Spider and Stone

CHAPTER ONE

GUALLIDURTH, THE UNDERDARK

10 UKTAR, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)

"Show me your face, Zollgarza.”

The request echoed in the dark tunnel and surprised the young drow lurking there. Irritation stabbed him. He’d thought his movements had gone undetected by his prey.

Zollgarza stepped from a niche in the wall behind a wide stalagmite and faced Derzac-Rin, a male not much older than Zollgarza but taller and well built. His chiseled features showed signs of strain.

“How did you know?” Zollgarza asked.

Derzac-Rin drew his rapier and raised it, poised like the sharpest needle. “I knew you’d track me. All Fizzri’s lovers meet the same fate. Pride made me believe I would be different. As soon as she cast me out, I knew she’d send you to finish me. May I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

Derzac-Rin tightened his grip on the rapier hilt, as if to pour all of his pent-up hatred and rage into the weapon, that sheer force of willpower might save him when his skill surely could not. “Why does she favor you so?” he demanded.

Zollgarza shrugged. “You should have asked her. I am nobody special.”

“Precisely.” Bitterness thickened the drow’s voice, making the word almost unintelligible. “You are less than nothing, a male with neither exceptional skills nor charm enough to make you a novelty. What have you to recommend yourself to the mistress mother?”

“I’m skilled enough to deal with you,” Zollgarza said. “At the moment, that’s all that matters.”

“Your features,” Derzac-Rin continued as if Zollgarza hadn’t spoken, “are so … misplaced. The crooked nose, lips too thick, as if the sculptor were merely a stuttering novice when he crafted you. I see nothing but contradictions and flaws.”

The mistress mother often spoke of Derzac-Rin’s vanity. Zollgarza supposed that explained his inability to comprehend the defects in Zollgarza’s own appearance.

Zollgarza shifted his stance, the barest motion his opponent would not perceive. Cave breezes stirred his hair. In addition to all the other faults Derzac-Rin had mentioned, Zollgarza’s hair was flat black-an aberration among the drow-with only the barest strands of white at the roots.

Calmly, Zollgarza drew his curved dagger. Attached to the pommel, a second smaller blade curved in the opposite direction, and affixed to the hilt was the figure of a silver spider. A fierce weapon, as beautiful as its wielder was not-at least in Derzac-Rin’s estimation.

“Are you ready to fight?” Zollgarza asked.

Derzac-Rin hadn’t finished his rant. “Where is your passion as you close in for the kill?” he shouted. “Where is the burning spark in your eyes? You refuse even to revel in my death! What moves you, Zollgarza, or should I say, what moves her to tolerate you? I must know this! You cannot-”

“Enough.” Zollgarza glided forward, brought his blade up, and caught the half-crazed drow’s rapier. Derzac-Rin shoved against him, but the frenzied move only put him off balance. Zollgarza pivoted, grabbed Derzac-Rin’s rapier hand, and held it extended. With his other hand, he reversed his dagger and touched one of the spider’s hollow legs on the hilt an instant before he stabbed Derzac-Rin in the flank.

The weapon failed to penetrate the drow’s armor as deeply as Zollgarza had intended, but poison would take care of the rest. As Derzac-Rin doubled over, the catch Zollgarza had touched in the spider’s leg released a watery green liquid that flowed down the blade to mingle with Derzac-Rin’s blood. Zollgarza yanked the dagger out, stepped forward, and spun quickly to face his opponent again, but Derzac-Rin did not attempt another attack. The green liquid smeared in his wound took up all his attention.

“The first leg, the one closest to the center of the blade, contains a paralytic,” Zollgarza explained. His voice didn’t burn with the passion and excitement of the kill, as Derzac-Rin had rightly observed. Instead, he spoke in a detached, analytical way. “A fungi-based poison I designed myself-the brewing required no exceptional alchemical skill, but the results are unquestionable. There is something to be said for efficiency over beauty.”

Derzac-Rin collapsed on his side, limbs jerking as he tried to maintain control of his body, to protect himself from Zollgarza’s impending strike. He failed. The poison froze him in a rigid fetal position, skin stretched taut over his handsome features.

Not so handsome now, Zollgarza observed silently.

Zollgarza bent over the drow and calmly finished his task.

When Derzac-Rin was dead, Zollgarza cleaned the blood and poison off his blade using a specially treated cloth. Then he laid the weapon aside in order to free both his hands. He knelt next to the body, removed Derzac-Rin’s spider silk breastplate, and pulled down the drow’s tunic to expose the obsidian flesh beneath. Finally, he took up his dagger again and laid the tip of the smaller blade against Derzac-Rin’s bare chest.

“For you, Mother Lolth,” Zollgarza whispered and began to carve the Spider Queen’s symbol into the drow’s chest. “His life, my life, my purpose-all for you and all return to you.”

Had Derzac-Rin been alive to hear Zollgarza’s prayer, he might have marveled at the love and loathing that threaded the drow’s voice, how his hands shook with rapture and disgust as he carved the image of the spider into the male’s chest, his passion awakened at last.

After Zollgarza disposed of the body, he returned to his quarters in the city to find a summons from the mistress mother awaiting him. She expected him even then, though she must have known that dealing with her former lover would detain him for a time. Perhaps she’d known that Derzac-Rin would present only a halfhearted challenge. Zollgarza himself had expected the battle to last much longer, but he had taken Derzac-Rin easily, as if fighting in a dream.

He shouldn’t have been surprised. Even if he’d won the fight, where could Derzac-Rin go-a lone male cast from his own House to take refuge in the mistress mother’s arms? That final sanctuary lasted but a month.

Zollgarza did not bother to hurry. The mistress mother would punish him for being late or she wouldn’t, depending on her mood. He washed the blood from his hands, replenished the poison in the spider’s leg on his dagger, and walked across the open plaza to the temple, where worshipers had already begun to gather for the evening services.

“Look there-the mistress mother’s pet. Do you know they call him the Black Creeper?”

“I suppose that means he slides along on his belly like a worm when he comes to her bed.”

Zollgarza heard the sneering insult, but it was impossible to locate its source in the thick crowd of drow assembled before the Spider Queen’s temple. He kept walking, never breaking stride as he made his way to Mistress Mother Fizzri Khaven-Ghell’s private audience chamber.

Situated on the temple’s second level, the mistress’s chamber was only accessible-for those without the magical means to reach it-via two crystal ramps that ascended from the east and west corners of the temple and crossed at the top like the interconnected strands of a spiderweb.

The crystals Zollgarza trod upon were worth a fortune, rare, glittering white clusters with specks of red in their hearts. By no coincidence was Guallidurth called the Temple City of Lolth.

He reached the top and turned to look out on the vast cavern that housed the rest of the temples and great manor houses. Hatred surged within him, a vile burn that made his limbs ache. Priestesses could ascend on their drift disks to the temple, and wizards had their own spells. Divine and arcane dominated, while Zollgarza, an unremarkable male warrior, had to walk the spider’s web to reach the mistress mother.

Pushing his emotions aside, he entered the audience chamber. The mistress sat on a maroon silk cushion arranged on a raised bench made of the same rare crystal as the ramps. Ringing her were six elite warriors of House Loor’Tchaan, scouts who often ventured off on long missions into the deep Underdark. Off to one side stood a trio of wizards from the same House, males who spoke among themselves in hushed tones. Zollgarza knew all the assembled drow individually, but to see them here together meant that something momentous had occurred.

Perhaps the mistress intended to send him on a mission for the city, finally, rather than a personal vendetta. There could be few other reasons for her to summon him to a gathering such as this. Usually, she preferred to keep her pet hidden away where no one could see him.

“How very good of you to join us, Zollgarza,” said Mistress Mother Fizzri Khaven-Ghell.

Her cold voice echoed softly, underscored by a faint hiss. Wound around a lock of her white hair was a tiny serpent, a blind creature of the Underdark cave pools, its body no thicker than the female’s smallest finger. As far as Zollgarza knew, Fizzri was never without the tiny beast. She wore it coiled in her hair or on the snake-headed whips that the priestesses used to punish males and slaves. He’d never seen it strike, but he’d heard rumors that the snake’s venom caused intense pain that ultimately resulted in infertility in males. The mistress mother used the threat of the serpent to discourage potential lovers from taking advantage of her in a vulnerable moment. Zollgarza had no doubt the rumors were true, but having just disposed of Fizzri’s latest conquest, he wondered how eager her next potential suitor would be.

“I’ve come as requested, Mistress. I apologize for the delay.” Bowing, Zollgarza took his place at the rear of the chamber, to Fizzri’s left. He felt the burning gazes of the wizards and scouts follow his movements. He could guess their thoughts. Like the unnamed drow outside in the crowd, they knew him only as the Black Creeper, the mistress mother’s pet.

He held no official rank in House Loor’Tchaan, though most of the household assumed he was the mistress’s lover. None of them knew where he came from, or how he’d earned Fizzri’s favor. The not knowing bothered them the most, made him more of a threat in their eyes. Zollgarza assumed it was only a matter of time before one or more of them decided to strike, to remove the impediment, real or imagined, that kept them from rising in power. They had no idea that Zollgarza disdained the notion of becoming Fizzri’s lover, no matter what status it might bring. He walked the spider’s web, but he would not become its prey.

Rather than meet the gazes of the watching drow, Zollgarza put his hand on the curved dagger at his belt. Let the weapon and its poisoned spider speak for him. He was no castrated dog.

“We are discussing a matter of great importance to Guallidurth-to all drow who faithfully serve the Spider Queen.” The mistress mother addressed the assembled drow, but her gaze lingered on the three wizards, and Zollgarza saw the flash of distaste in her eyes. “Change is coming. No doubt, you have all heard the whispers, the rumors that Lolth has tasked her priestesses with a vital mission.”

Her words caused a minute stirring among the wizards. Fists clenched and expressions darkened-spasms of fury quickly hidden. Zollgarza alone noticed the unrest and only because he looked for the reaction.

“She requires ancient and powerful magic, artifacts of Mystra, the dead goddess of magic,” Fizzri continued. “As we gather these artifacts, Guallidurth will prosper and expand its territory. The city of Iltkazar is our first target. We are going to claim it and its magic, once and for all, for the glory of Lolth.”

This time, an audible murmur went through the crowd. Zollgarza raised an eyebrow but otherwise made no comment. Iltkazar was a relic of old Shanatar, the ancient civilization of the dwarves. The drow had been trying to conquer the city and surrounding territory for centuries, and though they’d slowly worn down the dwarves’ impressive defenses, Zollgarza thought the mistress mother a bit premature in her declaration of victory.

That aside, he was more interested in the reaction of the three wizards to this news. Levriin Soltif was the elder amongst them. He bowed at Fizzri’s announcement, but a gleam of triumph burned in the ancient male’s eyes. Zollgarza recognized it, for a similar stirring had taken root in his breast, a flare of passion dredged up from somewhere deep inside him. True, he was no wizard, but he was male, and he comprehended as well as Soltif what the mistress mother’s announcement truly meant, no matter how she couched it as the edict of the priestesses.

In the past few months, Lolth’s commandments to her faithful had caused increasing unrest in the city. Traditionally, arcane magic was the purview of the males of drow society, but though they might attain great power in the Art, they would never rise above the female clerics of Lolth. The Spider Queen loved chaos and rewarded her most loyal followers, but she had never favored her male children as much as she did the females.

For the first time, the balance of power appeared on the verge of shifting. The dark goddess required ancient magic, and she called on the practitioners of the arcane arts to serve, to raise themselves as equals to their sisters in the eyes of their goddess.

No matter what the benefits were to Guallidurth, Zollgarza knew that Mistress Fizzri privately seethed at this turn of events.

“I want reconnaissance reports on the city’s outer defenses,” the mistress mother instructed. She hid her distaste behind a stern mask of command. “You scouts bring me numbers. I want to know how many soldiers we can expect. Our first strikes will be to their outposts. Draw them from their stronghold, strike from the shadows, and cull their numbers while we plan a larger assault. Fear will weaken them, and the dwarf city will fall.”

Restlessness again took hold of the wizards. Zollgarza shared their curiosity. What magic could the dwarf city, even one as ancient as Iltkazar, hold that would draw the eye of the Spider Queen? That, the mistress mother had not revealed.

What could she want with me? Zollgarza wondered.

Mistress Fizzri dismissed them, and the scouts bowed and filed out of the audience chamber. The wizards followed a moment later.

“Stay, Zollgarza,” Fizzri said when Zollgarza turned to follow them. “I have more to say to you.”

Zollgarza came forward and stood before the mistress, keeping his eyes downcast. He waited, but the silence stretched in the chamber. He felt the female’s gaze hard upon him, appraising him, studying his features as Derzac-Rin had done.

“I want you to infiltrate the city of Iltkazar,” she said at last.

A smile ghosted across Zollgarza’s lips. “Is that all my mistress wishes?” he asked. “Has she tired of my services so soon that she sends me to my death at dwarf hands?”

“Be silent! Look up at me.”

Zollgarza looked up, beholding Fizzri’s red eyes. The serpent glided from her hair to rest on her shoulder. “I jest, of course,” he said with faint mockery.

“You will infiltrate the city,” she repeated. “I know you are capable. Your task is to seek out the city’s ruler, King Mith Barak the Clanless. He has held the throne of Iltkazar for centuries and is in possession of the oldest magic in the city.”

“Am I to kill this King Mith Barak?” Zollgarza inquired.

“Perhaps you won’t have to,” Fizzri replied. “According to intelligence we have already gathered, Mith Barak is not always the leader of the city. He goes to the stone for seventy-five out of every one hundred years of his reign.”

“I don’t understand,” Zollgarza said. “Is that a dwarf expression?”

The mistress’s lips pulled back in a sly smile. “You might well think so, but in this case, I’m being quite literal. Mith Barak spends seventy-five years seated on his throne in the form of a mithral statue.”

“If that’s true, he is no ruler.” Zollgarza shook his head in disgust. The ways of stone-shapers and dirt-scrapers made no sense to him. “Why has no one killed him before now?”

Fizzri waved her hand dismissively. “I couldn’t say, but if that is the state you find him in, your task will be simpler.” Again, she flashed that sly smile. “You can manage to swing a hammer, can’t you?”

“Mithral is not so easily destroyed, as you know, and nor do I expect I’ll find the king unguarded in such a state, but I understand your meaning,” Zollgarza said. “His death is all that is required, then?”

“Not quite.” The mistress mother rose from the bench and approached Zollgarza. Her black silk gown trailed behind her like a shimmering stain. She held up her hand, palm out toward him, and spoke a word that sent an electrical charge arcing from one of her rings through the air between them. The snake recoiled, burying itself in the female’s hair.

A silvery-blue sphere appeared in the air above her palm. Inscribed upon the surface of the sphere scrawled writing Zollgarza could not read.

“Beautiful,” he said in that same detached, analytical voice.

“Yes, it is.” With her free hand, Fizzri traced the air around the sphere in a covetous gesture. “Every night when I go to sleep, this object haunts my dreams. It whispers to me.” Her eyes took on a dreamy glaze.

“Is it in the king’s possession?” Zollgarza asked, unnerved by the sudden change in Fizzri’s demeanor.

“Not for long.” Fizzri’s expression hardened. “It is called the Arcane Script Sphere. There is old magic in the city, but none is nearly as powerful as this artifact. See and remember it.” She clenched her fist, and the illusion disappeared. “I want you to kill Mith Barak if possible, but no matter what, you must retrieve this artifact. If it comes down to a choice between slaying the king and retrieving the sphere, you will get the sphere. Is that understood?”

Zollgarza bowed. “May I ask what interest the sphere has for the Spider Queen? Why do we seek a dwarven relic for her glory?”

“It is not and never was a dwarven relic,” Fizzri said. “More than that, I won’t tell you.”

“Then I will leave you,” Zollgarza said. He bowed and turned to go.

Fizzri laid a hand on his arm, her nails digging into his flesh. Zollgarza looked up and met the female’s gaze. Were those hints of silver he saw in her red eyes? He’d never noticed those hints before, and for a moment, he stood frozen, staring into that hypnotic silver light.

“Is that all?” the priestess asked softly. Emotion deepened her voice. Gone was the hissing undertone of the serpent. “So cold you are, Zollgarza. Why do I favor you so? You are less than nothing, a male with neither exceptional skills nor charm enough to make you a novelty. What have you to recommend yourself to the mistress mother?”

“What?” Zollgarza tried to step away, to escape those eyes, which were full silver now, gleaming with anger and frustration. She’d echoed Derzac-Rin’s words exactly. “What are you talking about?”

The female’s grip on his arm tightened, threatened to crush his bones. Zollgarza cried out in pain. Suddenly, her hands were everywhere, pinning his arms, driving him to his knees. He couldn’t move. What was happening? Had she poisoned him, used magic to bind his limbs?

Tell me why she sent you, the mistress mother snarled. Her voice was no longer the husky purr of a drow female. The voice that invaded Zollgarza’s mind was ancient, male, and filled with a shattering power that made him tremble. It had to be more than the sphere, more than my death, the voice cried. What do you want with Iltkazar? What is your power?

Zollgarza screamed. Fizzri’s audience chamber blurred and darkened. A wave of dizziness sickened him, cut off his scream. When his head cleared, he found himself in a small prison cell, his back numb against a cold stone floor. Chains bound him at the hands and feet.

Bent over him was an ancient dwarf, thinner than most creatures of his kind and not so muscular, but his spotted, calloused hands betrayed a strength Zollgarza couldn’t doubt. He gripped Zollgarza’s upper arms with such force that he thought his bones would snap. Between those hands flowed a silver beard that turned yellowish around his thick lips. His face bore the crags of the mountains spoken of in hundreds of dwarven tales, and a scar beneath his left eye made him look just as fierce as those tales portrayed the stout folk.

Those eyes-those silver eyes-Zollgarza felt himself falling into them again, spiraling back into his memories of that day in Guallidurth, when the mistress gave him his mission to infiltrate Iltkazar. Mith Barak-he recognized the dwarf king now-was making him relive the scene, reaming his mind for information.

With an effort, Zollgarza tore his gaze away from those stunning silver orbs. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, hoping the pain would clear his head.

“You’re strong willed,” the dwarf king said. His deep voice washed over Zollgarza, rough and gravelly with age but bearing an underlying power that Zollgarza felt through his whole body. “Do you remember where you are?”

“Iltkazar,” Zollgarza whispered. His throat burned from thirst. He swallowed several times to return moisture to his mouth.

King Mith Barak leaned back and reached for something in a corner of the cell. He brought a ladle of water to Zollgarza’s lips. “Drink,” he commanded, and Zollgarza obeyed without thinking. The king’s influence was strong. Whatever spell he’d used on Zollgarza lingered in him, forcing him to obey.

Mith Barak cast the ladle aside and lifted Zollgarza by the shoulder, forcing him to sit up against the wall. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

“You captured me,” Zollgarza said. “That much I understand.”

“I could have killed you, you know.” The king stood up, crossing his arms. “That’s what you came to do to me. Are you still wondering where the sphere is, Zollgarza?”

“You have the information you wanted,” Zollgarza said. He couldn’t risk looking directly into the king’s eyes again. “Why haven’t you killed me?”

“It’s true your mind is wide open to me, yet there are still … gaps,” Mith Barak said carefully. “What is your family name, Zollgarza?”

The weight of the dwarf’s compulsion flowed through him, but when Zollgarza opened his mouth to speak, no words came. He swallowed, tried again. Nothing.

Grunting, the dwarf scratched his beard. “Who sired you? Where were you born? Who was the last person you killed, before Derzac-Rin?”

The questions pounded in Zollgarza’s mind, strengthened by dwarf magic. He focused on the first, the one that disturbed him most due to his inability to answer it: his family name. Such a small thing, but when he searched for it, there was only blackness, an impenetrable shroud.

“What did you do to me?” he snarled. It had to be the dwarf’s magic that clouded his memories.

The king shook his head. “I did nothing except search your mind for those same answers. They aren’t there,” he said. “Someone has used magic-stronger than any I’ve ever encountered-to wall off parts of your memories. They’ve even denied you access to them. I want to know why.”

Zollgarza heard the threat in the dwarf’s voice, but he paid no attention. More questions swirled in his thoughts. His knowledge of poisons: Where had he learned those skills? Where had he come by the dagger with the spider on the hilt? He served Mistress Mother Fizzri, but what had he done before that? No one knew his place in House Loor’Tchaan.

Except Fizzri.

“Fizzri,” Zollgarza growled, straining suddenly against his chains. What had that bitch done to him?

Mith Barak chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “If your mistress did this to you, then she had help, I can tell you that.”

“What do you mean?” Zollgarza demanded, hating himself for appealing to the dwarf.

“I mean if it was her who cleaned out your memories, she did it with her goddess’s blessing and power,” Mith Barak said. “Divine magic-Lolth’s magic-is all over you, in your mind and in your body as well. It’s penetrated your flesh down to the bone. Whatever happened to you, you’ve been completely remade.”

“You’re lying.” He said it automatically, the denial rising easily to his lips. He looked down at his body, fettered by chains and bleeding from wounds he’d received during his capture. Nothing had changed there. He was himself. He was Zollgarza.

Your features are misplaced, the voice of dead Derzac-Rin taunted him. The sculptor was merely a stuttering novice when he crafted you.

“No!” The word tore from Zollgarza’s throat. He stared hatefully up at the king. “Why haven’t you killed me?” he repeated.

“Oh, you’ll die soon enough, but not before I’ve turned you inside out a few more times.” The king rapped on the door to the cell and a guard stepped inside. “We’re done here,” he said. “Make sure he’s fed, and fetch more water. I don’t want him too weak.”

“What do you want with me?” Zollgarza said, louder.

The king ignored him and followed the guard out of the cell.

Zollgarza lunged forward, straining against his chains. He landed on his face as the cell door slammed shut. “Why don’t you kill me!” he screamed, his face pressed against the dirty floor.

Silence answered him.