Ричард Бейкер - Condemnation

Halisstra awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright from the musty old divan in Tzirik’s hidden chamber. It took her a moment to understand that she was alive. The experience of having her soul wrenched from the Demonweb Pits back to Faerûn in an instant by Tzirik’s destruction was not something she cared to repeat. It took her a moment longer than that to understand that she was no longer in any physical pain.

Where she did ache, though, was in her heart. A great, hot hurt throbbed in the center of her being, a grief so keen and vast that Halisstra could not imagine anything that could swallow it.

She pressed her hand to her chest as if to smooth out the ache beneath her breastbone, and slowly looked around. The others in the company were rising, too, all variously dazed or groggy from their experience. To her right, Tzirik lay still on his couch, his body torn apart. Blood splattered the walls of the chamber, and awful pieces of the Jaelre cleric lay discarded on the floor. Beside the priest’s ruined corpse squatted Jeggred, licking blood from his white fur. A pair of Jaelre warriors lay close at hand, their throats torn out.

“Mistress?” the draegloth asked Quenthel. “What happened? What did you learn?”

Quenthel’s eyes fell on Tzirik’s corpse and the dead Jaelre guards nearby, and she scowled.

“What in the goddess’s name were you thinking?” she asked the draegloth. “Why did you slay him?”

“The guards? They seemed likely to object to my work on the heretic,” answered Jeggred.

“No, not them,” the priestess said, “Tzirik!”

Jeggred’s eyes narrowed, and a low growl began in his throat. The half-demon straightened and paced around the couches toward Pharaun, clenching his claws.

“Wizard, if you caused me to fail in my duty to—”

“Pharaun . . .” Quenthel said, frowning as she struggled to collect her thoughts. It didn’t take her long. Recollection dawned in her eyes, and she wheeled to glare at the Master of Sorcere. “You abandoned us in the middle of the Demonweb Pits, when we needed you the most. Explain yourself!”

“I deemed it necessary,” Pharaun said. “We were in mortal danger, but we could not flee without Tzirik’s complicity, and it seemed clear to me that Tzirik had no intention of going anywhere. The best method for escape I could contrive was to direct a sending to Jeggred, and instruct him to slay Tzirik’s material body. As the priest is the one who cast the spell of astral travel, his death ended it for all of us—rather more abruptly than I would have liked, but I could think of no other options. I told Jeggred you ordered it, since I was not certain he would kill the cleric simply because I asked him to.”

“Your cowardice ripped us away from the one place we had a hope of winning our answers,” Quenthel growled.

“No,” said Halisstra. “Pharaun’s prudence engineered our escape from an impossible situation, in the one manner that had any hope of working.”

“What is the point of escaping, when we failed to complete our quest?” the Baenre demanded.

“Answers? There were no answers to be had, Quenthel,” Halisstra said. “We could have abased ourselves before her until the end of time, and the Spider Queen could not have cared less. The quest was pointless—and it was a quest you were never certain of anyway. Or were there storehouses to raid in the Abyss?”

“I let your blasphemy and pridefulness pass in the Demonweb Pits, girl, but I will not do so again,” Quenthel said. “If you speak to me again in such a manner, I will have your tongue torn out at the roots. You will be punished for your lack of faith, Halisstra Melarn. The Spider Queen will visit unimaginable torments upon you for your lack of respect.”

“At least that would be a sign that she lives,” Halisstra replied.

She stood and began to gather her belongings. In the stone halls beyond their chamber, she could hear distant shouts of alarm and the clatter of many feet coming nearer. It seemed almost beneath her notice.

“The Jaelre are coming,” Danifae said. “They might have something to say about the evisceration of their high priest.”

“I would prefer not to have to cut my way out of this castle,” Ryld offered. “I’ve had my fill of fighting today.”

With a low growl, Quenthel tore her attention away from Halisstra and studied the small chamber. She chewed her lip in agitation, as if wrestling with an idea she didn’t like, then she muttered a curse and turned to Pharaun.

“Do you have a spell that can get us out of here?”

Pharaun smirked, obviously pleased that Quenthel had been forced to resort to his powers so quickly after condemning his actions.

“It’s a bit of a stretch, but I think I can teleport us all at once,” he said.

“Where do we wish to go? I can’t bring us safely into the Underdark, but other than that. ...”

“Anywhere but here,” Quenthel replied. “We need time to consider what we’ve seen and learned, and what we must do next.”

“The cave mouth the portal from the Labyrinth led to,” Valas said. “It’s several days’ march from here, and not heavily traveled.”

“Fine,” Quenthel snapped. “Take us.”

“Join hands, then,” Pharaun said.

He placed his own hand over Ryld’s and Halisstra’s, and spoke a short phrase just as the first blows sounded on the panel of the secret door. In the blink of an eye they stood on the cold, mossy ground of the cave mouth in the forest clearing. It was close to dawn. The skies to the east were pearly gray, and cold dew lay heavy around their feet. The glen was as empty and cheerless as it had been the first time the company camped there, a little more than a tenday past. Most of the snow had melted off, and icy water trickled into the sinkhole and ran out of sight beneath the hill.

“Here we are,” the wizard announced. “Now, if nobody minds too much, I believe I am going to find the most comfortable spot I can in the cavern below and sleep like a damned human.”

He clambered down the slippery rocks without waiting for a response.

“Take your rest later, wizard,” Quenthel called after him. “We must determine what we need to do next, the meaning of the things we saw—”

“What we saw has no meaning,” Halisstra said, “and what we do next does not matter. I’m with Pharaun.”

She summoned up the strength to leap lightly from boulder to boulder, descending back into the comforting and familiar darkness of the cavern below. Behind her Quenthel fumed and Jeggred rumbled in displeasure, but Ryld and Valas shouldered their packs and followed Pharaun down into the cave. Danifae turned to the Baenre priestess and rested one hand on her shoulder.

“We are all troubled by what we’ve seen,” the battle captive said, “but we’re exhausted. We’ll all think more clearly when we have had some rest, and perhaps then the goddess’s will might be more plain to us.”

Grudgingly, Quenthel nodded in assent, and the rest followed into the cave. Halisstra and Pharaun had already thrown themselves down on the pebbled floor of the cavern a few dozen yards from the entrance, shucking their packs and leaning back against the walls. The rest of the Menzoberranyr filed in slowly and picked out their own spots, collapsing wherever they happened to stop moving.

Seyll’s bloodstained armor seemed unbearably heavy on Halisstra’s shoulders, and the hilt of the Eilistraeen’s sword jammed painfully into her ribs. She was too tired to find a better position.

“Will no one tell me what happened in the Demonweb Pits?” Jeggred railed. “I have waited in that empty stone room for days, guarding your sleeping bodies faithfully. I deserve to hear what happened.”