Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(58)

“Damn your Spider Queen!” Drizzt spat. “Though I am certain Lloth found damnation eons ago!”

“She brings us power!” Vierna shrieked.

“She steals everything that makes us worth more than the stone we walk upon!” Drizzt screamed back.

“Sacrilege’,” Vierna sneered, the word rolling off her tongue like the whistle of the matron mistress’s snake whip. A climactic, anguished scream erupted from inside the room.

“Evil union,” Drizzt muttered, looking away.

“There is a gain,” Vierna replied, quickly back in control of her temper.

Drizzt cast an accusing glance her way. “Have you had a similar experience?”

“I am a high priestess,” was her simple reply.

Darkness hovered all about Drizzt, outrage so intense that he nearly swooned. “Did it please you?” he spat.

“It brought me power,” Vierna growled back. “You cannot understand the value.”

“What did it cost you?”

Vierna’s slap nearly knocked Drizzt from his feet. “Come with me,” she said, grabbing the front of his robe. “There is a place I want to show to you.”

They moved out from Arach-Tinilith and across the Academy’s courtyard. Drizzt hesitated when they reached the pillars that marked the entrance to Tier Breche.

“I cannot pass between these,” he reminded his sister. “I am not yet graduated from Melee-Magthere.”

“A formality,” Vierna replied, not slowing her pace at all. “I am a mistress of Arach-Tinilith; I have the power to graduate you.”

Drizzt wasn’t certain of the truth of Vierna’s claim, but she was indeed a mistress of Arach-Tinilith. As much as Drizzt feared the edicts of the Academy, he didn’t want to anger Vierna again.

He followed her down the wide stone stairs and out into the meandering roadways of the city proper.

“Home?” he dared to ask after a short while.

“Not yet,” came the curt reply. Drizzt didn’t press the point any further.

They veered off to the eastern end of the great cavern, across from the wall that held House Do’Urden , and came to the entrances of three small tunnels, all guarded by glowing statues of giant scorpions. Vierna paused for just a moment to consider which was the correct course, then led on again, down the smallest of the tunnels.

The minutes became an hour, and still they walked. The passage widened and soon led them into a twisting catacomb of crisscrossing corridors. Drizzt quickly lost track of the path behind them as they made their way through, but Vierna followed a predetermined course that she knew well.

Then, beyond a low archway, the floor suddenly dropped away and they found themselves on a narrow ledge overlooking a wide chasm. Drizzt looked at his sister curiously but held his question when he saw that she was deep in the concentration. She uttered a few simple commands, then tapped herself and Drizzt on the forehead.

“Come,” she instructed, and she and Drizzt stepped off the ledge and levitated down to the chasm floor.

A thin mist, from some unseen hot pool or tar pit, hugged the stone. Drizzt could sense the danger here, and the evil.

A brooding wickedness hung in the air as tangibly as the mist.

“Do not fear,” Vierna signaled to him. “I have put a spell of masking upon us. They cannot see us.”

“They?” Drizzt’s hands asked, but even as he motioned in the code, he heard a scuttling off to the side. He followed Vierna’s gaze down to a distant boulder and the wretched thing perched upon it.

At first, Drizzt thought it was a drow elf, and from the waist up, it was indeed, though bloated and pale. Its lower body, though, resembled a spider, with eight arachnid legs to support its frame. The creature held a bow ready in its hands but seemed confused, as though it could not discern what had entered its lair.

Vierna was pleased by the disgust on her brother’s face as he viewed the thing. “Look upon it well, younger brother,” she signaled. “Behold the fate of those who anger the Spider Queen.”

“What is it?” Drizzt signaled back quickly.

“A drider,” Vierna whispered in his ear. Then, back in the silent code, she added, “Lloth is not a merciful deity.”

Drizzt watched, mesmerized, as the drider shifted its position on the boulder, searching for the intruders. Drizzt couldn’t tell if it was male or female, so bloated was its torso, but he knew that it didn’t matter. The creature was not a natural creation and would leave no descendants behind, whatever its gender. It was a tormented body, nothing more, hating itself, in all probability, more than everything else around it.

“I am merciful,” Vierna continued silently, though she knew her brother’s attention was fully on the drider. She rested back flat against the stone wall.

Drizzt spun on her, suddenly realizing her intent. Then Vierna sank into the stone. “Goodbye, little brother,” came her final call. “This is a better fate than you deserve.”

“No!” Drizzt growled, and he clawed at the empty wall until an arrow sliced into his leg. The scimitars flashed out in his hands as he spun back to face the danger. The drider took aim for a second shot.

Drizzt meant to dive to the side, to the protection of another boulder, but his wounded leg immediately fell numb and useless. Poison.