Condemnation by Richard Baker Read Free Book Online Page A

happened, indeed?” Quenthel replied. She eyed Halisstra suspiciously. “Was that what I thought it was?”
    Halisstra nodded and stood, wiping blood from her hands.
    “It is a tradition in my House that those females who are suited for it may study the arts of the bae’qeshel, the dark minstrels. As you can see, there is power in song, something that few of our kind care to study. I have been trained in the minstrel’s lore.”
    Ryld sat up, looking down at his breastplate and the bloody quarrel lying in the dust. He looked up at Halisstra.
    “You healed me?” he asked.
    Halisstra offered her hand and pulled him to his feet.
    “As your friend Pharaun observed, we need you too much to allow you to inconvenience us with your death.”
    Ryld met her eyes, obviously considering some reply. Gratitude was not an emotion many drow bothered to act upon. The weapons master perhaps wondered what Halisstra might choose to do with his. She spared him any more serious reflections by turning her attention to Pharaun, and handing the iron wand back to him.
    “Here,” she said. “You dropped this.”
    Pharaun inclined his head and replied, “I admit I was surprised to see you wield it, but I heard you sing in Ched Nasad. Shame on me for not adding two and two.”
    “Let me see your arm,” Halisstra said.
    She sang the song of healing again, and repaired Pharaun’s injury.
    She would have examined the others and aided them if she could, but Quenthel interrupted her.
    “No one else is dying,” the high priestess said. “We must move now or our enemies will surely descend on us again. Valas, you lead the way. Head toward the outer walls so that we may make for the open desert if we decide to flee.”
    “Very well, Mistress Baenre,” the scout acquiesced. “It will be as you say.”

Chapter
    THREE
    Kaanyr Vhok, the half-demon prince known as the Sceptered One, stood on a high balcony over the old dwarven foundry and watched his armorers at work. The great smelter had once been the heart of the fallen realm of Ammarindar. The cavern was immense, and its roof rested upon dozens of towering pillars carved into the shapes of dragons, glowing red with angry firelight and the lurid radiance of molten metal. The clanging of hammers and roar of kilns at work filled the air. Dozens of hulking tanarukks, bestial fiends bred from orcs and demons, toiled on the foundry floor. They might have lacked the skill and enchantments of the dwarves who once worked there, but Kaanyr Vhok’s soldiers possessed a cunning instinct for the making of deadly weapons infused with dark lore.
    Kaanyr himself fit the infernal scene well. Tall and powerful, he had the stature of a strong-thewed human warrior and the strength of a stone giant. His skin was red and hot to the touch, and his flesh was hard enough to turn a blade. He was strikingly handsome, though his eyes danced with malice and his teeth were as black as coal. He wore a golden breastplate and carried a pair of wicked short swords made from some demonic black iron in rune-chased scabbards at his belt. He grinned fiercely with delight as he looked out over the gathering storm of his army.
    “I now lead nearly two thousand tanarukk warriors,” he said over his shoulder, “and I have just as many orcs, ogres, trolls, and giants at my command. I think the time has come to try my strength, my love.”
    Aliisza allowed herself a smile and moved closer, pressing herself to the demon prince’s side. Like Kaanyr Vhok, she too possessed demonic blood. In her case, she was an alu-fiend, the spawn of a succubus and some mortal sorcerer. Wings as smooth as black leather sprouted from her shoulder blades, but other than that she was dusky and seductive, voluptuous and inviting, a half-demoness whose allure few mortal men could resist. She was also clever, capricious, and very skilled in magic, and therefore well-suited to be the consort of a demonspawned warlord such as Kaanyr.
    “Menzoberranzan?”