Daughter of the Drow (45 page)

Meanwhile, a small band of priestesses followed Qilue through the dark waters. One of them, supported out of the water by two of her sisters, managed to toss a rope around the bowsprit. Qilue went first, climbing lithely up the rope and leaping onto the ship’s forecastle.

The sight before her stole her breath. Elkantar, her beloved, ran with acrobatic grace up a rope that sloped steeply from the aft castle to the top of the mast. His knife was drawn; he clearly intended to take out the troublesome archer. It was the sort of risky and valiant plan she’d come to expect from her consort, and, considering the storm of arrows raging around the mast, it might well be his last.

The priestess knew a moment of despair. She had loved and lost far too often in her many centuries of life; she could not bear to lose Elkantar, as well. But such choices were not hers to make. So Qilue drew her singing sword and held it high, taking strength as its song—the eerie, haunting tones of an elven soprano commingled with the call of Eilistraee’s hunting horn—leaped forth.

The magical sound galvanized the priestesses who followed her. Five more swords flashed in the faint light, joining in a chorus that rang out pure and strong above the clash of battle and the screams of the dying.

Far below the shipboard battle, Hjrene and her priestesses hugged the harbor floor and watched the hidden portal. Suddenly drow mercenaries, no doubt responding to a summons from the beleaguered ships, burst from the solid stone. The drow fighters rose quickly through the water, intent upon the shadowy forms of the ships.

Iljrene counted carefully as thirty drow swept past her hiding place on their way to battle. From all the information her spies had gathered, it seemed unlikely that more than forty drow remained in the stronghold. The final ten, therefore, were the targets. When these had passed, the battlemaster nodded, and each priestess swam quickly toward her chosen mark. The females struck from behind, each of them slicing a drow throat and releasing a magical pendant in one blow. Iljrene had no quarrel with such tactics; this was an ambush, not a duel of honor.

Triumphantly the priestesses swam down to the portal. Clutching the pendants, all ten of them hurtled through the invisible magic door. They rolled, drenched and gasping for air, onto a rocky-floored tunnel.

Right into the path of two-score onrushing guards.

The drow males pulled up short, startled by the unexpected arrival of the Prometiade forces. Iljrene leaped to her feet and brandished a sword, taking advantage of the merchants’ surprise to buy a moment’s time for her equally nonplused priestesses.

Four-to-one, she acknowledged grimly as she faced off against the closest male. Granted, the narrow tunnel gave the females some advantage—no more than four could fight at once—but the mercenaries could replace their slain as quickly as they fell. As she slashed and darted and danced, the tiny battlemaster determined to lower the odds as much as she could before another priestess was forced to step into her place.

Gold coins, a mountain of them, shifted beneath Liriel’s feet. Magic weapons, priceless statues and vases, and exquisite musical instruments were heaped around the base of the golden, gem-studded hill. The drow released a long, silent sigh of relief; she’d gotten into the dragon’s hoard room.

Liriel stooped and picked up the glittering black sapphire at her feet, the gem ZzTzora had planted there. Properly enspelled, the sapphire had been the final ingredient to opening the portal into Nisstyre’s stronghold. But Liriel did not pause to savor this triumph. Cautiously she made her way down the treasure heap, sliding on the shifting coins with each step. Usually the slightest disturbance of a dragon’s hoard brought the fey creature roaring toward battle. The sounds coming from Pharx’s lair suggested Zz’Pzora was tending to her assigned task with unusual vigor and relish. The male dragon was well and truly distracted.

Not wanting to chance too much on the capricious ZzTzora, Liriel made her way quickly through the tunnels that led into the merchants’ quarters. Far above, muted by the stone, she heard the faint sounds of battle, but the corridors were deserted. Then, at the base of one of the closed stone doors, she saw a sliver of light. She crept close, and eased the door open.

In a small chamber sat the copper-haired wizard, wrapped in a shawl and studying the Windwalker by the light of a single candle.

“Having any hick?” Liriel said mockingly. Nisstyre started at the sound of her voice and spun to face her. He was thinner than when she’d last seen him, and his black eyes burned in his haggard face. The ruby embedded in his forehead flared with angry red light. “How does it work?” he demanded, brandishing the amulet. “Its secrets yield to no drow magic!”

“I’ll gladly give you a demonstration,” the girl challenged. “Give me the amulet, then test me in battle!”

“I have no wish to harm you.”

“Afraid to try?” Liriel taunted.

The wizard scoffed and held up his left hand. The gold and onyx ring that had once belonged to Kharza-kzad Xorlarrin glinted in the candlelight. “I bested your tutor. Can the student do better?”

Liriel shrugged. “Look at it this way: you want information, and the only way you’ll get it from me is to kill me and converse with my spirit.”

The gem in Nisstyre’s forehead flared again, brighter this time. He winced, and his face contorted with pain and frustration. He hurled the amulet at Liriel, accidentally knocking over the candle and plunging the room into utter darkness.

“Very well, I’ll fight her!” he shouted. “Watch if you must, but by all the gods, hold your wretched tongue!”

Liriel peered at the wizard. He was not talking to her, but to some unseen person. Someone who could hear what she said, perhaps see what she did. Someone who wanted her dead. Her gaze flickered over to Nisstyre’s ruby eye, and a plan began to formulate in her mind.

Quickly she stooped and picked up the Windwalker amulet. The drow magic captured within—her own magical essence—coursed through her in a blissful tide of power. Dark-elven spells danced ready in her mind; faerie fire and darkness vied for a place at her fingertips. For the first time in many days Liriel felt complete. She dropped a quick kiss on the tiny golden sheath and hung the amulet around her neck. Then, with a quick sweep of her hand, she sent the first of her magic weapons hurtling toward Nisstyre.

A pulse of crackling black energy sped toward the wizard. Nisstyre was faster still. He disappeared, and the magic missile passed through his lingering heat shadow to explode against the far wall.

At that moment the walls of the room began to shudder. Cracks appeared in the ceiling, spreading out like tree branches. The floor beneath LirieFs feet buckled and shook violently, and her ears throbbed with a dull booming roar that sounded as if the very stone cried out in torment.

Liriel’s first impulse was terror and an overwhelming desire to flee. Only once before had she experienced such a tremor, but all her life she’d heard stories of the disasters that occurred when the earth shifted. Patrols lost, tunnels collapsed, whole cities buried. The drow, who spent most of their lives trapped beneath tons of rock, feared nothing so much as this.

Then she remembered the amulet and her restored powers. Summoning her ability to levitate, she rose just above the quaking floor and glided swiftly and calmly toward the doorway. She emerged just as the ceiling gave way. Stone fell with a thunderous roar, sending a cloud of dust into the empty corridor.

But beyond Nisstyre’s chamber, all was calm and still. Liriel took a deep, steadying breath. The “earthquake” had been a magical attack, limited to that one room. She silently applauded Nisstyre for his strategy—the attack was calculated to utterly unnerve a drow opponent—as she made her way back to the hoard room. For what other site would Nisstyre choose for spell battle? And what better warrior to have at his back than a dragon? The wizard anticipated the advantage of overwhelming odds. He could not know a second dragon had entered the fray.

Yet as Liriel sped down the silent corridors, she had little hope Zz’Pzora would even the score. So far the mutant dragon had been unfailingly helpful, but Liriel knew the creature could turn treacherous at odd moments. Their alliance had been built on the assumption that neither could be trusted. To her sorrow, Liriel knew the dragon as well as she knew herself.

Even in his weakened condition, Nisstyre was a formidable opponent. The moment the young drow stepped into the hoard room, she was buffeted by the sweep of giant wings. Liriel dropped and rolled, coming up with a handful of throwing knives ready. She launched three of the weapons at the giant bat—a nighthunter, the largest and deadliest of the Underdark bats—before she realized the creature was merely an illusion. The real danger came from fifty paces beyond. Perched on the pile of golden coins, Nisstyre slowly lifted a wand and pointed it in her direction.

Liriel struck a seductive pose. “I’ve reconsidered ypur offer,” she purred. “If you still desire a consort, I’d be honored to accept.”

As she’d expected, the ruby eye on Nisstyre’s forehead flared with sudden light. The wizard’s hand faltered, and he wove unsteadily, as if buffeted by the force of the unseen watcher’s anger.

“I still have the map you gave me,” Liriel lied sweetly. “In just a few days, we can be together in your forest stronghold. We can share the amulet, as you promised. Think of the power we can wield together! And as I promised, I’ll help rid you of the other.” She pointed to the ruby, which by now was almost vibrating with rage.

“She lies,” whispered Nisstyre, his face contorted with agony. “Yes, yes—I’ll prove my loyalty.” Again he lifted the wand and sighted down his target.

But Liriel had reached for a weapon of her own—a deadly, uniquely drow spell she had never dared try before. She snatched up a tooth from a pile of dwarven bones and hurled it at the wizard. Instantly his outstretched hand jerked into a flexed, tortured claw. His wand fell among the coins, but Nisstyre’s attention was wholly absorbed by his own hideous metamorphosis. His thumb shrank, becoming a rounded head with a greedy, pincer-shaped mouth. His fingers elongated, then divided in half to become eight thin, hairy appendages. What was once a wizard’s dexterous hand was now a hairy black spider. Mindless in its hunger and need, the creature twisted toward its host’s arm and began to feed. For a moment Nisstyre, horror-struck and dumb with pain, merely stared at the death spider eating its way up his arm. He began to stammer out a chant that would dispel the deadly enchantment and restore his hand—if not the flesh already devoured.

Liriel, meanwhile, searched for her next weapon. She knew that wand—it was one Kharza had made—and she knew what Nisstyre’s next attack would be. Frantically she dug through the piled treasure. Zz’Pzora had said there was a mirror—had the treacherous dragon lied?

Now healed, Nisstyre stooped, sliding several feet down the golden pile as he scrambled for his wand. With his undamaged hand he snatched it up and pointed it at Liriel. A gout of flame, hotter than the breath of a red dragon, sped toward the dark-elven girl.

At that moment Liriel found what she sought. Her fingers closed over the gilded frame, and she snapped the mirror up before her at arm’s length. She closed her eyes and turned her head away from the searing light. The dragon-breath spell struck the silvered glass and reflected back toward its sender.

The wizard’s black eyes widened with pure panic as the magical fire struck the golden coins at his feet. Instantly the metal melted, and Nisstyre sank deep into the bubbling, molten mass. His shrieks, as he suffered the agony intended for Liriel, were horrible to hear.

The results of a dragon-breath weapon were spectacular but brief. In mere moments the golden pile had cooled enough to bear Liriel’s weight. She climbed the treasure heap and stooped over the dying drow trapped there. The ruby eye seemed to be rising out of his forehead, and its glow was dimming in concert with the wizard’s ebbing life-force. Liriel plucked out the ruby and smiled into its fading light, as if into the face of the unseen watcher.

“You lose,” she said succinctly. With that, she tossed the lifeless gem into the pile.

Crawling on his belly, Fyodor crept through the tunnel that wound through solid stone toward the dragon’s lair. Zz’Pzora had preceded him in the form of a huge, purple snake. It had been odd, watching the purple drow shapeshift into a serpent. Her current form would no doubt be even more unnerving. Fyodor, for all his travel and his years of fighting, had never seen a dragon. They were not so plentiful in these times as they were in the old tales. Soon he would see not one, but two of the creatures. One of them, he was pledged to kill; the other had pledged to kill him.

It was not the death most Rashemi berserkers would choose for themselves, but Fyodor was content with his fate. Although he was far from his beloved land, he would die in battle, and with honor. It was enough.

Finally he came to the end of the tortuous journey. Beyond “the tunnel was the dragon’s lair, a huge cavern riven with jagged, fanglike stalactites and cluttered with the bones of Pharx’s recent meals. Within the cavern were two dragons, encoiled in reptilian embrace. One of them was undoubtedly Zz’Pzora—a beautiful creature with two heads, iridescent purple scales, and enormous wings the color of amethyst. She was huge—at least fifty feet from the tip of her tail to her dual snouts, but it was Pharx who stole Fyodor*s breath. The male dragon was fully twice Zz’Pzora’s size, armored with dark maroon scales and armed with teeth the size of daggers and claws like curving scimitars. This, Fyodor realized with awe, was the creature he had vowed to help slay.

A faint hiss came from the distant tunnel, and then screams of mortal anguish. Immediately Pharx lifted his head, like a giant hound scenting the breeze. “My gold.” muttered the creature in a rumbling voice. He disentangled himself from the purple dragon and sprinted toward the tunnel in a lurching run, head down to avoid the low-hanging ceiling. “My gold is melting! We must protect it!”

As the dragon neared his hiding place, Fyodor leaped into the cavern and pulled his sword. With all his strength he swung, bashing the creature between the eyes. Pharx pulled up short, shaking his head and huffing in astonishment. The blunt-edged sword had not broken through the dragon’s armor, but for a moment the dragon was dazed and cross-eyed.