Resurrection (3 page)

Halisstra looked from Uluyara and Feliane and was suddenly aware of the looks-behind-the-looks on the faces of the Eilistraeeans. She floated between them, speared by their gazes, their expectant expressions. She realized then what she had seen moments before in Uluyara's eyes: doubt.

They doubted her or were beginning to doubt her.

She felt a flash of anger, but it dissipated almost immediately; she also saw genuine concern in their eyes. They loved her and accepted her as a sister despite their doubt. Halisstra's mind turned to Quenthel and Danifae, her former "sisters" in faith, both so different from Uluyara and Feliane. Quenthel would not have abided doubt; and Danifae…

Danifae Yauntyrr stood on the same precipice on which Halisstra recently had stood, teetering between Lolth and Eilistraee, torn between the habits of an old life and the hope of a new one, afraid to take the next step. Halisstra believed that Danifae too could come over to the Dancing Goddess, if only she
would.

In a visceral way, Halisstra
needed
Danifae to submit to the faith of Eilistraee. Through the Binding, she had come to know Danifae well. They were very much alike, Halisstra and her former battle-captive. She knew that Danifae too could be redeemed, that she could be turned from Lolth, and she knew too that Danifae's redemption would validate Halisstra's own.

"Halisstra?" Feliane said.

Halisstra looked from one to the other of her sisters and forgave them for their doubt. How could she be angry at them for doubting her when she was beginning to doubt herself?

"Halisstra?" asked Feliane again, her hazel eyes soft but her grip hard. "Do you believe what I have just said? That we and the Dancing Goddess will help you bear your burden?"

Halisstra looked into Feliane's eyes and managed a nod. "I believe it," she said, but was not sure that their help would be enough.

Uluyara blew out a breath and said, "Perhaps we should make an offering to the Lady before venturing farther?"

"A good idea," Feliane said, still eyeing Halisstra.

Uluyara took from around her neck a pendant of silver, upon which was engraved a sword encircled by a swirling ribbon-Eilistraee's holy symbol. She cradled it in her palms.

Yor'thae,
hissed the aether, and Halisstra detected a note of anger in the wind's voice.

"This is an ill place for a dance," Feliane said, looking around at the souls and gray swirls.

"True," answered Uluyara, "but let us at least take a moment to pray."

All agreed, and together the three worshipers of the Dancing Goddess, two drow elves and a moon elf, gathered into a circle and asked Eilistraee for strength and wisdom while the souls of Lolth's damned streamed by, while the storms of Lolth's power raged around them. Halisstra felt like a hypocrite throughout.

Afterward, with doubt still stabbing at her, she asked her sisters, "Are we certain that we can we do this?" She had asked them the question before, but she needed to hear the answer again. She put her hand to the hilt of the Crescent Blade, scabbarded at her waist. It felt warm against her flesh. "This is only a blade. And we are only three."

Uluyara and Feliane shared a look of concern before Feliane said, "That is the Crescent Blade, Halisstra, consecrated by Eilistraee. It will serve. And you must not think that our strength is measured in numbers. Our strength is measured in faith."

Halisstra was not sure that her own faith would provide much strength. Still, she looked into her sisters' eyes and saw firm resolve there. She took what strength she could from them.

Uluyara nodded at the line of shades moving past and said, "Let us continue. Our path remains clear. The gates to Lolth's domain are now open. The souls will lead us to her."

Halisstra tried to imagine what it would be like to stand before Lolth, to do battle with the goddess she had worshiped for almost her entire life. She could not conceptualize it. It seemed absurd. And yet…

Perhaps it was possible.

"She is awake but I am not certain that she is fully returned," Halisstra said. "She is calling across the cosmos for her
Yor'thae,
her Chosen."

Feliane and Uluyara stared at her for a long moment.

"Yor'thae,"
Uluyara said, tasting the word on her tongue and crinkling her forehead at its flavor. "How do you know this?"

"I heard the term once, long ago," Halisstra lied.

Uluyara bored into her. "That's not what I mean, Halisstra Melarn. I mean: How do you know that she is calling for her Chosen now?"

Halisstra felt her whole body flush. She knew that she had just increased whatever doubt they harbored. Shame warred with defiance within her, and defiance won.

With effort, she recovered the dignity and assurance that had been trained in her from birth as the First Daughter of House Melarn.

"By my soul," she said, with as much certainty in her tone as she could muster, "I serve Eilistraee the Dark Maiden. Do not doubt it. Lolth's voice is an echo in my mind. A distant echo."

Her sisters continued to eye her. Feliane was the first to speak. Her angular, pale face wore a soft smile.

"I hear truth in your words," she said and looked to Uluyara. "That is enough for me."

"And me," Uluyara said and looped her pendant around her neck. "Forgive us, Halisstra. It just seemed strange that Eilistraee would choose one so recently separated from the Spider Queen to bear her blade. That strangeness made me… concerned." She took a breath and straightened. "But it is not for us to question the will of the Dark Maiden. You
are
the bearer of the Crescent Blade. Come. We'll follow these unfortunates to Lolth and do what we came to do."

With that, the three set out again, following the line of the dead. Uluyara's words bounced over Halisstra's brain, and she could not help but wonder what exactly it was that she had come to do.

Yor'thae,
said the wind into her ear.

As they flew through the fog of the aether, the energy bolts and power maelstroms grew more common. Halisstra's entire body felt charged, energized.

"We're getting closer to the source of Lolth's power," she said, and Feliane and Uluyara nodded. Only afterward did it occur to her to feel alarm that proximity to Lolth's power quickened her soul.

A short time later, they saw ahead a huge whirlpool of black and viridian energy, slowly churning. Its eight spiral arms extended out into the aether to almost the length of a crossbow shot. The whole of the maelstrom reminded Halisstra of a stylized rendering of a spider. She found its slow rotation hypnotic. One after another the souls streamed into it and vanished.

"That is the doorway to Lolth's plane," Halisstra said.

A bolt of ochre lightning split the emptiness.

Her companions nodded, eyeing the maelstrom. Feliane looked more pale than usual. The weight of their charge was settling on all of them.

"Are you prepared?" Halisstra asked, as much of herself as her comrades. She drew the Crescent Blade from its scabbard. In her other hand, she held her small steel shield-
Seyll's
shield.

Face grim, eyes fixed, Uluyara nodded. She drew her own blade, put her horn to her lips, and sounded a short blast that echoed through the Astral. The souls showed no sign of having heard.

Feliane drew her thinblade and readied her round shield. She looked so small.

"Follow me," Halisstra said and propelled herself toward the whirlpool. She was careful to look none of the souls in the face.

She realized as she entered the portal that they should have taken a moment to offer a prayer to the Dark Maiden before entering Lolth's domain. She was certain the oversight had been accidental.

Almost certain.

As the energy of the gate took her, she felt herself being pulled between the planes. As she came apart, the word
Yor'thae
sounded once more in her ears.

Then it was over. He snapped forward in space and caught up with the rest of himself at the portal's destination. Healed and refreshed from Quenthel's and Danifae's spells, he stood under a nighttime sky on the rocky ground of the Demonweb Pits, Lolth's domain.

Quenthel stood to his right, regal and serene. Danifae and Jeggred stood to his left, a small, dangerous spider and her hulking draegloth. A cool wind blew from the…

Pharaun frowned. He had no sense of direction and nothing from which to gain his bearings.

Danifae looked around, one hand absently tangled in Jeggred's filthy mane. The wind pressed the former battle-captive's
piwafwi
against her body, tracing a sensuous line along the curve of her hips and the fullness of her breasts. She smiled and started to speak, but Quenthel interrupted her.

"We have arrived," Quenthel said in a hushed voice, looking out over the landscape. "The goddess's name be praised."

That seems a bit much, Pharaun thought but did not say. He saw little worthy of praise. Lolth might have moved the Demonweb Pits from the Abyss to its own domain, but the plane remained little more than the same blasted wasteland. He recalled that other gods in the drow pantheon-among them Kiaransalee and Vhaeraun-maintained domains somewhere in the Demonweb Pits. Pharaun could not see where. From what he could see, the whole of the plane was Lolth's.

They stood in the darkness atop a low rise overlooking a rolling plain of rocks that extended to the limits of their darkvision. In the distance, lakes of some caustic substance bled thick smoke into the air. Great chasms and gorges scored the landscape, open wounds in the earth whose depths Pharaun could not determine from afar. Caves, pits, and craters opened everywhere in the soil, like burst boils, or perhaps screaming mouths. Pharaun saw no vegetation of any kind, not even scrub or fungus. The land appeared dead, blasted as if from a great cataclysm.

Thin, curiously curved and kinked tors of black rock jutted at odd angles from the earth. The smallest of them stood as tall as Narbondel but half as big around, and the wind and weather had left each as pockmarked and hole-ridden as the corpses that had littered the streets of the Braeryn a decade before, when black pox had run rampant among Menzoberranzan's poor. There were hundreds of them, and several had toppled over the years. The broken chunks lay strewn over the ground.

Pharaun studied them for a few moments more, struck with something about their shape. They were reminiscent of something…

"Are those the petrified legs of spiders?" he asked and was certain of it even as the words left his mouth.

"Impossible," Jeggred said with a snort.

But Pharaun knew better. The spires of black stone poking out of the ground were the weathered legs of petrified spiders, spiders that must have been as large in life as the stalactite fortress of House Mizzrym. The Pits had buried their bodies long ago, leaving only the legs exposed. Pharaun imagined the bloated stone bodies that must lie below the surface. He wondered if the spiders had died and been turned to stone in whatever cataclysm had left the Demonweb Pits a wasteland.

"If Master Mizzrym is right," Quenthel said, eyes flashing, "we would have been blessed indeed to have seen such servants of the Spider Queen in life."

Pharaun thought that he had seen more than enough servants of Lolth already. He put the huge, dead arachnids out of his mind and examined his surroundings more closely.

Webs covered everything, some of ordinary size, some of enormous proportions. They hung like silvery curtains between many of the spires, blanketed the tunnel mouths, shrouded the open ground, blew over the landscape in sticky balls, and floated on the wind like the snow Pharaun had felt on the World Above. Some were larger than the calcified webs of Ched Nasad.

"Her webs encase all," Quenthel said.

"And the world is her prey," Danifae added.

Behind them, there was no evidence of the portal. The journey from the old Demonweb Pits to the new had been one way. Spells would have to return them home,
if
they returned home.

The wind picked up into a gust, spraying dirt and webs. An eerie keening gave Pharaun gooseflesh.

It took him a moment to pinpoint the source of the sound: some of the webs, thick-stranded, silvery nets strung here and there, vibrated when the wind passed through them. The vibrations caused a haunting scream that rose and fell with the breeze. The spinners of the webs were head-sized, long legged, elegant looking spiders with narrow red-and-yellow bodies.

"Songspider webs," Quenthel said, following Pharaun's gaze. A hint of awe colored her tone. "The voice of Lolth."

She held her viper-headed whip in one hand and the five red and black snakes swayed to the keening, as though hypnotized. Quenthel leaned an ear toward the serpents and nodded at something they mentally communicated to her.

"The webs call to Lolth's Chosen," Danifae added, eyeing Quenthel.

"Indeed," Quenthel said, giving Danifae a veiled look.

Pharaun thought "Lolth's Chosen" a poor choice of words. Even he knew that the Spider Queen did not so much choose as offer. The one who seized her offer-Quenthel, no doubt-would become her Chosen.

In any event, he heard no words in the keening of the webs, though he did not doubt Danifae's claim. Lolth spoke only to her priestesses, not to males.

He looked up to see a cloudy, starless night sky roofing the ruined landscape. Through a single hole in the cloud cover, like a window, a cluster of eight red orbs glared earthward. Seven burned brightly; one was dimmer. They were grouped like the eyes of a spider, like Lolth's eyes. Pharaun felt the weight of them on his back.

Below the clouds but still high in the sky, green, yellow, and silver vortices of power churned and spun. Some lasted a breath, some longer; but all eventually dissolved into a hissing explosion of sparks as new vortexes formed. Pharaun took them to be a byproduct of Lolth's reawakening, the remnants of divine dreams, perhaps, or the afterbirth of chaos. Often, one of the vortices would eject what Pharaun assumed to be a soul.

The glowing spirits thronged the night sky, a semi-translucent, colorful swarm flitting through the dark like a cloud of cave bats. Most of them were drow, Pharaun saw, though he saw too an occasional half-drow, draegloth, and even a rare human. They paid no heed to Pharaun and his company-if they could even see them from so high up-but instead fell into a rough line and flew off in generally the same direction.

"A river of souls," Jeggred said.

"Which appears to have a current," Pharaun observed, watching the souls form up and flow as one toward some unknown destination.

"Lolth has broken her Silence and now draws her dead to her," Danifae murmured. "They are nothing but shadows now, but they will be re-clad in flesh if their petition is accepted."

Quenthel stared at Danifae with a look of such contempt that Pharaun could not help but admire the expressiveness of her features.

"Only if they reach Lolth's city and are found worthy, battle-captive," Quenthel said. "That is a journey that I, and only I, have already made once."

Danifae answered Quenthel with an impertinent stare. The expression did nothing to diminish the beauty of her face.

"No doubt the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith was found worthy as a shade," Danifae said, and her tone made the words more question than statement. More importantly, her choice of honorific suggested that she did not acknowledge Quenthel to be the highest ranking priestess in attendance.

Quenthel's eyes narrowed in anger, but before she could respond, Danifae said, "And no doubt the
Yor'thae
too must make the journey to Lolth's city to be found worthy. Not so, Mistress Quenthel?"

Another strong breeze excited the webs near them and set them again to singing. In the keening, Pharaun fancied he heard the whisper of
"Yor'thae."

Quenthel and the serpents of her whip eyed Danifae. The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith tilted her head at something projected into her mind by her scourge.

"Can you not answer that question without the aide of your whip, aunt?" Jeggred said with sneer.

The heads of Quenthel's weapon swirled with agitation. The high priestess kept her face passive and strode up to the draegloth and Danifae. Both priestesses seemed lost in the shadow of Jeggred's bulk.

Jeggred uttered a low growl.

"Did you say something to me, nephew?" Quenthel asked, and the serpents of her whip flicked their tongues.

Jeggred stared down at his aunt and opened his mouth to speak.

Danifae placed a hand on the muscular forearm of his fighting arm, and the draegloth held his tongue.

"You spoke out of turn, Jeggred," Danifae said and lightly slapped his arm. "Forgive him, Mistress Quenthel."

Quenthel turned her gaze to Danifae while her whip serpents continued to regard Jeggred with cold menace.

Quenthel stood a full hand taller than Danifae, and with the strength granted her by her magical belt she probably could have snapped the younger priestess's spine with her hands. The battle-captive kept her hand clear of the haft of her morningstar.

"For a moment, it seemed as if you had forgotten yourself, Danifae Yauntyrr," Quenthel said, in a tone of voice reserved for scolding children. "Perhaps the planar travel has disoriented you?"

Before Danifae could answer, Quenthel's gaze hardened and she said, "Allow me to remind you that I am the High Priestess Quenthel Baenre, Mistress of Arach-Tinilith, Mistress of the Academy, Mistress of Tier Breche, First Sister of House Baenre of Menzoberranzan. You are a battle-captive, the daughter of a dead House, a presumptuous child lacking the wisdom to temper your snide tongue." She held up a hand to forestall Danifae's response. "I will forgive your presumption this time, but consider well your next words. When Lolth's decision is made, her Chosen may feel compelled to right previous insolence."

Beside Danifae, Jeggred's rapid respiration sounded like a duergar's forge bellows. The powerful claws on the ends of his fighting arms clenched and unclenched. He looked at his aunt as though she were a piece of meat.

In answer, the heads of Quenthel's whips hissed into his face.

Out of prudence, Pharaun called to mind the words to a spell that would immobilize Jeggred, should the need arise. He knew where his loyalties would lie if the rift between Quenthel and Danifae became an open battle. Quenthel had just recited her title to Danifae. Pharaun would have added one more:
Yor'thae
of the Spider Queen. Lolth had brought Quenthel back from the dead. For what other purpose would the Spider Queen have done so?

To her credit, Danifae stood her ground in the face of Quenthel's anger and showed not the least fear. Her striking gray eyes revealed nothing. She lifted her hand and made as though to raise it to Quenthel's face, perhaps to stroke her cheek. When the whip-serpents turned from Jeggred to hiss and snap at her fingers, she jerked it back.

"Those days are past," Quenthel said, through a tight jaw.

Danifae sighed and smiled. "I seek only to see that you fulfill your destiny, Mistress of Arach-Tinilith," she said, "and to do the will of the Spider Queen."

While Pharaun mentally dissected the reply for the meaning within the meaning, Quenthel said, "We all know what is the will of the Spider Queen. Just as we all know who will be the Spider Queen's Chosen. Speaking names is unnecessary. Signs will bespeak the
Yor'thae.
Let each interpret those as they will. But an unfortunate fate awaits those who misinterpret."

Danifae's beautiful face adopted an unreadable veil but she held Quenthel's eyes. "An unfortunate fate indeed," she said.

Quenthel gave Danifae a final look, turned back to the draegloth, and asked, "And you, Jeggred. You have had an opportunity to reconsider your course. Is there something you wish to say to me now?"

Pharaun could hardly contain a grin. Quenthel Baenre had arrived in Lolth's domain a new woman. No longer was she the whispering, diffident female who spoke only to her whip; she was once again the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith who had led them from Menzoberranzan, the First Sister of the most powerful House of the city.

In that moment, Pharaun thought her more sexually appealing than even Danifae.

In the next moment, he realized he had been too long away from his paid harlots.

Jeggred too must have sensed the change in his aunt. Had Pharaun ever pitied anything in his life-he had not, of course-he might have pitied the draegloth. Instead, he found Jeggred's obvious discomfiture amusing and deserved. The half-demon had thrown his allegiance to Danifae and was facing the consequences of that mistake. Quenthel would not be forgiving.

Jeggred started to speak, but Danifae, still staring at Quenthel, shook her head, once only, a small gesture that quieted the draegloth as effectively as a silence spell.

"Softly," Danifae commanded.

Jeggred deflated and said to Quenthel, "No… aunt."