Halisstra carefully scanned her half of the bow, starting with the water close to the boat and working her way farther out until even her drow sight could make out nothing more through the blackness, then she returned her gaze to the boat and started again. Great stalactites or columns - it was impossible to tell - descended from the ceiling and van-ished into the inky water at odd intervals, creating titanic pillars of stone for the boat to navigate around. In other spots the jagged points of sta-lagmites jutted from the surface like spears. Coalhewer steered well clear of those, pointing out that there might be two submerged rocks for every one that broke the surface.
"I can't believe I'm crouching on the deck of a duergar boat, fleeing for my life from a city I'd never seen before three days ago," Halisstra murmured, breaking the long silence. "Two tendays ago I was the heir apparent of a great House in a noble city. One tenday ago I was a pris-oner, betrayed by the petty malice of Faeryl Zauvirr, and now here I am, a rootless wanderer with nothing more to my name than the armor on my back and whatever odds and ends are stowed in my pack. I just cannot fathom why."
"I am not unfamiliar with changes in one's circumstances and for-tunes," Danifae said. "What is the point of asking why? It is the will of the Spider Queen."
"Is it?" Halisstra asked. "House Melarn stood for twenty centuries or more, only to fall in the hour when Lolth withdrew her favor from our entire race. It was only in her absence that our enemies could over-throw us."
Danifae did not reply, nor did Halisstra expect her to. That thought was perilously close to heresy, after all. To suggest that something had occurred against Lolth's will was to doubt the power of the Spider Queen, and to question Lolth's power was to invite death and condemnation as a faithless weakling. The fate that awaited the faithless in the afterlife was too terrible to contemplate. Unless Lolth chose to take the soul of a fol-lower to her divine abode in the Demonweb Pits, a drow's spirit would be condemned to anguish and oblivion in the barren wastelands where the dead of all kinds were judged. Only abject worship and perfect service could sway the Dark Queen to intercede on one's behalf and grant life beyond life, eternal existence as one of Lolth's divine host.
Of course, thought Halisstra, if Lolth is dead, then damnation and oblivion become unavoidable, don't they?
She blanched at the thought and shivered in horror, standing quickly and pacing away from the bridge to hide her face from the others.
I must not think such things, she told herself. Better to empty my mind of all thoughts than to entertain blasphemy.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, doing her best to banish her insidious doubts.
"We've got trouble," Ryld announced from the afterdeck. The weapons master knelt and peered through the darkness behind the boat. "Three boats, much like this one."
"I see them," Pharaun said. He glanced up at the bridge. "Master Coalhewer, I thought you said this was the fastest vessel on the Darklake. Am I to gather that you exaggerated a bit?"
The dwarf scowled back into the darkness and replied, "I've never been overtaken before today, so how was I t'know any different?"
He muttered a foul string of curses and paced from one end ofthe bridge to the other, never taking his eyes off the following boats.
"They're not gaining on us by much," Quenthel observed after a long moment. "It's going to take them a while to catch us."
Halisstra turned and clambered past the bridge to gaze aft. She could see the pursuing boats, just barely. They trailed behind Coalhewer's craft by a bowshot, black ghosts silhouetted faintly against the dying red smudge that marked the city behind them. A glimmer of white played at the bow of each boat where it parted the waters.
She looked up at the duergar and asked, "Can't you make this thing go any faster?"
Coalhewer growled and waved a hand at the skeletons driving the craft.
"They've been told to go as fast as they can," he said. "We might speed her up by throwing weight over the side, but there's no telling if it'd be help enough."
"How far are we from the southern wall of the cavern?" asked Quenthel.