Windwalker (37 page)

Friendly sort, mused Sharlarra. “There’s been some talk of drow sightings hereabouts. Tavern talk,” she said, in response to Anya’s narrow-eyed glare. “Have you seen any drow around?”

“Perhaps.”

The cold answer found the edge of Sharlarra’s patience. They didn’t speak again until the village walls came into sight.

“That is the outlander’s hut,” the witch said, pointing to a small hillock. “The woman who calls herself Liriel is there.”

Sharlarra sent her a curious look. “How do you know that?”

“There is a tripod of sticks on the roof. The Domovoi—the house spirits—like such things. They only put them on the roof when people are within and take then off when they leave. If they are upset about the people leaving, they throw the sticks at them.” There was a slight warning tone in Anya’s voice.

“So visitors tend to leave in a hurry,” the elf said.

“That would be wise.”

Sharlarra swung off the horse and tapped on the door. A tall, silver-haired woman answered the door. Her eyes widened in recognition and astonishment. Sharlarra had her own moment of recognition. This, in living form, was the ghostly woman she had seen with Moonstone.

Which meant that the ghost she’d seen had truly been Sylune, witch of Shadowdale.

“Oh gods,” Sharlarra moaned.

The woman seized the elf and dragged her into the hut. She slammed the door and pulled a black mask off her belt. Before Sharlarra could blink, the “woman” had changed form into a small, slender drow.

“What are you doing here?” Liriel demanded.

“To be perfectly honest, I came looking for trouble.” The elf grinned. “Looks like I found it. Impersonating Sylune! You’ve got more brass than a cheap dagger. Tell me all that happened since you left the ship.”

Liriel took out a bottle of wine. They shared it as they pieced together their stories. News of Xzorsh’s death brought a sharp pang to Liriel. He was the first elf she had met, the first who taught her that not all faerie elves were to be feared, that some could perhaps be friends. This odd female, in Liriel’s opinion, was another such oddity.

They talked until nightfall. Finally Sharlarra rose. “I’ll be off. The stiff-necked witch who brought me here made it very clear that I was to leave as soon as we spoke.”

The drow felt a pang of regret. “I would like to talk again sometime.”

Sharlarra winked. “That’s not likely to be a problem. I said I’d leave the village, not the area. Moonstone and I will camp out in the forest for a few days. I’ll see you again, little doubt of that!”

“Moonstone?”

“My horse. Come see.”

Liriel followed her to the hillock’s courtyard and started in surprise at the sight of a ghostly horse. This set the elf off into gales of laughter. She swung into the saddle and urged the strange mount down the forest path.

The drow glanced up at the moon and wondered if she might be able to find Sharlarra’s song in the moonmagic of Eilistraee. She thought briefly of the lurking spiders, but the lingering echoes of the freed elves’ joy pushed aside such grim considerations. Liriel had made her choice: surely even the persistent Lolth must know that by now. So she went back into the cottage and sat at the table, leaving the door open to let it the moonlight.

She closed her eyes and listening for the song. After a time she found the elf woman - but the song seemed a strange fit for the merry, pretty female. A surging sound like dark waters warred against a constant, valiant struggle of a spirit determined to keep afloat. There was also a chorus of elf voices, a faint echo that seemed to go back and back to its source in the distance path. Connecting the disparate themes was the rhythmic clatter of a horse’s hooves.

Liriel sought farther for Eilistraee’s own. She sensed the music unique to many distant places. Each had small, hidden groups of drow, their power humming through the moonlight that bound them. Liriel could sense that many were dancing, too full of joy to hold still.

She rose and began to dance to the silent music in perfect accord with the scattered priestesses. Even the candle she’d lit at dusk seemed to move and sway in time.

The candle.

Liriel stopped short and stared at the candle. It had melted into a large formless glob, a strange thing that looked like a lumpy pillar. Then the eyes opened, fastened on her, and shone with malevolent intent.

There was no mistaking its identity. “A yochlol,” Liriel breathed, staring into the tiny creature’s eyes.

The handmaid began to grow, and the young drow snapped into action. She leaped forward and smashed her fist down on the candle. Half-melted wax splattered. Again she struck the candle and dashed the remaining puddle and the stand that held it to the floor.

The girl sank down onto her chair and covered her face with her hands, oblivious to the burn and the painful-looking blisters already starting to rise.

“I renounce you,” she whispered, rocking in her seat. “I am your child no more, your priestess never again.”

In the courtyard beyond the open door, the spectral harper watched with narrowed eyes. Her transluscent hand moved suddenly to the place where an ancient amulet had rested over her once-beating heart. The drow now wore the amulet. More than that—she had awakened it!

The Witch of Shadowdale nodded slowly as many small mysteries converged into one. She who had battled evil in so many of its forms, she who should by her very nature be beyond all fear, knew a moment of pure mortal terror.

Shakti Hunzrin worked her way steadily eastward, following the unrelenting zombie hoard and the vision granted her by the ruby embedded in the deathsinger’s forehead.

This male intrigued her. He did not protest the pain of contact, did not respond to her mental questions. He simple allowed her to see what he saw. To Shakti, this was a revelation.

The deathsinger’s keen eye picked up nuances she would never have noted on her own, and his keen sense of irony was a piquant frame for the grand tale of revenge that Gorlist intended to weave. For days Shakti was puzzled by the image that Brindlor showed her, but she began to suspect his purpose. He would tell a tale, but his current master would not be the hero of it.

Shakti spent many hours on the long trek thinking of ways to use this.

She and the undead finally reached the meeting place, a series of caverns deep below a mountain ridge humans called Running Rocks.

The deathsinger came to meet her, extending his hand to help her down from her lizard. Ordinarily she would have declined with scorn, but the long ride had left her stiff and sore.

“Where is Gorlist?” she demanded.

Brindlor nodded his head toward a side cavern. The warrior stood there, his narrowed eyes taking in the orderly ranks of female zombies.

In turn, Shakti inspected his forces. A score or two of drow stood behind Gorlist. “This is all?” she demanded.

“We had an unfortunate encounter with some berserker warriors,” Brindlor said.

The warrior strode forward. “You took your time getting here,” he snarled. “We will attack the humans tonight.”

“What are their numbers? Their defenses? What magic have they?”

Gorlist laughed scornfully. “They are human. What magic could they have?”

“These human wizards can be surprisingly resourceful,” the priestess said coldly.

“I have seen little evidence of this. We had one of the famed Red Wizards with us. He was killed by a bear.”

Shakti looked past the truculent warrior to his troops. Some had been wounded. The bandages were still new, the blood that stained them still bright. “How many humans did you fight, and where are they now?” she said briskly. “If we take their raiding party now, we will decimate their numbers and weigh the final attack in our favor.”

“A good strategy,” Brindlor observed. He shrugged aside Gorlist’s warning glare.

“Come,” Shakti said and strode toward her silent army. She took only a score of them—more to provide protection against possible drow treachery than to bring against the humans.

They made their way though a series of tunnels and emerged on a narrow walkway overlooking a high-ceilinged passage. A small band of humans walked along, carrying their dead and wounded with them.

There was something familiar about one of them: the black hair, the breadth of his shoulders, his way of moving. A slow, feral smile lit Shakti’s face as she recognized Liriel’s pet human.

She began to chant a prayer to Lolth. In response, thousands of spiders emerged from their hidden places and swarmed toward the warriors. They launched themselves from the walls, trailing silken threads. For several moments the air was dark with leaping spiders and thick with the startled curses of the Rashemi and the futile clang of their swords against the stone. Spider web was strong at any time, and the blessing of the goddess rendered it impervious to all steel and most spells.

When the humans were firmly enmeshed, Shakti made her way down the narrow walkway. She walked around the netting, observing the struggling humans within. She took a small silver cuff from her pinky and slid it onto the curve of one ear. This, a magical gift from the illithid Vestriss, enabled her to speak and understand the humans’ coarse language.

“I have no use for you,” she announced. “You will be set free, unharmed, in exchange for a small fee.”

“Pay ransom to a drow?” snarled a thick, graybearded man. “Not a single coin, on my life!”

“Did I mention money? How very vulgar of you.” Shakti smiled coldly. “I will trade many lives for one. Bring me the drow wench known as Liriel, and you will go free.”

“Liriel?”

A long, skinny young man repeated the word incredulously. He twisted in the web as best he could, turning to face the warrior beside him. “Fyodor, is not Liriel your wychlaran? What does she mean by calling her ‘drow’?”

“Oh, but she is,” the priestess said with cruel pleasure. As an extra little sadistic twist, she added, “Who should carry this message but Fyodor, who knows this drow so very, very well?”

The boy looked to Fyodor with shattered eyes. “You would not do such a thing, bring a drow into Rashemen. Tell me she lies. Tell me you would never betray us so!”

For a long moment the warrior held the pleading stare. Then he turned to Shakti.

“Send the boy with me,” he said in bleak tones, “and I will go.”

Fyodor and Petyar did not speak until they were free of the Warrens. At last the older man spoke. “Go back to the village to warn the others. The drow are likely to attack.”

“I have heard they can be treacherous,” the boy said coldly. “Apparently the whole of that story has not been told.”

The warrior caught his arm. “Petyar, there are things you do not understand. Zofia herself foresaw Liriel’s coming. I am not happy that Liriel chose to present a name and form not her own, but that was her choice, not mine. She made it according to the light she had.”

“The drow have precious little of that.”

“I have watched Liriel’s journey into the light,” Fyodor said. “She is not what you think she is.”

Some of the fury slipped from the young man’s face, leaving only the hurt and worry. “I hope, cousin, that you are right.”

Fyodor hurried to the hillock hut he shared with Liriel. The burden of his task lay heavy on his heart.

It was an impossible dilemma. In sending Petyar to take the message to the village and bring fighters to battle the drow, he was almost certainly letting his people know who and what Liriel was. If he did not, a band of his countrymen would die at the hands of Liriel’s enemies.

He found the drow sitting at the table peeling what appeared to be melted wax off her hands and arms. She looked him over from head to foot. Only then did Fyodor remember that he was naked except for his boots and the borrowed cloak. Her eyes registered what that meant. There had been a battle, one fierce enough to require transformation to berserker form.

“Gorlist?” she asked.

Fyodor nodded. “There are others, too. Undead drow, female warriors all, and a priestess with red eyes and a whip of undead snakes.”

“Nice touch,” Liriel muttered. “If that’s who I think it is, you’re not here because you managed to escape.”

He told her the story in quick, lean words. “You must flee Rashemen at once.”

The drow dismissed this with an absent wave of one hand.

“I’ll just give Shakti what she wants.”

“Little raven, we can’t know what forces they command!”

“Who said ‘we’? I’ve faced Shakti before and defeated her. I can do it again.” Her gaze dropped to her hands, and she flicked off a bit of wax.

“You are being arrogant.”

Her eyes flashed to his face. “I have reason to be. I not only survived in Menzoberranzan but thrived. I have seen the worst life has to offer, and I’m more than a match for anything Shakti has in store.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Do you say that because you believe it or because you think I’m stupid enough to?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Not very flattering.”

“You know what I mean! If you are determined to go, I go with you.”

He went over to the chest and dug out some clothes. He dressed quickly, and they stepped out into the night.

Beyond the door, Anya stood waiting for them, her staff pointed accusingly at the pair. Behind her stood a circle of witches. Anya stepped forward and with a twitch of deft fingers tore the mask from Liriel’s belt. The drow’s true appearance floated back like a dark tide.

“There is your ‘witch of Shadowdale.’ Now you know what she truly is,” Anya said with cold fury. “You know what he is as well! I demand the penalty of death earned by all traitors to Rashemen!”

YESTERDAY’S PROMISES

“You are wrong,” announced a musical, strangely hollow voice. “Here is the witch of Shadowdale.”

A pale glimmer appeared beside Liriel, spreading into a misty cloud then taking a familiar form—the tall, silver-haired woman whose face Liriel had worn since the battle of the watchtower.

The ghostly woman turned to Liriel’s accuser. “Anya, daughter of Fraeni, your mother was my friend, and in her name I invoke the oath. All vows made in shared circles must be kept, all secrets hidden. The drow who claimed my name has been accepted among us by the witch who knew me best. Do you not think Zofia had good reason for this?”