Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham [49]
The man bent to drink of the water, and instantly knew how death had finally come to the desperate creature. The water had a faint mineral smell. Fyodor dipped his hand in and sniffed. Once before he had smelled lime, during a season when plague took many in his village. He would never forget that terrible summer, or the scent of the lime sprinkled into the single, yawning grave. He rose and backed away from the deadly pool.
Fyodor looked around the cavern. Water ran in rivulets down the walls, and louder trickling sounds echoed through the cavern from the tunnels beyond. Surely not all of the pool's tributaries were poisonous, He had to have water soon, and this was probably his best chance of finding it. Yet the tunnels here were so twisted that the water he heard moat clearly could be around the corner, or a day's walk away. His beat chance, he decided, would be to continue following the drow thieves. They would also need drinking water, and perhaps they would lead him to it. So he quickly examined the tunnels leading out of the cavern and found the marks of passing elven boots.
The luminous blue glow1 faded as he left the cavern behind, and the pale light of his torch seemed pure and healthy in comparison. The path Fyodor followed was narrow and steep, and he soon struggled for breath in the thin, unfamiliar air. He had not gone far when he found the water. A small waterfall spilled down a rocky alcove, scattering droplets into a shallow, fast-running stream. The water followed the path for a few paces, then disappeared into a hole in the tunnel floor. Over the opening, draped from one side of the tunnel to the other, hung an enormous spiderweb. The entrapped droplets caught Pyodor's torchlight and turned the web into a thousand rainbow prisms. Fyodor noted a few tiny insects skimming the surface of the stream-a good sign that the water was potable. He tasted the water and found it sweet.
Fyodor threw himself to the ground and drank deeply. Heaving a sigh of satisfaction and relief, he reached for his water flask. His hand froze, and he cursed himself for a fool. Where there were webs, there were usually spiders, yet he had approached this gigantic web with no more sense than a fly. Eye-to-eye with the biggest spider he had ever seen, Fyodor thought he knew how a trapped fly must feel.
The spider's head was nearly as big as a man's fist, and in the faint torchlight its furred, rounded black abdomen glistened like that of a well-groomed housecat. The entire creature must have been nearly three feet across, and its eight enormous legs bent in a tense crouch.
Fyodor*s startled face stared back at him, reflected a thousand times in the creature's multiple eyes. The horror he expected to feel did not come. Unlike the scorpion-thing, this creature was no mindless, ravening beast. It had an air of watchful intelligence. It was clearly as interested in him as he was in it, and just as cautious. Slowly, silently, the giant spider backed away, one leg moving at a time. When it was beyond reach it uttered a low, chittering sound and began to rise into the air.
Fyodor watched in awe as the spider slid upward on a silken thread. He had seen spiders do that many times in his world, but had never noticed the grace and beauty of the silent flight. It was uncanny that so large a creature could walk such a gossamer path. Stranger still, the giant arachnid simply disappeared in midflight, long before it reached the tunnel's ceiling.
A magic-user? he mused. If the mushrooms in this place could scream, perhaps a spider could wield magic.
Or perhaps it answered to someone who could.
That thought spurred Fyodor to action. He quickly filled his flask and hurried along the tunnel. If that spider was indeed some sort of messenger, his presence in this place would soon be noted. If he did not retrieve the amulet soon, he would surely die in this bizarre, nightmarish world. Above all, he must keep his wits about him every moment.
This much he knew: the Underdark was no place for those