Despite his reservations, suspicions, and general distaste for the Baenre noble, Ravel found himself believing in Tiago’s sincerity. So surprising was that to him that the spellspinner briefly wondered if one of Tiago’s magical items had secretly cast a dweomer upon him to enamor him of the young warrior.
“Well enough,” Ravel heard himself saying, to his surprise. “Coordinate it.”
Tiago flashed him a shining smile and motioned for Jearth to follow, then turned to his mount.
“I will lead the first assault,” Ravel demanded, his tone changing abruptly. “I and my spellspinners will cast the first stones.”
Tiago bowed respectfully and mounted Byok, then waited as Jearth retrieved his own lizard mount. In the few moments he had alone with Tiago, Ravel found that their discussion was not quite at its end.
Free yourself of your envy, Xorlarrin son, Tiago’s fingers flashed at him.
Ravel looked at him suspiciously, then answered, I know not what you mean, presumptuous Baenre son.
Don’t you? came the response, but it was flashed with an expression of honest curiosity and not consternation, minimizing the accusation.
Tiago’s fingers flashed emphatically, and quickly, since Jearth was even then climbing into the saddle, and soon to return. When our elders speak of the promising young males of Menzoberranzan, two names are most often mentioned, are they not? Tiago Baenre and Ravel Xorlarrin. Promising young students, respective leaders of their academies. Perhaps we are doomed to be rivals, bitter and ultimately fatal to one.
His grin as he signaled this showed which of them Tiago expected that to be.
Or stronger, perhaps, would we both become, if we found common gain here. If you uncover this Gauntlgrym and tame the beast of the place, House Xorlarrin will flee Menzoberranzan. We all know this, he added against Ravel’s widening eyes. Do you believe the designs of Zeerith a secret to Matron Mother Quenthel?
His reference to Ravel’s matron without use of her title, coupled with his own reference to House Baenre’s matron mother, raised Ravel’s doubts and his anger, but he suppressed both as he focused on this surprising young warrior’s hints and designs.
Perhaps Baenre, Barrison Del’Armgo, and the other five of the eight ruling Houses will see this as treachery, and will summarily obliterate Xorlarrin and all associated with her. You might be wise to foster relationships with some in Bregan D’aerthe to facilitate your escape in that instance, he added flippantly, for so intricate was the drow sign language that it allowed for such inflection.
Or perhaps not, and in that instance, Ravel Xorlarrin would do well to have a friend within the noble ranks of House Baenre, Tiago finished, as Jearth came riding up.
“Come, my friend,” Tiago said to Jearth, teasing Ravel with the wording as he turned and started away.
Ravel watched the young man go and even whispered “well-played” under his breath. For indeed, Tiago’s presentation had been believable. The young Baenre hadn’t begun to indicate that he would be anything other than an enemy if House Baenre and the others decided to come after House Xorlarrin. After all, though his reference to the mercenary band of Bregan D’aerthe was more than a bit intriguing, Tiago was a Baenre. Bregan D’aerthe worked for, above all others, House Baenre.
Was there a hint, then, that should war befall House Xorlarrin, Tiago might stand as Ravel’s only chance of escape?
The spellspinner couldn’t be sure.
Well played, indeed.
Ravel and his fellow spellspinners could hear the murmurs beyond the wall of blackness that separated them from the main area of the immense underground chamber. Not darkness like the near absence of light so typical in the Underdark, but overlapping magical globes, visually impenetrable and absolutely void of light.
The noble spellspinners of House Xorlarrin had enacted these globes, this visual wall, just inside one of the chamber’s more nondescript entrances. Another wizard had created a floating eye and directed it up above the wall of blackness, so he could function as lookout.
In went the goblin fodder, disciplined because to veer astray was to die, and to utter a sound, any sound, was to die. The ugly little creatures lined up shoulder to shoulder, forming a semicircle within the room, a living shield, while the drow spellspinners silently moved into the clear area behind them and began their work.
Nineteen sets of Xorlarrin hands lifted up high, fingers wiggling, wizards slowly turning and quietly chanting. This ritual had been Ravel’s greatest achievement, a particularly Xorlarrin manner of combining the powers of multiple spellspinners. From those reaching, wiggling fingers came filaments of light, reaching out to fellow wizards precisely positioned, equidistant to others within their particular ring, with four in the innermost, six in the middle, and eight in the outer. In the very center of the formation stood Ravel, his hands upraised and holding a sphere almost as large as his head.
The filaments crossed with near-perfect angles, reaching out and about, drow to drow, like the spokes of a wheel, and when this skeletal structure was completed, those casters in the innermost ring turned their attention to Ravel and sent anchoring beams to the strange sphere, which caught their ends and held them taut.
The eighteen went fast to their weaving, running filaments across those anchoring spokes. White drow hair tingled and rose up in the growing energy of the creation. Ravel breathed deeply, inhaling the power he felt mounting in his anchor sphere, glorious reams of energy tickling his fingers and palms, and seeping into his bare forearms so that his muscles tightened and stood rigid. He gritted his teeth and stubbornly held on. This was the moment that distinguished him from the other promising spellspinners, Ravel knew. He accepted the mounting energy into his body and soul. He merged with this, becoming one, adapting rather than battling, like an elf walking lightly over a new fallen snow, while a less nimble, less graceful human might plod through it.
For Ravel instinctively understood the nature of magic. He was both receptacle and anchor, and as the web completed, the energy mounted even more swiftly and powerfully.
But Ravel was ready for it. He heard his lessers scrambling around, glimpsed drow fingers flashing furiously, relaying commands and preparations.
He was not distracted. Slowly Ravel began to wind his hands around, and the magical web responded by beginning a slow and steady spin, the bright strands becoming indistinct as they left glowing trails behind their movement.
Ravel heard commotion beyond the wall of summoned blackness, as he had expected. Quiet as goblinkin might be, they sounded quite clumsy and raucous to the dark elves.
The globes of darkness began to dissipate, and the wider cavern reappeared to the noble spellspinner, beyond the semicircle of goblin fodder, and beyond that line, barely fifty paces away, stood ranks of orcs interspersed with taller, hulking bugbears.
Several raised voices in protest at the sight of the goblins, with the drow still mostly obscured, but with that glowing, spinning web up high above the goblin line and in clear sight. Despite his discomfort and needed concentration, Ravel managed a smile at the stupefied reactions he noted among the humanoids.
Only for a moment, though, for then the spellspinner threw all of his energy and his concentration into the rotating web. He turned with it, a complete circuit, then another and a third, and as he came around, Ravel pulled back his left arm and threw forth his right, launching forth the web in a lazy spin. It floated out past the goblins, continuing its rotation, and without the anchor that was Ravel, the magical energies contained within it began to escape the spidery structure.
The web reached forth, floating, rotating, lines of white lightning shooting down to split the stone beneath it. Orcs and bugbears, eyes widened in shock, scrambled and tangled, falling all over each other to get out of the way.