Ричард Бейкер - Condemnation

Nimor smiled invisibly and congratulated himself on his timing. The matron mother, and perhaps a daughter or two, would be within, performing some empty ritual to their mute goddess.

Carefully staying out of sight, Nimor took one more look around to make sure no one else was approaching. He studied the two guards outside the door. They seemed no more than young officers, proudly attired for their exalted duty as guards to the matron mother, but Nimor did not trust his eyes. The two were more than they seemed, he was certain of it. He decided to bypass them if he could. Gathering himself, Nimor raised his left hand, on which gleamed a ring as black as jet. The ring of shadows was perhaps his most useful weapon, a device that conferred a number of useful magical powers. He called upon one of those powers, and melted into the shadows of the black corridor only to step out on the far side of the shrine’s door, into House Tlabbar’s most sacred sanctum.

The temple almost filled the central floor of the great palace, its graceful dome rising overhead, chased in silver and jet with Lolth’s spider insignia. The shrine was lit with a sinister silvery radiance, the better to display the lavish wealth House Faen Tlabbar had expended in decorating the Spider Queen’s chapel. Nimor spared no admiration on the gold baubles and gem-encrusted images, though.

Matron Mother Ghenni and two of her daughters abased themselves before the towering black idol of the silent goddess, groveling before Lolth, no doubt beseeching the Spider Queen to restore her favor to the House. No one else waited within. Apparently the matron mother felt that her guards and servants did not need to see her and her daughters prostrate themselves in their private adorations. Nimor’s information on Faen Tlabbar had once again been proven accurate.

The assassin silently drew his rapier and advanced, eyeing his prey. Ghenni was a striking dark elf, a female with a voluptuous body and a sinuous grace that allowed her to carry her years better than many females a hundred years younger. He noted the dark glint of mail beneath her emerald robes, and smiled. Apparently even the matron mother of a strong House didn’t feel entirely safe in her own home without the Spider Queen’s protection.

The matron mother paused in her observances, warned by something—a small sound, the flicker of a shadow, possibly just intuition. She raised herself up to her knees and looked around, wariness plain on her face.

“Sil’zet, Vadalma,” she hissed. “We are not alone.”

The two girls halted at once, still stretched out on the cold stone floor. They glanced about warily. Ghenni stood carefully, reaching for a wand at her belt.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “Who dares intrude on our devotions?”

Nimor made no answer but glided closer. The matron mother didn’t see him, he was certain of that, but just as he drew within sword reach, he felt a presence coalesce in the room. An unseen demonic force took shape in the air near the top of the dome.

“Beware, Matron,” a cold voice hissed. “An assassin approaches you unseen.”

To her credit, the Matron Mother of House Faen Tlabbar did not quail. As her daughters scrambled to their feet, Ghenni took two steps back and quickly gestured with her wand, snapping out a word of command. A sphere of roiling blackness hurled forth from the wand and burst behind Nimor in an inky blot of frigid shadows that lashed out like living things hungry for prey. The assassin ignored the spell, as he was already leaping forward. With a precise thrust, he ran the Faen Tlabbar through with his rapier. The blade was as black as night, a long stiletto of intangible shadowstuff that simply glided through the matron mother’s mail shirt as if the armor wasn’t even there. Its effect on the priestess was as lethal as one might expect. He twisted the blade in her heart and grinned, though she still could not see him.

“Greetings, Matron Mother,” he hissed aloud. “Perhaps you will find the answers you were seeking when you reach Lolth’s black hells.”

Ghenni gasped once and coughed blood. She staggered back, clutching at the blade in her heart, and her eyes rolled up in her head and she toppled to the floor. Nimor withdrew his rapier and whirled on the daughter on the left, Sil’zet, while the demon took shape over Ghenni’s body. It was a skeletal creature wrapped in green flames, armed with a black-glowing scimitar of pale bone.

The demon evidently could see him perfectly, for it set on Nimor at once. It aimed a ferocious cut at his head, which he simply ducked, but the creature reversed its blade with surprising speed and backhanded a second cut waist high. Nimor scowled and skipped back, momentarily thwarted. Behind the demon, he saw Sil’zet unrolling a scroll to read, while Vadalma held her ground, stooping to retrieve her mother’s wand while guarding herself with a dagger.

“You will not escape this room with your life, assassin,” Vadalma cried.

“Guards! To me!”

Nimor heard the guards outside fumbling at the chapel door. He ducked and darted, keeping away from the bone demon, but unwilling to engage it. Slaying a guardian demon was pointless, after all. He had only a few moments more, and he wanted to make the most of them. The assassin took one quick step and rolled beneath the demon’s guard, coming up beside Sil’zet as she declaimed the words of her scroll. He rammed his dagger into the small of her back while parrying the bone demon’s scimitar with his own black rapier. Sil’zet shrieked in agony and wrenched away, but Nimor tripped her expertly. She sprawled to the ground and writhed. Nimor followed her and sank the point of his rapier into the notch of her collarbone.

This time, the demon made him pay for ignoring it. Screeching in rage, it flailed at him with its bone sword, cutting a long, burning gash across his shoulder blade as he tried to spin out of the way. Nimor gritted his teeth against the pain and rolled away before the creature could cut him in two. Vadalma barked out the command word for her mother’s wand and blasted blindly with the shadow sphere in Nimor’s direction, flaying the assassin’s flesh with ebon tendrils as cold and as sharp as razors.

The door guards burst in with blades bared, their faces cold and expressionless. They closed with uncanny swiftness, sword points weaving as they groped closer to Nimor, following him with quick jerks of their heads as if the scuffle of his boots and panting of his breath betrayed him.

I’ve done what I came for, Nimor decided.

Ghenni was dead, and Sil’zet clearly dying. Her heels drummed on the marble floor as she drowned in her own blood. He would have liked to have killed Vadalma as well, but the demon and the door guards—whatever they actually were—simply complicated matters beyond practical resolution.

With a grimace of resignation, Nimor backed off several steps and blinked away with the power of his ring, emerging an instant later near the balcony where he had first entered the castle. The forbidding kept him from escaping in a single dimensional leap, but the assassin simply seized the body of the Tlabbar wizard he’d left by the door and darted outside again. The cut across his shoulders burned abominably, and his legs ached where the icy tendrils of the sphere had lashed him, but Nimor drew in a deep breath and allowed himself a feral grin of triumph.

“Fortunate fellows,” he said to the dead males at his feet. “When the Tlabbars determine that you guarded the door through which I came, you will be glad that you are dead.”

The bodies made no response, of course. They never did.

He glanced out at the faerielight glimmering over the battlements of the castle, listening to the alarms and cries of dismay rising from within. He would have liked to savor the sounds for a long time, but pursuit could not be far behind. With a sigh, he clenched his fist around his black ring and willed himself away.