Sacrifice of the Widow

CHAPTER TWO

Q'arlynd stood, hands laced together behind his back, at the broken lip of what had once been a broad street of calcined webbing. Across the wide chasm he could see a jagged protrusion, the spot where the street had anchored to the far wall. Similar protrusions dotted the walls above and below him. The city that had filled the vast cavern had been more than a hundred layers deep. This once-intricate stone web lay in a shattered heap far below, together with fragments of the noble Houses, temples, and academies that had hung from it like glowing pendants. The magical glow that had suffused the stone was all but extinguished, hidden under the scab of mold and fungi that had grown in the three years since the city's fall.

He shivered. The air was cool and moist, humidified by the constant trickle of water that dampened the cavern walls. He'd grown up in Ched Nasad, but a century of life there still hadn't inured him to the climate. He could feel the chill deep in his bones.

Ched Nasad had once been home to nearly thirty thousand drow. Perhaps one-tenth of that number remained, scrabbling out an existence in the ruins while trying to salvage whatever the duergar stonefire bombs hadn't burned. And fighting. Always fighting. Only a handful of the hundred or so noble Houses had survived the fall of the city-Houses of no consequence whose strongholds had been at the less desirable, outer edges of the web, against the damp cavern walls. They squabbled amongst themselves still, unable to come together in an alliance that might rid what remained of the city of its Jaezred Chaulssin masters.

Somewhere under that dark jumble of stone lay the ruins of House Melarn. It had been the first of the noble Houses to fall, and it had taken a good chunk of the city down with it, which was fitting, since House Melarn's matron-Q'arlynd's mother-had been murdered by those below her. That murder had set the other eleven noble Houses squabbling with one another, rendering them unable to meet the duergar threat.

"Divided we fall," Q'arlynd murmured.

He lifted his left arm and stared at the House insignia he wore on a wide leather band around his wrist. Carved into the adamantine oval was House Melarn's symbol, a glyph vaguely reminiscent of a stick-figure person, arms bent and one leg raised as if dancing. The insignia counted for little now. Q'arlynd was the only one of his House to survive, and he was male. Since inheritance and title passed through the female line, he could make no claim on any of the property that had been salvaged from the ruins of his former home. He'd had to watch, powerless, as it was looted by others.

Lowering his hand, he leaned forward to stare down at the bulge, low on the opposite wall, that was the domicile of House Teh'Kinrellz-the House he had reluctantly offered his services to after the city's fall. Below it was a depression in the rubble: the salvage excavation. The uncovered stones glowed faintly with faerie fire, a jumble of lavender, indigo, and crimson that looked like an iridescent puddle from above. A platform slowly rose over the hole as it was winched up from a high ledge. The dozen dark shapes slumped on it would be the slaves, exhausted from a cycle of digging.

The effort seemed futile. Though some magical treasures must have survived the fall, so deeply did they lie buried that excavating them would have taken an army of dwarves and the better part of a century. The efforts of House Teh'Kinrellz offered one thing, however-a semblance of organization. Under the leadership of that once-insignificant House, the drow of Ched Nasad might yet reclaim their cavern.

Q'arlynd snorted with bitter laughter. Who was he fooling? The city was as likely to be reclaimed as rothe were to suddenly sprout wings and fly.

Stone shifted under his left foot. It gave him the instant's warning he needed to pull his foot away. A chunk of stone tumbled from the edge, smaller fragments falling in its wake. Q'arlynd listened but couldn't hear them land. The bottom of the cavern was too far below.

Enough of this.

He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and took a step back from the edge, then another. He ran forward, flinging himself into space.

The air snatched at his piwafwi as he fell, yanking its hood back from his head. It pressed his shirt and trousers against his body and plucked at his shoulder-length white hair, turning it into a ragged streamer. He opened his eyes, feeling the wind squeeze tears from them. He flung out his arms to let air whistle through his splayed fingers. His heart hammered wildly in his chest, and it felt as though his stomach flattened against his spine. Grinning, he watched in morbid fascination as the floor of the cavern rushed up to meet him. That jumble of stone below-that was death.

Closer, closer…

Now!

Q'arlynd mentally shouted a command, activating the magic of his House insignia. His body jerked to a halt so close to the ground that his neck purse bounced off an up-thrust slab of stone. In the instant that he went from falling to levitating, his vitals felt as if they were being pulled from his body by an invisible hand. Bright sparkles of light crackled across his vision. Blackness roaring with blood nearly claimed him, but he shook it off and fought down the urge to vomit.

He floated, dizzy but exultant. A laugh burst from his lips, wild as that of the victim of a hideous mirth spell. Then he got hold of himself. It wasn't the first time he'd free-fallen from a great height. As a student at the Conservatory, he'd competed with the other novice mages to see who had the most nerve, but that had been years ago.

Never had he come so close to hitting the ground.

Twisting his body upright, he gave a second mental command, one that would summon a driftdisc to carry him back to House Teh'Kinrellz. As he waited for it, something caught his eye. The body of a drow female lay on the rubble. A corpse in the fallen city was unremarkable in itself, but he hadn't heard of any recent quarrels, and the body looked fresh.

Very fresh.

He sank to the ground, landing gracefully. The back of the female's head looked like a hollow, broken cup.

Something had smashed it in. The patch of red that stained her hair and the rubble she lay on was still spreading.

Q'arlynd looked around warily, certain he'd just interrupted something, but he didn't see anyone nearby. Even a glance through his crystal revealed no invisible enemies lurking nearby. Tucking the magical quartz back into his pocket, he cast an incantation that revealed obvious magical items on the dead female-the sword in her scabbard, her boots, two rings on an outflung hand. Mediocre dweomers all.

As Q'arlynd stepped closer on shifting rubble, part of the mystery resolved itself. A chunk of calcified web, also bright with blood, lay near the corpse's feet.

"By the Dark Mother," he whispered. He looked up, trying to calculate the odds of the stone that had been dislodged by his foot falling in precisely the right spot to strike the female on the head. Lolth's work, surely.

He shook his head.

Kneeling on the unstable rubble, he rolled the body over to see if she wore a House insignia. She did not, but there was a silver chain around her neck that held a sword-shaped pendant with blunted edges. On the blade was engraved a circle on which a sword was superimposed-the holy symbol of Eilistraee.

The pendant emitted an aura of magic. Q'arlynd nearly left it where it. was, but the mystery of what a priestess of a forbidden faith was doing in Ched Nasad intrigued him. He broke the chain and slipped the pendant into a pocket. It would prove useful, should he ever need to cast doubt on someone's loyalties.

The priestess looked young, perhaps still in her first century of life. Her forehead didn't yet have frown lines. Q'arlynd didn't recognize her. Perhaps she was a scavenger, come to Ched Nasad in search of plunder.

His lips twitched at the irony of it. All she'd harvested from the ruin was death.

He eased the rings from her fingers and pocketed them. Then he slid her sword half out of its scabbard. The blade gritted against something. Sand had found its way into the scabbard. The blade was steel, rather than adamantine, and filigreed with gold. It looked like something the surface elves had made. It wasn't something Q'arlynd wanted to keep. He preferred fighting from a distance, with spells. He slid it back into its sheath and continued to search the body.

A dozen tiny swords hung from a metal loop attached to the priestess's belt. They reminded Q'arlynd of keys on a ring, though their edges had no notches. They were silver and shaped like the pendant but not magical. On an impulse, he unfastened them from her belt and pocketed them, too. He felt around inside her pockets but found nothing of interest. The insides of her pockets were also gritty-more sand. Her clothes, however, were dry, so it wasn't river sand.

He yanked the boots from her feet. They were too large for him at the moment, but their magic would shape them to his feet, assuming he decided to keep them and not barter them away. One of the boots had several tiny spines embedded in its sole, and at the end of each of the spines was a moist chunk of green plant flesh. She must have stepped on a spiny plant. Q'arlynd sniffed them, but the scent wasn't one he recognized.

He plucked the spines out and tossed them aside, then stroked his chin with a forefinger. "A surface plant?" he mused aloud.

He stood, contemplating the mystery the priestess presented. That she'd used magic to reach Ched Nasad was clear. The vegetable matter on the spines was still fresh, which it wouldn't be if she'd walked to the ruined city through the Underdark. She couldn't have teleported there. The Faerzress that surrounded the ruined city would have made the odds of arriving on target about as unlikely as…

Well, as unlikely as winding up in the precise spot for a rock, dislodged by a foot above, to strike her dead.

A portal, perhaps?

If there was a portal, it was something Q'arlynd wanted to keep to himself.

Knowing that others might see the body and draw the same conclusions he had, he touched it and spoke the words of a spell. The body vanished from sight. A second spell ensured that the invisibility would remain in place. Straightening, he reached into a pocket for a tiny length of forked twig, and spoke a divination. He closed his eyes and slowly turned, the twig in his hand.

There. A faint tug at his consciousness caused him to lean forward.

Opening his eyes, he set out across the shifting rubble. He'd only gone the equivalent of a dozen paces when he saw a horizontal crevice between two slabs of rock-an opening just large enough for a drow to worm through on her belly. The mental tug came strongly from within.

He kneeled and peered inside. At the back of the crevice, something glowed with an eerie purple light: magical script, arranged in a semi-circle along the curved top of a half-buried arch. He'd been right! The dead priestess had arrived through a portal. The top half of the arch was clear. The rubble that had previously hidden it from view must have tumbled through the portal after it was activated. The lower half of the arch was still hidden by an enormous slab of fallen stone. Still, enough of the portal was clear for it to be useful.

And-here was the truly amazing thing-he'd seen that portal before. It was the one he'd led his sister and her companions to, three years ago, as they fled the collapsing city.

He rocked back on his heels, amazed at the coincidence.

Remembering.

The portal had been inside the Dangling Tower. Q'arlynd had led Halisstra and her companions to it, only to be confronted by the portal's protector, an iron golem. The golem had attacked the group, driving them back from the portal and seizing Q'arlynd. When a fissure opened in the floor beneath the golem, it had fallen through, dragging Q'arlynd along as well. Q'arlynd had been in the clutches of the golem, falling, as the stalactite that housed the Dangling Tower tore free of the cavern's ceiling and plunged down through the city, careening off the streets and buildings below. He'd escaped the golem by teleporting away in mid-fall.

He'd assumed that his sister and her companions had been killed when the tower smashed to pieces on the cavern floor far below. He hadn't even bothered to search for Halisstra's body, thinking it would lie buried deep in the rubble, but the survival of the portal presented a new possibility. Perhaps Halisstra had managed to escape through it as the tower was falling. If so, she might still be wherever it led. She, too, would have assumed her sibling was dead. The last she'd seen of Q'arlynd he was in the grip of a golem dragging him to a certain-death fall. She likely would have heard of the city's complete destruction-which would explain why, if she was still alive, she hadn't returned to Ched Nasad.

If Halisstra was alive and Q'arlynd could locate her, he might be able to improve his lot. Instead of being a vassal to another House-little better than a slave, really-he would once again be part of a noble House. It would, of course, be a House of two, but time would remedy that. House Melarn would rise again.

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to slow down. Halisstra may not have even made it through the portal, he reminded himself. Her skeleton might very well be somewhere under the heap of rubble on which he squatted. He would not allow himself to hope. Not yet.

A sighing noise behind him made him whirl, his free hand reaching for the wand sheathed at his hip, but it was only the driftdisc he'd summoned earlier. It could just as easily, however, have been one of his enemies. He chastised himself for letting his guard down. It was a stupid thing to do, if one wanted to keep on living.

And Q'arlynd wanted very much to do just that.

He glanced back at the arch. The script no longer glowed. It should be a simple enough matter to re-activate the portal-the inscription was in Draconic, which Q'arlynd could read-but he wasn't about to step blindly into unknown territory, not without learning all he could about the dead priestess. She had, after all, come from wherever the portal led to.

He took a careful look around, noting landmarks in the rubble. Then he settled himself cross-legged on the driftdisc and sped away.

Nearly three hundred leagues to the east, in a little-visited section of the sprawling underground labyrinth known as Undermountain, a Darksong Knight and a novice priestess of Eilistraee patrolled a dark cavern that wound its way past several natural columns of stone. Nearly a thousand years ago, the cavern had been one arm of a sprawling Underdark city. The drow who built that city were long gone-consumed by the slimes and oozes they had venerated-but traces of what they built could be seen still. The columns and walls, for example, were carved with notches that had once served as handholds and footholds. Holes in the cavern ceiling were the entrances to buildings that had been hollowed by magic out of native stone. Still more holes, arranged in intricate, lacelike patterns, had served as windows in the floors of these buildings. Some of the clearstone in these windows was still intact, but centuries of accumulated bat guano had obliterated any view inside.

The Darksong Knight pointed out those details as they walked along. "We only recently claimed this area. We hope to incorporate it into the Promenade, one day," Cavatina told the novice. "For now, though, it's home only to dire bats, cloakers, crawlers-and the occasional adventurer who blunders in and manages not to get eaten by the first three."

The novice obliged Cavatina by smiling. Her posture, however, was tense. Her eyes kept straying to the dark holes in the cavern ceiling above. Understandable, Cavatina thought. It was Thaleste's first patrol south of the Sargauth River. The novice had trained for two years but had yet to blood her sword. She'd spent all that time within the safe confines of the Promenade-the name Eilistraee's faithful had given the temple that lay on the other side of the river. Cavatina could hear the low gurgle of the Sargauth still, but the comforting sounds of the Cavern of Song lay far behind.

She pointed to a spot on the floor. "You see this smooth patch?" she asked.

The novice nodded.

"A slime passed this way, long ago, but it, along with the rest of the minions of the god of oozes and slimes, was driven into the Pit of Ghaunadaur. Which is…?" she prompted.

The novice spoke solemnly. "The pit in which the Ancient One was imprisoned by Eilistraee's Chosen, Qilue, First Lady of the Dance. She built Eilistraee's Mound to mark the spot where Ghaunadaur was defeated."

"Where his avatar was defeated, Thaleste," Cavatina corrected. "Ghaunadaur himself still lurks in his domain. That is why we patrol these dark halls-why we have built our temple here. We must ensure that his avatar never rises again."

Thaleste nodded nervously.

Cavatina smiled. "It's been a long time since anything oozed through these halls," she reassured the novice. "About six hundred years."

Another nervous nod.

Cavatina sighed to herself. Novices were not, as a rule, allowed to venture into truly dangerous areas, even with a seasoned Darksong Knight accompanying them. There was little there for Thaleste to fret about. The purpose of the patrol was simply to check the defensive glyphs and symbols that had recently been set there and report any that needed to be restored.

They continued on through the cavern, a novice in simple leather armor, and a warrior-priestess in a mithral chain mail shirt, her steel breastplate embossed with her goddess's symbols. Each female had a sword sheathed at her hip, next to a dagger. The Darksong Knight carried a hunting horn as well, slung from a strap that crossed one shoulder. Both priestesses were drow, their ebon skin blending with the darkness, their white hair and eyebrows standing out in stark contrast.

Cavatina, despite her vastly higher station, was still in her first century of life. Barely adult, by drow standards. The daughter of a Sword Dancer, she had her mother's lean, wiry build. She was tall, even for a drow female. Most of the other priestesses came only to her shoulder. Only Qilue herself was taller. During Cavatina's youth, there had been innumerable teasing about her being long and narrow as a sword blade but blunt as a maul when it came to speaking her mind.

Thaleste, on the other hand, was well into middle age, her body soft after decades of sloth. She had come to Eilistraee's faith only recently after a life of pampered luxury in one of the noble Houses of Menzoberranzan. Her motive for leaving that city had been far from holy. She'd angered her matron and barely survived the poison that had been slipped into her wine. She had been headed for Skullport for some poison of her own when she'd taken a wrong turn and blundered into the Promenade-a fork in life's path she later understood to be the unseen hand of Eilistraee.

Thaleste had gone from being a lazy, self-indulgent viper to a fervent worshiper who had embraced the goddess wholeheartedly, once she understood what the worship of Eilistraee truly meant. When that enlightenment had come, she'd wept openly, something a drow of the Underdark never did. She later confided in Cavatina that it had been the first time in two and a half centuries that she'd allowed herself to feel.

Cavatina had heard it many times before. She'd been born into Eilistraee's worship, seen many conversions. She envied each and every one. She herself would never know the moment of rapture redemption could bring. Though she had-and she smiled-experienced the intense exhilaration of skewering one of Lolth's demonic minions on her sword. More than one, in fact.

She sighed. Compared to a demon hunt, patrolling was dull work. She almost hoped that a cloaker would swoop down from the ceiling. She patted the bastard sword at her hip. Demonbane would make short work of it. The sword might not hum as prettily as the temple's singing swords, but it had seen Cavatina through more battles than she could count.

They continued through the cavern, checking to make sure that none of the magical symbols had been dispelled. Each symbol was as large as a breastplate, painted prominently on a wall, floor, or column where those passing through the cavern couldn't help but glance at it. The symbols had been painted using a paste made from a blend of liquid mercury and red phosphorus, sprinkled with powdered diamond and opal. Attuned to Eilistraee's faithful, the symbols could be safely stared at by her priestesses and lay worshipers, but anyone with evil intentions who so much as glanced at a symbol would trigger it, as would any cleric who served Eilistraee's enemies. Cavatina pointed out for Thaleste the difference between those symbols that caused wracking pain, and those that sapped strength.

"None that kill?" the novice asked. "Why not slay our enemies outright?"

"Because for all drow, there is a chance of redemption," Cavatina answered. Then she smiled grimly. "Though for some, the chance is much slimmer than for others. That's what our swords are for. Once an intruder is debilitated, we give her one chance. She can live by the song-or die by the sword."

Thaleste nodded, her eyes bright with tears. She'd made that very choice, just two years ago.

They moved on, softly singing the hymn that disabled the cavern's other magical protections. Tiny bells, hanging from silver threads, had been secreted here and there among the columns. Capable of detecting anything that moved in the cavern without singing the proper wards, the bells were ensorcelled to sound a clamorous alarm that could be heard dozens of paces away. A silence spell could muffle the sound, but the spell would have to be cast several times over-once per bell-and each bell's hiding place would have to be found first.

All of the bells Cavatina randomly selected to inspect were in place; none had been disturbed. Each rang with a clear ping when Cavatina flicked it with a fingernail.

Just like the Promenade itself, the caverns were protected not only by visible defenses but also by less tangible magic. Forbiddance spells had been put in place with sprinkles of holy water and wafts of incense, invisible to any who did not have the magic to detect them. They were a potent barrier, one that prevented enemies from teleporting or shifting there-even in astral or ethereal form. The forbiddance spells were permanent, and only the most powerful of spellcasters could remove them. The only way to bypass them was with one of Eilistraee's holy songs, and even that held no guarantee of safety. Those who used the song to slip past the magical barrier would, if of evil intent, arrive with grievous wounds-possibly even fatal ones.

The cavern narrowed, and the floor rose and fell. The priestesses clambered over half-formed stalagmites that looked like sagging lumps of dough. Several times, Thaleste's scabbard scraped against the soft limestone, tracing a faint line. The novice had a lot to learn about moving silently.

"The cloakers are going to have ample time to spring an ambush, with all that noise you're making," Cavatina warned her.

Thaleste was breathing hard from her exertions. Her face darkened in a blush. "My apologies, Mistress."

"Dark Lady," Cavatina corrected. "There are no matron mothers here."

"Dark Lady. My apologies."

Cavatina accepted the apology with a nod.

Eventually, they reached the spot where the cavern ended. The ceiling was low enough that Cavatina could have touched it. A faint breeze issued from a crack above her head. A narrow chimney, barely as wide as her shoulders, twisted up to the surface. She watched as Thaleste peered up into the opening.

There was movement inside the chimney-a flutter of wings. Thaleste shrieked as something small and black burst out of it. Cavatina, who had started to draw her sword even as Thaleste flinched, slid it back into its sheath. She stared at the creature as it flew away, squeaking.

"A bat." She sighed. "The next time something comes hurtling at you, Thaleste, try drawing your sword or casting a spell." She nodded at the chimney. "Now check the glyph"

Thaleste, blushing, murmured a prayer, casting a detection spell. Just inside the chimney, a glyph sprang into luminescence, sparkling like the light scattered by a diamond. Frowning in concentration, Thaleste studied its outlines, her finger tracing through the air in front of it.

"A songblast glyph," she announced at last, letting the glow fade. "Untriggered. Nothing evil has passed this way." Her shoulders relaxed a little as she said this.

"Unless it was ethereal," Cavatina reminded her.

The shoulders tensed again.

"Fortunately, the ability to assume ethereal form is something that few creatures-and only the most powerful spellcasters-are capable of," Cavatina continued. "And those that are capable of ethereal travel have no need for entrances like this one. They can pass through solid stone."

Thaleste swallowed nervously and glanced at the wall next to her out of the corner of her eye.

"The walls here are thick," Cavatina assured her. "Any spellcaster out on an ethereal jaunt would materialize inside solid stone long before reaching this spot."

Thaleste nodded.

"We're done here," Cavatina said. "Let's go back."

As they made their way back along the winding corridor they'd just traveled, Cavatina once again saw Thaleste startle. "Have you spotted something, Novice?"

Thaleste pointed at the ceiling. "A movement. Behind that broken window." She gave her mentor an apologetic smile. "Probably just another bat."

Cavatina chastised herself for having missed whatever Thaleste had just spotted. She should have been paying more attention. Then again, Thaleste was a nervous one. She'd only occasionally ventured outside the walls of her residence in Menzoberranzan. Her trip to Skullport had been an act of desperation. Eilistraee only knew how Thaleste had managed to survive as many decades as she had inside the City of Spiders. She was prone to seeing monsters in every shadow.

Even so, Cavatina drew her sword. The temple's battle-mistress had given specific orders to those on patrol. Any monster, no matter how small a threat it posed, was to be killed. The caverns the Promenade had recently claimed must be kept clean of vermin, and there were protocols to be followed. The use of silent speech during alerts, for example.

Stay here, Cavatina signed to Thaleste. I'll investigate. Cast a protection upon yourself, just in case.

Shouldn't I come with you?

No. The last thing Cavatina needed was a novice getting in the way of a hunt, and even if it turned out to be a cloaker up above, it would all be over in a few moments.

As Thaleste hurriedly whispered a protective prayer, Cavatina spoke the word that activated her magical boots. They lifted her into the air toward the window the novice had pointed at. The ceiling was perhaps a hundred paces high, and the window was one of those that had fallen away. Only a few jagged shards of clearstone hung from a hole that gaped a dozen paces wide. As Cavatina levitated toward it, a palm-sized fragment of clearstone dislodged from the remains of the window frame and fell, shattering to pieces on the stone floor below. Thaleste flinched away from it, her sword shaking in her hand.

Cavatina smiled as she rose toward the hole in the ceiling. Something was inside the room above. She gripped Demonbane in both hands, adjusting her grip on the worn leather of its hilt. Whatever it was, she was ready for it.

The window opened onto what had once been a grand hall. Pedestals along each wall held stone busts of those who had once inhabited the noble manor. Several of the busts had fallen and lay in pieces on the floor, but others had survived. A dais at one end of the room had probably once supported a throne. Behind the dais were the remains of a mosaic, most of its tiles long since fallen out. Enough remained, however, to show drow kneeling in submission before an altar, though the object of their veneration was indistinguishable. Side passages led off from the left and right.

All this, Cavatina took in at a glance. To all appearances, the room was as empty as any other in this area, but appearances could be deceiving. She twisted as she rose through the window, pushing off from what remained of the sill. Another piece of clearstone fell-something else for Thaleste to flinch at. As Cavatina drifted toward a more solid piece of floor, she sang a prayer. Divine magic surged out from her in a rippling circle, filling the room. If whatever was in here with her was invisible, the magic that cloaked it from sight was about to be purged.

The creature was revealed in mid-leap: a spider the size of a large dog, its spindly legs twice as long as Cavatina was tall. It came at her with its fang-tipped jaws distended, its mouth trailing drops of saliva that sparkled like golden faerie fire.

Cavatina slashed at the creature as it hurtled toward her, but the spider twisted in mid-leap, avoiding the blade. A slash that should have cleaved its body in two instead merely sliced off a couple of the bristles protruding from its cheek. Odd, that the spider had twisted its head toward the sword-it almost seemed to be trying to bite the weapon.

The spider landed on a wall and immediately flexed its abdomen toward her. As its spinnerets opened, Cavatina flung out her left hand and shouted Eilistraee's name. A shimmering, crescent-shaped shield sprang into being in front of Cavatina just in time to block the web the spider shot at her. The magical shield shuddered as the webs struck, then slowly sagged to the floor, weighed down by a mass of glowing golden webbing. Cavatina dispelled the shield, letting the sticky tangle fall.

She attacked. Releasing Demonbane, she sang a prayer that sent the sword dancing through the air toward the monster-a feint that would allow her to mount a second attack. She expected the spider to shy away from the blade, but instead the monster watched, unmoving, as the sword, directed by Cavatina's outstretched hand, wove through the air toward it. The spider sprang from the wall, directly at the sword. Twin fangs scissored against the metal. The spider sailed past Cavatina to land upside down on the ceiling, the sword between its fangs. Then it began to chew, as if savoring the taste of the blade.

Belatedly, Cavatina realized what she must be facing. "A spellgaunt!" she cried. She yanked her hand back, trying to wrench Demonbane from its jaws, but they were locked around the sword. The spellgaunt stood utterly still for a heartbeat, a dribble of sparkling drool sliding out of the corners of its mouth. Then it spat the weapon to the ground. The sword hit the floor with a dull clank. It landed next to Cavatina's foot, its midpoint dented with a neat row of tooth marks.

That gave Cavatina an idea. She sang a prayer that called a curtain of whirling blades into being between her and the monster.

"Come on," she taunted, holding them steady over her head. "Take a bite of these, why don't you?"

The spellgaunt hungrily eyed the whirling blades-each composed entirely of magical energy-then dropped from the ceiling. With a sweep of her hand, Cavatina sent the blades into its gaping mouth, even as she dodged aside. The spider stretched its mouth wide and gulped them down as it fell, heedless of the chunks of flesh being slashed from its face. Palps were severed, multifaceted eyes imploded as blades stabbed into them, and blood dribbled from the gaping wound its mouth had become, but still the frenzied spellgaunt, standing on the floor, gulped the blades down, whipping its head this way and that to pluck them from the air. As it ate, its abdomen distended and began to quiver.

Cavatina watched, holding her breath. The spellgaunt's body burst with a loud crack. Bloody chunks of chitin skittered across the floor, leaving smears of pale blue blood. The spider wavered on its spindly legs, then collapsed. It lay on the floor, its jaws weakly gnashing.

Cavatina picked up her sword. The spellgaunt raised its head groggily, empty eye sockets staring sightlessly in Cavatina's direction as it strained to reach the magical items she still carried. A ragged tongue slimed her boot with blood. Cavatina drew her foot away and turned Demonbane point downward. Then she thrust. Chitin crunched as the point pierced the spellgaunt's skull and scraped against the blade as she shoved it home. The monstrous spider quivered then collapsed, dead.

Cavatina put a foot on the monster's head and yanked her sword free. She held her palm over the blade, and a quick prayer confirmed what she already knew. The weapon had been completely drained of its magic. Demonbane had slain its last foe.

She wiped the sword clean on the hem of her tunic then thrust it back into its scabbard. It stuck, momentarily, as the teeth-dented section caught on the edge of the scabbard. Cavatina forced it down. She wouldn't be drawing it again.

She stared down at the dead spellgaunt. "Abyss take you," she growled. "That was my mother's sword." She gave the lifeless body a kick.

Only then did she stop to wonder what a spellgaunt was doing there. She knew little about the creatures, but she didn't think they were normally capable of turning themselves invisible.

Even so, it shouldn't have been able to enter the area undetected. It was a mere animal-albeit a magical one-bereft of either a good or evil aura, but it should have triggered the alarms. Most disturbing of all, it was one of Lolth's creatures.

That alone was cause for disturbing the temple's battle-mistress.

Cavatina sang a prayer that ended with Iljrene's name. When she had the battle-mistress's attention, she sent her silent message.

I found a spellgaunt in the caverns south of the river and west of the bridge. It triggered no alarms. I killed it.

Iljrene's voice came back at once. It sounded high and squeaky, just as it did in person. A spellgaunt couldn't bypass the alarms on its own; someone helped it get there. Begin a search. I'll send other patrols.

Cavatina immediately bent and inspected the spellgaunt's corpse. Something on its back sparkled: diamond dust. Iljrene was right. Someone had helped the spellgaunt to bypass the alarms, someone capable of casting a nondetection spell. Those abjurations lasted only so long. Whoever had worked their magic on the spellgaunt would be close by.

Cavatina remembered Thaleste, waiting below.

She strode over to the broken window and peered down, but there was no sign of Thaleste. Cavatina hoped the novice was hiding behind a pillar somewhere. She cast a sending to Thaleste.

Where are you? What do you see?

The answer was a moment in coming. There's another priestess down here. A dancer. I'm going over to talk to her.

Cavatina frowned. It wasn't yet time for the evening devotions, and even if it had been, a dancer shouldn't be there. Eilistraee's faithful danced naked, save for their holy symbols. While the area was well patrolled, it still had its dangers. Venturing into it unarmored would be a foolish thing to do. Losing oneself in a dance of devotion there would be more foolish, still.

A chill slid down Cavatina's spine as she realized what Thaleste might have just spotted. She sent a second, more urgent message.

Thaleste! That may be a yochlol in drow form! They have powerful enchantments. Get away from it!

No reply came.

Cursing, Cavatina leaped through the gap in the floor. Descending swiftly, she looked around for Thaleste. She spotted movement: Thaleste's legs, disappearing behind a column. Someone-or something-was dragging her away.

Cavatina cursed. She should never have left the novice on her own. She crossed the cavern floor in great bounding leaps, levitating slightly with each step. As she ran, she cast a protection on herself. She no longer had Demonbane, a weapon that would have sliced neatly through a yochlol, even were it to shift to gaseous form, but she did have her magical horn. She raised it and blew a blast, aiming it at the column ahead. A blare of noise crashed through the cavern, rattling the loose stones on the floor and shattering the fragments of clearstone that lay there. The sound wouldn't harm Thaleste-the magical horn had been attuned to do no damage to Eilistraee's faithful-but it would stun and deafen everything else in its path, leaving larger creatures bleeding from the ears and killing lesser creatures outright. A yochlol would probably just teleport out of the blast, but at least that would drive it away from Thaleste.

Releasing the horn, Cavatina wrenched her holy symbol from around her neck. Holding it aloft, she sang a prayer. A beam of light formed around the pendant then grew until it was the length of a bastard sword. The blade-shaped moonbeam crackled with magical energy as Cavatina held it aloft.

"Come out from behind there," she shouted. "I know what you are."

A naked drow female staggered out from behind the column, hands clapped over her ears and an anguished expression on her face. For a heartbeat, Cavatina still believed it to be a yochlol-a weak one that had been damaged by the blast. Then she saw the sword-shaped pendant hanging between the female's breasts. No servant of Lolth's would wear Eilistraee's holy symbol, even a false one. When the priestess stumbled and fell to her knees, but the rubble she landed on neither shifted nor made a sound, Cavatina realized the whole thing was an illusion. She glanced up to see a mass of web hurtling down at her.

"Eilistraee shield me!" she shouted.

The magical shield appeared above her just in time to send the web sloughing off to one side. Heaving the sticky mass behind her, Cavatina sprang into the air. She could finally see what she was dealing with: an aranea, a shape-shifting spider capable of assuming humanoid form. The aranea was in hybrid form, a drow female at first glance but with a strangely articulated jaw and black bristles growing out of her head in place of hair. She wore a blood-red robe that hung heavily due to its chain mail lining, but her legs were bare. Strands of webbing dangled from the bottom of the robe that was just long enough to cover the rounded bulge of her spiderlike hindquarters. She clung to the column of stone with bare feet and her bare right hand. Her left hand was encased in a gauntlet that had a dagger blade protruding from between the knuckles. A platinum disk hung around her neck on a chain. Cavatina knew what the medallion's symbol would be by the vestments the aranea wore. She was one of Selvetarm's faithful-a Selvetargtlin.

The blast from Cavatina's horn didn't seem to have hurt her at all. The aranea had probably already been out of range above it before it sounded.

All that flashed through Cavatina's mind in an instant, followed by cold rage that the enemy had penetrated the caverns surrounding Eilistraee's temple. The aranea shouted. A pleasant humming filled Cavatina's head, but it was gone an instant later. Whatever spell the aranea had cast was too weak to affect the Darksong Knight.

Cavatina countered with one of her own, a song of smiting. The aranea reeled as it struck her, eyes rolling back in her head, but she recovered in time to leap away from the column as Cavatina came at her with the moonblade.

The aranea landed on the floor of the cavern, and Cavatina followed. She feinted with the moonblade, thrust, but the Selvetargtlin was too skilled to fall for such tactics. Suddenly she was inside Cavatina's guard, the stench of her spider musk filling the Darksong Knight's nostrils. Cavatina twisted to the side, anticipating a slash from the gauntlet blade as she shoved the enemy to arm's length once more, but the aranea instead thrust her fingers out stiffly.

"Selvetarm!" she screamed.

Blades erupted from the aranea's hands, legs, face, and scalp-even her clothing. Hundreds of them, slender and deadly. Still screaming Selvetarm's name, she flung herself at Cavatina.

It was a suicidal move. Cavatina thrust her moonblade at the aranea's chest. Any other sword might have been turned or at least slowed by the chain mail lining of the cleric's blood-red robe, but the moonblade was a thing of pure magic, like the blade barrier Cavatina had summoned earlier. It slid through the chain mail like a hot knife through soft wax, and Cavatina's hand and arm were wet with blood. Even though the thrust was to the heart, the aranea had enough fight left in her to slam her arms together, driving the spike-thin blades in through the holes in Cavatina's chain mail. Cavatina gasped in agony as they pierced her sides.

The aranea sagged against Cavatina but still did not die. Hot purple blood sprayed Cavatina's chest and face as the Selvetargtlin, her eyes rolling wildly, twisted her left arm, trying to bring her gauntlet blade to bear. The blade only managed to graze Cavatina's right cheek, but the wound throbbed as if boiling oil had been poured into it. A foul smell rose from the cut, and Cavatina could feel herself weakening with each pulse of her heart. The periapt around her neck absorbed the initial injury-the cut itself-but there was something more.

The aranea had used magic to envenom her.

Furious, she thrust the aranea away from her, screaming out as the blades tore free of her flesh. The moonblade in Cavatina's hand flared silver-white as the aranea's blood sloughed off it.

Selvetarm's priestess fell to the ground and lay there, blood bubbling from her lips. "You're too late," she said in a voice choked with blood and insane laughter. "It's already done."

A bloody hand trembled toward the holy symbol that hung at the aranea's neck. Cavatina, in agony from her many wounds and with blood running down her sides in rivulets, realized that the Selvetargtlin was trying to cast one last spell. She slashed down with her moonblade at the aranea's wrist, severing its hand. Blood rushed from the stump like water from a broken pipe. The aranea trembled then lay still.

Cavatina had just started to turn away when the body exploded, pelting her with a rain of bloody flesh and slivers of bone. She ducked then glanced at the spot where the aranea had fallen. All that lay there was a blood-soaked robe, empty and loose on the cavern floor. The largest piece of the body was the size of a fingernail.

There was no time to contemplate what had just happened. Blood loss had made Cavatina weak, and her legs felt ready to collapse at any moment. Calling upon her goddess, she sang a healing spell. Eilistraee's moonlight illuminated her body, knitting flesh and replenishing the blood she'd lost. The shallow cut on Cavatina's cheek, however, remained. It would close in time, but for a while the Selvetargtlin's dark magic would deny it the benefits of magical healing.

There was no time to worry about that, though. Cavatina hurried around the column, looking for Thaleste.

The novice lay face-down on the cavern floor, buried under a thick tangle of spiderweb. Tearing the sticky mass away, Cavatina saw a bloody puncture in the back of Cavatina's neck: a bite. The aranea's venom wasn't usually fatal-it typically sapped the strength, rather than killing outright-but in some instances it could kill. Dropping to her knees, Cavatina laid her palm across the wound and sang a prayer of healing. Under her touch, the wound closed. A second prayer drove the remaining toxins from the novice's body.

Groaning, Thaleste sat up. Cavatina placed a hand on her shoulder, steadying her. It was only then that she noticed the novice's sword lying beside her. Its tip was blooded, but just barely-whatever wound the weapon had inflicted had been slight indeed.

Thaleste touched the back of her neck with a shaking hand then stared at her fingers, obviously surprised to see no blood. She was still inexperienced enough to be astonished by the fact that another drow had come to her aid.

"Did we kill her?"

Cavatina hung her holy symbol around her neck. "We did. Your sword thrust weakened her, and I finished the job."

Thaleste smiled. A seed of confidence was in her eye, and over time, it would grow.

Cavatina whispered a prayer and sent, Iljrene, it was a Selvetargtlin. I killed her. We were wounded but have healed.

Iljrene's reply came at once: Well done, but keep alert. Where there's one Selvetargtlin, there's usually more.

Cavatina nodded, still troubled by the aranea's final words. The Selvetargtlin hadn't just been talking about the spellgaunt she'd somehow smuggled into the caverns surrounding the Promenade but about something else, something that had put an evil gleam of pleasure in her eyes even as she died.

She'd gone to her death secure in the knowledge that Selvetarm would reward her for whatever dark service she'd performed.