Resurrection

Chapter Six

As she stepped through the portal, Halisstra felt spread across a distance vast and deep. In only a fraction of a heartbeat, the portal moved her from the relatively calm gray nothingness of the Astral to—She found herself in mid-air, falling.

Before she could activate the levitation power of her brooch, she dropped five paces and hit the ground with a grunt. She managed to keep her feet and found herself standing under a dim sun on blasted ground in the midst of a nightmare.

Spiders surrounded her, swarmed her, engulfed her, from hand-sized arachnids scurrying underfoot to horrid monsters twice her height. The creatures tore each other to pieces all around her. Hisses, clicks, and squeals filled her ears; black, brown, and red ichor stained the ground and splattered her face.

Halisstra was aswim in an ocean of Lolth’s maddened children. The Spider Queen must have caused Halisstra to arrive in the midst of the chaos as penance for her apostasy.

She steadied her stance, brandished the Crescent Blade, and took in her environment with only a single glance. She stood on a bleak, pit-ridden rockscape in the shadow of a slim spire of unusual looking rock, a tor of black stone that looked as though it should have toppled of its own weight in the gusting wind. The whirlpools of Lolth’s reawakened power dotted the cloudy sky.

She had been ejected from one such and thanked the goddess that it had not been higher off the ground. A line of souls streamed through the heavens, all of them floating in the direction of a distant mountain range, drawn there by the lodestone of Lolth’s power.

An eerie keening rang in her ears, the sound of songspider webs whistling in the blustery wind, like some obscene attempt to mimic the sound made by Seyll’s songsword. In it, she heard the echo of the word she had heard on the Astral, the word that made the hair on the nape of her neck stand on end:

Yor’thae.

She had no time to consider the sound further. The spiders around her noticed her. A sea of frenzied fangs, pincers, legs, and hairy bodies broke around her. Arachnids scuttled over rocks, over each other, over her. She slashed and cut but there were too many. They bit and tore indiscriminately, killing and devouring anything in their path. Spider bodies thumped into her; fangs tried to bite through her mail; claws sent her spinning, knocked her to her knees.

She refused to die on her knees.

“Goddess!” she screamed and swung the glowing Crescent Blade in a wide arc.

As if in answer, Feliane and Uluyara appeared in the air through a short-lived gate that appeared perhaps twenty paces to her right and five paces high in the air. They fell to the ground, and she saw them for only an instant more—both wore expressions of surprise and horror—before they too were buried under a mass of writhing, leaping spiders.

From her knees, Halisstra swung blindly, hitting spider flesh with every pass. Ichor sprayed, splattered her face and hands. Hissing and clicking filled her ears; squeals of pain.

She fought her way back to her feet, impaling a large blue spider on the end of her blade. She slipped in its gushing fluids and nearly fell. A huge, black, hairy arachnid leaped on her back and sank its fangs into her shoulder, but her mail withstood the attack. She flung it from her and stomped its thorax to mush as another huge spider reared before her, lunged forward, and bit at her legs. She dodged backward and fended it off with the Crescent Blade. She felt as though she were up to her waist in the creatures; with each step, she crushed half a dozen small spiders under her boots. She saw no way out, no way she would ever get free. She would die under their fangs, and her body would be left a desiccated husk blowing in the screaming wind.

“Goddess!” she cried again, hacking wildly with the Crescent Blade.

The enchanted steel killed where it struck, slicing arachnid flesh easily, but there were thousands of them. Eilistraee had no particular power over the creatures, and in her desperation Halisstra almost fell back into her old habit of channeling Lolth’s power to command spiders. It would be so easy to simply order them back to—Uluyara’s horn rang, and Halisstra latched onto the sound with the desperation of the drowning. She remembered the first time she had heard its clear call, on the World Above under the silver light of the moon. She centered herself, at least for a time, and with effort resisted Lolth’s pull.

If she were to live, she would have to save herself with the tools that Eilistraee, and only Eilistraee, had put into her hands.

Holding the Crescent Blade in both hands, Halisstra slashed about her with an abandon born of hopelessness, sending legs and spider flesh flying. Her small shield made her two-handed grip on the Crescent Blade a bit awkward, but she managed. She wanted the extra force to her swings.

Fangs clamped on her arm, her leg, and pierced her mail and flesh. Agony raced through her body, and warm poison throbbed into her veins. She grabbed the hairy blob on her forearm and squeezed it until it popped. She stabbed downward at another spider, impaling it, cross cut to her right, and took the mandible from another. She found it strange that killing Lolth’s creatures did not elicit the same elation she had felt back in the forest of the World Above when she had killed the phase spider in the name of Eilistraee.

Instead, she felt out of balance, dirty, guilty.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured as she killed but was not sure what she meant. The words just seemed to fit. Spider blood splattered her hands, her cloak, her face. “I’m sorry.”

Despite her words, she hacked her way through the roiling mass of bodies, legs, mandibles, and ichor toward where she had last seen her fellow priestesses. To her relief, she saw that both Feliane and Uluyara had found their feet and their blades. They dodged nimbly amidst the chaos, slashing and stabbing. They looked as though they were dancing—they leaped, spun, twirled, and tumbled, serving the Lady of the Dance even while they slaughtered. Both sported cuts and bites, and Feliane had a dark puncture on her bare forearm. Still, Halisstra thought them beautiful.

Their blades whistled through the air, an answer and a challenge to the strange keening. Halisstra caught Feliane’s eye as both cut their way through the never-ending tide of spiders.

“Halisstra!” Feliane called. Cutting, chopping, her round face was splattered with blood and ichor.

Uluyara whirled a circle beside the elf priestess, her blade a blur, and met Halisstra’s eyes for a moment.

“Here!” Halisstra answered.

Without stopping, she opened the abdomen of a spider, then another and another. She was fifteen paces from her sisters.

From out of the maelstrom of bodies a brown sword spider leaped high above the fray. Time slowed for Halisstra.

Easily as large as a pack lizard, the creature’s eight arms ended in claws that looked like short swords and killed just as effectively. Halisstra’s breath caught as the creature reached the apex of its leap. She had seen sword spiders fight in the basement arena of House Melarn, cutting down out-of-favor male warriors with bloody, brutal efficiency.

As the sword spider descended toward Feliane, it clustered its swordlike claws together to form a single impaling blade, pointing downward at the slight elf priestess.

“Above!” Halisstra shouted but could not be sure that Feliane heard her. “Feliane!”

A large spider appeared before Halisstra, and she hacked off two of its legs with the Crescent Blade.

The shadow of the descending sword spider must have blotted out the dim red light of the sun.

Feliane looked up, saw it, slipped to the side, and tried to raise her blade defensively. She was a heartbeat too slow. The sword spider crashed down on her, knocking her blade aside and driving her to the ground, flat on her back. Its clustered legs sheared through her armored shoulder and sank into her flesh. She screamed in pain, and blood spouted. Her sword fell from her hand, skittered away, and was lost under a throng of arachnids.

The sword spider straddled her small form, caging her in its bloody legs. She struggled beneath it, punching with her good arm, kicking, but she was already growing weak from blood loss. The blows crunched into the spider’s huge body but seemed to have little effect other than to elicit an angry hiss.

A pack of giant tarantulas drove Uluyara from Feliane’s side, and Halisstra lost sight of the High Priestess.

Halisstra shouted again and cut her way toward her sisters, hacking mercilessly at anything in her path. She left a trail of severed legs and pedipalps in her wake. Fourteen paces, twelve, ten.

She killed with every step. Ichor covered her; soaked her. Small arachnids teemed over her exposed skin, her face, and her hair. She devoured those that got near her mouth and spat the pieces to the ground.

She knew that she would not reach Feliane in time.

The swords of its claws still glistening red with the elf’s blood, the sword spider pinned the dying Feliane with three of its legs and raised its forelegs high in a strike that would lay open her chest and pierce her heart.

Uluyara materialized out of the madness to the sword spider’s right, blade held high. The High Priestess charged forward, calling on the Dark Maiden, and swung her blade in a crosscut designed to split the sword spider’s abdomen from head to spinneret.

But the spider saw her coming. It shifted slightly atop the wounded Feliane, parried Uluyara’s blow with one of its claws, and lashed out with another. The blow hit Uluyara squarely in the chest, sent mail links flying, and drove her backward. She stumbled, tripped on the carcass of a large spider behind her, and was instantly swamped with smaller arachnids.

The sword spider returned its attention toward Feliane. The arachnid again raised its forelegs high and drove them into Feliane’s chest. They split mail links, broke bones, and drove into the organs and flesh beneath. Feliane’s back arched with the agony, and blood pooled around her.

“Feliane!” Halisstra cried and cut down another spider and another.

She was five paces from the elf. Too far.

The elf’s eyes were still open but glassy. Blood poured from her chest and dribbled from the corner of her mouth. The sword spider bared fangs as long as knives and sank them into Feliane’s flesh. Her head sagged to the side. The spider made as though to pick the elf up and carry her back to its lair.

Halisstra had no time to think, so she did the only thing she could. She forced back the spiders near her with a flurry of vicious slashes, reached back over her head—a difficult maneuver with a shield slung on her arm—and flung the Crescent Blade with both hands at the sword spider.

The blade flew true, point first, and sank halfway to its hilt into the thorax of the huge arachnid. The creature uttered a hiss of agony, and its entire body spasmed. It withdrew blood-slicked fangs and claws from the elf’s flesh and started to turn toward Halisstra. The Crescent Blade stuck out of its flesh like a pennon. Another spasm wracked its body, another hiss escaped its fanged mouth, and it collapsed atop Feliane, dead.

Feliane did not move.

Using her shield, Halisstra bashed another spider in its face as it lunged for her. She jerked Seyll’s songsword from the scabbard on her back. With its fluted hilt whistling a counter melody to the eerie sound of the wind, she slashed another spider, another, and rushed to Feliane’s side.

She kneeled, and blew a sigh of relief when she saw that Feliane was unconscious but alive—barely. Halisstra had no time to take a longer look. She whirled around and beat back a trio of giant widows, opening a long slash in one. Afterward, she turned, bent, and heaved the sword spider carcass off of the elf.

Unmolested for the moment by any spiders, Halisstra flipped her grip on Seyll’s sword and put the hilt to her lips. Placing one hand on Feliane’s wounded chest while still trying to keep an eye on the arachnids around her, she blew a single, soothing note. The sound served as a focus for her bae’qeshel healing magic.

The punctures in Feliane’s chest closed to pink dots, and her breath came easier, though she did not regain consciousness. Halisstra could not risk another spell amidst the swarming spiders.

She took the hilt in her hands as three spiders the size of rats landed on her back. Their fangs could not penetrate her mail, and she pulled them from her as she rose and stabbed each in turn.

Standing over Feliane, she scanned the madness for Uluyara.

The High Priestess fought nearby against a red and black spider as large as a rothe. Already she had severed two of its legs.

“Uluyara!” Halisstra screamed. “Here!”

Uluyara spared her a glance, and nodded. The High Priestess unleashed an overhead cut at the spider, drove it backward a step, turned, and raced for Halisstra. The creature bounded after her with astonishing speed.

Halisstra reversed her grip, put the hilt of the songsword to her lips, and blew a series of dissonant notes. The bae’qeshel sent a wave of sound over Uluyara’s head and blasted the spider with its discordance. The power of the spell flattened the enormous arachnid, opened its exoskeleton, and a host of smaller spiders leaped upon it to feed.

Uluyara wove and danced her way through still more arachnids until she reached Halisstra’s side. She looked at Feliane, concern in her eyes.

“She’s alive,” Halisstra said, breathing heavily, “but we must get out of here now!”

Uluyara smiled fiercely, put a hand to Halisstra’s shoulder, and said, “Give me a moment’s protection.”

Halisstra nodded agreement, and while the high priestess chanted a prayer beside her, Halisstra used Seyll’s songsword and shield to slice and smash any arachnids that came near. The violence of the slaughter nauseated her. Spider parts lay everywhere, and blood stained the ground dark.

When Uluyara finished her prayer to the Lady, a ring of silvery blades took shape around them. Thousands of magical blades, all of them spinning and buzzing, formed a ring ten paces high. Two spiders caught in the wall as it materialized were slashed to gory ribbons.

“The Lady’s spells serve us well even in the Demonweb Pits,” Uluyara said, her voice and eyes hard.

Halisstra nodded, though only then did she realize that it had not occurred to her during the combat to cast one of the spells granted her by Eilistraee. She wondered why but feared the answer too much to consider the question overlong.

Perhaps two dozen spiders remained within Uluyara’s ring of blades. Halisstra knew a spell that would finish them, but an unexpected reluctance caused her to hesitate.

“We should go,” she said.

“First, these,” Uluyara answered, stepping forward. “Eilistraee has put them in our hands. We must finish them.”

Uluyara brandished her weapon, but Halisstra caught her arm and stopped her advance. She eyed the hairy wolf spiders prowling within the circle of blades.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Uluyara hesitated but finally nodded and said, “You bear the Crescent Blade.”

With effort, Halisstra pushed through her reluctance, put her fingertips to the symbol of Eilistraee on her chest, and prayed. She had a terrifying moment when the words momentarily escaped her, but she recalled them presently and her voice grew in strength. When she finished the incantation, an invisible, circular wave of power went forth from her. It hit all of the spiders and drove them, scrabbling and hissing, backward into the wall of blades. All two dozen of them vanished in a spray of legs and slashed flesh.

Halisstra felt sick and elated all at once.

She turned to find Uluyara looking at her, head cocked. The high priestess seemed to want to say something but instead gave Halisstra a nod of approval and kneeled beside Feliane. She took the elf’s face in her hands and whispered healing words. After a few moments, Feliane’s remaining wounds closed completely, color returned to her face, and her eyes fluttered open.

Uluyara helped her to her feet and held her steady.

“The Lady watches her faithful,” Uluyara said to the elf, and Feliane nodded.

The slight elf warrior-priestess eyed the carcass of the sword spider. She looked thanks at Halisstra.

Halisstra gave her an absent half smile but found her gaze reaching out, beyond the wall of blades. There, the slaughter went on unabated. Spiders bit, clawed, tore, and devoured one another in a nonstop orgy of violence. From time to time, one ventured or was carried by the combat into Uluyara’s wall of blades, where it vanished in a spray of gore.

In a way that made her sick to admit, Halisstra found the slaughter somehow rational. The strong would devour the weak and become stronger still.

She knew that she was looking upon the pith of Lolth’s doctrine made flesh, a metaphor for the Spider Queen’s entire creed.

“This has to end sometime,” she said. “We should hole up until it does.”

Feliane, recovering her blade from the ground, asked, “Where will we go?”

“There,” Halisstra replied, and nodded at the spire of stone looming over them. Few spiders prowled its sheer, strangely angled heights. They would be able to hold their ground atop it until the madness came to its bloody end. “We’ll fly.”

Seeing agreement in the eyes of Uluyara and Feliane, she again touched the medallion affixed to the chest of her mail and whispered a prayer to Eilistraee.

“Halisstra,” Uluyara interrupted, her voice low and urgent. “The Crescent Blade.”

The words to the prayer died on Halisstra’s lips, and she felt her cheeks burn. She had left Eilistraee’s blade in the carcass of the sword spider.

She had forgotten it.

“Of course,” she said, in a poor attempt to cover her neglect.

Without meeting Uluyara’s or Feliane’s eyes, she sheathed Seyll’s songsword in the scabbard over her back, walked over to the dead sword spider, and withdrew the Crescent Blade. She cleaned it on the spider’s carcass before putting it back in the scabbard at her waist.

When she turned, she saw the doubt in Uluyara’s eyes and the embarrassment in Feliane’s. She chose to ignore them both.

“You’re wounded,” Uluyara said, and pointed at the seeping wounds in Halisstra’s legs and the holes in her arm.

Halisstra had forgotten them too. She was certain she had been poisoned by the bites. The magical ring she wore allowed her to sense as much, and yet she showed no ill effects. She didn’t want to acknowledge why that might be.

“It’s nothing,” she said and began her spell anew.

When she completed the prayer, her body and gear and those of her fellow priestesses metamorphosed into an insubstantial gray vapor. She could still see, though her field of vision seemed to swell, contract, and roll. She could somehow still feel her body, or at least a body, though it felt thin and stretched, not unlike her soul.

The gusting wind tugged at her but she resisted its pull and willed herself into the air. Feliane and Uluyara, both appearing as vaguely humanoid clouds of vapor beside her, followed after.

Free of her flesh for at least a few moments, Halisstra felt free of her doubt, of her inner struggle. She felt unburdened by the world, as light as one of Lolth’s souls streaming through the sky high above. She wished she could feel that way forever.

Flying up the sheer, rocky side of the black, twisted outcropping, she looked for a likely place to wait out the slaughter. She was pleased to see no webs anywhere on the spire—though other tors had many—and the gusting wind seemed to keep the spiders from reaching its heights.

At its top, the spire looked as though it had been sheared off by a keen blade, forming a round, featureless plateau twenty paces in diameter. The wind would whip at them there, but they would be sheltered from the violence below.

Halisstra alit on the plateau, waited for Feliane and Uluyara to follow, and dispelled the magic. As one, the three priestesses regained their normal forms. Halisstra’s doubt returned with her flesh. The gusting wind nearly lifted her from her feet.

“We’ll need shelter,” Halisstra said above the wind.

Even there, the keening webs called to her. Yor’thae, they whispered.

In the distance, she could see ominous clouds forming over a distant mountain range and moving rapidly in their direction—a storm was coming.

“Gather here,” Uluyara said, pulling Halisstra and Feliane into a circle.

Wrapped in the arms of her fellow priestesses, Halisstra felt a sense of sisterhood that reassured her, at least for the moment.

“We will form a sanctuary together,” Uluyara said above the wind. “A place of safety in the midst of this obscenity.”

Feliane and Halisstra nodded, though Halisstra did not understand exactly what she meant.

Uluyara stepped back from their circle, removed her silver medallion from under her mail, and spoke a prayer to Eilistraee. The wind swallowed her words, but when she was done, she joined her hands, pointed them at the stone of the tor as through they were a knife, and parted them.

The stone answered her gesture. Her magic turned the rock malleable, and she shaped it as though it were clay in her hands. Moving with precision, she used the spell to raise two walls from the flatness of the plateau. They met at a right angle and shielded them from the wind. She stepped forward and shaped them more carefully with her touch, smoothing them as best she could with her palms.

“Now you,” Uluyara said to Feliane.

The elf smiled, nodded, and mirrored Uluyara’s casting. She raised a third wall, and a fourth, leaving a narrow archway in the middle of one to serve as the doorway.

“And you,” Feliane said to Halisstra.

Halisstra spoke the prayer that allowed her to shape stone to her will. When she finished, her hands felt charged, as though they were attached to the earth. She moved them gently, as if she was a potter, thinning the walls and drawing the excess up into a flat roof to form a crude, boxlike shelter.

She felt pleasure in working so closely with her fellow priestesses. They were creating. When priestesses of Lolth worked together, it was always to destroy, though Halisstra knew that sometimes—sometimes—destruction too brought pleasure.

When she finished her work, she and her fellow priestesses shared a smile. The wind whipped their hair into halos.

Inspired, Halisstra unsheathed the Crescent Blade and with its tip etched Eilistraee’s symbol into the still-malleable stone above the open doorway.

“A temple to the Lady in the heart of Lolth’s domain,” Uluyara said, her voice defiant above the howling wind. “Well done, Halisstra Melarn.”

Halisstra saw that the doubt that previously had clouded the expressions of her sisters was gone. Under their accepting gazes, the doubt in her own soul shrank until it was little more than a tiny seed in the center of her being, barely noticed.

At that exact instant, a knife stab of pain raced up Halisstra’s leg. Her vision blurred. She grimaced and would have fallen had she not caught herself on Eilistraee’s temple.

The spider poison.

Uluyara and Feliane crowded around her, concern in their expressions. Uluyara examined Halisstra’s wounds, found the blackened holes in her leg.

“Poison,” Uluyara concluded.

“Let me,” Feliane said and took Halisstra’s hands in her own.

Feliane sang to the Dancing Goddess above the howl of the wind, and her song purged the poison from Halisstra’s veins.

Halisstra felt as though something else might have been purged from her veins too. She thanked Feliane, who hugged her.

Afterward, the three priestesses of Eilistraee entered the temple they had raised. Uluyara quickly walked the interior, holding her holy symbol medallion and chanting the while.

When she was finished she looked at her two companions and said, “This is hallowed ground now, reclaimed from Lolth in the name of the Dark Maiden. At least for a time.”

Halisstra could not help but smile. The interior of the temple did feel different, cleaner, purer.

Within its rough walls, she felt sure of herself for the first time in days.

All three priestesses sank to the floor, spent, their backs to the wall, their legs extended.

Exhaustion showed in both Uluyara’s and Feliane’s expressions. But elation too. They had reached the Demonweb Pits and survived the attack of a spider swarm.

After a few moments’ respite, Uluyara healed them all of their minor cuts, scrapes, and bites.

Feliane conjured a meal of vegetable stew and fresh water into some small bowls she carried in her pack.

After the repast, Halisstra said to them, “We should take watch in shifts, just to be safe, while we wait. I doubt the spiders will dare the top of this spire in the wind, but we cannot be sure. When things grow calmer below, we can continue on. I’ll take first watch.”

Uluyara nodded, shifted against the wall, and closed her eyes. She vented a sigh and soon was in Reverie. Feliane followed her quickly.

Both were seasoned warriors, Halisstra realized, taking rest wherever and whenever they could.

Halisstra quietly positioned herself near the open door. She drew the Crescent Blade, laid it across her thighs, and settled in for her watch.

Outside, the wind railed against the temple for the effrontery it was. In its angry wails, Halisstra still heard it calling to Lolth’s Chosen, but she knew—or at least she thought that she knew—that it was no longer calling to her.

“I’m coming for you,” she softly promised. “Soon.”

Being little more than nests of legs, the chwidencha charged forward with alarming rapidity.

Pharaun willed himself into the air as they closed and his ring answered. In one hand, he still held the ball of guano; with the other, he pulled a bit of flakefungus from a cloak pocket and shouted the words to a spell. As he uttered the last word to the incantation, he crushed the flakefungus in his hand and cast the powder in the direction of one of the charging chwidenchas.

It uttered a squeal of agony as the magic engulfed it, flensed it of flesh, stripped it of its carapace, and left nothing more than a shapeless pile of gore.

The rest of the pack did not so much as slow.

Jeggred bounded forward in front of Danifae and met three onrushing chwidenchas with a charge of his own. He caught the first of them in mid-jump, plucking it from the air in his powerful fighting arms and tearing off its legs by the bunch while the creature squealed and slammed its remaining claws against the draegloth’s flesh, leaving bloody welts. Ichor sprayed, coating the draegloth, mixing with his own blood. In three heartbeats, the draegloth had disarticulated the creature, leaving only a round lump of hair and flesh.

Two other chwidenchas leaped atop Jeggred, one on his back and one on his side. Their weight knocked him to the ground and the three fell in a snarling tangle of legs and claws.

Jeggred still clutched a handful of the legs from the first chwidencha he had killed. Chwidencha claws rose and fell like miners’ picks, churning earth and flesh. Fanged mouths tried to penetrate the iron of the draegloth’s flesh. Jeggred roared and answered with his own claws. Pieces of chwidencha flew high into the air.

The rest of the pack continued forward and swarmed the priestesses. Danifae barely had time to pocket her holy symbol and free her morningstar before the chwidenchas were upon her. She careened backward and struck one with the spiked weapon, snapping some of its legs. She spun away from a claw swipe from another and slammed the head of the weapon into another chwidencha’s front, but a third leaped high and landed atop her. She tried to utter a spell, but the creature wrapped its legs around her as tightly as a cloak and tried to drive her to the ground. She turned a circle, its weight causing her to stumble, all the while offering a muffled chant. Finally she went down, and five chwidencha swarmed over her. Pharaun could barely see the priestess under the squirming mass of legs and claws. Claws pounded into her mail, her flesh.

To his surprise and to her credit, Danifae did not stop fighting. She pulled a dagger from a belt sheath and fought from the ground, kicking, stabbing, screaming, driving the dagger repeatedly into the flesh of chwidenchas that coated her. Pharaun figured her for dead and put her out of his mind.

Below and to Pharaun’s right, Quenthel’s whip cracked. All five serpents extended to twice their ordinary length and clamped their fanged mouths onto the legs of a chwidencha. Almost instantly, the creature’s legs went rigid, and it fell over dead from the whip’s venom.

Unperturbed, its fellows trampled over it. Chwidenchas closed on Quenthel from all sides.

Quenthel uttered a hasty prayer to Lolth and instantly grew to half again her size. A violet glow suffused her flesh, the power of Lolth made manifest. Using her magical buckler as a weapon, and driven by her spell-enhanced strength, she smashed its steel face into the front of a chwidencha, snapping a mass of legs like twigs. Three claws from a chwidencha to her right slammed into her in rapid succession, driving her backward but seemingly doing no real harm.

Her whip struck again, driving back one of the creatures. She caught another chwidencha in her buckler hand, gripping two thick legs in her fist, and threw the creature across the battlefield.

Before Pharaun could shout a warning, another two chwidenchas leaped onto Quenthel from behind. She bore the weight better than Danifae, tried to throw them over her back, but six others rushed forward. Claws thumped against her armor and tore gashes in her exposed flesh. Her serpents lashed out but missed. She fell, buried under a pile of seething, churning legs and claws.

Pharaun heard Danifae shout a warning, he turned in mid-air—And saw only a curtain of legs, claws, coarse hair, and an open, fang-filled mouth before the creature was upon him. A chwidencha had leaped high enough into the air to reach him. It hit him full force in the chest and wrapped its legs around him. The impact drove him backward and down, despite the power of his ring of flying. He hit the earth in a heap, entwined with the creature, his breath gone. The chwidencha wrapped him up with some of its innumerable legs, while it bit with its dripping fangs and flailed with its free claws like a mad thing. Blows slashed against Pharaun’s sides, his arms, his face, into the earth around him.

Only Pharaun’s enchanted piwafwi prevented the claws from disemboweling him, but he still felt blood flowing down his torso, and the impacts to his head nearly knocked him senseless.

He tried to fend off the blows with his hands and feet and roll out from under the chwidencha, but it was too heavy and too determined to hang on. Unable to fly, he mentally summoned his rapier from his ring, remembering too late that he had lost the ring to Belshazu. The chwidencha’s fangs ground against his magically armored cloak again and again, trying but failing to penetrate the garment and open his gut.

Pharaun struggled to regather his senses and his breath.

The chwidencha raised one of its claws high and drove it toward Pharaun’s face. He tried to squirm aside, failed, and the claw hit him with enough force to split rock. His protective enchantments prevented his face and skull from splitting open but the impact still exploded his nose and drove his head hard against the rocky ground. For a horrifying moment, consciousness started to slip from him. He grabbed at it and reeled it in with the entire force of his will.

Dazed and increasingly angry, he realized that he still clutched in his right hand the ball of bat guano.

“Here’s a treat,” he mumbled through a blood-filled mouth.

He mouthed the words to a spell that would turn the chwidencha and the entire area into cinders. He swallowed down the blood leaking into his mouth from his ruined nose and spoke the words clearly. He would have to hope that the inherent drow resistance to magic would shield him and his companions; that, or he would have to hope they could take more punishment than the chwidencha.

Just as he was about to utter the final syllables of the spell, the creature’s fangs penetrated his piwafwi and sank into the skin of his chest. A bolt of pain caused his body to spasm but Pharaun did not lose the cadence of his spell. He had trained in Sorcere, cast spells as an apprentice while his Masters had held candle flames to his bare flesh. A bite from one of Lolth’s failures could not break his iron concentration.

He finished the spell as the chwidencha reared back to take another bite of his flesh. Gritting his teeth, Pharaun closed his fist around the tiny ball of guano and shoved it into the chwidencha’s open maw.

Reflexively, it clamped down on his hand.

Pharaun closed his eyes just as his universe exploded in orange light and searing heat. He felt some of his hair melt, felt the flesh of his arm, chest, and face char. He could not contain a scream.

The force of the blast blew apart the chwidencha atop him, reducing it instantly to ash.

Hisses, growls, and screams sounded all around him, audible above the explosion. He smelled the stink of burning flesh. His own, no doubt.

It was over in one agonizing heartbeat.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring up into the dark sky above. For a moment, he had the absurd thought that his spell had charred the clouds, but then he realized that the storm was gathering above them.

Blinking, dazed, he shook the charred chwidencha pieces from his body—they were little more than chunks of seared flesh—and slowly sat up. He wiped the blackened blood from his face and nose and blinked until his blurry vision cleared. His hand was a blackened, seared piece of meat.

It did not yet pain him, but it soon would.

He looked around and saw that the fireball had wrought a perfect sphere of devastation. A circular swath of blackened and partially melted rock denoted its boundaries. He had not burned the sky, but he had nicely burned the earth. He took a professional’s pride in the damage it had done.

Within the circle, Jeggred sat on his four hands and knees, chest heaving, eyes blinking. A seared chwidencha corpse lay in pieces under his claws, and chwidencha legs dangled from his mouth. Bleeding but only mildly burned, the draegloth eyed Pharaun coldly as he spat the legs to the ground and climbed to his feet.

“You’ll need to do better than fire, mage,” the draegloth said, his voice raspy.

To Pharaun’s surprise, Danifae and Quenthel both had survived too. They were burned and smoking, and minor cuts and bruises covered them both, but they lived. Quenthel stood on the far side of the blast radius, returned to normal size. Her serpents, covered in ash, hissed at Pharaun.

He frowned, wishing he had at least put them down.

Danifae stood on the other side of the blast, leaning on her morningstar for support. She must have regained her feet and her weapon during the combat.

A score or so chwidencha carcasses, charred, smoking, and stinking, lay scattered about the battlefield.

“What in the Abyss did you do?” Danifae demanded, then she coughed. Claw scratches crisscrossed the fireball-pinked flesh of her face.

Saved your hide, unfortunately, Pharaun thought but did not say.

Instead, he replied, “A spell went awry, Mistress Danifae.”

“Awry?” Quenthel asked. Much of her hair was singed, but she otherwise looked to have avoided most of the effect of the fireball. “Indeed.” She coughed. “If your spell went awry, mage, then you merit no credit for ending the combat.”

Pharaun smirked through his broken nose and bowed as best as his wounded body allowed.

The bite wound in his stomach throbbed, and his hand was in agony.

Danifae glared at him and added, “Next time, male, you are to provide a warning before another of your spells... goes awry.”

Pharaun snorted with disdainful laughter and instantly regretted it. Blood shot from his nose, and pain wracked his face.

At that, Jeggred offered a snort of his own.

Through his pain, Pharaun said to Danifae, “And you might have warned me a bit earlier than—”

A scrabbling from outside the circle drew Pharaun’s eye, and he trailed off.

All of them followed his gaze.

The Teeming continued around them but that was not what concerned him.

Nearly a score of chwidenchas rose smoking from the rocks outside the blast radius. All had twisted legs and melted flesh and hair, but they too had survived the blast. They hissed, raised their front claws, and started tentatively forward.

“Perhaps the combat isn’t ended, after all,” Pharaun observed and took some satisfaction in the acid look Quenthel shot him.

Quenthel cracked her whip, and the serpents offered a hiss at the chwidenchas. Danifae brandished her morningstar and stepped near Jeggred. The draegloth threw back his head and uttered a roar that shook stones.

Pharaun let his companions dangle for a moment before he said, “But then again, perhaps it is over.” He’d had his fill of chwidenchas for the day. “Draw near,” he said to them, and looked directly at Danifae. “You are hereby warned.”

His companions shared a look and hurriedly backed near him as the chwidenchas slowly scuttled forward. Pharaun took a pinch of phosphorous powder from the inventory he kept organized in his piwafwi’s pockets, cast it in the air, and spoke the words to a spell. When he finished, a semi-opaque curtain of green fire whooshed into being, a ring of flames twenty paces tall that burned between them and the chwidenchas. It danced merrily, casting them all in a sickly green light.

“That should keep them a while,” he said.

His companions offered no thanks, but he took some satisfaction when even the whip-serpents sagged with relief.

With nothing else to be done for the moment, Pharaun said, “Pardon me, all,” before he pushed one nostril closed with a finger, blew out a gob of blood and snot, then did the same for the other side.

He was a bit embarrassed by it all—it was something Jeggred might do—but he had little choice.

He could hardly breathe. Pharaun shook his throbbing head to help clear it and drew a handkerchief from an inner pocket and wiped off his face as best he could. The white silk came back black with ash and red with blood.

Through the ring of flames, Pharaun saw the chwidencha circling, watching them through the breaks in the fire. Beyond the chwidencha, he still caught glimpses of the violence of the Teeming.

“How long, mage?” Quenthel asked.

“Not long enough, unfortunately,” he answered. “Perhaps a quarter hour. How long does this Teeming last?”

Quenthel belted her whip and shook her head. Pharaun wasn’t sure if that meant she didn’t know or simply didn’t want to answer.

“It lasts as long as Lolth wills it,” Danifae offered, belting her own weapon. She ran her fingers over the scratches on her face, checking their depth.

“Hardly helpful, Mistress Danifae,” Pharaun said. “And how convenient for us that her will caused it to occur just after we arrived here.”

“Tread carefully, mage,” Quenthel warned.

“Indeed,” Danifae said, eyeing him.

Pharaun was tempted to ask then and there why the chwidencha had answered neither Quenthel’s nor Danifae’s commands, but one look at Quenthel’s whip made him think better of it.

Instead, he said, “I think it ill-advised to travel overland while this continues. Chwidencha may prove the least of our concerns. It appears the Spider Queen has decided to make the Teeming part of her test.”

The priestesses said nothing but looked out through the curtain of green fire, their expressions distant and unreadable. Perhaps they too were wondering why the chwidencha had not responded to their power.

Finally, Danifae said, “We should take shelter for a time, let the Teeming run its course. Then we can travel overland again.”

Jeggred eyed the chwidencha with hungry eyes. “The wizard said the wall of fire will last only a quarter hour. What shelter will we find in so short a time?”

“The caves,” Pharaun said.

All of them looked first to Pharaun, then at the ground, to the holes that surrounded them.

“Why not atop one of the tors?” Danifae asked, pointing at one of the innumerable spires of black stone that dotted the plane. “Few spiders seem able or willing to scale their heights.”

“Look to the sky, Mistress Danifae,” Pharaun answered. Already the sun was invisible behind a wall of black storm clouds. “I think it would be safer and more comfortable, underground.”

Besides, Pharaun had already encountered one horror atop a spire. He had no desire to encounter another.

“The caves,” Quenthel said, nodding.

“Yes, Mistress,” hissed one of the female heads of her whip. “The caves will be safer.”

“Silence, Zinda,” Quenthel gently admonished her whip.

“Safer?” Jeggred said and sneered. “Safety is the concern of cowards, timid priestesses, and weak mages.” He eyed Quenthel and Pharaun meaningfully in turn.

Pharaun smiled at the draegloth, turned his gaze to Quenthel, and said, “I would remind your nephew that it was Mistress Danifae who suggested that we seek shelter to avoid the danger of the Teeming. Does that mean you think her timid, Jeggred?”

Pharaun took a moment to enjoy the look of consternation on Jeggred’s face before he said, “Perhaps not, then. But in any event, it appears you would prefer to linger on the surface until we return. I think it an excellent idea. Thank you, Jeggred. Your bravery will be remembered in song.”

He offered the draegloth an insincere bow, and Jeggred snarled and bared his fangs.

Pharaun ignored the oaf-showing a dolt to be a dolt brought him only small satisfaction—and eyed the open mouth of the chwidenchas’ hole.

To Quenthel, he said, “I can seal the cave opening behind us with a spell, and we can wait for as long as need be. When the storm passes and the violence ends, I can get us back through, and we can travel then.”

Quenthel nodded, and said, “An excellent idea, Master Mizzrym.”

Jeggred snorted with contempt, and Quenthel fixed him with a stare that could have frozen a fire elemental. The serpent heads of her whip rose up and offered the draegloth a stare of their own.

“Nephew?” she said and made the word sound like an insult. “You wish to say something more, perhaps?”

Jeggred opened his mouth, but Danifae’s hand on his arm stopped him from saying whatever words he had thought to offer.

Instead, Danifae smiled her disarming smile and looked to Pharaun.

“Master Mizzrym has offered sage counsel,” she said, as though to Jeggred but really to Quenthel. “And Mistress Quenthel is wise to heed it.” She let that sit a moment before she cocked her pretty head and frowned. “Though, I’ve never before seen a male demonstrate such persuasion over a priestess of Lolth.”

Pharaun almost laughed aloud at the transparency of the play. Danifae hoped to weaken the relationship between Pharaun and Quenthel by intimating that the high priestess relied to an unseemly degree upon Pharaun.

“Hardly persuasion,” he replied. “But perhaps if she were not the only priestess in this little band to have demonstrated wisdom, she would not have to rely on the paltry suggestions of a mere male.”

Jeggred glared at him, fangs bare. Pharaun stared back at the oaf.

Danifae showed no sign that she had heard Pharaun. She had eyes only for Quenthel.

The Baenre priestess met Danifae’s stare with one of her own, gave a tight smile, and said, “Some males serve a purpose, battle-captive.” She too let that sit a moment before adding, “Of course, one must be careful in choosing which males best suit the purpose at hand.” Then she let her gaze settle contemptuously on Jeggred. “A priestess with a poor eye for choosing her male servants is often a dead priestess. Perhaps your draegloth has some sage counsel of his own to offer on the matter?”

“Counsel?” Jeggred snarled. “Here’s my counsel, you—”

“Jeggred,” Danifae interrupted and patted one of the draegloth’s fighting arms. “Be silent.”

The draegloth said no more.

“Your dog is well-trained,” Pharaun said, and Jeggred started to lunge at him.

Danifae caught his mane, and he halted in mid-stride. Pharaun held his ground and smiled.

Again, Danifae did not acknowledge Pharaun, instead saying to Quenthel, “No, Jeggred has nothing to say at the moment. He is a male and offers his counsel only when solicited by me.”

Pharaun could see the anger brewing behind Quenthel’s eyes. She walked up to Danifae—not even Jeggred dared get in her way, though he did stay beside the battle-captive—and stared down at the smaller female.

“My nephew has never been known for his intellect,” she said.

Danifae smiled and stroked the draegloth’s arm. “No, Mistress Quenthel,” she replied. “Just his loyalty.”

Quenthel’s expression hardened. She gave Danifae one last glare before turning to Pharaun and saying, “And I rely on only Lolth, male.”

When he heard those words, Pharaun knew that Danifae had accomplished exactly what she had hoped.

“Of course, Mistress,” he said, and nothing more, for there was nothing more to say. The damage was already done.

Behind Quenthel, Danifae offered him a knowing smile through the cuts on her face. Jeggred offered him a snarl of undisguised hate.

He ignored them both and said to Quenthel, “The cave, Mistress?”

She nodded and replied, “The cave. But first...”

The high priestess withdrew from an inner pocket of her piwafwi the wand of healing that she had stolen from Halisstra Melarn back in Ched Nasad. She touched it to herself and whispered the command word. The cuts on her face closed, the burns diminished, and her breathing grew easier. Afterward, she walked over, and without asking permission, touched it to Pharaun and repeated the process. Much to his relief, his nose healed, the charred mess of his hand regenerated, and the innumerable cuts and scratches on his torso closed.

“Thank you, Mistress,” he said with a bow.

Quenthel did not acknowledge his gratitude. She put the wand back in her cloak, turned to Danifae, and said, “No doubt, you will tend to yourself and your loyal draegloth.”

Pharaun offered Danifae a sneer. Likely, Danifae could tend to no one. Though Lolth had reawakened and both priestesses had spells at their command, it was rare for a priestess of Lolth to store many healing spells in her mind. Priestesses of Lolth destroyed, they did not heal.

Quenthel could heal herself and Pharaun fully only because she had Halisstra’s wand.

To his surprise, Danifae smiled at Quenthel and said, “Lolth will tend to us. As always.”

“Quite so,” Quenthel replied with a cunning look.

Pharaun straightened his robes. At his feet, the cave mouth yawned. It sank almost vertically into the rock. Webs lined its walls, and stink leaked from it.

“After you, Mistress Danifae,” he said and gestured down at the cave, all the while thinking, After all, there might be something dangerous down there.

Danifae twisted her beautiful face into a sneer and said, “Come, Jeggred, Master Mizzrym remains timid.”

The draegloth took her curvaceous body in his inner, smaller arms and lifted her from her feet.

“How quaint,” Pharaun observed.

The draegloth stared holes into the mage.

One of Danifae’s legs escaped her cloak. She wore tight-fitting breeches, and the curve of her thigh and hip drew Pharaun’s eye, despite himself. She caught him eyeing her and did not cover her leg.

“Descend,” she said to Jeggred, all the while smiling seductively at Pharaun.

Jeggred touched his House Baenre brooch and levitated down into the cave mouth.

For Quenthel’s benefit, Pharaun signed after Danifae, Whore.

He looked up to find Quenthel staring at him, her expression unreadable. She drew her whip and stepped to the cave opening.

“Seal it behind us, mage,” she said.

She touched her own brooch and followed Danifae and her nephew down, whip bare and ready in the event of an ambush.

Pharaun stood a moment at the edge, watching the top of Quenthel’s head sink into the darkness. Quenthel had said to Danifae that some males served a purpose—he needed to make certain that she continued to think him one such.

For a moment, for a single tempting heartbeat, he considered abandoning her, abandoning the quest, but quickly dismissed the idea as ill-advised. Lolth was awake, and her priestesses again wielded the power of their goddess; things were returning to normal. Besides, Pharaun would be answerable to Gromph and House Baenre upon his return to Menzoberranzan for any direct or indirect harm he caused Quenthel.

With nothing else for it, he touched his House Mizzrym brooch and stepped out over the cave mouth. For a moment, he hovered there, listening to the darkness below, wondering whether Danifae and Jeggred would actually dare an ambush. He heard nothing and so descended until he floated just below the cave mouth. There, he withdrew from his pocket a round piece of polished granite, a stone he had purchased from a curio vendor in Menzoberranzan’s bazaar, long ago. He cradled it against his palm with his thumb, flattened his hands palms downward, and recited a series of arcane words.

When he finished the incantation, the magic formed a wall of stone over the cave mouth. Its borders melded with and into the surrounding rock, blocking the light from Lolth’s sun. The brewing storm and the seething Teeming disappeared behind the wall. The cave fell into welcome darkness, to which his eyes quickly adjusted.

He put the granite back in its place and descended the rest of the way down the shaft. It wove a bit here and there, but moved ever downward. He heard no sounds coming from below and assumed that nothing dangerous lurked there—other than his companions. To be prudent, he pulled another chip of flakefungus from his pocket and readied himself quickly to cast the flesh-flensing spell. He thought of an ancient drow adage: Keep allies within reach of your sword, but keep enemies within reach of your knife. He saw the wisdom of it. Pharaun never felt more uncomfortable than when Jeggred and Danifae were out of his sight.

It was clear to him that Danifae was trying to undermine Quenthel’s claim that she was the Yor’thae. Perhaps she thought to take that title for herself? As absurd as it sounded, Pharaun thought it to be true.

For his part, he was beginning to think that neither priestess was or would be Lolth’s Chosen.