Jaleigh Johnson - Spider and Stone

GUALLIDURTH, THE UNDERDARK

10 UKTAR, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

"Show me your face, Zollgarza.”

The request echoed in the dark tunnel and surprised the young drow lurking there. Irritation stabbed him. He’d thought his movements had gone undetected by his prey.

Zollgarza stepped from a niche in the wall behind a wide stalagmite and faced Derzac-Rin, a male not much older than Zollgarza but taller and well built. His chiseled features showed signs of strain.

“How did you know?” Zollgarza asked.

Derzac-Rin drew his rapier and raised it, poised like the sharpest needle. “I knew you’d track me. All Fizzri’s lovers meet the same fate. Pride made me believe I would be different. As soon as she cast me out, I knew she’d send you to finish me. May I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

Derzac-Rin tightened his grip on the rapier hilt, as if to pour all of his pent-up hatred and rage into the weapon, that sheer force of willpower might save him when his skill surely could not. “Why does she favor you so?” he demanded.

Zollgarza shrugged. “You should have asked her. I am nobody special.”

“ Precisely .” Bitterness thickened the drow’s voice, making the word almost unintelligible. “You are less than nothing, a male with neither exceptional skills nor charm enough to make you a novelty. What have you to recommend yourself to the mistress mother?”

“I’m skilled enough to deal with you,” Zollgarza said. “At the moment, that’s all that matters.”

“Your features,” Derzac-Rin continued as if Zollgarza hadn’t spoken, “are so … misplaced. The crooked nose, lips too thick, as if the sculptor were merely a stuttering novice when he crafted you. I see nothing but contradictions and flaws.”

The mistress mother often spoke of Derzac-Rin’s vanity. Zollgarza supposed that explained his inability to comprehend the defects in Zollgarza’s own appearance.

Zollgarza shifted his stance, the barest motion his opponent would not perceive. Cave breezes stirred his hair. In addition to all the other faults Derzac-Rin had mentioned, Zollgarza’s hair was flat black-an aberration among the drow-with only the barest strands of white at the roots.

Calmly, Zollgarza drew his curved dagger. Attached to the pommel, a second smaller blade curved in the opposite direction, and affixed to the hilt was the figure of a silver spider. A fierce weapon, as beautiful as its wielder was not-at least in Derzac-Rin’s estimation.

“Are you ready to fight?” Zollgarza asked.

Derzac-Rin hadn’t finished his rant. “Where is your passion as you close in for the kill?” he shouted. “Where is the burning spark in your eyes? You refuse even to revel in my death! What moves you, Zollgarza, or should I say, what moves her to tolerate you? I must know this! You cannot-”

“Enough.” Zollgarza glided forward, brought his blade up, and caught the half-crazed drow’s rapier. Derzac-Rin shoved against him, but the frenzied move only put him off balance. Zollgarza pivoted, grabbed Derzac-Rin’s rapier hand, and held it extended. With his other hand, he reversed his dagger and touched one of the spider’s hollow legs on the hilt an instant before he stabbed Derzac-Rin in the flank.

The weapon failed to penetrate the drow’s armor as deeply as Zollgarza had intended, but poison would take care of the rest. As Derzac-Rin doubled over, the catch Zollgarza had touched in the spider’s leg released a watery green liquid that flowed down the blade to mingle with Derzac-Rin’s blood. Zollgarza yanked the dagger out, stepped forward, and spun quickly to face his opponent again, but Derzac-Rin did not attempt another attack. The green liquid smeared in his wound took up all his attention.

“The first leg, the one closest to the center of the blade, contains a paralytic,” Zollgarza explained. His voice didn’t burn with the passion and excitement of the kill, as Derzac-Rin had rightly observed. Instead, he spoke in a detached, analytical way. “A fungi-based poison I designed myself-the brewing required no exceptional alchemical skill, but the results are unquestionable. There is something to be said for efficiency over beauty.”

Derzac-Rin collapsed on his side, limbs jerking as he tried to maintain control of his body, to protect himself from Zollgarza’s impending strike. He failed. The poison froze him in a rigid fetal position, skin stretched taut over his handsome features.

Not so handsome now, Zollgarza observed silently.

Zollgarza bent over the drow and calmly finished his task.

When Derzac-Rin was dead, Zollgarza cleaned the blood and poison off his blade using a specially treated cloth. Then he laid the weapon aside in order to free both his hands. He knelt next to the body, removed Derzac-Rin’s spider silk breastplate, and pulled down the drow’s tunic to expose the obsidian flesh beneath. Finally, he took up his dagger again and laid the tip of the smaller blade against Derzac-Rin’s bare chest.

“For you, Mother Lolth,” Zollgarza whispered and began to carve the Spider Queen’s symbol into the drow’s chest. “His life, my life, my purpose-all for you and all return to you.”

Had Derzac-Rin been alive to hear Zollgarza’s prayer, he might have marveled at the love and loathing that threaded the drow’s voice, how his hands shook with rapture and disgust as he carved the image of the spider into the male’s chest, his passion awakened at last.

After Zollgarza disposed of the body, he returned to his quarters in the city to find a summons from the mistress mother awaiting him. She expected him even then, though she must have known that dealing with her former lover would detain him for a time. Perhaps she’d known that Derzac-Rin would present only a halfhearted challenge. Zollgarza himself had expected the battle to last much longer, but he had taken Derzac-Rin easily, as if fighting in a dream.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. Even if he’d won the fight, where could Derzac-Rin go-a lone male cast from his own House to take refuge in the mistress mother’s arms? That final sanctuary lasted but a month.

Zollgarza did not bother to hurry. The mistress mother would punish him for being late or she wouldn’t, depending on her mood. He washed the blood from his hands, replenished the poison in the spider’s leg on his dagger, and walked across the open plaza to the temple, where worshipers had already begun to gather for the evening services.

“Look there-the mistress mother’s pet. Do you know they call him the Black Creeper?”

“I suppose that means he slides along on his belly like a worm when he comes to her bed.”

Zollgarza heard the sneering insult, but it was impossible to locate its source in the thick crowd of drow assembled before the Spider Queen’s temple. He kept walking, never breaking stride as he made his way to Mistress Mother Fizzri Khaven-Ghell’s private audience chamber.

Situated on the temple’s second level, the mistress’s chamber was only accessible-for those without the magical means to reach it-via two crystal ramps that ascended from the east and west corners of the temple and crossed at the top like the interconnected strands of a spiderweb.

The crystals Zollgarza trod upon were worth a fortune, rare, glittering white clusters with specks of red in their hearts. By no coincidence was Guallidurth called the Temple City of Lolth.

He reached the top and turned to look out on the vast cavern that housed the rest of the temples and great manor houses. Hatred surged within him, a vile burn that made his limbs ache. Priestesses could ascend on their drift disks to the temple, and wizards had their own spells. Divine and arcane dominated, while Zollgarza, an unremarkable male warrior, had to walk the spider’s web to reach the mistress mother.