Q'arlynd felt the kiira grow cool against his forehead. He heard his ancestors' whispered disapproval. He interrupted. "No need for that, Master Masoj. A svirfneblin who owes me a favor knows the location of these pools. I'll have the answer, soon enough."

Urlryn snorted skeptically, and Masoj made a sour face. Seldszar, however, looked thoughtful. After a moment of staring at the crystals orbiting his head, he slowly nodded. "Do it. Ask him."

Q'arlynd hadn't mentioned the svirfneblin's gender. Seldszar might have guessed it, of course. He'd have had an even chance of being right. Yet Q'arlynd doubted the diviner ever guessed-about anything.

Seldszar must have foreseen success.

Funny, how Eilistraee's dance worked, Q'arlynd mused. After all these years, he would finally learn what had become of his former slave, Flinderspeld.

Halisstra walked around the throne, her fingers caressing its smooth black marble. The throne was carved in the shape of a spider, resting on its back. The head formed a foot stool; the cephalothorax, the seat; and the bulging abdomen, the backrest. Four legs served to support the chair, while the other four splayed out from either side of the seat and curved toward the ceiling. Between these stretched steel-thread webs festooned with tiny red spiders. Halisstra plucked a strand of web with the tip of her claw. The steel thread vibrated, shedding spiders like drops of blood and filling the audience chamber with a shrill note. The sound sent a visible shiver through the priestess who crawled behind Halisstra, never once lifting her glance from the flagstone floor.

"Beautiful," Halisstra said. She closed her eyes to savor the way the note-chill as a draft from the grave-made the hair on her arms rise. Then she leaned down and curled her fingers in the priestess's long white tresses. She yanked the smaller female into the air and whispered in her ear. "I am pleased with its song. You will be rewarded."

The priestess, clad in a bodice-hugging black robe that would have vanished against her skin in the darkened room but for its hair-thin tracery of white lines, winced at the pain of being held aloft by her hair. "Your pleasure is my reward, Lady Penitent."

Halisstra leaned closer, until the jaws protruding from her cheeks brushed the priestess's neck. "And your pain is my pleasure." She bit, just deep enough to puncture the skin. Then she opened her fingers and let the priestess drop. The priestess fell to her hands and knees, and grunted as the poison took hold, rendering her body rigid.

Halisstra settled herself on the throne. The marble felt cool against her bare skin. She sang a breeze into existence and used it to set the webs vibrating. A thousand shrill notes encircled the throne, like the hum of fast-spinning blades.

"Send in the first petitioner," she ordered.

Unseen hands pushed a female out of the magical darkness that clouded the arched doorway: a priestess of Eilistraee.

She staggered into the room. Her eyes had been seared blind, and her fingers broken. Her dark skin was welted from the beating administered by Halisstra's worshipers, and her lips were swollen and bloody. Yet even as she faltered to a halt, she drew herself erect with a remarkable inner strength.

Halisstra despised her.

"Kneel," she shouted. She wove magic into the word, turning it into a compulsion the priestess could not help but obey. The priestess fell to her knees as if smashed with a hammer. One broken hand lifted to her chest-to the spot where her holy symbol used to hang-then jerked away as it brushed against the obsidian spider that now hung from the silver chain. Her head, however, remained erect. "Eilish… tray… hee…"

"Blasphemy!" Halisstra shrieked. "Do not utter that foul name in the presence of the Lady Penitent, or it will go harshly for you!"

The priestess made a gurgling noise. She laughed! Halisstra sprang from her throne. "You… dare!" she hissed. She towered over the priestess, her spider jaws clacking in fury. The eight legs protruding from her chest arched open, ready to grab. Her jaws fairly ached with the desire to bite and rend.

The priestess spat.

Halisstra snarled and swept the priestess up to her mouth-then realized this was what Eilistraee's bitch wanted. A quick, clean death: to be delivered into the arms of her goddess. "I'm not going to give it to you," Halisstra muttered. She tossed the priestess aside, spun on her heel, and settled herself on the throne. She idly stroked the head of the female who still kneeled, paralyzed, beside the throne, properly subservient. The webs continued to shrill.

She had an idea. "You will be redeemed," she told Eilistraee's priestess with a smile. "I give you a choice: the song or the spider."

The priestess shook her head. "Nuh."

Halisstra shrugged. "Very well then. I'll choose for you." She tapped her claw-tipped fingers against the arm of her throne, pretending to consider. In fact, she'd been lying when she'd offered the priestess a choice: the spider's venom was reserved for those truly worthy of it. "I think you'll choose… the song." She turned to the webs beside her and began to play.

Magic jerked the priestess to her feet. Tugged by the compulsion Halisstra's bae'qeshel music wove, she staggered in a circle around the throne. Halisstra plucked faster, and the dancer's tempo increased. The priestess spun in a ragged pirouette, her arms flailing and broken fingers raised above her head as she circled the throne. Halisstra gave a gleeful peal of laughter and played on. And on. The priestess staggered and fell, but immediately rose to her knees and continued her dance. Her knees left bloody smears on the flagstones.

Halisstra watched, gloating. In a moment or two, it would be over. The priestess would crack and repent. She would shed Eilistraee's faith and cast the tattered skin aside. Embrace the pain, the sorrow, the self-loathing. Sacrifice herself to a force greater than herself. She would become a penitent, redeemed through sweat, blood, and suffering.

Halisstra would break her.

The priestess suddenly lunged at the throne. Halisstra reared back in alarm, but it wasn't an attack. The priestess flopped forward, bringing her neck down atop the web. Steel threads sliced into her neck. Hot, sticky blood sprayed as she fell limp across the arm of the throne like a loose heavy cloak, her head lolling on a near-severed neck

The web strings fell silent.

Halisstra hissed her fury. She yanked the priestess off the web, snapping a strand of it, and stared into the slack-jawed face. "You smile?" she screamed. "You fool! You will never, never be redeemed!" She hurled the body across the room.

The kneeling priestess twitched; her paralysis was starting to wear off. Halisstra leaped off the throne and grabbed her minion, intending to tear her apart for her insolence-she hadn't been given permission to move, Abyss take her-but a whisper of song distracted her. It was coming from the webs on the throne. Halisstra cocked her head, listening. The voice belonged to T'lar, the assassin who'd been the first to accept penitence and redemption.

Lady Penitent, the webs sang. News from Sshamath.

Halisstra dropped the priestess and climbed back onto her throne. Sing on, she ordered. It had better be good news, she thought. She wasn't in the mood for more insolence.

Streea'Valsharess Zauviir is dead. The temple is ours.

Halisstra barked out a delighted laugh.

There is something else you should know. There is a wizard in Sshamath who opposes us.

"Hardly news," Halisstra laughed. "All of Sshamath's wizards are hostile."

This one will bear watching. His name is Q'arlynd Melarn.

Halisstra's breath caught. Her brother Q'arlynd, alive? "Impossible! He died in the collapse of Ched Nasad!"