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and that others would need his healing prayers.
 "What have you done?" Robillard asked Arabeth, who sobbed, but looked at the devastated fi-
eld, not at her gruesome handiwork.
"It was better than she deserved," Arabeth replied.
Glancing over his shoulder at the utter devastation of the Hosttower of the Arcane, and the
men and women who had gone against it, Robillard found it hard to disagree.
CHAPTER 17
CONSEQUENCE
T he irony of pulling a battered, but very much alive Deudermont from the ground was not lost
on Maimun, who considered how many others-they were all around him on the devastated field-
would soon be put into the ground, and because of the decisions of that very same captain.
"Don't kick a man who's lying flat, I've been told," Maimun muttered, and Robillard and Ara-
beth turned to regard him, as well as the half-conscious Deudermont. "But you're an idiot, good
captain."
"Watch your tongue, young one," Robillard warned.
"Better to remain silent than speak the truth and offend the powerful, yes Robillard?" Maimun
replied with a sour and knowing grin.
"Remind me why Sea Sprite didn't sink Thrice Lucky on the many occasions we've seen you
at sea," the wizard threatened. "I seem to forget."
"My charm, no doubt."
"Enough, you two," Arabeth scolded, her voice trembling with every syllable. "Look around
you! Is this travesty all about you? About your petty rivalry? About placing blame?"
"How can it not be about who's to blame?" Maimun started to argue, but Arabeth cut him short
with a vicious scowl.
 "It's about those scattered on this field, nothing more," she said, her voice even. "Alive and de-
ad& in the Hosttower and without."
Maimun swallowed hard and glanced at Robillard, who seemed equally out of venom, and in-
deed, Arabeth's argument was difficult to counter given the carnage around them. They finished
extracting Deudermont at the same time that another rescue team called out that they had located
Lord Brambleberry.
The ground covering him had saved him from the explosion, but had smothered him in the
process. The young Waterdhavian lord, so full of ambition and vision, and the desire to earn his
way, was dead.
There would be no cheering that day, and even if there had been, it would have been drowned
out by the cries of anguish and agony.
Work went on through the night and into the next day, separating dead from wounded, tending
to those who could be helped. Guided by Robillard, assault teams went into each of the four fal-
len spires of the destroyed Hosttower, and more than a few of Arklem Greeth's minions were
pulled from the rubble, all surrendering without a struggle, no fight left in them-not after seeing
the unbridled evil of the man they'd once called the archmage arcane.
The cost had been horrific-more than a third of the population of the once-teeming city of Lus-
kan was dead.
But the war was over.
Captain Deudermont shook his head solemnly.
"What does that mean?" Regis yelled at him. "You can't just say he's gone!"
"Many are just gone, my friend," Deudermont explained. "The blast that took the Hosttower
released all manner of magical power, destructive and altering. Men were burned and blasted, ot-
hers transformed, and others, many others, banished from this world. Some were utterly destro-
yed, I'm told, their very souls disintegrated into nothingness."
"And what happened to Drizzt?" Regis demanded.
"We cannot know. He is not to be found. Like so many. I'm sorry. I feel this loss as keenly as-
"
"Shut up!" Regis yelled at him. "You don't know anything! Robillard tried to warn you-many
did! You don't know anything! You chose this fight and look at what it has gotten you, what it
has gotten us all!"
 "Enough!" Robillard growled at the halfling, and he moved threateningly at Regis.
Deudermont held him back, though, understanding that Regis's tirade was wrought of utter gri-
ef. How could it not be? Why should it not be? The loss of Drizzt Do'Urden was no small thing,
after all, particularly not to the halfling that had spent the better part of the last decades by the
dark elf's side.
"We could not know the desperation of Arklem Greeth, or that he was capable of such wanton
devastation," Deudermont said, his voice quiet and humble. "But the fact that he was capable of
it, and willing to do it, only proves that he had to be removed, by whatever means the people of
Luskan could muster. He would have rained his devastation upon them sooner or later, and in
more malicious forms, no doubt. Whether freeing the undead from the magical bindings of Illusk
or using his wizards to slowly bleed the city into submission, he was no man worthy of being the
leader of this city."
"You act as if this city is worthy of having a leader," Regis said.
"They stood arm in arm to win," Deudermont scolded, growing excited-so much so that the
priest attending him grabbed him by the shoulders to remind him that he had to stay calm.
"Every family in Luskan feels grief as keen as your own. Doubt that not at all. The price of their
freedom has been high indeed."
"Their freedom, their fight," the halfling spat. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]