Ричард Бейкер - Condemnation

He felt the feathery touch of Pharaun’s words appearing in his mind: Anauroch. Ched Nasad was destroyed by rebellion and stonefire. Lolth’s silence did extend there. We now seek a priest of Vhaeraun in hope of answers.

The contact faded after those twenty-five words. That particular spell didn’t permit lengthy conversations, but Pharaun had answered Gromph’s questions with uncharacteristic efficiency.

“Ched Nasad destroyed?” breathed Gromph.

That merited immediate investigation. He turned again to his crystal orb and commanded it to show him the City of Shimmering Webs. It took a moment for the mist to clear, and reveal to the Archmage a complete calamity.

Where Ched Nasad had stood, there was nothing but remnant strands of calcified webbing, dripping slowly into a black abyss like molten glass from a glazier’s pipe. Of the city’s sinister palaces and wall-climbing castles, virtually nothing remained.

“Lolth protect us,” murmured Gromph, sickened at the sight.

He had no particular love for the City of Shimmering Webs, but whatever misfortune had befallen Ched Nasad might visit Menzoberranzan in time. Ched Nasad had been a city nearly as large and as powerful as Menzoberranzan itself, but Gromph could see with his own eyes the completeness of its ruin. If one building in twenty of the city remained, he would have been surprised.

Gromph shifted his orb’s vision, searching as best he could for some sign of survivors, but the main cavern was largely deserted. He saw more than a few burned bodies among the smoldering debris, but any drow who’d lived through the burning of the city were clearly sheltering in the nearby caverns. Gromph was unable to bring them into the view of his scrying device, so after a time he decided that the effort was irrelevant and allowed the crystal orb to go dim again. He sat for a long time in silence, gazing absently at the darkened orb.

“Now, do I need to share this with dear Triel?” he asked himself when he finally stirred from his reverie.

He knew something that the matron mothers presumably did not, and that was always the sign of possibility. The trouble was, Gromph had no idea what possible advantage he could derive from hoarding the knowledge, and the risks of failing to communicate what he had learned were all too clear. Knowing that Lolth’s silence extended beyond Menzoberranzan, he might mount a direct challenge to the priestesses—if he were inclined to do so—but even if he brought the full strength of Sorcere against the ruling Houses of the city, what would be left if he did succeed? The smoldering wreckage of Ched Nasad seemed a likely result. Most likely the House loyalties among the masters of the wizards’ school would cripple any such nonsense from the start.

No, Gromph decided. I am no revolutionary anxious to sweep away the old order—not yet, anyway.

Besides, the most likely cause of all the trouble was some insidious new snare of Lolth’s devising. Gromph wouldn’t put it past the Spider Queen to fall completely and inexplicably silent, just to see who might slink out of the shadows in order to take advantage of her priestesses’ temporary “weakness.”

That meant that sooner or later, Lolth would tire of her game and restore her favor to her clerics. When that happened, woe to anyone foolish enough to have shown the shallowness of his allegiance to the established order. No, the wisest thing to do was to pass along to Triel what he’d learned, and to make sure Matron Baenre didn’t hoard the knowledge to herself. Pharaun’s words indicated in a few quick brushstrokes a very grave danger to Menzoberranzan, and Gromph refused to be remembered as the archmage who allowed his city to be razed. With a sigh, he stood and dropped silently back down the shaft. He rather hoped Triel was in the middle of something awkward, so that he could savor the petty pleasure of interrupting her with news that could not wait.

“The question is not where we should go next,” observed Pharaun with a wry grimace. “The question is how we shall escape Hlaungadath alive.” The Master of Sorcere was exhausted. Dust plastered the blood and sweat on his face, and he was so tired he could do no more than collapse into the shadow of a long, crumbling wall. Having long since exhausted any spells useful in battle, he wielded a wand of thin black iron from which he called forth bolts of lightning. Pharaun glanced up at the sky as if to gauge how much more daylight remained, and he quickly winced away. “Will the cursed sun never set?”

“Get up, wizard,” said Quenthel. “If we rest, we die.”

She, too, trembled with exhaustion, but she stayed on her feet. The long snake-headed whips she carried still coiled and hissed dangerously, covered with gore, but blood trickled from a nasty cut above her left eye, and two furrows of broken and twisted links in her mail shirt showed just how close she’d come to dying under the claws of some hulking monstrosity of gray skin and spiderlike eyes.

“You’re more vulnerable to the lamias’ powers of suggestion and illusion while you’re fatigued,” Halisstra said. “Better to die fighting than to fall under the dominion of such a creature.”

She was in much the same condition as the others. Since she and Danifae had survived their initial encounter with the monsters, it had been an hours-long running battle through the streets and empty buildings of the ruins. First, a large pride of lamias had tried to overwhelm the party with their beguiling powers, but drow on guard for such magical tricks were no easy prey. Halisstra and the others steeled themselves for a fight against the lion-bodied monsters, but the lamias—deceitful and cowardly things that they were—withdrew from the battle and instead hurled wave after wave of beguiled thralls at the drow party. Lamias might have lacked for physical courage, but the manticores, asabis, gargoyles, and other assorted creatures under their control certainly did not.

“Neither option appeals to me,” Quenthel growled. She turned slowly, studying the walls and structures around them, seeking escape. “There. I can see the open desert just beyond those buildings. Maybe they’ll abandon the chase if we leave the city.”

“Unwise, Mistress,” said Valas. He crouched by an archway leading into their temporary refuge, watching for the next assault. “Once we leave the shelter of the walls, they’ll know exactly where we are. We’d be visible for miles out in the open, even with our piwafwis—they weren’t made to hide us in bright daylight on an open plain. Concealment is our best defense.”

Ryld nodded wearily. He stood by another doorway, his greatsword resting on his shoulder.

“They would surround us and drag us down out there,” the Master of Melee-Magthere said. “Best to try to keep moving within the ruins, and hope the lamias—ah, damn. We’ve got more company.”

Rubble shifted somewhere in the maze of crumbling walls beyond their refuge as something large padded closer.

“Watch out for illusions,” Halisstra said.

She balanced her mace in her hand and tugged at her shield, making sure it was strapped securely to her arm. Behind her, Danifae crouched, a long dagger in her hand. Halisstra wasn’t happy about arming her battle captive, but at the moment they needed all the help they could get, and it was plainly in Danifae’s best interests to make sure they didn’t all fall prey to the denizens of Hlaungadath.

The lamias tried something new. Against the gap in the wall that Jeggred guarded, the monsters hurled a wave of lizardlike asabis, savage creatures that hissed in anger as they threw themselves against the draegloth with scimitars and falchions clutched in their scaly hands. Three more challenged Valas while a pair of gargoyles streaked over the walls and dropped into the midst of the ruined building behind Ryld, their great black wings raising huge clouds of dust with every beat. The weapons master whirled to face the threat behind him, cursing.