Queen of the Demonweb Pits (greyhawk) Read online

"Everyone has that problem! Just be glad you're not an octopus."

  "You've been an octopus?"

  "Hey, I'm a faerie!" Escalla's feather plumes gave a twirl. Her frost wand and lich staff were being used as hat pins. Two cherries on the hat served as her eyes. "Once a week back home, we used to take turns to scare the horses."

  "You and your sister would take turns polymorphing?"

  "My sister didn't have to polymorph. She had a face like a dog's bum with a hat on." Escalla-the-hat folded her feathers. "But anyway, this is a human town! You have to blend in. A faerie and a sphinx might draw attention, you know. This way, we're invisible. We're just a part of the crowd."

  This particular piece of the crowd was well endowed, had freckles, and was having a conversation with her hat. Still unhappy about her arms, missing her tail and wings, Enid tried her best to walk through the bustling street. She sniffed as she passed the ring of monks, then suddenly had to avoid a nasty fall.

  "Arms are silly. Do they always just hang here like this?"

  "Move 'em as you walk. Not like that! When your leg goes forward, your arm goes back. Anyway, you'll need the arms to carry all the cakes."

  "What cakes?"

  "The cakes we'll get at the bakery! It's on the list of provisions!"

  Enid sheltered against a wall as carts of grain trundled past on their way to the town mill. She pulled out a pair of spectacles and perused the shopping list Escalla had provided for her.

  "Let's see. Wine, honey, sugar, fruit, faerie cakes…" Enid read the list and screwed her pretty nose up in a frown. "Is this what we're getting for rations? I thought we needed some other things too?"

  "Hmm?" Escalla waved a feather. "No, just that. Oh, and maybe some meat, bread, vegetables, and cheese. I can't think of everything!"

  "I see." Enid carefully put the shopping list away. Escalla had a metabolism like a hummingbird. "I believe you should leave the rest of the shopping to me."

  "Sure! But can we get some cream? I really want faerie cakes with the tops cut into those little butterfly wings!"

  They reached a shop that actually seemed to be open-a shop that proudly hung a wooden board painted with a cake from its eaves. The sign seemed new, clean, and neat. It was perfect. Escalla jiggled until Enid moved in the right direction, and Escalla was almost knocked off Enid's head as the tall girl entered the cramped, dim little store. Out in the street, the monks moved their circle closer to the store. The noise of the city dimmed as the door swung firmly shut.

  A large, sticky cake sat on a bench. The cake was covered in honey, fruits, and sugar, and it had been freshly sliced into dainty little pieces. In a town given over to mass producing simple food for refugees, the cake was an utter treasure. Escalla saw the sweet and drooled.

  Enid gave a sniff then narrowed her eyes and leaned over the cake, sniffing at it again. Escalla reached out with her feathers, but Enid stepped back out of the way.

  "Oh, dear. I believe I've forgotten my purse."

  Escalla shifted on Enid's head, looking carefully from left to right. The hat disappeared with a subtle pop as the faerie turned invisible.

  The attack came from the rafters-a massive blast of lightning stabbing from the dark. Enid ducked, and the spell shattered against a shield made of swarming golden bees. The ceiling instantly caught fire from the ricocheting energy.

  The globe of bees flickered and swirled around Enid. Escalla hovered in midair, naked, visible, and coldly furious as she readied her lich staff in her hand.

  "Nice one, frot-head! I like your poisoned cake."

  Enid hissed like an angry cat, hunched, and bared her teeth. Escalla looked idly at another blank patch of darkness.

  The next spell hammered at them in a manic blast of ice. The rear wall of the shop smashed in, the serving counter torn apart under a raging storm of icicles and frost. Safe inside their sphere of bees, Enid and Escalla watched and waited.

  The frost storm died, leaving the room ice-white and steaming with mists. Posing with her staff idly crooked across her shoulders, Escalla looked at the damage with a sneer.

  "For the uninitiated, this is a lesser sphere of invulnerability. An anti-magic shield. Guess you'll just have to take me out hand-to-hand." Escalla's shield spell worked both ways-no magic could go in, and no magic could go out. With a sly smile, the faerie laid a hand on Enid and caressed her with a spell. "But hey! Lookie what I've got here."

  Clothes ripped to rags. Enid warped up and outward into her sphinx form, her hindquarters knocking over the remnants of the rear wall. Clawed and bristling, a full-grown sphinx now crouched beneath the faerie girl. Standing on Enid's head, Escalla looked idly about the shop.

  "Are you coming out to play?"

  The answer came as a derisive female laugh, a laugh ringing with insanity. The roof fell, and Enid leaped forward, smashing through the wall and out into the street. Escalla sheltered from debris beneath Enid's wings. The shield spell danced and shimmered a golden light across the cobblestones.

  Standing in silence, a ring of hooded monks made a cordon around Enid and Escalla. The monks stood in silence, crouched and intense. Their robes hid their hands and faces in impenetrable darkness. Escalla hovered with her staff in hand. The sphinx unsheathed her huge claws and spread her wings. There were easily thirty monks, but it was doubtful that any of them could fly.

  The laugh came once again-a horribly familiar laugh tinged with a gay touch of madness. Escalla felt absolute loathing ooze through her soul.

  "You."

  Tielle, Escalla's sister, became visible at last.

  She was better fleshed than Escalla, with rounder curves at chest and thigh. Dressed in a few tiny specks of adamantine and silver, the faerie hovered gaily in mid air.

  "Sweet sister and her pretty kitty!" Tielle looked at Escalla in sick intensity, as though she had long adored and lingered over every inch of Escalla's hide. "It was very dark in prison. They left me as a blob, you know. A blob in a big, dark hole. Because it was your joke. Because dear beautiful Escalla thought it was funny." Tielle stared, her eyes wide and intense. "Oh, Escalla. My wonderful Escalla." Tielle cradled a drinking horn and a crystal ball tight against herself, hugging them as though their love spoke to her soul. "I have so looked forward to feeling you die."

  Running madly through the streets, Polk squinted at ankles, legs, and shoes. His badger nose smelled drow. Drow! People scattered, soldiers shouted. A woman screamed as he sped straight beneath her skirt. Polk wheezed as he ran, his fat fur rippling like an onrushing wave. Humans threw themselves out of his way, shouting in panic as they fought to escape the badger.

  Polk ran, dodging as a soldier stabbed at him with a spear. The big badger finally found the city wall and raced growling along its base. He bowled over a pile of baskets, ripped clean through a row of tents, and scattered pots and pans in his wake. He bellowed, "Jus! Where are you son?" He got no answer, and so the badger lumbered on.

  Three soldiers tried to wall him in with shields. Polk took them at a run, ploughing through a gap between their shields. He sped onward, scrabbling awkwardly up a set of stone stairs as he climbed to the city battlements. Overhead, the storm clouds shut away the sun.

  "Son! Son, where are you? Where are you, son?"

  "Polk! What in Cuthbert's name are you doing?" The Justicar sat at the head of the stairs with his sword across his knees, Cinders on his back, and Henry squatting beside him. Three town guards and a captain were with them, all gathered around a map. "Polk!"

  The badger gave a savage roar. Polk leaped the last three steps, bowling Henry over as he landed on Henry's chest. Polk hurtled forward in a snarling charge beneath the magistrate and crashed into a vast spider that hauled itself over the battlements.

  The giant spider was bigger than a horse. Polk shot under its jaws and attacked. Badger teeth ripped through chitin. Blood flew, and Polk wrenched the leg off the spider. Flailing its feet, the spider loomed over Polk, twin fangs bared and ready to stab down
into the badgers heart. An instant later, the spider was smashed aside, Jus's blade smacking into the monster's face.

  The blade hit hard, fast, and in savage silence. The monster staggered. The Justicar's sword hacked off one front leg, then another, then clove down in a massive blow that split the spider's head in two. He kicked the giant spider aside. The white blade of his sword shining, the Justicar looked across the city walls, and turned to roar back at the city guards.

  "Get your men to the battlements! Move! Move!"

  The captain stood, then lost his upper torso as a ballista bolt ripped above the battlements. Blood sprayed over the city walls. A second bolt whirred as it flew, and the Justicar raged forward, his big sword ringing as it caught the massive iron shaft and knocked it up into the air. Jus shouldered soldiers aside, then hacked his blade down into another spider's leg that came prancing over the wall.

  Jus killed the spider with a vicious twisting thrust of his sword over the battlements. He cut away the web the creature had been laying as a ladder up the city walls. Soldiers stared, then grabbed crossbows, javelins, and bows, running faster and faster to their posts as the war cries and screams of an immense army sounded from the fields below. Signalers blew their battle horns as the whole world suddenly went mad.

  The Justicar gave Polk a sharp nod, then helped him scrabble up onto the battlements. Polk and Henry looked out over the stone walls, off into the flooded countryside below, and both stared in ashen surprise.

  "That wasn't there a moment ago!" Henry said.

  Curtains of illusion faded and fell, revealing a vast army rampaging toward Keggle Bend. The flooded, muddy fields were jet black, boiling with a vile carpet of screaming flesh. For miles around, the countryside was covered with a baying, ravening multitude. Monstrous black shapes raged toward the city walls. There were spiders as big as dinner plates, as big dogs, and some as big as mares. There were creatures with swords and monsters with spears. Here and there, titanic spiders stood above the boiling mass, their backs crowned with ballistae and howling warriors. Black widows the size of horses led the incoming waves, the creatures splashing through muddy fields to clamber up the walls. Other spiders had already reached the battlements, webs stringing to the ground behind them as they climbed. The first wave of warriors reached the webs, and began to climb upward in a mass of hate and steel.

  7

  Crowds scattered in panic. Facing each other across a stretch of cobblestones, Escalla and Tielle seethed with spells. Escalla laid arrow-wards and blade-wards over herself and Enid as she watched the circle of monks from the corner of her eye.

  Tielle's costume consisted mostly of jewelry and spider silk. Looking at her sister, Escalla raised one eyebrow in disdain.

  "Nice outfit, Thunder Thighs. I see prison food agreed with you."

  "Insults." Tielle's eyes brightened. "Oh, I knew there would be insults!" Tielle looked at Escalla in yearning hunger. "And there you are, looking so beautiful. I want you to feel pretty! I want you to feel as beautiful and as glorious as you can." Tielle's breathing was deep and ragged as she wrung her hands about a large crystal horn. "And then I want to sear the skin off you. I want to burn you, Escalla, and I want it to last and last and last…"

  The bystanders had fled. Escalla looked at her sister and weighed the lich staff in her grasp.

  "All right, so I'm guessing you have a few more issues than last time we met?" Escalla hovered behind her shield. "I don't know how you got out of prison, but this time you're going back in pieces! Now, are you going to keep wasting spells, or are you going to drag your butt in here and fight like a faerie?"

  Shielded against magic, against missiles, and with sorcery able to deflect mortal blades, Escalla was ready for a fight. Beneath her, Enid gave a feline hiss. The sphinx was as big as a bull and a hundred time more deadly. Almost oblivious to the danger, Tielle flew brightly over to the edge of the magic shield.

  "Oooh. A lesser sphere of invulnerability! What a lovely, powerful little spell." The girl looked coyly sidewise at her sister. "Escalla? Would you consider yourself to be a good little faerie?"

  Escalla gave a disdainful shrug. "I fight the fight. I right the wrongs. Yeah, I'm good." The girl held her lich staff like a child about to play bat-and-ball. "What's it to you?"

  "Oh, nothing." Tielle held her hands merrily behind her back. "But do you know what? I have a secret."

  "Yeah? What?"

  "This!"

  Tielle moved. Escalla caught the motion and hurtled skyward. An instant later, a hissing blast of fluid shot out of Tielle's horn.

  Escalla screamed.

  Like red quicksilver, the fluid jetted outward in a solid beam. The spray clipped Enid on one shoulder, then swerved to catch Escalla as she twisted and flew. The blow hit Escalla on one thigh, the force of the blow knocking her spinning through the sky until she crashed against the cobblestones.

  Escalla thrashed in mindless agony. She arched her back and hammered her head on the pavement as raw pain ripped into her leg. The fluid hissed and burned, bubbling away flesh and skin. The golden bees of her magic shield scattered madly aside as Escalla smashed herself against the road.

  Tielle laughed and shook the horn next to her ear, smiling warmly as she heard yet more liquid sloshing away inside. She pointed the horn at Escalla and grinned.

  "And now, your body. But not your face…"

  Another beam of blood-silver shot straight at Escalla. She croaked and tried to move aside, but she was paralyzed with pain.

  With a roar, Enid lunged, shielding Escalla with her back. Fluid blasted into Enid's hide, searing her to the bone. Tielle gave her insane, ringing laughter as the horn ran itself dry.

  "Take them! Take them now!"

  The monks threw back their hoods. Reeling in agony, Enid could only stare.

  The opened hoods revealed hideous giggling faces, the eyes rolling mad and the flesh dripping wet with sweat. Their flesh was twisted and entwined with coil after coil of chains, mummifying them in steel. Thirty of the creatures gibbered and giggled as they whipped their arms forward, and chains lashed out to crack into Enid's hide. The sphinx staggered and thrashed. Chains wrapped around and around her legs, wings, and throat, dragging at her from a dozen different directions. Behind her servants, Tielle clapped her hands and made a little dance of glee.

  "Aren't they lovely? They're from Pandemonium, where I serve the Queen of Wind and Woe!"

  Tugging madly at the chains, the monks tried to drag Enid in a dozen different directions at once. Tielle watched it all in simple joy.

  "You might have spells and powers, Escalla, but I have friends!"

  One leg burned almost to the bone and her wings melted and useless, Escalla shook as she reached her hand up to Enid. The sphinx reared, trapped in agony, a dozen chains trying to wrench her from her feet. The sphinx fought back with huge strength and power, whirling and thrashing, sending Tielle's servants crashing to the ground. One chain monk flew and smashed into a wall, still giggling even as it died. More chains flew, links closed tight about Enid's throat, and Tielle leaned eagerly close as Enid started strangling to death.

  Escalla managed to reach Enid's foot. A chain whipped out and crashed against the injured faerie, wrapping around and around. Escalla gripped Enid's fur. A chain monk screamed and leaped for her, chains flailing through the air, then suddenly fog exploded through the alleyway as Escalla coughed out a spell.

  "No!"

  Tielle hurled herself high above the whirling melee. Fog choked the alleyway, and the chain monks whooped and wailed as their empty chains thrashed at the air. Screaming, Tielle ploughed a spell into the fog's heart. The fireball blasted cobblestones into the air, tossing aside chain monks and shattering houses in the street. She fought her way down through the mist, waving her hands to clear her view. Molten stone and shattered shops collapsed into rubble and debris. No corpses lay splayed before her-only empty sheaths of chain.

  "No!"

  The faerie rip
ped at the cobblestones with her bare hands, trying to find her sister. Raving, Tielle tore the rubble apart with spells, smashing and gouging her way down to the dirt below. Panting, she reared up out of the filth, casting wildly from side to side with her face streaming tears.

  "Where is she? Why did you release her? Why? Why?"

  Chain monks fell back in terror. Tielle blew one of them apart with one savage gesture of a finger, her hair flying about her little body as she stamped and screamed in hate.

  A chain monk crouched in the dirt nearby, hooting and moaning as it flapped a calming hand at Tielle. The monster pointed at an opening in one of the stone gutters of the street-an opening that led down into the flooded city sewers. A ferocious stench rose from the hole. Tielle flung herself over to the gutter and peered inside.

  The hole was nothing but a slot a handspan tall, leading to a drop some twenty feet or more into the sewer tunnels down below. The faerie slammed her hand against the stone and roared in rage.

  "Polymorph! Escalla and her mangy friend shape-changed and escaped!"

  Tielle could shapeshift and chase her sister down into the sewers, but the chain monks would be left behind. Tielle needed the chain monks to catch and hold all of Escalla's little friends. She turned upon her servants and showered them with abuse.

  "Tear up the streets! There must be a way into the sewers somewhere! Find it. Go-go-go!"

  Tielle raged, and the chain monks raced to do her will. Left alone in the street, the faerie snatched up a torn ribbon of black skirt and hurled it to the ground.

  Overhead, the sun suddenly dimmed. Darkness spread over the city, and the air trembled with a distant roar.

  The legions of Lolth had come. The battlements would be stormed, the air would fill with abyssal bats, and Tielle's prey might be slain by any one of ten thousand monsters. Cursing, Tielle walked back down the streets as lightning cracked high up in the sky.

  "Get down!"

  On the battlements, the town guards flung themselves flat as a wave of spells shot upward from the onrushing hordes below. Lightning bolts smashed stone from the battlements and charred soldiers into ash. The Justicar pushed spearmen into cover, then whirled and cut an incoming lightning bolt clean out of the sky. Benelux shrieked, half in pain and half in exultation.