Jaleigh Johnson - Spider and Stone

Zollgarza didn’t seem to hear her. She reached out a hand to Icelin, who tensed but let the drow clasp her wrist. “Take me to him,” she said hoarsely. “To Mith Barak. I have what he needs.”

“The king?” Icelin said. Understanding dawned on her. “If you’re a drow priestess, you have information about the attacking force, don’t you?”

“Part of me does,” Zollgarza said. Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. “It’s not strong yet, dominant. It fights with him, with the unclean parts of me. But it won’t win,” she said, gritting her teeth as if fighting off physical pain. “We have to hurry.”

“What’s your price?” Joya asked, suspicious. “And how are you just remembering this information now? The king already rooted through your mind and found nothing.”

An ugly smile flitted across Zollgarza’s face. “He was looking in the wrong mind,” she said. “I have lain in dark rooms and whispered plans with the mistress mother of the snake-headed scourge. I know why Fizzri-no, why Lolth -wants the Arcane Script Sphere.” Her hand tightened around Icelin’s wrist. “My price is my freedom-safe passage out of the city.”

“The king will never release you,” Joya said. “You know too much.”

“If I win my battle against what’s inside me, if female dominates male, all that knowledge will be gone,” Zollgarza said. “I will purge it with the rest of this disease. It’s a sacrifice I gladly make.”

“Why are you doing this,” Icelin asked, “betraying your people, your goddess?”

The light in Zollgarza’s eyes dimmed, and a shudder wracked her body. “I have no goddess-not while I am … this.” She held her hands up in front of her face, as if she didn’t recognize what she was looking at. “Half of one being, half of another. She did this to me, made me into an abomination, a sacrifice.” She looked up at Icelin with pleading eyes. “I will not let it happen.”

Icelin nodded. “We’ll take you to the king,” she said. “I just hope we can get to him in time.”

Ruen tensed when Icelin and Joya came out of the hall with the drow in tow. Garn and Obrin cursed and gripped their weapons. Ingara turned away in disgust.

“I can’t wait to hear this,” Ruen said, raising an eyebrow and looking pointedly at Icelin.

“Why do you always blame me?” Icelin said, putting a hand on her hip. “I never ask for the sort of trouble that follows me around like a plague, do I?” She related Zollgarza’s request quickly. “The king can decide what’s best to do,” she added. “We need to get to him, quickly.”

“You can use the stone flyers,” Garn said. “This way.”

He led them over the bridge to a set of caves in the back of the cavern wall. Iron bars set across the entrances kept in two massive creatures with skin made of stone. To Icelin, they vaguely resembled wolves with wings folded alongside their flanks. Garn spoke to the stable master and got the keys to one of the pens.

“The rest of them are already being used by the army. These are older, but the stable man says they’ll fly true. The king’ll be at the front of the army near the main gate,” he told them as he swung open the door to the pen. He raised a hand and spoke soothingly to the stone creatures, who watched the group warily. Stroking the necks of two of the beasts, he led them out of the pen. “Obrin,” he said to his son, “you carry the drow.”

“I want to go too,” Icelin said. “Will they carry Ruen and I?”

“Can you ride a horse well?” Ingara asked, looking concerned.

“Yes,” Icelin said.

“That’ll help,” Garn said. “We’ve trained them as aerial cavalry. They’ll follow a leader, and Obrin’s riding one of the ones we’ve trained to lead. Guide them only when you have to. They know what they’re about.”

“Just be careful,” Sull said, wringing his big hands.

“I will,” Icelin promised.

Obrin mounted the lead flyer, and Zollgarza crawled up behind him, being careful not to touch the dwarf but instead holding on to the raised stone ridges along the beast’s flank. Icelin and Ruen mounted the second flyer. The roughness of the flyer’s stone skin scratched and caught at her breeches. Could statues fly?

She wrapped her arms around Ruen’s waist for balance and held the Arcane Script Sphere tightly in the other. The lupine creature rocked back and spread its wings. A weight pressed down on Icelin as the creature’s wings came down, lifting them off the ground. Beating its wings furiously, the flyer took off, gaining momentum as the cavern floor disappeared beneath them. In a breath, the weight lifted, and a light, giddy sensation clawed at Icelin’s stomach. She tightened her grip on Ruen’s waist. It was then she noticed how rigid he sat on the flyer’s back, as if he, too, were made of stone. They were very high up in the air.

“Sorry,” Icelin said, wincing as she looked down at the stone buildings passing beneath them. “I never expected we’d be doing this.”

A gust of wind hit her, and the flyer changed direction slightly. Ruen put up a hand to hold his hat in place. “Which part?” he said dryly. “This whole adventure is starting to look a little bit mad from where I’m sitting.”

Below them, the army assembled before the main gate. Other flyers hovered in the air in formations of ten and twenty beasts, flying their own banners and following a single lead. Ballistae arranged in a semicircle near the main gate stood poised to fire. The king stood near one of the machines, surrounded by a group of scouts.

Soldiers looked up and saw the flyers descending. They hurried to clear a path, but several pointed at the drow and murmured in alarm. Icelin wondered briefly if they’d made a miscalculation, bringing Zollgarza into the middle of the army. There was a chance the dwarves would slay the drow on sight. Then they landed, and Icelin had no more time for doubts.

The king must have seen them approach as well, for he pushed through the crowd when the flyers’ feet hit the ground. “What is this, Obrin?” he growled, pointing at Zollgarza.

“Ask her,” Obrin said in Common.

Icelin flinched as the gazes of hundreds of dwarf soldiers and their king turned her way. Surprisingly, Zollgarza spoke.

“I have what you wanted,” she said to the king. “I can tell it to you, or you can rip it from my mind-more damage won’t matter.”

“Speak,” the king said bluntly.

“The mistress mother’s armies will distract your forces while her infiltrators seek out the Arcane Script Sphere,” Zollgarza said. “When they find it, and me, they will use my body and the sphere as a conduit for a ritual that will aid in the creation of a new Weave, reshaped by Lolth’s power. She will become the new goddess of magic.”

Icelin gasped. “Can she do that? The sheer power involved …”

“Preparations are being made in drow cities all throughout the Underdark,” Zollgarza said. “Artifacts, powerful tools of arcane might, are being gathered by the faithful. The Arcane Script Sphere bears a piece of Mystra’s essence and memory, and my body and mind are the union of male and female, arcane and divine. I would have been the nexus for the power Fizzri intends to channel. At least that was her intention.”

“Was?” Mith Barak said, gazing at Zollgarza narrowly.

“All I want now is to go free, away from this city, away from Guallidurth, away from every living thing. I have lived as a male. I am already tainted. I will not be Lolth’s sacrifice.”

Mith Barak raised an eyebrow. “And if you’re lying? What if you’re captured again? Why shouldn’t we kill you to make sure Lolth’s plan doesn’t come to pass?”

Icelin spoke up. “I believe Zollgarza speaks the truth,” she said.