Ричард Бейкер - Condemnation

“Oh, in the name of the goddess!” Quenthel growled, watching them. “Simply clear your minds and think of where you want to go.”

“With all due respect, Mistress, where is it that we should desire to go?” Valas asked as he disentangled himself from Ryld.

“Concentrate on following the priest,” the Baenre replied. “He cast the spell, so he will be able to find the portal leading into the Demonweb Pits. It may take many hours, but you will find that time passes strangely here.”

With that, Quenthel moved off in pursuit of Tzirik.

Halisstra closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and concentrated on trailing the priest at a comfortable distance. She closed up quickly and smoothly, and this time she didn’t allow herself to react in panic. Soon enough the rest of the company sailed along beside her, keeping together easily as they became more and more accustomed to the strangeness of the Astral Plane. Halisstra indulged herself by experimenting with her mode of locomotion, at first orienting herself horizontally so that she felt like she flew like a bird through the pearly void, then trying to face her direction of travel so that she felt as if she was walking swiftly without moving her legs.

As it turned out, it didn’t really matter what she did with her body as long as her mind remained focused on staying near her companions, and the true immateriality of the astral sea began to seep into her understanding. She was only a spirit, weightless, perfect, yet she was in a place where spirits became tangible. Somewhere beyond the endless pearly expanse that met her eye lay the realms of the gods, a thousand infinite concepts of existence where the divine beings who ruled over the fate of all Faerûn—of all the worlds, for that matter—had their abodes. She could spend a hundred drow lifetimes exploring the domains that touched on the astral sea, and not even come close to seeing them all.

The thought made her feel small, almost insignificant, and she pushed it from her mind. Lolth had not called her to the Demonweb Pits for her to be overawed by the silver void of the Astral Plane. She had called Halisstra and the others to stand before her, capable and confident, to profess their faith and adoration. For what other purpose could the goddess have done all that she had done by withdrawing her power from her faithful, by permitting the fall of Ched Nasad, by causing the endless toils and tribulations that had assailed the First Daughter of House Melarn?

There is a purpose, Halisstra told herself, a purpose that will be made clear to me soon, if I keep my faith strong and do not falter.

The Queen of the Demonweb Pits has brought us this far. She will bring us a little farther.

How long it took them to cross the Astral Plane, Halisstra could not begin to say. She’d never realized before the extent to which the routine processes of one’s body measured the days. Her astral form didn’t grow tired or hungry, and didn’t know thirst or discomfort of any sort. Without the minor actions of looking after the body’s needs—taking a sip from a waterskin when thirsty, halting to take a meal during their day’s march, or even stopping to sink deep into Reverie and while away the bright hours of daylight—time simply lost its doleful count.

From time to time they caught glimpses of phenomena other than the endless pearly clouds and twisting gray vortices that streaked the surrounding sky. Strange bits of matter drifted through the astral sea. On several occasions they passed boulders or hillocks of rock and dirt that hovered in space like miniature worlds, some nearly the size of mountains, others only a few yards across. Weird, empty ruins graced the larger of them, the abodes of astral sojourners or long gone residents. The strangest things they came across were whirling pools of color slowly revolving in the astral medium. The hues ranged from bright, shining silver to blackest midnight shot with angry purple streaks.

“Don’t stray too close to any of the color pools,” Tzirik had said. “If you enter one you will be ejected into a different plane of existence, and I have no desire to wander into strange worlds looking for a careless traveling companion.”

“How will we know which one will lead us to the Abyss?” Valas Hune asked.

“Do not worry, my friend, the spell Vhaeraun has granted me also confers a certain affinity for the destination I conceived when I shifted my spirit to this plane, and I am leading us more or less directly to the nearest color pool that will serve our purposes.”

“How much longer must we travel?” Quenthel asked.

“We are drawing near,” the priest answered. “It’s hard to tell here, of course, but I would guess we are within four or five hours of our destination. We’ve already traveled for almost two days.”

Two days? Halisstra thought. It seemed much less.

She found herself wondering what might have transpired back in Faerûn in two days. Did Jeggred still maintain his vigil over their inert bodies? He couldn’t have been entirely remiss in his duties, as they were all still alive, but how many more days would pass before they reached their destination, beseeched the goddess for an audience, and managed to return to their native plane?

Absorbed in her own thoughts, Halisstra kept to herself for the balance of the journey, scarcely noticing that her companions did the same. It came as a surprise to her when Tzirik slowed his effortless flight and finally arrested his motion all together, facing a whirlpool of black with silver streaks that slowly churned in the astral medium a short distance from the travelers.

“The entrance to the Sixty-sixth Layer of the Abyss,” the priest of Vhaeraun said. “So far our journey has been uneventful, but once we set foot within Lolth’s domain that is bound to change. If you have any second thoughts about this quest, Mistress Baenre, this would be the time to express them.”

“I have no reason to fear the Demonweb Pits,” Quenthel sneered. “I intend to do what I came here to do.”

Without waiting for the priest she arrowed forward and plunged herself into the whirling, inky blot. In the blink of an eye her gleaming astral form was lost to view, swallowed by the maelstrom.

“Impatient, isn’t she?” Tzirik remarked.

He shrugged and moved into the color pool himself. Like Quenthel, Halisstra sensed a certainty in the moment, and she did not mean to let any quailing sway her from her intended course. She entered the pool of swirling night a heartbeat behind Tzirik, her teeth bared in a defiant snarl.

There was no sensation at first, though the pool swallowed her sight completely the moment she plunged within it. The medium seemed much the same as the rest of the Astral Plane—a weightless, cool, perfect nothingness—but the swirling current of the revolving pool caught her at once, tugging on her with some strange nondimensional feeling of attraction or acceleration that dragged her psychic form in a direction she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. It didn’t hurt, but it felt so alien, so dislocating, that Halisstra gasped in shock and distress, shuddering violently in the grip of the astral maelstrom.

Goddess, help me! she pleaded in the silence of her own mind, as she flailed her arms and tried to extricate herself from the spinning mass. There was another long moment of indescribable motion, and—

She was through.

Halisstra swayed drunkenly with the return of gravity and struggled to catch her balance. She opened her eyes and found herself standing on something silver-gray, a steeply sloping ramp or wall top that dropped away an incredible distance before her. The rest of the party stood close by, looking around in silence as they rubbed their limbs nervously or fingered their weapons.