Spider and Stone

CHAPTER THREE

OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE OF THARGRED, TETHYR

21 UKTAR

Icelin hastily broke camp while Ruen went to search for Sull in the woods. She doused the fire and threw the still-dirty pots into a sack. Sull would scold her for neglecting them. He hated dirty pots. Icelin’s fingers shook as she tied the sack shut. Why hadn’t Sull come back yet?

When Ruen returned to camp, he was alone. Icelin’s heart sank. “I found his trail,” Ruen said. “It looks like he wandered near the dwarven ruins. I even found a patch of mint growing near a broken stone circle. Then a cluster of other tracks join up with his, but these were coming from the ruins.”

Icelin nearly dropped the waterskin she held. “I thought the temple was abandoned.”

“So did I, but we were wrong. I think whoever came from there took Sull back with him to the temple,” Ruen said grimly.

“Did you see any blood? Any bodies? Was there a fight?” Icelin kept her voice steady, but she felt the tension all through her body.

“No,” Ruen said. “Whatever happened out there, it wasn’t violent, and it ended quickly.”

That comforted Icelin somewhat, but still she had a sick feeling inside. If something happened to Sull …

She grabbed her staff, which was engraved with arcane markings and capped with a cage of thin, polished wooden branches. It had been a gift to her from a very old wizard who’d lived in Mistshore. He hadn’t communicated to her all its powers before he died, but Icelin knew it helped to control her wild magic, and she was grateful. At that moment, she simply wished it would quiet the fear that clawed at her throat, made her movements jerky and graceless.

“Leave any extra gear there,” Icelin said, pointing to the underbrush. “It’ll slow us down once we’re in the ruins. What about our horses?”

“Let them go,” Ruen told her. “Someone else will claim them. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

The cave that led down to the temple ruins had a line of fist-sized stones arranged at the foot of both walls like small sentinels. Symbols were carved into the stones, though Icelin couldn’t read the writing. It may have been a warning, a welcome, or perhaps travelers’ offerings to the dwarves’ lost goddess. Icelin preferred to think it was one of the latter.

“Four sets of tracks,” Ruen said. “Sull’s are the largest, though a couple of the others are almost his equal in weight. They’re human or dwarf, I think.”

“Maybe they’re pilgrims,” Icelin said, pointing to the stones.

“Pilgrims, or possibly bandits,” Ruen said. He pulled a torch from his pack and spent a moment lighting it. “Though why they would kidnap him and not just kill him-” He stopped at Icelin’s gasp of dismay. “The tracks lead straight ahead. Let’s see how deep this center passage goes.”

They walked in silence, listening for any signs of movement in the tunnels. Gradually, as the passage descended, the natural cavern became a carved stone passage with empty sconces along the walls ready for torches. Smaller passages branched off the main hallway, and from them echoed the sounds of scurrying movement, small animals fleeing the scents and light from above ground.

The tracks became harder to distinguish. More than once, Ruen scowled at the ground, trying to discern if the group they followed had stayed together in the main passage or branched off. Icelin knew he was doing his best, but he was not an expert tracker, especially over this type of terrain.

“Let me try something,” Icelin said after they stopped for the third time to reorient themselves. She moved to cast a spell, but Ruen caught her wrist in his gloved hand.

“Don’t,” he said. “We’re on the right track. We’ll find them without magic.”

“It’s a minor spell, hardly more dangerous than conjuring light,” Icelin tried to reassure him. “Trust me, it won’t go wild.” She smiled crookedly. “As much as you annoy me, you know I wouldn’t risk hurting you.”

“Why would you …?” Ruen hesitated. A strange expression passed over his face, but it was difficult to read because of his eyes. The colors masked much of Ruen’s emotions. “I’m not worried about you hurting me,” he clarified. “I’m worried about what the spell will do to you.”

Icelin lowered her hands. Ruen still gripped her wrist slackly. “Small magic isn’t going to drain my vitality,” she said gently. “Even a few of the larger spells won’t do lasting harm. Only the most aggressive spells I have, the ones that are truly deadly when they rage out of control, will affect me. I’ve told you this before.”

“Even cantrips cause you pain,” Ruen said. “You told me that, too.”

“So I did. Your memory needs no enhancement.” Icelin started to lay her hand on top of his, but Ruen pulled away. She clenched her teeth together and tried not to let it show in her face how much his rejection hurt.

“Cast your spell,” he said, not looking at her.

Icelin nodded. She cupped her hands in front of her nose and mouth and whispered a phrase. In her mind, she saw the words perfectly formed in glowing script, imagined the letters swirling in her cupped palms like specks of gold mingling with her breath. The magic rose up, filling the silent passage.

The spell took effect. Breathing deeply, Icelin fought back a brief, intense wave of dizziness and nausea. Ruen was right about the magic weakening her, but that wasn’t the only reason for the nausea. The smell of damp earth rose strongly in her nose, mingled with underlying hints of a dozen varieties of fungus and cave moss and the unmistakable odor of decay. Her spell had heightened her sense of smell ten times over, bringing the layers of scents in the tunnels to life in an overwhelming tapestry. Icelin stretched her awareness outward down the passage, seeking beyond the cavern odors, searching for familiar scents, beloved smells that had become like home to her.

“There,” Icelin said, drawing in another breath. “Mint, hints of fish and butter-it’s very faint, but it’s coming from the main passage. We’re going the right way.”

“Well done,” Ruen said. “Anything else? What about the group that has him? Can you detect their scents, how many there are?”

Icelin’s brow furrowed. “No … there’s nothing,” she said. “That’s odd. I only smell Sull.”

“It’s enough,” Ruen said. “Let’s go.”

Relieved that they were on the right path, Icelin moved forward, Ruen following at her side. For a while, he said nothing, though Icelin sensed him watching her. She picked her way carefully by the wavering light, half her mind fixed on maintaining the spell and letting her heightened senses guide her. She stepped on a loose stone in her too-large boots and stumbled.

Ruen gripped her elbow briefly, steadying her. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I know I’ve been … pushing … making the journey difficult for the three of us. I forget you’ve never traveled before.”

Icelin glanced at him, surprised by the turn in the conversation. “My parents were adventurers,” she said. “I suppose they did a lot of this sort of thing-crawling around in caves, digging through ruins, sleeping on the ground every night. I did want a taste of that kind of life. Well, all except for the sleeping on the ground part. I could do without that and not be troubled.”

“Has it been everything you thought it would be?” Ruen asked.

“And more,” Icelin said with feeling. She glanced at him in the torchlight with a raised brow. “I never thought I’d see the whole of the Sword Coast in a pair of months, for instance.”

Ruen offered her a strained smile. “You did say you wanted to see everything.”

“I’m not going to expire in the next few months, you know,” Icelin said lightly. “I intend to torment you for years and years yet.”

His smile disappeared. “I know that, but our time on the road-it passes faster, somehow, almost as fast as the scenery flashes by on a galloping horse. One day runs into the next, and I keep thinking …”

“What?” Icelin asked. She kept her voice low, but still it echoed in the silent passage. The darkness pressed close, creating the illusion of a small, intimate room in a globe of torchlight. They hadn’t been alone like this for months, and Ruen had never spoken to her as he did now. Icelin found herself holding her breath, though what she was waiting for, she couldn’t quite say.

“It’s not fair,” Ruen said at last. “You’re young, seen almost nothing of the world, and just when you start to come into your own, you discover you’ve been cheated out of a full and happy life.” He gazed at her with such an earnest, intense expression that Icelin felt her cheeks flush. “Others who’ve lived twice as long haven’t lived so well as you.”

“You honor me by saying that, but I’ve made my share of mistakes, and I have my regrets,” Icelin said. She glanced at the cave ceiling above her head, as if she could look through it to greater Faerun beyond. “You know enough about the world to know things are rarely fair. If I hadn’t had this burden, I might never have left Waterdeep. I’d still be in my great uncle’s shop, reading books about adventures in far-off lands instead of having one of my own.” She dropped her gaze, staring into Ruen’s strange eyes. “If I hadn’t been scarred, I would never have met you or Sull.”

Ruen shifted the torch from his right hand to his left. “Yes, I remember that night well. I was fishing on my boat-”

“You never really caught anything edible from the harbor, did you?” Icelin interjected.

Ruen ignored her. “Happily alone, content with the world, and suddenly this impertinent wench rows up to my boat and demands my aid.”

“I’m certain I asked nicely.”

“Not a coin to her name to induce me to help her, but oh no, that didn’t stop this woman.”

“Didn’t I offer to sleep with you in return?”

“I should have dumped you in the harbor, saved myself a lot of trouble,” Ruen said.

“We did get dumped in the harbor, and you surely never used to jest this much, before you met me,” Icelin pointed out. “I’ve been some good to you. I’ve given you an appreciation for the absurd.”

“Who said I was jesting?” Ruen checked what was left of the tracks. “Is your spell still working? Are they still on this path?”

“Yes,” Icelin said, breathing deeply to confirm that Sull was still ahead of them. “I feel like a tracking hound.” She raised a hand and glared at Ruen before he could speak. “Be very careful with your next words,” she warned him.

Ruen’s lips twitched. “You did say I should jest more.”

Icelin stepped toward him. She’d only intended to swat at his shoulder with her hand, but when Ruen saw her reaching for him, he stepped back and raised the torch between them as a barrier. He said nothing, merely quickened his pace, leaving Icelin lagging behind as she recovered from his reaction.

As suddenly as it had been there, the humor and warmth drained out of that small circle of light. Icelin suppressed the urge to scream in frustration.

Gods above, will you kindly smite him in the arse with a lightning bolt? she thought. Is that truly too much to ask?

She caught up with Ruen at an intersection and snatched the torch out of his hand. He shot her a look. “Now what have I done?”

Icelin scowled at him. “Are you really going to spend the next twenty years flinching and scrambling away like a rabbit every time I come near you?”

“You know why I react that way,” Ruen said calmly, but Icelin sensed the tension radiating from him.

“Of course,” Icelin said. “It’s because of the ever-present reminder of death clinging to me, obviously.” What man in his right mind would want to be near such a person? “I just wish you’d be a bit more subtle about it,” she grumbled.

“That’s not …” Ruen sighed. “Never mind. Nothing good will come of talking about this.”

“Nothing good at all,” said a voice from the darkness of the adjoining passage.

Icelin swung the torch toward the sound. A pair of dwarves stepped into the circle of glowing gold. The nearest one had a cluster of tattoos covering the left side of his face, strange symbols similar to those Icelin had seen carved on the stones at the cave entrance. Engraved stones wove in and out of his plaited gray beard and clicked faintly when he stepped forward. Icelin sensed power in the dwarf, carefully contained but unmistakable magical energy.

The other dwarf was much younger, with a rich mahogany beard and no tattoos, but there were strong echoes of the elder dwarf’s features in his face. They had to be father and son.

“Gods above, you humans will talk yourselves into your graves,” the elder dwarf growled in Common. “We heard your voices echoing down the tunnel.”

Icelin was surprised. The dwarves could not have been very far ahead of them if they’d heard Icelin and Ruen talking, yet why hadn’t she detected their presence with her heightened senses? Even now when they stood right in front of her and she sniffed the air, expecting to inhale the odor of sweat and dwarf breath, she detected nothing but the scents of the damp earth and stone.

The older dwarf must be employing a spell to conceal sounds and scents, she reasoned, to allow them to move in the tunnels and avoid detection. It was the only explanation unless, Gods help her, the tales she’d heard in her childhood about the dwarves were true-that they sprang from the stone itself.

Next to Icelin, Ruen tensed as the younger dwarf stepped forward. He said nothing, but he held a huge axe comfortably in his hands. The single-bladed weapon bore three faintly glowing runes carved along the wicked edge. Opposite this blade sprouted three obsidian spikes that tapered to gleaming points like the horns of a beast. The dwarf’s father carried an identical axe on his belt. Icelin tried not to stare at the magnificent and deadly weapons.

“Where is Sull?” she demanded.

“You’re the trespassers here,” the elder dwarf said, “which means you stay silent.”

“We seek an artifact in the temple,” Ruen said. “We thought the place was abandoned.”

“Abandoned or not, you have no right to be here. You and your companions desecrated our burial grounds when you came to plunder our temple,” the elder dwarf growled.

“Yes, and you snatched our companion,” Icelin said. “We’d like him back.”

“Calass,” the younger dwarf said. Icelin didn’t understand the word. He went on rapidly in the Dwarvish tongue. The elder nodded thoughtfully. “There are no artifacts left here for you to steal.” Ruen cursed in response, but the dwarf ignored him. “As for your friend, our companions took him below to answer for his desecration. We came back when we heard you following.”

“Below?” Icelin didn’t like the sound of that. “How deep do these ruins go?”

The younger dwarf spoke again, and in his dark eyes, Icelin saw a mixture of pride, contempt, and an endless, aching sadness. If she hadn’t been afraid of provoking an attack, Icelin would have reached out to the dwarf. Crazy, she knew, but sadness like that … it urged her to soothe-to do anything to quell it.

“What did he say?” Ruen asked the father.

“Deep,” the dwarf said, “deep into memory.” He pointed to the passage ahead of them. “You come with us now. We’ll take you to your companion and then decide what to do with all of you.”

“Not yet,” Ruen said. “I have questions of my own.” He drew a dagger from his belt and held it at his side, a paltry thing in the shadow of the dwarves’ gleaming axes, but Icelin knew better than to underestimate what Ruen could do with the weapon. In her mind, she searched for a spell to defend them both in the close quarters. She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

As she prepared to call on her Art, the elder dwarf suddenly turned and stared at her. “Don’t,” he said quietly. He raised his hand.

Icelin braced for a spell, but the attack was not what she expected.

A symbol flashed in front of her eyes, bright and painful, as if she’d been staring into the sun on a burning hot day. Three slashes of fire in the air-that was all Icelin discerned before a thunderous roar filled her ears.

She stumbled back, managing to hold on to her staff and the torch when all she wanted to do was thrust both aside and cover her ears. The roar was impossible to block out. She closed her eyes. An involuntary cry escaped her lips. The rune had faded, leaving only a blurred afterimage on the inside of her eyelids, but the thunder beat painfully in her ears and sent threads of fiery pain into her temples.

“Stop it!” Ruen shouted at the dwarves, but Icelin barely heard him. She couldn’t call her magic, couldn’t think beyond the roaring.

Dimly, she heard the ring of steel. Icelin opened her eyes and saw the younger dwarf standing in front of his father, blocking a dagger strike from Ruen. The dwarf swung his axe as if to drive Ruen back, but he dodged the swipe and delivered a swift punch to the dwarf’s arm.

His grip on the axe faltered. A flicker of surprise passed over the dwarf’s face, and he stared hard at his thin opponent, as if re-evaluating the threat Ruen posed. Through her pain, Icelin felt a rush of satisfaction.

Ruen was an uncanny fighter, a bundle of contradictions. To look at him, a hard punch would break him in half, yet Ruen was the one who usually delivered such terrible blows. As with so much in his life, his spellscar was to blame. It left his bones brittle, forcing him to wear a magic ring that kept them strong. That same ring also enhanced his physical strength, which, when combined with his speed and martial training, made him a formidable opponent.

In that moment, however, he was outmatched, at least in bladed weapons. Ruen sheathed his dagger and came at the dwarf again with just his fists.

For all their differences in height and weight, the dwarf was sure-footed. He dodged Ruen’s quick jabs, and Ruen had to use every bit of his speed to keep pace with the dwarf’s movements. It would be a long and bloody fight-the last thing Icelin wanted.

“Please listen to me,” she implored the elder dwarf. Her voice shook with pain. “I swear, we didn’t come here to desecrate this temple. If you give us back our friend, we’ll leave this place and never return. We don’t have to fight!”

The older dwarf’s face remained impassive. He glanced from Icelin to the battle between his son and Ruen. Icelin thought he was going to let it continue, despite her pleas.

Abruptly, the roaring in her ears diminished, leaving behind a dull ache at Icelin’s temples. In her relief, she almost sagged to the floor.

“Ruen, stop!” she called out. “It’s all right. I’m all right.”

The combatants paused in their dance of blade and fists. Ruen stood tense, but glancing at Icelin, he took a careful step away from the dwarf. His opponent did the same.

“It’s all right,” Icelin repeated. “Now we can talk-” She couldn’t finish. The cloying scent of blood and a burning substance filled her nose. Icelin choked at the unexpected foulness and covered her mouth to keep from gagging. The dwarves looked at her curiously-Ruen in alarm. They obviously smelled nothing amiss.

It was the scent spell. She’d stopped paying attention to it in the wake of the dwarf’s magical attack on her senses.

“What is it?” Ruen took hold of her shoulder with his free hand, but Icelin shrugged him off.

“Something’s near-gods, that’s awful.” She looked around the torchlit darkness but saw nothing. The dwarves exchanged anxious looks.

Then they all heard it. The scrape of stone and a stirring of air overhead made them look at the ceiling. That brief glimpse was the only warning before a large, hairy body dropped from the ceiling and landed on the younger dwarf’s back. A second weight slammed into Icelin and drove her to the ground.

Icelin caught herself on her hands, but the breath whooshed out of her, and the torch rolled away, sending sparks and fractured light in all directions. When Icelin looked up, a black cage surrounded her, but the bars of that cage were not made of iron. They were jointed and covered with stiff black hairs.

Rolling onto her back, Icelin suppressed a scream. The reflection of her prostrate form shone in the glassy black eyes of an immense spider. Its mandibles hovered directly above her head. Blood from the last unfortunate creature it had encountered stained those mandibles and dripped from its glistening black body. A thick, greenish liquid mixed with the blood, and the scent of burning poison rose in her nostrils again. Icelin dismissed the scent spell so she could breathe, but it was impossible to tear her gaze away from those soulless black orbs.

Icelin lifted her hands and cast the first spell that came to mind. She spoke the arcane phrases haltingly, but in her mind, she screamed her intent: burn.

Her fingers glowed and flames erupted from her hands, shattering her reflection and blocking out the spider’s eyes. The creature recoiled, legs scraping across the stone, tangling in Icelin’s hair. Panic and revulsion rose in her. She had to get out from under the thing before it crushed her.

By the light of her fire spell, Icelin saw Ruen viciously stab the spider’s body, trying to draw it away from her. He danced aside as the monster turned and tried to take a bite out of him. Dropping to his knees, he pitted his weight against the monster and yanked aside one of the spider’s legs. Icelin reached through the gap, and he hauled her out from under the creature.

“Watch out!” Icelin shouted.

A third spider scuttled along the ceiling above their heads. Ruen let her go, ran to the far wall, and using a small stone outcrop as a leaping-off point, propelled himself up the wall, close enough to reach the spider’s bloated body. Before it had the chance to scramble away, Ruen pushed off the wall, ripping the spider off its stone perch. Icelin darted out of the way as he and the monster landed on the passage floor.

Ruen rolled clear just as a backhand swing from the elder dwarf’s axe drove the obsidian horns into the spider’s exposed abdomen. The monster’s legs flexed and clawed the air wildly, but it couldn’t pull itself together for another attack. The deadly axe tore it apart in a mess of gore.

The younger dwarf had thrown the spider off his back. He shouted and hacked at the creature. His axe sliced through the monster’s legs like sticks. He reversed the strike and tore into the spider’s abdomen with the obsidian horns as his father had done.

In its death throes, the spider latched onto the dwarf’s arm and bit deep. Blood and poison drenched the dwarf’s arm. He yelled and bore down with his axe, cutting the spider in half.

Icelin poured more fire into the other spider’s eyes. The room blurred as weakness overcame her. Too fast, she thought, too much. At least the spell hadn’t gone wild.

“Icelin, stop!” Ruen crouched beside her. “The creature’s dead.”

Shaking, Icelin reined in the fire and instinctively grasped her staff. Responding to her touch, red light filled and swirled in its wooden cage. Power, balanced and carefully contained-the symbolism was not lost on her. Focusing her thoughts on the staff, the strength and stability of its magic, Icelin felt a little calmer.

“Are you all right?” Icelin asked, turning to Ruen with a slightly dazed expression.

“You’re asking me that?” Ruen nodded to her hands where she clutched the staff. They trembled still, knuckles white against the wood. “You shouldn’t have spent yourself like that.”

“That’s what my great uncle used to say whenever I did something foolish. I’m sorry, but I’m not fond of spiders,” Icelin said weakly, “especially when they’re bigger than I am.”

The younger dwarf snarled something in his native language as he held a hand against his wound. Black ichor dripped from his axe.

“What did he say?” Ruen asked.

The dwarf’s father nodded at Icelin. “He agrees with her,” he said. He hesitated, then held out a hand to Ruen. “You fight well,” he said grudgingly. “I’m Garn Blackhorn.”

“Ruen Morleth,” Ruen said and clasped the dwarf’s hand briefly. “She is Icelin Tearn.”

“The young one’s my son, Obrin,” Garn said. “Did you get much of the poison?” he asked his son.

The dwarf grunted. He lifted his hand away from his wound. Some of the greenish liquid flowed down his arm. Icelin couldn’t smell the poison anymore, but the pinched look of the dwarf’s face and the pallor of his skin told her he was in pain.

Garn went to his son. He held up a hand and traced a symbol in the air with his index and middle fingers. The short, gnarled digits were anything but graceful, yet that was the only word Icelin thought of when she beheld the glowing orange rune with roots of blue and purple that flowed from the dwarf’s fingertips, hissing in the cold cavern air.

The symbol faded. Garn unfastened Obrin’s gauntlet and rolled up his sleeve to expose the spider bite. A breath later, Obrin’s torn flesh glowed, and the same rune Icelin had seen traced on the air rose up as if from deep within Obrin’s skin.

The delicate shape of the rune fascinated her-two interlocking rings with a horizontal line drawn across both. A symbol impossible to translate, yet its effects lingered in the air long after the rune had faded away completely. Warmth, protection, healing. Be at peace, the magic whispered in a voice without words, strong and firm. The younger dwarf closed his eyes briefly as the rune melted into his flesh, the orange light covering the wound and closing it.

Icelin allowed her eyes to drift closed for a moment. So often she’d only felt the touch of wild magic, but the soothing presence of this kind of stable Art made her breathing slow and washed away the sick feeling in her stomach.

When she opened her eyes, she met the younger dwarf’s curious gaze. Embarrassed, Icelin looked away. “You also fought well, Obrin,” she said. The dwarf shot her an irritated glance and muttered something, again in his own language. “Doesn’t he speak the common tongue?” Icelin asked.

“He speaks it, and he understands everything you’re saying, but he doesn’t speak to outsiders,” Garn said. “It’s beneath his dignity.”

“But not yours,” Ruen observed.

The elder dwarf stroked his beard, his fingers tracing the runes on his cheek in a significant if absentminded gesture. “My son is his own man. He acts as he sees fit, and so do I. You’re both skilled enough in battle, even if you are thieves and plunderers,” he said.

Icelin and Ruen exchanged a glance. “Don’t look at me,” Icelin said wearily. “You’re the thief-and probably the plunderer, too. All I want is Sull.”

“Why did you capture him?” Ruen asked. “If you thought he desecrated your burial grounds, why didn’t you just kill him?”

“Because he told us you’re looking for the Arcane Script Sphere,” Garn said. “That changes things.”

“Do you know of the artifact?” Icelin asked.

A flicker of disdain passed over Garn’s face. “It’s not my place to tell you of it. We’ll take you to your friend, but it’s a long way down, deeper than I think you intended to go.”

“Will you let us come back out again?” Ruen asked.

Garn didn’t answer. He examined his son’s wound one more time and, appearing satisfied, helped him to his feet. “Your lady looks exhausted,” he said, nodding to Icelin. “She can rest once we get to the city. Our king will want to speak to you about the artifact.”

“A city?” Icelin said as Ruen helped her to stand. “And a king? I suppose we were just discussing new adventures, weren’t we?” she said to Ruen. “I really should learn to keep my mouth shut. The gods have a way of listening when I start going on about adventure.”

Ruen picked up the torch. “Lead on,” he told the dwarves.