Tangled webs - Elaine Cunningham [139]
When Liriel awoke, the fat crescent moon was high in the sky, bathing the forest with its silver light. She stirred, winced, and pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. Within her head raged the violent cacophony of spellsickness. Long moments passed before the confused girl realized that some of the noise-perhaps most ofit-came from without.
The drow lowered her hands from her head and gazed with horror at the scene before her. In the grip of a horrendous battle frenzy, Fyodor fought against opponents that he alone could see. The Rashemi had not gone unscathed, though: his clothes and skin had been torn repeatedly by branches and brambles as he raged through the woods, lunging and slashing again and again.
How long this had gone on Liriel could not know, but her keen eyes caught the bubble of pink-tinged froth that collected in the corner ofhis faint, unnerving smile. She knew only that she had failed and that Fyodor would die if she could not find a way to stop him.
instinctively she flung out a hand. To her surprise and relief, drow magic flowed from her fingertips and sent thick streams of spider silk hurtling into the young man's wild path. The sticky strands exploded outward, forming a giant web that stretched from the trunk of Yggsdrasil's Child to a sister oak some twenty feet away.
The amok warrior tore through the web without missing a step.
Now that she knew her Underdark magic was still with her, Liriel reached for a more potent tool. Up came her tiny crossbow. She fired a dart into Fyodor's thigh. He ignored it and parried some nonexistent sword thrust. Again she fired, and again, until her quiver at last was empty. The young warrior bristled with darts and resemhled nothing so much as a tall and angry hedgehog.
Yet Fyodor did not fall. He continued to fight shadowsor more likely, Liriel realized with sudden bright certainty, he continued to do battle with all the ghosts who haunted his dreams. And the phantom warriors would kill him, as surely as he had killed them.
Shaking with frustration and fear, the drow leaped into Fyodor's wild path and shrieked at him to stop. To her astonishment, he did just that. The frenzy fell from him like a cloak, and the heavy black sword dropped to the ground as his magically enhanced form shrank abruptly down to its natural size. Fyodor swayed and fell at last into an exhausted-and poisoned-slumber.
Liriel fell to her knees beside him and began to tear out the darts. He'd already taken enough drow sleeping poison to kill a bugbear; she only hoped the berserker rage had absorbed much of it. To her relief, he continued to breathe-shallow, but steady.
She watched over her friend throughout the remainder of the night and long into the next day, dosing him repeatedly with antidote until her precious flask was empty. The forest was heavy with twilight shadows when Fyodor finally awoke. Nearly giddy with joy and relief, Liriel spilled out the story of what had happened-to her, and to him, and how he had stopped only after she'd given up rational hope. "But i've no idea what any of it means," she concluded. "i do," Fyodor said softly. "Such things have been done before, but not in my lifetime