Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham [58]
She quickly spoke the words to the spell, and darkness enveloped her like a welcoming embrace. Liriel looked around at the Underdark, at the comfortable familiarity of the tunnels and caverns. For good or ill, she was home.
An eerie, high-pitched cry sounded, reverberating off the walls of a good-sized cavern somewhere up ahead. Other voices joined in a chorus of excited, wavering hoots and shrieks. From behind her, Liriel heard an answering call. She spun around, hand on the hilt of her short sword, as two narrow slits of bright light came swooping down toward her. The distinctive violet shade-the color of glowing amethysts-could mean only one thing: a dragazhar.
Liriel threw herself flat and rolled aside. A large form swept over her, close enough for her to feel the rush of air. Her eyes, still attuned to the bright lights of the midnight sky, slipped back fully into the heat-sensing spectrum. The dragazhar, or nighthunter, flapped by on velvet black wings like those of a giant bat. The creature had the long tapered head of a scurry rat, a whiplike tail tipped with a razor-sharp triangular spike, and long curving ears reminiscent of dragon horns. With a wingspan of some seven feet, the nighthunter was one of the most dangerous of all the Underdark bats. Liriel crouched, pulled several throwing knives from their hiding places, and waited for the creature's next pass.
The expected attack did not come, but sounds of battle-repeated dull thuds and the cries of the wheeling bats-came from the cavern ahead. Ten dragazhar, she guessed from the echoing calls, a full hunting pack. Seldom did they attack anything but small animals, but whatever they'd attacked this time was giving them a good fight.
And if there was anything Liriel enjoyed, it was a good fight. Weapons in hand, the drow inched her way down the tunnel.
Faint light greeted her as she rounded a sharp turn, the pale violet light cast by certain luminescent fungi. The light increased with each step, until the tunnel was nearly as bright as the midnight sky she had left behind. The sounds of battle grew louder, too, and the mighty thwacks of an unseen weapon brought squeals of anger and pain from the giant bats.
This ought to be worth watching, Liriel thought happily as she scrambled down a steep, dipping curve.
Then the cavern was before her. Thick black spears of rock thrust from the floor and the ceiling of the cave, meeting here and there like bared fangs. Several dragazhar wheeled and swooped, darting between the stalactites with astonishing agility. Not one of the creatures had gone unscathed by battle. Most were scored with long, bloody lines, one had lost its tail, and yet another flopped helplessly on the cavern floor, its broken wing hanging limp. Yet the dragazhar's adversary was hidden from view.
She crouched low behind a rock formation and edged her away around for a better look. What she saw was more surprising than anything this night had yet shown her.
The nighthunters' bane was merely this and nothing more: a single human male.
Chapter 9
THE TREASURE HUNTER
Liriel had glimpsed an occasional human in the market. A few of humankind's shadier and more desperate merchants ventured into the Underdark, but like most dark elves of her class she despised these merchants as vermin and had no dealings with them. She had never been this close to a human. Curious, she crept closer.
This one was young, about her own age as humans reckon time, or perhaps just a bit older. The man was about a head taller than she was. He was taller than most drow mates and much broader. His thick muscles made him resemble a tall dwarf, but his face was beardless and finer of feature. He had none of the drow elegance of form, and