Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham [31]
After several moments of internal debate, Fyodor felt around in his pack and took out a stick and a strip of doth. He wound the cloth around the end of the stick, then reached for the flask tucked into his sash. Carefully he poured a little of the liquid onto the cloth. He fumbled in his bag for flint and steel.
The sparks lit up the blackness like flashes of lightning, and the torch easily caught flame. In the sudden flair of light, Fyodor got his first good look at the Underdark.
"Mother of all gods," he whispered in a mixture of horror and awe.
He was in a cave, larger than any he had imagined possible. The ceiling arched high overhead, and long, twisted spires of rocks stabbed downward. The path he followed had a solid wall of rock along one side, and a sheer drop on the other. Just a few paces from where he stood, the pathway fell hundreds of feet into a gorge. On the far side of the divide was a lacy rock curtain resembling a giant honeycomb. Behind it Fyodor saw more paths winding up along the cliffs sheer walls and openings that could only be more tunnels. Wondrous bridges fashioned of stone and magic spanned the gorge at several levels. This place was a crossroads built throughout countless centuries by alien and unknowable cultures. Its vastness and complexity overwhelmed Fyodor as even the darkness could not.
Yet he set aside such thoughts and pressed on with his search. Dropping to one knee, the Rashemi examined the rocky floor. Finally he found a marker: a single droplet of nearly melted slush. The drow thieves had passed this way.
Fyodor followed the trail of diminishing dampness into a side tunnel, knowing as he did each step took him closer to death. He had no idea where he was and knew no way to return to the surface once he retrieved the precious amulet. He had entered the Underdark fully aware of the danger-indeed, the apparent futility-of this course of action, but what other choice did he have? Without the amulet he would die. Perhaps his time would not come for a year; perhaps it would come tomorrow.
Without warning, a giant insectlike creature darted into Fyodor's circle of torchlight. Bottle-green in hue and fully five feet in length, the monster looked like some unholy offspring of a spider and a scorpion. It had no eyes that Fyodor could see, but its excited chittering left little doubt it sensed the man's presence. Long, whiplike antennae groped here and there for its prey, and the enormous pincers on its spine-covered front legs flared and snapped repeatedly with a sound like that of steel traps closing.
Perhaps, Fyodor thought grimly, his time would come today.
Liriel stood absolutely still as the deep dragon stalked toward her. Both of its sharp-fanged maws dripped with hungry anticipation, and its two heads bobbed as it walked. For this dragon was a freak, a rare product of the strange radiation of the Underdark. Smaller than most of its kind-a mere fifty feet from the top of its two horned heads to the tip of its single tail-the dragon was covered with shimmering purple scales that emitted their own weird light.
The two-headed beast began to circle Liriel, like a house lizard playing with a doomed scurry rat. The head on the right wore an expression of weary resignation, the one on the left a sly, if slightly dim-witted, smile.
"Small, she is," chirped the smiling dragon head, eying the dark-elven girl. "Hardly big enough to bother snaring. I'll have this one, and you can eat the next drow that happens by, hmm?"
"Don't be such a dolt," snapped the right-sided head in a voice that was deep and