religious ritual-but the smell of sweat and sex always lingered. She slept on the floor, refusing to take rest in the same bed that she shared with a male. A clay oil lamp sat on a stool near her bed, its tiny flame guttering in the stagnant air. In the corner stood a stone chair,
upon which she hung the few articles of clothing she owned. A chamber pot and washbasin sat on opposite walls.
Danifae owned nothing of significant value except her faith, her holy symbol, and the blackroot distillate that she kept in a vial at her sash. She refilled the vial every fourth tenday by giving her body to an old, half-drow apothecary who worked out of the bazaar. She had made herself immune to the poison long ago through slow exposure.
She had sunk far, she knew, much farther even than when she had been a battle-captive. But she refused to surrender her faith. Most thought her nothing more than an insane whore or a cast-
off hag afflicted with grand delusions. But she was neither. She was a spider, and she was being tested, nothing more and nothing less.
She had failed Lolth back in the Demonweb Pits-that was why she had not been chosen to be the Yor'thae- but she would atone for that failure and someday again find favor in the Spider
Queen's eight eyes.
In the meantime, Danifae murdered in Lolth's name. Every eighth client that came to her garret fell prey to her. The Spider Queen might not have been answering Danifae's prayers, but
Danifae offered sacrifices nevertheless.
She disposed of the corpses by selling them to an elderly drow fungus farmer. Danifae's prey ended up fertilizer in the mushroom fields of the Donigarten.
The weak fed the strong, she thought, and smiled through her scars.
A knock on her door turned her around.
' 'Fae,' said a slurred voice from behind the door. 'Open up. I want to taste your flesh.'
Danifae knew the voice. Heegan, the second son of a failed merchant, who always stank of pickled mushrooms and mindwine.
'Hold a moment,' Danifae said, and the male did as he was told.
Heegan was number eight.
Danifae pulled the vial of blackroot distillate from her pouch, daubed her finger, and coated her lips. Donning a smile, she moved to the door and opened it.
There in the hallway stood Heegan, his white hair mussed, his filthy shirt partially unbuttoned. Danifae stood two hands taller than the male. She looked at his watery, dull red eyes and thought, You are one of the weak.
'Well met, 'Fae,' he said, leering at her breasts, covered only in her threadbare shift. 'Aren't we a pretty pair?'
He dangled a pouch of coins under her nose.
Danifae snatched the coins and slapped him across the face. He smiled through his bleeding lip, seized her in his arms, and pressed his lips to her. His breath was foul, his excited grunts fouler. She abided, knowing that with each kiss he became more ensnared in her web.
She allowed him to steer her toward the bed. He tried to lay her down but she used her superior strength to turn him around and force him down instead. He grinned drunkenly,
muttering some ridiculous endearment.
She straddled him and he licked his lips in excitement. His hands fumbled with her shift, her sash, and she could tell from his movements that more than mindwine was clouding his mind.
His hand passed over the blackroot vial and never paused, so eager was he to get at her skin.
Smiling into his face, she teased him for another thirty count-until his eager expression grew confused, then alarmed.
'What's happening to me?' he said, his speech thick and sloppy. 'What have you done to me,
bitch?'
He tried to shove her off him but the drug had already taken hold. His strength was gone, and he managed only to paw at her shoulders. In moments, he was fully paralyzed and could only stare up at her in horror.
She eyed him coldly, still smiling, and began her incantation. Her voice called upon Lolth,
offering the male's death for her amusement. When she finished her prayer, she put her hands on his throat and throttled him.
He died with bulging eyes and a wet gurgle.
'You are the weak,' she whispered in his ear. 'And I am the spider.'
Chapter Seventeen
Halisstra stepped into the Pass of the Soulreaver and felt her body stretch through time and space. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep moving forward. Vomit raced up her throat, but she fought it down.
A narrow path stretched before her and behind her. Sheer walls rose to either side. A mist cloaked her ankles.
The mist screamed at her and hissed.
She clutched the Crescent Blade. She was not alone and she knew it.
'Come out,' she said, her voice low and dangerous.
Ahead, the mist swirled and formed into a vast serpent whose body stretched behind it to infinity. Black, empty eyes stared into Halisstra's soul and pinioned her in place. The serpent opened its mouth and hissed. The sound turned Halisstra's legs to water.
Deep within the serpent writhed the tiny, partially consumed essences of millions of failed souls. Their screams, rich with despair, fat with terror, bombarded Halisstra. She struggled to stand her ground. She saw her own fate in them-she too was a failed soul-but instead of causing her despair, it raised her anger.
'Face me,' she said and did not know whether she was talking to the creature or to someone else.
The serpent hissed again and slithered sinuously forward. The souls wailed their pain and terror with each movement of the creature.
Halisstra stared at the glowing souls and wondered for a moment if Ryld was trapped within the creature. She decided that she did not care and moved forward.
She roared, lifted the Crescent Blade, and charged, meeting the serpent's advance with one of her own.
The miniature golems swarmed forward at Gromph. The transmutation that allowed him to fight prevented him from casting any spells to stop them, and he refused to abandon his station over the prismatic sphere atop the main body of the golem.
The smaller constructs scrabbled and leaped up the body of the golem to get a Gromph, thirty of them, forty. The archmage roared and brandished his axe.
A spider golem landed on his back, then another, and both bit into his flesh. Others clambered up his legs to beat at his chest. His armor spells deflected some but not all of their bites, and he grunted with pain over and over again.
He grabbed one of the creatures by a leg, threw it atop the body of the golem, and chopped it with his axe. He chopped another, and another, all the while waiting for the transformative spell to abate so that he could focus on the real issue-the prismatic sphere.
To his horror, the miniature golems that he struck split into smaller fragments and within a five count sprouted eight legs each and came at him again.
He cursed, swung at more of the spiders, again and again. Each time he struck, the small constructs burst into pieces, and each piece itself became another, smaller spider golem. Killing one made five more.
He was surrounded by a roiling swarm of constructs. They came at him from all sides, a swarm of fearless, remorseless killers. Eventually, he stopped chopping at them with his axe and instead tried to throw or push them
