Sacrifice of the Widow

CHAPTER NINE

Qilue was in the Cavern of Song, lending her voice to those of the other priestesses, when Iljrene's urgent message came. The Nightshadows have struck again. The Misty Forest this time. They've stolen another soul. Her body has just been brought to the Hall of Healing.

I'll be there at once, Qilue replied. She hurried out of the cavern, gathering up her clothes from the floor as she went.

As she strode down the passageways that led to the Hall of Healing, Qilue's expression was grim. It was the third soul Vhaeraun's assassins had claimed: one from a priestess at the Gray Forest shrine, another from a priestess of the Chondalwood, and the third, from the Misty Forest.

Two other souls that had been stolen had been restored, praise Eilistraee. The soul of Nastasia, the first to fall, had been set free by unknown causes, and the priestess who had been killed at the shrine in the Forest of Lethyr had also been raised from the dead after the assassin who had attacked her was killed. His body had been questioned by a necromancer-an unpleasant, but necessary task. The corpse had revealed that Malvag was alive. The pair had met a day before the attack the Lethyr shrine. The plan to open a gate was indeed going ahead, and when it came to fruition, the souls of Eilistraee's priestesses would be consumed.

Iljrene was waiting for Qilue in the Hall of Healing, beside another priestess Qilue knew well-Leliana. Qilue had taken Leliana's sword-oath more than a century ago, when she had first come up from below.

Leliana turned, a stricken look on her face, as Qilue entered. "Lady Qilue," she said. "It's my daughter Rowaan. The Nightshadows killed her and Chezzara can't raise her from the dead. Her soul…"

Qilue touched Leliana's arm. "Let's be certain first." She glanced past Leliana at the alcove where two novice priestesses hastily prepared a bed on which to lay a body. Two other priestesses-both just teleported from the Misty Forest, judging by the snowflakes still melting in their hair-stood by, holding the corners of a damp blanket on which Rowaan's body lay. Even in death, she looked remarkably like her mother.

Qilue moved closer and noted the telltale mark of an assassin's cord around Rowaan's neck. She murmured a prayer of detection, and a distinctive shadow appeared across the lower half of the dead priestess's face.

Leliana moaned.

"Tell me about the attack," Qilue prompted.

"It happened late last night," one of the priestesses holding the blanket answered. "The Nightshadow who did it got away. So did the one who aided him."

Leliana's face twisted with anguish. "It's my fault," she blurted. "I was stupid. I trusted him."

Qilue frowned, not quite understanding. "This second Nightshadow-you knew him?"

Leliana nodded. "He posed as a petitioner." A bitter laugh burst from her lips. "He even took the sword-oath, but he betrayed us in the end. He dispelled the glyph on Rowaan's door then kept me talking while the other Nightshadow went into her room and…" Her voice faltered, and her eyes strayed to the priestesses who were gently laying her daughter's body on the floor. "Stole her soul."

Leliana tore her eyes away from the body of her daughter. She took a deep breath then spoke again, shaking her head all the while. "I still can't understand it. I questioned him under a truth spell, and he gave his name and the details of his coming to the surface readily enough. He wasn't truly a petitioner-he only sought us out in order to find his sister-but he fought beside us when the judicator attacked, and later, when he took the sword-oath, I thought that perhaps he had-"

"Leliana," Qilue said, cutting the other priestess off in mid-flow with a touch on the arm. "You're getting ahead of yourself. One piece of the story at a time, please. What name did this male give?"

"Q'arlynd Melarn."

Qilue' gasped. Moonfire danced on her skin, washing the cavern with light. There was the second coin, dropped at her feet. It had landed, as Eilistraee had foretold, on the side that was betrayal. "Tell me everything about this male-and swiftly, but start at the beginning this time."

Qilue listened as Leliana's tale unfolded, occasionally interrupting with a question. When it was done, she stood in thought for several moments. "It seems odd that he confessed his knowledge of Vhaeraun to you on the very night the Nightshadow struck."

"Q'arlynd must be a Nightshadow," Leliana insisted. "He even admitted attending their meetings."

"Did he really?" Qilue said softly. An idea was beginning to take shape. "And now he's promised himself to Eilistraee." She paused. "Perhaps he's the one that will aid her."

"Aid who, Lady Qilue?" one of the other priestesses asked.

Qilue, lost in thought, didn't answer. If Q'arlynd was the Melarn who would aid Eilistraee, that meant Halisstra would betray the goddess. Cavatina knew how to take care of herself-she was skilled in hunting demons, and used to trickery-but even so, Qilue worried that she might have sent the Darksong Knight to her death. She steeled herself, telling herself it had to be done. Such sacrifices were necessary, if the drow were to be brought into Eilistraee's light. In the meantime, the new development had to be dealt with.

She stared down at the faint square of black that shrouded Rowaan's face. "Q'arlynd came directly from Ched Nasad, you say?"

Leliana nodded. "Through the portal in the ruins of Hlaungadath."

"Let's hope he tries to return the same way."

Q'arlynd squatted in the tiny patch of shadow cast by the wall, squinting at the portal. An entire night he'd tried to activate it, and nothing had happened. He'd thought it would be a simple matter-a repetition of the phrase that had triggered its magic from the other side back in Ched Nasad, but though he'd read the Draconic characters precisely as written, the space inside the arch remained a blank stone wall. He might as well have knocked on it with his head, for all the good it had done.

In full daylight, the sun beating down overhead, the glare rendered him almost blind. He wondered, for the hundredth time, if he should just give up on the portal and make his way to the closest Underdark city instead. Eryndlyn lay somewhere beneath ancient Miyeritar. Perhaps one of its merchant Houses could use a battle mage to accompany their trading missions. It would be a big step down from his hopes, but it would at least be something.

A sudden noise made him startle. Another lamia? Quickly, he rendered himself invisible. As he rose to his feet, he reached inside his pouch for components for a fire spell. He waited, sulfur-gum in hand, as footsteps approached the doorway to the room in which he stood.

A shadow fell across the floor, a shadow with the outline of a drow. A naked drow-and female, too. Q'arlynd almost laughed. How stupid did the lamias think he was? Still, he had to admire the detail they'd put into their illusion. Those curves were very enticing.

He pulled the quartz crystal from his pouch. With it, he'd be able to see through the lamia's illusions-and pinpoint the creature so that he could incinerate it where it stood. As the shadow lengthened, he activated his insignia and rose into the air, out of the roofless building.

Below him, a drow female appeared to step into the room. Q'arlynd squinted through the crystal at her, expecting to see either the bare stone of the floor below the illusion-or a lamia, underneath a drow-shaped glamor. Instead he saw a female who was tall and beautiful, with silver hair and a proud bearing, like the matron mother of a noble House. She wore a gauzy silver robe that did little to hide the dark curves beneath. A sword hung from a scabbard on her belt, and she wore a bracer on her right forearm that served as a sheath for a dagger. In her left hand, she held a curious looking metal wand with a knob at either end. Eilistraee's holy symbol hung from a chain around her neck. She had a deeply lined face and somber expression, but despite her age she looked as fit as a female in her first century of life. Regardless of the obvious threat she posed-perhaps because of it-he found her intensely attractive. She was, quite simply, the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

Q'arlynd lowered his crystal. The priestess was real. She must have been sent to find him, to kill him. He placed a foot atop the ruined wall and gently pushed off, at the same time taking aim with the sulfur-gum.

Without warning, his levitation ended, sending him crashing into the street below. He rose, gasping and spitting blood from a cut lip. As he did, the priestess turned and glanced out into the street. She stared straight at him-seeing him. His invisibility must also have ended.

"Q'arlynd?"

He flicked the pinch of sulfur-gum at her and shouted the words of his spell. The tiny ball streaked through the air, igniting in mid-flight. It struck the priestess on the shoulder, immediately expanding into a violent ball of searing fire. Much of it washed back onto Q'arlynd-something it shouldn't have done.

He scrambled to his feet, his hair and skin singed from the blast, furiously blinking away the fiery afterimage that obscured his vision. He expected to see a charred body lying on the ground, but when his vision cleared the priestess was just standing there, completely unscathed. A nimbus of silver fire surrounded her naked body like a second skin, and her hair was one long, sparkling streak of silver. A candle-sized flame flickered at one end of the wand she held, and she raised it to her lips and blew it out.

"That wasn't very nice," she said in a dry voice.

Then she flicked a hand. A silver-white ray flashed from her fingertips to Q'arlynd, striking him in the chest. He touched fingers to the spot where it had struck, but felt no wound. A second flick of the priestess's fingers, and a wall of blades sprang up around Q'arlynd, completely enclosing him. They whizzed in a tight circle around him, giving him no space to move.

"If you try to attack me again," she said, "I'll tighten the ring." She made a squeezing motion with her hand, and the curtain of whirling blades cinched closer.

Q'arlynd, however, had no intention of letting her slice him up. With one word, he could teleport away. He spoke that word-

Nothing happened. He stood in the same spot as before. The magical blades swirled around him, filling the air with a dangerous hum.

"Your spells won't work," the priestess told him. "You're inside a field that negates magic."

"Impossible," Q'arlynd breathed. At the Conservatory, they'd taught that an antimagic field could only be cast by a wizard-on the wizard himself. It wasn't something a priestess hurled at someone else from a distance.

He tried a dispelling, but the whirling blades remained. He tried a second spell, but the magical armor that would have protected him from the blades failed to appear. Not wanting to press his luck-the priestess was watching his every move-he refrained from further spellcasting. His chest was tight with tension.

"Who… are you?"

She smiled. "Someone you've been hoping to meet. Lady Qilue Veladorn, high priestess of Eilistraee and Chosen of Mystra."

Q'arlynd's breath caught. He was certain, deep in his gut, that the high priestess was going to kill him. That she hadn't done so already was only because she wanted to question him. His best chance lay in appearing as compliant as possible in the hope that she would show lenience and kill him swiftly. He tried to crouch, in order to prostrate himself on the ground and barely avoided a nasty gash on the forehead. He settled for a partial bow instead.

"Lady Qilue, my profound apologies for attacking you," he said. "Had I known who you were, I never would have dared."

She made no comment, just stood there as the silver sparkle gradually faded from her skin and hair. Q'arlynd kept his eyes firmly on the ground, staring at a patch of sand beside her feet.

"Leliana told me about last night's attack," Qilue said. "She says you made it possible for the Nightshadow to enter Rowaan's room."

Q'arlynd clenched his jaw. His stomach felt cold and hollow. Best to get this over with. He wondered where his soul would wind up once the priestess killed him. Probably in the Demonweb Pits, where Lolth's demonic minions would ensure that he received endless torment for his fall from grace, brief though it had been.

"I did dispel the glyph on her door, it's true," he said slowly, "but not for the reason you think. I simply wanted to talk to Rowaan-to give her some information about the Nightshadows that I thought your priestesses might find useful. I changed my mind and spoke to Leliana instead."

"Why?"

"Leliana's a higher-ranking priestess. I thought she would offer me a greater reward." He spread his hands- and winced, as a blade nicked his finger. "It's as simple as that."

"I believe you."

Q'arlynd glanced up. "You do?" Hope flared in him like a bright flame.

Qilue smiled. She gestured, and the whirling curtain of blades that had surrounded him was gone. "I've come to ask a favor of you," she said. "One favor. You can say yes or no to it of your own accord, but if the answer is yes, I will place a geas on you that compels you to fulfill it. Do you understand?"

Q'arlynd nodded. He did indeed. He'd seen the effects of a geas firsthand long ago. One of Lolth's priestesses had cast it upon a House boy, compelling him to clean her boots each night by licking them with his tongue. Then she'd walked through the filth of the lizard pens. The boy had refused to clean the boots-and had quickly sickened and died, the magic of the geas hollowing him out from within.

His lips parted-he'd been about to flippantly ask what would happen if he said no to her request-then he realized there was really only one answer to her question. "What task must I perform, Lady?"

"You were once a Nightshadow."

"A petitioner, nothing more," he said carefully. "I never wore the mask."

"You attended their meetings." She switched to silent speech. You know their passwords.

Ah, so that was what she wanted. A spy. "I know the ones they used in Ched Nasad, decades ago."

Show me one.

He demonstrated one for her: fists drawing apart-as if stretching an assassin's cord-then suddenly flipping upside down, fingers curled, in the sign for a dead spider.

"Do you know what soultheft is?" Qilue asked.

Q'arlynd nodded. He had indeed heard of it. His brother had been stupid enough to boast that he'd one day kill a matron mother and steal her soul-preferably, their own mother. "It's a powerful spell. Done using Vhaeraun's mask, I understand, once the victim is dead."

Qilue moved closer. "Do you think you could pass as a Nightshadow? Could you fool them into thinking you're one of their own?"

He smiled, his eyes still respectfully on the ground. "I believe so, Lady."

Qilue and lifted his chin with a finger. She stared into his eyes. "Will you?"

Q'arlynd was forced to meet her eyes. He saw enormous strength of will there but also something more, something that tempered this strength. He knew, suddenly and with certainty, that she'd meant it when she said she'd let him choose whether to perform this "favor" of hers. She wasn't commanding him. She was asking him. A female, asking a male.

He didn't even have to think about his reply. It was his chance to prove himself, to serve not just a powerful priestess but a powerful mage-one who was a Chosen of the goddess of magic. A rush of excitement filled him. If he'd been of a religious mind, he might have whispered a prayer of thanks. To… somebody.

"I am yours to command, Lady Qilue."

"A favor," she reminded him, her hand falling away from his face.

Q'arlynd smiled and cocked his head, a playful gesture. He was at ease, on familiar ground. "Of course. A favor. What is it?"

Qilue's expression tightened. "Five nights ago, a Nightshadow attacked our shrine in the Forest of Lethyr. He was attempting to steal the soul of one of our priestesses."

"He did not succeed?"

"No."

The answer had been abrupt. There was more to the story than this, but whatever it was, Qilue wasn't going to tell him.

"There have been other attacks on our priestesses," she continued. "Other soulthefts."

Q'arlynd listened in silence, thinking of Rowaan. He felt a twinge of something. Guilt, he supposed.

"The males committing them are led by a Nightshadow named Malvag. They plan to use the soul-charged masks to open a gate between Vhaeraun's domain and Eilistraee's, so that Vhaeraun can slay our goddess."

Q'arlynd whistled softly. "Is that possible? The gate, I mean. I'm sure Eilistraee can take care of herself."

"To open such a gate, the Nightshadows would need to work high magic-something that requires complete cooperation between spellcasters and complete faith in one another." Qilue gave a tight smile. "Can you honestly imagine Nightshadows trusting each other?"

Q'arlynd chuckled. "Hardly likely."

"Even if they fail to conjure a gate, the attempt will consume the souls of the priestesses who were killed. I don't want that to happen. I want the magic that's binding their souls to the masks dispelled, and the priestesses freed-and that means stopping Malvag."

"You want him killed?"

"If he can be."

The "if" gave Q'arlynd pause, but only for a moment. He could guess what was coming. "You want me to impersonate the Nightshadow who was killed in the Forest of Lethyr."

Qilue nodded. "We know his name: Szorak, of House Auzkovyn. He was one of three Nightshadows who joined Malvag's scheme. He's the only one from House Auzkovyn. The other two were from House Jaelre, and it's doubtful they knew him well. Neither they nor Malvag himself have seen Szorak without his mask. You're about Szorak's height and build, and your eyes are the same color. We won't need to use a glamor on you, and we know much about Szorak, since his sister was one who converted to our faith."

As Qilue said this, a pained expression came to her eyes. There was a story there, but this was not the time to ask about it.

"So far so good," Q'arlynd said, "but if I show up without a soul-charged mask-"

"We will provide a mask," Qilue said. "Not Szorak's, but one that looks just like it. A square of cloth, created by polymorphing a gem-one that contains the body and soul of a priestess who has volunteered to risk herself in this venture."

Q'arlynd stroked his chin nervously. He was being asked to risk just as much. "Won't the Nightshadows be able to tell I'm not one of them?" he asked. "I've sworn myself to Eilistraee-I've taken the sword-oath."

"You spoke the words." She touched fingers to his chest. "But your heart…" The fingers lifted. "One day, perhaps, a song will dance there."

Q'arlynd gave a dutiful nod. He'd worry about that later. He had a job to do, and a potential matron to impress.

"Where is Malvag now?"

"We don't know. He's cloaked himself with powerful magic that prevents me from scrying him, but we do know where he and the other Nightshadows will meet on the night of the winter solstice: in a cavern lined with dark-stone crystals. The cavern has no entrance or exit; it's unconnected to anything else in the Underdark. The only way to reach it is to teleport." She smiled. "Fortunately that's something, Leliana tells me, that you claim to be quite adept at."

Q'arlynd allowed himself a modest smile. Qilue had obviously believed Leliana, or she wouldn't have sought him out. "Where is this cavern located?"

"Again, we don't know. We assume that it doesn't lie very deep in the Underdark, and that there's no faerzress near it, since teleportation to it is possible. All we have is a description of it, a brief description provided by the corpse."

Q'arlynd's eyebrows raised. "You expect me to teleport there on the strength of a description?"

"I realized that this would be impossible, without you having viewed the cavern. That is why I took the additional precaution of having the necromancer animate the body of the dead assassin. He then asked Szorak to 'describe' the cavern a second time-by drawing it."

"Ah," Q'arlynd said. "I see. You want me to study the drawing then try to teleport there."

Qilue gave him a measuring stare. "Can you do it?"

Q'arlynd carefully kept his thoughts from showing on his face. If the sketch had been done by the equivalent of a zombie, with only the shakiest of muscle control and no spirit to guide his hand, it wouldn't be very accurate. The resulting "drawing" would probably be no more than a few crude scratch marks.

He stroked his chin nervously. His stomach felt hollow at the very notion of what Qilue was asking-and he hadn't even jumped yet, but the thought of attempting an "impossible" teleport was tempting simply for the sheer challenge of it. Qilue was hanging upon his answer, every muscle in her body taut. If he pulled this one off, it would really impress her. If he managed to stop Malvag and save the souls of a couple of priestesses in the bargain, the rewards would be rich indeed. Qilue was a veritable conduit to Mystra herself. The very thought made him lightheaded.

"I can do it," he said.

Qilue beamed. "Good."

Part of him reveled in that smile. Another part wondered if he'd just signed his own death order. He crushed the second part mercilessly. To advance in life, one had to take chances.

"The geas, then," Qilue said.

Q'arlynd bowed his head.

The high priestess laid cool fingers on his forehead and invoked the names of both Eilistraee-and Mystra. "I command you to perform this service for me," she began. "To locate Malvag, and…"

When she finished, Q'arlynd's forehead tingled. A shimmer of silver magic shivered the hairs on his arms erect then was gone.

It was done. The geas had been laid upon him.

Now all he had to do was achieve the near-impossible.

"One favor," Jub whispered as he descended through the cavern on a thread of silk. "One favor I promised Qilue, and this is what she asks: to sneak into the lair of a dracolich."

The dracolich in question had already swooped past him once, causing Jub to spin madly on his thread. The undead wyrm was an enormous creature, black as old blood and with wings so broad they brushed the walls on either side of the passage. The monster left the stench of death in its wake and had a deep, unhealed wound in its left flank, yet it lived-after a fashion. Jub was awed by the amount of magic it must have taken for a dragon to transform itself into an undead creature.

Jub had magic, too-the tiny metal box, attached to a leather armband, that he wore above his left elbow. He'd gotten a real bargain on the phylactery from the thaumaturgical shop in Skullport because of its "curse." It didn't polymorph properly-it would only change its wearer into "vermin," but that was just fine with Jub. With it, he could change into pretty much any bug he could think of, big or small. He usually liked to turn into a fly-nobody ever suspected a fly of spying-but Qilue had warned him that that wouldn't be a healthy form to choose this time around. The males he was searching for worshiped Selvetarm, champion of the Queen of Spiders. They were bound to be hundreds of her pets around, wherever they were holed up, so Jub had polymorphed into a spider himself. It was, he reflected with sly grin that set his fangs quivering, the perfect disguise.

The spider body had come in pretty handy so far. It had gotten him past a bunch of traps. It was fist-sized-too light to trigger the spring-spikes or pits. It had also enabled him to scurry into a crack in the wall when a heavy block of stone smashed down. The body had its drawbacks, however. Shooting out strands of web left his ass feeling twitchy, and having three pairs of eyes took a lot of getting used to. All of the colors were flat, and he kept getting mixed up about what was close and what was far away-not to mention distracted by the rush of the walls going past while simultaneously seeing the cavern dwindling away behind him. He didn't know how spiders could stand looking in all directions at once.

Reaching the floor of the cavern, Jub snapped the thread of silk and looked around. Several passages led out of there. They all looked enormous to Jub, but if he'd been walking around in his regular, half-orc, half-drow body, the white bristles on the top of his head would have brushed the ceilings of most of them. That figured… Dolblunde had been built by rock gnomes.

He scuttled along the cavern, trying to decide which side passage to explore first. Walking had been tricky at first, but now that he had the hang of having eight legs he could move pretty quickly. He'd covered a fair chunk of the ancient city already. Something was bound to turn up soon, unless Qilue had been wrong about the Selvetargtlin being there, of course. She might have been lied to.

Jub paused at the entrance to one of the passages. A noise issued from it, a clicking sound. It came to him through his feet, which were sensitive to vibrations in the floor. Deciding to check it out, he scuttled into the passage.

His leg hairs quivered more rapidly as he drew closer to the source of the sound, which stopped, then started again, then stopped again. The passage was wide enough for a pair of rock gnomes to have walked through it side by side, its ceiling high and narrow as a knife slash and its floor surfaced with crushed stone. The tunnel wound through the rock like a stream, which it probably had been at one point. Jub knew he was on the right track when he saw a clump of web on the wall. A spider must have passed that way, maybe one of the Selvetargtlin's pets.

About fifty paces along, Jub spotted a spider clinging to the wall. Hairy and black, it was about the same size as his polymorphed form. It turned as Jub scuttled by, watching him with its multiple eyes. Jub had chosen a spider form with a narrow body and long, graceful legs that would allow him to cover more ground. He hoped that bigger, heavier spider wouldn't see him as prey. He crept past it, ready at a moment's notice to polymorph back into his half-drow form and squish the thing, but the hairy spider ignored him.

The passage opened, up ahead, onto a large cavern filled with humid air. The clicking noise came again, and something moved across the mouth of the tunnel. It looked, strangely enough, like animated black swords walking about on their points. As Jub drew closer, he could see that these "swords" were the legs of an enormous spider, its body big enough to have filled a small room. Its feet, sharp as whetted knives, clicked against the stone floor as it walked. It hung around just outside the passage as if guarding it, its abdomen expanding and contracting as it breathed.

Jub scurried out of the passage, wary of those sharp, stabbing feet. The monster, like its smaller, hairier cousin in the passage behind Jub, ignored him. Good thing, too. All it would have to do was sit on Jub and he'd be dead.

Jub scuttled up a wall, stopping when he was high enough to get a good view.

The cavern was enormous. At the far end was a deep pool of water. Fringing the shore of the pool were dozens of small ruined buildings.

Jub spotted at least a dozen people. Most were drow, easily recognizable, even to his limited eyesight, by their black skin and white hair. They wore robes, but Jub was too far away to tell if they were Selvetargtlin or not. He also spotted several aranea in spider form. He recognized them by their distinctive humpback and the humanoid arms jutting out from just below their chins. Their faces were entirely insectlike, with multiple eyes and gnashing fangs, but they moved with an intelligence and purpose that true spiders lacked.

Jub scurried across the ceiling, toward the city. As he drew closer to the ruins, he could make out details of individual buildings. It looked as though it had once been a marketplace. Each building was fronted with a slab of stone that had probably served as a shop counter. The smashed remains of doors hung from rusted hinges, and the floor was littered with broken pottery, shattered crates, and bones. Most of the skulls that grinned up at Jub were small-rock gnomes-but here and there he spotted the heavy-browed skulls of his full-orc kin. They'd sacked Dolblunde more than six centuries ago, and the city had lain empty since then.

It wasn't empty any more. In addition to the handful of drow and aranea Jub had already spotted, the ruined marketplace was filled with spiders. Jub could see them scurrying around everywhere. Most were about his size, but some of the larger ones were as big as dogs. They'd spun webs in the vacant doorways and shop windows and darted from one chunk of fallen masonry to the next. They paused and stared up at Jub with gleaming, multifaceted eyes as he made his way toward the center of the ruined marketplace.

There, next to the remains of a well, was what at first glance looked like a spider even larger than the sword-legged monster that guarded the entrance. It was motionless, however, and as Jub drew closer he realized it was a statue. The body of a drow lay in front of it, but there was no one else close by.

Jub descended on a strand of web for a better look. Close up, he could see the statue was only partially finished. The most detailed portion was the drow head that perched on top of the spider body.

Qilue had been right. The drow she'd asked Jub to find must be there after all. That statue was of Selvetarm, Lolth's drow-headed spider champion.

The corpse that lay in front of the statue was a drow female. She was sprawled face-down on a block of stone that had been hauled out of a nearby building, by the look of the scuffs on the floor. She was dressed in a long black piwafwi embroidered, in red, in a spiderweb pattern. The back of it was stained with dried blood, and more blood crusted the stone she lay on. The smell filled Jub's spider senses, making him twitchy.

He landed on the block of stone next to the corpse. A platinum chain hung around her neck, the medallion on it partially hidden under her shoulder. Jub eased it out with his forelegs. The disk, also platinum, was embossed with the image of a spider-Lolth's holy symbol. On the ground, next to the dead female's dangling hand, was further proof of her status: an adamantine whip handle, topped with what had once been two living snakes. Their heads had been sliced clean off. They lay on the ground next to the whip.

The body presented a puzzle. Those wounds looked like something the sword-footed spider might have done, except that the spider was hanging out by the tunnel entrance and didn't seem inclined to move around much. Jub doubted that a priestess of Lolth-capable of controlling spiders with a thought-would have died like that.

No, those wounds were probably blade thrusts, aimed at the back, just over the vitals, like a rogue's surprise stab, swift and deadly, and without much warning by the look of it. Otherwise, the priestess would have taken a few of her attackers down with her using that whip of hers.

The weirdest thing was that the dead priestess was still lying there. She'd been killed a while ago, judging by the dried blood, but the Selvetargtlin didn't seem to have noticed her yet.

When they did find her, things were going to get hot. Selvetarm was Lolth's champion. His followers would be furious as a swarm of stirges when they found one of the Spider Queen's priestesses murdered. They'd turn the cavern upside down looking for her killer.

Jub's leg hairs suddenly vibrated. It took him a moment to identify the sound as the clash of steel on steel. It came from inside one of the nearby buildings-a windowless, two-story structure that looked as though it might have once been a warehouse. The doorway was invitingly open, its shattered double doors lying on the ground nearby, but Jub wasn't stupid enough to blunder in that way. Instead he scrambled up a wall to the roof. Centuries of dripping water had pitted it, leaving holes in the thin stone just big enough to scuttle through. Jub crawled inside and clung to the ceiling, staring down.

Below him, two Selvetargtlin in blood-red robes danced around each other, one with an adamantine sword in hand, the other with a spiked mace of black iron. Both had long white hair that hung in thick braids that whipped around as they spun, parried, and thrust. Their robes barely moved. As one flipped back, Jub saw it was lined with chain mail. Both males wore steel gauntlets over their hands. A nasty looking blade stuck out of the back of each gauntlet.

The pair fought furiously, sword and mace clanging in a flurry of parried blows. They battled in silence-something that, he'd heard, was unusual for a Selvetargtlin. Selvetarm's priests usually worked themselves up for a fight by shouting out their deity's name. Nor were they using spells against each other. Odd, for a fight that seemed to be in deadly earnest.

The male with the mace feinted-then spun backward, the blade on his gauntlet slicing a line through the other male's robe, exposing the gleaming chain mail that lined it. The second male retaliated by slashing at the first one's neck, torso, and hamstrings-but the first avoided all three swings. He leaped into the air, his lower body twisting sideways. His boots struck the wall and stuck. Running up it like a spider, he crouched, ready to spring, but the Selvetargtlin with the sword was equally quick. He, too, ran up the wall as if it was a horizontal surface. The battle continued until suddenly the sword went spinning to the ground, smashed out of the hands of the male who had been wielding it. The disarmed Selvetargtlin leaped after it, but the male with the mace was just as fast. He landed on the floor a heartbeat after the first and smashed down with an overhand blow that should have left his opponent sprawling and bloody, but though the first had lost his sword, he still had his bladed gauntlets. He twisted and sprang inside the arc of the descending mace, punching both blades into the other male's chest.

The death grunt was loud enough to set Jub's hairs quivering. The mortally wounded Selvetargtlin collapsed on the floor, blood bubbling from his chest as the gauntlet blades yanked free. Shuddering with effort, he twisted his head to the side-an invitation to his opponent, who was at last retrieving his sword, to finish him.

The other drow laughed. "Well fought," he said between gulps of air, sheathing his sword. Then he kneeled and slapped both gauntleted hands down on the other's chest, a palm over each wound, and began to pray. Darkness, threaded with a tracery of white webbing, coalesced around his hands then bled down into the wounds. The threads of white stitched themselves back and forth, sealing the wounds shut, preventing the other from dying.

A moment later, the victor helped the healed Selvetargtlin to his feet. The other male wiped bloody lips with the back of his sleeve then picked up his mace. "You fought well, too," he said, pausing to spit the last of the blood from his mouth. He rubbed the spot where the wounds had been. "I didn't expect that last thrust. Let's hope your chitines prove as competent."

"They already have," the other answered. "They're surprisingly capable of following orders. Of course, it helps that they think those orders come from Lolth herself."

Both males laughed.

Jub's hairs shivered erect. Chitines were four-armed magical creations of the drow. Bred as slaves by wizards centuries ago, they were only three-quarters the height of a male. Abandoned by their creators as unfit, they had escaped, decades ago, to distant reaches of the Underdark, where they lived still. Jub had blundered into one of their web-filled caverns once-luckily for him, just one chitine denned there. He'd killed it but had come away covered in gouges from its hook-lined palms and feet. He'd been lucky to get out alive. The chitines hated the dark elves with an intense, smoldering anger. They attacked all drow on sight-even a half-drow like Jub.

Yet these Selvetargtlin were talking about the chitines as if they were pet lizards.

Lizards that, by the sound of it, were fighting battles for them.

The males were still talking, though in less boisterous voices as their breathing gradually slowed. Wanting to hear more, Jub descended from the ceiling on a thread of silk.

"… glad to hear your chitines fought well," the Selvetargtlin with the mace was saying. "What was their target?"

"The Moonwood. They killed eight dark dancers."

Jub jerked to a halt and thought, No wonder Qilue said this job was so important. These guys are attacking Eilistraee's shrines.

"If our underlings do their job too well, we'll bleed them gray, instead of just drawing them away with our feints," the male with the mace said.

"I hope not. I want a few of them still standing when we jump to the temple, at least sixty-six of the bitches-one for each of us to kill."

Both laughed as they walked toward the door.

"So the chitines didn't suspect anything?" the Selvetargtlin with the mace asked.

"None." The other grinned. "I told them the Spider Queen would reward them with…"

The voices faded away as the pair walked out into the street. Jub hung from his thread, slowly spinning in place, waiting for their shouts of alarm. The dead priestess was just outside the door. The two would practically have to step over her on their way outside, but no alarm came. The Selvetargtlin, it seemed, didn't care that a priestess of Lolth had been killed.

Probably, Jub realized, because they'd killed her.

He wondered if he should follow the pair of clerics, but then figured they'd be walking too quickly for him to keep up. He'd heard enough, anyhow. "Temple," they'd said. "The temple." They were planning an attack on the Promenade. Sixty-six of them, it seemed-a curiously exact number.

The Promenade wasn't far away-only a few leagues, as the worm burrowed-but its magical protections were rock-solid. Jub wondered how the Selvetargtlin were planning on getting inside. Far as he could see, there was no way they'd be able to.

He turned and scrambled back up the strand of web then out onto the roof. It was time to make his report.

He scuttled back to the tunnel, crossing rooftops where he could, but several times he was forced to scurry along the floor. He had an anxious moment when he reached the exit. The sword-foot spider nearly skewered him, its blade-sharp feet clacking down all around him as he made a dash for it-but then he was in the passage once more.

He hurried along it, back to the empty cavern.

Once there, he ducked into another of the side passages and shifted back into his half-drow form. Qilue had told him to report any discoveries back to her the moment it was possible to do so. She probably didn't expect him to get out of there alive with a dracolich flying around. That pricked his pride, but not so much that he wouldn't do as she'd asked. He owed Qilue. Fourteen years ago, her consort had died while freeing Jub and a bunch of other wretches from a slave ship in Skullport. Instead of blaming the slaves for her consort's death, Qilue had set them free-and invited them back to the Promenade to live. She hadn't even tried to claim the slaves as her own. All she'd demanded, in return for their freedom, was one favor from each of them.

Fourteen years later, Jub was finally going to pay her back.

His clothing and gear had polymorphed with him when he invoked the phylactery's magic, and they were back on his half-drow form. He pulled a slim metal tube from his pocket and uncorked it then carefully tipped out its contents. A feather with a silver shaft fell into his hand, followed by a roll of parchment. He sat, cross-legged, and touched the magical quill to his tongue to prime it. Then he began to write.

His letters were clumsy-simple block letters, like a child would write. If anyone else but Qilue were going to read it, he'd have been embarrassed, but Qilue never made fun of him. She was as beautiful, body and soul, as Jub was ugly.

SELV. CLERICS ATTACKED THE MOON WOOD WITH CHITTENS. BUT IT WAS JUST A FAINT. THEYR GOING TO. ATTACK THE PROMENAD, TOO. 66 OF THEM. NOT SURE WHEN.

He paused a moment, thinking, then added:

THEYR IN DOLBLUND,LIKE YOU THOT.I THINK THEY KILT A LOLTH PREESTIS THERE.

He paused again. Qilue had told him to write down everything he saw and heard, no matter how insignificant it seemed. So he added:

His message finished, Jub tapped the magical quill against the parchment three times. On the third tap, the words he'd written flowed back into the quill, vanishing from the page. Jub held the feather close to his mouth and whispered Qilue's name, then released it. The feather streaked through the air like an arrow, vanishing in a sparkle of silver motes.

Jub shifted to a crouching position, hands and knees on the floor, ready to polymorph again. As he did, he heard something in the cavern outside, a soft, halting step, as if someone was shuffling along. As it drew closer to the tunnel he was hiding in, he activated his phylactery and scrambled up the wall in spider form. The shuffling-a vibration he could feel in his legs-stopped at the entrance to his tunnel. Something peered inside. It was one and a half times the height of a drow, with a recognizable head, arms and legs, but its body was entirely covered in a thick mass of tangled- webs. Eight spider eyes stared out of a face dominated by a gaping mouth and gnashing fangs. The thing smelled like a combination of spider musk and rot. Wherever the crude blobs that were its hands and feet touched stone, they left a clump of clinging web.

The thing stared at Jub for several moments-long enough to unnerve him. Just when he was certain it had recognized him as an enemy, it withdrew. It shambled away through the cavern, its feet making sticky, shuffling sounds.

Time to get out of here.

Jub doubled back the way he'd come, climbing the steep walls of the cavern. When he reached its ceiling, his hairs picked up a faint air current emerging from a nearby crack in the rock. The air was flowing into the cavern and was slightly damp. It smelled of melting snow.

The crack was just wide enough for him to squeeze into. It was also a quicker way out-one that didn't lead past all those traps. He scrambled up through it. The climb was a torturous one, and Jub nearly got stuck several times, but the higher he climbed, the better he could smell the wintery scent of the woods above.

The darkness of the shaft was starting to pale to gray when he passed a narrow fissure that opened onto a vast cavern. One glance into it was enough to halt him in his tracks. The floor of the cavern glittered with thousands of gems and coins, strewn about like pebbles on a beach. Half buried in these were statues, books, bejeweled breastplates and helms, silver-chased swords, chalices, and a host of other treasures. It was a sight that Jub had never expected to see in his lifetime-a dragon's horde.

He knew better than to be tempted by it. He turned to go.

Something stirred the hairs on his legs… the flapping of massive wings.

A heartbeat later, an enormous head rose to eye level. A massive, slit-pupiled eye, large as a dinner plate and wrinkled as a prune, stared into the hole.

"Not so fast, little orcling," a whisper-dry voice said.

Terrified, Jub tried to scramble away but found himself suddenly unable to move. His heart beat furiously and his rapid breath sent pulses through his abdomen. He screamed at his body to move, but it wouldn't. Terrified-the dracolich must have seen through his spider disguise and recognized him for what he was-Jub raged at himself. If he'd gone back the way he'd come, instead of trying to take a shortcut, this never would have happened.

The tips of two claws poked into the hole, pinching Jub between them. He gasped as they knifed into his sides. The dracolich plucked him from the hole, and with a harsh whisper, it dispelled the magic of Jub's phylactery, returning Jub to half-drow form. Its breath held the sharp tang of acid.

"I warned you not to trespass up here," the dracolich told him in a voice hoarse as a dying man's. "We had an agreement."

The paralyzation that gripped Jub's body was starting to wear off. "Sorry," he gulped. Hope filled him. The dracolich didn't realize he was a spy-it thought he was one of the Selvetargtlin! "I didn't mean to break it. I thought this was a shortcut to the surface. I didn't know it led to your lair."

As he spoke, Jub desperately tried to activate his phylactery. If he could suddenly turn into a fly, he might be able to buzz away up the shaft and escape. He'd be too tiny for the dracolich to grab. The dracolich, however, seemed to have completely drained the magic from the phylactery.

The undead dracolich hovered, black wings lazily flapping, its massive, wrinkled eyes staring balefully at Jub. "You were warned," it wheezed.

Then it inhaled, filling its lungs. Acid-tinged air seeped out through the chinks between its scales where chest muscle had once been.

Jub steeled himself. This was it. He was going to die. At least he hadn't failed Qilue. Perhaps, when they both met again in Eilistraee's domain, she'd smile at him and thank him. Maybe gently touch his hand and-

The dracolich exhaled. A stream of acid slammed into Jub's chest, instantly searing a hole through flesh, ribs, and lungs, melting his spine. His upper body flopped backward like a broken doll, acid-seared flesh sloughing from it. There was one brief flash of pain so intense it was blinding.

Then came gray oblivion and a soothing song that swelled through him, washing the anguish away.