“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 planned for, or at least foreseen, Inthracis’s involvement. He comforted himself with the reminder that Lolth was a demon, chaos embodied, and that she would not—could not, by her very nature—accept a predetermined outcome. Matters were still subject to chance.
Perhaps Inthracis’s attack would facilitate the creation or emergence of theYor’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. Spanning the abyss, and extending out to forever, was the Infinite Web of Lolth.
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. Transformed souls stalked the city’s walks, webs, and ways, damned insects in a hive. The glowing spirits of those not yet transformed into their eternal flesh flitted around the metropolis like frustrated fireflies.
Billions of spiders prowled strands of the Infinite Web around the city. Some lived in holes, and tunnels bored into the strands. Others skittered along the surface. All of them fed upon the others. Only the strongest survived for very long.
Inthracis put the city out of his mind and focused on his task.
Before him rose the titanic peaks of jagged stone whose tops scraped the sky. Cracks and holes marred the sheer mountainsides, and millions more spiders crawled in and out of the openings.
The Pass of the Soulreaver, like a black mouth in the stone, parted its lips three spearcasts up the sheer side of the tallest of the mountains. A ledge jutted from the mountainside at the pass’s opening, and only a single, twisting, rock-strewn path—a ramp, really—led down the
steep mountainside.
The pass vomited souls. A steady line of glowing spirits streamed out of the opening and streaked into the air for Lolth’s city. Few made it unharmed.
Curtains of magical energy rose from the cracks in the broken rock of the plains and engulfed the souls as they soared over. The ghosts burned everywhere in the sky, so numerous they looked like sparks cast off from a blazing fire. After squirming for a period of time that varied from a few heartbeats to a two-hundred count, the flames released the captive soul, and the spirit flew free toward Lolth’s city. Inthracis assumed that the burning served as some kind of purgation.
To his nycaloth sergeants, Inthracis sent, Order up the troops. When the drow priestesses emerge from the Pass of the Soulreaver, we ambush them with spells as they exit. They will have no cover. That should force them down, and we can finish them here.
If the priestesses survived the initial onslaught of spells, they would have to walk or fly down the narrow path. Inthracis and his troops would attack them as they descended and be waiting for them if they reached the Plains of Soulfire.
The nycaloths, flying above the assembled host of mezzoloths, growled orders, and the latter shifted into formation. The regiment assembled into a roughly crescent moon shape at the base of the ramp leading down from the Pass of the Soulreaver. The barbed tips of their glaives shone with magic. The nycaloth commanders continued to circle the troops, eyeing the pass. Each bore a powerfully enchanted axe.
Inthracis stood near the rear of his forces, rods at his belt, canoloths at his side.
Given the audience gathered behind him, Inthracis assumed the priestesses would soon cross from the other side of the pass. He cast a series of defensive spells on his person and attuned his vision to see magic, invisible creatures, even ethereal forms. Nothing on the mountainside could escape his sight. Soon, the Pass of the Soulreaver would spit out Lolth’s priestesses. And when it did, Inthracis would be ready. He intended to give his audience something to watch.
Pharaun came back to himself on what he assumed to be the other side of the Pass of the Soulreaver. The dark opening yawned behind him. Souls exited and flew over and past him. He thought of the Reaver, of the souls that would never leave the pass, and shuddered.
After being swallowed by the creature, he had felt nothing more, seen nothing more. He did not remember moving through the pass at all. Moments or hours had been lost to him. He recalled a whispered voice, vague screams, and agonizing pain, but the events were so distant in his memory that they might as well have happened to someone else.
The challenge of the pass is not for you, Quenthel had said. From you, the Reaver will take only a tithe.
A tithe.
He did feel somehow diminished in a way he could not quite articulate. He tried to conjure a witty observation but came up with nothing. Perhaps that in itself was reflective of his diminishment.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the Reaver’s chasmal maw, its insidious whispers. He could not help but wonder what Quenthel had experienced.
He lay on the rocky ground, on the other side of Lolth’s mountains, facing the cloudy, gray sky. He saw no sun, though dim light illuminated the land. He felt as though he had traveled through the mountains to find himself on another world, another plane. He knew that where he lay at that moment was related to the land he had left only in that Lolth ruled both, only in that the Pass of the Soulreaver connected them.
He put his hand to his temple and found that small spiders crawled over him. He heard a sizzling, like cooking meat. He could not pinpoint the source. A soul flew over him, then another.
He turned his head and saw that Quenthel lay to his right, her eyes closed. Her face looked drawn. She held her holy symbol in her hand. Her body had returned to normal size.
He swallowed but found his throat dry. Dusting off the spiders, he sat up.
To his left, Jeggred and Danifae lay unconscious. He stared for a moment before the reality struck him.
How had they ended up there, at that moment? They must have entered the pass well after Pharaun and Quenthel.
He toyed with the idea of quietly killing Jeggred but swallowed the impulse. Quenthel had allowed him to live even after the draegloth had attacked her. Pharaun dared not act so presumptuously.
Frowning with frustration, he reached out and put a hand to Quenthel.
“Mistress,” he hissed and shook her.
She frowned, mouthed something incomprehensible, but her eyes did not open.
Jeggred uttered a growl. The draegloth’s fighting hands clenched into fists. Pharaun wondered for a moment about what Jeggred might have seen in his journey through the Pass of the Soulreaver, then decided that such things were better left unknown.
He climbed to his feet and stood on wobbly legs.
Fire exploded all around him, soaking the ledge in light and heat. His magical protections shielded him from substantial damage from the flames, but the explosion blew the breath from his lungs, seared his exposed skin, and knocked him flat.
He sat up, blinking, looked to Quenthel, and saw that she too had come through the fireball relatively unharmed, partially because she had been prone. Unfortunately, Danifae and Jeggred too looked blackened but alive.
Another explosion rocked the ledge, then another. The heat was melting the rock. Smoke made Pharaun’s eyes water. Crisped spiders fell from the heights like black snow.
What in the name of the Abyss is happening? he thought.
A lightning bolt ripped across the face of the ledge, shattering rock. Fragments of stone buried themselves in Pharaun’s face, in Quenthel’s hands, in Jeggred’s flesh.
Quenthel’s serpents came hissing to life, followed by their mistress.
From Pharaun’s left, Jeggred too awoke fully, his inner hands brushing away the stone shards stuck in his flesh. Danifae propped herself up on one of arm and looked around, dazed.
For a long moment, the four of them stared at one another.
Another explosion rocked the mountainside.
“What’s happening?” Jeggred growled, as he climbed to his feet.
Danifae stood and said to Quenthel, “It seems we’ve both passed the trial of the Soulreaver, Mistress Quenthel.”
Quenthel’s serpents hissed at the former battle-captive.
“So it appears,” Quenthel acknowledged.
Pharaun started to crawl toward the lip of the ledge, but before he reached it, an impenetrable cloud of white vapor cloaked the edge, and veins of superheated embers suffused it. Pharaun recognized the spell—an incendiary cloud. The embers sank into Pharaun’s skin, burning their way through his protective spells.
Pharaun threw the hood of his enchanted piwafwi over his head. The embers still found his hands, and he gritted his teeth against the pain.
The stink of burning flesh and hair filled his nostrils.
Jeggred roared with pain. The priestesses grunted against the burning.
Pharaun could not see through the fiery mist more than an armspan in front of him.
A second lightning bolt split the fog, rocked the ledge, and sent Pharaun crashing into the mountainside. The embers swirled in the explosion, rooting for exposed flesh.
“Dispel the cloud, Mistress!” Pharaun shouted and did not care which of the priestesses heeded him. “I will give us cover.”
From his left and right he heard both Danifae and Quenthel chanting spells. Their voices sounded as one, eerily disembodied in the burning cloud. Jeggred growled low, the pained, angry rumble of a wounded animal.
Pharaun waited until the priestesses were well into their spell before beginning his own. He took a pinch of diamond dust from his piwafwi and rushed through the gestures and words to a spell that would raise a sphere of magical force around them. He could not tell exactly where Quenthel stood—the explosions had sent both of them careening about the ledge—so he worded the spell to make the sphere as large as possible.
The priestesses finished their spells simu
ltaneously, and one or both of the counterspells dispelled the magical cloud. One moment the cloud was there, the next it was gone.
Both priestesses were brandishing their holy symbols on opposite sides of the ledge. Jeggred crouched in a huddle near Danifae, his arms encircling her protectively, his mane and skin still smoking.
The priestesses stared at each other, Danifae holding her chunk of amber, Quenthel her jet disc.
Pharaun had no way to know whose spell had successfully dispelled the cloud, and the uncertainty troubled him. Everything about the recent past troubled him.
Still, he kept his concentration and finished his own spell. When he pronounced the final word, a transparent sphere of magical force took shape around the ledge, covering all of them.
Another fireball and lightning bolt slammed up against the sphere and exploded in light, but neither breached Pharaun’s spell.
Jeggred stood to his full height, eyeing Quenthel. Dried blood caked his claws and ringed his mouth. Pharaun imagined it to belong to one of the Eilistraeeans.
“Mistress,” Pharaun said, “my spell will not hold long.” “Of course it won’t,” Quenthel answered. “You are a male.”
Pharaun ignored the barb, crept forward the rest of the way, and looked out over the ledge. The others did the same.
A twisting path, bounded on its sides by sheer drops, led down the steep mountainside to a plateau riddled with chasms, craters, and pools of acidic venom. A green haze filled the air, and Pharaun blinked at the acridity. Through the haze, Pharaun saw . . .
An army waited below.
“Yugoloths,” the mage observed. “Five hundred, at least.”
“Mercenaries,” Quenthel spat, following his gaze. Her serpents hissed.
Scaled, four-armed, nycaloths swooped through the air above an assembled force of insectoid mezzoloths. The squat, beetle-like mezzoloths bore long polearms in their four arms, while each of the nycaloths held an enchanted battle-axe. They were arranged in a crescent shape at the bottom of the path, a wall of armor and flesh. Pharaun knew the yugoloths to be resistant to most forms of energy. He assumed that most would have used magic to bolster their inherent resistances. Dealing with them would not be as easy as simply burning the lot with a fireball, but he had killed fiends before.
R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection Page 96