shrieked as the Justicar walked to the furnace, his huge strength holding the living corpse over his shoulders. The Justicar gripped, wrenched, and bowed Recca's body, bending it like a green stick. Bones split, flesh tore. With a hideous crack, Recca split in two, top ripping from bottom and troll blood spraying onto the walls. The Justicar tossed the monster's thrashing legs into the furnace where they instantly caught fire. The upper body still fought and screamed. Jus held Recca by the neck, looked at Enid's corpse, and said-'Here's Justice'-then flung Recca's body to the flames.
Recca wailed as he burned. The Justicar held Recca's stolen heart in his hand and pulped it, hurtling the remains into the flames. Recca's stolen troll blood boiled, and his flesh blazed like paper. The blazing skull howled once more then split in the ferocious heat. Bones and teeth scattered as the monster crashed dead into the fires.
The Justicar turned and retrieved Benelux from where she lay. The sword seemed strangely subdued.
'Not well done. It cost a friend.'
He strode over to Polk and Henry, both now stirring-both smothered in dead spiders and splashed with blue fluid. Dazed, Polk stared over at the furnace where Recca burned.
'Son…?'
'You're all right. It's done.' The big man set the badger on his feet then helped Henry to stand. 'We're leaving.'
The whole palace suddenly gave a titanic shudder. The floor split open, and blank, empty space appeared in the gap. Whatever will had held this plane together, it was now breaking apart.
Henry tried to lift Enid and drag her away, but she was too heavy. Stricken, the boy looked up at the Justicar. The big ranger sank to his knees and rested a hand upon Enid's braided hair-still soft, still warm and fragrant. He surged to his feet, pushed Henry on his way-and with one stroke of his sword, cut off Enid's tail. Henry cried out, but the Justicar already had the bloody fragment through his belt. The ceiling ripped open, and blank nothingness flooded into the hall.
The Justicar grabbed Polk and Henry and ran hard and fast for the stairs.
'Go! Back to the bronze gates! We're leaving!'
The spider palace tilted as its legs gave way. Fighting through the crash and fall of wreckage, the Justicar hauled his friends outside, leaving Enid's corpse to the flames.
Lolth lurched down the trail, blind from the pain. Her entire body was a raging ocean of fire. Flesh still hissed and dripped from her bones. She promised eternal torture to every one of her enemies.
The bronze gates that led into the Demonweb were just ahead. Once there, she could hide, heal, and abandon this damaged body for a new one. On any plane but here, she was immortal. Anywhere but here, she could come back to fight another day. Feeling each step tearing her flesh, Lolth lurched into a run.
That damned Justicar and his worthless faerie! Lolth turned, saw her huge spider palace through a haze of agony, and then croaked out words of command. Explosions rocked the palace and it began to dissolve, breaking apart as Lolth abandoned the magics that held it together. She betrayed her palace staff, her handmaidens, and her followers as she left the palace behind, certain of killing her enemies in the wreckage.
The gates were only a dozen steps away, when a voice snapped out at her from the rocks.
'Hey, bug bitch! Here's a present from Enid!'
Escalla!
Lolth dived, and a jet of blue holy water crashed into the ground behind her. A tiny splash of it seared her flesh. Lolth blindly fired a lightning bolt, shattering rock and dirt, but the faerie had gone. Looking wildly about, Lolth prepared a spell-then decided to turn and run. She saw the bronze gates ahead, laughed wildly, and ran through the shadows as she sped along the path.
The Demon Queen focused all her attention on her goal. She was only four steps away from salvation when the ground fell away beneath her. A cry of agonized despair escaped her as she looked down and saw the yawning portable hole, filled with shiny blue liquid.
There was a splash and a scream. Morag slithered up the path, over a boulder, and stopped at the big brass gates. She stared as she saw Cinders the hell hound lying splayed over a rock, his nose pointing down and his tail all a-wag. Escalla-filthy, tired, and worn-was wiping her face. She looked up at Morag, then stooped to pick up the portable hole that lay spread out across the trail.
Expecting a savage fight with Lolth, Morag readied her blades. She looked sharply about the shadows and the rocks.
'Well, is she here? Did you find her?'
There was a snigger, and a thump-thump-thumping of a hell hound's tail.
Escalla silently closed up the portable hole, sealing away the open well of blue liquid. On the ridge above them, Lolth's spider palace exploded, crashing in fragments to the sands. With Henry under one arm and Polk under the other, the Justicar sped out of the mouth of the palace just as it collapsed. The big man turned, watched the palace fall, and then looked over at Morag, Cinders, and Escalla. Cinders lit a flame to guide his friends.
They came together by the gates. Jus held Escalla, burying his face in her hair, while Henry looked desolately at the palace ruins. Morag heaved a sigh of release and opened up the gates into the Demonweb, quietly ushering the adventurers home.
In the fields of the Flanaess, an army stalled.
There were long columns of spiders, gargoyles, and trolls. Demons had been marching, surrounded by stinking legions of undead. The whole mass had been poised like a spear aimed at the cities of the Nyr Dyv, the great inland sea. The army now numbered almost a million strong.
And then a presence-a purpose-lifted from their minds.
The insensate carnivores staggered. The multitudes of scorpions and spiders suddenly animated, their will their own again, and they found themselves hostile, hungry, and surrounded by prey. Giant spiders flung themselves on screaming trolls. Gargoyles turned and ripped into packs of flapping varrangoin. Demons raved and tore each other into fragments, while the undead fell apart or simply wandered away.
A million strong, then a hundred thousand. A hundred thousand, and then a few small bands gorging themselves on carrion. The armies of Lolth dissolved like mist upon the winds. Lolth's spells were broken, her realm destroyed, and Keggle Bend was avenged.
26
In a strange, warm land of sand and palms, the skies shone a clear metallic blue. No clouds broke the smooth arc of the heavens. No storms or winds were allowed to spoil the careful order of each day. It rained at appointed times, heralded by the appropriate deities riding chariots through the air. The crocodiles basked, the ibises strutted importantly across the shores, and all seemed well with the outer planes.
The river Lethe flowed slow and solemn here. Every day, a fanfare of trumpets sounded just after dawn. The denizens of this place-clean, white beings with the bodies of humans and the heads of ibises-strode to the banks, and with formal gestures bid the reborn to arise. Dripping with the waters of forgetfulness, worshipers of Thoth who had deceased on the material plane arose blinking from the waters. Their ibis heads were new and unfamiliar, and they walked clumsily with their new bodies. The attendants wrapped them in white robes and led them to the temples where they would be instructed how to serve their benevolent, wise god.
The temple itself was without parallel. A vast stone statue of white marble reared a thousand feet into the sky-Thoth the Ibis in his crown, with his shepherd's crook in one claw and a khopesh sword in the other. Stone wings shadowed and protected an avenue lined with two thousand armed and armored guards. The hawk-headed soldiers stood rigid and silent. Behind them were ranked stone golems, crouching like leopards and with the heads
