Лиза Смедман - Extinction

“Now we’ll see some fun,” said the plump wizard standing next to Triel.

Triel acknowledged him with a curt nod. She didn’t much care for Nauzhror, her first cousin once removed. He had only been promoted to the position of Archmage of Menzoberranzan because Gromph was missing, but he wore the archmage’s robes with a stuck-up snobbishness, as if he’d earned them. Triel instead directed her comment to Wilara, the priestess who stood on her left.

“The spiders will put the fear of Lolth into them,” she chuckled.

Wilara laughed politely along with her mistress. Her laughter ended abruptly a moment later, however, when the jade spider, instead of attacking the tanarukks, strode through the gap they’d created in their ranks.

“What in the Spider Queen’s name...” the priestess whispered.

Wilara’s unfinished question was answered a moment later as the spider crashed headlong into the House Baenre soldiers. Plucking one of them from the ground with its mandibles, it scissored the soldier in half. Then, letting the pieces fall to either side, it continued to race forward, smashing its way through mushrooms and drow alike.

“Lolth help us,” Nauzhror said in a strangled voice. “They’ve managed to get control of one of the constructs.”

As the jade spider advanced, the drow fell back in confusion. One or two prostrated themselves before it—only to receive the same treatment as the first soldier.

The spider continued its relentless advance, and soon several drow lay in bloody heaps behind it. Within moments, the spider had carved a gap through both the mushroom forest and the troops—a gap the tanarukks were quick to exploit.

“Attack, curse you!” Triel cried as the enemy surged forward.

The drow soldiers were too far away to have heard her, but thankfully one of their officers—probably Andzrel, judging by the black armor and cloak—rallied them. They fell upon the tanarukks from either side and quickly closed the gap the spider had opened. But even as the enemy was driven back once more toward the cavern wall, the jade spider continued to advance. Leaving the struggling foes and the mushroom forest behind, it scaled the slope that led from Qu’ellarz’orl up to the House Baenre compound. It moved swiftly and in a few moments more was at the barrier.

It hesitated just outside the high fence that enclosed the compound as if contemplating the magic that flowed through the barrier’s glowing silver strands, then it turned toward one of the stalagmites to which the fence was attached. As the House guard on the balconies above watched in confusion, the construct scaled the stone as easily as a living spider, climbing to a point just above the fence. It leaped down over the barrier, then began moving toward the center of the compound.

Triel’s eyes narrowed as she saw where it was headed. The jade spider was making its way to House Baenre’s central structure—the great domed temple of Lolth.

Wilara gasped as she, too, calculated the spider’s course.

“They dare attack our temple?” the priestess cried.

Nauzhror, with a sidelong look at Triel, exploded with appropriate rage.

“The insolence!” the interim archmage fumed. “May Lolth’s webs strangle them!”

His familiar—a fist-sized, hairy brown spider—scuttled from one of his shoulders to the other, disturbed by the mage’s violent motion.

Triel pursed her lips, saying nothing. The temple might be the target, but an attack on it was not the enemy’s chief aim. There was little a single jade spider—or even a dozen of them for that matter—could do to harm the building itself. Triel was sure that the incursion was intended to be a demonstration, made where all could see it, that Lolth had turned her face away from her chosen people. The spider would have to be stopped—but anyone doing so outside the doors of a building consecrated to Lolth would incur the goddess’s wrath.

In ordinary times, at least.

Triel longed to cry out to Lolth, to plead for the goddess to tell her what to do, but she knew what the answer would be: silence. The Matron Mother of the First House was on her own—and if the jade spider wasn’t stopped, Menzoberranzan’s weakness would be plain for all to see. The males of House Baenre, fighting so valiantly to force the enemy back into the tunnels, might falter. If they became convinced that Triel and the other ranking females had lost Lolth’s favor for some fault of their own or that the goddess had turned away from all drow forever, they might even turn against their matron mothers.

That could not be.

“The enemy knows our weakness,” Triel said in a tense voice. “They must believe that Lolth has fallen silent forever and hope to make it plain for all to see.”

Beside her, Wilara stiffened. Then amazingly, she contradicted her matron mother.

“No,” the priestess said, shaking her head and causing the long braid that hung down her back to ripple like a snake. “The goddess will answer. She must.”

The vipers in Triel’s whip hissed their annoyance, but Triel ignored them. Under the circumstances, she could allow Wilara’s outspokenness.

“Lolth may awaken yet,” she said, speaking as much to steady herself as for the lesser priestess’s benefit. “My sister Quenthel has not yet given up, so neither should we. But in the meantime, we have to rely upon ourselves. And upon other forms of magic.”

She turned to Nauzhror and asked, “Do you know the spell that will transform stone to flesh?”

“I do, Matron Mother,” he answered, “but if we transform it to flesh, the statue will become a living spider. The problem remains. We just can’t... kill it.”

“Quite so,” Triel said. As she spoke, she unfastened one of the wand cases hanging from her belt. “But by the time we’re finished, it won’t be a spider.” She drew out a slender iron wand, tipped with a chunk of amber whose depths held the remains of a desiccated moth. “As soon as you cast your spell, I’ll polymorph it into something else—something large and dangerous enough to have torn a hole through our ranks. Something our troops won’t have any problem attacking.”

Nauzhror smiled and said, “A deceitful plan, Matron Mother. One worthy of Lolth herself.”

Glancing down, Triel saw that the spider had nearly reached the temple.

“Quit fawning,” she ordered. “Teleport us down there at once.”

Nauzhror spoke the words of his spell, and an instant later the balcony seemed to lurch sideways as he and Triel squeezed between the dimensions. In the blink of an eye they were standing in front of the doors to the great temple. Two dozen House guards who had been milling about uncertainly a moment before gasped as their matron mother suddenly appeared before them. Some bowed, and others glanced between Triel and the jade spider that was rapidly approaching, its stone legs click-clicking as it scurried across the Nauzhror, his face paling to gray as the enormous stone spider rapidly closed the gap, began chanting a spell. He pointed a finger, from which an intense, narrow beam or red light sprang, but the trembling or his hand made the beam waver, causing it to miss the spider by several paces.

Triel grabbed Nauzhror’s hand, steadying it. The beam connected—and jade became flesh. Triel activated her wand.

The spider shifted into the form she held in her mind; a two-legged creature with powerful muscles, enormous claws and mandibles, and a rounded, insectoid head. Its body was covered in chitinous plates, and feelers sprouted from cracks near its head where the sections met. Startled by its sudden transformation, the creature stumbled to a halt, feelers waving frantically as its mandibles clacked shut.

“Matron Mother,” Nauzhror gasped. “An umber hulk?”