Resurrection (36 page)

"You seek reasons, daughter, purpose, and that is your failing. Do you not see? Chaos offers no reasons, has no purpose. It is what it is and that is enough."

Quenthel heard the words and in them understood how she had failed her goddess. In that failure, she had failed her House and herself.

She did not have it in her to cry at her failure, not in front of her goddess, especially not in front of her goddess. She would not give Danifae, or what was left of Danifae, the satisfaction.

She lifted her head and looked into Lolth's gray, drow eyes-Danifae's eyes. "Kill me, then. I will not beg for my life."

She almost added the blasphemous, "from you," to the end of her statement, meaning Danifae. But Danifae was no longer just Danifae, and Quenthel had to come to terms with that. Danifae was part of Lolth, the Spider Queen, the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Quenthel's goddess, and in a form greater than before.

Lolth's full lips curved back in a smile to reveal not teeth but a spider's fangs.

"And that is why you will live," Lolth said.

Quenthel was not sure if she felt relief, shame, or both. She said nothing, merely bowed her head.

"Leave my tabernacle, Mistress of Arach-Tinilith," Lolth said. "Return to Menzoberranzan and continue to head my faith in that city. Tell what you have seen here."

She stroked Quenthel's hair a second time, less gently, as though controlling an impulse to kill.

"Now," the goddess said. She indicated Halisstra with a nod and added, "Leave this one with me."

Quenthel did not question. She rose, turned, and strode between the abyssal widows until she was out of the temple.

Halisstra could not move. She had heard the Spider Queen speak to Quenthel, but the words did not register, simply skipped off of Halisstra's hearing.

Danifae was the
Yor'thae.
Lolth was reborn.

After a time, Quenthel turned, gave Halisstra one final look-a mixture of hate and respect-and exited the temple.

Lolth had promised that only one would leave the temple alive. Quenthel had just left-alive.

Halisstra was going to die.

The goddess looked upon her. She felt the weight of Lolth's gazes. She awaited the bite of the goddess's mandibles, as she had seen in her vision.

It did not come.

She dared a look up into Lolth's face and saw Danifae there, but also so much more. She still clutched Seyll's sword. She released it and shoved it from her.

"I'm sorry, goddess," she said to Lolth and abased herself fully, "Forgive me."

She knew that her apostasy was beyond words. She had danced to Eilistraee on Lolth's plane, erected a temple to the Dark Maiden atop the Spider Queen's tor. She was the worst kind of heretic.

All eight of Lolth's aspects regarded her, and the silence stretched. When the goddess at last spoke, her voice was Danifae's only, but pregnant with power, thick with anger.

"You have been away from me too long, daughter," Lolth said. "I do not forgive."

Lolth leaned toward her, over her. The seven other bodies of Lolth encircled her. Halisstra could not move. Lolth bent. Halisstra's heart pounded.

Lolth's sibilant voice, more Danifae's than ever, whispered in her ear, "Good-bye, Mistress Melarn. What you could have been is not what you are."

Halisstra screamed when the goddess' fangs sank into her neck, twin rods of agony. The other seven spiders too lurched forward and sank their fangs into her flesh. The pain was agonizing, exquisite. The venom set her skin afire, turned her body red hot. Pain and an inexplicable exaltation caused a spasm to course through her body. Her vision went blurry. She opened her mouth to curse Lolth, to thank her, but she could make no sound. Her life ebbed, ebbed. Briefly, she wondered what would become of her soul in death. She longed for the same annihilation as Seyll.

She smiled as the end came for her.

But Lolth's venom did not kill her. She lingered between life and death.

"Not death, wayward daughter," Lolth said in all eight of her voices. "Your sins were too great for such an easy release. For your apostasy, you will give me an eternity of service as my Lady Penitent, my… battle-captive," she said in Danifae's voice, "neither living nor dead. You are charged to shed the blood of the heretics who follow my daughter, son, and once-husband. Pain will eat at you ever. Hate will fuel you. And guilt will plague you but never stay your hand. This is to be your penance. Your
eternal
penance."

Horrified, Halisstra grasped for death. Futile.

"There is no escape," Lolth said. "Like me, you too will be transformed and resurrected."

The eight body of the Spider Queen took Halisstra in her pedipalps and pulled her under her thorax. Halisstra hung limp in the arms of her goddess. From her spinneret, Lolth drew forth silken webs and with fearsome grace, spun Halisstra into them.

She was being cocooned. It started at her legs and crept up her body. She barely felt it. She barely felt anything. The strands covered her eyes, and she saw only darkness. Lolth dropped her to the floor.

Within the cocoon, Lolth's venom transformed her. She retreated from the edge of death. The venom saturated her to her soul, wracking her with pain, pain that she knew would never end. Something in the webs sank into her skin.

Lolth's power probed her heart and found there the hate that Halisstra had never been able to extinguish, found there the forgiveness and love that she had never fully been able to nurture. Lolth's touch brought the hate to full bloom, and reduced the weakness of love and forgiveness to little more than a single spore.

Her skin grew as hard as her soul. Her strength and stature increased to match her hate. The pain of rebirth was agonizing. She opened her mouth and screamed. It came out as a hiss. She ran her tongue over her lips and felt fangs. She tore through the webs with her newfound strength and freed herself from the cocoon. She rolled out onto the floor of the tabernacle, covered in slime.

The yochlols oozed forward to her and wiped her clean with their tentacles. The eight bodies of Lolth retreated to their web, finished with her.

Beside her, Halisstra saw a sword, Seyll's sword. She closed her hand over its hilt and rose.

Violet flames rose from the blade.

Somewhere deep inside, a tiny part of her watched it all in horror. The small spore of her former self, that piece of her that had found joy dancing under the moon, could only watch and despair.

The rest of her remembered her old life, a life of sacrifice, power, and debauchery. She eyed the blade in her hand, longing to use it.

Perhaps the Velarswood, the Lady Penitent thought, and smiled through her pain.

"Welcome home, daughter," said the eight voices of Lolth.

Quenthel stood outside the temple. She did not look back, even when she heard Halisstra Melarn scream. She looked up at the sky. There, the eight satellites of Lolth burned red, and all burned equally bright. The eighth had been reborn.

She swallowed her frustration, took out her holy symbol, prayed to Lolth, and once more took the form of the wind.

She flew off the tabernacle, descended past Lolth's crawling city, and over the Infinite Web toward the misty Plains of Soulfire. Abyssal widows, yochlols, and spiders still thronged the plains.

She alit on the plains and took her normal form amidst the milling arachnids. None paid her any heed.

Little sign remained of the battle with the yugoloths. The field had been picked clean by the horde.

As before, souls exited the Pass of the Soulreaver to
be caught in the violet flames of the Plains of Soulfire, burning and writhing until weakness was purged from their flesh. Quenthel wondered when next she passed through the plains how long her own her soul would hang in the air, burning, until her weakness was adequately purged.

She saw movement near the ledge before the Pass of the Soulreaver. A towering form called out to her and loped down the path-Jeggred.

She walked forward over the broken ground to
meet her nephew. The draegloth picked his way over the plains, through the arachnids. Blood and gore covered him. Ribbons of yugoloth skin still hung from his claws. His own flesh, torn open by innumerable scratches, cuts, and oozing wounds, looked as broken and battered as the plains around them. One of his inner arms was nothing more than a bloody stump. He slowed as he approached, obviously surprised to see her.

His eyes
narrowed in a question, and he looked up and past her, to the city, to the tabernacle.

"I knew it," he said, grinning like the idiot he was. "It was her."

Her whip stung his hide, and he whirled on her, claw raised. Her stare stopped him cold.

"You were but a fortunate fool," she said, pent up rage making her voice tight. "Lolth is reborn, and now things are as they were. You answer to
House Baenre."

The serpent whips flicked their tongues and hissed.

Jeggred stared at her, indecision on his face.

"Disobedience will be punished severely, male," she added.

Jeggred licked his lips, bowed his head, and bent his knee. "Yes, Mistress."

Quenthel smiled. Cowing Jeggred brought her some small satisfaction but not enough. She stared at the top of the draegloth's head, thinking, her anger unsated.

She incanted a prayer, cast a spell that charged her touch with enough power to kill almost anything.

Jeggred heard her casting and looked up, his gaze wary. Quenthel smiled at him.

"You well served the Spider Queen, nephew," she said, and reached out to stroke his mane.

Jeggred visibly relaxed.

Quenthel's smile faded. She grabbed a handful of the draegloth's course hair and discharged into the draegloth all of her hate, all of her anger, all of the power in her spell.

It hit Jeggred like a giant's maul. His bones twisted and shattered; his skin tore itself open; blood erupted from his ears, eyes, and mouth. He fell to the ground and writhed with agony, roaring.

"But you poorly served me," she said.

She brandished her whip for a killing blow but hesitated.

She had a better idea.

The half-demon clawed his way to his feet, bleeding from a hundred wounds.

"She will kill you for this," he said, spitting blood. "I will kill you."

Quenthel was not sure whether Jeggred meant Triel or Danifae but either way, she could only smile. Jeggred understood little.

"You've served your purpose," she said into Jeggred's bloody face. "And you are but a male."

Around them, the arachnids began to gather, perhaps attracted by the smell of Jeggred's blood.

Quenthel looked into his red eyes and said, "Farewell, nephew. You are my first sacrifice to the reborn Spider Queen."

With that, she held her holy symbol in her hands and offered a prayer to her reborn goddess. Magic swirled around her, magic that would return her to Menzoberranzan.

She had much to tell her matron mother.

Just before the spell moved her away from the Demonweb Pits, she saw a thousand spiders clamber forward, coat Jeggred's body, and begin to feed.

The draegloth's screams made her smile.

She appeared on the broken, cratered landscape amidst caustic pools, steaming fumaroles, and clouds of green vapor. Her demon blood prevented the environment from harming her. She was alone on the plain.

Behind her, Lolth's Infinite Web stretched over a limitless abyss and outward toward forever. The Spider Queen's city, capped with its pyramidal tabernacle, crawled the strands. So too did more spiders than there were demons in the Abyss.

Before her rose sheer jagged mountains as tall as Aliisza had ever seen. Spiders crawled all over them too. Aliisza didn't know what Lolth saw in spiders. The alu-fiend thought them hideous creatures, as ugly as a dretch.

She still did not know exactly what had transpired. She knew only that Lolth had been reborn as something greater than she had been.

And that Pharaun Mizzrym was dead.

The acknowledgment stirred a strange sensation in her, not unlike the way she'd once felt after going without food for a few days. Her stomach hurt, and her legs felt weak. She felt a sense of loss, or at least of missed opportunity. She would miss Pharaun's companionship, his ready wit.

And I bedded him only once, she thought with a pout, though she supposed that was better than not at all.

All around her lay the signs of a great battle. Severed limbs, broken weapon hafts, rent armor, dented helms, broken earth. She had learned through divinations that Pharaun had died there, fighting Inthracis and his ridiculous Black Horn Regiment. She kicked a nycaloth's helm and sent it spinning into the nearest steaming pool.

Though she was invisible, she felt the eyes of the city on her, lurking the way spiders did, watching, waiting for any sign of weakness. She found herself moving slowly across the landscape, as though she were traversing a web and wanted to keep it still lest the vibrations caused by her movement awaken the spider.

The things I do for lust, she thought and smiled through her anxiety.

In the shadow of Lolth's city, alone on the Plains of Soulfire, Aliisza methodically scoured the site of the battle. She used spells to assist her search from time to time but mostly relied on her own eyes and ability to see enchanted items.

Several cast-offs from the battle glowed in her sight but nothing of interest to her until…

There.

There was almost nothing left. His robes lay in tatters. His flesh, even his bones, were mostly gone, consumed by some rabid yugoloth or arachnid-a swarm of either or both.

But something had survived. Aliisza bent and retrieved it. She held it before her face.

Pharaun's severed finger, its flesh intact, still wore his Sorcere ring, which glowed in Aliisza's sight. She looked at the digit for a time, at the smooth skin, the manicured nail. She wondered what it might feel like to have those fingers on her body again.

Laughing, she slipped the finger and the ring into her pocket.

"Well, dearest," she said to the air, "It looks like I'll get a piece of you
after all. I'll have to think about what to do with it."

With that, she teleported away.

Valas Hune crouched near the top of the magnificent, natural staircase that led up from the floor of Menzoberranzan's cavern to Tier Breche. Magical traps and wards glowed on the stairs, and two guards from Melee-Magthere stood at the top.

Valas skirted the wards, and the guards looked over and past him. Shrouded in the shadows, he looked down on Menzoberranzan.

Already the city had mostly returned to normal.

Behind him, slaves labored on Tier Breche, rebuilding the damage done to Sorcere and Arach-Tinilith by the duergar stonefire bombs. Many of the slaves were themselves duergar, former soldiers captured rather than slaughtered by the Menzoberranyr.

Across the cavern, Qu'ellarz'orl stood in all its faerie fire-limned majesty. It looked the same as it had for centuries. With House Agrach Dyrr removed from the Ruling Council, Valas could well imagine the scramble among the lesser Houses to seize Dyrr's position in the hierarchy.

Things had indeed turned back to normal, he thought.

Flesh peddlers, spice merchants, narcotic dealers, and more ordinary sellers thronged the booths and shacks of the city's rebuilt Bazaar. Pack lizards and trade carts crawled along Menzoberranzan's streets.

Qu'ellarz'orl might have been Menzoberranzan's head, but the Bazaar was the city's heart. Valas knew that the marketplace reflected the status of the city at any given time. He could see that trade was thriving, which meant that Menzoberranzan was coming back to life.

Rumors had been swirling through the city, most merely hard-to-believe, but some patently absurd. Valas didn't know what he believed but he did know what he saw: Quenthel Baenre was once again Mistress of Arach-Tinilith and neither Pharaun, Jeggred, Danifae, or any of the others had returned. Valas heard the unspoken message in that. Of the band that had been sent to find Lolth, none but the high priestess had returned.

Valas was leaving the city, lest he too disappear. He had arranged with Kimmuriel, his Bregan D'aerthe superior, to take a scouting mission far from Menzoberranzan. He would return again, but only after enough time had passed so that Quenthel Baenre had forgotten all about him.

To his surprise, the thought of leaving the city turned him maudlin.

Strange, that he would feel nostalgia over such a pit. Menzoberranzan was an ugly, black-hearted bitch who devoured the weak and made bureaucrats of the strong. Still, she managed to evoke a certain attachment in her surviving citizens.

Valas supposed that was the secret of her survival. Mean as she was, the drow who lived there called her home and fought like demons to preserve her. He stared at Narbondel, glowing red in the darkness, signaling another day.

Another day of violence, infighting, murder, and betrayal.

Lolth and the city deserved each other, he decided, and smiled.

With nothing else for it, he turned, melted into the shadows, and headed away from the city for his next mission.

Inthracis the Fifth opened his eyes. Nisviim stood over him, the jackal-faced arcanaloth's expression slack and distant. Without a word, Nisviim turned and exited the chamber.

Inthracis lay there, his new mind racing. He had failed. His last memories were of searing pain. The drow mage had captured and incinerated him with a clever combination of spells. Inthracis resolved to remember the tactic so that he might use it himself one day.

He presumed that Lolth's
Yor'thae
had reached the Spider Queen. He did not know which of the three priestesses had been the Chosen One, and he did not care. He cared only about the possibility of facing Vhaeraun's wrath. If the Masked Lord discovered that Inthracis lived again…

He pushed such thoughts from his mind.

He would simply have to hope that Lolth's wrath with her son would keep Vhaeraun occupied long enough that the Masked God would forget about Inthracis. Meanwhile, the ultroloth would stay in the background for a few decades and allow Nisviim to take a more active hand in the affairs of Corpsehaven.

He sat up, reveling in the feel of his new body. For a moment, he wondered if Lolth too was adorned in new flesh.

He put that thought from his mind, too. He'd had enough of gods and goddesses to last him a long while.