R. A. Salvatore
Archmage
PROLOGUE
The hulking demon snorted fire with every great breath, clawed hands twitching, eager to grab at the great flaming whip set in a loop on his hip. This was Balor, the mightiest of his kind, massive and powerful, with great leathery wings, a whip of fire, a sword of lightning, and a keen understanding of battle. The demons that took his name and form were known as the generals of the Abyss, used by the demon lords to guide their armies in the never-ending wars that scarred the smoky and dismal plane.
Balor was itchy now, wanting his weapons but not daring to reach for them. The creature in front of him, half spider, half beautiful drow, had not come here to request his service as a general.
Far from it, it seemed.
“You wish to strike out at me?” the Spider Queen remarked, her eight arachnid legs clattering on the stones as she moved around the beast. Behind her lay a wake of lesser demons-shredded manes, balguras pummeled into piles of mush, shadow demons robbed of their life energy that lay there as smoking clouds of insentient darkness.
“Why have you come to me, Lolth?” Balor asked. “Why have you destroyed my minions? I am not at war, with you or any, and am not now in service to any.”
The Spider Queen twisted her drow torso to regard the carnage she had inflicted. “Perhaps I was bored,” she answered casually. “No matter.”
Balor issued a little growl, but kept his composure. He knew that it-that all of this-was something more, something more dangerous. Lolth had been in the company of the balor Errtu extensively of late, and Errtu was Balor’s greatest rival.
“You have not answered my question,” Lolth remarked. “Do you wish to strike out at me?”
Balor couldn’t deny the eager twitching of his clawed hands. He had served all of the demon lords over the centuries, of course, but Lolth was his least favorite. She was something more than the other Abyssal lords, a goddess relying on the prayers and fealty of some puny mortal race on the Prime Material Plane, beings Balor would use as. . food. Her eyes, spider or drow-or whatever other form she chose to take-were not focused here in the Abyss, but were ever elsewhere. Like her ambitions.
“Do it,” Lolth teased.
Another growl escaped Balor’s lips, and how he wanted to comply.
“Ah, but you cannot,” Lolth went on. “Because I can unmake you with a word, or make of you something else, something less.”
Balor’s nostrils flared, fires coming forth. She was not bluffing, of course. She was a demon queen and on this plane, the Abyss, her power over creatures such as Balor was absolute. On another plane of existence, perhaps Balor would strike out at her-and how delicious that would be! — but in the Abyss, he could not.
“I will not unmake you,” Lolth promised. “I will not obliterate you. I am curious, beast of fire. Long have I wondered about the sting of your whip. How sharp the flames? They can melt the skin from a manes, but how would they fare against the hide of a goddess? I do not fear your fire, Balor.”
The demon did not make a move.
“I will not unmake you,” Lolth stated flatly. “You are the favored of Baphomet and Kostchtchie, and as much as I might enjoy the spectacle of mighty Balor reduced to inglorious irrelevance, you are not worth the bother to which such an act would give rise.”
The words spun in Balor’s thoughts. Baphomet had indeed used him, and recently, to command his legions, and Kostchtchie, the Prince of Wrath, had always called upon Balor first and foremost. But what was this about? Why would Lolth even be here, in Balor’s castle?
“I played no role in the failure of Tiamat’s rise,” the demon told her, wondering if that might be the reason for her visit. There were rumors that Lolth was trying to help the minions of the great catastrophe, Tiamat, in resurrecting her castle and body in the Prime Material Plane, a tremendous effort by the dragons of that plane that had, so said the rumors, spectacularly failed. “I would be glad to be rid of the witch.”
“I have made no accusation,” Lolth said slyly.
“Then why?” a frustrated Balor roared, fire flying like spittle from his great maw. “Why are you here, Demon Queen of Spiders? Why do you taunt me?”
“When has Balor considered a challenge to be a taunt?"
“A challenge? Or a goading-a prelude to an excuse!”
“Strike me!”
“No!”
“Then I shall unmake you!” Lolth’s eyes flared with sinister promise.
Before he could even consider the movement, Balor had his sword in hand, lightning spraying from its tip, and his whip in his other hand, the length of it becoming a living flame.
Lolth reared up, her four front legs coming off the stone to wave in the air, her arms up high, her face a mask of ferocity, mouth opening impossibly wide in a great hiss.
Balor raised his whip arm, the fiery line rolling up high above his shoulder. It felt as if he had dunked that arm under water. Something grabbed at it and slowed it.
A new smell joined in the sulfuric haze of the Abyss, a sharp, burning hiss, and Balor did not have to turn to know that a great conflagration blazed behind him. With a defiant roar, the beast yanked his arm free and sent his whip cracking out in front of him, snapping out at Lolth.
Her legs blocked, the fiery instrument scored her hide with an angry tear and blister. But the Spider Queen’s cry was more of joy than pain, or, more likely, it was both.
On she came, lightning flashing from every drow fingertip, four spider legs kicking out to batter at Balor.
And more, the demon realized. The air around him filled with floating webs, Lolth’s webbing, and every filament, it seemed, carried a spider, ravenous and biting.
The whip cracked again. Balor thrust forth his sword, the blade extending with a great blast of lightning, one that had Lolth backstepping from the sheer weight of it.
But on she came again, bolt after sharp bolt lashing out from her fingertips, stabbing at Balor. Her eyes flared with fire and she vomited acid and poison, spraying it all over Balor.
His whip arm went back again. This time, the webbing grabbed at it more fully, like a smoking wall moving at Lolth’s command, rolling forward to enwrap him. He opened wide his wings, trying to burst free, but he couldn’t. The wall closed nearly around him, and millions of spiders leaped upon him, biting at his flesh.
He thrust forth his sword and felt it bite into Lolth’s flesh, but she screamed again as if in ecstasy. And when Balor went to retract the blade, he could not.
He glanced down to see the Spider Queen holding the blade in her grasping hand.
Holding the blade!
In desperation, he threw forth another blast of lightning through the blade, perhaps the greatest he had ever evoked, and he saw it enter Lolth’s hand, saw it fly from the blade to the gaping wound the blade had gashed. And Lolth took it, accepted it fully into her great frame, and from her free hand came a shock of lightning that seemed her own and Balor’s combined, slamming into Balor and driving him back.
He wrenched free his sword, and now he did hear pain in Lolth’s cry as her hand came with the sword. But any joy that realization might garner proved short-lived as he felt the pillow-like softness behind him. The wall of webbing grabbed at him. His thrashing only brought it closer around him.
Hatefully, Balor looked at Lolth, at her smile, even though she was holding up her arm, spraying blood, ending in a torn and fingerless stump.
She vomited onto him again, her poisonous spittle covering him, burning at him. She bade her webbing to complete its roll around Balor. Her million spiders eagerly released their filaments, redoubling their efforts to bite at him.
Balor’s whip flashed out and connected with nothing, the swing smothered by the too-thick blanket of webbing and spiders.
All sense of balance left him. He could not move, could feel nothing but the poison of Lolth and the tiny bites of her unrelenting minions.