Condemnation (War of the Spider Queen #3)

Condemnation (War of the Spider Queen #3) Page 21

The sound of Vhaeraun's sword hammering at the great stone barrier shook the entire plane. Each blow set the great black fane at the web's center shuddering with the force of an earthquake, and from the center the reverberations pulsed through the immense gray cables that soared up into the endless night. Even though each stroke knocked her back down to the cold flagstones, Halisstra managed to stumble over to the company of Menzoberranyr, who, like her, staggered from side to side, trying to keep their balance in the face of Vhaeraun's assault.

Tzirik stood aside, still rapt with the glory of his god's presence, some-how able to ignore the damage the Masked Lord was wreaking as the shock waves passed through him with no effect. At each blow, a tiny network of glowing green cracks in the Face of Lolth seemed to spread just a little wider. Despite the incalculable force of each stroke of the god's blade, the visage of the Spider Queen seemed almost, but not quite, invulnerable to his assault.

The goddess does not respond, Halisstra thoughtin bleak amazement. She doesn't care.

She fell to her hands and knees amid the rest of the company, who ig-nored her, stupefied as they were by Vhaeraun's wrathful assault. Ryld knelt behind Splitter, averting his eyes and stoically enduring the punish-ing blows. Valas danced about in agitation, waving his arms, jerking his legs up and down like a spider on a pin. The scout didn't know whether to watch, run, or hide, and seemed to be trying to do all three at once. Pharaun levitated a foot or two above the ground to avoid the trembling impacts, shielding himself with some kind of spell as his eyes flicked from his companions to the god to Tzirik and back to Vhaeraun. Danifae, crouched nearby him, rolled with easy grace, keeping her feet beneath her as she watched each blow with a fierce, measuring gaze. Quenthel stood as stiffly as a statue, hammered by each tremor, her arms wrapped around her torso as if to hold in her distress. She watched the scene with a sick fasci-nation, incapable of anything more.

Pharaun managed to break himself free of his indecision. He drifted close to Quenthel and seized her by the arm.

"What's happening here?" the wizard shouted in her ear. "What is he doing?"

The Baenre ground her teeth in frustration.

"I don't know," she admitted. "This is all wrong. It's not the same. There are no souls here."

"What souls?" the wizard asked. "Should we interfere?"

Both Ryld and Valas glanced up at that, their faces stricken.

"He's agod,"Ryld managed to call out above the deafening clamor. "What do you propose we do?"

"Fine, then. Do we stay and watch, or do we leave? This doesn't seem to be a safe place to be," Pharaun replied.

Another shock wave lashed through the company, causing the wizard's spell shield to flare brightly.

"I'm not sure we can leave, even if we want to," Ryld said. He jerked his head at Tzirik, who watched the scene with an expression of dark joy behind his mask. "Don't we need him?"

"Should we leave, even to save ourselves?" Valas added. "We would seem to be culpable for - this." The scout shielded his eyes from the sight of Vhaeraun's efforts. "What happens when he breaches the temple? Mistress, what will happen? Is Lolth in there?"

Quenthel let out a shriek of despair.

Danifae fell at Quenthel's feet and asked, "Mistress, have you been here? Have you been here before?"

"I don't know!"the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith shouted.

She jerked her armaway from Pharaun and stormed over to Tzirik, weaving as the ground trembled underfoot. She spun him away from the facade of the temple, tearing himaway from the dark adoration of his god, and gripped the breastplate of his armor with her hands.

"Why is he doing this?" she demanded. "What have you done, heretic?"

Tzirik blinked and shook his head, his eyes behind his mask still full of the glory of his epiphany.

"You do not know what you are witnessing, priestess of Lolth?" Tzirik said. He laughed deeply. "You have the rare good fortune to be present at the destruction of your goddess." He disentangled Quenthel's hands from his armor and took a step back, his voice rising in exultant glee. "You wish to know what is going on here, Lolthite? I will tell you. The Masked Lord is going to unseat your Spider Queen and overthrow her black tyranny forever! Our people will finally be freed of her venomous influence, and you and the rest of your parasitic kind will be swept away as well!"

Quenthel snarled in feral rage, "You will not live to see it!"

Her whip sprang into her hand, and she drew her arm back to flay the triumph from Tzirik's face. Before she'd even started her lash, Vhaeraun - a bowshot distant, his back to the company as he chiseled and bludgeoned at the growing crack in the stone visage - waved his left hand without turn-ing around. From beneath Quenthel's feet a column of seething black magma exploded, hurling her dozens of feet into the air with bone-breaking force. Tzirik, standing almost within arm's length, was untouched, but the rest of the company scattered to avoid the hot, stone-shattering impacts of great round blobs of the molten rock.

The god didn't even break his hammerlike rhythm of blow after blow. He struck again and again, even as Quenthel plummeted back down to the flagstones of the plaza, screaming as gobs of the infernal rock clung to her flesh and burned. Valas and Ryld ran to her aid. Danifae cringed, but kept her eyes on the god engaged in his assault.

Pharaun studied the scene, and shook his head.

"This is insane," he muttered.

He made a curious gesture with his hand and disappeared, teleporting away to some presumably safer locale. Halisstra saw him leave, and stood staring for one long moment before another impact of Vhaeraun's sword threw her to the ground. She lay there, defeated, while Quenthel thrashed and shrieked in agony nearby.

"Ah,"breathed Vhaeraun. The god backed away from the face, which was split by a glowing green scar from the center of the forehead straight down the bridge of the nose and across the lips to the cleft of the chin."Mother, have you nothing to say even now? Will you die in silence?"

The face remained impassive, the roiling light in the introspective eyes unchanged, but once again something seemed to tear the very fabric of the cosmos with a horrible ripping sound. A black gash appeared in the air near the face, and from it stepped another divine form.

Where Vhaeraun was lean and impossibly graceful, the newcomer was a thing of nightmare. Half spider and half drow, it clutched an armory of swords and maces in its six thickly muscled arms, and each of its chitinous legs ended in a vicious pincerlike claw. Its face, perversely enough, was that of a handsome drow male.

"Depart, Masked One," the spider-god commanded in a tortured, burbling voice. "It is forbidden for you to intrude here."

"Do not presume to stand between me and my destiny, Selvetarm," Vhaeraun snarled.

The monstrous spider-god Selvetarm waited no longer, but darted for-ward with blinding speed, weaving his sextuple blades in an irresistible assault that might have dismembered a dozen giants in the space of two heartbeats.

Vhaeraun whirled aside, dancing through the storm of steel as if he chased Selvetarm's weapons instead of the other way around, parrying blows he found too inconvenient to elude and riposting with supernal grace. When the gods' weapons met, thunderclaps shook the ground.

Halisstra pushed herself upright, gaping in amazement. She might have stood transfixed at the scene indefinitely, but Ryld appeared at her elbow.

"We need your healing songs," he hissed. "Quenthel is badly burned."

What does it matter? Halisstra wondered.

Still, she climbed to her feet and made her way over to the fallen priest-ess. Quenthel writhed on the ground, hissing between her teeth as she strove unsuccessfully to master her pain. Ignoring the impossible duel that raged back and forth between the two deities, Halisstra focused on the Baenre's in-juries and managed to begin the discordant threnody of abae'qeshelsong.She laid her hands on Quenthel's burns and wove as best she could, finding a momentary calm in the exercise of her talents for a tangible and immediate end. Quenthel's thrashings eased, and in a moment she opened her eyes. Her spells cast, Halisstra merely slumped down again and stared at the battling gods.

"What do we do?" she whispered. "What can we possibly do?"

"Endure," Ryld replied. He gripped her arm with one iron hand and met her eyes. "Wait and watch. Something will happen."

He looked back toward Vhaeraun and Selvetarm, too.

Valas rose from Quenthel's side and made his way over to Tzirik, crouching to keep his balance.

"Tzirik! What happens to this place, to us, if Vhaeraun defeats Selve-tarm and destroys the face? Can you get us out of here?"

"What happens to us does not matter," answered the priest.

"Maybe not to you, but it matters greatly to me," Valas muttered. "Did you bring us here only to die, Tzirik?"

"I did not bring you here, mercenary, you brought me," the priest replied, giving Valas only a fraction of his attention. "None but the Spider Queen's priestesses could get this close to her temple, not even the Masked Lord. As to what happens when Vhaeraun defeats Selvetarm, well, we shallsee."

He turned his full attention back to the dueling gods.

The Masked Lord and the Champion of Lolth fought on furiously. Ichor oozed from several black wounds in the half-spider's chitinous body, and dripping black shadow flowed from a handful of sword cuts that had kissed the graceful Vhaeraun. While the gods strove together in the realm of the physical, exchanging blows at a dizzying rate, they also confronted each other magically and psychically at the same time. Spells of terrible power blasted back and forth between them, deadlier even than Selvetarm's six weaving weapons. Their eyes locked on each other with a tangible contest whose potency tugged at what was left of Halisstra's reason, even from a hundred yards away. Missed blows and deflected spells caused terrible damage all around the two deities, gouging great craters in the walls of the temple and the flagstones of the plaza, and more than once coming perilously close to annihilating the mortal onlookers through sheer mischance.

"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 Cham-pion of Lolth shrieked and recoiled, but a moment later he seized Vhaer-aun'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 onlook-ers 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 flick-ers 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 speak-ing 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 ex-pression 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," Pha-raun 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 help-lessly as the priest droned on. Danifae and Quenthel crouched a little father back, equally helpless, the determination to do something battling withtheir 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 bar-rier, 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 Menzober-ranyr, 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 top-pling 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 com-mand word and discharged a white sphere of some magical, viscous sub-stance at the priest, but Tzirik's seething blades ripped apart the viscid glob in a spray of gluey strands.

"Get up, Halisstra," Quenthel hissed. "Your sister priestesses need you!"

The powerful tremors took Halisstra's feet out from under her the first time she tried to stand. She shook her head and tried again.

My sisters need me? she thought. Strange, as our goddess apparently has no use for any of us who serve as her priestesses. If Lolth chooses to turn her back on me, to spurn my faithfulness and devotion, then the least I can do is return the favor.

Throughout Halisstra's life she had willingly joined ranks with her worst enemies, her most bitter rivals, when something rose to threaten the absolute dominion over dark elf society she and her sister priestesses shared. Staring off into the endless, empty expanse of the Demonweb Pits, she found that she would not take one single step in Lolth's name.

"Let him do as he will," she said to Quenthel. "Lolth has taught me not to care. If we managed to preserve Lolth's very existence today, do you think she would be grateful? If I tore my own heart out and laid it on the Spider Queen's altar, doyou think she would be pleased by my sacrifice?"

Bitter laughter welled up in her throat and Halisstra gave herself over to it, even as Tzirik's tremors subsided. Her heart ached with a hurt that could rend the world in two, but she could not find a voice for it.

Quenthel stared at her in horror.

"Blasphemy," she managed to whisper.

The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith gathered up her whip and turned on Halisstra, but before she could strike, Tzirik struck with another spell, scouring the entire party with sheets of incandescent flames that raced back and forth across the stone plain like water sloshing on a plate. Halis-stra threw herself flat and cried out in pain. The others cursed or cried out, scrabbling for cover that did not exist.

"Leave me!" Tzirik commanded from within his cage of whirling steel.

He stooped down and picked up his scroll, while the Menzoberranyr picked themselves up from the smoking stones.

Ryld rose slowly, his flesh seared at face and hands,and watched as the cleric started to cast his spell again. The weapons master eyed the spinning blades surrounding the priest, and with the quickness of a big cat, he gath-ered up his legs and sprang into the barrier, crouching low into the tightest ball possible. Droplets of blood splattered nearby as the whirling magical blades sparked and sliced against the weapons master's dwarven armor, drawing blood in a dozen places - but the Master of Melee-Magthere was through the barrier.

He staggered to his feet with an animal grunt of pain, Splitter gripped awkwardly in his slashed hands, but he managed to drive at Tzirik with the point of the greatsword. Once again the cleric was forced to drop his scroll. He parried the thrust with his shield and lashed back with his spiked mace.

Ryld avoided the blow only by leaping backward, so close to the whirling blades that sparks flew from his shoulders as the razors kissed his back. He recovered and glided forward again, spinning his deadly sword and slashing quickly at the Jaelre cleric.

Valas, standing outside the whirling blades, reached up to the nine-pointed star token on his breast and touched it. In the blink of an eye he vanished, reappearing inside the barrier behind Tzirik. He dropped his bow and drew his kukris, but Tzirik surprised him.

Turning his back on Ryld, the strong cleric took three powerful strides and slammed his heavy shield into the Bregan D'aerthe even as Valas got his knives in hand. With a roar of anger the Jaelre shoved Valas back into the curtain of deadly razors and sent the scout stumbling through, spin-ning and screaming as the blades sliced his flesh.

Ryld made Tzirik pay by darting forward to strike out with a full double-handed slash across the torso that spun the priest half around, but the cleric's plate armor held against the blow. In response, Tzirik leaped in close to Ryld, inside the fighter's reach, and rained down a barrage of wicked blows with the spiked mace, driving the weapons master back.

Ryld gathered himself for another assault, but at that moment Quen-thel hurled herself through the blades as well. One sliced her calf deeply and sent her stumbling when she passed through, and she went to one knee with a gasp of pain, blocking Ryld. Tzirik stepped back out of reach of the Baenre's whip, and quickly called out a spell. Ryld froze in place as the cleric ensnared him, freezing his will and paralyzing his muscles.

Quick as a snake, Tzirik turned on Quenthel and hammered her to the ground even as she tried to stand on her injured leg. Avoiding the hissing serpent heads, Tzirik kicked her whip back outside the curtain of blades, and turned to crush Ryld's skull while the weapons master was helpless before him. The bronze mace drew back for the lethal blow - and Tzirik was sent reeling away from his intended victim, battered by a powerful blast of sound.

Halisstra, standing just on the other side of the blades, followed with a secondbae'qeshel song and scoured the cleric again. She would not fight for Lolth again, but she would fight for her companions, Ryld in particular.

"Do not kill the priest," she called to her companions. "We need him to bring us home!"

"What do you suggest, then?" Danifae snapped from beside her. "He seems intent on destroying us!"

"Indeed," said Tzirik.

The Jaelre priest recovered from Halisstra's spells and lashed out with one of his own, calling down from the black skies above a column of crawling purple fire that blasted Halisstra and Danifae. The cleric wheeled to confront Quenthel, who was just gathering herself to leap at his back. He hefted his mace.

"I take great pleasure in slaying clerics of the Spider Queen," Tzirik said. "When you awake in Minauthkeep, I'll slay you again there."

He advanced on her, his cruel eyes alight as Quenthel hobbled awk-wardly, seeking to dodge the inevitable blow.

Tzirik's breastplate simply vanished. The cleric halted in consternation, and glanced down. All other pieces of his full plate armor remained in place, but then - slowly - his arming coat vanished as well, revealing the smooth black flesh of his torso and chest.

"What in the Masked Lord's name?" he muttered, and glanced up just in time to turn away from Danifae, who shot a bolt at his heart that instead caught the cleric's shield. His mystification turned abruptly and instantly to pure terror."No!" he screamed."N - "

Some unseen force ripped open Tzirik's bare chest and began to pluck the gory ribs one by one out of his jerking torso. Blood and bits of bone splattered all around, yet the cleric impossibly kept to his feet as he was flensed alive before the astonished Menzoberranyr.

Halisstra, who had seen many terrible things at Lolth's altars, recoiled in horror. With a cold, distant part of her mind, she noted that the flesh and bone torn out of Tzirik simply faded away, just as his armor had.

It's not happening here, she realized. Tzirik is being murdered, but back in Minauthkeep.

One final obscene blow seized the contents of Tzirik's chest cavity and literally strewed them abroad. The Jaelre priest sank to his knees as his eyes rolled up in his head. From some immense distance a shining silver cord appeared, tethered to the priest's back. It recoiled sharply into his astral body with a psychic force that plucked at Halisstra's very soul, and Tzirik was gone, as if he had never existed.

"Gods ..." Valas managed to say, then he grunted in shock.

All of them felt it at the same instant - a violent wrenching of their psyches that rent the stone plain and the black temple into a thousand sil-very shards.

Halisstra opened her mouth, a scream of terror welling up inside her, but before she could draw another breath she was yanked away into oblivion.

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 Faerun 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 drae-gloth. "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. Ex-plain 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, andthe 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 de-termine 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 boul-der, 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 Eilistraeean'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."

"You will," Valas answered. "Later. I don't believe any of us rightly know what to make of it. Give us time to rest, and to reflect."

Rest? Halisstra thought.

She felt as if she could sleep - sleep in the unconscious and helpless manner of a human - for a tenday and not feel healed of the fatigue she carried. Her mind refused to reflect any longer on why Lolth had aban-doned her, yet she had something in her heart that demanded examina-tion, a grief that would not permit her the refuge of the Reverie until she had found some way to let it out.

With a sigh, she pulled her satchel close and opened it, taking out the leather case of her lyre. She carefully unsheathed the heirloom, running her fingers over the rune-carved dragonbone arms, touching the perfect mithral wire.

At least I still have this, she thought.

In the silence of the forest cave, Halisstra played the dark songs of thebae'qeshel, and softly gave voice to her unbearable grief.