They stood upon a pathway of slick, polished stone suspended in the middle of a yawning, empty gulf. The path was wide, flat, without walls or ceiling, like a bridge through an abyss of fog.
Faces distorted in pain and terror formed and vanished in the mists before being torn apart by violent winds that never seemed to stir the air. Inside the stone surface of the path, flattened figures scratched and pleaded. Escalla looked about, a little crestfallen, and pulled on her chain mail.
"Oh, this is so un-hoopy." The girl winced and shifted her feet. "Jus, I think I'm treading on someone's soul."
Only the soul of a sinner. Benelux gave a prim little shimmer of disdain. Go ahead, dear. Scuff your feet. The blighter deserved it.
"Spiky, go stick your head up a rust monster's bum." Escalla decided to solve the problem with flight, and her wings whirred into action.
Staring about the mists, Henry jerked his crossbow left to right, covering shapes that screamed and swirled.
"What is this place?" asked the young soldier.
"The Demonweb." Of them all, only the Justicar seemed undisturbed. He scanned the pathway, looking for tracks. "This is the antechamber to Lolth's home plane."
Henry looked around and slowly stood straight. "So where's the spider palace?"
"Looked like it went above us." The Justicar rested a hand upon Henry's shoulder and pointed overhead. "Somewhere up there."
"Can we fly up and see?"
Still whirring her wings but still very much on the ground, Escalla's face had gone red. She flapped with all her might, the rising whine of her wings drawing the party's attention one by one. The faerie jumped madly up into the air, and still she failed to get aloft.
Enid carefully scratched her ear with one hind paw. "Oh, dear. There may be a few technical difficulties with that plan."
Escalla leaped and jumped, rapidly losing her temper. "Fly! Come on, damn it! Fly!"
"Escalla?" Jus finally solved the problem by grabbing the angry faerie by the scruff of her clothes. "Escalla! Stop. This is Lolth's plane. Laws are different here."
"Laws!" Escalla kicked and struggled. "I hate laws! Law represses freedom, and loss of freedom is tyranny!"
"Physical laws, Escalla. Like gravity."
"You mean we have to walk while we're in here?" Escalla allowed herself to be put on Jus's shoulder. "That is so un-hoopy! People will think I'm a brownie or something."
"Not with a backside like that. Perfect lift and pinch." The Justicar studied the mists that surrounded the path. "On top of the spider palace, none of you could fly. The same laws must have applied."
Enid blinked. "Oh, meaning we're supposed to walk along these paths?"
"Meaning the paths are a guardian maze." Shrugging, the Justicar looked around. "This is the way Lolth guards her door."
The Justicar and Cinders took point, with Escalla sitting on Jus's shoulder, her frost wand cradled on her knees. Enid, Polk, and Henry came behind. They moved silently, while all around them, lost souls screamed inside a universe of fog.
Footfalls had an unnatural silence. There were no walls to throw back echoes, no stones to shift and rattle. Enid's big soft paws, the Justicar's careful tread, Henry's boots, and Escalla's feet-none made more than the slightest sound upon the horrible pavement. The floor with its images of screaming faces and clawing hands throbbed as warm as flesh.
The path turned at sharp ninety-degree angles-turning, then turning again. Escalla edged as close as she dared to the brink of the path and looked down. Below her through the mist, she could dimly see another path identical to the one she trod.
"Hey! Look!"
They all looked down and traced the shape of another path that ran at right angles to them forty feet below. It was almost invisible in the horrible, haunted mist. Escalla looked carefully about, her sharp eyes spying other shapes in the mist up above. There was a maze of paths above and below, locked together like pieces of a puzzle.
"The palace was headed for the top of the web. Should we try and climb up?"
"Don't put temptation in front of the boy." Polk sat on his haunches like a mouse, unable to see more than a few feet into the mist. "We have to do the maze. Defeat the guardians! We can't complete the adventure without killin' all the guardians."
"Polk, shut up." The Justicar looked up through the mists, judging their jerk and flow. "How do we get up there?"
Escalla rubbed her hands together in glee. "We have the tangle rope! The one Jus got from the erinyes!"
"Too short." Cinders had burned through that rope in a fight long, long ago. It was now only twelve feet long and hung from the Justicar's sword belt. "And there are ghosts in the mist."
They turned and surveyed the horrible shapes in the mist. By unanimous consent they all moved on, looking for the stairs and ladders they all felt sure must be there.
The long, quiet walk went on-turn after turn, yard after yard. Walking softly at their head, the Justicar suddenly sank to his knees in silence, and the entire group froze in response.
"Henry."
Around the next corner, dimly seen through the mist, four horrible shapes pattered along the path. They were whip scorpions the size of wolfhounds. Henry looked, knelt, and fired in one smooth action. His crossbow shuddered and threw out a stream of bolts from its magazine. Two scorpions staggered sideways, already curling as the poisoned darts struck home. The remaining two lifted their claws high like dogs locking the scent, and they raced straight at the party. Enid and Jus surged forward, but a swarm of golden darts shaped like bees streaked through the air, smashing chitin and blowing holes through the scorpions. The creatures staggered and died as a second strike blasted them off their feet.
Escalla stood, her spell finger trailing a wisp of magic. The girl blew it away and gave a little shrug.
"Henry and I will clean up the little stuff on the way." The faerie used Cinders's tail as a handhold as she scaled the Justicar. "Jus's stoneskin will only block a few hits. We want to save it for when he fights Lolth."
The scorpions all wore silver bands about their tails. They had moved in unison, like a purposeful patrol. The party gave their bodies a wide berth, mistrusting the way the monsters twitched and oozed.
The pathway led on. There were more turns, more twists, until finally the way fed into a junction. A door gleamed in the mist-a door that seemed to lead to nowhere. Jus pointed, and the party fanned out. Enid and Henry watched the other pathways while Jus, Cinders, and Escalla moved carefully to the door.
The door simply hung in space, its bottom joined to the pathway, and its rear opening onto empty fog. Escalla peered behind it, shrugged, then cracked her knuckles. A careful search for traps, the approval of Cinders, and Escalla listened at the door with one pointy ear. She crept back to the others, her voice a sly little whisper.
"There's a room behind the door. I hear big things moving and arguing."
The Justicar nodded. "Cinders?"
The hell hound's nose wrinkled as Cinders was allowed to sniff at the crack beneath the door. Big fangs gleamed, and the dog wagged his tail.
Stinky trolls!
Escalla happily wagged her wings. "Oh! Hoopy!
"Guards!" Polk was overjoyed. He opened a tiny notebook stuck through his belt and began jotting notes into his endless chronicles. "We're in luck, son! Killing guards is heroic! Blade to blade! Man to man! Pure heroism against the cunning of evil!"
The rest of the party ignored him. Escalla leaned against the doorjamb, molded magic between her hands, and nodded. Jus kicked open the door, and Escalla gleefully launched a fireball into the space beyond. Everyone dived aside, leaving Polk blinking until Jus grabbed him by the fur and yanked him to safety.
The fireball exploded, billowing flame across the path. Chunks of debris hurtled out the door, across the path, and were snatched by the fog. The Justicar jumped up. Henry stood in front of the door and drew his sword. As a burned, raging troll came lunging through the portal, the Justicar's white sword sheared its head from its trunk. Benelux whipped blindingly fast into the stomach of a second troll. The big man kicked his victims back into the room and followed, his blade severing an arm from another troll, all in a single blur.
Damaged trolls and severed troll parts began to grow and regenerate. The Justicar swept his gaze across the room, then parried a troll claw with his forearm before burying his sword in a monsters skull.
"Cinders!"
The flame crashed like a wave across the trolls. The monsters screamed, reared, and writhed as they died. The hell hound gave a feral growl of pleasure as the trolls burned to a crisp. Jus flicked Benelux clean and sheathed her all in one silky, fluid move, rising from fighting stance to turn his back upon the room.
Escalla was holding the slowglass gem up to her eye, recording the moment.
"Got it!" The girl popped the gem back into her cleavage and then looked at the burning, ruined room with a sigh. "Gods I love it when you go all homicidal!"
Escalla looked back along the path outside while Jus tore the burned hide from the corpses of trolls. Enid carefully smudged her feet in soot and walked out into the passage with Henry at her side.
Escalla went suddenly stiff, and her antennae lifted high, quivering with alarm. She froze, as if listening, then said, "Jus, he's back there. Recca. Coming fast."
"He heard the fight with the scorpions." Jus shook out scorched pieces of troll hide. "Stun scroll?"
"Oh, I don't think it works on undead." Enid frowned. "Sorry."
"No matter. Get moving. Polk, go with them." Moving through the smoke, the Justicar trailed scraps of troll hide in his hand. The room was filled with vile smoke. "Get to your places. Move!"
The door hung open, burn marks fanning out across the path. A charred troll's head lay upside down and forlorn. The Demonweb seemed alone with its fog, ghosts, and eerie winds.
Until a movement flickered on the path.
He came fast, running with a tireless stride-feral and horrible. A rusted eagle helm kept its beak open in an eternal scream. Dead eyes searched ceaselessly for hints of prey.
The scent of burned flesh made the creature slow. Recca's sword swept out. The black blood inside his blade gleamed and seethed. Sidestepping the dead scorpions, Recca crept to the junction, his skull turning to look carefully up and down the way.
A shattered door into nothingness hung open before him. Burn marks, charred troll bodies, smoke, and stink leaked onto the path. Sphinx footprints and a single set of boot marks led off along the path. Recca sniffed the air and looked at the room behind the door.
He dived through the door in a somersault, arcing high into the air, blade blurring as he spun. He landed with his blade on guard but shifted rapidly. He ran his blade through three troll corpses, viciously twisting the blade. No blood spurted. The Justicar was not hiding beneath a cunning shroud of charred dead flesh. The monster turned, dead eyes gleaming. Moving with supreme caution, Recca walked back through the open door.
The blow, when it came, almost cut him in two. Recca twisted with serpentine speed, blocking with his sword, and the white blade only managed to hack halfway through his waist. Recca tore free, spilling onto the path, his flesh burning and smoking where Benelux had cut.
The Justicar stood beside the door. He had hung beneath the pavement, suspended above the howling fog, his hands hidden by a scrap of troll hide as Recca passed overhead. Now he strode toward the staggering monster, his blade snapping back, ready to thrust. Recca's wound smoldered, and this time the Justicar saw what happened. Green blood pumped into the open wound, flashed, and sealed the dead flesh shut. An instant later, the wound was gone.
The Justicar assessed Recca's tools. He shifted fighting stance, saw the move countered, shifted his weight, and saw the responding twitch of stance. Recca was active, responsive. Alive. The Justicar watched him over the point of his own blade.
"You're in there, Recca…"
Escalla and the others were still waiting for Recca to reach the perfect position. The Justicar changed fighting stance, choosing movements learned in a hundred fights, skills picked up far, far away from Recca and his schooling. He watched the animated corpse respond. The Justicar remembered being awed, shamed, and in worship of this man, remembered the scorn the elf had poured over his human student.
If he were jealous, why had Recca taught him if he knew the student would someday equal the master? Perhaps because the student was never expected to match Recca in skill? Had Recca seen him as a threat rather than a triumph?
The Justicar moved slowly and carefully, circling the undead master. Recca moved away slowly, always keeping just out of range. He danced with the same old skill and speed, using the moves he had been so unspeakably proud of.
They were too close for Escalla to risk a spell, and Henry and Enid knew better than to try to fight Recca hand-to-hand. Coaxing Recca into position, the Justicar adjusted his blade.
"The tanar'ri tore your heart out, but I killed it." The big ranger was dark with anger. "Jealousy, Recca?"
The corpse hissed like a cobra, fangs wide. The Justicar could feel the hate. It was a weakness. Recca fought for pride. Pride was a weakness. Justice was balanced and controlled. The Justicar could beat this thing, this swordmaster. He felt the certainty of it as if it were cast in bronze.
The Justicar let his point drift a mere tenth of an inch and growled at his enemy. "You lost, Recca. You lost because you never had a code."
He had given Recca an opening. Recca screamed and cut. The corpse's attack came exactly as Jus knew it would-timed and planned. This time Jus took the blow on the flat of his blade, doubling Benelux like a quarterstaff. The blades met, and the Justicar punched with his hilt, the blow shattering Recca's jaw and sending the cadaver sprawling back along the path.
The broken jaw clicked and healed as Recca flipped onto his feet and came at the Justicar behind a whirling web of steel.
They fought hard and fast, the swords smashing sparks from one another in a maddened dance. An instant after the swords met and crashed, Recca tumbled and leaped over the Justicar to attack from behind. He landed, sword poised, the Justicar only half way through a turn, and then a blast of frost crashed into him from the side. The magic dissipated, blocked by the aura of his magic sword.
"Hey, boney!" The troll's head stood on two shapely little legs, and a frost wand waved from one ear. "Hey! Remember me?"
Recca wiped frost from his face. From around the corner, Henry appeared, taking aim with his crossbow. Recca flicked up his sword, caught the first two crossbow bolts on his blade, and had three more smash into his chest. The impact knocked Recca over the edge of the path, and he fell into the howling mist. Rushing to the brink, Escalla and Jus looked out to see Recca carried up into the fog storm before smashing into a pathway overhead and disappearing from view.
Escalla shed her hollowed-out troll's head and cursed. "Damn it! You were doing it! You were getting on top of him! That was our best shot at snuffing him!"
"He'll find us again." The Justicar flicked his blade clean. He felt heavy, tired, and burdened. "Next time."
"Hey, Jus?" Escalla clung to his knee and looked up in concern. "Hey, come on! It's just a monster with a sword. We can outdo him!"
The Justicar sheathed Benelux. Recca was alive and revealing the hatred Jus had always pretended wasn't there. Escalla held Jus's hand and looked into his face.
"We did better this time."
"He's brilliant." The Justicar felt Recca's hate still lingering in the air. "He's as good as he always was."
"Yeah, but you're better."
Suddenly Jus could see it. He could feel the change between himself and Recca.
"Recca is too proud to change." The big ranger turned to look up into the mist. "Yes. For three hundred years, he was swordmaster and a chief of the Grass Runners. He wants his victory to prove his perfection."
Jus glanced at the pathway overhead, then turned away, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword. His other hand took Escalla's, and they walked back to their friends.
Henry spared a hard glance for the overhead fog, then peered briefly into the troll-littered room as he passed. He gave a sudden frown and held up one hand.
"Justicar, sir? Look at this!"
A neat white folder lay in the middle of the ash. The group stared at it in puzzlement. Cinders gave a sniff, paused, sniffed again, then his grin brightened.
Girlie girl smell!
"Girl?" Escalla sniffed, almost choking on smoke and carbonized troll. "What? Like a little girl?"
Big girl. Nice skin!
"There speaks the connoisseur." Escalla crept toward the folder then stroked her lich staff. It grew to the size of a broomstick. "All right, people! Let a professional handle this! Heads down!"
Enid hid outside the door. "Escalla? Do you really think you should touch it?"
"Sure we should! Hey! This is my professional opinion!" The faerie displayed her tiny skirt. "So just duck and let me do my job!"
Everyone dived for cover as Escalla flipped the folder open with her staff. No spells discharged. No poisoned needles shot out. No trap doors opened or monsters appeared. Emerging cautiously from cover, the party gathered to find Escalla holding the folder and shaking it in disappointment, as though hoping some gold and jewels might fall out.
"Hey! I think it's a map!" She tossed the folder at Jus. "All right! I solved the dungeon. Here! Find me Lolth, or I'll let Cinders lick you!"
Yuck.
Escalla leaned on the hell hound and whispered, "Don't knock it till you've tried it." She leaped onto Jus's back. "Well, am I hot or am I not?"
"You're hot." The Justicar looked at the open folder. It showed a maze of interlocking lines that seemed to be the pathways in the fog. Someone had even thoughtfully penciled in neat marks to show their initial point of entry, a dot to mark the trolls' room, and a big red X at a far point of the maze. Other places were marked with discrete red numbers-two "ones," two "twos," and two "threes." Each one was marked with a "travel" rune. Traps? Ladders? Stairs?
The map was a godsend. Too much of a godsend. It had appeared as if by magic. It all smacked of an elaborate trap. The Justicar weighed the implications in his mind then cast a careful search over the room.
The ash had been disturbed. Marks lay in long strokes-diagonally parallel. The Justicar rubbed ash between his finger and thumb.
Henry squatted at his side. "Drag marks, sir?"
"Snake. A big snake." Jus showed his student how to tell the marks by shape and distance. The ash had been compacted quite hard, which meant the snake weighed at least as much as a man. "Lolth's handmaiden."
Demons could teleport. That would explain how she entered the room even while the party fought outside its door. A layer of airborne ash had not yet settled on the folder's cover. She must have left the folder only seconds before Henry peered into the room.
Henry scratched the thin stubble of his newly sprouting beard and asked, "Why would Lolth's handmaiden give us a map?"
"If Lolth knew we were here, I would expect cruder traps than these." The Justicar breathed slow and hard. He took a piece of charred troll and passed it up to Cinders, who ate it with noisy glee. "We'll use the map, but we'll be careful." The big man put a finger on Henry's shoulder. "Very, very careful."
"Morag! We have rats! Nasty, furry little rats!"
Recharging her magic, Lolth lolled with her feet in a bath filled with the blood of a few hapless sacrifices. She had been idly planning her conquests, making slaves plant pins on her maps of the Flanaess when Morag arrived in the throne room.
Her long lashes tilting in elegant surprise, Morag poised in the door. "Magnificence?"
"Intruders, Morag. In the Demonweb. I sense something different in my home."
Morag bowed gravely. "Escapees from the prison levels, Magnificence?"
"Perhaps." Lolth carefully watched her secretary. "Morag. I do hope we have had no little break-ins from outside."
Morag spoke carefully, knowing that she played for very, very high stakes. One slip, and Lolth would command her to pull her own intestines out-slowly-yard by yard.
"Magnificence, the guards at the gates have reported no trouble."
"Have they not?"
Lolth's voice, sly and acidic, dripped with irony. She shot a sidewise glance at Morag.
"Morag, how long have you been with me?"
"One hundred and one years, three months, three days, six hours, and twenty-seven minutes, Magnificence."
"Ah. Leaving eight hundred and ninety-eight years, nine months, twenty-seven-odd days, seventeen hours and thirty-three minutes until our little arrangement comes into review." Lolth paddled her feet, lounging back in her throne. "I do so hope it is a good review, Morag."
Morag rippled her long tail. "I'm sure everything will be properly dealt with, Magnificence." Her swords clattered as she shifted her weight. "Our reentry to the pits has been normal. All guard posts were changed immediately after we docked. I have unleashed a hundred extra spiders into the Demonweb." Morag flourished an order for Lolth to sign. "Here are the hatchery reports from the spider pits. Here is the oath of allegiance from the Ixitxachltl of the Flanaess's inland sea. And here is an execution order for that priestess you thought had bigger breasts than you."
"Oh, just polymorph her into something nasty for an afternoon." Lolth signed, already bored with the procedures.
"Yes, Magnificence."
"I shall be refreshed in about ten hours, Morag, so have the stokers raise a head of steam, and get my dinner. Oh, and nothing living, this time! Not if it can speak. I don't want my appetite spoiled by another idiot trying to give me three wishes if I let him go free."
Morag bowed, her six arms spreading in obeisance, then she slithered back out of the room. Lolth sniffed a vague scent of soot upon the air, scowled, and then went back to her plans for conquest and slaughter.