Free Condemnation by Richard Baker

intangible barrier that blocked the archway as surely as a wall of masonry. Nimor frowned, summoned up his willpower, and tried the archway again, only to find his passage barred in mid-step.
    “Damnation,” he muttered. “A forbidding.”
    The Tlabbar castle, or its interior anyway, was warded by a great fixed spell that utterly prevented an enemy from setting foot within. Nimor could elude or undo some magical traps, but the forbidding was simply beyond his ability to penetrate.
    That explains the open door, he thought. The Tlabbars are confident in their magical defenses. Now what?
    Nimor sheathed his knife and studied the archway. A spell of forbidding could be crafted to defend a building or area in one of several ways, but if the Tlabbars wanted to move about their own castle, they would have had to make a forbidding through which one could pass without too much difficulty—perhaps with a token of some kind, or maybe with a password. Nimor quickly searched the bodies of the two Tlabbar guards he’d slain, but found nothing that seemed like it might serve as a token to pass the forbidding.
    It might be anything, he thought. A cloak clasp, an enchanted coin in a purse, an earring or a necklace …
    He decided he didn’t have time to experiment. With one hand he picked up the dead wizard and tucked the fellow under his arm, then he strode back to the archway and steeled himself to step through. This time, he passed through without resistance, as if the ward was simply gone.
    Something the Tlabbar guards wear, then, Nimor decided.
    He briefly considered shouldering the dead wizard and carrying the fellow along in case he needed to pass another warding inside the castle, but decided against it. Stealth and speed were his best defenses, and lugging a corpse through the castle was not particularly subtle. Besides, the Tlabbars were not likely to have two forbiddings in their palace, or to use the same key for both if they did. He unceremoniously dumped the wizard on the other side of the doorway, and headed inside.
    The archway opened into a long, high-ceilinged corridor that ran above one of the Tlabbar halls. Doors made of pale zurkhwood lined the hall, opening into studies, parlors, trophy rooms, and other such chambers if Nimor’s old maps were correct. He ignored them all and darted swiftly down the hall, reaching a small staircase at the end that descended to the level below. Here he encountered a magical glyph barring passage on the stair, but he sensed the trap before stepping close enough to trigger it. He simply vaulted over the rail instead, dropping lightly to the stairs below. The stairs swept around in a grand curve and led him to another gleaming black corridor near the center of the Tlabbar castle, leading to the House shrine. The floor was polished black marble that would have gleamed like a mirror had there been any light to see by. Not far ahead, a pair of House guards stood watch over a great double door leading into Lolth’s sanctuary.
    Nimor smiled invisibly and congratulated himself on his timing. The matron mother, and perhaps a daughter or two, would be within, performing some empty ritual to their mute goddess.
    Carefully staying out of sight, Nimor took one more look around to make sure no one else was approaching. He studied the two guards outside the door. They seemed no more than young officers, proudly attired for their exalted duty as guards to the matron mother, but Nimor did not trust his eyes. The two were more than they seemed, he was certain of it. He decided to bypass them if he could.
    Gathering himself, Nimor raised his left hand, on which gleamed a ring as black as jet. The ring of shadows was perhaps his most useful weapon, a device that conferred a number of useful magical powers. He called upon one of those powers, and melted into the shadows of the black corridor only to step out on the far side of the shrine’s door, into House Tlabbar’s most sacred sanctum.
    The temple