He could imagine Riltana’s voice. “Now’s not the time to contemplate your navel, idiot!”
The final drow warrior saw Demascus appear behind Chenraya. But the dark elf didn’t betray the deva’s presence to the priestess. Demascus realized he’d just made an ally, if only briefly, in the drow’s hate for Chenraya.
Demascus sheathed his white-runed blade and snatched up the Veil of Wrath and Knowledge in his free hand. The fabric stirred at his touch. He turned to Chenraya. But he couldn’t detect the Veil’s secret shadow, the dim shroud only he could see. No time to wonder why.
He sheathed his other blade, then flipped the Veil around the drow priestess’s neck and pulled it tight. Sometimes the best tricks were the oldest.
Chenraya tried to gasp. But the scarf was already so tight she only squeaked. Then she thrashed like a bear caught in a trap. Her strength amazed him. Her feminine frame belied the vicious power of her limbs. He kicked her behind the knees and pulled her head back. With her feet no longer completely supporting her weight, her ability to resist was curbed. But she still flailed and pummeled like a demon. And he supposed she might partly be one, given whom she worshipped.
The drow warrior seemed to finally decide his distaste for Chenraya was less than his hatred for someone who would lay a hand on one of his own. He rushed the deva.
Demascus circled, trying to keep Chenraya between himself and the warrior. Her resistance allowed a few of the warrior’s quick sword thrusts to prick him, though none seriously. Besides, he only needed to keep pressure around her neck for just a few more heartbeats and Chenraya would be done. Just to be sure, he tied off the scarf as tightly as possible.
Her cloak picked that moment to reveal itself as an animate threat. The dark material spilled off her like liquid. Then it inflated, appearing for all the world like a very large spider with huge, razor-sharp mandibles. They snapped with convincingly loud clacks and tried to bite the deva around the neck. His only choice was to release his choke on the priestess or risk losing his head to a decapitating bite. He threw himself back.
Chenraya lurched forward, into the arms of the drow warrior. Her cloak-guardian retained its newfound spider shape and advanced. Demascus swept Exorcessum’s twin blades out of their sheaths. The hilts fit his hands as if made for him. He laughed. With the tools of his office in hand, did these drow really think they could stand before him?
He stepped up to meet the advancing cloak-spider. Chenraya, eyes still bugged out and skin noticeably pale from the scarf still fastened around her neck, squeaked out a single word. A word like the one used by the other dark elf to shroud the dais in darkness.
This word summoned arachnids. A blinding downpour of black, biting spiders, impossible to see through, or live through, if one wasn’t drowborn!
He slipped out from beneath the hem of lowering arachnids by a hair’s breadth. A few sticky legs latched onto him even as he spun away from the swarming mass by leaping from the dais. He awkwardly swatted at the crawling things before they could find a chink in his armor or crawl up his chest and onto his face. Even for someone like him, it was awkward to swat spiders while holding two swords and still land on his feet from a dozen-foot fall into a crowd of monsters, most of which were waiting for him.
Chenraya couldn’t breathe. What felt like iron cable constricted her throat. The deva had abandoned the dais, but not his strangling cord. Though spiders shrouded her like a feather bed, she took no comfort from it. She could see perfectly well through the otherwise solid mass of swarming arachnids. The last Bregan D’aerthe mercenary stood unmoving, studying her. She gesticulated, mouth agape, eyes bulging, at the constriction at her throat. For all her strength, she couldn’t loosen it. Alarm and fear coursed in her blood like acid. She might die here!
The male finally took action. He spun her around and fumbled at a fabric knot that bulged at the nape of her neck. Only moments had slipped by, but the pressure behind her eyes expanded like a balloon, and exploratory fingers of darkness intruded on her vision. For the first time in her long life, Chenraya couldn’t see, not through this darkness. She panicked. No strength remained, so she flailed, with no breath to call out to Lolth for aid; she couldn’t even gasp. Whether she lived or died was all down to a single drow mercenary whose name she’d refused to learn. Which meant …
This is it, she thought. She’d have collapsed, but the swarming spiders held her upright with hundreds of tiny legs. Miraculously, the strangling cord was pulled away! She sucked in huge breaths. The surrounding swarm gave her space to breath.
“You saved me,” she rasped to the figure before her.
The last Bregan D’aerthe nodded. He held the offending white length of fabric in one hand. He took her left hand with the other. His grasp was warm, warmer than she would have guessed. She had never allowed herself such intimacy with the inferior sex before.
She cleared her throat. “I owe you a great debt. Please tell Lolth that, through you, her plans have moved a step closer to completion.”
“What?”
She plunged her favorite dagger into the mercenary’s heart with her right hand. Then she chanted the keystone word that would finally create the opening to her home, to Menzoberranzan.
The drow collapsed, his eyes round with accusation. It was the last expression he ever made. The strangling cord in his hands trembled, then slithered down the dais like a white snake. She let it go; it no longer mattered. The entire Demonweb was shuddering. Her ritual had come to fruition. The temporary portal in the ceiling shuddered open.
Oh, such glory would be hers! She’d acquired a portion of a dead Primordial so powerful, yet so tractable, that it would prove the perfect component. Thanks to her, Lolth’s coming apotheosis would succeed. And when Lolth became the new Goddess of Magic and the Weave, wouldn’t she raise Chenraya Xolarrin up as her first exarch?
Yes, Chenraya decided, as the influence of the temporary gate pulled her into its embrace. And as an exarch, a divine being in her own right, she’d be in a position to deal with her lessers as they deserved. A time of reckoning for the less-fair sex was imminent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DEMONWEB
21 LEAFFALL, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Demascus landed in the mass of slave-soldiers at least ten feet from the dais base. He didn’t land gracefully, and he garnered a few more bites. But he’d escaped the shroud of spiders above, and was on his feet a moment later, his twin swords accelerating like threshing blades. Two ettercaps rushed him, hoping to bring him down while he was still distracted. Their hope was in vain. Spidery ichor sprayed those shoving closer, a gory warning to the others to stay clear of him unless they wished the same.
He grinned, as the office of the Sword once more began to expand across his awareness-
“Demascus!” The cry for aid was louder than ever and truly desperate this time. A note of despair cut through his killing trance, enough that he was able to recognize Riltana’s voice.
“Chant’s hurt; Arathane’s poisoned. Help!”
The top of the dais remained within the swarm summoned by Chenraya. He’d left the Veil knotted tight around the priestess’s neck. If fate willed it so, the scarf had already strangled her to death.
He leaped over a reanimated miner, severing its head with a horizontal sweep of his blade. As he came down, he kicked an ettercap full in its face, breaking its mandibles. It screamed and fell back into its fellows. Demascus glanced to the top of the dais and saw the gods were not merciful. The platform was no longer cloaked in spiders. Chenraya stood alone, holding the silvery staff in one hand, rubbing her neck with the other.