At that exact instant, a knife stab of pain raced up Halisstra's leg. Her vision blurred. She grimaced and would have fallen had she not caught herself on Eilistraee's temple.

The spider poison.

Uluyara and Feliane crowded around her, concern in their expressions. Uluyara examined Halisstra'swounds, found the blackened holes in her leg.

"Poison," Uluyara concluded.

"Let me," Feliane said and took Halisstra's hands in her own.

Feliane sang to the Dancing Goddess above the howl of the wind, and her song purged the poison from Halisstra's veins.

Halisstra felt as though something else might have been purged from her veins too. She thanked Feliane, who hugged her.

Afterward, the three priestesses of Eilistraee entered the temple they had raised. Uluyara quickly walked the interior, holding her holy symbol medallion and chanting the while.

When she was finished she looked at her two companions and said, "This is hallowed ground now, reclaimed from Lolth in the name of the Dark Maiden. At least for a time."

Halisstra could not help but smile. The interior of the temple did feel different, cleaner, purer. Within its rough walls, she felt sure of herself for the first time in days.

All three priestesses sank to the floor, spent, their backs to the wall, their legs extended. Exhaustion showed in both Uluyara's and Feliane's expressions. But elation too. They had reached the Demonweb Pits and survived the attack of a spider swarm.

After a few moments' respite, Uluyara healed them all of their minor cuts, scrapes, and bites. Feliane conjured a meal of vegetable stew and fresh water into some small bowls she carried in her pack.

After the repast, Halisstra said to them, "We should take watch in shifts, just to be safe, while we wait. I doubt the spiders will dare the top of this spire in the wind, but we cannot be sure. When things grow calmer below, we can continue on. I'll take first watch."

Uluyara nodded, shifted against the wall, and closed her eyes. She vented a sigh and soon was in Reverie. Feliane followed her quickly.

Both were seasoned warriors, Halisstra realized, taking rest wherever and whenever they could.

Halisstra quietly positioned herself near the open door. She drew the Crescent Blade, laid it across her thighs, and settled in for her watch.

Outside, the wind railed against the temple for the effrontery it was. In its angry wails, Halisstra still heard it calling to Lolth's Chosen, but she knew-or at least she thought that she knew-that it was no longer calling to her.

"I'm coming for you," she softly promised. "Soon."

Being little more than nests of legs, the chwidencha charged forward with alarming rapidity. Pharaun willed himself into the air as they closed and his ring answered. In one hand, he still held the ball of guano; with the other, he pulled a bit of flakefungus from a cloak pocket and shouted the words to a spell. As he uttered the last word to the incantation, he crushed the flakefungus in his hand and cast the powder in the direction of one of the charging chwidenchas. It uttered a squeal of agony as the magic engulfed it, flensed it of flesh, stripped it of its carapace, and left nothing more than a shapeless pile of gore.

The rest of the pack did not so much as slow.

Jeggred bounded forward in front of Danifae and met three onrushing chwidenchas with a charge of his own. He caught the first of them in mid-jump, plucking it from the air in his powerful fighting arms and tearing off its legs by the bunch while the creature squealed and slammed its remaining claws against the draegloth's flesh, leaving bloody welts. Ichor sprayed, coating the draegloth, mixing with his own blood. In three heartbeats, the draegloth had disarticulated the creature, leaving only a round lump of hair and flesh.

Two other chwidenchas leaped atop Jeggred, one on his back and one on his side. Their weight knocked him to the ground and the three fell in a snarling tangle of legs and claws. Jeggred still clutched a handful of the legs from the first chwidencha he had killed. Chwidencha claws rose and fell like miners' picks, churning earth and flesh. Fanged mouths tried to penetrate the iron of the draegloth's flesh. Jeggred roared and answered with his own claws. Pieces of chwidencha flew high into the air.

The rest of the pack continued forward and swarmed the priestesses. Danifae barely had time to pocket her holy symbol and free her morningstar before the chwidenchas were upon her. She careened backward and struck one with the spiked weapon, snapping some of its legs. She spun away from a claw swipe from another and slammed the head of the weapon into another chwidencha's front, but a third leaped high and landed atop her. She tried to utter a spell, but the creature wrapped its legs around her as tightly as a cloak and tried to drive her to the ground. She turned a circle, its weight causing her to stumble, all the while offering a muffled chant. Finally she went down, and five chwidencha swarmed over her. Pharaun could barely see the priestess under the squirming mass of legs and claws. Claws pounded into her mail, her flesh.To his surprise and to her credit, Danifae did not stop fighting. She pulled a dagger from a belt sheath and fought from the ground, kicking, stabbing, screaming, driving the dagger repeatedly into the flesh of chwidenchas that coated her. Pharaun figured her for dead and put her out of his mind.

Below and to Pharaun's right, Quenthel's whip cracked. All five serpents extended to twice their ordinary length and clamped their fanged mouths onto the legs of a chwidencha. Almost instantly, the creature's legs went rigid, and it fell over dead from the whip's venom. Unperturbed, its fellows trampled over it. Chwidenchas closed on Quenthel from all sides.

Quenthel uttered a hasty prayer to Lolth and instantly grew to half again her size. A violet glow suffused her flesh, the power of Lolth made manifest. Using her magical buckler as a weapon, and driven by her spell-enhanced strength, she smashed its steel face into the front of a chwidencha, snapping a mass of legs like twigs. Three claws from a chwidencha to her right slammed into her in rapid succession, driving her backward but seemingly doing no real harm. Her whip struck again, driving back one of the creatures. She caught another chwidencha in her buckler hand, gripping two thick legs in her fist, and threw the creature across the battlefield.

Before Pharaun could shout a warning, another two chwidenchas leaped onto Quenthel from behind.

She bore the weight better than Danifae, tried to throw them over her back, but six others rushed forward.

Claws thumped against her armor and tore gashes in her exposed flesh. Her serpents lashed out but missed. She fell, buried under a pile of seething, churning legs and claws.

Pharaun heard Danifae shout a warning, he turned in mid-air- And saw only a curtain of legs, claws, coarse hair, and an open, fang-filled mouth before the creature was upon him. A chwidencha had leaped high enough into the air to reach him. It hit him full force in the chest and wrapped its legs around him. The impact drove him backward and down, despite the power of his ring of flying. He hit the earth in a heap, entwined with the creature, his breath gone. The chwidencha wrapped him up with some of its innumerable legs, while it bit with its dripping fangs and flailed with its free claws like a mad thing. Blows slashed against Pharaun's sides, his arms, his face, into the earth around him.

Only Pharaun's enchanted piwafwi prevented the claws from disemboweling him, but he still felt blood flowing down his torso, and the impacts to his head nearly knocked him senseless.

He tried to fend off the blows with his hands and feet and roll out from under the chwidencha, but it was too heavy and too determined to hang on. Unable to fly, he mentally summoned his rapier from his ring, remembering too late that he had lost the ring to Belshazu. The chwidencha's fangs ground against his magically armored cloak again and again, trying but failing to penetrate the garment and open his gut.

Pharaun struggled to regather his senses and his breath.

The chwidencha raised one of its claws high and drove it toward Pharaun's face. He tried to squirm aside, failed, and the claw hit him with enough force to split rock. His protective enchantments prevented his face and skull from splitting open but the impact still exploded his nose and drove his head hard against the rocky ground. For a horrifying moment, consciousness started to slip from him. He grabbed at it and reeled it in with the entire force of his will.

Dazed and increasingly angry, he realized that he still clutched in his right hand the ball of bat guano.

"Here's a treat," he mumbled through a blood-filled mouth.

He mouthed the words to a spell that would turn the chwidencha and the entire area into cinders. He swallowed down the blood leaking into his mouth from his ruined nose and spoke the words clearly. He would have to hope that the inherent drow resistance to magic would shield him and his companions; that, or he would have to hope they could take more punishment than the chwidencha.

Just as he was about to utter the final syllables of the spell, the creature's fangs penetrated his piwafwi and sank into the skin of his chest. A bolt of pain caused his body to spasm but Pharaun did not lose the cadence of his spell. He had trained in Sorcere, cast spells as an apprentice while his Masters had held candle flames to his bare flesh. A bite from one of Lolth's failures could not break his iron concentration.

He finished the spell as the chwidencha reared back to take another bite of his flesh. Gritting his teeth, Pharaun closed his fist around the tiny ball of guano and shoved it into the chwidencha's open maw.

Reflexively, it clamped down on his hand.

Pharaun closed his eyes just as his universe exploded in orange light and searing heat. He felt some of his hair melt, felt the flesh of his arm, chest, and face char. He could not contain a scream.

The force of the blast blew apart the chwidencha atop him, reducing it instantly to ash. Hisses, growls, and screams sounded all around him, audible above the explosion. He smelled the stink of burning flesh. His own, no doubt.

It was over in one agonizing heartbeat.

He opened his eyes and found himself staring up into the dark sky above. For a moment, he had theabsurd thought that his spell had charred the clouds, but then he realized that the storm was gathering above them.

Blinking, dazed, he shook the charred chwidencha pieces from his body-they were little more than chunks of seared flesh-and slowly sat up. He wiped the blackened blood from his face and nose and blinked until his blurry vision cleared. His hand was a blackened, seared piece of meat. It did not yet pain him, but it soon would.

He looked around and saw that the fireball had wrought a perfect sphere of devastation. A circular swath of blackened and partially melted rock denoted its boundaries. He had not burned the sky, but he had nicely burned the earth. He took a professional's pride in the damage it had done.

Within the circle, Jeggred sat on his four hands and knees, chest heaving, eyes blinking. A seared chwidencha corpse lay in pieces under his claws, and chwidencha legs dangled from his mouth. Bleeding but only mildly burned, the draegloth eyed Pharaun coldly as he spat the legs to the ground and climbed to his feet.

"You'll need to do better than fire, mage," the draegloth said, his voice raspy.

To Pharaun's surprise, Danifae and Quenthel both had survived too. They were burned and smoking, and minor cuts and bruises covered them both, but they lived. Quenthel stood on the far side of the blast radius, returned to normal size. Her serpents, covered in ash, hissed at Pharaun. He frowned, wishing he had at least put them down.

Danifae stood on the other side of the blast, leaning on her morningstar for support. She must have regained her feet and her weapon during the combat.

A score or so chwidencha carcasses, charred, smoking, and stinking, lay scattered about the battlefield.

"What in the Abyss did you do?" Danifae demanded, then she coughed. Claw scratches crisscrossed the fireball-pinked flesh of her face.

Saved your hide, unfortunately, Pharaun thought but did not say.

Instead, he replied, "A spell went awry, Mistress Danifae."

"Awry?" Quenthel asked. Much of her hair was singed, but she otherwise looked to have avoided most of the effect of the fireball. "Indeed." She coughed. "If your spell went awry, mage, then you merit no credit for ending the combat."

Pharaun smirked through his broken nose and bowed as best as his wounded body allowed. The bite wound in his stomach throbbed, and his hand was in agony.

Danifae glared at him and added, "Next time, male, you are to provide a warning before another of your spells . . . goes awry."

Pharaun snorted with disdainful laughter and instantly regretted it. Blood shot from his nose, and pain wracked his face.

At that, Jeggred offered a snort of his own.

Through his pain, Pharaun said to Danifae, "And you might have warned me a bit earlier than-"

A scrabbling from outside the circle drew Pharaun's eye, and he trailed off.

All of them followed his gaze.

The Teeming continued around them but that was not what concerned him.

Nearly a score of chwidenchas rose smoking from the rocks outside the blast radius. All had twisted legs and melted flesh and hair, but they too had survived the blast. They hissed, raised their front claws, and started tentatively forward.

"Perhaps the combat isn't ended, after all," Pharaun observed and took some satisfaction in the acid look Quenthel shot him.

Quenthel cracked her whip, and the serpents offered a hiss at the chwidenchas. Danifae brandished her morningstar and stepped near Jeggred. The draegloth threw back his head and uttered a roar that shook stones.

Pharaun let his companions dangle for a moment before he said, "But then again, perhaps it is over."

He'd had his fill of chwidenchas for the day. "Draw near," he said to them, and looked directly at Danifae.

"You are hereby warned."

His companions shared a look and hurriedly backed near him as the chwidenchas slowly scuttled forward. Pharaun took a pinch of phosphorous powder from the inventory he kept organized in his piwafwi's pockets, cast it in the air, and spoke the words to a spell. When he finished, a semi-opaque curtain of green fire whooshed into being, a ring of flames twenty paces tall that burned between them and the chwidenchas. It danced merrily, casting them all in a sickly green light.

"That should keep them a while," he said.

His companions offered no thanks, but he took some satisfaction when even the whip-serpents saggedwith relief.

With nothing else to be done for the moment, Pharaun said, "Pardon me, all," before he pushed one nostril closed with a finger, blew out a gob of blood and snot, then did the same for the other side.

He was a bit embarrassed by it all-it was something Jeggred might do-but he had little choice. He could hardly breathe. Pharaun shook his throbbing head to help clear it and drew a handkerchief from an inner pocket and wiped off his face as best he could. The white silk came back black with ash and red with blood.

Through the ring of flames, Pharaun saw the chwidencha circling, watching them through the breaks in the fire. Beyond the chwidencha, he still caught glimpses of the violence of the Teeming.

"How long, mage?" Quenthel asked.

"Not long enough, unfortunately," he answered. "Perhaps a quarter hour. How long does this Teeming last?"

Quenthel belted her whip and shook her head. Pharaun wasn't sure if that meant she didn't know or simply didn't want to answer.

"It lasts as long as Lolth wills it," Danifae offered, belting her own weapon. She ran her fingers over the scratches on her face, checking their depth.

"Hardly helpful, Mistress Danifae," Pharaun said. "And how convenient for us that her will caused it to occur just after we arrived here."

"Tread carefully, mage," Quenthel warned.

"Indeed," Danifae said, eyeing him.

Pharaun was tempted to ask then and there why the chwidencha had answered neither Quenthel's nor Danifae's commands, but one look at Quenthel's whip made him think better of it.

Instead, he said, "I think it ill-advised to travel overland while this continues. Chwidencha may prove the least of our concerns. It appears the Spider Queen has decided to make the Teeming part of her test."

The priestesses said nothing but looked out through the curtain of green fire, their expressions distant and unreadable. Perhaps they too were wondering why the chwidencha had not responded to their power.

Finally, Danifae said, "We should take shelter for a time, let the Teeming run its course. Then we can travel overland again."

Jeggred eyed the chwidencha with hungry eyes. "The wizard said the wall of fire will last only a quarter hour. What shelter will we find in so short a time?"

"The caves," Pharaun said.

All of them looked first to Pharaun, then at the ground, to the holes that surrounded them.

"Why not atop one of the tors?" Danifae asked, pointing at one of the innumerable spires of black stone that dotted the plane. "Few spiders seem able or willing to scale their heights."

"Look to the sky, Mistress Danifae," Pharaun answered. Already the sun was invisible behind a wall of black storm clouds. "I think it would be safer and more comfortable, underground."

Besides, Pharaun had already encountered one horror atop a spire. He had no desire to encounter another.

"The caves," Quenthel said, nodding.

"Yes, Mistress," hissed one of the female heads of her whip. "The caves will be safer."

"Silence, Zinda," Quenthel gently admonished her whip.

"Safer?" Jeggred said and sneered. "Safety is the concern of cowards, timid priestesses, and weak mages." He eyed Quenthel and Pharaun meaningfully in turn.

Pharaun smiled at the draegloth, turned his gaze to Quenthel, and said, "I would remind your nephew that it was Mistress Danifae who suggested that we seek shelter to avoid the danger of the Teeming. Does that mean you think her timid, Jeggred?"

Pharaun took a moment to enjoy the look of consternation on Jeggred's face before he said, "Perhaps not, then. But in any event, it appears you would prefer to linger on the surface until we return. I think it an excellent idea. Thank you, Jeggred. Your bravery will be remembered in song."

He offered the draegloth an insincere bow, and Jeggred snarled and bared his fangs.

Pharaun ignored the oaf-showing a dolt to be a dolt brought him only small satisfaction-and eyed the open mouth of the chwidenchas' hole.

To Quenthel, he said, "I can seal the cave opening behind us with a spell, and we can wait for as long as need be. When the storm passes and the violence ends, I can get us back through, and we can travel then."