War Of The Spider Queen - Condemnation Part 30

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 pa.s.ses, 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 G.o.d said, with a cruel smile on his face. "Do you not recognize the son of your own G.o.ddess, priestess of Lolth?"

"Vhaeraun," Quenthel breathed.

The G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.dly might.

CHAPTER 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 a.s.sault.

Tzirik stood aside, still rapt with the glory of his G.o.d's presence, somehow able to ignore the damage the Masked Lord was wreaking as the shock waves pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d's blade, the visage of the Spider Queen seemed almost, but not quite, invulnerable to his a.s.sault.

The G.o.ddess 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 a.s.sault. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d," 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 forthis." 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 arm away from Pharaun and stormed over to Tzirik, weaving as the ground trembled underfoot. She spun him away from the facade of the temple, tearing him away from the dark adoration of his G.o.d, 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 G.o.ddess." 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, Vhaerauna bowshot distant, his back to the company as he chiseled and bludgeoned at the growing crack in the stone visagewaved his left hand without turning 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d engaged in his a.s.sault.

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 G.o.d 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 impa.s.sive, 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-G.o.d 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-G.o.d Selvetarm waited no longer, but darted forward with blinding speed, weaving his s.e.xtuple blades in an irresistible a.s.sault that might have dismembered a dozen giants in the s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.ds' 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 priestess. 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 injuries and managed to begin the discordant threnody of a bae'qeshel song. 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 G.o.ds.

"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 Selvetarm 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 shall see."

He turned his full attention back to the dueling G.o.ds.

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 G.o.ds 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-G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds had left behind them. Distant flickers of light still danced from their battle, far below. For the s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sault, 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 a.s.signed 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!"