Extinction

Ryld opened his eyes. He could tell by Halisstra's tone that he wasn't going to like whatever it was she was about to say. She sounded formal and firm, her tone reminiscent of the way a priestesses would address a male. He braced himself, waiting for the whiplike reprimand that must soon come. She must have spotted him earlier, spying on the sacred song and dance, and she was going to chastise him for it.

"I'm going back to the Underdark," she told him. "I'm going to find Quenthel Baenre and the others and rejoin their quest."

Startled?but not showing it, in case it was a test?he stared deep into her eyes. Her face, like his own, was perfectly neutral. No, not completely. Something shone in her eyes?something more than reflected starlight. An echo of the passion they'd shared.

"Why?" he asked.

Halisstra visibly relaxed.

"Uluyara has asked me to go back there. Eilistraee's priestesses need to know if Lolth truly is dead. The information is vital to their cause?and I'm the only one who can obtain it for them."

Ryld nodded. The warrior part of his mind acknowledged the wisdom of Uluyara's command. Halisstra would make an excellent spy. Moreover, she was merely a foot soldier in Eilistraee's order. If Quenthel killed her, she would barely be missed. The traitor priestesses' war against Lolth would continue with barely a ripple. Deep inside, however, he boiled with anger at Uluyara's willingness to sacrifice Halisstra.

"I'm not asking you to come with me," Halisstra said.

Realizing that he had let his anger show?and that Halisstra had misread it?Ryld said what was on his mind.

"One tiny slip, and Quenthel will kill you, as fast as a striking serpent."

"That's something I'm willing to risk."

"I'm not," he said. "That's why I'm going to come with you."

Halisstra touched his cheek.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Later still, when Ryld had indeed slipped into Reverie, Halisstra stared at him. He sat cross-legged, his eyes closed. His hands were crossed on the scabbarded blade of Splitter, but otherwise he looked like a vanquished warrior, his armor strewn about him and his weapons cast aside.

Sighing, Halisstra leaned back against a wall of the ruin and settled into Reverie herself. Her muscles were already loose and relaxed, and so it took but a moment for the familiar wash of memories to claim her.

She drifted with them, observing with detachment as her mind skipped from one to the next, like a stone skipping on water. Memories of the first day of her service in the temple of House Melarn and her instructors caning her palms until they bled after she mispronounced the words of the daily prayer. And of the satisfaction Halisstra had felt the next day, when she was called to lead the prayer?and did so with a precision that earned a brief smile from the priestess who had beaten her. Memories, too, of the footraces she and her sister Jawil had run, as children, along the roads of Ched Nasad?and the terrifying plunge after Jawil had pushed her over the edge in retaliation when Halisstra at last won a race. Only the fact that Halisstra had «borrowed» an aunt's House insignia?one that provided levitation magic?had saved her. Later, Jawil had said that she'd known about the insignia all along.

Those older, well-visited memories jostled against newer, fresher, somehow cleaner ones. Of the night she had been lifted from the cave and embraced by the priestesses of Eilistraee. Of the fierce joy she'd felt after defeating the phase spider. Her mind even drifted over brand-new memories that were only then being engraved upon her soul.

All of the other males Halisstra had lain with had been eager, yes, but an undercurrent of fear ran just beneath the surface of their lust. Perhaps it was because they knew they were being taken by a priestess of Lolth and feared that Halisstra, like the spiders she held sacred, might casually kill them and cast them aside. When she had first started kissing Ryld, Halisstra had seen a fleeting trace of that fear in him, but then it had disappeared. At some point during their lovemaking, he had surrendered?not to fear, or even to Halisstra, but to something larger. It was not so much that she had taken him. Instead he had given himself.

That realization acquired, Halisstra's mind drifted on to other recent memories. One of them, harsh and insistent, rose to the fore: Seyll. Or rather, her death at Halisstra's hands. Strangely, that image was garbled. Halisstra's memory of Seyll, dying, blood leaking from her side into the stream in which she lay had somehow become confused with that of Seyll in the moment just before she died, when the priestess had turned and was reaching out with both hands, preparing to help Halisstra cross the stream. In that false recollection, Seyll was reaching up toward Halisstra and speaking?whereas in truth, Seyll had actually been lying so still that Halisstra had thought her already dead. And the words were wrong?they were not the words of hope that Seyll had offered after Halisstra had dragged her «body» from the stream and begun stripping it of its weapons and armor. Instead they seemed to be a message, and an urgent one.

Halisstra, still deep in Reverie, leaned forward to hear it.

You will need the sword, Seyll whispered.

Halisstra, her eyes still closed, patted the floor beside her and her fingers came to rest upon the broken-tipped songsword, nested in its scabbard.

"I have it," she whispered aloud.

In the dream-memory, Seyll shook her head.

Not that one. Blood bubbled from her lips as she spoke. Only with the Crescent Blade can you defeat her.

"Defeat who?" Halisstra asked. "I don't?"

It was lost on the Cold Field, Seyll interrupted, her voice gurgling as her breathing became ragged. She was close to death, almost unable to speak. The priestess was carrying it. . and was slain. The. . worm has it now. Halisstra puzzled over that one: was it «worm» Seyll had said?or "wyrm?" She decided it must have been wyrm. Dragons were known to covet treasure?especially magical weapons. And judging by the reverential way in which Seyll had said the words "Crescent Blade," magical was exactly what the sword was.

Seyll was still speaking?so faintly chat Halisstra could barely hear her.

Find the Crescent Blade. . and use it. . to defeat her.

"Defeat who?" Halisstra cried.

From beside her came a swift, rustling noise. Her Reverie broken, Halisstra opened her eyes and saw Ryld in a ready crouch, Splitter in hand. He glanced swiftly around the darkened room, then at Halisstra, eyebrows raised in a silent question.

"It was nothing," she answered. "I was in Reverie. It was just a dream."

Ryld relaxed and slid the greatsword back into its sheath. His eyes lingered on her, and Halisstra remembered that she was still naked. He did not look respectfully away, as was the custom for a drow male. Instead his eyebrows raised a second time, and a fire danced in his eyes.

Halisstra shook her head.

"Later," she told him. "I need to speak to Uluyara about something."

Leaping to her feet, she hurriedly clothed herself, then slipped out into the night.