Condemnation - By R. A. Salvatore Page 0,104

this accursed cell would reduce me to desper-ately grasping at phantom hopes?"

"The hopes I offer are not phantoms," Seyll said. "Tell us what you're doing here, show us that you're no enemy of the peaceful folk of Cor-manthor, and you will have your liberty."

"You can't expect me to believe that."

"I am here, am I not?" Seyll answered. "Clearly some of our kind learn to live in peace with the surface folk."

"Of course you have nothing to fear among the surface folk," Halis-stra retorted. "Your vapid, dancing goddess is too weak to threaten them."

"As I told you before, I was a priestess of Lolth when I was captured," Seyll said. She formed her hands into a gesture of supplication, a cere-monial pose Halisstra knew well. In the tongue of the abyssal planes where Lolth dwelt, Seyll mouthed the words of a high and secret prayer: " 'Great Goddess, Mother of the Dark, grant me the blood of my enemies for drink and their living hearts for meat. Grant me the screams of their young for song, grant me the helplessness of their males for my satiation, grant me the wealth of their houses for my bed. By this unworthy sacri-fice I honor you, Queen of Spiders, and beseech of you the strength to destroy my foes.' "

The infernal words seemed to crackle with dark power, each harsh syl-lable charged with an evil potency that spread through the cell like a slick of poison. Seyll made a drawing motion of her hand, showing the manner in which the knife was to be wielded, and settled back on her heels.

Shifting back to Elvish, she closed her eyes and said, "Many hapless souls died beneath my knife, yet I found redemption and peace here. Whether the same awaits you is a question I cannot answer, but I offer myself as proof that you can walk these lands in peace if you wish."

Halisstra stared at Seyll, almost as if seeing her for the first time. She had been about to condemn the priestess once more as a weak failure, a traitor to the one true drow goddess, but the words died on her lips. No one but a priestess of high station would have been taught that rite, yet Seyll had decided to turn her back on Lolth. Not only that, but she still lived, and seemed to have found some amount of contentment in her decision. Halisstra had of course been indoctrinated over years of train-ing to regard heresy, apostasy, as the vilest sort of crime imaginable. Yet in her years of sacrifice and abasement before the Spider Queen's altar she had never before encountered a true apostate. Oh, she'd slandered some of her rivals with false accusations of turning away from the Spider Queen, but actually sitting in the presence of someone who had com-mitted the ultimate betrayal of the goddess, and - so far, at least - lived to tell the tale. . . .

"I want to challenge you to do something," Seyll said. "I believe you have the intelligence and the imagination for it, but we shall see. Imag-ine, for a moment, that you could live in a place where you can walk the streets without fearing an assassin's dagger in your back. Imagine that your friends - real friends - want nothing more from you than the pleas-ure of your company, that your sisters cherish your accomplishments instead of resenting your successes, and your children are not murdered for an accidental failing. Imagine that your lovers seek you out for who you are, and not your station or influence. Imagine that your goddess asks you to celebrate her with your joy, not your terror."

"There is no such - "

"You answer too quickly. I asked you to imagine it, if you can," Seyll said. She stood and moved away, turning her back on Halisstra. "I will wait."

"I can't imagine such nonsense. It's an empty fantasy, signifying noth-ing. We're not meant for such things; no one is, not dark elf, not light-elf, not even the insipid humans. Only a fool dwells on dreams."

"Yet, for the sake of argument at least, would it not seem a pleasant thing?" Seyll said over her shoulder. "You must entertain impossible dreams all the time. All thinking creatures do. Perhaps you've dreamed of having your enemies in your power, or of a lover you couldn't take, or of rising to the station you truly merit."

Halisstra snorted, truly irritated, and shook her hands in her manacles.

"If you can

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