Queen of the Demonweb Pits

Outside the eastern gate, five hundred prisoners had been dragged into a huge circle two hundred yards across. While drow priests drew magic symbols in human blood, monsters killed the prisoners and strung their body parts into the titanic glyph. The circle flashed with power, turning brilliant white.…

And a vast bronze spider leg crept into view.

The magic circle now formed the base of a shimmering dome-a vast gateway into the Abyss. The gate looked into a place where the ground itself was formed from screaming souls, and where the air rang eternally with screams. From this nightmare heaved a spider shape so huge that it made trolls and ogres scatter like mice.

It was a machine-a palace made from a sickly bronze-green metal. It stood on eight vast legs, with countless windows sparkling like malevolent eyes. A hundred feet tall-the ground shuddered as it walked. Great fangs made of black steel arched above the armies of the damned.

With a hiss and roar, the spider palace trundled forward step by thunderous step, then halted beside the city walls. Its head hunted back and forth like a beast scenting prey. In the fields below, the drow, spiders, trolls, and troglodytes shook blood-spattered weapons and screamed in acclaim.

A door opened in the side of the palace. The vast metal spider sank down slowly, a staircase extending like an obscene tongue from between its jaws. As the palace settled into place with a deafening clang of brass, a small black figure emerged in the doorway.

She was perfect-lean, skin black as midnight and with silk-white hair so long that it trailed on the ground. Clad only in jewels, the apparition spread a pall of nightmare about herself. Lolth, Queen of Spiders, Mistress of the Drow, emerged from her palace to gaze upon her conquest.

Behind Lolth slithered a tanar'ri with a woman's torso, six arms, and a lower body shaped like a snake. Trim and sparse, the demon followed after Lolth and snapped commands to the troops, making them pull away from their prey.

The Justicar risked a moment more to watch the distant figure, and then he pulled carefully away.

'Lolth.'

Cinders think is time to go.

'Absolutely.'

The Justicar was alone and on the run again, with a nightmarish army all around him. It was as if the old, savage days were alive again. The Justicar remembered a figure in eagle armor holding a huge black sword, then shook the image off and kept himself in harsh reality.

Old times, old friends, old enemies were gone.…

It was a full invasion. Lolth had made a gate, and she would stage more troops into the Flanaess. The Justicar slid back through reeds, kept his sword naked in his hand, then ran west toward the hills. His leg hurt, and his body was in shock, but he pushed himself into a run that soon put the town of Keggle Bend far behind.

Behind the departing ranger, climbing from the monstrous brazen palace, a figure stirred. Hissing cold with undeath, the figure killed the grass beneath its feet. Trolls and gibbering demons backed away from it in terror. Rusted eagle armor gleamed with patches of frost.

Dead eyes scanned the city and dismissed it. Dead eyes looked at roads and weeds and all the thousands of hidden places only a trained eye could see-and then settled on a slight swirl in the mud beside the riverbanks. A few bricks were hidden by the reeds.

The sign of man-made works feeding into the river.

The cadaver in its eagle armor stirred. It abandoned Lolth and her demons, leaving the burning city at its back. Walking down into the water, the cadaver disappeared with a sullen hiss of icy steam.…

9

The minions of the Demon Queen molded Lolth a throne from the flayed bodies of her victims. She shifted her weight. One or two of the furnishings were not quite dead, and Lolth idly threw a spell intended to keep it that way. She took the skull of the local high priest and poured herself a drink, regarding the fallen city with a sigh.

Bodies were being dragged from the still-burning city to the gates where frost imps froze them for storage. Hundreds of survivors had been herded into great lines beside the city walls. Relaxing with her drink, Lolth raised one brow as she saw Morag slithering along beside the prisoners and diligently counting heads.

Lolth gave a weary sigh and said, 'Morag, you drabble-tail! What are you doing?'

'Accounting, Magnificence.' The tanar'ri wrote upon pages made from human skin.

A human lunged out of the line of prisoners, armed with a jagged piece of iron. He threw himself straight at Morag's back. One idle flick of Morag's tail caught her attacker and slammed him against the nearby wall. Disgusted, Morag changed an entry in her files.

Annoyed by the display, Lolth leaned one elbow upon her squirming throne.

'Morag? Why, pray tell, are you counting cadavers?'

'I am tallying our stocks, Magnificence.' The secretary stabbed at her parchments with her pen. 'A little mathematics will tell us how long our stores will last.'

Lolth sighed. 'Morag, these wretches are to feed my teeming hordes. Now what is the one dominant characteristic of a teeming horde?'

Morag raised one elegant brow. 'The smell, Magnificence?'

'No. They teem, Morag! They breed, they die, they subdivide like germs! They do not have fixed numbers and little record sheets!' The demon queen folded up her arms. 'This is chaos, Morag! Chaos is expressive, adaptable, and incalculable! Sometimes you can be so… so baatezu!'

Morag folded up her notes. 'Magnificence, we need to know how long the troops can be fed.'

'We are attacking another city tomorrow, Morag. Then another and another. That's the way a conquest works. Eventually the entire population of the Flanaess will be our slaves and cattle through all eternity.' Lolth slurped from her skull cup. 'Improvise once in a while, Morag! I do. It's called genius.'

Morag muttered something sour that the goddess failed to catch. Lolth sniffed and turned her eerie, flame- filled eyes upon her secretary. 'Morag, are you wearing perfume?'

'I am wearing scent, Magnificence. Black lotus.'

'How absurd. Whatever for?'

'I am meeting someone, Magnificence. An incubus.'

Lolth looked at her secretary in mocking amazement. 'An incubus! You?' The demon queen tried not to laugh. 'Whatever do you do together?'

'We read.' Stung, Morag sensed Lolth's laughter. 'He happens to be highly intellectual!'

Wiping a mock tear from her eyes, Lolth tried to keep her face straight. 'Oh, Morag, I always wondered why we never bothered having a court jester.' The goddess's voice rang like a choir as she sighed in mirth. 'Go slither off to your chores. Tell the commanders I will see them immediately. We need to start shuffling more troops onto this delightful little world.'

The secretary thrashed her coils. Proud and angry, Morag jammed her notebooks beneath her arms. As she moved away, Lolth's mocking voice called after her. 'Morag? Where did our cadaverous friend trot off to?'

'He left, Magnificence.' Morag dropped her voice to a mutter. 'About the time you plumped your mammalian arse on that chair.'

Cocking a sharp eye at Morag, Lolth reached for another drink. 'Excellent. Another little plan coming to glorious fruition!' The demon queen raised her skull-cup to her secretary. 'Off you go! If you need me, my mammalian arse and I shall be right here.'

Seething, Morag slid off through the bodies, blood, and rubble.