The Lost Library of Cormanthy - Mel Odom [55]
"I am on my way." Krystarn closed her prayers to the Spider Queen, asking only for the strength to see her mission through to the end, begging forgiveness for not being able to offer up the heart of an enemy at this time in sacrifice.
She took up her weapons and her traveling clothes. Shallowsoul would not have called had she not been going somewhere. With all her gear strapped about her, she pulled on her piwafwi over it all. The last tenday had been filled with boredom awaiting Shallowsoul's attempts at finding the ranger, but she'd pursued her efforts at finding Shallowsoul's real hiding place. None of those efforts had met with success.
The rooms were elegantly furnished with furniture she had recovered from what had been the finest houses around Myth Drannor. It was a pocket-sized palace, but she knew it was only a gilded boil inside a corpse.
She warded the door behind her as she stepped through into a hallway filled with ruin. Two male drow under her command stood watch over her door. They worked in shifts, making sure she was never alone or unprotected in her rooms.
"Malla," they said in unison, using the drow term for an honored one. The title always made Krystarn smirk.
"Go get the others," she ordered one of them. She couldn't remember his name.
The drow male hurried away. The remaining one fell into step with her, holding his spear butt just clear of the ground so it wouldn't make any noise.
Krystarn followed the hallway to the other end. No lights lit the walls, but she didn't need them. A wall blocked the end of the hallway. She put her hand out against it, then discovered it was still solid. She remained facing the wall, listening to the others of her entourage fall into lines behind her.
She didn't need to look to make sure they were all there. Twenty-two drow males had followed her from Menzoberranzan, their lives pledged to her task, accepting that she had been placed upon her quest by Lloth, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, herself.
The wall rippled before Krystarn, then pulsed like a great mouth about to open.
"Come." Shallowsoul's command filled her mind.
"Wait for me," Krystarn ordered the male drow warriors.
"Yes, Malla," Captain V'nk'itn responded. "We shall stand steady."
Krystarn knew that the male drow wouldn't stand there out of loyalty, but out of fear of her vengeance if they failed. When she had taken them, she had tied their blood to hers; if they fled, she could follow.
She wrapped her fingers around the hilt of the morning star and stepped through the door. Immediately, the rush of cold wind wrapped around her and she went blind and deaf. She felt like a leaf trapped in a treacherous whirlpool in the streams that cut through the Underdark. Yet, at the same time, she maintained her sense of equilibrium.
The darkness cleared like cool fog drifting in from one of the streams leading into Menzoberranzan. Cool air obscured her true Drow vision for a moment.
"Enter." Shallowsoul's physical voice sounded even worse than his mental one.
Krystarn took exactly two steps forward. As always, the room she appeared in was not one she had been in before. Her heart stilled in her chest as she gazed around at the shelves of books that occupied all four walls and stood in stacks in the center of the large room.
This was what she lusted for, what she had promised Mother Lloth her direct obedience forever after in exchange for her success. A stack of books stood so close to her that she could reach out and touch them if she but moved her arm. But she didn't, because she knew to do so would mean instant death. Shallowsoul allowed no one to touch the books.
She scanned the titles, finding them in a language she did not comprehend. Shallowsoul played his games with her avarice and she knew it. Deliberately, she was teleported of late into rooms of the vast library where she could not read the titles. Thick and pristine, arranged so neatly on the shelves, the books called out to her.
Shallowsoul laughed, and the noise sounded like bones grating, somewhere on the other side of the stacks. "Even from