Condemnation - By R. A. Salvatore Page 0,74

lich muttered a word of awful power and scuttled forward, his skeletal talons outstretched. Seemingly unconcerned by Gromph's de-fensive spell the lich plunged his hand through the dancing globe of color and grasped the archmage by one arm. Gromph shrieked in dismay as the power of the lich's spell struck full upon him, blasting his defen-sive globe to motes of winking light and locking his every muscle into an absolute rigidity.

"Gromph Baenre, thou art encysted," Dyrr intoned, his naked teeth gleamed against the great and terrible blackness within his skull.

The archmage had one long glimpse at the triumphant lich standing over him, then he started to fall. Gromph, unable to move, plummeted straight down through the floor, through the flickering rooms and cham-bers of Sorcere, through a vast distance into the yawning black rock below the tower, the city, the world. For one terrible instant Gromph felt himself at the bottom of a measureless well, staring up through uncounted miles of darkness at the pinprick figure of his nemesis above. The darkness fell in upon him and smothered him in its embrace.

In the archmage's chambers in Sorcere, the lich Dyrr stood, looking down at the spot in the floor where he had condemned Gromph Baenre. Had he been a living mage Dyrr might have panted for breath, trembled with fatigue, or perhaps even collapsed from mortal wounds sustained in the fierce duel, but the dark magic binding his undead sinews and bones together was not subject to the weaknesses of the living.

"Bide there a time, young Gromph," he said to the empty place. "I may find a use for you yet, perhaps in a century or two."

He made a curt gesture and vanished from the conjury.

The great peals of a thunderclap echoed through the black stone passageways, a rumbling so deep and visceral that Halisstra could feel it more than hear it. She crouched in the shadow of a great stone arch and risked a quick glance across the great hall. On the far side, below the drow party, a handful of hulking monsters picked themselves up off the floor and sought cover. Several more lay still in the rubble and wreckage of the lower portion of the hall.

"That broke their rush," Halisstra called out to her companions. "They're regrouping, though."

"Determined bastards," Pharaun said.

The wizard sheltered behind a towering pillar of stone, grimacing with fatigue. Over the previous day and a half the company had marched at least thirty miles through the endless corridors of the Labyrinth, pur-sued at every turn by seemingly endless hordes of minotaurs and baphomet demons. On two occasions the dark elves had narrowly avoided fiendishly clever efforts to trap them by closing off the tunnels they were fleeing through.

"I have few spells of that sort left," Pharaun said. "We need to find a place where I can rest and ready more spells."

"You'll rest when we all do, wizard," Quenthel growled. The Baenre and her whip were splattered with gore, and her armor showed more than one ugly rent where a deadly blow had barely been turned. "We're close to the Jaelre. We must be. Let's move again before the minotaurs organize another charge."

The other drow exchanged looks, but they pushed themselves to their feet and followed Quenthel and Valas into another passage. This ran for perhaps four hundred yards before opening into another great hall, this one featuring tall, fluted columns and a floor paved with well-fitted flag-stones. Graceful, winding staircases rose up along the cavern walls to meet long, sheltered galleries where dim faerie fire burned, illuminating cham-bers that might once have been workshops,merchant houses, or simply the modest homes of soldiers and artisans.

"Drow work again," Ryld observed. "And again, abandoned. You're certain this is the place, Valas?"

The scout nodded wearily, his right hand clamped over a shallow but bloody wound on his left shoulder.

"I have been in this very cavern before," he replied. "These are Jaelre dwellings. Up there a number of armorers lived, and over on that wall was an inn I stayed at. The palace of the Jaelre nobles lies just through the next passage."

Quenthel leaped up a short, curving stairway and glanced into some kind of shop, its windows dark and empty. She swore and moved past sev-eral others, looking into each in turn before descending back to the floor of the main hall.

"If these are the Jaelre dwellings, then where in all the screaming hells are the Jaelre?" she demanded. "Did the accursed minotaurs slay them all?"

"I doubt it,"

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