Paul Kidd - Queen of the Demonweb Pits

She scampered on ahead. Growling, Jus turned and signaled the others to make a run for the stairs. He turned back just in time to see Escalla disappearing through Lolth's front door. From inside the spider palace, the faerie gave a happy little cry.

"Oh! Hey, guys! Yep! You got me! So which one of you wants to go and report that you just got a prisoner?"

Enid looked at Jus, and the two of them charged headlong up the stairs and through the door.

The inside of Lolth's palace was shocking and surprising. Beyond the entrance alcove, with its dead gargoyles and guards, there was an area of clean white walk-a wide room with a rug upon the floor and paintings on the wall, all tasteful and incredibly beautiful.

Behind a desk sat a slim, cool woman with bobbed black hair. Her six arms were busy all over the desk, writing, sorting, doodling and filing all at once. Long snake coils draped elegantly over a perch that was half office chair and half shoe tree. As Jus cautiously edged into the room, she turned her back to him and deliberately concentrated on her files.

"Greetings, Justicar. Come in." The demon spoke in a very, very ordinary voice-officious and beautifully spoken. "You've done well. She still doesn't know you're here."

Escalla became visible. She ambled into the room, looking eagerly at the furnishings. Enid flowed through the door, her eyes on the tanar'ri woman and her claws unsheathed. Polk and Henry stood in the doorway and simply stared.

The six-armed tanar'ri never once looked at her visitors. Instead, she concentrated on her files.

"You may call me Morag. That is my common name, not my true name. Lolth has my true name. She has it written down. While she holds it, I must obey her to the letter. I must always answer her with the truth. If she wants to, she can use it to destroy me."

Looming huge and dark, the Justicar thoughtfully regarded the tanar'ri girl, then said, "If Lolth dies, the name is lost, and you are free."

"Yes."

"Why should we help you?"

Morag kept her back to him, sitting straight and stiff.

"You are not helping me. I have never discussed plans with you. Therefore, when asked by Lolth, I will say I have never conspired against her." One slim hand motioned to a large book upon the table. "Your names are penciled into the appointment list for the day. Therefore, there are no intruders in the palace. My duties will shortly call me away from this room." The woman made a careful entry into a ledger. "I can even say that I have not seen any intruders. I have never laid eyes upon you."

Escalla had been poking about the room. Perched on the desk was a painted portrait of a tanar'ri male-a handsome creature with a longing, slightly wistful expression. Escalla took one look at the picture and whistled in glee.

"Hubba-hubba! Oh, wow! Is he yours?"

"Give me that!" Morag snatched the picture away and hugged it against her breast. "And no, he is not mine. He… he…" A blush actually crept up the tanar'ri's cheeks. "He's an acquaintance."

"Oh…" Walking along the desk, Escalla cast a sly little eye backward at the tanar'ri. "But, ah, an acquaintance who's pretty nice to you. I mean, I can tell! He has great eyes." Escalla looked at the rugs, the paintings, and tapped her index fingers together "You really caught something special in that painting. You did all these, too?"

Morag straightened, tugging at her neat little black skirt.

"Yes. Yes, I painted them."

"And I bet you write, too!" Escalla was now sitting on the edge of the desk companionably next to the tanar'ri. "You do history, right? But there's a novel you've been working on, too?"

"It's a trilogy!" The tanar'ri sat up, and then subsided into misery. "We… I'm Lolth's secretary. Her vassal. Her… her slave." Morag swallowed. "I'm not supposed to… to waste time, to form attachments."

"Wow! You poor thing!"

Escalla was quite distraught. She looked up to see Jus looking patiently irritable at her. The girl waved her hand, shooing him away. "What? Hey, just because she's a tanar'ri, we can't both talk like girls?" The faerie snapped her fingers at her man. "We have a problem here! Helping ladies in distress is in the line of Justice! This is right up your alley!"

Morag was still hugging her portrait of her paramour. Escalla cleared her throat and came a little closer, staying out of view.

"Um, right. So this fella of yours… I mean, you'd like the chance to know him better, huh? You made a dumb mistake with Lolth, and now you're stuck! Regrets lead to frustration. Frustration leads to anger. I mean, we have to catch this problem now before it ruins your life forever!"

Morag hung her head. All six hands clenched tight. "Yes."

"Hoopy. Well, girl to girl, I'm glad to help." Escalla waggled her little bare feet. "So tell me: How do we get Lolth? What's the secret?"

"I can't tell you. Not… not directly."

"Hints are fine." Escalla lounged on the tabletop. "Shoot!"

Morag slithered from her chair. She gathered files and folders, checked the set of her curved swords, and tugged her skirt down straight. She headed for a door, then paused to speak into thin air.

"When thinking of Lolth, remember this: Power breeds superiority. Superiority breeds contempt. Contempt breeds a need to control." The tanar'ri exited through a door, her beautiful coils shimmering as she moved. "I believe it was Saint Cuthbert who said, 'Evil is a stain. The darker the evil, the more pure the waters must be to wash it clean.' "

Morag swept majestically out of the room. "The ship is powering up. We leave for the Flanaess within the hour."

The door closed with a bang, and Escalla sat up, scowling.

"Actually, I was hoping more for something on the lines of 'Two doors on the left, her bedroom's just great! You can ambush her there. Lolth goes shut-eye at eight.' " The girl shrugged. "Ah, well…"

"It could have been worse." The Justicar came over to Escalla's side to examine the desk. "It could have been a poem."

Polk shambled forward, his belt fur dragging. "It should have been a poem, damn it! Don't that snake know anything about adventuring? It should have been a rede!"

Escalla recoiled. "A reed? What? Like a bull rush?"

"No, a rede, girl! A rede! A saying! A phrase put into rhyme so it won't be forgotten!"

"The Flanaess has been literate for a couple of thousand years now, Polk. Some might think rote-learning is a tad old fashioned." Escalla was happily poking about in the desk. "Huh! What do you know? Some old decorator's plans for the palace. They even wrote in the titles of the rooms so workmen knew what furniture went where." The girl flipped out the map. "Morag is so careless. This should have been filed!"

The spider palace was laid out in a series of decks-engine rooms in the belly, a control room in the head. The rest of the place seemed to be palatial audience chambers, throne rooms, and guards quarters. Perfectly able to read any language ever written or devised, Enid took charge of the charts, smoothing them flat upon the floor. One big lion claw traced scribbles in the tanar'ri script written over some of the rooms.

"Let me see. The private chambers are right at the very top. Handmaiden chambers, guard chambers…" The sphinx gave a pretty scowl. "What exactly are we looking for?"

"Lolth." The Justicar's hand scratched as it ran over the stubble of his chin. He pondered Morag's words carefully and thoroughly. "Superiority breeds contempt. Contempt breeds a need to control…"

"Easy!" Escalla was changing entries in Lolth's appointment book, booking up her lunchtimes for the next seventeen years. "Contempt! She's a goddess. She won't see us as a threat, so if we challenge her, we can draw her into a trap! You know-slap Enid's stun symbol over a door, then I moon Lolth and we beat her when she runs through the door and gets hit by the spell!"