Resurrection

As one, the drow-spider creatures responded, "But you could be. The eighth awaits the

Yor'thae."

"No!" she answered.

They hissed and bared their teeth, revealing a spider's fangs.

The eight bodies of Lolth clicked as one, and the widows fell silent.

They cocked their beautiful heads, listening to their goddess.

Halisstra brandished the Crescent Blade, drew in a deep breath, and took another step into the temple.

The doors swung closed behind her with a boom. She stopped for a moment, uncertain,

trapped, alone. She looked down the aisle at Lolth and somehow found a reserve of courage.

"I will face you for what you have done to me," she said.

The widows rustled. The yochlols waved their ropy arms.

You have done it to yourself, Lolth answered in Halisstra's mind.

The goddess's voice-voices, for Halisstra heard seven distinct tones in the words-nearly drove

Halisstra to her knees.

Holding the Crescent Blade in both sweating hands, her knuckles white, Halisstra took another step, then another. The blade shimmered in her grasp, its crimson fire a counterpoint to the temple's violet light. Halisstra might have no longer served the Dark Maiden, but Eilistraee's sword still wanted to do the work for which it was designed.

The strange drow-spiders eyed her as she walked between them but made no move to stop her.

They shifted uneasily with each step that she took nearer to Lolth's forms.

Halisstra was shaking, her legs felt leaden, but she kept moving.

Seven sets of mandibles churned as Halisstra got closer. The eighth body of Lolth stood still,

waiting. Halisstra stepped to the base of the dais, before the bodies of Lolth, and looked into the emotionless eye-cluster of the eighth spider.

She saw herself reflected in those black orbs and did not care for how she appeared. Her heart pounded in her breast, so hard it surely must burst.

Sweating, gritting her teeth, she lifted the Crescent Blade high.

Lolth's voices, soft, reasonable, and persuasive, sounded in Halisstra's mind.

Why have you come, daughter? Lolth asked.

I'm not your daughter, Halisstra answered. And I've come to kill you.

She tightened her grip on the Crescent Blade. Its light shone in Lolth's eight eyes, reminding

Halisstra of the satellites in the sky of the Demonweb Pits that had watched her from on high.

The yochlol to Lolth's sides slithered toward Halisstra, but Lolth's forms stopped them with a wave of their pedipalps.

You could not even if you willed it, Lolth said. But I see your heart, daughter, and I know that you do not will it.

Halisstra hesitated, the Crimson Blade poised to strike.

It is not me that you wish to kill, child, said Lolth. I am what I am and you have always known that. I kill, I feed, and in that killing and feeding I am made stronger. Why does your own nature trouble you so? My daughter's worship ill-suited you. Why do you fear to admit what you want?

The Crescent Blade shook in Halisstra's hand. Tears welled in her eyes. She realized it then.

It was not Lolth that she wanted to kill. She wanted to kill the uncertainty, the dichotomy in her soul that had spawned her weakness. She knew it lingered there still, a guilty, fearful hole.

She had raised a temple to Eilistraee in the Demonweb Pits, had slain countless spiders holy to

Lolth, had wielded the Dark Maiden's own blade. Her final rejection of Eilistraee was inadequate penance.

She loved Lolth, longed for the Spider Queen, or at least the power that Lolth brought. That was what she wanted to kill-the longing-but she could not, not without killing herself and who she was.

Embrace what you are, child, Lolth said in a chorus of seven voices.

But it was eight sets of mandibles that opened wide.

Chapter Eighteen

Billions of eye clusters burned holes into Inthracis's back. He felt their gazes through his robes like a thousandweight. The clicking of countless arachnid mandibles rang in his ears.

He could sense the nervousness in the regiment. The fiends shifted uneasily, stealing looks over their shoulders. Souls or no souls, they had not expected this.

Stand your ground, he projected to the nycaloth leaders.

He kept his back to the Infinite Web and Lolth's mobile city. Inthracis did not want to look again upon the unending abyss, the chaotic strands of the web that never ended, the grotesque undulation and metallic groans of Lolth's metropolis.

And the eyes.

Millions upon millions of spiders and other arachnids-including thousands of abyssal widows and hundreds of yochlols-thronged the far edge of the plains, looking toward the mountains,

toward the Pass of the Soulreaver, toward Inthracis and the regiment. Inthracis had never before seen a horde of such size, not even during the Blood Wars. It seemed that every arachnid in the

Demonweb Pits had gathered there, in a line before their goddess's city.

Several tense moments had passed before Inthracis felt certain that the throng would not attack. Apparently, they had gathered not to fight but to bear witness.

Still, the realization caused Inthracis concern. It meant that Lolth had pla

Perhaps Inthracis's attack would facilitate the creation or emergence of the Yor'thae. Perhaps he would kill all three priestesses and Lolth herself would die. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

He considered reneging on his promise to Vhaeraun and returning to the Blood Rift, but he knew that the Masked God's vengeance would be swift. Perhaps Vhaeraun was watching him even then.

Inthracis resigned himself to play his part. If Lolth was going to allow him to attack the priestesses, then he would attack the priestesses. If she was not going to allow it, then he would not.

He showed none of his doubt to the regiment, of course. To them, he projected, If they were going to attack, it would already have come. Remain steady. It will not be long.

He patted Carnage and Slaughter, and they growled softly in response. They too seemed restless. He looked around and wondered how in all the planes he had allowed himself to become involved in the workings of the gods.

The Plains of Soulfire spread out around him, a cracked, broken plateau of rock that bridged the half-league between the mountains and the Infinite Web. Open tears in the rock spat sprays of arcane fire and blasts of acid into the sky. A thin haze of green gas cloaked the terrain, not enough to be opaque but enough to create wrinkles in Inthracis's perception.

Before him, the plains ended at the mountains. Behind him, the plains just. . stopped, as though wiped clean. And where they stopped, an infinite abyss yawned, a black, empty hole in reality that never ended. Spa

Inthracis did not turn, but he pictured the web in his mind: strands of silk, most of them fifty paces in diameter or more, stretched across the void forever.

Lolth's city sat amidst the strands, an architecturally chaotic metropolis that somehow appeared like an enormous spider, on equally enormous legs, crawling along an even more enormous web. Its glacial, groaning movement across the web vibrated even the hugest of the strands.

The city was a mammoth cluster of metal and webbing, with one web-cloaked structure piled on another, and no order, reason, or uniformity to the layout. Only the position of Lolth's pyramidal tabernacle made sense: it capped the city, glowing like a beacon with violet light.