She had been ejected from one such and thanked the goddess that it had not been higher off the ground. A line of souls streamed through the heavens, all of them floating in the direction of a distant mountain range, drawn there by the lodestone of Lolth's power.

An eerie keening rang in her ears, the sound of songspider webs whistling in the blustery wind, like some obscene attempt to mimic the sound made by Seyll's songsword. In it, she heard the echo of the word she had heard on the Astral, the word that made the hair on the nape of her neck stand on end:

Yor'thae.

She had no time to consider the sound further. The spiders around her noticed her. A sea of frenzied fangs, pincers, legs, and hairy bodies broke around her. Arachnids scuttled over rocks,

over each other, over her. She slashed and cut but there were too many. They bit and tore indiscriminately, killing and devouring anything in their path. Spider bodies thumped into her;

fangs tried to bite through her mail; claws sent her spinning, knocked her to her knees.

She refused to die on her knees.

"Goddess! she screamed and swung the glowing Crescent Blade in a wide arc.

As if in answer, Feliane and Uluyara appeared in the air through a short-lived gate that appeared perhaps twenty paces to her right and five paces high in the air. They fell to the ground,

and she saw them for only an instant more-both wore expressions of surprise and horror-before they too were buried under a mass of writhing, leaping spiders.

From her knees, Halisstra swung blindly, hitting spider flesh with every pass. Ichor sprayed,

splattered her face and hands. Hissing and clicking filled her ears; squeals of pain.

She fought her way back to her feet, impaling a large blue spider on the end of her blade. She slipped in its gushing fluids and nearly fell. A huge, black, hairy arachnid leaped on her back and sank its fangs into her shoulder, but her mail withstood the attack. She flung it from her and stomped its thorax to mush as another huge spider reared before her, lunged forward, and bit at her legs. She dodged backward and fended it off with the Crescent Blade. She felt as though she were up to her waist in the creatures; with each step, she crushed half a dozen small spiders under her boots. She saw no way out, no way she would ever get free. She would die under their fangs, and her body would be left a desiccated husk blowing in the screaming wind.

"Goddess!" she cried again, hacking wildly with the Crescent Blade.

The enchanted steel killed where it struck, slicing arachnid flesh easily, but there were thousands of them. Eilistraee had no particular power over the creatures, and in her desperation

Halisstra almost fell back into her old habit of channeling Lolth's power to command spiders. It would be so easy to simply order them back to-

Uluyara's horn rang, and Halisstra latched onto the sound with the desperation of the drowning. She remembered the first time she had heard its clear call, on the World Above under the silver light of the moon. She centered herself, at least for a time, and with effort resisted

Lolth's pull.

If she were to live, she would have to save herself with the tools that Eilistraee, and only

Eilistraee, had put into her hands.

Holding the Crescent Blade in both hands, Halisstra slashed about her with an abandon born of hopelessness, sending legs and spider flesh flying. Her small shield made her two-handed grip on the Crescent Blade a bit awkward, but she managed. She wanted the extra force to her swings.

Fangs clamped on her arm, her leg, and pierced her mail and flesh. Agony raced through her body, and warm poison throbbed into her veins. She grabbed the hairy blob on her forearm and squeezed it until it popped. She stabbed downward at another spider, impaling it, cross cut to her right, and took the mandible from another. She found it strange that killing Lolth's creatures did not elicit the same elation she had felt back in the forest of the World Above when she had killed the phase spider in the name of Eilistraee.

Instead, she felt out of balance, dirty, guilty.

"I'm sorry," she murmured as she killed but was not sure what she meant. The words just seemed to fit. Spider blood splattered her hands, her cloak, her face. "I'm sorry."

Despite her words, she hacked her way through the roiling mass of bodies, legs, mandibles,

and ichor toward where she had last seen her fellow priestesses. To her relief, she saw that both

Feliane and Uluyara had found their feet and their blades. They dodged nimbly amidst the chaos,

slashing and stabbing. They looked as though they were dancing-they leaped, spun, twirled, and tumbled, serving the Lady of the Dance even while they slaughtered. Both sported cuts and bites,

and Feliane had a dark puncture on her bare forearm. Still, Halisstra thought them beautiful.

Their blades whistled through the air, an answer and a challenge to the strange keening. Halisstra caught Feliane's eye as both cut their way through the never-ending tide of spiders.

"Halisstra!" Feliane called. Cutting, chopping, her round face was splattered with blood and ichor.

Uluyara whirled a circle beside the elf priestess, her blade a blur, and met Halisstra's eyes for a moment.

"Here!" Halisstra answered.

Without stopping, she opened the abdomen of a spider, then another and another. She was fifteen paces from her sisters.

From out of the maelstrom of bodies a brown sword spider leaped high above the fray. Time slowed for Halisstra.

Easily as large as a pack lizard, the creature's eight arms ended in claws that looked like short swords and killed just as effectively. Halisstra's breath caught as the creature reached the apex of its leap. She had seen sword spiders fight in the basement arena of House Melarn, cutting down out-of-favor male warriors with bloody, brutal efficiency.

As the sword spider descended toward Feliane, it clustered its swordlike claws together to form a single impaling blade, pointing downward at the slight elf priestess.

"Above!" Halisstra shouted but could not be sure that Feliane heard her. "Feliane!"

A large spider appeared before Halisstra, and she hacked off two of its legs with the Crescent

Blade.

The shadow of the descending sword spider must have blotted out the dim red light of the sun.

Feliane looked up, saw it, slipped to the side, and tried to raise her blade defensively. She was a heartbeat too slow. The sword spider crashed down on her, knocking her blade aside and driving her to the ground, flat on her back. Its clustered legs sheared through her armored shoulder and sank into her flesh. She screamed in pain, and blood spouted. Her sword fell from her hand,

skittered away, and was lost under a throng of arachnids.

The sword spider straddled her small form, caging her in its bloody legs. She struggled beneath it, punching with her good arm, kicking, but she was already growing weak from blood loss. The blows crunched into the spider's huge body but seemed to have little effect other than to elicit an angry hiss.

A pack of giant tarantulas drove Uluyara from Feliane's side, and Halisstra lost sight of the

High Priestess.

Halisstra shouted again and cut her way toward her sisters, hacking mercilessly at anything in her path. She left a trail of severed legs and pedipalps in her wake. Fourteen paces, twelve, ten.

She killed with every step. Ichor covered her; soaked her. Small arachnids teemed over her exposed skin, her face, and her hair. She devoured those that got near her mouth and spat the pieces to the ground.

She knew that she would not reach Feliane in time.

The swords of its claws still glistening red with the elf's blood, the sword spider pinned the dying Feliane with three of its legs and raised its forelegs high in a strike that would lay open her chest and pierce her heart.