Paul Kidd - Queen of the Demonweb Pits

With a sigh, the Justicar regarded the faerie. "Lolth's magic resistant."

"Well… then we attack from behind the door!" Escalla shadowboxed back and forth between the legs and tails of her friends. "We bind her in the magic rope, use a silence spell to stop her casting magic, and give her the fist-beating of a lifetime!" The faerie was overjoyed. "This is gonna be simpler than I thought! Hey, Cinders! Fetch!"

She threw a pencil. All eyes followed it as it clinked onto the floor and rolled. Cinders wag-wag-wagged his tail, his teeth gleaming in the overhead lights.

What?

Everyone looked wearily at the faerie. Escalla shrugged.

"I'm lookin' for an instinctive reaction. I'm gonna sneak it up on him!" The faerie slapped Jus on the shoulder. "All right, big J! Got a route? Let's go!"

The Justicar was not yet ready to move. He stood over the map, one hand resting on Enid's warm shoulder as he looked down at the diagrams.

"Wash away evil. Wash it clean…?" The Justicar tapped Benelux's wolf-skull pommel. "It's a clue. Enid, you're our riddle consultant. Any ideas?"

"Um, not really. Unless the washing-thing is a clue to a room we should use?"

Jus scratched the stubble of his chin. "Is there a bath house on the map?"

"There's this!" The sphinx carefully read Morag's beautiful round handwriting. "It says, 'Black Dragon Lair. Please grout tiles properly.' "

"That's not it." The ranger heaved a frustrated sigh. "Escalla? Henry? Any ideas?"

Henry could only shrug helplessly. Escalla merely cocked her frost wand and stuck her lich staff through her belt like a dagger.

"We'll keep an eye out as we go. What's to worry? You're all stoneskinned up, we have a map, and the faerie's taking point! What could possibly go wrong?"

They moved onward into the palace, and Enid leaned closer to Henry as they walked. "Henry, I get such a shiver down my spine whenever she says that."

"Absolutely."

Inside the palace were Lolth's private quarters-her treasury, audience chambers, and carefully prepared lines of defense. She would have long ago planned her retreat and her tactics in case of invasion. The Justicar looked at his map then chose a door. Above him, Cinders looked slyly left and right and made a happy growl.

We go find spider lady?

"No. No, we make the spider lady come to us."

Burn spiders! Wheee!

Cinders's grin turned to the palace above, and the party walked into the spider's lair.

Lolth stood in the center of her audience chamber, arranging one of her nasty little triumphs of ingenuity. The floor was a dead, leaden gray, made from quicksand gathered from the swamps of the Abyss. Lolth had a secret bridge running across the floor, hidden an inch or two beneath the sand. Anyone crossing the floor without knowledge of the secret path would end up dead and drowned! The goddess watched her giants bring in the last buckets of quicksand, and she flicked out her long hair in glee.

"Excellent."

A door opened, and Morag cruised serenely into the chamber. She saw the arrangements and flipped open a notebook, jotting down an estimate of the costs. Lolth saw her at work and raised a droll little smile.

"Morag! How good of you to join us at last. All your little files and folders stowed away?"

"Yes, Magnificence."

"Ah." The spider goddess walked the length of her hidden bridge. The aura about her made the air crackle with power. "Have you seen any intruders, Morag?"

Morag tucked her pen behind one ear. "I have seen no intruders, Magnificence."

"Yes." The goddess stood, held her arms outstretched, and horrible amorphous handmaidens oozed from under a door and removed their mistress's lounging clothes. Lolth allowed herself to be accoutered for war. Her handmaidens stripped her naked-all except for the delicately engraved gems she always wore about her neck. "Yes, Morag. Still, I have a little inkling that something might be wrong. Have you any thoughts upon that matter?"

"Your intuition is divine, Magnificence." The secretary flipped open her notebook. "I will rouse the palace guards and have them begin an immediate search. The webs, the palace, the boulder fields. It will delay our departure for at least two hours."

"No delays!" The goddess whirled, scornful and magnificent. "We will return to the Flanaess! I have to renew the spells that bind my armies. Have you any idea what those fools will be doing without my genius to guide them?" Lolth shoved her handmaidens aside and strode along the rim of her quicksand pool. "I can't trust any of you idiots to do anything right. How long until we leave?"

The secretary coolly pulled out a little timepiece-hand-crafted modron work that she greatly admired. "Thirty minutes, Magnificence. Web fluid is still being loaded into the palace tanks. We still have only three boilers on line."

"Tell them to hurry!"

"I will tell them, Magnificence." Morag closed her book. "But we may find that water will only heat so fast. There are laws of physics in operation, even here."

Lolth stabbed a look of pure calculation at Morag. The goddess tapped at the gems hanging from her neck.

"There is something very un-tanar'ri about you, Morag."

"Yes, Magnificence." The secretary proudly settled her swords and pens. "That is why you enslaved me."

Lolth whirled. She looked at her quicksand floor in satisfaction and folded her hands.

"Yes. And you toil so very well. Dear, dull, drab, beige little creature that you are. But if you can shapechange, I do wish you'd at least make a pretense of a proper bosom. You really do tend to bring the team down." Lolth allowed the last of her own new clothes to be fixed into place-covering her own plush bosom in a thin net of spider web. "Stuck here for half an hour! I am annoyed, Morag. I wanted to be on my way ages ago. Today I hear nothing but delay delay delay!" The goddess immodestly hitched the thong of her garments. "Well, we shall be here for an hour, then. We shall make the best of it. Morag, are there enough demon vassals still here for me to be depraved?"

"I am sure you'll find a way, Magnificence." Morag acidly took notes. "Will that be all?"

"Oh, yes, Morag. Quite all." Lolth waggled her hand. "Off off off! Go on! Slither back to your little hutch and start totting up things. You can at least be useful if you can't manage to be ornamental. Off!"

Morag slid silkily away and closed the door behind her. Lolth signed imperiously to a handmaiden, who opened up a door. Lolth turned and looked into the space beyond and gave a sly, evil little smile.

"Yes. We all have our little secrets." The goddess walked past the figure standing silently in her hall-a nightmarish shape of rotted flesh, dry skin, and bone, wearing an eagle fashioned helm and tarnished armor. "I have a plan for dealing with intruders, so be careful of the traps, my dear. But do please make yourself at home."

Pressed flat against a wall, the Justicar looked cautiously around a corner. Beside him, Escalla frantically tugged at his tunic to get the man's attention.

"Jus! This route leads downstairs! What are we going downstairs for? All the really hoopy treasure will be up in Lolth's rooms!"

Jus glanced at Morag's map, then drew the faerie after him as he went around the corner.

"Lolth will have her best traps and guards around her own apartments. What we need is to strip those guards away from her. We need her unprepared, rushed, and unfocused." The Justicar looked around a corner, then signaled Henry to watch the rear. "We need to get Lolth extremely annoyed..:."

"O-o-oh! Pissed off spider goddess? Hoopy! Yeah, I can see that!"

Silently drawing his sword Jus approached a door. Somewhere up ahead, there was a hum that transmitted through the metal hull.