"They already have," the other answered. "They're surprisingly capable of following orders. Of course, it helps that they think those orders come from Lolth herself."
Both males laughed.
Jub's hairs shivered erect. Chitines were four-armed magical creations of the drow. Bred as slaves by wizards centuries ago, they were only three-quarters the height of a male. Abandoned by their creators as unfit, they had escaped, decades ago, to distant reaches of the Underdark, where they lived still. Jub had blundered into one of their web-filled caverns once-luckily for him, just one chitine denned there. He'd killed it but had come away covered in gouges from its hook-lined palms and feet. He'd been lucky to get out alive. The chitines hated the dark elves with an intense, smoldering anger. They attacked all drow on sight-even a half-drow like Jub.
Yet these Selvetargtlin were talking about the chitines as if they were pet lizards.
Lizards that, by the sound of it, were fighting battles for them.
The males were still talking, though in less boisterous voices as their breathing gradually slowed. Wanting to hear more, Jub descended from the ceiling on a thread of silk.
"… glad to hear your chitines fought well," the Selvetargtlin with the mace was saying. "What was their target?"
"The Moonwood. They killed eight dark dancers."
Jub jerked to a halt and thought, No wonder Qilue said this job was so important. These guys are attacking Eilistraee's shrines.
"If our underlings do their job too well, we'll bleed them gray, instead of just drawing them away with our feints," the male with the mace said.
"I hope not. I want a few of them still standing when we jump to the temple, at least sixty-six of the bitches-one for each of us to kill."
Both laughed as they walked toward the door.
"So the chitines didn't suspect anything?" the Selvetargtlin with the mace asked.
"None." The other grinned. "I told them the Spider Queen would reward them with…"
The voices faded away as the pair walked out into the street. Jub hung from his thread, slowly spinning in place, waiting for their shouts of alarm. The dead priestess was just outside the door. The two would practically have to step over her on their way outside, but no alarm came. The Selvetargtlin, it seemed, didn't care that a priestess of Lolth had been killed.
Probably, Jub realized, because they'd killed her.
He wondered if he should follow the pair of clerics, but then figured they'd be walking too quickly for him to keep up. He'd heard enough, anyhow. "Temple," they'd said. "The temple." They were planning an attack on the Promenade. Sixty-six of them, it seemed-a curiously exact number.
The Promenade wasn't far away-only a few leagues, as the worm burrowed-but its magical protections were rock-solid. Jub wondered how the Selvetargtlin were planning on getting inside. Far as he could see, there was no way they'd be able to.
He turned and scrambled back up the strand of web then out onto the roof. It was time to make his report.
He scuttled back to the tunnel, crossing rooftops where he could, but several times he was forced to scurry along the floor. He had an anxious moment when he reached the exit. The sword-foot spider nearly skewered him, its blade-sharp feet clacking down all around him as he made a dash for it-but then he was in the passage once more.
He hurried along it, back to the empty cavern.
Once there, he ducked into another of the side passages and shifted back into his half-drow form. Qilue had told him to report any discoveries back to her the moment it was possible to do so. She probably didn't expect him to get out of there alive with a dracolich flying around. That pricked his pride, but not so much that he wouldn't do as she'd asked. He owed Qilue. Fourteen years ago, her consort had died while freeing Jub and a bunch of other wretches from a slave ship in Skullport. Instead of blaming the slaves for her consort's death, Qilue had set them free-and invited them back to the Promenade to live. She hadn't even tried to claim the slaves as her own. All she'd demanded, in return for their freedom, was one favor from each of them.
Fourteen years later, Jub was finally going to pay her back.
His clothing and gear had polymorphed with him when he invoked the phylactery's magic, and they were back on his half-drow form. He pulled a slim metal tube from his pocket and uncorked it then carefully tipped out its contents. A feather with a silver shaft fell into his hand, followed by a roll of parchment. He sat, cross-legged, and touched the magical quill to his tongue to prime it. Then he began to write.
His letters were clumsy-simple block letters, like a child would write. If anyone else but Qilue were going to read it, he'd have been embarrassed, but Qilue never made fun of him. She was as beautiful, body and soul, as Jub was ugly.
SELV. CLERICS ATTACKED THE MOON WOOD WITH CHITTENS. BUT IT WAS JUST A FAINT. THEYR GOING TO. ATTACK THE PROMENAD, TOO. 66 OF THEM. NOT SURE WHEN.
He paused a moment, thinking, then added:
THEYR IN DOLBLUND,LIKE YOU THOT.I THINK THEY KILT A LOLTH PREESTIS THERE.
He paused again. Qilue had told him to write down everything he saw and heard, no matter how insignificant it seemed. So he added:
His message finished, Jub tapped the magical quill against the parchment three times. On the third tap, the words he'd written flowed back into the quill, vanishing from the page. Jub held the feather close to his mouth and whispered Qilue's name, then released it. The feather streaked through the air like an arrow, vanishing in a sparkle of silver motes.
Jub shifted to a crouching position, hands and knees on the floor, ready to polymorph again. As he did, he heard something in the cavern outside, a soft, halting step, as if someone was shuffling along. As it drew closer to the tunnel he was hiding in, he activated his phylactery and scrambled up the wall in spider form. The shuffling-a vibration he could feel in his legs-stopped at the entrance to his tunnel. Something peered inside. It was one and a half times the height of a drow, with a recognizable head, arms and legs, but its body was entirely covered in a thick mass of tangled- webs. Eight spider eyes stared out of a face dominated by a gaping mouth and gnashing fangs. The thing smelled like a combination of spider musk and rot. Wherever the crude blobs that were its hands and feet touched stone, they left a clump of clinging web.
The thing stared at Jub for several moments-long enough to unnerve him. Just when he was certain it had recognized him as an enemy, it withdrew. It shambled away through the cavern, its feet making sticky, shuffling sounds.
Time to get out of here.
Jub doubled back the way he'd come, climbing the steep walls of the cavern. When he reached its ceiling, his hairs picked up a faint air current emerging from a nearby crack in the rock. The air was flowing into the cavern and was slightly damp. It smelled of melting snow.
The crack was just wide enough for him to squeeze into. It was also a quicker way out-one that didn't lead past all those traps. He scrambled up through it. The climb was a torturous one, and Jub nearly got stuck several times, but the higher he climbed, the better he could smell the wintery scent of the woods above.
The darkness of the shaft was starting to pale to gray when he passed a narrow fissure that opened onto a vast cavern. One glance into it was enough to halt him in his tracks. The floor of the cavern glittered with thousands of gems and coins, strewn about like pebbles on a beach. Half buried in these were statues, books, bejeweled breastplates and helms, silver-chased swords, chalices, and a host of other treasures. It was a sight that Jub had never expected to see in his lifetime-a dragon's horde.