Condemnation (24 page)

“I think I agree with Mistress Melarn,” Ryld said. “It seems the Jaelre carried away everything of value and left this place.”

“A great deal of trouble for nothing, then,” Pharaun remarked. “If there’s anything so disappointing as fruitless toil and hardship, I’m not sure what it is.”

The company stood in silence a moment, each occupied with his own thoughts.

Halisstra ached with exhaustion, her legs as weak as water. She had avoided any serious injury, but on the other hand she had almost completely exhausted her reservoir of magical strength over the past few hours, wielding her bae’qeshel songs to confuse the attacking hordes, strengthen her companions, and staunch the worst of her companions’ wounds.

Jeggred, lurking at the rear of the band near the tunnel leading back to the previous room, broke the silence.

“If the mercenary does not return soon, we will be fighting again,” the draegloth said. “I do not hear the minotaurs behind us any longer, which means they’re probably circling around to come at us from another direction.”

“We’ve taught them not to come at us down long, straight tunnels, I suppose,” Ryld observed. He studied the Jaelre cavern with a practiced eye. “Best not to let them catch us in the open like this. They might overwhelm us with sheer numbers.”

Danifae asked quietly, “What if this is a dead end?”

“It can’t be,” Quenthel said. “Somewhere in these caverns we’ll discover where it is the Jaelre have fled to, and we will follow. I have come too far to return to Menzoberranzan empty-handed.”

“That’s all very good,” Pharaun said. “However, I feel constrained to point out that we are exhausted and have almost used up our magical strength. Blundering through these halls and corridors until the minotaurs manage to trap and kill us is sheer stupidity. Why don’t we lie low in one of those artisan homes—say, in that gallery over there—and rest until we’re ready to continue? I believe I can conceal our presence from our pursuers.”

Quenthel’s eyes flashed with fire as she said, “We will rest when I see fit. Until then, we keep moving.”

“I do not believe you understand what I am saying—” Pharaun began, rising to his feet and speaking with short, clipped words.

“I do not believe you understand what I am commanding you to do!” Quenthel snapped. She whirled on the wizard and stepped close, her whips writhing in agitation. “You will cease your incessant questioning of my leadership.”

“When you begin to lead intelligently, I will,” Pharaun retorted, his calm demeanor finally cracking. “Now, listen—”

Jeggred rose with a feral snarl and grasped the wizard around the upper arms with his huge fighting claws, pulling him away from Quenthel and hurling him across the floor.

“Show some respect!” the draegloth thundered. “You address High Priestess Quenthel Baenre, Mistress of Arach-Tinilith, Mistress of the Academy, Mistress of Tier Breche, First Sister of House Baenre of Menzoberranzan … you insolent dog!”

Pharaun’s eyes flashed as he leaped to his feet. The facade of good humor fell from his face, leaving nothing but cold, perfect malice.

“Never lay a hand on me again,” he said in a deadly hiss.

His hands crooked at his sides, ready to shape awful spells against the draegloth, while Jeggred crouched and made ready to spring.

Quenthel shifted the grip on her scourge and paced closer as the serpent heads curled and darted, striking at the air in their agitation. Ryld set one hand on Splitter’s hilt and watched all three, his face an expressionless mask.

“This is madness,” Halisstra said as she backed away, pointing her crossbow at the floor. “We must cooperate if we want to get out of here alive.”

Quenthel opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to issue the order that would send Jeggred charging at the wizard regardless of the consequences, but at that moment Valas returned, trotting up to the company. The scout came to a halt, taking in the situation with a glance.

“What is going on here?” he asked carefully.

When no one answered, the Bregan D’aerthe looked at each of the company in turn.

“I cannot believe this. Have you not had your fill of fighting in the last forty hours? How can you even consider spending the last of your strength, your magic, your blood, slaughtering each other, when we’ve already fought our way across half of the damned Labyrinth?”

“We are in no mood to be harangued by you, mercenary,” said Quenthel. “Be silent.” She glared at Pharaun, and thrust her whip through her belt. “It serves no purpose to fight each other here.”

“Agreed,” said Pharaun—perhaps the tersest statement the loquacious mage had uttered in the time Halisstra had known him. From some unsuspected well of discipline the wizard mastered his anger and straightened, relaxing his hands. “I will not be handled like a common goblin, though. That I will not bear.”

“And I will not be taunted and baited at every turn,” Quenthel replied. She turned to Valas. “Master Hune, did you find anything in the palace?”

The scout glanced nervously at Quenthel and Pharaun, as did Halisstra and Danifae.

“In fact, I did,” he said. “In the main hall of the palace there is a large portal of some kind. Unless I misread the signs, a large number of people passed through it. I suspect House Jaelre lies somewhere on the other side, in some new abode.”

“Where does the portal lead?” Ryld asked.

Valas shrugged and said, “I have no idea, but there is certainly one way to find out.”

“Fine,” said Quenthel. “We will put your portal to the test at once, before the minotaurs and their demons return. In a few minutes, anywhere will be better than here.”

She let one long glare linger on Pharaun, who finally had the good sense to avert his eyes in what would have to suffice for a bow.

Halisstra let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

TEN

“Now this I did not expect,” remarked Pharaun.

The wizard sighed and sat down on a rock, allowing his pack to drop to the moss-covered ground. The company stood in the mouth of a low cavern looking up at a daylit forest, somewhere on the surface. The Jaelre portal lay a few hundred yards behind them in a damp, winding cavern that led to a large, steep-sided sinkhole with lichen-covered boulders and trickling rills of cold water splashing down from the hillside above.

The day was heavily overcast—in fact, a light rain was falling—and the clouds, coupled with the gloom of the forest, helped to ameliorate the insufferable brightness of the sun. It was not so harshly brilliant a day as they had seen in the cloudless desert of Anauroch a tenday past, but to eyes long accustomed to the utter lightlessness of the Underdark, the diffuse sunlight still seemed as harsh as the glare of a lightning stroke.

“Should we keep moving?” Ryld asked. He’d returned Splitter to its sheath, angled across his broad back, but he held a crossbow at the ready and squinted into the towering green trees. “It won’t take the minotaurs long to figure out where we went.”

“It doesn’t matter if they do,” Pharaun said. “The portal was keyed to function for drow alone. It’s nothing more than a wall of blank stone to our friends in the Labyrinth—a sensible precaution on the part of the Jaelre, I suppose, though had I been in their shoes I believe I would not have ruled out the possibility of attackers of my own race.”

“You’re certain of that?” Quenthel asked.

The wizard nodded and replied, “I was careful to examine the portal before we stepped through. Leaping blindly through portals is a bad habit, and should be reserved only for the gravest of situations, such as escaping imminent death in the destruction of a city. And, before anyone asks, we can still retrace our steps if we wish. The portal functions in both directions.”

“I am not in a hurry to return to the Labyrinth. Better the sun-blasted surface than that,” Halisstra murmured.

She picked her way across the floor of the sinkhole, studying the forest overhead. The air was cool, and she noted that the trees nearby were mostly needleleafs of some kind, trees that did not lose their foliage in the wintertime, if she remembered correctly. A number of barren trees of a different sort stood in and among the evergreens, trees with slender white trunks and only a handful of ragged red and brown leaves clinging in an odd clump near the crown. Dead? she wondered. Or merely bare of leaves for the winter months? She’d read many accounts of the World Above, its peoples, its green plants and animals, its changing seasons, but there was a great difference between reading about something and experiencing it firsthand.

“Where on the surface are we?” Quenthel asked.

Valas stared hard at the trees for a long time, and craned his head up to squint at the dimly glowing patch of clouds that hid the sun. He turned in a slow circle to examine the hillside nearby. Finally he knelt and ran his fingers over the soft green mat of mosses clinging to the boulders in the cavern mouth.

“Northern Faerun,” he said. “It’s early winter, as it should be. You can’t see the sun too well to judge its position in the sky, but I can certainly feel it, as I suspect we all do. We’re in the same general latitude as the lands above Menzoberranzan—not more than a few hundred miles either north or south, I think.”

“Somewhere in the High Forest, then?” Danifae asked.

“Possibly. I’m not sure the trees look right. I’ve traveled the surface lands near our city, and the foliage looks different from what I remember of the High Forest. We might be some ways distant from Menzoberranzan.”

“Excellent,” muttered Pharaun. “We trek through the Underdark to Ched Nasad, are forced through a portal to the surface hundreds of miles from home, then we trek back down into the Underdark through shadow and peril, only to pass through another portal that takes us back to the surface, perhaps even farther from home. One wonders if we might have simply marched here from Hlaungadath without our pleasant detour through the Plane of Shadow, the delightful hospitality of Gracklstugh, and our lovely little tour of the minotaur-infested Labyrinth.”

“Your spirits must be rebounding, Pharaun,” Ryld observed. “You’ve found your sarcasm again.”

“A sharper weapon than your sword, my friend, and just as devastating when properly employed,” the wizard said. He ran his hands over his torso and winced. “I feel half dead. Every time I turned around, some hulking bull-headed brute was trying to cleave me in two with an axe or pin me to the floor with a spear. Might I trouble you for one of your healing songs, dear lady?” he asked Halisstra.

“Do not repair his injuries,” Quenthel snapped. She still stood with one hand clamped around her torso, blood trickling between her fingers. “No one is mortally injured. Conserve your magic.”

“Now, that is precisely—” Pharaun began again, glaring at Quenthel and climbing to his feet.

“Stop it!” Halisstra snapped. “I have exhausted my songs of power, so it does not matter. When I have recovered my magical strength I will heal all who need it, because it is foolish to press on in our state. Until then, we will have to rely on mundane methods to address your injuries. Danifae, help me dress these wounds.”

The battle captive turned to Jeggred, who stood near, and motioned for him to sit down, shrugging her pack from her shoulders to search for bandages and ointments. The draegloth did not protest, a sign of how exhausted he was.

Halisstra glanced over the others and decided that the wizard was most in need of attention. After pushing him back down onto the boulder, she took out her own supply of bandages. She studied Pharaun’s upper arm, where Jeggred’s talons had scored the flesh, and she began to apply an ointment from among the supplies they’d purchased in Gracklstugh.

“This will sting,” she said pleasantly.

Pharaun mouthed an awful curse and jumped as if he had been stabbed, yelping in pain.

“You did that on purpose!” he said.

“Of course,” Halisstra replied.

While she and Danifae worked on the others, Valas scrambled up a narrow path hidden along the wall of the sinkhole. He studied the ground carefully, and paused to stare thoughtfully into the forest nearby.

Halisstra looked up at him and asked, “Did you find something of interest, Master Hune?”

“There is a path here that climbs up out of the cave mouth,” the Bregan D’aerthe answered, “but I couldn’t say where the Jaelre went. Several game trails converge here, but none seem to have been used by any number of folk.”

“In the Jaelre palace in the Labyrinth you said you’d found clear signs that they had used the portal. How could there be no signs on this side?” Quenthel demanded.

“Dust and grit in the Underdark can hold signs of passage for many years, Mistress. On the surface, it is not so easy. It rains, it snows, the small plants quickly grow over disused paths. Had the Jaelre passed this way in great numbers within the last tenday or two, I would probably see the signs, but if they came this way five or ten years ago, I would be left with nothing to read.”

“They would not have marched far across the surface,” Quenthel mused. “They can’t be far away.”

“You’re probably correct, Mistress,” Valas replied. “The Jaelre would doubtless have preferred to move by night, staying under the cover of the trees during the day. If this is a very large forest—the High Forest, or perhaps Cormanthor—they might be hundreds of miles away.”

“There’s a cheerful thought,” Pharaun muttered. “What in the world brought the Jaelre up here, anyway? Didn’t they consider the possibility that the surface dwellers would slaughter them as eagerly as the minotaurs did?”

“When I knew them years ago, Tzirik and his fellows spoke from time to time of returning to the surface,” Valas said. He turned away from the forest and lightly dropped back down into the cave mouth. “Reclaiming the World Above is part of the doctrine of the Masked Lord, and the captains and rulers of House Jaelre wondered if the so-called Retreat of our light-blinded surface kin might not be an invitation to claim the lands the surface elves were abandoning.”

“Did it not occur to you back in Ched Nasad that your heretical friends might have decided to act upon their wishful thinking and abandon that black, fiend-ravaged warren they called home?” Quenthel asked. “Did it not occur to you that you might have been leading us into a dead end in the Labyrinth?”