Dissolution

SIXTEEN

Laughter echoed through the candlelit corridors of Arach-Tinilith. Quenthel frowned. She'd been expecting something to happen, eagerly anticipating it, in fact. What she wasn't expecting was an explosion of mirth, and she couldn't guess what it meant. She strode forward, and her patrol followed behind. They seemed edgy, but not quite as reluctant as they had the night before. The fate of Drisinil, Molvayas, and the rest of the plotters had convinced the survivors that Quenthel still enjoyed the favor of Lolth, at least to the same dubious extent as the rest of the stricken clergy. The laughter rang on and on until at last the searchers found the source. Hunched over, her shoulders shaking, a novice knelt before one of the smaller altars of the goddess. Steady despite the paroxysms of glee, her index finger painted lines of graceful calligraphy on the floor. Quenthel couldn't make out what the girl was using for pigment until she lifted her hand to her face like an artist dipping a brush in a paint pot. She'd gouged her eyes out, another seeming handicap that didn't impair her writing. The mistress stepped close enough to inspect the lines of blood. For all her erudition, she couldn't read the characters, hut she could feel the power in them. They pulled at her and repelled her at the same time, as if they might yank her spirit, or a piece of it, out of her body. She wrenched her eyes away from the symbols and swung her whip. The vipers cracked into the eyeless female's back, their venomous fangs tore into her, and she collapsed, dead or merely insensible. Quenthel didn't particularly care which. «What was she writing, Mistress?» Jyslin asked. «I don't know,» Quenthel admitted, smearing the glyphs with her toe, «something in one of the secret tongues of the Abyss. Scribing it may have been a way of casting a spell, so I made sure she wouldn't finish.» «What was wrong with her?» Minolin asked. Quenthel was still surprised that the Fey-Branche had not, as expected, turned out to be one of the traitors. «I don't know that, either,» said the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith. She actually did have an idea, but wasn't sure of it yet. «Let's move on.» Fifteen minutes later, a ru

Rilrae's face was blank and seemingly devoid of comprehension. Tears flowed down her checks. She smelled of mucus, and the breath snuffled in her nose. She didn't answer Quenthel's question, just made a feeble, ineffectual effort to turn her face away. The mistress sighed and let her go. She'd seen cases like Rilrae before, generally in some dungeon or torture chamber. The junior priestess had experienced something sufficiently unpleasant to drive her deep inside her own mind. Had Quenthel still possessed her Lolth-granted powers, or been carrying the proper equipment, she might have been able to shake Rilrae out of her delirium, but as matters stood, the useless creature wouldn't be providing any information. A

Quenthel reflected that a pattern was becoming clear. Some power struck a female and more or less drove her mad. She then separated herself from her companions, either making an excuse or just ru

«Exalted Mother,» Jyslin said, «what's happening? Which demon invaded the temple tonight? The assassin? Did it poison our sisters to make them go insane?» «No,» the Baenre said, «not in the way you mean.» «Then—» «Go!» Quenthel raged. «Minolin, I told you to take them out of here.» «Yes, Mistress!» The Fey-Branche hastily formed them up and led them away. The corridor seemed very quiet once they'd disappeared. «Mistress,» said Hsiv, «was it wise to send them away?» «You question my judgment?» Quenthel asked. The viper flinched. «No!» «You sought to protect me, so I'll let it go. This time. I dismissed the girls because they can't help me, and I'd like to have some underlings left when this nonsense is over.» «They might have guarded you from another would-be mortal killer.» «We can hope that if Minolin gets everyone out, there won't be any more. Besides, why in the name of the Demonweb did I create you?» Greenish candlelight rippling on black scales, Yngoth reared and twisted around to look Quenthel in the face. «Mistress,» the viper hissed, «we are rebuked. We'll keep watch. What will you do?» «Wait, and prepare myself.» She found a classroom possessed of a reasonably comfortable instructor's chair, the high limestone back carved into the stylized shape of a stubby-legged spider. She sat down, laid the whip at her feet, removed a thin shaft of polished white bone from her pouch, and set it in her lap, holding it at either end.

Closing her eyes, she commenced a breathing exercise. Within a heartbeat or two, she slipped into a meditative trance. She thought she would need the utmost clarity to contend with the night's demon, because Jyslin had guessed wrong. The intruder didn't encapsulate the art of the assassin, nor the spirit of the drow race, for that matter. It embodied the concept of evil. The traitor elves of the World Above professed to hate evil. In reality, Quenthel thought, they feared what they didn't understand. Thanks to the tutelage of Lolth, the drow did, and having understood it, they embraced it.

For evil, like chaos, was one of the fundamental forces of Creation, manifest in both the macrocosm of the wide world and the microcosm of the individual soul. As chaos gave rise to possibility and imagination, so evil engendered strength and will. It made sentient beings aspire to wealth and power. It enabled them to subjugate, kill, rob, and deceive. It allowed them to do whatever was required to better themselves with never a crippling flicker of remorse.

Thus, evil was responsible for the existence of civilization and for every great deed any hero had ever performed. Without it, the peoples of the world would live like animals. It was amazing that so many races, blinded by false religions and philosophies, had lost sight of this self-evident truth. In contrast, the dark elves had based a society on it, and that was one of the points of superiority that served to exalt them above all other races. Paradoxically, though, a touch of the pure black heart of this darkest of all powers could be deadly, just as the highest expression of comforting warmth was the fire that consumed. Even folk who spent their lives in the adoration of evil generally had no real comprehension of the endless burning sea of it raging below and beyond the material world, and that was just as well. Even a fleeting glimpse could convey secrets too huge and fearsome for the average mind. Its touch could a