Ричард Бейкер - Condemnation

“I can’t believe I’m crouching on the deck of a duergar boat, fleeing for my life from a city I’d never seen before three days ago,” Halisstra murmured, breaking the long silence. “Two tendays ago I was the heir apparent of a great House in a noble city. One tenday ago I was a prisoner, betrayed by the petty malice of Faeryl Zauvirr, and now here I am, a rootless wanderer with nothing more to my name than the armor on my back and whatever odds and ends are stowed in my pack. I just cannot fathom why.”

“I am not unfamiliar with changes in one’s circumstances and fortunes,” Danifae said. “What is the point of asking why? It is the will of the Spider Queen.”

“Is it?” Halisstra asked. “House Melarn stood for twenty centuries or more, only to fall in the hour when Lolth withdrew her favor from our entire race. It was only in her absence that our enemies could overthrow us.”

Danifae did not reply, nor did Halisstra expect her to. That thought was perilously close to heresy, after all. To suggest that something had occurred against Lolth’s will was to doubt the power of the Spider Queen, and to question Lolth’s power was to invite death and condemnation as a faithless weakling. The fate that awaited the faithless in the afterlife was too terrible to contemplate. Unless Lolth chose to take the soul of a follower to her divine abode in the Demonweb Pits, a drow’s spirit would be condemned to anguish and oblivion in the barren wastelands where the dead of all kinds were judged. Only abject worship and perfect service could sway the Dark Queen to intercede on one’s behalf and grant life beyond life, eternal existence as one of Lolth’s divine host.

Of course, thought Halisstra, if Lolth is dead, then damnation and oblivion become unavoidable, don’t they?

She blanched at the thought and shivered in horror, standing quickly and pacing away from the bridge to hide her face from the others.

I must not think such things, she told herself. Better to empty my mind of all thoughts than to entertain blasphemy.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, doing her best to banish her insidious doubts.

“We’ve got trouble,” Ryld announced from the afterdeck. The weapons master knelt and peered through the darkness behind the boat. “Three boats, much like this one.”

“I see them,” Pharaun said. He glanced up at the bridge. “Master Coalhewer, I thought you said this was the fastest vessel on the Darklake. Am I to gather that you exaggerated a bit?”

The dwarf scowled back into the darkness and replied, “I’ve never been overtaken before today, so how was I t’know any different?”

He muttered a foul string of curses and paced from one end of the bridge to the other, never taking his eyes off the following boats.

“They’re not gaining on us by much,” Quenthel observed after a long moment.

“It’s going to take them a while to catch us.”

Halisstra turned and clambered past the bridge to gaze aft. She could see the pursuing boats, just barely. They trailed behind Coalhewer’s craft by a bowshot, black ghosts silhouetted faintly against the dying red smudge that marked the city behind them. A glimmer of white played at the bow of each boat where it parted the waters.

She looked up at the duergar and asked, “Can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

Coalhewer growled and waved a hand at the skeletons driving the craft.

“They’ve been told to go as fast as they can,” he said. “We might speed her up by throwing weight over the side, but there’s no telling if it’d be help enough.”

“How far are we from the southern wall of the cavern?” asked Quenthel.

“I don’t know these waters well. Three miles, I’d guess.”

“Then keep to your course,” the Baenre decided. “Once we’re ashore, we’ll be able to outdistance any pursuit, or pick our ground to fight on if we decide not to run.”

“But what of my boat?” Coalhewer demanded. “D’ye have any idea how much I paid for it?”

“I’m certain I hadn’t invited you along, dwarf,” Quenthel replied.

She turned her back on the duergar and settled down to wait, absently stroking her whip as she watched the pursuing boats draw closer.

The boat churned on, passing more stalagmites jutting up from the waters as the pursuing boats edged closer. Halisstra and Danifae watched carefully for obstacles ahead, but despite herself, Halisstra could not resist the impulse to glance over her shoulder every few minutes to check on their pursuers. Each time she did, the boats had closed a little more, until she could actually make out discrete individuals moving around on their decks. Fifteen minutes after they’d first come into view behind Coalhewer’s boat, the duergar vessels began to fire missiles after them—heavy crossbow bolts that fell hissing into their wake, and clumsy catapult-shot of great flaming spheres that soared past the boat to smash against the dank columns littering the surrounding waters.

“Zigzag a bit,” Quenthel told the dwarf. “We don’t want to be hit by one of those.”

“They’ll gain faster on us if I do,” Coalhewer protested, but he began to ease his wheel from one side to the other, trying to avoid keeping straight on any heading for too long.

“Ryld, Valas, return fire at the lead boat. Don’t use more than half your arrows or bolts. We may need them later on.” Quenthel glanced around, and nodded at Halisstra. “You too, Halisstra. Danifae, keep watch forward. Pharaun, answer those catapults.”

Valas turned around on the bridge and braced himself against intersecting rails, fitting an arrow to his string. He aimed for the lead boat, and loosed an arrow. Ryld and Halisstra followed a moment later with bolts of their own. After a long heartbeat of flight time, the tiny figure of a gray dwarf threw up its arms and reeled over the side of the boat, vanishing beneath its flailing paddles. Other dwarves scurried for cover, raising large mantlets to cover themselves.

Pharaun stepped forward and gestured boldly at the leading boat, barking out the words of a spell. From his fingertips a small orange bead of flame streaked out, darting across the dark water with the speed of an arrow. It seemed to vanish into the blackness, swallowed by the bulk of the leading boat—and a brilliant blast of flame erupted right at the pursuer’s prow, scouring the foredecks with a roar that echoed through the great cavern. Duergar wreathed in flames lurched and stumbled in the distance, with more of them falling or throwing themselves over the side.

“Well done!” Quenthel cried.

Even Jeggred roared in glee, but a moment later a buzzing globe of blue energy rose from the second ship and streaked back at them. Pharaun started a spell of deflection or warding, but he was unable to parry the blow, and glaring streaks of lightning enveloped Coalhewer’s boat. The very air roared with dozens of thunderclaps and explosions as crawling arcs of electricity detonated barrels, casks, and fittings, or sizzled into flesh. Halisstra cried out and buckled to the deck as a bolt stabbed through her left hip, while Ryld collapsed jerking to the deck, his breastplate glowing blue-white with the lightning ball’s energy. The skeletal rowers kept at their toil, driving the boat onward.

Pharaun jerked out his wand and hurled a bolt back at the boat that had launched the lightning ball at them. A skipping meteor of blinding fire flew at them from the leading boat, bounding across the water with an almost animate hunger. By a stroke of good luck, the missile struck a low-lying rocky outcropping and detonated behind them, spreading a slick of burning fluid across the water’s surface. The third boat fired its catapult again, sending a cometlike ball of flame whizzing clear over the bridge to explode a short distance ahead.