Tangled webs - Elaine Cunningham [122]
Liriel closed her eyes and began to softly chant tbe words to a clerical prayer. It was a simple spell, a boon that Lloth granted even to drow outside her clergy. In response to her summons, hundreds of arachnids would creep out of the woodpiles and crevices to converge on the hut were ibn lay sleeping. They would not form an attacking swarmshe would not endanger the delicate and sacred creatures s0.-but they would spin throughout the night and drape the sailor's bedchamber in layers of gossamer webs.
When the spell was cast, Liriel crawled into her bed and dropped almost immediately into exhausted slumber. Her final thought-an image of ibn coming awake in a tangle of spider silk and frantically batting his way throughcurved her lips in a smile that lingered long after she had fallen into a dreamless sleep.
Liriel came awake the next morning before dawn, sitting bolt upright in bed and gripped by the terrifying conviction that something was very wrong.
Then she heard it-the traditional chanting song tbat sped the spirit of the slain to tbe afterlife that awaited. Entwined with the unfamiliar words that spoke of the man's lineage was a name she knew, a name written deeply upon her heart.
The drow threw aside her covers and raced from tbe hut, not bothering to dress or arm herself. Clad only in her tunic, she frantically followed the mournful cadences oftbe song to the village center, where a solemn group gatbered around a large, pale form. Liriel registered the familiar, deep timbre ofthe shaman's chanting voice-so like that of his dead kinsman-and the group offisherfolk still clad in tbe rough boots and aprons tbey donned each morning before plying their trade. Among them stood Dagmar, grimfaced and pale as deatb. Some of tbe women wept silently; Hrolf's young kinswoman looked as if she had no tears left to shed.
A wail of pure anguish cut through the somber chant of tbe shaman. Dimly, as if through a mist, the realization came to Liriel that the voice was her own.
Without thought, without will, she found herself kneeling at Hrolf's side. She smoothed his wet, disheveled braids, picked up one cold, massive hand and cradled it against her cheek. She began to keen softly, a high and haunting chant she had heard in the tunnels near Skui1port, when the faithful followers of Eilistraee-the Dark Maiden, the drow goddess of song and the hunt-mourned tbe comrades who had fallen in battle.
Ulf's song faltered and tben fell silent, for the shaman recognized a loss deeper than his own. He watched as tbe dock-altar chanted, rocking mindlessly in time to her eerie song. Her grief was all the more terrible for being tearless, and her strange golden eyes seemed to burn against the darkness of her skin. Next to the stoic calm of the Northmen, the dignified tears of tbeir womenfolk, tbe elf's wild mourning was almost frightening in its intensity. Yet it was clearly genUine, and Ulf stood by in respectful silence, even in gratitude, tbat Hrolf had been so beloved.
The shaman was grateful, too, for the belated insight tbe little drow gave him into his lost kinsman. He and Hrolf were sons of twin-bom brothers, and tbey had grown up together. No brother could have been more dear to him, yet never had Ulf understood his kinsman, especially Hrolf's youthful-and nearly disastrous-passion for an elven woman. Ulfhad been aghast when Hrolftook in this black elf maid as a daughter. Suddenly he could see why.
They were strangely akin, the pirate captain and the little drow wizard-both wild and untamed, approaching all of life with a natural exuberance the Northmen usually knew only in battle. Even in her mourning, the elf was utterly unfettered by convention, as Hrolf had been his whole life long. It was a farewell the pirate would have appreciated. After several moments the shaman waved the fisherfolk away, then came to place a hand