Descent into the Depths of the Earth (37 page)

Henry dived, already streaking sideways to cover the faerie.
He screamed and pulled the trigger of his crossbow. The machine kicked like a
mad thing, blasting a dozen crossbow bolts straight into the monster’s flesh.
The beast reeled but remained very much alive and angry. Henry dragged out his
sword and flailed at its hide, driving the staggering monster back toward the
tunnel mouth.

Seeing her pet guardian on the retreat, the drow flung up a
hand and total darkness descended—a darkness obliterated a second later by Jus’
magic light stone. The drow had already turned to run. Jus whip-cracked his
enchanted rope, bringing the drow down in a screaming heap. The creature fumbled
for its hand crossbow and fired a shot that was parried aside by a
lightning-fast flicker of the Justicar’s sword. An instant later, the elf’s head
fell to the ground.

The troll roared, its wounds already healing closed. The
creature bashed at Henry, who blocked the monster’s claws with his sword even as
the barrage sent him to the ground. Jus reared up behind the troll, his sword
held high and his face terrifying. The magic sword screamed in strange joy as it
cleaved down through the troll’s shoulder and into the chest, sending it
crashing to the ground.

“Cinders!”

The monster had already begun to rise. Grinning gleefully,
the hell hound blasted flame into the troll. Fire ripped the flesh off its
bones, making the troll bubble like a torch as it finally died.

“Jus!” Escalla screamed.

Two hundred yards away, a female drow sat upon a huge lizard.
The dark elf stared blankly at the adventurers, then turned and fled toward the
towers. Escalla shot off in pursuit, only to see the drow spring into the air
and turn into a flying manta. The sorceress flew hard and fast toward safety.
Unable to catch the drow, Escalla sped back and helped Henry back to his feet.

“Boys, we’re gonna have company!”

The Justicar looked back toward the disappearing manta. With
his hell hound over his back and his white blade gleaming, the big man turned,
leaped over the burning troll, and sped down the spider tunnel. Escalla blinked
then slapped Polk and Henry, shoving them in Jus’ wake.

A long tunnel sheathed in horrific bas relief wound through
solid rock like a monstrous black gullet. With his magic sword sheeting light
into the darkness, the Justicar ran fast and hard, Cinders streaming flames and
smoke behind. Jus sped through tunnels and over a stream. The tunnel walls
spread out to become a vile promenade a hundred yards wide. Scenes of slaughter
and perversion were carved into the walls, blurring past like a nightmare as the
ranger charged through, but so far, the tunnels remained strangely empty of
drow.

The tunnel ran for a thousand yards, and then a thousand
more. Thundering forward, Jus never slowed his pace. Far behind him, Private
Henry and Polk fell behind, struggling forward and reeling in a daze of
exhaustion.

The tunnel finally ended in a vile riot of sculpted spiders
and orgiastic rites. Sitting at the tunnel mouth, a female drow had half risen
to make a challenge when Jus smacked her in the guts with his sword, cutting the
dark elf in half. A second elf turned to scream a warning to a vast temple
building just beyond. Her head fell from her neck before she could even scream.

Jus erupted out of the tunnel and saw another drow staring at
him from ten feet away. The magic rope snapped out. Jus jerked the drow toward
him and broke the creatures neck with one vicious twist of his hands. His
long-contained fury finally released, the Justicar was already on the move,
tossing his prey aside as he sped into the cover of ornate gardens of fungi and
bone.

“Whoa!”

Escalla flew out of the corridor, bypassed the three dead
drow, and urged Polk and Henry onward to glory. The two humans collapsed,
wheezing painfully and almost ready to vomit. Laden down with chainmail, Henry
had almost killed himself on the one mile run, but he still carried his crossbow
in his hands.

Panting hard, the party drew in the sight of a horrible new
cave. Red light, thick as blood clots, spilled outward, hazing the cavern like a
hideous living mist. It revealed a large cavern, perhaps a mile wide—a place
that seeped poison like a canker buried deep in the heart of the Flanaess. The
place seethed with evil, a presence foul enough to stain and thick enough to
cut.

Buildings stood nearby, vile colonnades of stone carved until
it seemed the walls were made of flayed corpses, screaming skulls, and grasping
claws. Far beyond, at the heart of the huge cavern, a trumpet’s call set the
cavern shuddering. A sudden flash of light—dark purple like fluid from a severed
vein—spurted upward from an unseen point at the center of the cave. With it came
an ocean of terrified human screams.

Jus rose from cover, paused, and let Cinders glare at the
terrain.

Spiders. Steel. Cooking smells. No drow.

“Right.” Jus flicked a glance at the buildings jutting out
from the colonnade. “Military barracks, empty ones. Something’s going on.”

The group moved around the barracks, crouching low. Escalla
faded to invisibility, lofting high to gaze farther into the awful cave. After a
few moments, the group cleared the barracks, and Escalla’s voice came drifting
down from above.

“Oh crap.”

Dropping Polk and Henry into cover behind a ridge of glowing
minerals, Jus looked sharply upward.

“What?”

“Guys, you know those missing Keolanders?” Escalla’s voice
seemed dazed. “I think we just found them.”

The mineral ridge looked down upon a vast purple pit that
swirled and pulsed like blood. A stockade surrounded the pit, and chained in
rows were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of screaming prisoners. There were humans
from Keoland, elves and half-orcs, halflings and gnomes. Drow agents had spent
months plundering the world above, seizing victims for a hellish feast of living
blood.

A vast temple stood at the far end of the cave, a temple
shaped like the egg of a titanic spider. Beside the temple doors, two drow blew
upon huge horns. A thin, exquisite drow priestess came strolling from the
temple, her naked body smeared with runes painted in sacrificial blood. A dozen
priestesses followed her, accompanied by loping centaur creatures that were part
drow and part spider. Perhaps a hundred drow gathered at the temple steps,
screaming out a hideous hymn to their goddess.

Staring out over the struggling slaves, Jus felt Escalla’s
little hand upon his arm. “There! It’s a faerie!”

Escalla pointed across the valley. Flying from the temple
came a tiny shape, a faerie masked and robed in white. Jus took one look at the
creature and gave a cold growl. “That’s our target.”

Escalla cracked her knuckles, ready for action. “Yep. Got
it!”

The enemy faerie wore a stylized white mask, blank except for
painted tears. White robes hid the faerie’s body.

Staring across the valley at the other faerie, the Justicar
narrowed his eyes. “Who is it?”

“In that gear? Could be anybody.”

Escalla seemed far more interested in the preparations being
made near the temple steps. A vast golden bowl had been set before an engraved
slab of stone. A huge archway of bones had been raised beside the golden bowl,
the structure braced by ropes and chains. Escalla took one look at the
arrangements and swore.

“Damn!”

“What?”

“See that?” The girl pointed to the arch of bones where the
enemy faerie hovered, painting runes with a small brush. “They’re making their
own gate! They can tap into the faerie gates and have Lolth retrieve the faerie
key.”

Flat against the ground and almost invisible, the Justicar
hissed as he weighed the scene below. “They can make their own gateways?”

“In theory, sure.” Escalla made a frustrated noise. “Hell of
a spell, though!” Almost all of the drow priestesses now flanked the archway,
eyes closed and hands linked, their throats screaming terrible syllables. “See?
Ha! It’s going to take every mage they’ve got to break into where
they’re
going.”

Henry peeked over a clump of lichen, stared, and said, “Where
are they going?”

“Don’t ask!” The girl had her eyes on the temple door. “Oh my
gods! Get down!”

From the gates of the drow temple, a sinister black light
spilled forth. A visible cloud of evil stole slowly down the steps. The elves’
chanting took on a dead, tinny sound, as though the music died as it crossed
into another world.

Lolth, Mistress of Spiders, had taken on a form of flesh to
enter the mortal world. Probing slowly from the yawning temple doors came a
long, hideous black leg, almost pencil thin, and then another, and another.
Creeping forth with mincing steps, the demon queen of spiders moved out to
survey her prey.

The sheer evil of the creature struck like an icy knife.
Black and gleaming, the gigantic spider loomed above the drow. Where a spider’s
face should have been, the face of a beautiful dark elf woman peered forth, her
face leering as she saw the slaves penned in their thousands at the temple
gates. The captives tried to shrink away, the motion looking like a tide surging
through a formless sea.

And then the screaming began.

Drow warriors dragged a captive to the temple steps and threw
him across the obsidian altar. A priestess gave an orgiastic scream and sawed
the prisoner’s head off slowly with a ceremonial knife. Blood spurted steaming
into the giant sacrificial bowl as the head was cast aside. The jerking corpse
was strung up above the bow to drain its blood, while another prisoner was
dragged swiftly into place and killed with savage speed. Fifty other screaming,
fighting captives were dragged forward to await death in line, while the demon
goddess cackled in laughter. Lolth dipped her face into the bowl and drank with
manic thirst. The spider seemed to shimmer as hot blood filled her with its
power.

Escalla and Henry had frozen. Only Jus and Cinders reacted,
the hell hound and master both giving a killing snarl. Jus tried to surge
forward to take the white sword to Lolth, but Escalla hurtled into his path.

“Stop! Jus, no! Not like this! Please!” The screams of the
doomed and dying ran hideous through the cave. Escalla ran her hands through her
hair, trying to think. “All right, all right! Jus, this is not for you!” A
demon! A demon queen! The spider lady was swelling with power as she drank her
hellish draught. One twitch from Lolth, and Escalla and her friends would be
smears on the wall. “Jus, I’ll stop Lolth! You free the prisoners and try to
clear the gate! The gate’s our only way out! I’ll come and help you when I can.”

Screams and howls sounded as the obsidian knife sawed through
victims. Lolth slurped and drank, consuming gallons of blood. Her head whirling
in panic, Escalla tried to think of a scam, a trick, a brilliant ploy.

Sudden inspiration struck. The faerie dived down, relieved
Polk of a flask from his belt, then hovered high.

“Oh, I’m gonna regret this!” The girl took a big deep breath.
“All right, people, plan resolves! Let’s get moving!”

A distant hunting horn sounded down the tunnel that led to
the main drow cave. The companions whipped their heads around to stare at the
tunnel mouth nearby. There was a distant noise of movement, an echo of running
feet as drow from the plateaus came to destroy the intruders who had violated
the temple grounds.

Rising, Henry stared toward the tunnel and licked his lips.
He put his crossbow down and clumsily drew his sword.

“You two deal with the demon,” the young soldier said. “Polk
and… and I will hold the tunnel mouth.” The boy flicked a pleading look
toward Jus when the big man turned to stare. “You can’t free those people if
you’re attacked from behind.”

Jus gave the boy one long, searching look, then nodded and
placed one hand upon the boy’s shoulder. Huge with anger, Jus spared one look at
the main temple with its shocking scenes of sacrifice, then waved the others to
stay put as he flowed into the barracks and its colonnade. Red eyes gleaming,
Cinders switched his ears left and right, leering in anticipation, then slowly
let his black fur rise.

The hell hound worked in perfect unison with his partner.
Standing in the middle of the dark colonnade, Jus swirled. Flame whiplashed out
of Cinders’ jaws, blasting into the huge black widow spiders that nested in the
shadows. Big as melons, the foul creatures exploded and died even as they leapt
straight at the Justicar’s face. Cinders snarled in glee, blasting the last
survivors as they lunged into the attack. Teeth bared, the hell hound watched
his enemies burn and gave a feral growl.

Aside from the smoldering spiders, the barracks were empty,
but the supply rooms were not. Jus tossed aside baskets, threw jewels and
treasures to the ground, uninterested in meaningless baubles. He found the tools
he needed stacked box by box in a room filled with swords and shields. Crates of
quarrels for the elves’ crossbows lay stacked beside a wall. Heaving two huge
boxes onto his shoulders, Jus stalked out of the flames and curling spider
corpses toward his friends, then slammed his treasures to the ground.

The big man threw open the ammunition boxes. Each one
contained perhaps a hundred small crossbow quarrels, each one tipped with deadly
poisons.

The Justicar set the boxes in place and said, “Here are your
tools.”

Henry threw himself into place opposite the tunnel mouth,
cramming a handful of the small crossbow bolts into his magazine. Jus dragged
rocks to fence the boy in with cover, made sure there was a line of retreat into
more cover, then tore the lids away from the ammunition cases.

“Polk! Polk, come here!”

The teamster started forward in confusion. Jus grabbed the
man and positioned him beside Henry.

“Polk, you stay here and load for Henry. Whatever happens,
you keep feeding crossbow bolts into that weapon. You hold them as long as you
can, but if it gets too much, I want you both inside that portable hole!” The
Justicar wiped clean a streak of rusty earth to the front of their position,
swiping it free of dirt. “Here’s a drow cloak. It’s flame proof. Keep that iron
ore deposit in front of you in case they fire a lightning bolt.”