War Of The Spider Queen - Condemnation Part 31

A few hundred yards distant, cloaked in darkness and drifting vapors, Pharaun sat cross-legged on the hard stone, hurrying to finish his spell. He'd watched the two G.o.ds battle to a standstill and plummet out of sight, but he was committed to his course and did not intend to stop. The spell of sending could not be cast quickly, and if he attempted to rush it, he would lose it all together. In the part of his mind that was not absorbed in the shaping of the magic, he wondered with no little trepidation whether the G.o.ds' omniscience might be complete enough to note his presence, note that he was casting a spell, and deduce why he was casting itand whether the G.o.ds would deign to stop him. As best he could tell from his safe distance, though, Vhaeraun and Selvetarm were occupied with their fierce battle and were unlikely to be paying him much attention.

He completed the spell and whispered the message it would carry for him through the incalculable distances of dimensions and s.p.a.ce, "Jeggred. We are in mortal peril. Slay Tzirik's physical body at once. We will return quickly, but guard us until we do. Quenthel commands it."

Pharaun sighed and stood, his expression thoughtful. The sending was reliable, but he didn't know for certain the effects of attempting it from another plane of existence. Nor did he know how long it would take his words to reach Jeggred back in Minauthkeep, or if the draegloth would choose to do as he asked even in Quenthel's name ... or even if the cursed half-demon was still alive and free to kill the high priest.

The Master of Sorcere had a good sense of what to expect if all went as he hoped. It was only a matter of time, and not much at that.

"This would not be a good time to become obstinate, Jeggred," Pharaun muttered, even though his sending was gone already. "For once, do as I ask without question."

Warily, he began to creep back toward the distant cleft in the temple's ma.s.sive wall.

Surrounded by his tumbling wall of blades, Tzirik stood aside from the rest of the company, quickly and expertly reading aloud from his scroll. He didn't bother explaining to the Menzoberranyr what Vhaeraun had told him to do, or why he was doing it. He simply proceeded as if they were not there at all, though he'd taken the precaution of raising a blade barrier to keep them from interfering.

Ryld and Valas stood close to the deadly, spinning razors, watching helplessly as the priest droned on. Danifae and Quenthel crouched a little father back, equally helpless, the determination to do something battling with their inability to discern what, exactly, they could do. Halisstra stood watching as well, but she merely waited to see what form her doom would take.

"Tzirik, stop!" cried Valas. "You have put us all in sufficient peril today. We will not allow you to continue."

"Kill him, Valas," Danifae said. "He will not listen, and he will not stop."

The scout stood paralyzed as the priest's chant approached the final, triumphant notes. His shoulders slumped, stricken with defeat. Without warning, Valas brought up his shortbow and fired.

The first arrow was deflected by a whirling blade in the magical barrier, but the second pa.s.sed through cleanly and pierced Tzirik's gauntleted hand. The priest cried out in pain and dropped his scroll, which fluttered to the stone plaza, unexpended.

The Jaelre whirled on Valas, eyes afire with hate through his masked helm, and said, "Are you still the b.i.t.c.hes' errand-boy, Valas? Don't you see that you're nothing but a well-heeled dog to them? Why do you persist in giving the Spider Queen your loyalty, when you could take the Masked Lord for your G.o.d and know true freedom?"

"Lolth will do as she will," Valas answered. "I, however, am loyal to Bregan D'aerthe, and to my city. We can't allow you, or even your G.o.d, to deflect us from our quest, Tzirik."

Tzirik's face clouded and he said, "You and your companions will not gainsay the will of Vhaeraun. I refuse to permit it."

He crouched and raised his s.h.i.+eld, snarling out the words of another divine spell. Valas fired again, but his arrows only ricocheted from the priest's s.h.i.+eld. Tzirik finished his spell and placed his wounded hand on the ground. A powerful tremor blasted through the stone and bludgeoned the Menzoberranyr, flinging them about like dolls and ripping open great cracks in the substance of the stone plain, crevices that led into absolute blackness below.

Valas staggered back and forth, trying to keep his balance as the stones cracked and buckled beneath him. Danifae steadied herself and snapped off a shot with her crossbow that pa.s.sed through the blades and struck Tzirik a ringing hit on the breastplate, but the bolt s.h.i.+vered into pieces on the priest's armor.

Quenthel managed a desperate, off-balance leap to keep from toppling into a gaping crevice beneath her. She rolled awkwardly, and came up with a short iron rod in her hand. The high priestess barked a command word and discharged a white sphere of some magical, viscous substance at the priest, but Tzirik's seething blades ripped apart the viscid glob in a spray of gluey strands.

"Get up, Halisstra," Quenthel hissed. "Your sister priestesses need you!"

The powerful tremors took Halisstra's feet out from under her the first time she tried to stand. She shook her head and tried again.

My sisters need me? she thought. Strange, as our G.o.ddess apparently has no use for any of us who serve as her priestesses. If Lolth chooses to turn her back on me, to spurn my faithfulness and devotion, then the least I can do is return the favor.

Throughout Halisstra's life she had willingly joined ranks with her worst enemies, her most bitter rivals, when something rose to threaten the absolute dominion over dark elf society she and her sister priestesses shared. Staring off into the endless, empty expanse of the Demonweb Pits, she found that she would not take one single step in Lolth's name.

"Let him do as he will," she said to Quenthel. "Lolth has taught me not to care. If we managed to preserve Lolth's very existence today, do you think she would be grateful? If I tore my own heart out and laid it on the Spider Queen's altar, do you think she would be pleased by my sacrifice?"

Bitter laughter welled up in her throat and Halisstra gave herself over to it, even as Tzirik's tremors subsided. Her heart ached with a hurt that could rend the world in two, but she could not find a voice for it.

Quenthel stared at her in horror.

"Blasphemy," she managed to whisper.

The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith gathered up her whip and turned on Halisstra, but before she could strike, Tzirik struck with another spell, scouring the entire party with sheets of incandescent flames that raced back and forth across the stone plain like water slos.h.i.+ng on a plate. Halisstra threw herself flat and cried out in pain. The others cursed or cried out, scrabbling for cover that did not exist.

"Leave me!" Tzirik commanded from within his cage of whirling steel.

He stooped down and picked up his scroll, while the Menzoberranyr picked themselves up from the smoking stones.

Ryld rose slowly, his flesh seared at face and hands, and watched as the cleric started to cast his spell again. The weapons master eyed the spinning blades surrounding the priest, and with the quickness of a big cat, he gathered up his legs and sprang into the barrier, crouching low into the tightest ball possible. Droplets of blood splattered nearby as the whirling magical blades sparked and sliced against the weapons master's dwarven armor, drawing blood in a dozen placesbut the Master of Melee-Magthere was through the barrier.

He staggered to his feet with an animal grunt of pain, Splitter gripped awkwardly in his slashed hands, but he managed to drive at Tzirik with the point of the greatsword. Once again the cleric was forced to drop his scroll. He parried the thrust with his s.h.i.+eld and lashed back with his spiked mace.

Ryld avoided the blow only by leaping backward, so close to the whirling blades that sparks flew from his shoulders as the razors kissed his back. He recovered and glided forward again, spinning his deadly sword and slas.h.i.+ng quickly at the Jaelre cleric.

Valas, standing outside the whirling blades, reached up to the nine-pointed star token on his breast and touched it. In the blink of an eye he vanished, reappearing inside the barrier behind Tzirik. He dropped his bow and drew his kukris, but Tzirik surprised him.

Turning his back on Ryld, the strong cleric took three powerful strides and slammed his heavy s.h.i.+eld into the Bregan D'aerthe even as Valas got his knives in hand. With a roar of anger the Jaelre shoved Valas back into the curtain of deadly razors and sent the scout stumbling through, spinning and screaming as the blades sliced his flesh.

Ryld made Tzirik pay by darting forward to strike out with a full double-handed slash across the torso that spun the priest half around, but the cleric's plate armor held against the blow. In response, Tzirik leaped in close to Ryld, inside the fighter's reach, and rained down a barrage of wicked blows with the spiked mace, driving the weapons master back.

Ryld gathered himself for another a.s.sault, but at that moment Quenthel hurled herself through the blades as well. One sliced her calf deeply and sent her stumbling when she pa.s.sed through, and she went to one knee with a gasp of pain, blocking Ryld. Tzirik stepped back out of reach of the Baenre's whip, and quickly called out a spell. Ryld froze in place as the cleric ensnared him, freezing his will and paralyzing his muscles.

Quick as a snake, Tzirik turned on Quenthel and hammered her to the ground even as she tried to stand on her injured leg. Avoiding the hissing serpent heads, Tzirik kicked her whip back outside the curtain of blades, and turned to crush Ryld's skull while the weapons master was helpless before him. The bronze mace drew back for the lethal blowand Tzirik was sent reeling away from his intended victim, battered by a powerful blast of sound.

Halisstra, standing just on the other side of the blades, followed with a second bae'qeshel song and scoured the cleric again. She would not fight for Lolth again, but she would fight for her companions, Ryld in particular.

"Do not kill the priest," she called to her companions. "We need him to bring us home!"

"What do you suggest, then?" Danifae snapped from beside her. "He seems intent on destroying us!"

"Indeed," said Tzirik.

The Jaelre priest recovered from Halisstra's spells and lashed out with one of his own, calling down from the black skies above a column of crawling purple fire that blasted Halisstra and Danifae. The cleric wheeled to confront Quenthel, who was just gathering herself to leap at his back. He hefted his mace.

"I take great pleasure in slaying clerics of the Spider Queen," Tzirik said. "When you awake in Minauthkeep, I'll slay you again there."

He advanced on her, his cruel eyes alight as Quenthel hobbled awkwardly, seeking to dodge the inevitable blow.

Tzirik's breastplate simply vanished. The cleric halted in consternation, and glanced down. All other pieces of his full plate armor remained in place, but thenslowlyhis arming coat vanished as well, revealing the smooth black flesh of his torso and chest.

"What in the Masked Lord's name?" he muttered, and glanced up just in time to turn away from Danifae, who shot a bolt at his heart that instead caught the cleric's s.h.i.+eld. His mystification turned abruptly and instantly to pure terror. "No!" he screamed. "N"

Some unseen force ripped open Tzirik's bare chest and began to pluck the gory ribs one by one out of his jerking torso. Blood and bits of bone splattered all around, yet the cleric impossibly kept to his feet as he was flensed alive before the astonished Menzoberranyr.

Halisstra, who had seen many terrible things at Lolth's altars, recoiled in horror. With a cold, distant part of her mind, she noted that the flesh and bone torn out of Tzirik simply faded away, just as his armor had.

It's not happening here, she realized. Tzirik is being murdered, but back in Minauthkeep.

One final obscene blow seized the contents of Tzirik's chest cavity and literally strewed them abroad. The Jaelre priest sank to his knees as his eyes rolled up in his head. From some immense distance a s.h.i.+ning silver cord appeared, tethered to the priest's back. It recoiled sharply into his astral body with a psychic force that plucked at Halisstra's very soul, and Tzirik was gone, as if he had never existed.

"G.o.ds ..." Valas managed to say, then he grunted in shock.

All of them felt it at the same instanta violent wrenching of their psyches that rent the stone plain and the black temple into a thousand silvery shards.

Halisstra opened her mouth, a scream of terror welling up inside her, but before she could draw another breath she was yanked away into oblivion.

Halisstra awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright from the musty old divan in Tzirik's hidden chamber. It took her a moment to understand that she was alive. The experience of having her soul wrenched from the Demonweb Pits back to Faerun in an instant by Tzirik's destruction was not something she cared to repeat. It took her a moment longer than that to understand that she was no longer in any physical pain.

Where she did ache, though, was in her heart. A great, hot hurt throbbed in the center of her being, a grief so keen and vast that Halisstra could not imagine anything that could swallow it.

She pressed her hand to her chest as if to smooth out the ache beneath her breastbone, and slowly looked around. The others in the company were rising, too, all variously dazed or groggy from their experience. To her right, Tzirik lay still on his couch, his body torn apart. Blood splattered the walls of the chamber, and awful pieces of the Jaelre cleric lay discarded on the floor. Beside the priest's ruined corpse squatted Jeggred, licking blood from his white fur. A pair of Jaelre warriors lay close at hand, their throats torn out.

"Mistress?" the draegloth asked Quenthel. "What happened? What did you learn?"

Quenthel's eyes fell on Tzirik's corpse and the dead Jaelre guards nearby, and she scowled.

"What in the G.o.ddess's name were you thinking?" she asked the draegloth. "Why did you slay him?"

"The guards? They seemed likely to object to my work on the heretic," answered Jeggred.

"No, not them," the priestess said, "Tzirik!"

Jeggred's eyes narrowed, and a low growl began in his throat. The half-demon straightened and paced around the couches toward Pharaun, clenching his claws.

"Wizard, if you caused me to fail in my duty to"

"Pharaun . . ." Quenthel said, frowning as she struggled to collect her thoughts. It didn't take her long. Recollection dawned in her eyes, and she wheeled to glare at the Master of Sorcere. "You abandoned us in the middle of the Demonweb Pits, when we needed you the most. Explain yourself!"

"I deemed it necessary," Pharaun said. "We were in mortal danger, but we could not flee without Tzirik's complicity, and it seemed clear to me that Tzirik had no intention of going anywhere. The best method for escape I could contrive was to direct a sending to Jeggred, and instruct him to slay Tzirik's material body. As the priest is the one who cast the spell of astral travel, his death ended it for all of usrather more abruptly than I would have liked, but I could think of no other options. I told Jeggred you ordered it, since I was not certain he would kill the cleric simply because I asked him to."

"Your cowardice ripped us away from the one place we had a hope of winning our answers," Quenthel growled.

"No," said Halisstra. "Pharaun's prudence engineered our escape from an impossible situation, in the one manner that had any hope of working."

"What is the point of escaping, when we failed to complete our quest?" the Baenre demanded.

"Answers? There were no answers to be had, Quenthel," Halisstra said. "We could have abased ourselves before her until the end of time, and the Spider Queen could not have cared less. The quest was pointlessand it was a quest you were never certain of anyway. Or were there storehouses to raid in the Abyss?"

"I let your blasphemy and pridefulness pa.s.s in the Demonweb Pits, girl, but I will not do so again," Quenthel said. "If you speak to me again in such a manner, I will have your tongue torn out at the roots. You will be punished for your lack of faith, Halisstra Melarn. The Spider Queen will visit unimaginable torments upon you for your lack of respect."

"At least that would be a sign that she lives," Halisstra replied.

She stood and began to gather her belongings. In the stone halls beyond their chamber, she could hear distant shouts of alarm and the clatter of many feet coming nearer. It seemed almost beneath her notice.

"The Jaelre are coming," Danifae said. "They might have something to say about the evisceration of their high priest."

"I would prefer not to have to cut my way out of this castle," Ryld offered. "I've had my fill of fighting today."

With a low growl, Quenthel tore her attention away from Halisstra and studied the small chamber. She chewed her lip in agitation, as if wrestling with an idea she didn't like, then she muttered a curse and turned to Pharaun.

"Do you have a spell that can get us out of here?"

Pharaun smirked, obviously pleased that Quenthel had been forced to resort to his powers so quickly after condemning his actions.

"It's a bit of a stretch, but I think I can teleport us all at once," he said. "Where do we wish to go? I can't bring us safely into the Underdark, but other than that. ..."

"Anywhere but here," Quenthel replied. "We need time to consider what we've seen and learned, and what we must do next."

"The cave mouth the portal from the Labyrinth led to," Valas said. "It's several days' march from here, and not heavily traveled.

"Fine," Quenthel snapped. "Take us."

"Join hands, then," Pharaun said.

He placed his own hand over Ryld's and Halisstra's, and spoke a short phrase just as the first blows sounded on the panel of the secret door. In the blink of an eye they stood on the cold, mossy ground of the cave mouth in the forest clearing. It was close to dawn. The skies to the east were pearly gray, and cold dew lay heavy around their feet. The glen was as empty and cheerless as it had been the first time the company camped there, a little more than a tenday past. Most of the snow had melted off, and icy water trickled into the sinkhole and ran out of sight beneath the hill.

"Here we are," the wizard announced. "Now, if n.o.body minds too much, I believe I am going to find the most comfortable spot I can in the cavern below and sleep like a d.a.m.ned human."

He clambered down the slippery rocks without waiting for a response.

"Take your rest later, wizard," Quenthel called after him. "We must determine what we need to do next, the meaning of the things we saw"

"What we saw has no meaning," Halisstra said, "and what we do next does not matter. I'm with Pharaun."

She summoned up the strength to leap lightly from boulder to boulder, descending back into the comforting and familiar darkness of the cavern below.

Behind her Quenthel fumed and Jeggred rumbled in displeasure, but Ryld and Valas shouldered their packs and followed Pharaun down into the cave. Danifae turned to the Baenre priestess and rested one hand on her shoulder.

"We are all troubled by what we've seen," the battle captive said, "but we're exhausted. We'll all think more clearly when we have had some rest, and perhaps then the G.o.ddess's will might be more plain to us."

Grudgingly, Quenthel nodded in a.s.sent, and the rest followed into the cave. Halisstra and Pharaun had already thrown themselves down on the pebbled floor of the cavern a few dozen yards from the entrance, shucking their packs and leaning back against the walls. The rest of the Menzoberranyr filed in slowly and picked out their own spots, collapsing wherever they happened to stop moving.

Seyll's bloodstained armor seemed unbearably heavy on Halisstra's shoulders, and the hilt of the Eilistraeean's sword jammed painfully into her ribs. She was too tired to find a better position.

"Will no one tell me what happened in the Demonweb Pits?" Jeggred railed. "I have waited in that empty stone room for days, guarding your sleeping bodies faithfully. I deserve to hear what happened."

"You will," Valas answered. "Later. I don't believe any of us rightly know what to make of it. Give us time to rest, and to reflect."

Rest? Halisstra thought.

She felt as if she could sleepsleep in the unconscious and helpless manner of a humanfor a tenday and not feel healed of the fatigue she carried. Her mind refused to reflect any longer on why Lolth had abandoned her, yet she had something in her heart that demanded examination, a grief that would not permit her the refuge of the Reverie until she had found some way to let it out.

With a sigh, she pulled her satchel close and opened it, taking out the leather case of her lyre. She carefully unsheathed the heirloom, running her fingers over the rune-carved dragonbone arms, touching the perfect mithral wire.

At least I still have this, she thought.