Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham [92]
Books were stacked on the study table, piled against the wall, tossed about on the floor. And such books! Many of them were about humans and human magic-subjects strictly forbidden in Menzoberranzan.
Elated with this discovery, Shakti hugged one of the damning volumes to her cbest. Drow had died for lesser offenses, and the possession of these books was enough to bring serious trouble even to a member of House Baenre. But that was not quite enough for Shakti; she wanted to know why Liriel sought this information about the surface world.
No one took such risks motivated only by intellectual curiosity. Was House Baenre planning another strike against the surface? Or perhaps seeking an alliance with a group of humans? If either of these things proved true, the city would almost certainly rise up in rebellion.
Shakti tossed the book aside and reached for another. Instantly she froze as loose pages fluttered from the discarded book.
The priestess stooped and picked up a page. It was fine vellum parchment, covered with small, elegantly formed drow script. Even without light, the nearsighted priestess could read the page, for it was written in everdark ink, the rare, glowing ink used only by the most powerful and prosperous of drow wizards.
As she read, her excitement grew. These were Liriel Baenre's notes, written in her own hand! Shakti scanned page after page, and the emerging picture surpassed her darkest dreams of vengeance.
Liriel Baenre had found a way to take her innate drow powers to the surface. She'd found an amulet, a human artifact of some sort, that granted her this power.
The pages fluttered unheeded from Shakti's hands as the importance of this discovery struck home. She read in these handwritten pages Liriel Baenre's death warrant. Most of the city's drow would cheerfully kill to possess such magic. And then what might happen? For good or ill, such a thing could change Menzoberranzan forever.
But how, wondered Shakti, had Liriel done such a thing? Eagerly the priestess took up one book after another. Finally, tucked between the pages of a particularly battered volume, she found what she sought: a handwritten bill signed only with a faint, familiar design. Shakti recognized the mark of the Dragon's Hoard.
A wild grin twisted Shakti's face. She knew the merchant band well. In fact, she had recently acquired a new rothe stud from the Dragon's Hoard, a white ram whose compact size and unusually fine fleece marked him as the property of House Zinard, a family of the drow city Ched Nasad. The rothe was stolen, of course, for the Zinards would never part with such a valuable animal.
It was whispered around Menzoberranzan that contraband goods of almost any kind could be had from the
Dragon's Hoard. The merchant band protected the many secrets of its clients, but surely Shakti could find a way to make one of the merchants talk. She was as talented at torture as any drow in Menzoberranzan. Oaths of secrecy, even fear of death at Captain Nisstyre's hands, would mean little to the unfortunate male who fell into her hands.
Before the bell rang to summon Lloth's faithful to chapel, Shakti had extracted some fascinating information from her chosen captive. The merchant had known nothing about Liriel Baenre, but he'd spoken eloquently on the subject of his employer.
Nisstyre, it seemed, was not just any merchant captain. He was a wizard trained in the schools of Ched Nasad, who had fled the city many decades past rather than submit to the mind-searching test of loyalty to Lloth. Shakti thought she might know why.
In his last, agonized moments, the tortured drow had confessed that he himself was a follower of Vhaeraun, the drow god of intrigue and thievery. It seemed unlikely the servant would dare to follow such a god without the knowledge and consent of his master. This gave Shakti a powerful weapon to use against Nisstyre, but oddly enough the female was not inclined to wield it.
The concept of a rival deity fascinated her. She had never entertained such