Resurrection

She found it easier to measure time not with Narbondel but with corpses. It had been thirty-

seven corpses since Lolth had selected her-Danifae could not so much as think her name-as

Yor'thae.

Though Danifae had never been to Menzoberranzan before Lolth had selected her Yor'thae,

she had come to know it well since. And to hate it.

To her right, far across Menzoberranzan's cavern Danifae eyed the mammoth steps of the great stairway that led up to Tier Breche. She could see it at such a distance only because of its enormous size and the violet faerie fires that illumined its steps. On the high plateau beyond the stairs-invisible to her at that distance-stood Lolth's grandest temple, Arach-Tinilith, the heart of the Spider Queen's faith. Danifae had never set foot within it and never would.

Within Arach-Tinilith presided the bitch, Lolth's Yor'thae.

Anger still boiled in Danifae, hate without end for the Yor'thae. She vented it on the males who came to her.

Danifae had created her own temple to Lolth, her own Arach-Tinilith: a tiny, stinking garret deep in the Braeryn. There, she spun her web and fed on her prey in Lolth's name.

She leaned out of the window-her holy symbol still dangled from her neck, the amber smudged with grease and soot-and looked down to the street below. Addicts haunted the alleys like sunken-eyed, dazed ghosts. Fellow whores loitered in the doorways below her, soliciting anyone and anything that passed them by.

Groups of filthy orcs and bugbears leered at the fallen drow females. Danifae could see that the whores had sold their dignity along with their flesh. Not her. She served the Spider Queen still and ever would, despite the Yor'thae.

A thick sludge of sewage and trash coated the street. "The Stenchstreets," they were called,

and rightly. Danifae could not but think of the whole of the Braeryn as an open sewer that she could not escape.

She would not let Danifae escape.

The odor of freshly emptied chamber pots carried up to the window and made Danifae wrinkle her nose. The expression felt awkward around the stiff scars that marred the left side of her face. Thinking of her disfigurement brought another flash of anger. She willed hate through the air and across the cavern to Tier Breche.

She had long ago given up trying to hide her scars. They were part of her, as much as her faith, as much as her hate.

After Lolth had made her choice, the Spider Queen's resurrection had been completed and the

Yor'thae had come to Menzoberranzan in triumph. She had promised to usher in a new age for the Spider Queen and her worshipers.

But not for all of her worshipers.

The Yor'thae had punished Danifae for her presumption, forcing her to live a houseless life,

dispossessing her of almost all of her property, marring her features to make her ugly, denying her the dignity of an execution.

Even Lolth herself appeared to have turned her back on Danifae.

The goddess no longer granted the former battle-captive spells and instead merely haunted her dreams. When she slept, Danifae saw visions of eight spiders, eight sets of fangs, legs, eyes, and poison.

Despite it all, Danifae refused to accept the label of apostate. She worshiped Lolth still,

though she was a congregation of one.

Poor and disfigured, she sold her body to males to earn enough coin to eat. Though the

Yor'thae had scarred her face, men still lusted for her body and were willing to pay for its use.

Danifae abhorred their touch, despised making them feel as though she were subjugated to them,

but nevertheless did what she had to to survive-like any good spider.

The Yor'thae had laughed when she'd cast Danifae into squalor, thinking that a life of penury would make Danifae weak. But Danifae was a survivor, like all spiders, and her trials were but another test in a long line of tests. She had and would survive it. She would grow stronger. She could not be broken, not ever.

If Danifae had learned but one tenet from Lolth's worship, from her life as a slave to Halisstra

Melarn, it was that existence was a test. Always. The strong preyed on the weak and the weak suffered and died. There was nothing more to know.

And though Danifae was not the Yor'thae, she refused to be weak.

She left off the window, turned, and looked upon her sparsely furnished garret. She preferred to think of it as her web, an unassuming web, like that of the widow, within which lurked a predator.

A mushroom fiber pallet strewn with soiled blankets sat against the near wall. Every day, she carried the sheets to the shores of the Darklake to launder them-the routine had long ago taken on the significance of a religious ritual-but the smell of sweat and sex always lingered. She slept on the floor, refusing to take rest in the same bed that she shared with a male. A clay oil lamp sat on a stool near her bed, its tiny flame guttering in the stagnant air. In the corner stood a stone chair,

upon which she hung the few articles of clothing she owned. A chamber pot and washbasin sat on opposite walls.

Danifae owned nothing of significant value except her faith, her holy symbol, and the blackroot distillate that she kept in a vial at her sash. She refilled the vial every fourth tenday by giving her body to an old, half-drow apothecary who worked out of the bazaar. She had made herself immune to the poison long ago through slow exposure.

She had sunk far, she knew, much farther even than when she had been a battle-captive. But she refused to surrender her faith. Most thought her nothing more than an insane whore or a cast-

off hag afflicted with grand delusions. But she was neither. She was a spider, and she was being tested, nothing more and nothing less.

She had failed Lolth back in the Demonweb Pits-that was why she had not been chosen to be the Yor'thae-but she would atone for that failure and someday again find favor in the Spider

Queen's eight eyes.

In the meantime, Danifae murdered in Lolth's name. Every eighth client that came to her garret fell prey to her. The Spider Queen might not have been answering Danifae's prayers, but

Danifae offered sacrifices nevertheless.

She disposed of the corpses by selling them to an elderly drow fungus farmer. Danifae's prey ended up fertilizer in the mushroom fields of the Donigarten.

The weak fed the strong, she thought, and smiled through her scars.

A knock on her door turned her around.

" 'Fae," said a slurred voice from behind the door. "Open up. I want to taste your flesh."

Danifae knew the voice. Heegan, the second son of a failed merchant, who always stank of pickled mushrooms and mindwine.

"Hold a moment," Danifae said, and the male did as he was told.

Heegan was number eight.

Danifae pulled the vial of blackroot distillate from her pouch, daubed her finger, and coated her lips. Do

There in the hallway stood Heegan, his white hair mussed, his filthy shirt partially unbuttoned. Danifae stood two hands taller than the male. She looked at his watery, dull red eyes and thought, You are one of the weak.

"Well met, 'Fae," he said, leering at her breasts, covered only in her threadbare shift. "Aren't we a pretty pair?"

He dangled a pouch of coins under her nose.

Danifae snatched the coins and slapped him across the face. He smiled through his bleeding lip, seized her in his arms, and pressed his lips to her. His breath was foul, his excited grunts fouler. She abided, knowing that with each kiss he became more ensnared in her web.

She allowed him to steer her toward the bed. He tried to lay her down but she used her superior strength to turn him around and force him down instead. He gri

muttering some ridiculous endearment.