Extinction (War of the Spider Queen #4) 6

Halisstra sat cross-legged on the wet stone floor of a cave whose only exit was far overhead. The walls of the cave were coveredwith pic-tures, the paint daubed onto the stone itself, the lines following the natural contours of the rock. Life-size figures of drow strained toward the ceiling, hands extended overhead and eyes glowing with raptur-ous desire. All of the figures were adult, but each had an umbilical cord that snaked down toward the floor of the cavern like a root.

Halisstra's wrists were no longer bound, but she could no more escape the cave than the painted figures could step away from the rocky canvas that held them. The walls were at least three times her height and curved inward to meet the hole in the ceiling, making climbing impossible without the aid of magic. She had been carefully and thoroughly stripped of all magical devices and weapons, and the curse the priestess had placed on Halisstra prevented her from singing or even humming - from using any of herbae 'qeshelmagic.

After Ryld had gone, the priestess who'd slain the troll teleported Halisstra into the cave, then disappeared. The First Daughter of House Melarn had remained there for an entire day, at first restlessly pacing the cave, looking for a way out. When she finally accepted the fact that she was trapped, she sank, cross-legged, into Reverie. Once she'd emerged from her meditations, she'd watched the circle of sky above grow gray, then black. The rain had stopped but the sky was still overcast. Neither the stars nor the moon could be seen. Looking up, Halisstra could almost imagine that she was in the Underdark  - that above the cave was a tunnel or passage. But the earth-and-bark-scented breeze blowing in through the hole destroyed that illusion, as did the low rumble of thunder in the distance. So too did the ferns that surrounded the opening like a fringe of hair. Beads of rain dripped from their sodden stems.

From outside came the sound of singing. The voices were those of the priestesses who'd gathered to decide Halisstra's fate. Their song was accompanied by the silvery tones of a flute and the rapid clash of swords, a staccato of metallic clangs marking the beat. Halis-stra thought it might just be her imagination, but it sounded as if the song was reaching a crescendo. She assumed that one of Eilistraee's followers would appear in another moment and announce how Hal-isstra was to die.

Halisstra braced herself for the inevitable. One way or another - by the magic of their traitor goddess or the cold steel of a sword - she was going to be put to death. The priestesses would have come to their senses and realized that Halisstra had only been buying time when she swore fealty to Eilistraee. The time had come for Halisstra to pray and prepare for entry into the next realm - but pray to which god?

Halisstra knew hundreds of prayers to supplicate Lolth - prayers she could recite with her hands, using the silent speech - but they would go unheard, unseen. Lolth had vanished and was no longer lis-tening to prayers. She wasn't even punishing blasphemers. The Demonweb Pits had been devoid of the souls of the dead, and Halisstra had to presume that Lolth's faithful were disappearing into oblivion, just as their goddess had.

Should Halisstra pray instead to Selvetarm, Lolth's champion? For all she knew, he might be locked in battle with Vhaeraun still and unable to hear her - or worse, slain. Was there any god who was still listening?

Halisstra shivered and drew her knees up against her chest, wrap-ping her arms around them. At least Ryldwas safe. Her surrender had saved him. She started to rest her chin on her knee, then winced as it touched the cut from Ryld's sword. The wound was a tiny one, no bigger than the crescent of her thumbnail, but it burned like a fresh brand. It had broken open and was bleeding again, even though Halisstra's chin had barely touched it.

Outside, the singing stopped. Halisstra heard a rustling above and glanced up to see Feliane, kneeling in the ferns and staring down at her. The priestess had scrubbed her face clean of the black dye, and her skin was an unhealthy looking mushroom-white. Looking at it, Halisstra decided she must have been wrong about the sky being over-cast; the moon must have been peeking through the clouds, because for a moment a faint, silvery radiance illuminated Feliane. Then it was gone, and Halisstra could see the priestess's face clearly again.

Well?Halisstra asked in sign.What is my fate to be? The song - or the sword?

"The song," Feliane answered.

Halisstra nodded grimly and stood. She wanted to meet death on her feet.

I'm ready,she signed, fingers moving in tense, sharp jerks.

Feliane's round face broke into a grin. On a drow, it would have been a gloat of triumph, but so innocent and naive looking was Feliane that for a moment it appeared like a warm smile. Halisstra pushed that foolish notion from her mind and stood, rigid, waiting.

Feliane began to sing in High Drow. From behind her, Haliss-tra could hear a chorus of women's voices, though Feliane's was the strongest.

"Climb out of the darkness, rise into the light.

"Turn your face to the sky, your elf birthright.

"Dance in the forest, sing with the breeze;

"Claim your place in the moonlight among flowers and trees.

"Lend your strength to the needy; battle evil with steel.

"Join in the hunt; to no other gods kneel.

"Purge the monster within and the monster without;

"Their blood washes you clean, of this have no doubt.

"Trust in your sisters; lend your voice to their song.

"By joining the circle, the weak are made strong."

Feliane extended her hand down into the hole, as if inviting Hal-isstra to take it. Her pale skin had taken on a moonlit glow.

It took Halisstra a moment to realize the import of the song and gesture. It wasn't an execution but an invitation. And not just to life, bur to join the circle. To join the priestesses of Eilistraee.

Halisstra's eyes narrowed. It had to be a trick of some kind.

"Trust?" she said - out loud, surprised to find that her ability to speak had returned.

She didn't need to let the scorn she felt creep into her voice; the word already held a negative connotation in the drow tongue, imply-ing weakness, naivete. She thought of the alliances she'd tried to build among her own sisters and how those alliances had been betrayed. She'd tried to reach out to Norendia, telling her sister about the bard who'd been teaching her darksong. A few cycles later, that bard had "fallen" from one of the city walkways to her death. Later that same cycle, Jawil, second oldest of the Melarn daughters after Halisstra, had made an attempt on Halisstra's life. When Halisstra had rushed to Norendia for help, she had been stabbed in the back. Literally. Thankfully, Halisstra's magic had proved strong enough to save her - and to kill her two sisters.

"Trust," she muttered again.

Behind Feliane, she could see the priestess who had slain the troll. The woman looked down, smiled, then stepped back out of sight.

Ideas flashed through Halisstra's mind, quick as lightning strikes. She could usebae'qeshel magic to charm Feliane into lowering her a rope then stun the rest of Eilistraee's priestesses with a painful burst of sound and escape. But each flash of inspiration left behind it a rumble of doubt, disturbing as the distant thunder.

Was escape really what Halisstra wanted - or had there been a faint echo of truth in the oath she'd sworn earlier? She'd been drawn to the World Above, though she hadn't been able to articulate the reason, either to Ryld or to herself. But now she was starting to un-derstand. She'd always thought treachery and selfishness to be indel-ible hallmarks of the drow, but she was beginning to see that there could be another way.

The drow who lived on the surface not only trusted one another, they were also willing to extend that trust to her. Even knowing that she had killed one of their priestesses - that she might do the same to any of them. Their faith in her capacity for redemption was strong, even though there was only the word of a dying priestess to base it on.

Or was there?

From somewhere above came the sound of a flute, playing a few soft, tentative notes. It reminded Halisstra of the sounds Seyll's sword had made when she was fighting the stirges. And of that single, piercing note that had at last knocked them from the sky. Had that been Eilistraee's magic at work? Had Halisstra already been accepted by the goddess, even then?

Feliane waited patiently, hand still extended, as Halisstra wrestled with her doubts. The elf priestess's entire body was glowing silver. Her hair seemed alive with sparkling stars, her smile was as bright as a crescent moon. The goddess had filled her, transformed her. She stared down at Halisstra with a mother's love, urging her to accept it.

Trembling, Halisstra raised her hands above her head, just like the figures painted on the cave walls.

"I accept, Eilistraee," Halisstra said. "I will serve you."

She felt a tear streaking down her cheek, and angrily told herself it was just a drip from the ferns above  - then she realized it didn't matter.

Feliane, too, was weeping.

The elf priestess began to chant, and Halisstra felt her body grow lighter. The stone floor dropped away from her feet as she floated upward, drawn by Feliane's spell. The fringe of ferns made the hole in the ceiling look too narrow to fit through, so Halisstra crossed her arms tightly against her chest, making herself smaller. As she rose through the opening, wet ferns brushed against her face, forcing her to close her eyes. Her body squeezed through them, slipping out of the cave, and she felt dozens of hands touching her, guiding her. The priestesses were all around the opening, lifting her from the cave, hugging her, singing.

"Climb out of the darkness, rise into the light..."

Opening her eyes, Halisstra looked up and saw the full moon through a break in the clouds. The goddess's face smiled down at her, weeping raindrops of joy.

"Eilistraee!" Halisstra cried. "I am yours!"

"The goddess welcomes you into her embrace," Feliane whis-pered in her ear. "Now you must prepare yourself for the trial she has set you."

Ryld frowned, puzzled, as he examined the footprints in the slush. He was still on the animal's trail - he was certain of that - but its footprints had suddenly changed. In one spot where the beast had paused, the track became more like the print a bare drow foot would make, but with deep gouges at the front of each toe that must have been claw marks. They reminded Ryld, at least a little, of the foot-prints of an orc but the stride, when the animal had continued from that spot, was all wrong. The beast had risen to walk on two feet, not four. The pattern of its footprints, however, was still more like the lope of a quadruped.

Short sword in hand, Ryld continued following the tracks. The animal-thing had tried to conceal its trail by walking along rocks or logs and wading up a stream, but Ryld had no difficulty following it. He was used to tracking opponents across the bare stone of caverns and tunnels. Even with it melting, the slush made tracking anything the work of a child.

Eventually he spotted a small structure deep in the forest. Made from rough-hewn logs, the one-room building had a slumped appearance, as if it was about to collapse at any moment. Its door hung at an angle, attached to the frame by a single rusted hinge, and the roof was thick with moss and larger, leafy surface plants sprout-ed from it in spots. Firewood that had once been stacked against one wall lay tumbled across the ground, dotted with a sprouting of fungus, and a hole in the building's roof marked where a chimney had once stood. Surrounded by a litter of broken bottles and rusted pots that had obviously been dragged out by scavengers long before, the shelter looked utterly abandoned.

But something was moving inside it.

Ryld drew hispiwafwi around himself and crept closer through the trees. He felt something soft under his boot, and the stink of fresh excrement rose to his nostrils. His lip curled. Even in the war-rens of Menzoberranzan, people didn't defecate so close to their homes. Whoever was living in the little shelter was no better than an animal, the weapons master thought, angrily scraping his boot.

He looked up just in time to see a small black shape streaking toward him from the cabin. It was the same sort of animal he'd been tracking - but not the same one. As the beast sank its teeth into the wrist of his sword hand, Ryld's warrior's instincts took over.

He grabbed the creature by the scruff of the neck with his free hand and used its own momentum to slam it into a tree. Dazed, it staggered to the side, shaking its head.

Ryld whipped his sword around in a slash at the animal's throat - but it proved quicker than he expected. His blade slammed into the tree behind it as the beast rolled out of the way.

Yanking his sword free, Ryld rounded on the creature - only to see it rearing up on two legs. It held its forepaws out in an unmis-takable gesture of surrender. Its mouth worked, forming words that were half yip, half speech.

"Wait!" it gasped in oddly-accented Low Drow. "Friend."

Ryld hesitated, but kept his sword ready.

"You can speak?" the weapons master asked.

The creature nodded urgently, then it closed its eyes as a shud-der coursed through it. Bald patches appeared in its fur and spread, exposing pale skin, and its muzzle shrank and flattened. The quadru-ped legs rearticulated themselves with a soft crackle of cartilage, and paws transformed into hands and feet.

When the transformation was complete, a naked human youth stood where the animal had been. Were he a drow, Ryld would have guessed his age at about twenty, but humans matured faster than that. The boy was probably no more than a dozen years old. His hair was black and tangled, his hands and feet as filthy as those of an urchin from the Stenchstreets.

"What sort of creature are you?" Ryld asked.

The boy uttered a word that Ryld didn't recognize, speaking one of the languages of the World Above. Seeing that Ryld didn't under-stand,he switched to Low Drow.

"A blend of wolf and human," he answered. "I shift between the two."

"Wolf?"

"The furred animal that walks on four legs," the human replied.

The weapons master nodded.

"Where is the other wolf-human?" Ryld asked it. "The gray one."

He kept a wary eye on the structure and surrounding forest, furi-ous at himself for having let his attention wane a moment before.

"There's no one here but me."

"Liar," Ryld spat. He stepped forward, menacing the boy with his sword. "Is the larger one your parent? Is that why you're trying to protect it?"

"I have no parents. They were killed in a hunt the year I was born," the boy explained. He not only stood his ground but glared back at Ryld, showing an amazing amount of mettle for a mere boy. "They were killed by your people."

Ryld considered that and said, "Is that how you learned to speak Drowic? Were you a slave?"

"My grandfather was, but he fought back."

"The gray wolf?" Ryld guessed. "That's your grandfather? Where is he?"

"He's not here," the boy replied, glancing into the forest in the opposite direction of the little building, though too casually.

The look told Ryld what he needed to know. The lie was as trans-parent as glass.

The weapons master reached down and grabbed the boy by the hair.

"I see," said Ryld. "Let's go talk to him."

He half-dragged, half-marched the boy to the shelter.

Pausing just outside the door, he held his sword to the chest of the squirming boy and called, "If you want the boy to live, show yourself. Give me some information and I'll spare his life, and yours."

There was no answer from inside the shelter, save for a low groan. As it sounded, the boy twisted in Ryld's grasp, trying desperately to squirm free. Ryld hurled him to the ground and slammed a boot into his chest. He raised his sword, too furious to care about getting information any longer.

"Stop!" a male voice gasped. "I'll tell you . . . whatever you want ... to know."

Ryld looked up and saw a human with gray hair and a beard that hung to his chest, leaning in the doorway of the shelter with a dirty blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His face had a haggard expression, and his right calf was bruised and swollen to twice its normal size. The foot below it was a shredded, bloody mess, as if it had been impaled on spikes, then torn free.

The boy screamed something at his grandfather in a language Ryld didn't understand, but his gestures made it obvious he was urg-ing the old man to flee.

The gray-haired man - he looked several centuries old, but was probably less than fifty - glanced down at his ruined foot.

"Run?" he asked the boy - speaking in Drowic, obviously for Ryld's benefit. "How can I?" Then he met Ryld's eye and asked, "What do you want ... to know?"

"The priestesses of Eilistraee," Ryld said. "Do they have a temple in this wood?"

The boy suddenly stopped squirming and looked up at Ryld.

"You're not part of the hunt?" he asked.

A grim smile appeared on the older man's face.

"He's not. Or he wouldn't be asking." Then, to Ryld, he said, "Let my grandson go ... and I'll tell you where the temple is."

Ryld removed his foot from the boy's chest. Instantly, the boy sprang to his feet. He stood warily, hunched over slightly with arms bent as if contemplating a shift into wolf form.

The gray-haired man chuckled, then waved at the boy.

"Yarno, leave him be. You can see by the look in his eyes. He's an enemy of the temple. And the enemy of our enemy . . ."

"Is your friend," Ryld completed.

The old man nodded and asked, "Have you any healing magic . . . friend?"

"Answer my questions, first," Ryld said. "And I'll see about heal-ing you."

The old man surprised him by chuckling.

"Not for me," he said. "For you. Your wrist."

Ryld glanced down at the spot where the boy had bitten him. The boy's incisors had broken the skin, and a trickle of blood ran down the back of Ryld's hand.

"It's only a scratch," he said.

The old man shook his head.

"Tell him, Yarno. He . . . he doesn't know."

"Tell me what?" Ryld asked, suspicious.

"We'rewerewolves, "the boy said. "Most of the time we shift forms because we want to, but whenever there's a full moon we be-come wolves whether we want to or not. We can't control ourselves when that happens. We attack everyone. Even our friends. When we wake up in the morning, we don't know what we've done."

"Your family is cursed?" Ryld asked, not bothering to inquire as to what a "full moon" might be.

"Not cursed," the old man said. "Diseased. And it's a disease that can be spread . . . through bites."

"They call us 'monsters,' " Yarno added in a pained whisper. "They hunt us."

Ryld nodded, understanding the boy's pain. Life as a werewolf in that forest would be much like living in the slums of Menzoberranzan.

He recalled his own childhood, always dreading the next group of drunken nobles who round sport in raging through the narrow streets, blasting the screaming wretches of the Braeryn with bolts of magic, slashing as they rode past on their lizards, leaving their vic-tims to bleed to death on the dirty stone of an alley.

The boy, Yarno, was staring intensely up at Ryld, his eyes filled with a lingering, unsalved hurt. Human the boy might be, but look-ing into his eyes was like staring into a mirror. Ryld's lips parted, and he nearly spoke the words aloud: I was hunted, too. I understand...

Then the boy's grandfather interrupted.

"I have belladonna," he said. "Yarno's parents planted it in the woods, hoping it would .. . spare their son. This was once their home." He paused to catch his breath, then went on. "The herb will make you sick, but if you eat it... you might avoid the disease."

Ryld nodded and sheathed his sword.

"Tell me where the temple is, and I'll see what I can do to clean your wound, and set those bones. Then I'll think about trying that belladonna."