Лиза Смедман: Extinction

“I wonder if any of the others have found a way down yet,” Pharaun muttered.

As if in answer, Valas Hune appeared from out of the forest, emerging from a tangled clump of underbrush with a silence that was only in part due to the enchanted chain mail the scout wore. A pair of magical, curved kukri daggers hung at his hip, and to his vest was pinned a miscellany of enchanted talismans fashioned by more than one Underdark race. The mercenary, his amber eyes watering slightly as he squinted against the sunlight, had a squared-off jaw that seemed permanently clenched. He habitually held himself tensed and ready, as if he expected to take a punch. His ebony skin was crisscrossed with dozens of faint gray lines, fading legacies of two centuries’ worth of battles.

Valas jerked his head in the direction from which he’d just come and said, “There’s a ruined temple a short distance away. It’s built around a cave.”

Quenthel’s eyes glittered, and the serpents in her whip froze in rapt attention.

“Does it lead to the Realms Below?” she asked.

“It does, Mistress,” Valas said, offering a slight bow.

Pharaun strode forward and clapped an arm around the scout’s shoulders.

“Well done, Valas,” he said in a hearty voice. “I always said you could smell a tunnel a mile away. Lead on! We’ll be back in Menzoberranzan in no time, quenching our well-earned thirst with the finest wines that—”

“I think not.” Quenthel stood with hands on her hips, the serpents in her whip matching her venomous stare. “The goddess is missing, possibly under attack. We must find her.” Her eyes narrowed. “You are not suggesting, are you, Pharaun, that we turn our backs on Lolth? If so, I’m sure the matron mother will see to it you receive proper punishment.”

Valas glanced between Pharaun and Quenthel, then took a slight step to the side, dislodging Pharaun’s arm from his shoulder.

“Turn my back on Lolth?” Pharaun asked, chuckling to hide his nervousness. “Not at all. I’m merely suggesting we follow the matron mother’s orders. She bade us find out what’s happened to Lolth, and we have. We may not have all of the answers yet, but we have some pretty important pieces of the puzzle. The matron mother will no doubt want us to report what we’ve found out so far. Since the archmage is no longer answering my sendings, we can’t be certain he’s receiving our reports. I assumed we would report in person.”

“Only one of us need go,” Quenthel said. “But it won’t be you. There are other, more important things for you to be doing.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “You have the ability to summon demons, do you not?”

Pharaun raised an eyebrow.

“I have summoning spells, yes,” he said. “But what does that have to do w—”

“We will return to the Demonweb Pits—in the flesh, this time,” answered Quenthel. “And with a more trustworthy guide than Tzirik.”

Valas shuddered and asked, “A demon?” The normally taciturn scout saw Quenthel’s glare, seemed suddenly to realize he’d spoken aloud, and bowed. “As you command, Mistress.”

“Assuming I do summon a demon, how can we possibly hope to prevent it from tearing us limb from limb, let alone coerce it into becoming a tour guide for some little jaunt to the Abyss? Even Archmage Gromph wouldn’t think of whistling up a demon without a golden pentacle to bind it. We’re in the wilderness—in the Realms of Sunlight, in case you hadn’t noticed. Where am I supposed to get the spell components to—”

“Jeggred.”

Pharaun blinked, wondering if he’d heard Quenthel correctly.

“Jeggred,” she repeated. “We’ll use his blood. You can draw the summoning diagram with that.”

“Ah...” Pharaun cursed silently as he realized that Quenthel was, unfortunately, right. The blood of a draegloth could indeed bind a demon, but only one: the demon who had sired Matron Mother Baenre’s half-demon son. The demon that was Jeggred’s father.

Pharaun had no desire to meet him, in the flesh or otherwise, but he could see he had little choice in the matter. Not if he wanted to maintain his delicate balancing act of apparent loyalty to Lolth—necessary if he was to keep his position as Master of Sorcere. Just as Valas had done, Pharaun bowed.

“As you command, Mistress,” he said—with just enough of a sarcastic twist on the final word to remind her that her title was a hollow one. Mistress of Arach-Tinilith she might be, back in Menzoberranzan, but he was hardly one of her quivering initiates. He swept a hand in the direction Valas had indicated earlier. “Let’s do the spellcasting below ground, shall we? I’d like to get out of this wretched sunshine.”

As Valas and Quenthel set off, Pharaun pretended to follow them. He paused, picked up a twig, and used it to collect a bit of spiderweb from the trail. Lolth might be silent, but the sticky nets woven by her children were still useful; spiderweb was a component in more than one of his spells. Tucking the web-coated twig into a pocket, he hurried after the others.

Halisstra stood on top of the bluff, staring out across the forest. Snow-blanketed trees stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, here and there dimpled by a lake of an impossibly bright blue or divided by a road as neat and straight as a part through hair. For the first time, Halisstra understood what the word “horizon” meant. It was that distant line where the dark green of the forest met the eye-hurting, white-streaked blue of the sky.

Beside her, Ryld shivered.

“I don’t like it up here,” he said, holding a hand to his eyes to shade them. “It makes me feel... exposed.”

Halisstra glanced at the sweat trickling down Ryld’s ebony temple and shivered herself as the chill winter wind blew against her face. The climb had been a long, hot one, despite the age-worn stairs they’d found carved into the rock at one side of the bluff. She couldn’t explain what had compelled her to lead Ryld up there, nor could she explain why she felt none of the apprehensions the weapons master did. Yet despite his anxiety, Ryld—who stood fully as tall as Halisstra herself, even though he was a male—was in every respect a warrior. He wore a greatsword strapped across his back; a cuirass with a breastplate wrought of dwarven bronze; and vambraces, articulated at the elbows, that sheathed his lean, muscled arms in heavy steel. A short sword for fighting at close quarters hung in a scabbard at his hip. His hair was cut close to his scalp so that enemies could not grab it during combat. Only a fine stubble remained: hair as white as Halisstra’s own shoulder-length locks.

“There was a surface dweller—a human mage—who dwelt for a short time in Ched Nasad,” Halisstra said. The vastness of the sky above them made her speak softly; it felt as if the gods were lurking up there just behind the clouds, watching. “He spoke of how our city made him feel like he was living in a room with too low a ceiling—that he was always aware of the roof of the cavern over his head. I laughed at him; how could anyone feel enclosed in a city that was so loosely woven—a city balanced on the thin lines of a calcified web? But now I think I understand what he meant.” She gestured up at the sky. “This all feels so … open.”

Ryld grunted and asked, “Have you seen enough? We’re not going to find an entrance to the Underdark up here. Let’s climb back down and get out of the wind.”

Halisstra nodded. The wind found its way inside the armor she wore, even through the thickly padded chain mail tunic that covered her from neck to knees, and from shoulders to elbows. A silver plate attached to the tunic’s chest was embossed with the symbol of a sword, standing point-up across a full moon surrounded by a nimbus of silvery filaments. It was the holy symbol of Eilistraee, goddess of the surface-dwelling drow. The padding of the chain mail still smelled of blood—that of the priestess Halisstra had dispatched. The smell haunted the armor like a lingering ghost, even though the blood was several days old.