Tangled webs - Elaine Cunningham [129]
"Really? By whose hand?"
The Northman glanced down at the sword at his throat, and his lips tightened in a small, hard smile. "By the hand of treachery," he said softly. "i have learned how effective that can be."
A strange light entered the drow's crimson eyes. "Effective, but too efficient for my liking," she stated with dark glee, and she reached for something tucked into her belt, something that looked like the handle of a whip.
As she pulled it free, several thick ropes emerged from among the folds of her skirts. They rose up, swaying sinuously, and regarded Rethnor with pitiless, reptilian eyes. To his horror, the High Captain realized that the whip was made up of living snakes. Five of them-all with eager, open jaws and fangs dripping with venom.
Shakti drew back her arm and then lashed forward. The snake heads dove in, and their fangs sank deep into the High Captain's flesh. Jolts ~of icy, numbing pain shocked through him, and he dropped to the floor, nerveless and limp.
Again the priestess flung back her arm, ripping the snakes' fangs from him. She stood poised for an agonizingly long moment as Rethnor steeled himself for the second strike.
"That will do for now," the drow said with obvious reluctance. "But remember the price of failure and do not risk awakening my anger!"
Shakti tucked away the whip; the snakes immediately snuggled back into their hiding places. She retrieved her pitchfork and stalked from the room. The man regarded the shattered door, his deep puncture wounds and torn flesh, and he marveled that the drow did not consider these to be acts of rage. He wondered with deep foreboding what might occur if she should ever become truly angered.
A thought flashed in Rethnor's pain-numbed mind, one too full of possibilities to ignore. The thrice-bedamned priestess had turned his own body against him. But perhaps there was some treachery he could yet deal her. Shakti wanted the drow wizard. Very well, he would deliver her to Shakti, but in such a rage as might well level all of Ascarle.
A proverb from, of all places, Waterdeep, came unbidden to his mind: "The gods look with pity upon two sorts of people, those who don't get what they want, and those who do."
Sanja's reaction to her daughter's defection was all Liriel could have wished. After a time, however, the woman's ranting ceased to be entertaining and became merely tiresome.
Apparently Ulf shared Liriel's opinion, for he curtly told his apprentice it was past time for them to resume her studies. The drow nodded and followed the grim-faced shaman out toward the forest. Once they'd left the boundaries of the village behind, however, Ulf sent a brief, conspiratorial grin in her direction. Liriel smothered a smileit seemed the shaman was not so unlike his rowdy kinsman, after all.
But the shaman quickly sobered and got down to business, long before Liriel could sort though the mixed feelings of warmth and pain that remembrances of Hrolf brought her. "Tell me of the magic you have stored in the Windwalker," he demanded.
Liriel explained what she could of the Underdark's strange radiations, comparing it to the place magic the shaman knew and understood. "This magic fades in the light of the sun, but once my rune is cast, the magic will be mine as long as i live and no matter where i go," she concluded. Ulf considered this. "But why is this so important? You wield other magic: that of spells, and of runes, and even, i think, that given by the gods. When you danced in the moonlight, you found the magic of the place and something else besides. Upon whom did you call? Selune?"
"i don't know of any goddess by that name," Liriel said uncomfortably, unnerved by the questions about her theology. She did not like discussing Lloth with people outside her race, and she was not sure how the jealous Spider Queen would respond to any mention of Eilistraee. "As to darkelven magic, it is what makes me what i am. Would you willingly abandon the power that comes from your homeland, to live as a spellcasting wizard in some southern city?"
The sbaman