Halisstra twisted Seyll's sword in Danifae's arched back, and the former battle-captive gasped with pain. Halisstra took satisfaction in each of Danifae's bubbling, labored breaths. Behind Danifae, Quenthel Baenre looked on with surprise. Halisstra ignored her. She had eyes only for her battle-captive. The high priestess was irrelevant.
Danifae's morningstar fell from her hand.
"Mistress... Melarn," shesaid, her voice soft.
Halisstra decided that she wanted to look Danifae in the face before she died. She released her grip on Seyll's sword and allowed her former battle-captive to turn around.
One third of Seyll's blade jutted like a bloody pennon from the side of Danifae's chest. Danifae's beautiful gray eyes stared out of an incongruously gentle expression. She looked upon Halisstra and smiled a mouthful of blood-stained teeth.
"Do not call me Mistress ever again," Halisstra said.
Danifae's full lips twisted with pain. She raised a hand as though to touch Halisstra's face. The effort caused her to wince.
"Halisstra," she said, each word divided by a pained breath. "I'm... sorry."
It took a moment for Halisstra to understand the words. When she did, tears welled in her eyes; she could not stop them. In a rush, she thought of all that she and Danifae had shared, the secrets, the ambitions. They had been through so much together, had come to know each other so well through the Binding. She surprised herself by regretting what it all had finally come to.
"Sorry?" Halisstra said, and her voice broke. "Sorry? It never should have come to this!"
Danifae nodded. Blood seeped around the blade sticking out of her body. Halisstra had missed her heart. "I know," Danifae said, still holding out her hand.
Despite herself, Halisstra started to raise her own hand but stopped.
"I missed you, Mistress," Danifae said.
Halisstra blinked away tears and finally took Danifae's hand.
"I missed you t"
As quick as an adder, Danifae grabbed Halisstra with her other arm and yanked her close, impaling her on the point of her own blade.
Halisstra gasped as the steel penetrated first her mail then her flesh. She felt the point scrape against her ribs and exit her back. Warm blood soaked her piwafwi.
She should have known. She should have known.
Her eyes looked over Danifae's shoulder to Quenthel.
The Baenre priestess smiled, gloating, whip in hand.
Danifae wrapped her arms around Halisstra and squeezed her tight. Pain knifedthrough Halisstra.
"I am sorry for nothing," Danifae hissed in her ear.
Halisstra fought through the pain and returned Danifae's embrace, just as hard.
Both of them gasped with agony.
Their bodies were melded, joined by steel. Their blood flowed as one. A Binding of a different sort once again united them.
Halisstra rested her head on Danifae's shoulder, a strangely soft gesture.
"I hate you," she whispered.
Danifae reached up and stroked Halisstra's hair, something she had done countless nights before. "I know," Danifae answered.
Halisstra loved her too, despite it all.
"I know," Danifae said again, and her embrace softened.
Halisstra could bear no more. With a grunt, she pushed Danifae away, screaming as the blade exited her flesh. The effort knocked them off balance, and both sprawled to the ground, Danifae still stuck through with steel. They both sat on Lolth's ground, bleeding and gasping.
Quenthel Baenre eyed them both.
"Here is where it ends," she said, and advanced on Danifae. The whips of her serpent glared.
A hiss and sizzling sound turned Halisstra's head, turned Quenthel's head, turned the heads of the whip vipers.
Nycaloths appeared around them, teleporting in from the battlefield below. One, three, eight, a dozenthe smallest of them towered over even Quenthel. Their muscles rippled under their scaled skin. Each bore a rune-inscribed axe. Their muzzles twisted into snarls.
Desperation contorted Quenthel's face. She looked at the nycaloths, at Danifae, at Halisstra. Halisstra could see the indecision in her eyes. It resolved into an expression of utter hate.
"It is not you," the Baenre priestess said to Danifae, her voice shrill.
She ignored the danger of the nycaloths and raised the whip high for a killing strike when high atop the grotesque heap of Lolth's city the double doors to the Spider Queen's tabernacle flew open. Rays of violet light poured from the temple doors.
For Halisstra, time seemed to stop. Motion ceased. Every being within sight of Lolth's cityyugoloths, drow, demons, and draeglothstayed their hands. All eyes turned toward the unending web, toward the Spider Queen's city.
A ripple ran through the arachnid host gathered at the far edge of the plains, an anticipatory shuffling. The sound of their motion reminded Halisstra of the downpour of rain she had heard while in the World Above.
Her heart hammered; herbreath came fast. She clutched the broken Crescent Blade in her fist so tightly she feared her skin would split. She barely felt her wound. Danifae lay a few paces from her, facing the city, eyes wide, breathing shallow, her cloak soaked with blood. A whispered prayer of healing, a powerful one, leaked from the battle-captive's lips. Seyll's sword slid from her flesh, and the wound closed. Halisstra echoed the prayer and closed her own wound.
Quenthel didn't notice either of them. She stood and stared back at Lolth's city, frozen, her whip still held high for a strike.
Souls hung sizzling in the air over the Plains of Soulfire, writhing in agony, bleeding weakness from their eternal forms.
A sudden breeze picked up, blowing outward from the tabernacle. It turned to a gust, to a screaming gale, and in its scream Lolth's voice spoke, the sound that of multiple voices, the seven voices of Halisstra's vision "Yor'thae."
Around them, the nycaloths shared a look. Halisstra saw the fear in their eyes, the uncertainty. Without warning, they blinked out, teleporting back from whence they came. The retreat spread rapidly to the rest of the surviving army, and they too fled. The klurichir, its flesh torn and one of its pincers severed, nevertheless gathered another mouthful of mezzoloths and blinked out himself. The swarm of spiders dissipated, and the creatures made their way back to their mountain dens. The undead mezzoloths animated by the ultroloth fell to the ground, as inert as the soil.
Corpses lay everywhere over the still Plains of Soulfire. Pharaun Mizzrym hung in the sky over the broken land, strangely motionless. Halisstra did not see Jeggred Baenre anywhere.
"She has chosen," Danifae said as she rose to her feet.
Halisstra did the same.
A ripple went through Quenthel Baenre's body, though whether from ecstasy or fear, Halisstra could not tell.
Pharaun couldn't move or speak. He controlled his flight with his ring, which followed his mental urgings. Blood continued to pour down his sides from the wounds inflicted on him by the nycaloths.
He had heard Lolth's call, had seen her temple open, but none of that concerned him. If he did not get aid from one of Lolth's priestesses, and soon, he would die of blood loss.
He maneuvered his posture in the air so that he could see the ground. Movement from below drew his eye Jeggred rose, staggering, from underneath a heap of mezzoloth corpses, his flesh bloody, one of his inner arms torn off at the elbow, one of his eyes little more than a bloody hole. The draegloth looked not to Lolth's temple but back up the path toward the Pass of the Soulreaver, to where the three priestesses stood.
Halisstra Melarn had followed them, somehow.
Quenthel, Danifae, and Halisstra stood high above the field of slaughter, staring up at Lolth's tabernacle. They reminded Pharaun of queens surveying their realm.
In the air around Pharaun, souls still burned in viol et fire. After undergoing purgation for a time, they flew on to Lolth's city.
Pharaun knew that the priestesses too had undergone purgation. So had he. So, in his way, had Jeggred. He flew toward them, marveling that they did not kill each other.
Pharaun supposed that Lolth's call was bigger than their hate for each other. The Spider Queen's voice controlled their conflict, just as her worship controlled the conflict endemic to drow society.
His vision blurred, but he fought back the oblivion of unconsciousness. He was weakening. He wanted to call out to Quenthel but he could not speak. He flew toward the path.
The priestesses saw him coming. Halisstra retrieved a sword from the ground, but none of them moved to help. He set himself down before Quenthel.
Behind and below, he heard Jeggred loping up the ledge.
"Your male has returned," Danifae said with a smirk, though Pharaun took satisfaction in her wince of pain.
"And yours is returning," Quenthel said over her shoulder, meaning Jeggred.
The Baenre priestess studied Pharaun for a time, a peculiar look on her face. The Master of Sorcere saw in Quenthel's expression that his life sat on a blade's edge.
"You can fly due to your ring but are otherwise immobile?" she asked.
Pharaun could not answer.
"A counterspell will do," Quenthel said.
Pharaun would have breathed a sigh of relief, if he could have.
Quenthel incanted her spell, and when she finished, Pharaun still could not move.
A dark smile split the high priestess's face.
"No more flying," she said.
He tested her words, mentally calling upon the ring to lift him. It did nothing.
The bitch had countered the magic in his ring!
"The goddess summons me, Master Mizzrym," she said. "You have served your purpose, as all males do. But now your soul belongs to her."
Jeggred loped up, panting, bleeding, the ragged flesh of his arm stump seeping crimson.
"Mistress," the draegloth said to Danifae and eyed Quenthel and Pharaun with undisguised hate. Danifae looked at Jeggred, looked at Pharaun, looked out over the Plains of Soulfire.
"The goddess summons us, Quenthel Baenre," she said to Quenthel. To Jeggred, she said, "Carry Master Mizzrym down to the plains and leave him there. As Mistress Quenthel said, his soul belongs to the Spider Queen."
Pharaun wanted to curse, to cast, to rail, but he could do nothing. His heart beat fast in his chest. Jeggred did not question. He leered into Pharaun's face and reached out to take him in his fighting arms. A surge went through the mage. The ultroloth had not dispelled Pharaun's contingency spell. The moment the draegloth touched him, a magical fist would come into effect. Pharaun could control it mentally. He tensed, ready.
Jeggred cocked his head and pulled back.
"He said he would cast a contingency spell, so that if I touched him...." Jeggred trailed off, staring at Pharaun.
Pharaun's heart sank. Why had the draegloth only just then decided to show some intelligence? Danifae tsked. "You've always been too obvious, Master Mizzrym," she said and chanted a counterspell. When she finished, Pharaun's contingency spell dissipated.
"Now, Jeggred," she said.
"Farewell, male," Quenthel added, her voice devoid of any trace of emotion.
Jeggred gathered him up in his fighting arms and ran down the path. When he reached the plains, he manipulated Pharaun so that they were face to face.
"I would have preferred to kill you myself," the draegloth said. "What? No insulting response?" The draegloth laughed, and his vile breath flew into Pharaun's face.
The Master of Sorcere could not believe that one of the last sensory impressions of his life would be to inhale Jeggred's wretched breath.
Jeggred loped a ways farther out and cast Pharaun to the rocky ground. He landed on his side, staring at the Infinite Web, at Lolth's city, at the arachnid host gathered on the Plains of Soulfire.
From above and behind, he heard Danifae's voice "Save yourself if you can, Jeggred Baenre. I am called to the tabernacle."
With that, Pharaun heard the sound of spellcasting. After a fewmoments, each of the three priestesses flew over him, in the form of gray vapor. As fast as quarrels, as though racing, they sped to Lolth's presence at last.
As the priestesses vanished into the distance, the host of spiders at the far end of the plains began to stir. Pharaun was reminded of the Teeming, and the image disquieted him.
Without warning, the spiders surged forward. Pharaun watched them approach, a wall of eyes, claws, legs, and fangs. Their coming sounded like the rush of water. They fed on the fallen as they moved, reducing flesh to bone in moments. He hoped that his wounds would bleed him out before they reached him.
Behind him, he heard Jeggred curse, followed by receding footsteps as the draegloth ran back up the path toward the Pass of the Soulreaver.
The oaf finally learned some sense, the mage thought.
Pharaun could not even close his eyes. He could only watch the approaching wave and wait to be eaten alive. The bleeding was not killing him fast enough.
He watched the horde strip the flesh from one corpse after another. He knew then that his last sensory impression would not be Jeggred's stink. It would be pain.