vicious fury seized his mind.
By the time the spell had transformed him fully, Gromph felt nothing but a powerful compulsion to chop the golem into bits. He reveled in the spell-induced ferocity. The knowledge imparted to him by the spell crowded out his understanding of the Weave, but he did not care. He would not have cast spells even if he could have. Spellcasting was for the weak.
The axe felt weightless in his hand. He crumbled the suddenly blank parchment in his fist and spun the axe around him with one hand, so fast it whistled.
The golem fixed its emotionless gaze upon him and bounded over the altar. The creature moved with alacrity and grace, unusual for a construct. Its weight caused the temple floor to shake.
Gromph brandished the axe, roared, and charged the rest of the way down the aisle.
Quenthel sat cross-legged on the floor of her room, praying by the light of a sanctified candle,
asking for some revelation that would explain this absurdity. She clutched her holy symbol in her hand and ran her thumbs along its edges.
Lolth did not answer. The Spider Queen was as silent as she had been immediately before her rebirth.
Merely thinking of that obscenity caused Quenthel to shake with rage. The serpents of her whip, laying by her side, sensed her anger and swirled around her in an attempt to comfort their mistress.
She ignored them, rose, and took the whip and candle in her hand. Quenthel threw open her door, exited her chambers, and stalked the great hall of House Baenre, seething. Her wrath went before her like a wave and cleared her path.
Servants saw her coming, bowed their heads, and scurried into side halls and off chambers.
Her forceful strides caused her mail to chime and the candle flame to dance.
How could Lolth have chosen another? Quenthel was-had been she reminded herself with heat-the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith. Lolth had brought her back from the dead.
But the Spider Queen had chosen her, an upstart whore!
The serpents of her whip offered soothing words in her mind but she ignored their soft hissing.
You are still the First Sister of House Baenre, K'Sothra said.
True, Quenthel acknowledged. But she was no longer Mistress of Arach-Tinilith. She had seen to that.
Quenthel knew it was blasphemous to think ill of the Yor'thae, but she could not stop herself.
Quenthel would have preferred the dignity of a clean death to the shame of being removed from
Arach-Tinilith. Triel regarded her differently since her removal; everyone in the House did.
Why would Lolth have cast her so low? After all she had done and endured?
No one had been better suited to be Lolth's Yor'thae. No one. Especially not her.
A cobweb caught Quenthel's eye. Her rage subsided, and she stopped in the middle of the hallway. She saw nothing unusual about the web, but it seemed meaningful to her.
It hung in a corner, strung between two tapestry-covered walls, silvery in the candlelight. It was big.
A stonespider's web, Quenthel decided. She had seen stone spiders grow half as large as her hand.
A few desiccated caveflies hung from the strands like tiny marionettes.
She walked to the web, head cocked, and held the candle aloft.
She studied the strands, thinking them beautiful in their intricacy. Every strand had a reason to exist in the web, every strand served a purpose.
Every strand.
The web made sense in a way that her life, death, and resurrection did not.
She looked more closely at the web, moved the candle around it, but saw no spider. She lightly brushed it with her finger, hoping the vibration would draw the creature out of hiding.
Nothing. The caveflies bounced on their strings.
For no reason that she could articulate, Quenthel hated the web. An impulse took her, and she could not stop herself.
She lifted the candle and held its flame to the strands. She knew it was blasphemy but she did it anyway, unable to contain a crazed grin.
The strands curled and disintegrated, vanishing into fleeting streams of smoke. The caveflies rained to the floor. Warming to her work, Quenthel continued until she had obliterated all sign of the web. She kneeled and burned each of the caveflies, one by one.
The serpents of her whip were too stunned even to hiss.
Mistress? K'Sothra finally managed.
Quenthel ignored her and stalked off, her rage inexplicably abated.
Chapter Sixteen
Danifae lost track of Jeggred the moment she stepped onto the Pass of the Soulreaver. One moment he was there; the next, gone.
She was alone.
A narrow passageway stretched before her, lined on each side by sheer walls of rock. A gray mist crawled over the ground. Her skin went gooseflesh from the chill.
With nothing for it, she walked forward. She felt as though she was covering leagues with each step, taking days to draw each breath. She pressed on, waiting for the Reaver to show itself.
After only a few moments, whispers sounded in her head, then hisses, pained wails. She could not see the source.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose. Her breath came fast.
It was behind her! She knew it with certainty.
She lowered her morningstar and turned around slowly.
A mere five paces away, the misty, serpentine form of the Soulreaver filled the passage. Its empty eyes reduced her to insignificance. Its open mouth could have swallowed an ogre whole.
Deep in its throat, in its bowels, glowed innumerable souls, as tiny as the dolls of a child, as desperate and pained as victims of a torturemaster.
Danifae struggled to find herself, to show no fear. She knew she faced another test of her worthiness.
She touched her holy symbol, and the amber felt cool in her palm.
The Reaver was so immense, so ancient, so terrible. .
The screams of the souls filled her mind. She bore it, though she wanted to dig a furrow in her skull.
The Reaver opened its mouth wider, simultaneously beckoning and challenging her to come forward, to test herself against what it would show her.
She started forward on leaden legs but stopped after only two steps.
Danifae gestured it toward her and said in her most seductive whisper, 'You come to me.'
It did not hesitate. Mouth agape, it streaked at her, terrifyingly fast. She held her ground as its maw engulfed her.
A thousand muttering voices, terrified, hopeless voices-the voices of the trapped souls-rang in her ears, sounded in her being.
She answered their scream with one of her own.
Anival, First Daughter to the Matron Mother of House Agrach Dyrr, watched from high atop one of the walls as the Xorlarrin forces shifted their ranks in preparation for an assault. She could see little. Strategically placed spheres of magical darkness shielded much of the movement.
Shouted commands and the ring of metal carried across the moat chasm.
Standing beside her, Urgan, the scarred weapons master of House Agrach Dyrr, said, 'They will attack within the hour, Mistress Anival.'
Anival nodded. She put her hands to the hafts of the two enchanted light maces that hung from her belt. Each sported a head fashioned in the shape of a spider.
'The timing is not coincidental,' she said but did not explain. She assumed the attack to be designed to
