Condemnation (48 page)

They reached the bottom—almost.

For some time they’d noticed converging strands drawing closer to their own, and Halisstra could see the reason why. A great ring of webbing a dozen times thicker than any of the gray strands was suspended below them, binding the ends of the strands together. Its circumference was so great that Halisstra could hardly describe a curve at all in the ring’s vast arc. In the center there was something—a titanic black structure or island of sorts hanging in the mighty web. The drow paused, surveying the scene, until Valas broke the silence.

“Is that it?” he said in a low voice.

“The entrance to Lolth’s domain,” Tzirik answered, “lies somewhere within that ring.”

“Are you sure?” asked Ryld.

“I am,” Quenthel replied for the priest.

She didn’t look aside or hesitate, but simply set off again at the same hard pace.

As the strand approached the central ring its steep pitch gradually flattened and thickened somewhat, and for the first time in seemingly endless hours and miles the company found itself traversing something like level ground instead of picking their way down the sloping cable. More demonic and spidery corpses appeared, some half-buried in the strand as if they’d fallen from the limitless heights above—which they most likely had.

The travelers reached the thick ring and crossed one more stretch of twisted webbing only to find that the structure in the center was some kind of immense stone temple, a baroque building of gleaming black obsidian miles in diameter. Spiked stone buttresses soared across the bottomless space, linking the structure to the ring around it. Vast dark plazas of smooth stone large enough to swallow cities surrounded the temple’s flanks. Without speaking, the company picked their way over to one of the colossal flying buttresses and advanced toward their goal.

Halisstra found herself trembling, not with exhaustion, but with a combination of terror and ecstasy as she realized that she must soon withstand Lolth’s scrutiny in the flesh.

I am worthy, she told herself. I must be.

The demons that had plagued their progress through the webs didn’t seem to care for the black temple. In any event, no more of the monsters pursued the company once they left the web behind them. For a long time the dark elves simply walked onward, crossing the huge outer plaza, as the walls of the temple came closer and closer, revealing their dark details.

Quenthel oriented their march on a sharp-edged break in the cyclopean wall, a huge cleft that must have been the temple’s portico. From time to time they passed the strange, inanimate forms of large, spiderlike beings that seemed to be sculpted from fluid black stone. Oddly enough, the petrified forms grew smaller and smaller the closer they came to the cleft. Halisstra dismissed the mystery from her mind, concentrating only on the goal before her.

At last they reached the mouth of the temple, and looked upon its entrance. A vast face confronted them, the face of a cruelly beautiful dark elf, her features calm and still as if in contemplation. Perfect black stone barred the entrance from one side to the other, sculpted into the image of the Spider Queen’s visage. Only her half-lidded eyes showed any animation at all. Gazing down blankly at the tiny supplicants below her, Lolth’s eyes gleamed with a roiling, hellish glee focused entirely on whatever thoughts or processes lay behind them.

The company stood gazing up in wonder and terror, and Quenthel prostrated herself before the image of her goddess. Halisstra and Danifae joined her at once, groveling on the cold black stone. Even the males dropped to the ground, lying on their faces and averting their eyes. Tzirik, as a priest of Vhaeraun, settled for taking one knee and lowering his gaze respectfully. He didn’t serve the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, but he and others of his faith certainly recognized her divinity.

“Great Queen!” called Quenthel. “We have come from Menzoberranzan to beseech you to restore your favor to your priestesses! Our enemies encroach on your holy city and threaten your faithful with destruction. We humbly beg you to instruct us in what we must do to find approval in your eyes. Arm us with your holy might once more, and we will hunt your enemies until their blood fills the Underdark and their souls fill your belly!”

The face did not respond.

Quenthel waited for a long time, still prostrate, then she licked her lips and uttered another prayer. Halisstra and Danifae joined their pleading to hers, and they begged and pleaded with every prayer, every invocation, every catechism they had ever been taught, scraping and groveling at the temple door. The males simply waited, still stretched out on the black stone. After a time, Tzirik moved off a short distance and sat down with his back to the face, communing with his own god. Halisstra ignored him and continued her supplications.

Still the face did not respond.

The three priestesses kept up their pleas for what must have been hours, but finally Quenthel pushed herself upright and gazed full on the visage of Lolth.

“Enough, sisters,” said the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith. “The goddess plainly does not deign to answer us at this time.”

“Perhaps we are in the wrong place,” Pharaun suggested. “Perhaps we must go farther in order for you to offer your prayers.”

“There is no place farther to go,” Tzirik said, rejoining the party. “Vhaeraun informs me that this is the only point of approach to Lolth’s domain through the Abyss. If she refuses to hear you at this spot, she will not hear you anywhere else in this plane.”

“But why does she continue to ignore us?” Halisstra asked in a plaintive voice. She climbed to her feet, her heart sick with longing. After all that had happened—the fall of her House, the destruction of her city, the travails of the quest—to stand before Lolth’s temple and be ignored was simply incomprehensible. “What more do we have to do?”

Tzirik shrugged and said, “I cannot answer that question.”

“Apparently Lolth can’t, either,” Halisstra said.

She ignored the disapproval and fear that flickered across Quenthel’s features, and strode up angrily to stand within arm’s reach of the towering face.

“Hear me, Lolth!” she cried. “Answer me! What have we done to earn your displeasure? Where are you?”

“Speak with respect!” hissed Quenthel, her eyes wide with terror.

Ryld quailed, but managed to find the strength to take a couple of steps forward.

“Mistress Melarn …” he said, “Halisstra, come away from there. No good—”

“Lolth!” Halisstra screamed. “Answer me, damn you!”

She struck the cold stone of the face with her fists, flailing away in futility, in anger. Her mind went empty as animal fury rose up to overthrow her reason. She screamed curses upon her goddess, she battered at the uncaring face until her hands were bruised and bloody, and still no answer came. After a time she found herself huddled against the cold stone, weeping, her hands broken and useless. Like a lost child, she cried with all the ache in her heart.

“Why? Why?” was all she could manage to say through her sobs. “Why have you abandoned us? Why do you hate us?”

“You speak heresy,” Quenthel said, her voice hard with disapproval. “Have you no faith left, Halisstra Melarn? The goddess will speak in her own time.”

“Do you really believe that still?” Halisstra muttered.

She turned her face away and gave herself up to her tears, no longer caring what Quenthel, or Danifae, or any of the others thought. She’d had her answer from Lolth.

“Weak …” she heard Quenthel whisper.

Standing a short distance from the rest of the company, Tzirik sighed and said, “Well, that’s that, I suppose. Lolth hasn’t chosen to break her silence for you, so now I have something I must do.”

He raised his arms and made a complex series of passes, while muttering dire words of power. The air crackled with energy. Quenthel’s eyes widened as she recognized the spell the Vhaeraunite spoke.

“Stop him!” she screeched, whirling to face the priest.

She started forward, raising her deadly whips, but Danifae caught her arm as she rushed past.

“Carefully!” hissed Danifae. “Our bodies are still in Minauthkeep.”

“He’s creating a gate!” Quenthel snapped. “Here!”

“What are you doing, Tzirik?” Pharaun said with some alarm.

The wizard recoiled a step and prepared a defensive spell, but Danifae’s warning was just enough to cause him to hesitate before interfering.

Ryld and Valas held their hands as well, uncertain of what would happen if they harmed the cleric whose spell had brought them to Lolth’s door. The weapons master and the mercenary drew their weapons but halted there.

“Pharaun, what should we do?” Ryld said.

Before the wizard could answer, Tzirik finished his spell. With an enormous tearing sound, a great black rift: appeared in the air beside the Jaelre priest.

“I am here, my lord!” he cried into the rift. “I stand before the Face of Lolth!”

And from the depths of blackness within the rift, a voice of ineffable power, of terrible potency, answered, “Good. I come.”

The blackness seemed to stir, and from the rift stepped something that had the size and shape of a lean, graceful drow male, but was obviously something more. Dressed in black leather, a purple mask draped over his face, the being radiated puissance and presence, his form almost quivering with the potentialities he contained. Even Halisstra, absorbed in her own misery with her back turned to the scene, whipped her head around as she sensed the being’s arrival. With imperious ease, the being surveyed the plain of dark stone and the black temple.

“It is as I thought,” he said to Tzirik, who had fallen prostrate at his feet. “Rise, my son. You have done well, and brought me to a place from which I was barred.”

“I have only done as you commanded, Masked Lord,” Tzirik said, standing slowly.

“Tzirik,” Quenthel managed in a strangled voice, “what have you done?”

“He has opened a gate for me,” the being who could only be a god said, with a cruel smile on his face. “Do you not recognize the son of your own goddess, priestess of Lolth?”

“Vhaeraun,” Quenthel breathed.

The god folded his arms and drifted past the company of Menzoberranyr to confront the perfect stone visage, giving the mortals no further thought. He made a small shooing gesture with his left hand, and Halisstra, still huddled before the face, was violently hurled aside. She flew spinning through the air and landed badly at least thirty yards away, tumbling to a halt on the fluted ebon stone of the plaza.

“Dear Mother,” Vhaeraun said, addressing the face, “you were foolish to leave yourself in such a state.”

The god spontaneously began to grow, his radiance increasing as he soared to a height taller than a storm giant, scaling himself to the task at hand. He held out his hand, and from out of nowhere a black, gleaming sword made of shadows appeared in his grip, sized to his towering form.

A spearcast distant, Halisstra groaned and raised her eyes from the cold stone under her aching body. The Menzoberranyr stood paralyzed by indecision. Tzirik, on the other hand, watched smugly as Vhaeraun levitated upward to confront Lolth’s gaze directly, blade in hand. With careful deliberation, the Masked Lord drew back his sword of shadows, his mask twisting into a rictus of hatred.

And Vhaeraun hewed at the Face of Lolth with all his godly might.

TWENTY

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, somehow 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 thought in bleak amazement. She doesn’t care.

She fell to her hands and knees amid the rest of the company, who ignored her, stupefied as they were by Vhaeraun’s wrathful assault. Ryld knelt behind Splitter, averting his eyes and stoically enduring the punishing 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 fascination, 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 a god,” 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.