No, it was a laugh. "Even if I did, why would I share it with you, dark elf?"
"I told you," the warrior said, "we can protect you from the bugbears and goblins."
"So can my little iron trinket."
"But eventually, if you simply remain in here, you'll die of hunger and thirst."
"I'm dying anyway. Can't you tell? I'm not an old woman—I'm a baby as you drow measure time!—but I look like an ancient hag. I just don't want to perish at the hands of those miserable undercreatures. I've ruled here for fifteen years, and if I die beyond their reach, I win. Do you see?"
"Well, then, my lady," said Pharaun, "your wish suggests the terms of a bargain. Oblige us, and we'll refrain from admitting the bugbears."
She made a spitting sound and said, "Admit them if you must. I loathe the brutes, but I hate you dark elves more. It was you who made me as I am. I bartered information with you for as long as I had something to gain, but now that the disease is finally killing me, you can all go to the Abyss where your goddess lives, and burn."
Pharaun might have replied that as far as he could tell, Smylla had sealed her own fate on the day she decided to descend into the Underdark, but he doubted it would soften her resolve.
"I don't blame you," he said, making a show of sympathy. It wouldn't have deceived any drow, but even though she'd trafficked with his race for decades, perhaps she still had human instincts. "Sometimes I hate other dark elves myself. I'd certainly despise them if they served me as they've treated you."
She eyed him skeptically. "But you're the one who's different from all the others?"
"I doubt it. I'm a child of the goddess. I follow her ways. But I've visited the Realms that See the Sun, where I learned that other races think and live differently. I understand that by the standards of your own people, we've treated you abominably."
For a moment, she looked up at him as if no one had commiserated with her about anything since that long-lost season when she was the belle, or at least the coveted curiosity, of the revels and balls.
She said, "Do you think a few gentle words will make me want to help you?"
"Of course not. I just don't want your bitterness to get in the way of your good sense. It would be a pity if you turned your back on your salvation."
"What are you saying?"
"I can take away your sickness."
"You're lying. How could you do what the priestesses cannot?"
"Because I'm a wizard." Pharaun snapped his fingers and dissolved his mask of illusion. "My name is Pharaun Mizzrym. You may have heard of me. If not, you've surely heard of the Masters of Sorcere."
She was impressed, though trying not to show it.
"Who aren't healers," she said.
"Who are transmuters. I can change you into a drow, or, if you prefer, a member of another race. Whatever we choose, the transformation will purge the sickness from your new body."
"If that's true," she said, "then why do your people fear illness?"
"Because this remedy is inappropriate for them. It's unthinkable for a drow, one of the goddess's chosen people, to permanently assume the form of a lesser creature except as a punishment. Also, most wizards can't cast the spell deftly enough to purge a disease. It requires a certain facility, which happily, I possess."
He grinned.
"And you'll use it to help me?"
"Well, to aid myself, really."
The soothsayer scowled, pondering the offer.
Eventually she said, "What do I have to lose?"
"Exactly."
"But you have to change me first."
"No, first of all, we must establish that you do indeed possess the information my colleague and I require. We're seeking a number of runaway males hailing from noble and humble residences alike,"
"We have a handful of drow hiding out in the Braeryn. Some are sick like me. Some are outcast for some other offense. A couple are just taking a long illicit holiday from their responsibilities and female relations. I can tell you where to find most of them."
"I'm sure," said Pharaun, "but I imagine they've resided here for a while, have they not? We're seeking rogues of more recent vintage. Menzoberranzan has suffered a mass migration in recent tendays."
Smylla frowned. From a subtle shift of expression, the mage knew she was deciding whether or not to lie.
"More drow males than usual have visited the Braeryn," she said. "Indulging their most sordid impulses, I assumed, but as far as I know they didn't stay here. If they did, I don't know where."
Ryld sighed. Pharaun knew how he felt. Generally speaking, the wizard relished a baffling, brain-cramping puzzle, but even he was growing impatient at their lack of progress.
Given the lack of any sensible leads, he resolved to follow where intuition led. Still caught up in his role of sympathizer, he dared to step to the cot and pat Smylla on her bony shoulder. She gasped. In all likelihood, no one had touched her for a long while, either.
"Don't abandon hope," Pharaun said. "Perhaps we can still make a trade. Fortunately, my comrade and I are interested in other matters as well. Has anything peculiar occurred in the Braeryn of late?"
The clairvoyant rasped out another painful-sounding laugh.
"You mean aside from the fact that last tenday, the animals rose up against me?"
"I do find that interesting. As you confessed, your magical talents withered away some time ago. Since then, you've dominated the goblins through bluff and force of personality, and it worked until a few days ago. What changed? Where did the undercreatures find the courage to turn against you? Have you noticed anything that might account for it?"
"Well," said Smylla, "it could just be they saw me failing physically, but—" Her cracked lips stretched into a grin. "You're good, Master Mizzrym. You give me a smile, friendly conversation, a soft touch on the arm, and my tongue starts to flap. That's loneliness for you. But I will have my cure before I give up anything of importance."
"Very sensible." Pharaun extracted an empty cocoon from one of his pockets. "What do you wish to become?"
"One of you," she said, leering. "I once heard a philosopher say that everyone becomes the thing he hates."
"He must have been a cheery fellow to have about. Now, brace yourself. This will only take a moment, but it may hurt a little."
Employing greater care than usual, he recited the incantation and used the ridged silken case to write a symbol on the air.
Magic shrilled through the air, and the temperature plummeted. For a moment, the whole room rippled and shimmered, then the distortion concentrated itself on Smylla's shriveled body. Tendons standing out in her neck, she screamed.
Beyond the door, one of the bugbears shouted, "We want to get even, too! We had a bargain!"
Smylla's sores faded away, and her emaciated form filled out into a healthy slimness. Her ashen skin darkened to a gleaming black, her blue eyes turned red, and her ears grew points. Her features became more delicate. Her snowy hair thickened, changing from brittle and lusterless to wavy and glossy.
"The pain went away," she breathed. "I feel stronger."
"Of course," Pharaun said.
She stared at her hands, then sat up, rose from the cot, and tried to walk. At first she moved with an invalid's caution, but gradually, as she proved to herself that she wouldn't fall, that hesitancy passed. After a few seconds, she was striding, jumping, and spinning like an exuberant little girl testing her strength, her grimy nightshirt flapping about her.
"You did it!" she said, and the pure, uncalculated gratitude in her crimson eyes showed that even wearing the flesh of a dark elf maiden, she was still human at the core.
Though it was foreign to his own nature, Pharaun found her appreciation rather gratifying. Still, he hadn't transformed her to bask in her naive sentimentality but to elicit some answers. "Now," he said, "please, tell us."
"Right." She took a deep breath to compose herself and said, "I do believe something emboldened the undercreatures in this house. What's more, I think it's aftected goblinoids throughout the Braeryn."
"What is it?" asked Ryld.
"I don't know."
The warrior grimaced.
"What led you to infer this agency?" Pharaun asked. "I assume you were housebound even before you barricaded yourself in your room."
"I saw a change in the brutes who live here. They were surly, insolent, and foul-tempered, ready to maim and kill one another at the slightest provocation."
Ryld hitched his shoulders, working stiffness out or shifting Splitter to lie more comfortably across his back.
"How is that different than normal?" asked the weapons master.
Smylla scowled at him and said, "All things are relative. The creatures exhibited those qualities to a greater extent than before, and whenever I heard tidings from beyond these walls, they suggested the entire precinct shared the same truculent humor."
Pharaun nodded. "Did you hear about tribal emblems appearing in the streets?"
"Yes," she said. "That bespeaks a kind of madness, don't you think?"
"Maybe in one or two thralls," said Ryld. "What of it? You promised my friend information. Tell us something we don't already know, and I mean facts, not your impressions."
The clairvoyant smiled. "All right. I was building up to it. Every few nights a drum beats somewhere in the Braeryn, calling the lower orders to some sort of gathering. Many of the occupants of this house clear out. With what little remains of my clairvoyance, I've sensed many others skulking through the streets, all converging on a common destination."
"Nonsense," said Ryld. "Why has no drow patrol heard the signal and come to investigate?"
"Because," said Pharaun, "the city possesses enchantments to mute sound."
"Well, maybe." Ryld turned back to Smylla. "Where do the creatures go, and why?"
"I don't know," she said, "but perhaps, with my health and occult talents restored, I could find out." She beamed at Pharaun. "I'd be happy ro try. I fulfilled the letter of our bargain, but I do realize I haven't provided you with all that much in exchange for the priceless gift you gave me."
"That remark touches on the question of your future," the wizard said. "You'd have no difficulty reestablishing your dominion here in the Stenchstreets, but why live so meanly? I could use an aide of your caliber. Or, if you prefer, I can arrange your safe repatriation to the World Above."
As he spoke, he surreptitiously contorted the fingers of his left hand, expressing himself in the silent language of the dark elves, a system of gestures as efficient and comprehensive as the spoken word.
"I think—" Smylla began, then her eyes opened wide.
She whimpered. Ryld pulled his short sword out of her back, and she collapsed. Pharaun skipped back to keep her from toppling against him.
"Despite her previous experiences," the lanky wizard said, "she couldn't quite leave off trusting drow. I suppose it shows you can take the human out of the sunshine, but not the sunshine out of the human." He shook his head. "This is the second female I've slain or murdered by proxy in the brief time since our adventure began, and I didn't particularly want to kill either one of them. Do you suspect an underlying metaphysical significance?"
"How would I know? I take it you bade me kill the snitch because she was feeding us lies."
"Oh, no. I'm convinced she was telling the truth. The problem was that I deceived her. Her metamorphosis didn't really purge her disease. It was a bit tricky just suppressing it for a few minutes."
Pharaun stepped back again to keep the spreading pool of blood from staining his boots, and Ryld cleaned the short sword on the dead human's bedding.
"You didn't want to leave her alive and angry to carry tales to Greyanna," the weapons master said.
"It's unlikely they would have found one another, but why take the chance?"
"And you asked Smylla about the marks on the walls. You're just too cursed curious to let the subject go."
Pharaun grinned. "Don't be silly. I'm the very model of single-minded determination, and I was asking to further our mission."
Ryld glanced at the door and the iron bar. They were still holding.
"What does the strange behavior of goblins have to do with the rogue males?" he asked.
"I don't know yet," Pharaun answered, "but we have two oddities occurring at the same time and in the same precinct. Doesn't it make sense to infer a relationship?"
"Not necessarily. Menzoberranzan has scores of plots and conspiracies going on at any given time. They aren't all connected."
"Granted. However, if these two situations are linked, then by inquiring into one, we likewise probe the other. You and I have experienced a depressing lack of success picking up the trail of our runaways. Therefore, we'll investigate the lower orders and see where that path takes us."
"How will we do that?"
"Follow the drum, of course."
The door banged.
"First," said Ryld, "we have to get out of here."
"Easily managed. I'll remove the locking talisman from the door, then use illusion to make us blend with the walls. In a minute or two, the residents will break the door down. When they're busy abusing Smylla's corpse and ransacking her possessions, we'll put on goblin faces and slip out in the confusion."

ELEVEN
Quenthel's patrol had stalked the shadowy, candlelit passages of Arach-Tinilith for hours, until spaces she knew intimately began to seem strange and subtly unreal, and her subordinates' nerves visibly frayed with the waiting. She called a halt to let the underlings rest and collect themselves. They stopped in a small chapel with the images of skulls, daggers, and spiders worked in bas-relief on the walls and the bones of long-dead priestesses interred beneath the floor. Rumor whispered that a cleric had cut her own throat in this sanctuary and her ghost sometimes haunted it, but the Baenre had never seen the apparition, and it wasn't in evidence then.
The priestesses and novices settled on the pews. For a while, no one spoke.
Eventually Jyslin, a second-year student with a heart-shaped face and silver studs in her earlobes, said, "Perhaps nothing will happen."
Quenthel stared coldly at the novice. Like the rest of the party, the younger female cut a warlike figure with her mace, mail, and shield, but her dread showed in her troubled maroon eyes and shiny, sweaty brow.
"We will face another demon tonight," Quenthel said. "I feel it, so it's pointless to hope otherwise. Instead I suggest you concentrate on staying alert and remembering what you've learned."
Jyslin lowered her eyes and whispered, "Yes, Mistress."
"Wishful thinking is for cowards," Quenthel said, "and if you fools are lapsing into it, we've lingered here too long. Up with you."
Reluctantly, someone's links of supple black mail chiming ever so faintly, Quenthel's minions rose. She led them onward.
In light of the two previous intrusions and the obvious uselessness of the wards the mages of Sorcere had created, Quenthel had placed Arach-Tinilith on alert and organized her staff and students into squads of eight. Most of the units would stand watch at set locations, but several would patrol the entire building. The Baenre princess had opted to lead one of the latter.
She'd also decided to throw open the storerooms and armories and dispense all the potent enchanted tools and weapons still deposited there. Even the first-year students bore enchanted arms and talismans worthy of a high priestess.
Not that the gear had done much to bolster Jyslin's morale, nor that of many another novice. Had Quenthel not been suffering her own carefully masked anxieties, their glumness might have amused her. The girls had seen demons throughout their childhoods. They'd even achieved a certain intimacy with them in Arach-Tinilith, but this was the first time such entities had posed a threat to them, and they'd realized they hadn't truly known the ferocious beings at all.
No doubt some of the females had also been perceptive enough to recognize that they themselves had been in comparatively little danger until Quenthel mustered them in what was more or less her personal defense. If so, their resentment, like their uneasiness, was irrelevant. They were her underlings, and it was their duty to serve her.
"It's the wrath of Lolth herself," whispered Minoiin Fey-Branche, a fifth-year student who wore her hair in three long braids. Obviously, she didn't intend for her voice to carry to the front of the procession. "First she strips us of our magic, then sends her fiends to kill us."
Quenthel whirled. Sensing her anger, her whip vipers rose, weaving and hissing.
"Shut up!" she snapped. "The Spider Queen may be testing us, eliminating the unfit, but she has not condemned her entire temple. She would not."
Minoiin lowered her eyes. "Yes, Mistress," she said tonelessly.
Quenthel noticed that no one else looked reassured, either.
"You disgust me," the Baenre said. "All of you."
"We apologize, Mistress," said Jyslin.
"I remember my training," Quenthel said. "If a novice showed a hint of cowardice or disobedience, my sister Triel would make her fast for a tenday, and eat rancid filth for another after that. I should do the same, but unfortunately, with Arach-Tinilith under siege, I need my people strong. So all right, though it should shame you take it, you can have another rest. You'll fill your bellies, and it had better stiffen your spines. Otherwise, we'll see how many of you I have to flog before the rest cease their cringing and whining. Come."
She led them on to a classroom where the kitchen staff had set a table. She'd ordered them to prepare a cold supper and leave it at various points around the temple, so that the weary sentinels could at least refresh themselves with food, and the cooks had done a decent job of it. On a silver salver lay pink and brown slices of rothé steak steeped in a tawny marinade, their aroma competing with Arach-Tinilith's omnipresent scent of incense. Other trays and bowls held raw mushroom pieces with a creamy dipping sauce and a salad of black, white, and red diced fungus, while the pitchers presumably contained wine, watered as per her command. Quenthel hoped the alcohol would hearten those residents whom Lolth's absence and the incursions of the past two nights had terrified, but she didn't want any of the temple's defenders sloppy drunk and incapacitated.
Some of Quenthel's minions fell to as if they expected this to be their last meal. Others, likely as certain of their fate, seemed too tense to do more than pick at the viands.
The mistress of the Academy supposed that, though she intended to survive the night, in a sense, she belonged to the latter party. Her stomach was somewhat queasy, and the long hours of edgy anticipation had killed her appetite.
Come on, demon, she thought, let's get this over with. . . .
The entity failed to respond to her silent plea.
She decided her throat was a little parched, caught Jyslin's eye, and said, "Pour me a cup."
"Yes, Mistress."
The second-year novice performed the service with commendable alacrity. She filled the silver goblet too high for gentility's sake, but Quenthel expected no better from a commoner. The Baenre accepted the cup with a nod and raised it to her lips.
Her whip of fangs hung from her wrist by the wyvern-hide loop that pierced its handle. She felt a thrill of alarm surge across the psionic link she shared with the vipers. At the same instant, the snakes reared and dashed the goblet from her grasp. She stared at them in amazement.
"Poison," Yngoth said, his slit-pupiled eyes glinting in their scaly sockets. "We smelled it."
Quenthel looked around. Her followers had heard the serpent's declaration and were gawking at her and the reptiles in consternation. They appeared to be in perfectly good health, but she trusted the vipers and knew it wouldn't last.
"Purge yourselves," she said. "Now!"
They never got the chance. Almost as one, they succumbed to the toxin, swaying, staggering, and collapsing. Some retched involuntarily as the sickness hit them, but it didn't help. They passed out like the rest.
Quenthel shifted the whip back to her hand, peered in all directions, and bade the vipers do the same. She'd realized her demonic assailants were supposed to suggest the several dominions of the goddess, and therefore an "assassin" of some sort would turn up sooner or later. Still, she foolishly assumed that being would attack in some obvious way just as the "spider" and "darkness" had. She hadn't expected it to employ stealth and attempt to poison her, though in retrospect, that tactic made perfect sense.
The question was, had the demon done all it planned to do, or, since its first ploy had failed, would it strike at her in some other way?
Off to the west, someone screamed, the sound echoing down the stone halls. Quenthel had her answer, and it was the one she'd expected.
Her heart beat faster, her mouth felt drier still, and she realized she wasn't eager to confront this new intruder, certainly not without the support of her personal guards. Yet she was mistress in these halls, and it was unthinkable to turn tail and let an invader make free with her domain.
Besides, if she fled, the cursed thing would probably track her anyway.
Leaving her fallen patrol with their useless magical treasures strewn about them on the floor, she strode toward the noise. She shouted for other underlings to attend her, but no one responded.
In a minute or so, she entered a long gallery, where wall carvings told the history of Lolth as it had occurred and as it was prophesied: her seduction of Corellon Larethian, chief deity of the contemptible elves of the World Above, their union and her first attempt to overthrow him, her discovery of her spider form and her descent into the Abyss, her conquest of the Demonweb and her adoption of the drow as her chosen people, and her future triumph over all other gods and ascendancy over all creation.
A silhouette appeared in the arched entry at the far end of the hall. It changed color and shape—humanoid, quadruped, blob, worm, cluster of spikes—from one instant to the next. Somehow perceiving Quenthel, it let out a cry. Its voice sounded like a wavering, cacophonous jumble of every noise she'd ever heard and some she hadn't. Within the first discordant howl she caught the shrill note of a flute, the grunt of a rothe, a baby crying, water splashing, and fire crackling.
Quenthel recognized the demon for the profound threat it was, but for a moment, she was less concerned for her safety or fired with a fighter's rage than she was surprised. Poison surely suggested an assassin, yet the demon before her was plainly an embodiment of chaos.
The spirit started down the gallery, and the walls bulged, flowed, and changed color around it. Quenthel reached into the leather bag hanging from her belt and brought out a scroll, then something hit her hard in the back of the neck.

Ryld peered about the room. Judging from the sunken arena in the center of the floor, the ruinous place had, in another era, served as a drinking pit—one of those rude establishments where dark elves of every station went to forget about caste and grace for a few hours, guzzle raw spirit, and watch undercreatures slaughter one another in contests that were often set up in such a way as to give them a comical aspect.
In other words, it would have been a crude sort of place by the standards of elegant Menzoberranzan, but it had grown cruder since the goblinoids had taken it over. Scores if not hundreds of them packed into the space, and the mingled stink of their unwashed bodies, each race malodorous in its own particular fashion, was sickening. The loud gabbling in their various harsh and guttural languages was nearly as unpleasant. It all but drowned out the rhythmic thuds that filtered through the ceiling, but of course the shaggy gnoll drummer on the roof wasn't playing for the folk already inside but to guide others still in transit.
To Ryld's surprise, a fair number of the creatures assembling there hailed from outside the Braeryn. He observed plain but relatively clean and intact garments suggestive of Eastmyr, and even liveries, steel collars, shackles, whip marks, and brands—the stigmata of thralls who'd sneaked away from their mistresses' affluent households. Obviously, those who'd come from beyond the district couldn't have heard the drum through the magical buffers. Some runner must have carried word to them.
Still magically disguised as orcs, though not the same ones who'd tricked the two bugbears, the masters of Tier Breche had squeezed into a corner to watch whatever would transpire.
Certain no one would hear him over the ambient din, Ryld leaned his head close to Pharaun's and said, "I think it's just a party."
"Do you see them celebrating?" Pharaun replied. His new porcine face had a broken nose and tusk. "No, not as such. They'd be considerably more boisterous. They're waiting for something, and eagerly, too. Observe those female goblins chattering and passing their bottle back and forth." Pharaun nodded toward a trio of filthy, bandy-legged creatures with flat faces and sloping brows. "They're aquiver with anticipation. If they're still as giddy after the gathering breaks up, we may want to seek solace for our frustrations in their hairy, misshapen arms."
Certain his friend was joking, Ryld snorted . . . then realized he wasn't quite sure after all.
"You'd have relations with a goblin?"
"A true scholar always seeks new experiences. Besides, what's the point of being a dark elf, a lord of the Underdark, if you don't exploit the slave races to the utmost?"
"Hmm. I admit they might be no worse than one of those priestesses who demand you grovel and do exactly as you're—"
"Hush!"
The drum had stopped.
"Something's happening," Pharaun added.
Ryld saw that his friend was correct. A stir ran through the crowd and they started to shout, "Prophet! Prophet! Prophet!"
The master of Melee-Magthere didn't know what he expected to see next, but it certainly wasn't the figure in the nondescript cloak and hood whose upper body appeared above the heads of the crowd. Perhaps he'd climbed up on a bench or table, or maybe he'd simply levitated, for this "Prophet," plainly beloved of the lower orders, appeared to be a handsome drow male.
The Prophet let his followers chant and shout for a minute or so, then he raised his slender hands and gradually they subsided. Pharaun leaned close to Ryld again.
"It's possible the fellow's not really one of us," the wizard said. "He's wrapped in a glamour somewhat like ours, but his spell makes every observer perceive him in a favorable light. I imagine the goblins see him as a goblin, the gnolls, as one of their own, and so forth."
"What's inside the illusion?"
"I don't know. The enchantment is peculiar. I've never encountered anything quite like it. I can't see through it, but I suspect we're about to learn his intentions."
"My brothers and sisters," the Prophet said.
His voice sparked another round of cheering, and he waited for it to run its course.
"My brothers and sisters," he repeated. "Since the founding of this city, the Menzoberranyr have held our peoples in bondage or in conditions equally degraded. They work us until we die of exhaustion. They torture and kill us on a whim. They condemn us to starve, sicken, and live in squalor."
The audience growled its agreement.
"You witness our misery everywhere you look," the hooded orator continued. "Yesterday, I walked through Manyfolk. I saw a hobgoblin girl-child, surely no older than five or six, trying to pick up a scrap of mushroom from the street. With her teeth! Her hands wouldn't serve. Some drow had magically fused them together behind her back so she would live and die a cripple and a freak."
The crowd snarled in outrage, even though their races commonly engaged in tortures equally cruel, albeit far less varied and imaginative.
"I walked through Narbondellyn," the Prophet said. "I saw an orc, paralyzed in some manner, lying on the ground. A dark elf slit his chest, spread the flaps of skin, cut some ribs with a saw, and whistled his riding lizard over to feed on the still-living thrall's organs. The drow told a companion that he gave the reptile one such meal every tenday to make it a faster racer."
The audience howled its wrath. One female orc, transported with fury, gashed her cheeks and brow with a piece of broken glass.
The Prophet's litany of atrocities ran on and on, and Ryld gradually felt a strange emotion overtaking him. He knew it couldn't be guilt—no dark elf experienced that ridiculous condition—but perhaps it was a kind of shame, a disgust at the sheer waste and childishness manifest in Menzoberranzan's abuse of its undercreatures and a desire to rectify the situation if he could.
The feeling was irrational, of course. The goblins and their kin existed only to serve the pleasure of the drow, and if you ruined one, you just caught or bought another. The weapons master gave his head a shake, clearing it, then turned to Pharaun.
Even through his orc mask, the wizard's amusement was apparent.
"Resolved to mend your wicked ways?"
"I gather you feel the influence, too," said Ryld. "What's happening?"
"The Prophet has magic buttressing his oratory, again, in a sort of configuration I don't quite understand."
"Right, but what's the point of all this bellyaching?"
"I assume he'll get around to telling us."
The speaker continued in the same vein a while longer, goading the crowd to the brink of hysteria.
At last he cried, "But it does not have to be that way!"
The undercreatures howled, and for a moment, until he pushed the feelings away, Ryld felt his magically induced disgust blaze up into savage bloodlust.
"We can be avenged! Repay every injury a thousandfold! Cast down the drow to be our slaves! We'll wrap ourselves in silks and cloth-of-gold and make them run naked, feast on succulent viands and feed them garbage! We'll sack Menzoberranzan, and afterward those of us who wish it will return to our own peoples laden with treasure, while the rest of us rule the cavern as our own!"
Not likely, thought Ryld. He turned to say as much to Pharaun, then blinked in surprise. The wizard looked as if he was taking this diatribe seriously.
"They're just venting their resentment in the form of a fantasy," the warrior whispered. "They'd never dare, and we'd crush them in a matter of minutes if they did."
"So one would assume," Pharaun replied. "Come on, I want a closer look."
They started working their way forward through the agitated throng. Some of their fellow spectators plainly resented their shoving. Ryld had to toss one hobgoblin down onto the floor of the sunken arena, but no one seemed to think it odd that they wanted to get closer to the charismatic leader. Others were doing the same.
The Prophet continued his oration.
"I thank you for your work and your patience, which soon will reap their reward. Word of our revolt has reached every street and alley. We have warriors everywhere, and each understands what he is to do when he hears the Call. Meanwhile, the drow suspect nothing. Their arrogance makes them complacent. They won't suspect until it's too late, until the Call comes and we rise as one—until we burn them."
Ryld and Pharaun had forced their way close enough to see the Prophet pick up a sandstone rod and anoint the end with an oil from a ceramic bottle. The rod burst into yellow, crackling flame as if it were made of dry wood, that exotic combustible product of the World Above. The master of Melee-Magthere squinted at the sudden flare of light.
"Eyes of the Goddess!" Pharaun exclaimed.
"It's a neat trick," Ryld said, "but surely nothing special by your standards."
"Not the fire, those two bugbears standing behind the Prophet."
"His bodyguards, I imagine. What of them?"
"They're Tluth Melarn and one Alton the cobbler, two of our runaways. They're wearing veils of illusion, too, but of a simpler nature. I can see past theirs."
"Are you serious? What are drow, even rogues, doing aiding the instigator of a slave revolt?"
"Perhaps we'll find out when we tail the Prophet and his entourage away from here."
"I taught you how to use the fire pots," the orator continued, "and my friends and I have brought plenty of them." He gestured toward several hovering floatchests. "Take them and hide them until the day of reckoning."
The bright notes of a brazen glaur horn blared through the air. For a moment, confused, Ryld thought "the Call"—whatever that was—had arrived, then a thrill of panic, or at least the memory of it, reminded him what the trumpet truly portended. Judging by the goblins' babbling and frantic peering about, they knew, too.
"What is it?" Pharaun asked.
"You're nobly born," said Ryld, hearing a trace of an old bitterness in his voice. "Didn't you ever go hunting through the Braeryn, slaying every wretch you could catch?"
The wizard smiled and said, "Now that you mention it, but it's been a long time. It occurs to me that this is probably Greyanna's doing. Not a bad tactic, really, even though it involves a lot of waste motion. Once I shielded us our hunters couldn't pinpoint our location, but they knew our mission would bring us to the Braeryn so they organized a hunt for a party of nobles. The idea is that all the turmoil is likely to flush us out and send us scrambling frantically through the streets, at which point they'll have a better chance of spotting us."
"What's more," said Ryld, making sure his swords were loose in their scabbards, "your sister gives us the choice of retaining our veils of illusion and being harried by our own kind, or casting them off and facing the wrath of the undercreatures. Either way, someone might do her killing for her."
The Prophet raised his hands for calm, and the undercreatures quieted a little.
"My friends, in a moment we will scatter as we must, for a little while longer, but before you go, take the fire pots. Once the danger is past, share the weapons and news of our gathering with all those who were unable to attend. Remember your part in the plan and wait for the Call. Now, go!"
Some of the rebels bolted without further delay, but at least half lingered long enough to take a jug or two from the hovering boxes. One orc lost his footing in the press, then screamed as other goblinoids trampled him in their haste. Meanwhile, the Prophet and his bodyguards slipped out a door in the back wall.
"Shall we?" said Pharaun, striding after them.
"What of Greyanna and all the hunters?" asked Ryld.
"We'll contend with them as necessary, but I'll be damned if I hide in a hole while two of the boys we worked so hard to find vanish into the night."
The masters stalked out onto the street. The Braeryn already echoed with more trumpeting, the sporting cries of dark elves, and the screams of undercreatures.
The teachers shadowed the Prophet and the rogues for half a block. The trio moved briskly but without any trace of panic. Evidently they were confident of their ability to elude the hunters. Ryld wondered why.
Then the night gave him other things to think about.
He and Pharaun skulked by a house where several shouting goblins pounded on the granite front door. As was the common practice during a hunt, the inhabitants refused to admit them. They wouldn't let in anyone but folk who actually lived there. Otherwise, a rush of terrified refugees flooding into the already crowded warren might trample or crush some of the residents—or the influx might make the house a more provocative target. It had happened before.
Finally Ryld heard the small, long-armed creatures turn away from the structure. They cried out, then broke into a run, their rapid footsteps drumming on the ground.
Ryld had no idea why the goblins were charging him and Pharaun. Perhaps the creatures had mistaken them for tenants of the house that had denied them entry and thus appropriate targets for revenge. Maybe they simply wanted to take their frustrations out on someone.
Not that it mattered. The brutes were no match for masters of Tier Breche. The dark elves would kill them in a trice.
Ryld drew Splitter from its scabbard and came on guard, meanwhile taking in his assailants' pitiful makeshift weaponry and lack of armor. It was pathetic, really, so much so that the next few seconds would almost be a bore.
Two goblins spread out, trying to flank him. He stepped in and swung Splitter left, then right. The undercreatures fell, one dropping its crowbar to clang against the ground and the other keeping hold of its mallet.
The next two bat-eared creatures hesitated. They should have turned and run, because Ryld couldn't stand and wait for them to ponder whether they still wanted to fight. The Prophet and the rogues were getting farther away by the second.
He stepped in and cut downward. A goblin, this one possessed of a short sword—-a proper warrior's weapon, and some martial training to go with it—lifted the weapon to parry. It didn't matter. Splitter sheared right through its blade and streaked on into its torso.
Knife in hand, the fourth goblin dodged behind its foe. Sensing its location, Ryld kicked backward. His boot connected solidly, snapping bone, and when he turned the creature lay motionless on the ground, likely dead of a broken back.
Ryld turned to survey the battlefield. His eyes widened in shock and dismay.
Pharaun too was on the ground. Three goblins crouched over him on their bandy legs. One scabrous creature had blood on the iron spike that served it as a poniard.
Ryld bellowed a war cry, sprang at them, and struck them down before they could do any more damage. He kneeled beside his friend. Beneath the elegant piwafwi, Pharaun's equally gorgeous robe had two punctures in it, and was dark and wet from breastbone to thighs.
"I heard them corning a moment after you did," the wizard wheezed. "I didn't turn around fast enough."
"Don't worry," said Ryld. "It's going to be all right."
In reality, he wasn't at all sure of that.
"The goblin thrust through the gap between the wings of my cloak. The little bastard hurt me when Greyanna and her followers couldn't. Isn't that silly?"

TWELVE
When Quenthel had decided she must don armor, she had performed the task as methodically as she did everything else. She'd put on a cunningly crafted adamantine gorget, a Baenre heirloom, beneath her chain mail and piwafwi, and it was likely that protective collar that saved her life.
Still, the unexpected impact on the nape of her neck knocked her forward and down onto one knee, and the edge of her enchanted buckler clanked against the floor.
For a moment, she was dazed. The whip vipers hissed and clamored to rouse her, their outburst clashing with the jumbled howling of the advancing chaos demon.
She felt something hanging down her back and bade the serpents pull it off. Hsiv reared over her shoulder, tugged the article out of the mail links and cloth with his jaws, and displayed it for her inspection. She recognized it from the armory. It was an enchanted quarrel sized for a two-hand arbalest, and if it, or one like it, so much as pricked a dark elf's skin, it would almost certainly kill.
Quenthel thought her assailant had had just about enough time to reload. If so, the Baenre obviously couldn't trust her cloak and mail to protect her—the first bolt had pierced them easily enough.
Though it meant turning her back on the demon, she wrenched herself around, remaining on one knee to make a smaller target, and did her best to cover herself with her tiny shield.
Just in time. A second quarrel cracked against the armor. A shadowy but recognizably female figure ducked back into an arched doorway, no doubt to ready her weapon again.
Trapped between two foes, Quenthel thought that if she didn't eliminate one of them quickly, they were almost certainly going to kill her. Judging her sister dark elf the easier mark, she leveled a long, thin rod at her.
A glob of seething green vitriol materialized in the air before her, then shot toward her enemy. Quenthel could just see the edge of her opponent's body in the recessed space, and that was what she aimed for. Even if she missed, the magic ought to slow the assassin down.
The green mass clipped her foe's shoulder. It exploded, and the dark figure jumped. The stonework around her was covered in a sticky mass of something like glue. Quenthel smiled, but her foe, apparently unhindered by the entrapping magic, returned to the task of cocking the crossbow. Something, her innate drow resistance to hostile magic, perhaps, had shielded her from harm.
Quenthel glanced over her shoulder as she slipped the rod back into her belt. Though moving at a leisurely pace, the chaos demon had already traversed more than half of the lengthy gallery, and of course its speed could increase at any moment, just as every other aspect of its being altered unpredictably from one second to the next.
But if the Spider Queen favored Quenthel and the entity didn't accelerate, she might have time for another strike at her foe of flesh and blood. Silently directing the vipers to keep an eye on the demon, she turned back, and read from a precious scroll.
When Quenthel pronounced the last syllable, the scroll disappeared in a puff of dust and a brilliant light filled the chamber. The dark elf in the doorway reeled and clutched blindly at the door frame. She touched the slowly-dripping mass of glue and snatched her fingers away, leaving skin behind.
Quenthel started to read another scroll as the air around her stirred, blowing one direction then another. Hot one second and cold the next, the gusts wafted countless smells, pleasant and foul alike. She took it for a sign that the demon had drawn very close, and the vipers' warning confirmed it.
Still, she wanted to finish her lesser adversary off before the girl recovered her sight. She completed the spell, the exquisitely inked characters burning through the parchment like hot coals.
From the elbow down, the enemy female's left arm rippled and swelled, becoming an enormous black spider with green markings on its bristling back. Still attached to the rest of her body, it lunged at her throat and plunged its mandibles in.
Quenthel spun around. Mauve with golden spots, then white, then half red and half blue, the demon loomed over her. Most of the time it looked flat, like a hole into some other luminous, turbulent universe, and an observer had only its inconstant outline from which to infer its shape. Over the course of a couple seconds, it seemed to become an enormous crab claw, a wagon complete with driver, and a whirling dust devil. The length of gallery behind it resembled a tunnel carved from melting rainbow-colored slush except for one little stretch. That section appeared unchanged until Quenthel noticed that the carvings had flipped upside down.
The high priestess scrambled to her feet. As she rooted in her bag for another scroll, her scourge dangled from her wrist. The vipers writhed and twisted.
The chaos demon blinked from ochre to a pattern of black and white stripes, and from the form of a simple isosceles triangle to that of an ogre. Its cry currently a mix of roaring and cawing, it swung its newly acquired club.
Quenthel caught the blow on her buckler. To her surprise, she didn't feel the slightest shock, but the shield turned blue, changed from round to rectangular, and became many times heavier than it had been before.
The unexpected weight dragged her down to the floor again. Resembling a cresting wave, the intruder flowed toward her. She yanked, but her shield arm was caught somehow and wouldn't pull free of the straps.
Rippling from magenta to brown stippled with scarlet, the demon advanced to within inches of her foot. Quenthel's boot evaporated into wisps of vapor, and pain stabbed through the extremity.
Finally her hand jerked out of its restraints, and she flung herself backward, rolling, her mail whispering against the floor.
When she'd put sufficient distance between herself and her foe, she rose, then faltered. For an instant, she couldn't locate the fiend, and her mind struggled to make sense of the scene before her. Green and blue, shaped like an hourglass, the demon was gliding along the ceiling, not the floor. It was still pursuing her. The cursed thing was random in every respect save its doggedly murderous intent.
The entity's howl ceased for a moment, then resumed with a peal of childish laughter. Quenthel snatched and unrolled a scroll, which abruptly turned into a rothe's jawbone. The air took on a sooty tinge, and her next breath seared her lungs.
Choking, she stumbled back out of the cloud. She could breathe, though the stinging heat in her throat and chest persisted. She suspected that, had she inhaled any more of it, the taint might well have killed her. As it was, it had incapacitated and possibly slain the vipers, who hung inert from the butt of the whip.
She tossed away the jawbone, grabbed another scroll, and started reading the powerful spell contained therein. Shaped like some hybrid of dragon and wolf, the demon, back on the floor again, advanced without moving its legs. Though colored the blue and gold of flame, it threw off a bitter chill that threatened to freeze the skin on her face and spoil her recitation with a stammer.
Quenthel thanked the goddess that her own education in Arach-Tinilith had taught her to transcend discomfort. She forced out the words in the proper manner, and a black blade, like a greatsword without a guard, hilt, or tang, shimmered into existence in front of her.
She smiled. The floating weapon was a devastating magic known only to the priestesses of Lolth. Quenthel had never seen any creature resist it. Though the stone floor was still chilly against the sole of her bare foot, the ghastly cold had passed, and she stood her ground, the blade interposed between her and her pursuer.
"Do you know what this is?" she asked it. "It can kill you. It can kill anything."
Certain the demon could hear her thoughts, she sent it the words, Surrender and tell me who sent you, or I'll slice you to pieces.
Emitting a sweet scent she'd never encountered before, looking like a giant frog crudely chiseled from mica with rows of wicked fangs in its sparkling jaws, the chaos demon waddled forward.
Fine, the Baenre thought, be stupid.
Controlling the black blade with her thoughts, she bade it attack. It hacked a long gash in the top of the frog head and knocked the demon down on its belly. The edges of the wound burned with scarlet fire.
The intruder turned inky black while flowing into a shape that resembled two dozen hands growing on long, leafy stalks. The stems stretching and twisting, the creature grabbed for the sword.
Quenthel let the hands seize hold of it, and as she'd expected, the magically keen double edge cut them to pieces, which dropped away onto the floor. The demon gave a particularly loud cry, which sounded in part like the rhythmic clanging of a hammer beating metal in a forge. Wincing at the noise, the priestess didn't know if the extreme volume equated to a scream of pain, but she hoped so.
The demon turned into a miniature green tower shaped according to the uncouth architectural notions of some inferior race. A force surrounding it tugged at the sword as if the keep were a magnet and the conjured weapon, forged of steel. Quenthel found it easy to compensate for the pull. She slashed away chunks of masonry.
The tower opened lengthwise like a sarcophagus. It lurched forward, swallowed the sword, and closed up again.
The entity had caught Quenthel by surprise, but she didn't see why it should matter. It might even be more effective to cut and stab her foe from the inside. She used the blade to thrust, felt the point bite, and her psionic link with the weapon snapped.
Startled, she nonetheless reflexively reached for another scroll. The demon spread out into a low, squirming red and yellow mass. A hole dilated in the midst of it, and it spat the sword out. The weapon retained its shape but rippled with shifting colors just as the intruder did, and Quenthel still couldn't feel it with her mind.
She backed away, the blade followed, and, rattling and growling, the demon brought up the rear. The sword swept back and forth, up and down, while she ducked and dodged. So far, she was evading it, but it hampered and hurt her simply by being near. Her mail turned to moss and crumbled away. Her flesh throbbed with sudden pains as the demon's power sought to transform it. One leg turned numb and immobile for a second, and she nearly fell. Itchy scales grew on her skin then faded away. Her eyes ached, the world blurred to black, white, and gray, and the colors exploded back into view. Her identity itself was in flux. For one instant, she thought the thoughts and felt the soft, alien emotions of an arthritic human seamstress dwelling somewhere in the World Above.
Somehow, despite all such disconcerting phenomena, she managed to read the spell on the scroll and avoid the radiant blade at the same time.
She wasn't sure how this particular parchment had found its way to Arach-Tinilith. She questioned that a dark elf had scribed it, for it contained a spell that few drow ever cast. Indeed, some priestesses would disdain to cast it, because it invoked a force regarded as anathema to their faith. But Quenthel knew the goddess would want her to use any weapon necessary to vanquish her foe, and it was remotely possible that this magic would prevail where even the supposedly invincible black blade had failed.
Bright, intricate harmonies sang from the empty air. A field of bluish phosphorescence sprang up around her. Within it, she could make out intangible geometric forms revolving around one another in complex symmetrical patterns.
The cool radiance expressed the power of order, of law, the antithesis of chaos. The sword that had become an extension of the demon's will froze inside it like an insect in amber—and the demon was equally still. For a moment, at least. The creature began hitching ever so slightly forward, working itself loose of the restricting magic.
The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith was essentially a creature of chaos as well, but mortal and native to the material plane, and thus the spell had no power over her. She wheeled and dashed to the body lying in the doorway. Only the spider part of it was moving, chewing and slurping on the rest.
The dead girl turned out to be Halavin Symryvvin, who'd had the surprisingly good sense to remove all that gaudy, clinking jewelry before attempting to attack by surprise. The novice had managed the arbalest rather deftly, considering her sore, mutilated hands.
Quenthel stooped to pick up the weapon and the quiver containing the rest of the enchanted quarrels. She moved warily, but the feasting arachnid paid her no mind.
She turned, laid a dart in the channel, and shot. When the shaft hit it, the demon shuddered in its nearly immobile form, but didn't die.
It occurred to her that she could get away from it while it was trapped, muster any loyal minions who hadn't partaken of the poisoned supper, and fight the thing at the head of a company, just as she'd originally intended. After the harrowing events of the past minutes, the idea had a certain appeal.
But after what she'd endured, she wanted to be the one to teach this vermin a lesson about molesting the clergy of Lolth. Besides, the appearance of strength was vital. So she kept shooting as fast as the cocking action of the weapon would allow. The demon inched its way toward her as if it was made of half-cooled magma.
Four bolts left, then three. She pulled the trigger, the dart struck the demon in the middle of its horned, triangular head, and it winked out of existence.
She could still hear its voice, but knew that was just because it had shrieked so long and loudly. She gave her head a shake, trying to quell the phantom sound, then glimpsed yet another shadow watching her from some distance away.
"You!" she shouted, cocking the arbalest to receive the penultimate quarrel. "Come here!"
The other dark elf bolted. Quenthel gave chase, but she was still a little winded from the struggle with the demon, and her quarry outdistanced her and disappeared.
The Baenre stalked on through the labyrinthine chambers and corridors until she rounded a bend and came face to face with three of her minions. The goddess only knew what their true sentiments were, but confronted with her leveled arbalest and the obvious fact that, while her gear was much the worse for wear, she herself was unscathed, they hastily saluted.
"I killed tonight's intruder," she said, "and a homegrown enemy as well. What do you know of our situation? Is anyone else dead?"
"No, Mistress," said a priestess. The lowered visor of her spider-crested helmet completely concealed her features, but from her voice, Quenthel recognized Quave, one of the senior instructors. "Most of those who ate and drank the tainted meal are waking. I think the poisoner only wanted to render us unconscious, not kill us."
"Apparently," said Quenthel, "she was willing to let the demon administer the coup de grace to me. What of those who encountered the entity before I did?"
Quave hesitated, then said, "When they tried to hinder it, it hurt them, but not to the point of death. They should recover as well."
"Good," Quenthel said, though she took no joy in knowing she was the unknown enemy's sole target.
"What are your orders, Mistress?" asked Quave.
"We'll have to sort out the living from the dead, and deal with each accordingly. We'll also look for the place where the demon got in, and seal it."
These were tasks that would doubtless keep her occupied for the rest of the night, but she knew she had to find a way to stop the intrusions, and pull the fangs of another crisis as well.
It would all make for an arduous day's labor, with the outcome uncertain enough to depress even a high priestess. Still, her mood lifted slightly when her vipers began to stir.

"I have a healing potion," said Ryld. He took a small pewter vial from his pouch, unstoppered it, and held it to Pharaun's lips. The wizard drank the liquid down.
"That might be a little better," Pharaun said after a moment. "But it's still bad. I'm still bleeding. On the inside, too, I think. Do you have any more?"
"No."
"Pity. A wretched little goblin did this. I can't believe it."
"Can you walk?" asked Ryld.
Pharaun would have to move or be moved, somehow. He couldn't just lie in the street, not in the Braeryn, not on a night when the hunt was out. It was far too dangerous.
"Possibly." The mage strained to lift himself up with his hands, then slumped back down. "But apparently not."
"I'll carry you," said Ryld.
He gathered the mage in his arms, and bidding Pharaun do the same, called upon the magic of his House insignia. They floated slowly upward, and swung onto a rooftop.
The view from that vantage point was far from encouraging. Screaming undercreatures ran through the streets and alleys of the Braeryn with whooping riders in pursuit. The dark elves killed the goblins with the thrust of a lance, the slash of a sword, or simply by trampling them under the clawed feet of their lizards. They tended to find intimate mayhem more amusing. Some, however, had no qualms about loosing a quarrel or conjuring a blast of magic.
Still other drow wheeled above the scene on foulwings, wyverns, and other winged mounts. Ryld saw danger on every side.
He hauled Pharaun up against a sort of gable in the hope that it would provide cover against the scrutiny of the flyers.
"It's bad," the swordsman said. "A lot of drow are hunting. There's no clear path out of the district."
The wizard didn't reply.
"Pharaun!"
"Yes," sighed his friend, "I'm still conscious. Barely."
"We'll hide here until the hunt ends. I'll covet us with a patch of darkness."
"That might w—"
Pharaun gasped and thrashed. Ryld held on to him for fear that he'd roll off the roof.
When the seizure ended, the Mizzrym's face seemed gaunt and drawn in a way it hadn't been before. More blood seeped from his wounded stomach.
"This isn't going to work," said Ryld, "not by itself. Unless you have some more healing, you're going to die."
"That would be ... a profound tragedy . . . but . . ."
"We have plenty of dark elves in the Braeryn tonight. One of them surely brought some restorative magic along. I'll just have to take it from him, or her. Here's that darkness."
Ryld touched the roof and conjured a shadow that covered the Master of Sorcere and not much else. With luck, the effect was localized enough that no one would notice the obscuration itself.
The weapons master rose and raced away. Whenever possible, he ran along the rooftops, bounding from one to the next. Often enough, however, the houses were far enough apart that he had to jump down to the ground and skulk his way through the slaughter.
It was at such a time that he saw another hunting party. Unfortunately, the group was too large to tackle. He had to hide from it instead. Crouched low, he watched a mage on lizard-back lob a yellow spark through the window of one of the houses. Booming, yellow flame exploded through the room beyond. A moment after it died, the screaming began. Ryld winced. As a child of six, he'd survived precisely such a massacre, and, severely blistered, lain trapped for hours beneath a weight of charred, stinking bodies, the luckier ones dead, the live ones whimpering and twitching in their helpless agony.
But it wasn't him burned nor buried tonight, and he spat the unpleasant memory away. He glanced about, checking to see if anyone was looking at him, then broke from cover and floated upward.
He dashed on along a steeply sloping roof engraved with web patterns and defaced, he noticed, with another slave race emblem. He sensed something above and behind him, and pivoted. His boots slipped, and he levitated for an instant while he found his footing amid the carvings.
He looked up and spied a huge black horse galloping through the air as easily as the common equines of the World Above could run across a field. Fire crackled around its hooves and pulsed from its nostrils. The dark elf male on its back held a scimitar, but wasn't making any extraordinary effort to lift it into position for a cut. Apparently he was counting on his demonic steed to make the kill, and why not? What goblinoid could withstand a nightmare?
Ryld froze as if he were such a hapless undercreature paralyzed with fear. Meanwhile, he timed the speed of the nightmare's approach. At the last possible moment, hoping to take the phantom horse and its master by surprise, he whipped Splitter out of its scabbard and cut.
And missed. Somehow the demon arrested its charge, and the blade fell short.
Its fiery hooves churning eighteen inches above the rooftop, the nightmare snorted. Thick, hot, sulfurous smoke streamed from its nostrils, enveloping Ryld, stinging and half blinding him. He heard more than saw the black creature lunging, striking with its reptilian fangs, and he retreated a step. The move saved him, but when he counterattacked, the nightmare too had taken itself out of range.
Through the stinking vapor, he glimpsed the infernal horse circling. It sprang at him again, this time rearing to batter him with its front hooves. He crouched and lifted Splitter. The point took the steed in the chest, and for a moment, he thought he'd disposed of it, but, its legs working frantically, it flew upward, lifting itself off the blade before it could penetrate too deeply.
The next few seconds were difficult. Ryld could barely make out his foes, while the nightmare could apparently see through its own smoke perfectly well. He stood and turned precariously on the crest of the roof, in constant danger of losing his balance, whereas the flying horse could maneuver wherever it pleased. Just to make life even more interesting, the rider started swinging his curved sword. Fortunately, like most denizens of the Underdark, he had little notion of how to fight on horseback, but his clumsy strokes still posed a danger.
Ryld wanted to end the confrontation quickly, before someone discovered Pharaun's hiding place. Unfortunately, in light of all his disadvantages, the weapons master thought the only way of doing that was to take a risk. The next time the demon reared, he let one of the blazing hooves slam him in the chest.
His dwarven breastplate rang but held. The blow hurt cruelly but didn't break any ribs or otherwise incapacitate him. He fell backward, banged down on the cast pitch of the roof, and started to tumble. Kicking and scrabbling, negating his weight, he managed to catch himself and twist around into a low fighting stance.
The nightmare was rushing in to finish him off. He swung Splitter, and this time the demon was too committed to the attack to halt its forward momentum. The greatsword slashed through its neck, nearly severing the head with its luminous scarlet eyes. The steed toppled sideways and rolled, leaving a trail of embers. The rider tried to jump free, but he was too slow. The nightmare crushed him on its way to the ground.
Ryld tore open the dead male's purse, then floated down to the demon horse and checked the saddlebags. There were no potions or any other means of mending a wound.
Why, he wondered, should he expect to find such a thing among the noble's effects? The noble had come to the Braeryn for some lighthearted sport. He hadn't believed the goblins couldn't hurt him or that he was in any other danger, so why bring a remedy for grievous harm to the festivities, even if he was lucky enough to possess one?
There were only five hunters who'd come there with a deadly serious purpose, prepared to cross swords with formidable foes: Greyanna and her retainers. They were far more likely to carry healing magic than any other drow whom Ryld might opt to waylay.
Alas, they were likely to prove more trouble as well, but if he wanted to save Pharaun, he'd just have to cope. Pharaun was a useful ally, and Ryld was unwilling to let that carefully nurtured relationship expire easily. He skulked on, ignoring the hunters who obliviously crossed his path, until he finally spied a familiar figure on a rooftop just ahead of him.
Still masked, one of Greyanna's twin warriors was stalking along that eminence. An arrow nocked, he peered down into the street below.
Ryld threw himself down behind a stubby little false minaret on his roof. He peered around it, looking for the rest of the would-be murderers.
He didn't see them. Maybe the band had split up, the better to look for their quarry. They'd have to, wouldn't they, to oversee the entire district.
He ducked back, cocked his hand crossbow and laid a poisoned dart in the channel. He and Pharaun had been reluctant to kill their pursuers, but with the wizard dying, Ryld was no longer overly concerned with a petty retainer's life.
He leaned back around, his finger already tightening on the trigger—and the space where the archer had stood was empty. Ryld cast about, and after a moment spotted the male atop a round, flat-roofed little tower adhering to the main body of the building.
That posed two problems. One was that the warrior was farther away and ten feet higher up, at or beyond the limit of the little crossbow's range. The other was that the male happened to be looking in Ryld's direction. His eyes flew open wide when he spotted his quarry.
Ryld shot, and his dart fell short of the tower. A split second later, the twin pulled back his bowstring and loosed his arrow in one fluid motion. The shaft looked like a gradually swelling dot, which meant it was speeding straight at its target.
Ryld dodged back. The arrow whizzed past, and the archer shouted, "Here! I've got him here!"
The weapons master scowled, feeling the pressure of passing time even more acutely than before. He didn't want to be there when the rest of the enemy arrived, and the only hope of avoiding it was to dispose of his present opponent quickly. The longbow simply had his hand crossbow outclassed. He needed to get in close.
He drew Splitter, sprang out into the open, and strode toward his foe. The archer sent one arrow after another winging his way, and he knocked them out of the air. The defense was considerably more difficult advancing across the irregular surface of the roof than it would have been standing still on the ground.
Ryld began to sweat, and his heart beat faster, but he was managing. There came another shaft, this one aglitter with some form of enchantment, and he swatted it down. Rattling, it rolled on down the pitch of the roof.
He took another step, slapped aside another missile, then heard something—he didn't know what, just an indefinable change in the sounds around him. He remembered that some enchanters created magical weapons capable of more than flying truer and hitting harder.
He spun around. The sparkling arrow had launched itself back into the air and circled around behind him. It was streaking toward its target and was only a few feet from his body.
Ryld wrenched Splitter across in a desperate parry. The edge caught the arrow and split it in two. Spinning through the air, the piece with the point hit his shoulder, but, thanks to his armor, did him no harm.
He lurched back around with barely enough time to deflect the next shaft, then marched on. Four more paces brought him to the end of the roof.
The gap between this house and the next was five yards across. He took a running start, made himself nearly weightless, and jumped. The twin tried to hit when he was in the air, but for a blessed change, his arrow flew wild. Ryld thumped down atop the same structure his opponent occupied. It felt as if it had taken forever to get this far, even though he knew it had really been less than a minute.
Not that he was done running the gauntlet. The arrows kept hurtling at him, including one that gave an eerie scream, filling him with an unnatural fear until he quashed the feeling, and another that turned into a miniature harpy in flight. Yet another struck two paces in front him and exploded into a curtain of fire. Squinting at the glare, he wrapped his piwafwi around him and dived through, emerging singed but essentially unscathed.
After that, he was close enough to the tower to cancel most of his weight and leap up to the top. He sprang into the air like a jumping spider and alit on the platform. The twin hastily set down his bow and drew his scimitar.
"Do you have any healing magic?" Ryld asked. "If so, give it to me, and I'll let you go."
The other warrior smiled unpleasantly and said, "My comrades will start arriving any second. Surrender now, tell me where Pharaun is, and perhaps Princess Greyanna will let you live."
"No."
Ryld cut at the warrior's head. The other male jumped back out of range, sidestepped, and slashed at the weapons master's arm. Ryld parried, beat the scimitar aside, and the fight was on.
Over the course of the next few seconds, the Mizzrym warrior gave ground consistently. Twice, he nearly stepped off the flat, round tabletop that was the apex of the tower but on both occasions spun himself away from the edge in time. He was a good duelist, and he was fighting defensively while he waited for reinforcements to arrive. That made him hard to hit. Hard, but not impossible.
Pressing, Ryld feinted high on the inside to draw the parry, swung his greatsword down and around, and cut low on the outside. Splitter sheared into the Mizzrym's torso just below the ribs, and he collapsed in a gush of blood.
Magic trilled and flickered through the air. When Ryld spun around, the other twin and Relonor popped into being on the rooftop below. Obviously, House Mizzrym's mage could teleport on his own, without the aid of the brooch Pharaun had pilfered.
His voluminous sleeves sliding down to his elbows, Relonor lifted his arms and started to cast a spell. The newly arrived twin nocked an arrow and drew back the string of his pale bone bow.
Ryld threw himself down on his stomach. He was ten feet above his adversaries, and he hoped that they couldn't see him. Sure enough, no magic or arrow flew in his direction. He scuttled across the platform—enchantments in his armor deadening the sound of his footfalls—and grabbed his previous opponent's bow and quiver, then scrambled to his knees The twin and the wizard rose above the platform, the former levitating, the latter soaring in an arc that revealed some magical capacity for actual flight. The archer loosed an arrow, and mystical energy flashed from Relonor's fingertips.
The Mizzrym's magic reached its target first. A ghastly shriek stabbed through Ryld's ears and into his brain. He cried out and flailed in agony. The warrior's arrow plunged into his thigh, and the razor-edged point burst from the other side.
After a moment, the screaming stopped. Ryld could feel that it had hurt him, perhaps worse than the arrow had, but had no time or inclination to fret about it. Quickly as few folk save a master of Melee-Magthere could manage, he loosed two shafts of his own.
The first took Relonor in the chest, and the second stabbed into the warrior's belly. They both dropped down out of sight.
Ryld looked at the twin with the sword cut in his flank. The male appeared to be unconscious, which would facilitate searching him. Ryld hobbled over to him to rifle his pockets and the leather satchel he wore on his belt.
Blessedly, he found four silver vials, each marked with the rune for healing. Greyanna had indeed outfitted her agents properly for a martial expedition. It was the twin's misfortune that he hadn't had time to drink of her bounty before going into shock.
His brother and Relonor no doubt carried healing draughts as well, and Ryld had no guarantee that they'd be unable to use them. They might come after him again any second, and he'd just as soon avoid a second round. He needed to beat a hasty—
Enormous wings beat the air. A long-necked, legless beast passed overhead with Greyanna and the other priestess, the skinny one, astride its back. Glaring down at Ryld, Pharaun's sister pulled at the laces securing the mouth of her bag of monsters.
Ryld dumped the remaining arrows out of the quiver, the better to examine them. One was fletched with red feathers while the rest had black.
He'd already seen his first foe shoot one fire arrow. Praying that the red-fletched arrow was another, he drew back his bowstring and sent it hurtling into the air.
The arrow plunged Into the sack, and burst into flame. The scarred high priestess reflexively dropped the bag, and it fell, burning as it went. The magic spores combusting inside turned the fire green, then blue, then violet.
Greyanna screamed in fury and sent the foulwing swooping lower. Ryld looked for another magic arrow and found that none were left. He nocked an ordinary one, and his hands began to shake, no doubt an aftereffect of the punishment he'd taken.
For a moment, it seemed to him that he was finished. If he couldn't shoot accurately, he couldn't hit one of the foulwing's vital spots, or the riders on its back, for that matter. Nor was he in any shape to fight them hand to hand.
Then he realized he still had a chance. He surrounded his arrow with a cloud of murky darkness, then shot it upward.
The descending beast was a huge target. Even shooting blind with trembling hands, he had a fair chance of hitting in somewhere, and the foul-wing gave a double shriek that told him he'd succeeded.
He watched the mass of darkness he'd created tumble and zigzag drunkenly through the air. Stung, suddenly and inexplicably sightless, the winged mount inside had panicked, and Greyanna was evidently unable to control it. She quite possibly could have dissolved the darkness with some scroll or talisman, but she couldn't see either or lay hands on her equipment easily with the foulwing lurching and swooping about beneath her.
Ryld snapped the head off the arrow in his leg and pulled the offending object out. He gathered up the healing potions, and quickly as he was able, activated the magic in his talisman, floated down off the roof, and limped away.

THIRTEEN
As Quenthel skulked down the corridor, it occurred to her that at the same time, Gromph was casting his radiant heat into the base of Narbondel. Even revelers and necromancers were settling in for a rest. She, however, was too busy to do the same. She wouldn't have a chance to relax until late the next night, unless, of course, she wound up resting forever.
Fortunately, one of the Baenre alchemists brewed a stimulant to delay the onset of the aching eyes, fuzzy head, and leaden limbs that lack of rest produced. Quenthel extracted a silver vial of the stuff from one of the pouches on her belt and took a sip of it. She gasped, and her shoulder muscles jumped. Jolted back to alertness, she continued on her way.
In another minute, she reached the door to Drisinil's quarters. In deference to the status of her family, the novice resided in one of Arach-Tinilith's most comfortable student habitations. Quenthel regretted not sticking her in a dank little hole. Perhaps then the girl would have learned her place.
The high priestess inspected the arched limestone panel that was the door. She couldn't see any magical wards.
"Is it safe?" she whispered to the vipers.
"We believe so," Yngoth replied.
How reassuring, Quenthel thought, but it was either trust them or use another precious, irreplaceable scroll to wipe away protections that probably didn't exist.
She activated the power of her brooch. When a novice came to Arach-Tinilith, the enchantments on certain doors were keyed to allow her to enter, based on the unique magical signature of her House insignia, rooms the high priestesses deemed it necessary for her to pass into. Only Quenthel's brooch could unlock them all.
She unlocked Drisinil's door and warily cracked it open. No magic sparked, nor did any mechanical trap jab a blade at her. As quietly as she could, Quenthel crept on into the suite. Sensing her desire for quiet, the snakes hung mute and limp.
She found Drisinil sitting motionless in a chair, her bandaged, mutilated hands in her lap. For a moment, Quenthel, thinking the other female must have a dauntless spirit to enter the Reverie at such a perilous time, rather admired her—then she caught the smell of brandy, and noticed the bottle lying in a puddle of liquor on the floor.
Quenthel stalked toward the novice. It occurred to her that she was doing to Drisinil as the living darkness had done to her. The thought vaguely amused her, perhaps simply because she was finally the predator, not the prey. Smiling, she gently laid the vipers across the other drow's face and upper torso. The snakes hissed and writhed.
Drisinil roused with a cry and a start. She started to rear up, and Quenthel pushed her back down in her chair.
"Sit!" the Baenre snapped, "or the serpents will bite."
Her wide eyes framed by the cool, scaly loops of the vipers, Drisinil stopped struggling.
"Mistress, what's wrong?"
Quenthel smiled and said, "Very good, child, you sound sincere. After your first ploy failed, you should at the very least have rested elsewhere."
"I don't know what you mean."
Drisinil's hand shifted stealthily, no doubt toward a hidden weapon or charm. The vipers struck at the student's face, their fangs missing her sharp-nosed features by a fraction of an inch. She froze.
"Please," Quenthel said. "This will go easier if you don't insult my intelligence. You have spirit, you believe I punished you too harshly, and you're Barrison Del'Armgo, eager to bring down the one House standing between your family and supremacy. Of course you're involved in the plot against me. You're also an idiot if you didn't think I'd realize it."
"Plot?"
Quenthel sighed. "Halavin tried to kill me last night, and she didn't act alone. A single traitor couldn't have drugged all the food and drink set out at various points around the temple. It would have required abandoning her station for long enough that someone would have marked her absence."
"Halavin could have tainted the meal while it was still in the kitchen."
"She was never there."
"Then perhaps the demon poisoned the viands with its magic."
"No. As I'm sure you noted, each spirit represents one of the facets of reality over which the goddess holds special dominion. Poison is the weapon of an assassin, while with its continually fluctuating form, last night's assailant was plainly a manifestation of chaos.
"The conspirators," Quenthel continued, "had to contaminate each and every table because they didn't know where I would stop and eat. Many fell unconscious, but you and the other plotters knew not to sample the repast."
Drisinil said, "I had no part in it."
"Novice, you're beginning to irritate me. Admit your guilt, or I'll give you to the vipers and interrogate someone else." The serpents hissed and flicked their tongues.
"All right," said Drisinil, "I was involved. A little. The others talked me into it. Don't kill me."
"I know what your little cabal has done, but I want to understand how you dared."
Drisinil swallowed and said, "You . . . you said it yourself. Each demon seeks to kill only you, and each in its own particular way reflects the divine majesty of Lolth. We thought she sent them. We thought we were doing what the goddess wanted."
"Because you're imbeciles. Has no one taught you to look beyond appearances? If Lolth wanted me dead, I couldn't survive her displeasure for a heartbeat, let alone three nights. The attacks resemble her doing because some blasphemous mortal arranged it so, to manipulate you into doing her killing for her. I'd hoped you conspirators knew the trickster's identity, but I see it isn't so."
"No."
"Curse you all!" Quenthel exploded. "The goddess favors me. How could you possibly doubt it? I'm a Baenre, the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith, and I rose to the rank of high priestess more quickly that any Menzoberranyr ever has!"
"I know . . ." The novice hesitated, then said, "The Mother of Lusts must have some reason for distancing herself from the city, and we . . . speculated."
"Some of you did, I'm sure. Others simply liked the idea of eliminating me. I imagine your Aunt Molvayas would relish seeing me dead. She'd have an excellent chance of becoming mistress in her turn. We Baenre don't have another princess seasoned enough to assume the role."
"It was my aunt!" Drisinil exclaimed. "She came up with the idea of helping the demons kill you. I didn't even want to help. I thought it was a stupid idea, but within our family, she holds authority over me."
Quenthel smiled. "It's too bad you weren't more impressed with my authority."
"I'm sorry."
"No doubt that. Now, I need the names of all the conspirators." Drisinil didn't hesitate an instant. "My aunt, Vlondril Tuin'Tarl . . ." As ever, Quenthel maintained a calm, knowing expression, but inwardly she was surprised at the number of conspirators. An eighth of the temple! It was unprecedented, but then she was living in unprecedented times.
When Drisinil finished, the Baenre said, "Thank you. Where did you gather to hatch your schemes?"
"One of the unused storerooms in the fifth leg," Drisinil said. Quenthel shook her head. "That won't do. It's not big enough. Convene the group in Lirdnolu's old classroom. Nobody's used it since she had her throat slit, so it will seem a safe meeting place."
Drisinil blinked. "Convene?"
"Yes. Last night's plot failed, so obviously you must hatch a new one. You've chosen a new chamber for the conference because you suspect the storeroom is no longer safe. Say whatever you need to say to assemble your cabal in four hours' time."
"If I do, will you spare me?"
"Why not? As you've explained, you only participated reluctantly. But you know, it suddenly occurs to me that we have a problem. If I send you forth to perform this task, how do I know you won't simply flee Tier Breche and take refuge in your mother's castle?"
"Mistress, you already explained that such a course could only lead to my death."
"But did you believe me? Do you still? How can I be sure?"
"Mistress ... I ..."
"If I had my magic, I could compel you to do as you're told, but in its absence, I must take other measures,"
Quenthel raised the whip, sweeping the vipers off Drisinil's face in the process, and slammed the metal butt of the weapon down in the middle of her forehead.
The mistress then took out the silver vial. She pinched the dazed, feebly struggling girl's nostrils closed, poured the stimulant into her open mouth, and forced her to swallow.
The effect was immediate. The younger female bucked and thrashed until her eyes flew open.
The high priestess hopped back down to the floor. "How does it feel? I imagine your heart is hammering."
Drisinil trembled like the string of a viol. Sweat seeped from her pores.
"What did you do to me?"
"That should be obvious to an accomplished poisoner like yourself."
"You've poisoned me?"
"It's a slow toxin. Do as I ordered, and I'll give you the antidote."
"I can't cozen the others like this. They'll see something's wrong with me."
"The external signs should ease in a minute or two, though you'll still feel the poison speeding your heart and gnawing at your nerves. You'll just have to put up with that."
"All right," Drisinil said. "Just bring the antidote with you when you come to Lirdnolu's room."
The mistress arched an eyebrow, and Drisinil added, "Please."
Quenthel smiled. Catching her mood, the whip vipers sighed with pleasure.