The drider charged, its pincers raised high, promising a lethal denouement. Demascus sidestepped the monster, but his foot caught on the loose head he’d earlier evaded. He went down hard, somehow managing to knock the wind out of himself on the webbed floor.
He sucked air as he attempted to regain his feet, only to be bashed back to the ground by a pincer. A thread of pain pulsed on the left side of Demascus’s body where the pincer tip had scored.
He internally searched for any remaining vestige of the Sword of the Gods. It was almost as if he’d exhausted its ability to manifest with his earlier fight with Chenraya. That, or the power didn’t like to be summoned; it liked to appear of its own accord, and was choosing to withhold its grace now-
The deva rolled away from another blow and managed to get Exorcessum up into guard. At least its power remained constant, evident in its blazing runes of red and white. His attacker paused, and Demascus finally managed to regain his feet. The sour, rotten smell of the drider’s breath engulfed him, nearly a presence in itself-one hardly less lethal than the monster.
Something struck him from behind hard enough to make him stumble. He groaned. Too many foes surrounded him. Light and shadow, where the Hells was his mastery? He tried to remember a word of power or a glyph of-
Thunder rode the heels of a crazy line of electric light that zagged past Demascus and impacted whatever was attacking him from behind.
He followed the blast back to its source and saw Queen Arathane, mantled in snapping sparks.
The queen was alive! And kicking. Relief warmed him.
The drider took advantage of Demascus’s distraction with another flurry of pincer strikes, forcing him back behind the point of his blade. He risked another glance at Arathane. She remained visible through the press, and he saw Chant and Riltana, too. They’d remained where he’d told them, of course.
Demascus deflected another blow, and gouged a bloody furrow up one of the drider’s arms. A bare instant later, flesh closed up where he’d torn it. Damn, the thing was regenerating its flesh. It enjoyed too many blessings of Lolth for the deva’s comfort.
The thought triggered a recollection. Oh, yeah, that’s how it was done! With a mental command, he activated one of the red runes on his blade. A rune in the shape of a tongue of fire.
“Burn!” he commanded, and swung the blade of his sword low along the ground, surprising the drider. Expecting another slash, it danced back. The triggered fire rune jumped from the blade like a flying fish from the sea. The drider attempted to evade, but the rune exploded into a sphere of raging flame. The creature was enveloped. Demascus dove away from the fury of the blast and failed to keep his feet. Which was becoming tiresome; he’d spent an inordinate amount of the fight on his face.
When the fire faded into sizzling wisps a heartbeat later, the monster survived only as a flaming heap of legs and pincers waving a thin banner of black smoke.
Then Demascus got up and sprinted along the irregular lane between the slave-soldiers, many of whom were momentarily enthralled by the drider’s fiery destruction.
He reached the chamber entrance. Chant was reloading his crossbow. Up close, he saw that Arathane was unsteady on her feet and much the worse for wear.
Riltana said, “Took your damn time,” but smiled.
“I’ve got the staff!” he shouted. He pulled the foreshortened length from his belt with one hand and waved Exorcessum like a lunatic in the other. “Most of it, anyway.”
Behind him, the chamber itself convulsed. A shriek of pure hatred rang the Demonweb like a bell. The sound was equal parts demonic bloodlust and a promise of endless death. No mortal throat could have produced such a horrible noise. And the fury of the remaining ettercaps and undead miners in the chamber had increased. Perhaps their madness wasn’t so unexplainable after all. The mind in the Demonweb, Lolth herself, was rousing to fury.
“Time to go,” said the queen.
Demascus herded the others before him down a webbed tunnel that pulsed like the throat of a swallowing giant. Chant moved as if his impressive girth was an illusion. But a particularly loud scream made him slow and glance behind him, his brow furrowed.
“Faster!” Demascus yelled. “Don’t stop!”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” came Riltana’s retort from farther down the bucking tunnel. The windsoul had the lead, literally flying, but Arathane was her shadow; the queen seemed to ride a chariot of lighting.
Demascus glanced over his shoulder.
A wave of arachnid fury filled the temple chamber they’d just left. Spiders in uncountable thousands boiled forward like stew on a cookstove. Their mandibles frothed with poison and malice. Not even the slave-soldiers were immune-ettercaps and the remnant undead miners were consumed so quickly they might as well have been disintegrated.
“Lords of light and shadow,” he murmured. The swarm flooded into the web corridor after the group, surging more quickly than even Riltana could fly.
“Sharkbite,” gasped Chant, breathless and suddenly more scared than intrigued by his situation. It seemed he’d finally realized that they might not make it. His eyes were wide as they saw a pang of mirrored fear in the deva’s expression.
“Just go!” Demascus yelled. If the exit had been even twenty feet farther, Chant would’ve been right. As it was, dozens of tiny spiders launched themselves from the swarm crest before Demascus, bringing up the rear and plunging into the orange-misted portal. They lit on his arms, head, and back, and began biting. He swatted and rolled as he spilled through the transition into the courtyard.
Then the spiders were gone, as if they’d been scraped away. But their wounds remained. He scratched at a welter of red bumps on his forearm, eyeing the portal. If the swarm billowed out, the courtyard would be instantly swamped.
“Those creatures,” said Arathane between big breaths, “weren’t real. They were manifestations of the Demonweb. Those spiders simply don’t exist outside Lolth’s portal network.”
“You hope,” said Chant. Then he blushed, and added, “Your Majesty.”
“I guess we’ll see,” said Riltana, who was already on the far side of the courtyard. “Maybe the rest of you should come and stand by me, just in case.”
Everyone shuffled over to the windsoul. The portal remained quiescent for another span of heartbeats. Just a quiet arch filled with colorful mist.
Demascus said, “Your Majesty? You’d better take this.” He handed her the staff.
The queen received the arambarium relic with solemn dignity. “Demascus-all of you-Akanul owes you a great debt.”
Riltana smiled. A laugh escaped Demascus as he regarded the scene. What did it say about him that nearly everyone he called a friend in Airspur had only a nodding acquaintance with the rule of law? On the other hand, being on speaking terms with the queen of the entire country balanced out that particular equation, with coin to spare.
Arathane continued, “It appears no spiders or dark-elf assassins are going to immediately rush out of the portal. But I won’t have such a vile passage in my land. Demascus, could I ask you one more favor?”
“Of course.”
“Stand guard over the portal mouth until I return, with a company of Akanul sappers and elite peacemakers. We’ll collapse this entire cave and portal so that nothing can ever use it again.”
Demascus said, “I’ll watch over it. But hurry. I’m so tired I’m starting to hallucinate that I’m sleeping, not talking. Riltana, would you go with the queen, escort her out of the Catacombs?”
Arathane smiled at him and winked. He did a doubletake; had that been real or an invention of his tired mind? The queen whirled, all her stately grace back in full measure. “Would you do me the honor?” she asked the windsoul.