Ричард Бейкер - Condemnation

“Treacherous jackal!” snarled Selvetarm. “Your perfidy will not be rewarded!”

“Simpleminded fool. Of course it shall, ” Vhaeraun retorted.

He leaped in among Selvetarm’s flurrying blades and punched his shadow sword deep into the spider-god’s bulbous abdomen. The Champion of Lolth shrieked and recoiled, but a moment later he seized Vhaeraun’s ankle with one pincer and jerked the god to the ground. As quick as a cat he rained a torrent of deadly blows down on the Masked Lord.

Vhaeraun responded by invoking a colossal blast of burning shadow-stuff that plunged straight down from some impossible height overhead and bathed both gods in black fire. Selvetarm roared in divine anguish, even as he hammered again and again at Vhaeraun.

With a horrible grinding sound that Halisstra and the other onlookers felt in their very bones, the stone plaza disintegrated beneath them.

Still locked in their furious struggle, the two deities fell through the great temple island into the black abyss that waited below. Their roars of rage and the ground-shaking clamor of their weapons grew fainter and fainter as they fell away into the pit.

“They’re gone,” Ryld said numbly, stating the obvious. “Now what?”

No one had an answer for him, as the company gaped at the castle-sized shaft into nothingness the gods had left behind them. Distant flickers of light still danced from their battle, far below. For the space of several minutes the drow did nothing, climbing back to their feet, no one speaking at all. Tzirik merely folded his arms and waited.

“Did they destroy each other?” Valas ventured at last.

“I doubt it,” Danifae said.

She looked thoughtfully at the glowing green crack that split Lolth’s face, but said nothing more.

“If Lolth didn’t care to respond to Vhaeraun’s assault, I doubt she’ll have anything to say to us,” Ryld said. “We should get out of here.”

The weapons master turned to speak to Tzirik, only to find that the Jaelre priest was locked in rapt attention, staring off into nothing, his expression alight with adoration.

“Yes, Lord,” he whispered to no one. “Yes, I obey!”

Even as Ryld stepped forward to question the priest, the Jaelre priest gestured and spoke an unholy prayer. A whirling field of thousands of razor-sharp blades like that he’d used against the goristro sprang into existence a short distance around him, barricading Tzirik behind a cylindrical wall of tumbling metal. Ryld yelped a curse and leaped backward, throwing himself out of the path of the murderous blades.

Tzirik ignored the weapons master, continuing with whatever task Vhaeraun had assigned him. With fumbling fingers the cleric drew a case from his belt and extracted a scroll, unrolled it, and began to read aloud from the parchment, beginning the words of another powerful spell while protected from the Menzoberranyr by his deadly barrier.

Halisstra looked up at him in dull surprise, trying to discern what spell the Jaelre priest was casting. It was difficult to bring herself to care any longer.

Even as Halisstra sank back down in apathy and despair, the fight rekindled in Quenthel. She surged up, groping for her whip.

“It’s another gate!” she screamed. “Do not let him finish that spell!”

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 gods 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 gods’ omniscience might be complete enough to note his presence, note that he was casting a spell, and deduce why he was casting it—and whether the gods 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 space, “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 massive 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 passed 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 bitches’ 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 god 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 god, 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 shield, snarling out the words of another divine spell. Valas fired again, but his arrows only ricocheted from the priest’s shield. 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 passed through the blades and struck Tzirik a ringing hit on the breastplate, but the bolt shivered 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.