Annihilation (27 page)

Jeggred let the animal cut him. Four parallel lines of deep red blood traced behind the cat’s raking claws. The animal was trying to hurt the draegloth in any way it could, but it was wounded and desperate and was making rash decisions. On the other hand, Jeggred only
appeared
feral. He was in control of himself. Ryld could see it in every twitch of the draegloth’s eyes that anticipated the cat’s attacks three or four moves ahead. Though the animal clawed him, Jeggred got in closer and wrapped one of his bigger, stronger arms around the animal’s belly. The draegloth’s claws made a popping sound when they punctured the cat’s flesh, then a ripping sound as they opened its underside in three deep, ragged incisions.

Things started spilling out of the madly writhing animal. Long ropes of intestines, things that must have been its kidneys, and other organs rode a torrent of steaming blood onto the spongy moss. Jeggred held the animal close to him and squeezed until more came out and kept squeezing until the cat was dead.

Ryld stood a few paces away, watching, ready. He thought back on his training and the single overriding principal of defending against claws. Things with claws—any number of demons, trolls, and the like—stabbed then pulled down. Claw attacks always came high and ripped down. All he had to do was be ready for that. There was the fact that anything that attacked with claws would never parry. If Ryld set his blade against Jeggred’s attack, the draegloth would avoid contact with the keen edge or risk dismemberment. Ryld could use that to his advantage simply by defending against the draegloth’s arms as if they were swords. Jeggred would be put on the defensive by being unable to defend, and he wouldn’t parry Ryld’s attacks, but he would dodge.

The draegloth looked up from his still-quivering kill and bared his knifelike fangs at Ryld. The weapons master stood his ground. He wasn’t as strong as Jeggred, and he might not be as fast, but he was smarter and better trained.

That might be enough.

“Why are you here?” Ryld asked the draegloth. “Surely you didn’t come all this way just to save me from that cat.”

The half-demon, covered in the animal’s still-hot blood, was steaming.

“I was told things about you, weapons master,” Jeggred growled. “Disturbing things.”

Ryld held Splitter in both hands in front of him and said, “I can only imagine.”

“The priestess I can understand,” said the draegloth. He took a wide, slow step sideways, moving away from the dead animal. “They’re feeling particularly betrayed by Lolth. They seek power and communion, so it seems only fitting that if one goddess turns her back on them, they might seek the embrace of another, but you?”

“I can’t seek the embrace of a goddess?” asked Ryld, stalling as he examined the half-demon for wounds and weaknesses.

“Why would you,” asked the draegloth, “when you can have the embrace of a flesh and blood female?”

“You have me all figured out,” the weapons master said, surprised that the draegloth seemed to have done just that.

“My mistress has,” Jeggred said with a shrug. He stepped to the side again, beginning to circle Ryld. “She even now stands over the corpse of your traitor priestess. I get the pleasure of ending your life.”

“It’ll be a particularly painful and violent death, no doubt,” Ryld said, irony absent from his voice.

The draegloth smiled, coughed out a laugh, and charged.

The big claws came in first, high, aimed for his chest. Ryld whirled Splitter in front of him then abruptly stopped the blade’s spin and sliced up to parry the draegloth’s right arm. As he expected, Jeggred drew his arm back sharply in an effort to avoid the enchanted greatsword. Ryld quickly changed direction, tucking the blade in, stepping back, and stabbing at the dodging half-demon. The tip of Ryld’s sword penetrated the draegloth’s furred hide under his shoulder blade to a depth of an inch or two. The half-demon, bleeding, hopped back, sliding off the blade.

Ryld stepped back too, rolling the greatsword in both hands in a slow figure eight in front of him.

Soon, one of them would be dead.

“Where is he?” Quenthel asked, her red eyes wild with barely contained fury.

“He’s gone to kill them,” Danifae answered.

Pharaun watched the exchange from a distance. He had sat cross-legged in the exact center of the deck, right in front of the mainmast, precisely where Aliisza had told him to sit. He could feel the ship of chaos vibrating beneath him, reacting to the power he was exerting over it.

“On whose command?” the high priestess asked.

“On yours, Mistress,” Danifae answered, “through me.”

“Through you?” Quenthel repeated. “Through
you?
”

Pharaun pressed one of his hands against the deck and felt the pulse in a cluster of veins that was growing there.

The high priestess slapped Danifae across the face, but the
battle-captive stood her ground.

“Halisstra Melarn and Ryld Argith are traitors,” Danifae said. “They are traitors to this expedition, traitors to Lolth, and traitors to drow civilization. You know that, I know that, and Jeggred knows that. That’s why he’s there.”

“On
your
command,” the Mistress of the Academy pressed, “not mine.”

“He’s doing what has to be done,” Danifae replied, her voice finally showing some emotion: anger and impatience. “You weren’t able to give him the order, so I did it for you.”

Pharaun laughed at the exchange and at the thrill of the ship reacting to his thoughts and touch. He found Danifae’s hijacking of the draegloth fascinating.

“We have the time, Mistress,” Pharaun offered in Danifae’s defense—if only for the sport of it. “Why not let the draegloth clean up some messes? If Mistress Melarn is indeed a traitor, and after watching her in the face of Lolth’s temple that’s hardly a surprise, consider it a favor from a loyal young priestess in your service. Master Argith, on the other hand, is likely not a traitor to the City of Spiders. He lacks the necessary spark for rebellion, I’m afraid. If you wish to be concerned with anything it should be that the weapons master might actually kill your nephew.”

Quenthel looked over at Pharaun, who met her gaze for a moment then returned his attention to the ship. The high priestess glanced at Danifae, who stood tall and resolute, giving no ground. The Mistress of the Academy held her scourge in one hand, and the vipers curled around the fingers of her other. She looked down at the vipers then back at Danifae. Pharaun watched the whole thing while feeling the ship’s pulse momentarily quicken.

Quenthel took a step away and turned her back on Danifae, who sighed. Pharaun thought the battle-captive might have been disappointed.

“That,” Danifae said to Quenthel’s back, “is why Jeggred serves me now.”

They began to circle each other, testing their steps on the spongy, uneven moss. Jeggred looked down and considered the puncture wound. He lifted one eyebrow in a sort of grudging salute then let his tongue unroll from his mouth. The black, rough tongue slowly licked the wound. When he smiled next, Jeggred’s own blood stained his razor-sharp fangs.

Just keep your distance, Ryld told himself. Keep your distance and go for the hands.

The draegloth charged again, and again his claws came in high at first. Ryld had the wide, heavy blade of Splitter parallel to the ground. All he had to do was bend his knees, step in, then stand, and he met the draegloth’s descending rake.

The weapons master stepped into the attack and parried precisely as if the huge claw was a sword blade. Jeggred brought his smaller claws down fast and hard so that Ryld barely had to press the parry. The draegloth drove his own arm down onto the blade. Ryld felt a tug, then release. Blood sprayed. Jeggred’s right, smaller hand tumbled through the air and bounced once when it hit the moss.

Ryld didn’t allow himself the time to celebrate having cut off one of the draegloth’s hands. He stepped back away from the blood that was spraying from the half-demon’s stump. Jeggred screamed—an unsettling, ear-rattling sound—and he started backing quickly away.

Well aware that the half-demon could change direction very quickly, Ryld stepped back too, though not quite as far.

“You will pay for that with your hands and feet, whelp,” Jeggred
hissed around clenched teeth. “I was following orders when I came here to kill you, but now—” he held up the stump from which blood was still pumping—“it’s personal.”

A refreshing cycle of darkness had passed during which Gromph alternated between brief periods of Reverie, infuriating sessions with the same handful of winged halflings, and the casting of powerful divinations.

The darkness was a welcome comfort to the archmage’s light-ravaged eyes. He had spent nights under the open sky before—though not many—and he had seen stars. The stars in the Green Fields seemed a little brighter than those visible from Faerûn. Gromph wasn’t familiar enough with either to sense any difference between the number and positions of the stars there and Faerûn’s, but he knew they were different. The Green Fields was a separate reality all together.

The needle-like plant that covered the rolling hills was something he’d seen before as well. In the trade language of the World Above it was called “grass.” The halflings of the Green Fields called it
“ens.”
There were other things he’d seen before in the World Above: “flowers,” “trees,” and things like that. It made Gromph wonder if there was an Underdark of sorts somewhere beneath his feet—then he reminded himself that he wouldn’t be there long enough to find out.

The halflings he’d first encountered had all but adopted him. A few of the little folk seemed genuinely happy to receive him. The one who called himself Dietr and who claimed to have been from Faerûn was suspicious but wanted something—something he wouldn’t or couldn’t ask for. However they approached Gromph, all of them were easy and casual with each other. They had a sense
of hospitality and were determined to help him. They brought him food that fell into one of two categories: heavy and swimming in fragrant cream sauces or a confusing variety of sweet, fresh fruit. Neither appealed much to Gromph, but he ate enough to give him the energy he needed to prepare spells and collect himself for his return to Menzoberranzan.

Gromph hadn’t moved far from the spot at which he’d first appeared. The Green Fields seemed to be exactly that: an endless open landscape of green grass and other plants. Gromph hadn’t seen a building of any kind, and it appeared as if the halflings lived out in the open, slowly but constantly moving.

When the light returned, Gromph knew he would have to be on his way. He cast the last in a series of divinations that would help him not only return to the Prime Material Plane but go back to Toril, back to the Underdark below Faerûn, and back to Menzoberranzan herself. It was no mean feat, and certainly Dyrr hadn’t expected him to be able to accomplish it, but then Dyrr hadn’t expected him to break free of the imprisonment either. The lichdrow’s insistence on underestimating him would, possibly, allow Gromph the luxury of beating him.

The archmage stood, shielding his eyes from the pervasive light and watched Dietr and one of the females approaching with another tray of fruit. Dietr held a waterskin.