“Oh, I believe you, lass,” Sull said, “but I won’t be holdin’ you back. I’ll be gettin’ a good seat to watch.”
The seneschal placed the book on the table in front of Zollgarza. The black cover bore a single onyx gem nestled in gold embellishments, and a forked black ribbon marked the section where some unknown reader had left off. The reader was likely dead now, Zollgarza thought, but then perhaps so am I, if this is another of the king’s plots.
He reached for the book, but the seneschal’s voice stopped him.
“Will you not wait until she returns?”
She referred to Icelin, of course. Zollgarza scoffed at the notion. “What difference could her presence possibly make?” he said. “If I’m to go mad, as you claim is a distinct possibility, she can’t save me, nor would she want to.”
“Isn’t it preferable, even for one such as you, to go into the unknown with someone by your side?” the seneschal asked. “While she is present, you will know you are not alone.”
“You’re mistaken. ‘Alone’ to me means safety, Seneschal,” Zollgarza replied. “It means there is no knife poised at my back, no enemy waiting to take advantage of a weakness.”
“Icelin is not a drow. Her sense of treachery does not stand as a virtue,” the seneschal pointed out.
“It doesn’t matter. Vice or virtue, when it comes to survival, everyone has a drow heart,” Zollgarza said.
He flipped open the book. What he’d been expecting, Zollgarza couldn’t truly say. He’d avoided thinking about the consequences of delving into the tome, focusing instead on the seneschal’s promise of clarity and certainty.
If this tome will tell me who I am, he thought. I will risk madness. I will embrace it.
The first page of the book was blank. Zollgarza scowled and flipped to the next. Blank. He turned the pages rapidly, searching for the words, but there were none. “Are you playing with me?” He whirled angrily on the seneschal, but she was gone. Zollgarza slammed his fist against the tabletop.
He picked up the book, intending to cast it into the fire, but he stopped. Shifting his grip, he held the book open flat on his palms. He thought he must have been imagining what he was seeing.
The book’s pages stood upright-held by an unseen force. Zollgarza reached out with his index finger to touch a page. It turned over slowly, ever so slowly, and fell from the right side of the book to the left.
Zollgarza released the breath he’d been holding. The air felt different-heavier, somehow. Dust motes drifted in front of his face, hanging like miniature stars, crystal clear. He reached up to touch one, and the ground dropped out from underneath him. A dark void yawned, and Zollgarza felt himself falling, his stomach heaving.
A trap. I should have known.
He landed in a crouch on a cold stone floor. Zollgarza instinctively reached for weapons he did not have and turned in a quick circle, looking for enemies.
The library had vanished. He was in a room lit by bluish arcane light. The source was an altar at the back of the room. Zollgarza rose to his feet, but he felt more exposed and vulnerable than ever. He recognized that altar. Once he’d run his hands over the symbols carved upon the obsidian surface, symbols now outlined in fresh blood.
But when? When had he done these things? This was a priestess’s private chamber-he knew that as surely as he recognized the texture of the altar and the lingering camphor scent of incense-a sanctuary where a drow of his rank would never be allowed to go. Yet everything about it felt familiar, welcoming, as if he were coming home.
“Kneel,” said a voice from the darkness.
Zollgarza tensed. Was that Fizzri’s voice? No, this was deeper, colder. Pulled from the darkness, the voice crawled over his skin, a seductive whisper, and a command so forceful Zollgarza felt his knees give way before it. In a breath, he was on the ground with his back to the altar.
A figure stepped from the shadows. Zollgarza recognized it and fell prostrate upon the floor.
“Mother Lolth!”
The yochlol smiled at Zollgarza. She was the goddess’s handmaiden, a demon appearing as a young drow female with silky white hair, a form-fitting black dress with the figure of a spider belted at her waist, and a necklace of diamonds that glittered in the arcane light. She stood before Zollgarza’s prostrate body. The scent of night-blooming flowers wafted from her, but there was an underlying odor, a hint of decay.
Bending, she lifted Zollgarza’s chin and forced him to look into her bottomless red eyes. “Why are you asking questions, child? Why are you so lost?”
“I want to know who I am.” It hurt to speak, to look at her. She was a beautiful, all-encompassing creature, and in a breath, she could devour him, taking all the pieces that were left of his mind.
“You are Zollgarza.” The yochlol’s breath ghosted over his face, that same rich smell of flowers and rot, sweet and terrible. “Loyal servant of the Spider Queen.”
“My memories …”
“Do not think on the past,” the yochlol purred, but there was a note of warning in her voice, a deepening of her crimson gaze. “The past clouds your purpose. Identity, self-these mean nothing to the Spider Queen. You must surrender them to her greater glory.”
“I … but there is such emptiness. The void threatens to consume me.” Those places where identity and self dwell, they were gone. If he couldn’t fill them, he had to know why they’d been taken. “I must give the void meaning. I must know my purpose,” Zollgarza begged.
“You’ve failed in your purpose,” the yochlol said, her gaze turning hard. “Mith Barak lives, and you’ve failed to obtain the Arcane Script Sphere.”
“Forgive me,” Zollgarza said. “The dwarves should have killed me, yet I live. My failure in the eyes of Lolth should have meant my death, yet I live. What is the purpose of it?” His voice shook. “Am I meant to be trapped-caged-forever? Is that my fate? I beg you, Lolth, don’t waste me like this! Don’t damn me to a dwarven prison. I can be so much more to you.”
His voice gave out, and he collapsed, pressing his forehead against the ground at the handmaiden’s feet. The yochlol walked past him, pausing before the altar to run her hand over the blood-filled carvings. Zollgarza followed her with his eyes, not daring to breathe, to hope that she would show him mercy. Lolth was not merciful, but she might give him a second chance if she thought him worthy.
“Is that what you believe?” the handmaiden purred. She lifted her hand from the altar, examining the fresh blood on her fingers. Inhaling the scent, she closed her eyes and with obvious pleasure, licked the blood from her fingers. “Do you believe the goddess sees in you a worthy servant?”
Zollgarza raised himself to his knees and parted the folds of his dark tunic to expose his chest. “I would spill my lifeblood for her. She has only to ask.”
The handmaiden laughed-a hard, cruel sound that echoed in the quiet chamber. “And what is that worth, foolish male?” She held up her bloodstained fingers. “This is the blood of a thousand priestesses, beloved of the goddess, mingled upon the altar to Lolth’s glory. They, too, shed blood willingly for Lolth. Do you claim your blood is purer than theirs?”
“I …” The denial stuck in his throat. Questioning the goddess’s view was not only forbidden but would likely result in a slow and excruciatingly painful death. Yet the words burned in his throat, and the urge to shout a denial, to scream at the demon that she had no idea of what greatness he was capable. Instead, he bowed low again to the handmaiden. “I know my place,” he said through gritted teeth, “but I can be more-to Lolth.”
“Perhaps,” the yochlol said. “But not as you are now. In this form, you are beneath her notice and caring. When you spill your blood and lie dying upon the floor, screaming Lolth’s name, she will not be there to comfort you.”