Terror filled Alagh?n as news of Borran Kiosk's return spread through the community. During the night, the stories had circulated through the sailors' bars and been taken with them back to their ships. By morning, the stories flowed to the townspeople buying bread and meat for their tables, washing back from the merchant ships to land like the tide, by way of cargo handlers and merchants. In each telling the stories of the watch's encounter with the mohrg and the violent deaths of the priests of Eldath grew fiercer and uglier.

High in one of the older buildings on the west side of Alagh?n, not far removed from the gate that allowed entrance in from the western trade routes, Borran Kiosk gazed down from between the slats of a boarded-over window. From there the mohrg watched people gather fearfully in the streets and along the docks.

"You take pride in your accomplishment," Allis said.

For a moment, Borran Kiosk did not answer. After whisking him away to this hiding place, traveling swiftly across the rooftops of the city for a time, then dropping down to the street level and managing all the twists and turns there, the werespider woman had disappeared. No longer of the flesh, the mohrg needed no sleep. He'd passed the long, slow night aching for revenge against the living who still called Alagh?n home. It had been everything he could do to stay hidden, and only his fear of Malar's retribution had stayed his hand.

Sails lifted on one of the ships in the harbor. Slowly, the great Sembian merchant ship turned and headed east, bound for other ports.

They escaped, Borran Kiosk couldn't help thinking.

The idea rankled him, but he consoled himself with the thought that though the ship's crew had escaped his physical wrath, his arrival had given them stories they would never forget and never forget to pass on.

Borran Kiosk turned toward his visitor, momentarily putting aside his anger at her for not having come earlier. His great purple tongue slid through his jaws and tasted the air, licking the woman's scent from it.

"Yes," he said, "I do take pride in the fear they have of me. I have expended great effort to acquire that fear."

Allis regarded him from the doorway at the other end of the room. She was holding a woven basket that was covered by a dingy scrap of cloth. She looked like she was just returned from washing laundry.

She said, "You are everything I was told to expect."

"Who told you what to expect?" Borran Kiosk asked.

Ignoring him, she crossed the room and deposited the basket on a slanted, three-legged table.

The rooms had been vacant for years. Spider webs filled the corners and created fragile latticework bridges between piles of rubbish. Judging from the amount of refuse in the building, for a time after being vacated it had become a dumping ground for the businesses and homes around it.

Unleashing the rage that filled him, Borran Kiosk reached for Allis, closing his skeletal hand around her upper arm and pulling her around.

The woman turned easily, coming around almost like a lover acknowledging the favored attentions of her suitor, but even as that thought filled Borran Kiosk, he saw her change. She wasn't afraid of his grim, fleshless face as he'd thought she would be.

Her head erupted, becoming bigger and rounder, sprouting eyes and fangs. Venom dripped from the slash of mouth that no longer fit a human face. The arm Borran Kiosk held turned rough and covered over with spiky hair. Her simple green dress dropped to the floor, pooling around misshapen spider feet as she soared above him in height.

"No!" she said, her voice filling the enclosed space. "Don't you dare put your hands on me!"

As a spider standing on six of her eight legs, the woman was taller than Borran Kiosk, almost to the point of bumping her head on the ceiling rafters, and she was almost four times as large. She struck with her other forward leg, slamming into the mohrg's chest and head with incredible strength.

The impact lifted Borran Kiosk from his feet, though if Borran Kiosk chose not to be moved, not much could move him.

He flew across the room, mind working with lightning speed, and slammed against the far wall. He broke through the thin boards that covered the bare bones of the wall and stopped against the inside of the outer wall without breaking through. The impact fractured his left femur in two places, the breaks quite apparent.

Borran Kiosk threw a hand out, a spell already on its way. He watched the giant spider bob and weave at the other end of the room. The realization that she was afraid of him soothed the mohrg's nerves like a healer's balm. He was more in control of the situation than he'd expected.

His anger vanished, replaced by triumphant humor. In the past, his peers had pointed to those quicksilver mood changes as proof of his madness, but he knew he only looked on the world in a manner different from most. He closed his hand, stilling the destructive magical energies he'd almost unleashed.

Borran Kiosk grabbed the edges of the wall and extracted himself. Debris from the shattered wall rained around him, but he ignored it. His left leg moved awkwardly as the broken ends of the femur grated against each other. He reached down then spat his tongue out.

Wrapping the broken bones in the thick purple tongue, he used the magic that was an inherent part of what he'd become. Pain flared through his leg for a moment, then was gone. When he removed his tongue, the femur had been healed and nothing remained of the breaks.

Borran Kiosk raised his fierce gaze to the werespider and said, "You're afraid of me."

The huge spider shifted back and forth, scuttling on the tips of all eight legs, the fat body hanging ponderously between them.

"You are evil," Allis accused.

"And what are you?" Borran Kiosk advanced on her.

"I am a servant of Malar."

"Then why fear me?" Borran Kiosk asked, continuing to walk toward her. "I, too, walk in the Beastlord's shadow and serve his wishes."

"I don't fear you."

"You lie," Borron Kiosk said, letting his tongue whip through the air. "I can taste it."

The spider retreated, pressing up against the wall behind her. She was too large to attempt to go through the door or any of the windows, and returning to human size would weaken her.

She said, "You live only to kill."

"As does Malar," Borran Kiosk said.

"That is but one aspect of his nature," Allis objected.

"A very important aspect."

The spider reared up on her four back legs, flattening against the wall. She held her four front legs before her, raised to defend herself if necessary.

"Malar called me here to help you," she said.

"Malar doesn't speak directly to someone like you."

Borran Kiosk stopped in front of her. He shook broken pieces of boards and splinters from his bloody priest's cloak.

"Who?" he asked.

The spider didn't hesitate. "I can't tell you," she said. "If I did, they would kill me."

Summoning a fireball, Borran Kiosk held it dancing in his fleshless palm. The heat was intense. He heard leftover cartilage in his hand pop and crackle, surrendering to the heat. The fire couldn't actually harm him, but the effect of the crackling sounds on Allis was immediate.

The spider shivered and drew back, the flames of the fireball reflected in all of her eight eyes.

"What do you think I will do?" Borran Kiosk whispered.

The cold, dispassionate words hung in the emptiness of the room. The spider shifted, and for a moment Borran Kiosk thought she might try to escape from the building. The thought of a gigantic spider suddenly scuttling across the rooftops of Alagh?n amused him. Everyone in town would assume it was his handiwork, and in a way it would be.