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R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection
R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection Read online
R. A. Salvatore's
War of the Spider Queen
Volume II
Table of Contents
Introduction
Author's Note
Extinction
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Annihilation
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Resurrection
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Other Works
Introduction
Welcome to Faerûn, a land of magic and intrigue, brutal violence and divine compassion, where gods have ascended and died, and mighty heroes have risen to fight terrifying monsters. Here, millennia of warfare and conquest have shaped dozens of unique cultures, raised and leveled shining kingdoms and tyrannical empires alike, and left long forgotten, horror-infested ruins in their wake.
A LAND OF MAGIC
When the goddess of magic was murdered, a magical plague of blue fire— the Spellplague—swept across the face of Faerûn, killing some, mutilating many, and imbuing a rare few with amazing supernatural abilities. The Spellplague forever changed the nature of magic itself, and seeded the land with hidden wonders and bloodcurdling monstrosities.
A LAND OF DARKNESS
The threats Faerûn faces are legion. Armies of undead mass in Thay under the brilliant but mad lich king Szass Tam. Treacherous dark elves plot in the Underdark in the service of their cruel and fickle goddess, Lolth. The Abolethic Sovereignty, a terrifying hive of inhuman slave masters, floats above the Sea of Fallen Stars, spreading chaos and destruction. And the Empire of Netheril, armed with magic of unimaginable power, prowls Faerûn in flying fortresses, sowing discord to their own incalculable ends.
A LAND OF HEROES
But Faerûn is not without hope. Heroes have emerged to fight the growing tide of darkness. Battle-scarred rangers bring their notched blades to bear against marauding hordes of orcs. Lowly street rats match wits with demons for the fate of cities. Inscrutable tiefling warlocks unite with fierce elf warriors to rain fire and steel upon monstrous enemies. And valiant servants of merciful gods forever struggle against the darkness.
A Land of Untold Adventure
Has it really been ten years? Sometimes it feels as though I’m still working on this Forgotten Realms mega-event, other times it seems centuries have gone by.
It started with an off-hand conversation between myself and my boss’s boss at the time, Mary Kirchoff. She was joking about how our distributor at the time had told her that what we needed were “more R.A. Salvatores.” You know, authors who sell as many books as Bob Salvatore does, as though any of us could just snap our fingers and have that author materialize out of thin air. If that were possible, every week there’d be a 300-way tie for #1 on The New York Times best-seller list.
But it did start us thinking.
Around that time there was a series of military thrillers running up and down the best-sellers lists called Tom Clancy’s Op Center—books written by various authors under the Tom Clancy brand name. Either Mary or I (let’s say it was me because it turned out to be such a great idea) suggested we do something similar, attaching some of our newer authors to “the R.A. Salvatore brand” in the hope of getting a little extra attention for everybody. We started calling it R.A. Salvatore Presents.
That’s the business decision behind it, but no way would Bob Salvatore lend his name and time to any series unless there was a story worth telling. And that was quite a question. Obviously, no other author but Bob was going to write Drizzt . . . so what else was there?
As so often happens, a bit of creative synchronicity presented itself. We were working on a line of Greyhawk novels that were updated novelizations of the classic AD&D adventure modules. They started by pitting adventurers against some giants, then descending into the depths of the earth, and ended with a confrontation with the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, a.k.a. Lolth.
The original adventure module ended with the assumption that your party would kill Lolth, so the Greyhawk novel (spoiler alert) would end the same way. The logical question became If we kill Lolth in a Greyhawk novel does that mean she is dead everywhere? If Lolth dies, what happens to the theocratic matriarchy of our favorite dark elf ’s home town?
Now that sounded like a story with R.A. Salvatore Presents written all over it.
We started talking about it inside Wizards of the Coast and the team that was even then developing Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition told us that in the new worlds order there was no connection between the various campaign settings, so if Lolth dies in the world of Greyhawk, she goes on entirely unfazed in the Forgotten Realms setting.
Okay, but still, it was a cool idea, and worth doing anyway.
What followed was a pitch, which went something like this: R.A. Salvatore Presents will tell the story of what happens to drow society when their principal goddess, Lolth, suddenly stops answering prayers and at least appears to be dead. The drow of Menzoberranzan send an expedition to the Demonweb Pits in search of answers.
People, including Bob Salvatore, liked that idea, and we were off to the races.
And it seemed like a race, too—a long, grueling Iron Man Triathlon.
We started with only that seed of an idea and once Bob was signed on, we set up a “summit” meeting at the offices of Wizards of the Coast. We had th
e first three authors in mind at that point: Richard Lee Byers, Thomas M. Reid, and Richard Baker. Both Thomas and Rich Baker worked for WotC at the time, so they were easy to rustle up, but we had to fly Bob and Richard Byers in from Massachusetts and Florida, respectively. The meeting was the most fun I’ve had in my adult life. Somewhere in a file cabinet at WotC are the printouts of the original whiteboard notes, with characters roughed in as “Traitor Priest,” “Scout,” etc. and plot points outlined in order to structure the six-book series. What was amazing to me, when I looked at those notes again years later, was how closely the finished books actually followed that initial outline.
Richard Byers started writing first even as I got to work on the series bible, a document that Bob and I passed back and forth via email I don’t know how many times as it started to take shape. The series bible ended up at more than ninety pages including detailed D&D character sheets for all the major characters (courtesy of Mr. Baker), word lists and glossaries, even notes on protocol, like who you call “Mistress,” and so on.
That was the key to keeping six authors and two editors on track for almost three years: Write everything down, and share those notes with everybody.
When it came time to seat the final three authors, of course I started with Lisa Smedman, who’d blown me away with her work on the Sembia series. Mary and then managing editor Peter Archer surprised me (and Bob, too, I think) with the opportunity to write the fifth book—an offer I didn’t have to hear twice. Finally, Mel Odom agreed to write the last book, but had to pull out because of other commitments, leaving a space right at the very end that Paul S. Kemp filled brilliantly.
R.A. Salvatore’s War of the Spider Queen was the hardest I ever worked—and it was worth every second of it.
I used to joke that if I ever suggested doing anything like it again, my coworkers were free to strike me on the head as hard as they could. But you know what? I would do it again in a heartbeat, especially if I get to do it again with those same nine people: Richard Lee Byers, Thomas M. Reid, Richard Baker, Lisa Smedman, Paul S. Kemp, managing editor Peter Archer, art director and designer extraordinaire Matt Adelsperger, legendary fantasy illustrator Brom, and of course R.A. Salvatore.
Come on guys . . . what do you say?
Philip Athans March 2011
It was for food, at first, a hunger profound and demanding. Living creatures, scrambling and scrabbling, a ball of thousands rolling and biting and kicking. No alliances, no sharing, a million individual spiderlings feasting upon their siblings, crunching on carapaces and sucking on sweet life juices.
Those that survived the first minutes of freedom from the egg sack found their physical hunger satiated, found their eight-legged bodies bloated. And for a moment, there was rest.
But physical hunger proved no more than the catalyst, and these beasts, offspring of the Lady of Chaos, were elevated from physical need to the demands of the ego, from simple hunger to the first taste of power, and the war raged once more. They bit and they ate. They attacked and they fed, nourished as much by the exquisite pain of their rivals as by the smell of flowing ichor.
The shriek of a victim’s agony.
The fear in eight tiny eyes as one gained advantage and another realized its doom.
The joy of spilled lifeblood.
This marked the second level, beyond the physical, for those who survived the first wave of feeding. This marked the satiation of ego, the sense of supremacy, the sweet taste of victory. And the thousands rested.
But they were not done.
For beyond the hunger and the power came the need for thrill, the true mark of Lady Lolth, the ultimate and paradoxical craving to walk on the very edge of disaster.
And so it began anew. The thousands attacked, consumed and were consumed, and to those who survived the first few moments of the renewed trial came the sense of self, for these were beings of Lolth, beings of chaos, and in that swirl of battle, where oblivion loomed on every side, the offspring lived, truly lived, basking in the realization that each moment could be the last moment.
This was the beauty of chaos.
This was the beauty of Lolth.
This was the doom for all, but one.
chapter
one
Pharaun lay on the forest floor, staring up into the angry eyes of five hissing serpents. Their fangs bared and dripping with poison, their mouths open wide, the red-and-black-banded vipers strained against the whip handle from which they grew.
The woman holding the whip stared down at Pharaun with tightly contained rage. Taller and stronger than the Master of Sorcere, she was an imposing figure. Pharaun could not see her face—the bright light streaming down from the sky above flooded his vision, turning her into a dark silhouette with bone-white hair—but her tone was as venomous as her serpents’ hisses.
“You stepped on that spider on purpose,” Quenthel said. “I did not,” he spat back, wincing at the slush that was soaking through his elegant shirt, chilling his back. He was glad the other members of their group had scattered in different directions to search—that they weren’t there to observe him in such an undignified pose. “I can’t see a gods-cursed thing in this wretched light. Would I have let my trousers get into such a state if I could see well enough to step around the brambles that tore them? If there was a spider on the path, I didn’t know it was there.”
He glanced to his left, at the spot Quenthel had indicated a moment before. As she looked in that direction, he slid his right hand out from behind his back.
One of the whip-serpents hissed a warning to its mistress, but too late. The moment Pharaun’s hand was clear, he spoke the word that awoke the magic in his ring. Instantly, the steel band around his finger unfurled, elongating and expanding into a sword. Quick as thought, it spun in mid-air, slashing at the serpents.
The vipers recoiled, narrowly escaping the scything blade. Quenthel leaped back, her mail tunic clinking. Pharaun scrambled to his feet and pressed her with the sword.
“Jeggred!” Quenthel screamed, her piwafwi whirling out behind her as she dodged the dancing sword. “Defend me!”
Pharaun whipped a hand into a pocket of his own piwafwi and pulled out a pinch of powdered diamond. Flicking the sparkling powder into the air, he shouted the words of a spell, at the same time whirling in a tight circle to scatter the powder. A dome of force sprang up all around him, shimmering like an inverted bowl.
And not a heartbeat too soon. An instant after the magical dome had materialized, a vaguely drow-shaped form hurtled out of the forest. The draegloth leaped onto the dome, the claws on his oversized fighting hands screeching like the shrieks of the damned as they scrabbled for a hold on the diamondhard surface. The half-demon jumped again and again onto the dome, sliding off.
At last giving up, the draegloth crouched just outside the magical barrier, his smaller set of hands balled into fists on the ground while his larger hands flexed claws in frustration. He glared with blood-red eyes at Pharaun, then jerked his chin in defiance, sending a ripple through the coarse mane of yellowwhite hair that cloaked his shoulders.
Pharaun winced at the stench of the draegloth’s breath, wishing the magical barrier was capable of blocking odors.
Behind Jeggred, Quenthel kept a wary eye on the sword that hovered just over her head, shielding herself from it with the buckler strapped to her arm. The serpents of her whip hissed at it, one of them straining upward in a futile effort to snap at the weapon. Quenthel started to reach for the tube at her hip that held her scrolls, then paused. She seemed reluctant to waste the little magic she had left on such a petty quarrel.
“Call off your nephew, and let’s talk,” Pharaun suggested. Squinting, he glanced up at the harsh blue sky. “And let’s get out of the sun, before it turns that pretty adamantine buckler you’re wearing to dust.”
Quenthel’s eyes narrowed in fury at Pharaun’s insubordination. No doubt she was thinking that though a Master of Sorcere he might be, as a male he should
remember his place. Quenthel certainly lusted to use the spells once granted her by Lolth to pin Pharaun in a web and subject him to a thousand slow torments, but the Queen of Spiders had fallen silent. Save for her scrolls, Quenthel had no more spells to cast.
“Jeggred,” she snapped. “Withdraw.”
Reluctantly, Jeggred backed away from the barrier.
“That’s more like it,” Pharaun said.
He lifted his right hand, fingers extended, and spoke a command word. His sword shrank, then streaked through the air toward his hand and coiled into a ring once more. He started the gesture that would lower the barrier, then paused as he saw Jeggred tense.
“I should remind you, Quenthel, that I could kill this demon spawn with a single word,” Pharaun cautioned.
“Jeggred knows that,” Quenthel said, indifference turning her beautiful face into an expressionless mask. “He makes his own choices.”
Jeggred growled—whether at Quenthel or Pharaun, it wasn’t clear—and spat against the magical dome. Rising to his feet, he stalked back into the forest.
Pharaun let the barrier fall.
“Now then,” he said, straightening his elegant but travelworn clothes and smoothing back an errant lock of white hair from his high forehead. “I apologize for stepping on one of Lolth’s children, but I assure you it was entirely an accident. The sooner we leave the Lands of Light, the better. Not only did we just stir up all of Minauthkeep by killing the high priest of House Jaelre—”
“Your decision, not mine,” Quenthel spat. Then, after a moment, she smiled. “Though Tzirik did deserve to die.”
The serpents in her whip hissed their assent.
Pharaun nodded, glad that she was in agreement that the death had been necessary. Tzirik’s magic had allowed their group to travel through the Astral Plane to the Demonweb Pits, domain of the goddess Quenthel served—a goddess who had fallen alarmingly silent, of late. There, they had discovered why Lolth’s priestesses could no longer draw upon her magic: the goddess had disappeared. Her temple appeared to have been abandoned, its door sealed with an enormous black stone carved in the likeness of her face.