Paul Kidd - Queen of the Demonweb Pits

He finished the drink, looking relaxed and relieved. Watching him, Jus sat with Cinders in his lap, brushing the hell hound's black fur to a shine. Jus took back the cup and snapped it into place on his canteen.

"Rough?"

The soldier looked at the city's ludicrous crowds and gave a dismal sigh.

"Noisy. Crowded. But the granary's full." The guard jerked his chin at the river. "Floods won't last. Happened like this ten years ago. Soon goes away."

You should do something about it. Benelux's voice echoed inside the Justicar's skull. A true ruler should cure this at the source, not simply manage the symptoms. You should build retaining walls or drainage canals!

"The wars might have disrupted public building projects." The Justicar glowered at the sword. "Always uncover facts before you make accusations."

He put the finishing touches on Cinders's coat with a wet cloth, making the hell hound gleam. The guard watched the hell hound's face assume a goofy look. The living pelt hammered his tail upon the ground.

"That thing real?"

"Yep." Jus cleaned the grooming brush and tossed the resulting ball of fur over the wall. "He's called Cinders."

The hell hound's huge teeth gleamed. Hi!

With a jerk of his thumb, Jus introduced himself. "Justicar. Henry. The sword's Benelux. We're heading to a village southward: Hommlet."

"Hommlet! And you came from the north?"

"Yep."

"Any trouble?"

"No. No trouble."

The Justicar was uncompromising and calm. His competence spoke for itself. The town guardsman stroked his chin and looked toward the northern hills-a barrier that seemed the end of the known world.

Jus drew Cinders back in place across his shoulders.

"Can we help?"

"Hommlet…" The guard tugged at wisps of his beard. "Would it have room for a few refugees?"

"I don't know. As much as you have here, I'd think. We could take a hundred people off your hands if you give us something to feed them with."

The guard shot upright and tugged his surcoat straight. "Wait here! I'll fetch the captain."

The man bustled off. Pouring Henry a second beer, the Justicar seemed perfectly at ease.

"Second lesson. An obstacle is a rock. If you can't break it, flow around it." The Justicar's black armor creaked softly as he relaxed. "Logic and instinct. They're your sharpest tools. In life, there are no mysteries that cannot be solved. No problems that cannot be fixed."

Henry frowned. "None at all?"

"None." Jus thought of Escalla and gave a heavy sigh. "Some just need a little more work than others."

Darkness built above the city. Far off in the distance, there was the rumbling of a sudden summer storm.

"Ah. Here we are. Oh, for once, it's actually quite pleasant!" Lolth stood in a wilderness of dead, twisted grass, a hillside where the bones of the slaughtered jutted through the soil. "That horrid fresh air smell is gone."

Black, polished, and magnificent, Lolth stood and let the fetid winds caress her hair. Behind her, carried along by Lolth's spells in the middle of her morning cup of tea, Morag glowered.

"Magnificence? What are we doing here?"

"We are eliminating trouble before it can begin." Lolth pulled two long thigh bones from the earth and enchanted them. "Do you have that bag I gave you?"

"Yes, Magnificence."

"Good. Drink your tea."

Holding the bones as divining rods, Lolth walked off along the hillside. Morag sighed, bunched up her coils, and followed, delicately picking a path past the bones of a dead wyvern. The place was wretchedly cold, abysmally dry, and Morag felt the day's carefully crafted schedules slipping away. She hurried after her mistress, planting herself so that Lolth's appointment diary could clearly be seen.

The spider goddess ignored her, happily scanning her divining rods over the dead grass.

"This is Iuz's territory, I believe. We shall take it over once we eliminate him." Lolth swung sideways as the two bones quivered and began to cross. She walked rapidly over the hill, led by her divining rods.

Morag impatiently folded all six of her arms. "Magnificence, the operation begins in sixty minutes."

"Yes, yes. I'm a goddess, Morag. I can teleport. I don't need a nag." Lolth shot a scathing glance at her secretary. "Your little shopping trip is safe and sound, never fear."

The divining rods crossed, and in the end, their target was obvious. On a hillside littered by the bones of monsters, one site had been conspicuously made into a grave. The earth had been heaped in a telltale fashion. Most interestingly of all, a froglike tanar'ri skull had been left to mark the grave-a skull impaled and pinned by a broken sword. Lolth reached out to draw the sword from the ground and instantly burned her hand.

"Damnation!"

"Magnificence?" Lolth was notoriously vulnerable to blessed artifacts. "Shall I fetch you a bandage?"

"Don't be impertinent!" Lolth blew on her fingers, hurt and angry. She kicked the sword and the skull out of the ground and shoved them away with one stiletto-heeled boot. "What sort of fool leaves an enchanted sword stuck in the soil?"

"Someone who has a better sword, Magnificence?"

"Brilliant." Lolth spared the grave a contemptuous kick. "Well what are you waiting for? You have six hands. Dig!"

Morag. growled. Her hands were long and clever, and her scales had just been buffed and dried. She wearily unslung her collection of weapons, notebooks, pens, and diaries, and went to work, digging in the horrid, flinty soil. As she labored, Lolth opened her hands and cast a spell. An instant later, a savage vulture-demon appeared before her. Lolth accepted a delicate glass from the creature, allowed it to pour her some wine, and then lolled atop a varrangoin's skeleton to watch Morag at her work.

"Ah, wine. I always did like a glass in the afternoon. We must search this world and see if there are any novel vintages to be found!"

"Yes, Magnificence." Well down in her hole, Morag resentfully shoveled earth. "I'm sure the faeries will have a bottle or two to spare."

"Shut up. Dig."

The excavation took a good ten minutes of filthy work, by which time Morag was cursing. She had broken a nail, gotten grit in her eye, and was filthy from tip to tail. She finally uncovered a dried, withered skeleton-a figure clad in armor that had rusted to a flaky brown.

From above her came Lolth's imperious voice. "Don't hurt the bones, idiot! Now get out of there!"

No helping hand was offered. Morag angrily threw a spell and summoned some of her own vassals: hopping birdlike minions that stank like the pit. The beings reached down to help the secretary out. She jerked her hands free from their grasp and fastidiously cleaned herself while Lolth had the beings carefully lift the old bones out of their grave.

The corpse was well preserved-a withered husk dried like leather from the parched soil of the hills. The armor was elven mail, cut and ripped by claws. It had been torn open where the cadaver had once had its heart ripped out of its chest. The being bore a helmet fashioned like the open mouth of a screaming eagle. Lolth busied herself drawing an enchanted circle about the corpse, daubing her magic symbols with blood taken from an ivory chalice. Behind her, yet more tanar'ri appeared, dragging with them humanoid slaves, a troll, spider servitors, and treasure chests. The hillside had suddenly become crowded.

Lolth painted three final runes, then tore the heart out of a slave to activate her magic. Fastidiously cleaning herself, Morag looked away in disgust, reaching for her notebooks and weapons.

The enchanted circle flashed and flared into life about the corpse. Lolth opened bloody hands, chanted her spell, and a cold wind stirred her hair, lifting her silks about her magnificent body.