Quenthel and Danifae both appeared lost in rapture, temporarily mad perhaps. Each held her holy symbol in her hands; each wore the wild but assured expression of an ecstatic.

Pharaun knew that ordinary spiders answered the priestesses' commands, but he did not know whether the arachnids native to the Pits would. Besides, the priestesses' powers were limited.

They could not command millions of spiders, could they?

Pharaun liked the situation less and less. He reached into his piwafwi, removed a ball of sulfur-soaked bat guano, and held it between thumb and forefinger-just in case. Ordinarily, he would not have considered offering violence to Lolth's children, at least not in the presence of her priestesses, but if it came to killing spiders or dying himself under a heap of hairy bodies, the choice would be an easy one.

As ready as he would get, he waited.

The sunlight slid across the rockscape, birthing more spiders, closer, closer. .

When it reached them, motion exploded all around. Thousands of spiders boiled from their holes like steam from a heated beaker, hissing and clicking. From a large tunnel to Pharaun's right, rothe-sized masses of hairy spider legs issued forth-five, ten, a score. His heart hammered between his ribs. The creatures had no bodies as such, no heads. They were nothing more than a clumped, disgusting, squirming mass of legs, each of which was longer than Pharaun was tall,

and eight of which ended in a pointed claw of chitin as long as his forearm.

"Chwidencha," Pharaun said. " Two score or more."

Chwidencha-he'd heard them called "leg horrors"-had once been drow, or perhaps drow souls,

but they had failed Lolth, and as punishment had been transformed by the Spider Queen into that twisted form. The Demonweb Pits did not appear to Pharaun to be a paradise for the Spider

Queen's faithful. It looked more like a prison for her failures.

The chwidencha's rapid, undulating movement was enough to cause Pharaun a wave of nausea. Impossible clusters of long, jointed legs, like a nest of vipers, squirmed a greeting to the red light of the dawn.

Though they had no eyes that he could see, the chwidencha immediately noticed the companions. Forty or more mouths offered muffled hisses from orifices buried under nests of legs.

"I see them, Master Mizzrym," Quenthel said, turning around, but her voice lacked the same confidence it had held a moment before.

The thousands of spiders boiling from the holes around them did not come near the chwidencha and left the companions unmolested, a small island of sanity amidst the chaos.

Lolth's damned appeared to command a certain respect, or fear.

With alarming speed and coordination, the chwidencha pack encircled them at a distance of perhaps ten paces.

The four drow closed ranks a few steps, a reflexive action. Pharaun called to mind the words to his fireball spell but held off casting. He shared a look with Quenthel but could not read her face. Jeggred's chest rose and fell heavily, and his fighting claws flexed. The draegloth interposed himself as best he could between the arachnids and Danifae but it was little use. They were surrounded. His growls answered their hisses and tapping claws.

Outside the ring of Lolth's damned, the spiders that had boiled forth stood still for a moment,

like arena fighters gathering their strength. Then the urge to slaughter reached them, and they erupted into violence. Thousands upon thousands of spiders engaged in an orgy of dismemberment and feeding. Squeals, screeches, and hisses rang through the morning air. The ground vibrated under the volume of violence.

Within the ring, the tension grew. The chwidenchas' legs churned sickeningly, as though they were agitated or somehow communicating. Though he could see no eyes, it was clear to Pharaun that the chwidencha were regarding them. He felt the weight of their looks, the heaviness of their malice, the depth of their hate.

"Well-" he started to say.

At the sound of his voice, the chwidencha pack hissed as one. The smaller legs sprouting from what would have been their faces writhed, squirmed, and parted to reveal fanged mouths larger around than Pharaun's head. Finger-length fangs dripped a thick, yellow venom.

To all of them, Quenthel said, "We will not harm any of Lolth's children."

Pharaun could see that Quenthel was sweating as badly as he was, though her voice was calm.

"These are more like stepchildren," he answered and ran through the inventory of spells in his mind.

"They are neither," Danifae said, raising her holy symbol-a red spider encased in amber-

before her. "These are her damned."

At the sight of Lolth's brandished symbol, the chwidencha pack emitted a high-pitched screech that made the hair on the nape of Pharaun's neck stand on end. As one, they spasmed in anger, legs churning and squirming. The claws on the ends of their legs cracked rock, and

Pharaun could not help but imagine what they could do to flesh.

"They do not appear to be the religious type, Mistress Danifae," Pharaun said.

Danifae did not lower her symbol.

The wind gusted, set the songspider webs to screeching, a sound that temporarily rose above even the cacophony of the Teeming.

This entire plane of existence is mad, Pharaun decided. The priestesses are mad. I am mad.

The chwidencha answered the song of the webs with another screech of their own. Pharaun didn't care for the look of their open, fanged mouths.

"Mistress," he said to Quenthel, "perhaps you could discourage further discussion with these creatures? I find them poor conversationalists. Mistress Danifae?"

For that, Quenthel turned to look at him just long enough to stare daggers. Danifae smirked.

Quenthel raised her jet symbol at the chwidencha, mirroring Danifae's gesture and eliciting a similar response.

Venom dripped to pool on the ground. Hisses answered their movements.

Quenthel pronounced, "Leave us now, damned of Lolth! We are servants of the Spider Queen about her will. You will not impede us."

"Back to your holes!" Danifae commanded, offering her own symbol.

A palpable wave of divine power went forth from both the priestesses.

Pharaun expected to see the chwidencha turn and flee into their tunnels but the leg horrors did not move, at least not away from them. More hisses answered the priestesses' command; legs squirmed and writhed. As one, the chwidencha took a slow step forward, and the circle of safety shrank.

While Danifae wore an inexplicable smile, Quenthel's uncertain expression told Pharaun everything he needed to know.

As she stepped through the portal, Halisstra felt spread across a distance vast and deep. In only a fraction of a heartbeat, the portal moved her from the relatively calm gray nothingness of the Astral to-

She found herself in mid-air, falling.

Before she could activate the levitation power of her brooch, she dropped five paces and hit the ground with a grunt. She managed to keep her feet and found herself standing under a dim sun on blasted ground in the midst of a nightmare.

Spiders surrounded her, swarmed her, engulfed her, from hand-sized arachnids scurrying underfoot to horrid monsters twice her height. The creatures tore each other to pieces all around her. Hisses, clicks, and squeals filled her ears; black, brown, and red ichor stained the ground and splattered her face.

Halisstra was aswim in an ocean of Lolth 's maddened children. The Spider Queen must have caused Halisstra to arrive in the midst of the chaos as penance for her apostasy.

She steadied her stance, brandished the Crescent Blade, and took in her environment with only a single glance. She stood on a bleak, pit-ridden rockscape in the shadow of a slim spire of unusual looking rock, a tor of black stone that looked as though it should have toppled of its own weight in the gusting wind. The whirlpools of Lolth's reawakened power dotted the cloudy sky.