He threw back his head and roared again.
Another explosion nearly knocked him from his feet. He dug his fighting arms into the rock to keep his balance and ran on.
A shadow fell on him, but he did not spare a glance up. The giant demon summoned by his aunt soared overhead, toward the rear of the mezzoloths.
Jeggred was twenty strides from the first of the creatures. Fifteen. Ten. He looked into their compound eyes, brought his fighting arms up to rend. Five. He could hear their clicks, the ring of their armor.
He leaped high off the path and landed into their midst. His momentum carried him into two of the mezzoloths' glaives, and both sank deeply into his skin.
He barely felt the pain, even as his blood began to flow.
He let fury take him over fully. His claws rose and fell, slashed and tore. Sometimes he struck carapace, sometimes he struck nothing. He had arms in his mouth, bodies, heads. Anything that came within his reach was bitten, rent, torn. Yugoloth blood dribbled down his chin.
Glaives slammed into him but he did not care. Balls of flame exploded against his skin and he still did not care. He felt his blood flowing down his back, his chest, his arms. He was swarmed with mezzoloths. He roared and killed, roared and killed.
Impenetrable darkness suddenly sheathed him. Blind, he continued to rake and slash at anything within reach. He didn't know if the mezzoloths could see within the darkness, and he did not care. He slashed and killed even as he began to grow weaker.
Pharaun watched Jeggred tear down the narrow path and leap into a mass of waiting mezzoloths. The draegloth vanished under an avalanche of black bodies, and Pharaun gave him no further thought.
The klurichir set down toward the rear of the yugoloth army and cut a great swath through their number with its axe. Nycaloths and mezzoloths swarmed it, axes and glaives thumping into its flesh. Its roar rang across the battlefield.
The spider swarm poured down the mountain like an avalanche and crashed into the front of the yugoloth lines. The mezzoloths responded with clouds of green killing gas, which left piles of spiders dead, but the swarm churned forward, devouring everything in its path.
The ultroloth floated over the battle toward Pharaun, perhaps a long crossbow shot distant.
Eight nycaloths accompanied the powerful ultroloth, four to either side. Each of the nycaloths called upon an innate magical power and caused multiple mirror images of themselves to form around them. Eight became over thirty, and Pharaun could not tell which was real and which an illusion.
Half of the nycaloths beat their wings, brandished their enchanted axes, and flew for Pharaun.
The ultroloth followed them, holding a sword in one hand and two crystal rods in the other. The other nycaloths veered aside and flew toward the ledge, toward the priestesses.
'Beware, Mistress!' Pharaun shouted down to Quenthel.
She heard him and looked up.
Quenthel saw the scaled, green yugoloths streaking toward her. She stopped her charge down the path, pulled her holy symbol, and began to incant. Beside her, Danifae too began to chant a spell.
Yugoloths are inured to lightning, Mistress, Yngoth said in her ear. And to fire and ice.
Quenthel nodded as she cast. She knew all about yugoloths and assumed that they had augmented their innate resistances with magical protections. She had no intention of using any of those energy types. Instead, when she completed her spell, a sheath of blue energy flared around each of the approaching nycaloths. The magic of the spell destroyed all of the moisture within the nycaloths' bodies-water, saliva, blood. The creatures had only a moment to scream their agony before Quenthel's spell reduced them to shrunken husks of flesh and bone that fluttered to the ground.
And the high priestess had only a moment to enjoy their destruction before Danifae cut short her spell by slamming her morningstar into the back of Quenthel's head.
Sparks erupted in her brain, pain in her skull. Her vision went dark, and she stumbled forward.
But she did not fall. The blow would have killed most anyone, but Quenthel's protective spells muted much of its force.
She lashed out blindly with her whip behind her and hit nothing. The serpents hissed angrily.
Danifae's voice from behind said, 'Here is the final test, Baenre bitch. You for me, and me for you. Let us see who is to be the Yor'thae.'
Quenthel felt the back of her head-it was warm and sticky with blood, but already her vision was clearing. She turned around, whip and shield at the ready.
'You should have made certain to kill me with that blow, child,' she said.
Danifae whirled her morningstar and answered, 'I will remedy that mistake right now.'
Halisstra awoke on the other side of the Pass of the Soulreaver. The sounds of battle-the ring of steel, the screams of the dying-brought her back to herself.
The din gave way to the words from her vision, which still echoed in her brain: Embrace what you are.
She would. And with the power granted her by Lolth, she would kill Danifae Yauntyrr.
Her hand closed over the hilt of the Crescent Blade, lying beside her on the rock.
She sat up and found herself on a ledge, high up on the mountainside. The Pass of the
Soulreaver yawned behind her. Souls streamed out of it and past her.
Fire had blackened the rock of the ledge, melted it in places. Burned spiders littered the ground, their charred legs curled under their bodies, the hair of their carapaces singed.
'A sign, Spider Queen?' she asked of Lolth.
Nothing.
Then a breeze stirred the dead spiders, caught them up in a tiny whirlwind. She watched them,
transfixed by their tiny bodies floating randomly, chaotically on the eddies of the wind. She sympathized with them.
Staring at the dead spiders, she felt a thrill charge her soul. She grinned, a fierce, hateful smile. She understood at last.
Lolth had told her to embrace what she was.
Eager, she climbed to her feet and studied the face of the mountain.
There. A narrow, deep crack, like a slot.
'I understand now,' she said.
Halisstra stuck the blade halfway into it, took the hilt in both hands, and jerked downward.
The blade resisted her attempt. She tried again. Again. She roared and tried again.
The Crescent Blade snapped in a flash of crimson light. When its steel broke, something in
Halisstra broke as well. Tears flowed down her face, and she did not know why. The tiny seed of doubt, of hate, the power-loving kernel that sat in her center, bloomed fully and flourished. She felt as she had before the fall of Ched Nasad, as though the past days had been a dream.
No, she realized. Not a dream. A test.
And she had finally passed it.
She was Halisstra Melarn, First Daughter of House Melarn, servant of the Spider Queen, and she knew what she had to do.
She would kill Danifae.
She needed to kill Danifae, as much as she once had thought she needed to see her former slave redeemed.
Halisstra watched the blade of the broken sword blacken and shrivel in her hand, curl up and die like the dead spiders that littered the ledge.
She had her new holy symbol. She had her sign.
The prayers she had memorized in Eilistraee's name, the magic she had stored in her brain for use against Lolth, flowed out of her in a rush. She sighed, sagged, and kept her feet only by leaning against the mountainside.
Halisstra was empty, bereft.
A small black spider emerged from a crack in the stone and crawled onto her hand, the hand that held the
