Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [91]
Fourteen years later, Jub was finally going to pay her back.
His clothing and gear had polymorphed with him when he invoked the phylactery’s magic, and they were back on his half-drow form. He pulled a slim metal tube from his pocket and uncorked it then carefully tipped out its contents. A feather with a silver shaft fell into his hand, followed by a roll of parchment. He sat, cross-legged, and touched the magical quill to his tongue to prime it. Then he began to write.
His letters were clumsy—simple block letters, like a child would write. If anyone else but Qilué were going to read it, he’d have been embarrassed, but Qilué never made fun of him. She was as beautiful, body and soul, as Jub was ugly.
SELV. CLERICS ATTACKED THE MOON WOOD WITH CHITTENS. BUT IT WAS JUST A FAINT. THEYR GOING TO ATTACK THE PROMENAD, TOO. 66 OF THEM. NOT SURE WHEN.
He paused a moment, thinking, then added:
THEYR IN DOLBLUND, LIKE YOU THOT. I THINK THEY KILT A LOLTH PREESTIS THERE.
He paused again. Qilué had told him to write down every thing he saw and heard, no matter how insignificant it seemed. So he added:
THEYR GOING TO JUMP ON THE TEMPLE.
His message finished, Jub tapped the magical quill against the parchment three times. On the third tap, the words he’d written flowed back into the quill, vanishing from the page. Jub held the feather close to his mouth and whispered Qilué’s name, then released it. The feather streaked through the air like an arrow, vanishing in a sparkle of silver motes.
Jub shifted to a crouching position, hands and knees on the floor, ready to polymorph again. As he did, he heard something in the cavern outside, a soft, halting step, as if someone was shuffling along. As it drew closer to the tunnel he was hiding in, he activated his phylactery and scrambled up the wall in spider form. The shuffling—a vibration he could feel in his legs—stopped at the entrance to his tunnel. Something peered inside. It was one and a half times the height of a drow, with a recognizable head, arms and legs, but its body was entirely covered in a thick mass of tangled webs. Eight spider eyes stared out of a face dominated by a gaping mouth and gnashing fangs. The thing smelled like a combination of spider musk and rot. Wherever the crude blobs that were its hands and feet touched stone, they left a clump of clinging web.
The thing stared at Jub for several moments—long enough to unnerve him. Just when he was certain it had recognized him as an enemy, it withdrew. It shambled away through the cavern, its feet making sticky, shuffling sounds.
Time to get out of here.
Jub doubled back the way he’d come, climbing the steep walls of the cavern. When he reached its ceiling, his hairs picked up a faint air current emerging from a nearby crack in the rock. The air was flowing into the cavern and was slightly damp. It smelled of melting snow.
The crack was just wide enough for him to squeeze into. It was also a quicker way out—one that didn’t lead past all those traps. He scrambled up through it. The climb was a torturous one, and Jub nearly got stuck several times, but the higher he climbed, the better he could smell the wintery scent of the woods above.
The darkness of the shaft was starting to pale to gray when he passed a narrow fissure that opened onto a vast cavern. One glance into it was enough to halt him in his tracks. The floor of the cavern glittered with thousands of gems and coins, strewn about like pebbles on a beach. Half buried in these were statues, books, bejeweled breastplates and helms, silver-chased swords, chalices, and a host of other treasures. It was a sight that Jub had never expected to see in his lifetime—a dragon’s horde.
He knew better than to be tempted by it. He turned to go.
Something stirred the hairs on his legs … the flapping of massive wings.
A heartbeat later, an enormous