Extinction - Lisa Smedman [47]
Still concentrating, he continued sliding his feet along the ground until they encountered resistance: a strand of kelp. Its touch nearly broke his focus, so close was the feel to that of the tentacle that had left the slime of its foul touch on his face. Shuddering, he pressed on until he could feel kelp all around him, then he opened his eyes.
He'd done it. The illusionary cage had disappeared. He was free.
But for how long? He could no longer move his left hand properly. It had only two fingers, with a thick web of skin growing between them. His left ear felt strange, as did his left eye. It was starting to squint shut and the colors he saw through it were somehow wrong. Further confirmation of his fate came when he saw a clump or something lacy and white drifting away from him. It was the hair from the left side of his scalp.
He glanced back at Zanhoriloch and saw that the creatures of that city were still going about their business, swimming back and forth between their stalagmite towers, oblivious to his escape. No alarm seemed to have been raised, and none of the aboleth came swimming out to intercept him. A surge of joy filled him, but it was short-lived. With a sinking heart, he realized that his escape was only temporary. Soon he would be a drow-thing, transformed forever into a water-breathing creature. The entire lake would be his prison.
Even though he knew it was hopeless, since none of his companions had healing magic, and since they'd probably mistake him for a monster and kill him on the spot. Valas tied his kukri back into its sheath and began swimming against the current, He'd completed the first part of his duty as a mercenary: he'd escaped. Next he would carry back to his companions his report, even though it contained woefully little, save for a warning to avoid Zanhoriloch at all cost.
That report delivered, he would get one of the others to kill him. If they refused, he'd do the job himself.
Chapter Thirteen
Andzrel Baenre, weapons master of House Baenre, stood in the cavern directing his troops. Runners continually came and went through the half-dozen tunnels that connected to the cavern, carrying news of the battle for the approaches to Menzoberranzan. Soldiers from House Baenre were holding the northern exit from Ablonshier's Cave.
Faintly, from the connecting tunnel, Andzrel could hear the clash of steel on steel as drow sword met tanarukk battle-axe. A group of duergar had tried to force their way through a tunnel that circled past that exit, only to become tangled in the webs cast by the wizard attached to Andzrel's company. The latest report indicated that the webs were on fire. The half-orc, half-demon tanarukks, apparently, were trying to burn their way through-at the expense of their gray dwarf allies caught in the sticky strands. The reek of burned hair and flesh drifted down the tunnel.
In the caves to the west of where Andzrel stood, Baenre troops had forced a group of duergar back into a faerzress and hurled light pellets in after them. The resulting pyrotechnic display had apparently been quite spectacular, according to the slingers who had triggered it-slingers who had been struck blind as a result. More House Baenre fighters, waiting in the wings around a bend of the tunnel, had rushed past the slingers to deliver the coup de grace to the blinded duergar.
Andzrel itched to be a part of it. To be crawling the jagged twists and turns of the Dark Dominion's narrow passageways, sword in hand, fighting his enemy face-to-face in the tight confines of the tunnels. Instead he was perched on a column of broken stalagmite, directing the troops that flowed past him into battle while he remained behind. He tried picturing himself as a spider at the center of the web-sensitive to the vibrations of battle coming from all directions and responding to them-but it didn't help. He wanted an excuse to draw his sword, for Lolth's sake, to engage the enemy in glorious battle as he had at the Pillars of Woe, when he'd snatched