Tangled Webs (27 page)

“Think on it, and we will speak of these things again another time. But come, lad. Let’s test your strength and skill,” Wedigar invited with a good-natured smile as he drew his sword.

The Rashemi shook his head. “I dare not fight you,” he said bluntly. “Even a friendly contest might bring the rage upon me.”

“Hammers, then,” the First Axe suggested, tucking his sword away and unhooking the hammer from his belt. “We throw for distance.”

Since he had no excuse for this, Fyodor agreed. Wedigar handed him the weapon, and the young Rashemi hefted it experimentally. It was heavy, but much lighter than the hammers he himself had wielded at the forge. He tossed it high into the air and watched as it spun, considering its speed and balance. Although Liriel and Hrolf instinctively ducked out of the way of the falling weapon, Fyodor stood his ground and easily caught the polished handle.

Wedigar lifted a brow. “You have done this before.”

“Seven years at the forge,” the Rashemi agreed. “I was apprenticed to a swordsmith as soon as I could stoke a fire and hold tongs. Never have I used a hammer in battle, but we often threw for sport when the day’s tasks were done.” Fyodor hauled back the weapon for the throw. Sighting
down a tree at the edge of the clearing, he heaved for all he was worth. The hammer spun toward it, end over end. The clawed tip bit deep into the wood.

The First Axe nodded, visibly impressed. “You must come to Holgerstead. It is your place,” he said simply.

“I would like to see more of Ruathym,” Fyodor agreed. “Tomorrow we go to Inthar, and I wish to see more of the surrounding hills and forests-perhaps to hunt. I have been too long away from the land,” he said wistfully. “But in a few days, I will come.”

“I will tell your warrior brothers to expect you,” Wedigar said heartily, clapping him on the back. “But the moon rises high, and we must sleep. The unmarried men of the village sleep in the Trelleborg-the barracks. Let us go there now; there is a place for visiting warriors, as well.” Fyodor cast a quick glance toward Liriel, but Hrolf was already ahead of him.

“Don’t you be worried about the lass, now,” he said, dropping an arm around the drow’s shoulders. “In this land, unmarried women stay in their father’s houses. I’ve got me some warehouses at the edge of the village and a snug cottage of my own with an extra room that should suit my girl here. Never had me a daughter before, but I’m thinking I’ll get the knack of it soon enough.”

“She couldn’t want better care,” Fyodor said, deeply touched by the sincere warmth in Hrolrs words.

“Oh, don’t mind me-just go ahead and make all the arrangements!” Liriel snapped. The drow shrugged off Hrolrs embrace and spun away to stalk into the night. After several paces she stopped, turned, and glared at the pirate captain. “Well, are you coming or not?”

Her two friends exchanged knowing glances and furtive grins. “There’s one important thing to keep in mind when dealing with elven females,” Hrolf confided to Fyodor in a droll whisper. “They’re just like women, only more so!”

The rising sun was still clinging to the distant edge of the sea when Liriel and Fyodor caught their first glimpse of Inthar. It was a vast and sprawling keep, ancient beyond reckoning. An enormous curtain wall of thick stone surrounded the site, its many gaps testifying to the ravages of time and battle. Inside this first perimeter was a maze of walls and buildings, most of which had been reduced to tall, tumbled piles of rocks. Above it all soared a single round tower, as remote and forbidding as the widow at a warrior’s funeral. The explorers-Fyodor, Liriel, and three young Ruathen-stood for a long moment in somber contemplation of the grim site.

“That is the best way to enter.” Ivar, a young man with a bowl-shaped mop of yellow hair, pointed to a gap in the curtain wall. “The area has been explored and secured.” “Secured from what?” Liriel asked warily. An aura of magic, as visible to her senses as the thick morning mist, clung to the ruins. It was best that she knew now what sort of magic-wielding creatures they might face, so she could prepare the needed spells.

“From time to time wild beasts lair in the ruins,” Dagmar responded in a voice one might use to soothe a frightened child. The young woman drew a small bone knife from her sash and handed it to the drow. “You will not need to use this, but carrying it might make you feel better.”

Liriel stared at the feeble weapon and then up at the woman. To all appearances, Dagmar was serious. The drow’s eyes narrowed.

Sensing the coming storm, Fyodor hurriedly took the knife from Dagmar’s outstretched hand and tucked it into Liriel’s boot. “You may find a use for it,” he murmured, then immediately regretted his choice of words. The drow’s grim smile suggested that she had one already in mind.

Then a low, quavering moan started somewhere in the depths of the maze of stone, rising slowly into a thin wail. The sound was faint and distant, but it carried an eldritch chill that sent tremors through every member of the exploring party.

“A spirit,” Ivar said, his voice pale with dread. “There are many in these ruins.”

“Not just any spirit,” Liriel corrected him. “That’s the cry of a banshee-the evil remnant of an elven female. I wonder what causes it to linger here.”

Fyodor caught the musing tone of her voice and remembered her pledge to find and release the trapped spirits of the sea elves. Although he appreciated her devotion to her promise, he did not see how there could be a connection between the two matters. “Was this place once an elven stronghold?” he asked.

The fifth member of their party-Brynwolf, a young warrior with reddish-brown braids and beard-let out a scornful laugh. “I doubt that even Inthar is that old! There are no elves on this island, nor have there been since the days of the Rus,” he boasted.

“All the same, the elders have said we are not to go into Inthar when the groaning spirit cries,” Dagmar said in a disappointed tone. “Sigurd and Kara ignored the warnings.” Liriel had no need to ask about the fate of these explorers; the grim expressions on the faces of the three youthsand her own knowledge of banshees-told her what had happened. Without magic to shield them, the humans had no doubt been slain by the banshee’s keen. Liriel mused that it was well for her companions that dawn had broken; the banshee’s wail was chilling at any time, but it could only release its deadly keen at night. Even so, the touch of the creature, the mere sight of it, could be dangerous.

But a priestess of Lloth—even a reluctant one-had no need to fear the undead. Liriel had proved that in the dungeons under Skullport. She tugged her obsidian pendant from its hiding place beneath her tunic, and she prepared herself to face once again the power and confusion that was her dark goddess.

“I’m going in,” she informed Fyodor.

The young man nodded as ifhe had been expecting this. He turned to his new friends. “We will meet you back in the village.”

The three Ruathen argued and threatened, but they soon realized that neither Fyodor nor his strange little companion could be dissuaded. With many a backward glance, they strode away and disappeared into the forest, reluctantly leaving the Rashemi and the drow to their fate. “The keep?” Fyodor asked when at last they were alone. Liriel nodded. Banshees were known to hoard treasure, and the keep was the most likely stronghold. Holding firmly to her holy symbol, the drow slipped into the stone maze and made her way toward the tower. Fyodor followed closely, alert for any beasts that might be crouching amid the stones and shadows.

They got to the foot of the tower without incident. A single arched portal, empty where the wooden door had long ago rotted away, led into the keep. Beyond, all was darkness. Liriel conjured a globe of faerie fire and followed the bobbing ball of light into the dank interior.

Inside the keep was a courtyard, hints of its former splendor remaining in the carved marble of the walls and floor. Liriel noted the indentations where gems had been pried from the stone and the distinctive elvish design of the low wall that surrounded a mineral spring bubbling up in the center of the yard. But there were no signs of treasure or of the spirit.

The drow wandered over to the spring and sat down on the crumbling marble. A sensation of cold assaulted her at once, though the bubbling spring sent wisps of mineralscented steam into the stagnant air. With intense foreboding, Liriellooked deep into the water. Gazing back at her with malevolent red eyes was the face of an elven hag. Wizened skin stretched tight over angular bones, and strands of sparse hair writhed, like a tangle of serpents, in the churning water. Clawlike hands extended up, reaching with deadly purpose toward Liriel.

The drow leaped to her feet, her pendant in her hand, as the banshee burst from the water and flew into the air. “Magic you have, and magic I crave-but the living may not pass,” the spirit hissed, swirling around the stunned pair like a wildcat circling its prey:

As the drow brandished her holy symbol, the banshee responded with mocking, hate-filled laughter. Liriel frantically mouthed the words of a clerical spell, one that would drain power from an undead creature. But the banshee’s wild mirth only increased, and at last Liriel understood what she faced.

This spirit had once been drow.

While it was possible for an elf of any of the surface races to turn to evil and become a banshee, dark elves excelled at evil, strove for it-bred for it! A draw banshee was among the most feared of all undead. A high priestess might have had the power to turn such a creature; Liriel did not. And the only thing that might kill a banshee-an enchantment that could dispel evil-was beyond her as well. That spell was not taught in Menzoberranzan. Considering the nature of Lloth’s clergy, such magic could be suicidal.

Liriel turned to Fyodor. “Run,” she said succinctly.

He did not debate the matter. The friends fled from the tower as the banshee’s laughter rose into short, wailing bursts, a mocking sound that pursued them as they ran wildly along the edge of the sea cliffs. They did not slow their pace until the tower of Inthar was long out of sight and the banshee’s voice was no more than a lingering chill in their souls.

The Rashemi was the first to stop. He leaned over, hands on his knees as he drew in long, ragged breaths. “Better a hundred armed men than such a creature,” he gasped out.

Liriel nodded absently, her eyes turned out to sea and her thoughts still puzzling over the strange encounter. Banshee lairs invariably housed whatever the elf had valued in life. What magic was the banshee guarding, and why had it insisted that the living might not pass? There was a mystery here that both disturbed and intrigued the inquisitive drow.

Suddenly some movement on the rock-strewn beach below caught the distracted drow’s eye. Two figures walked along the shore-obviously lovers, judging by their entwined hands and the solicitous way the large, fairhaired man bent over the much smaller woman. Liriel peered more closely at the female who, despite her yellow hair and pale skin, did not have the look of a N orthwoman. She was too small, too slim, and far too impractical, clad as she was in a clinging gown of cloth-of-gold, a fabric more appropriate to a royal wedding than a seaside tryst. The wind blew cold off the sea, yet the woman wore no cloakonly a fringed shawl ofwhite silk knotted about her shoulders. The two faced the sea, and since they were too far distant for even Liriel’s elven eyes to discern their identity she did not bother pointing them out to Fyodor. Nor did she truly wish for him to contemplate such contented lovers. “Let’s take the forest path,” she said abruptly and spun away from the cliWs edge.

They had walked in silence for nearly an hour when, without warning, Fyodor stopped and drew his sword. Liriel instinctively followed suit, pulling her dagger and falling into battle stance at his back.

“What is it?” she demanded, her voice just above a whisper. “The forest,” he replied in kind. “It has gone silent.”

The drow strained her ears. Sure enough, the strange sounds of the forest creatures-the chirp of insects, the cry of birds, the scolding voices of the little furry things that Fyodor called squirrels-had disappeared. The only sound was the wind in the restive leaves.

Then, suddenly, a rush of wind and wings spun down toward them. Instinctively Liriel dropped and rolled. Fast though the drow was, her attacker was faster still. A scorching pain slashed her shoulders, followed by a sharp, wrenching stab as a lock of her hair was torn from her scalp. Liriel ignored both and rolled into a crouch. Her eyes widened at the sight before her.

Fyodor had his sword out before him, holding it in two hands as he faced off against a man-sized hawk. The enormous bird and the warrior moved in a slow, eerie dance, circling together as each sought an opening. A white, wavy strand ofLiriel’s hair was tangled in one of the hawk’s daggerlike talons, and its bright, silver-hued eyes regarded its opponent with feral intelligence. When Fyodor shot a quick, concerned glance toward his drow companion, the hawk seized the moment and darted in, beak diving for the human’s heart.

Liriel sucked in a startled gasp; there was no time for her to deflect the attack. And no need—even without the battle rage, Fyodor was a capable fighter. Up came the black sword, blocking the strike and slapping the curved beak sharply to one side. For just a moment, the hawk’s neck was exposed. But without the berserker frenzy to speed his movements, Fyodor could not move the heavy sword fast enough to take advantage of the opening.

The giant hawk fell back a few hopping steps, spreading its wings wide in preparation for the next attack.

Liriel snatched a bolo from her belt, whirled briefly, and let fly. The weapon spun and wrapped itself around an enormous leg. The whirling weights struck with a satisfying crack, and the hawk staggered to a stop. For a moment the drow dared to hope the leg bone had broken, but the giant raptor recovered its balance and came on again, this time advancing on Liriel with an odd, hopping gait.

The drow snatched up a handful of throwing knives and squared off against the thing. She’d once seen a normal hawk drop to the ground, seize and carry off a rabbit nearly as large as itself. She did not doubt that this gigantic raptor had similar intentions, and her throbbing shoulders suggested she was its intended prey.