Nauzhror coveted the archmage's position, but his fear of failing Gromph Baenre outweighed his ambition.

If Gromph succeeded and learned that Nauzhror did nothing more after the shapechange spell expired, Nauzhror knew he would suffer. If Gromph failed and died, he knew too that Triel Baenre would investigate herself, and again, Nauzhror would suffer.

In the end, the Master of Sorcere knew that he could do nothing but play his part to the best of his abilities and hope that Gromph succeeded.

To Prath, still sitting in the archmage's chair, he said, "Get up, boy."

Prath leaped from the chair as though it was on fire. Nauzhror circled the desk and slid into the chair.

With an expertise born of decades of training, he attuned Gromph's chrysoberyl scrying crystal and caused it to show him the Xorlarrin forces gathered outside of House Agrach Dyrr. The soldiers and wizards were massed but standing idle.

Nauzhror studied the locale for a time, fixed the image in his mind, and let the scrying crystal go inert.

"What should we do now, Master Nauzhror?" asked Prath. The apprentice's voice betrayed his nervousness.

Nauzhror replied, "Now, we assist the archmage's efforts by seeing to it that Yasraena will be faced at the same time with enemies within and without."

Without further explanation, he spoke a word of power and teleported into the midst of the Xorlarrin army.

Chapter Fifteen

Pharaun's mind fogged the moment he stepped onto the Pass of the Soulreaver. His equilibrium failed him. He felt as though he were moving back and forth, up and down, all at once.

Staggering, he held out a hand until it touched the cool wall of the narrow pass. He stood still, leaning against the stone and trying to recover himself.

The mage knew he wasn't moving but still felt a sensation of motion and perceived the rapid passage of time. He stood at the center of the world as it streaked around and past him.

Pharaun closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and clutched at the wall with a death grip.

Time and motion stopped so suddenly he almost fell forward.

He opened his eyes and saw no souls, no Quenthel, nothing but stone walls to either side of him rising toward infinity. Darkness shrouded the pass, but ordinary darkness through which Pharaun could see. A smooth, narrow path stretched before him, disappearing into the far distance. He turned around and saw the same path extending backward to the limits of his vision.

But he had taken only one step. Hadn't he?

Pharaun had teleported, gated, dimension doored, and shadowalked enough to understand that the Pass of the Soulreaver was not a physical place with spatial dimensions so much as it was a metaphor, a symbol for whatever bridged the time and distance between the ruined land he had just left behind and Lolth's personal realm that lay ahead.

For a disconcerting instant, though, he wondered if the entirety of Lolth's plane was no more than metaphor, if the minds of he and his companions had given form to something otherwise formless.

The thought disquieted him, and he pushed it from his brain.

"Quenthel," he called and did not like the quaver he heard in his voice. The word echoed off the stone, and when it came back to him, the voice was not his own.

A scream of terror: "Quenthel!"

Hysterical laughter: "Quenthel."

A despairing mumble: "Quenthel."

A wail of pain: "Quenthel!"

Pharaun's skin crawled. Sweat beaded his forehead. His skin was clammy. He kept his mouth shut and walked down the path-slowly.

He saw nothing and heard nothing but the twisted echo of his own voice, but. . .

He was not alone.

And it was not Quenthel he sensed.

From ahead-or was it behind?-whispering began, hissings, the remnant of ancient screams. The inarticulate mutterings soaked into his soul. He felt itchy, soiled. His breath came fast.

"Who is there?" he called and cringed when the words rebounded to him, screaming in terror.

He reached into his robe and withdrew a wand for each hand: the iron shaft that discharged lightning in his right, the zurkhwood wand that fired bolts of magical energy in his left.

He walked on. The walls whispered and muttered in his ears.

"Reaver," they said.

He felt eyes on him from behind, boring into his being. He whirled around, both wands brandished, certain something was there.

Nothing.

The whispers turned to hissing laughter.

Breathing heavily, he put his back to the wall and tried to gather himself. Ghostly hands as cold as a grave reached through the wall and covered his mouth. Panic sent his heart hammering. He pulled himself free, fell to the ground, turned and fired three magic missiles into the wall.

There was nothing there.

He scrabbled to his feet.

What was happening? He was not himself. A spell was affecting him. Surely he- A sudden shriek rang off the walls, a hopeless wail filled with despair and rage. Pharaun tensed, his knuckles white on his wands.

Ahead of him, a vast, spectral form flew out of the wall on one side of the pass and into the wall on the other, like a fish swimming through the waters of the Darklake. The form moved fast, but he caught a good glimpse of it before it vanished into the stone-a vast, bloated, serpentine body of translucent gray, within which squirmed and screamed hundreds or thousands of glowing drow souls.The Soulreaver.

Its black eyes were bottomless holes; its mouth a cavern. It dwarfed the nalfeshnee; it dwarfed ten nalfeshnees.

It was a living prison for failed souls.

Pharaun imagined his own soul trapped within it, and a pit formed in his stomach. He tried to ignore the shaking in his hands as he put one of the wands back in his robe and withdrew a pinch of powdered irtios, a clear gem. He cast the sparkling powder into the air while speaking aloud the words to a powerful evocation.

He maintained his concentration even when the arcane words echoed back at him as wails.

When he finished, the irtios powder swirled around him, formed a sphere about fifteen paces in diameter, and transformed into an invisible, impenetrable sphere of force that could keep out even incorporeal creatures.

Pharaun prayed to Lolth that it would keep out the Soulreaver. Even it if did, however, Pharaun knew the solution was only a temporary one. The spell would not last overlong, and he could not move the sphere.

Still, he needed some time to gather himself. He was agitated, nervous.

The shriek of the Soulreaver repeated but sounded muffled, as though from deep in the ground.

Secure within his sphere, Pharaun tried to settle his racing heart and develop a plan.

The soles of his feet began to tingle. He looked down and saw a distortion in the floor of the pass. He watched in horror as the rock turned translucent under him and the distortion took shape: an enormous open mouth lined with teeth.

The Soulreaver was coming up through the floor directly under him, mouth open, wide enough to swallow both Pharaun and the sphere.

Pharaun stared downward, wide-eyed with terror. He tried to find the words to a spell but failed, stuttering incoherently.

Deep down in the Soulreaver's gullet, he saw the tiny forms of wriggling souls, their eyes filled with a terror that mirrored his own.

The walls of the inside of the Soulreaver's mouth rose around him, and he could do nothing but watch as he was engulfed.

He did not even have time to scream before the jaws snapped shut and he joined the damned.

Quenthel stood alone on the Pass of the Soulreaver. She knew that anyone who would brave its trials must do so alone.

She knew too that the Soulreaver was the lone survivor from the mythology of a long dead world. Lolth allowed it to exist in the Demonweb Pits because it amused her, because it provided a final test for some of her petitioners.

The high priestess did not know why some petitioners were tested and others not. She attributed it to the chaotic whim of Lolth. When Quenthel had died at the hands of a renegade male in the Year of Shadows, her soul had passed into Lolth's city without test by the Reaver.

She knew she would not go untested a second time.

With her whip in hand, Quenthel stalked down the narrow pass. The wind whistled between the walls, calling Lolth's Yor'thae. The heads of her whip rapidly flicked their tongues in and out, listening, tasting the air.

It comes, Mistress, said Yngoth.

Quenthel knew. Her skin went gooseflesh.

When she heard the Soulreaver's sinister hissings, sensed its maddening mumbles deep in some primitive part of her brain, she had to fight to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

She was Lolth's Chosen, she reminded herself, and she would not be deterred.

The Soulreaver slithered up out of the floor ahead of her, passing through stone as though through air, a sinuous, huge, translucent serpent. Souls squirmed within its long body, trapped, desperate, tortured. The Reaver was the final resting place and torture chamber for thousands upon thousands of failed souls.

Quenthel did not intend to add her own soul to their number.

Be wary, Mistress, said K'Sothra.

But Quenthel did not intend to be wary. That time was past. She would take what the Soulreaver offered.

Gripping her holy symbol in her hand, speaking Lolth's praises from her lips, she charged forward toward the apparition. It opened its mouth and hissed, showing her the squirming, twisted faces of innumerable trapped souls lodged in its gullet. Without hesitation, Quenthel dived through its teeth and into its jaws.Hate pulled Halisstra back to consciousness. Rage opened her eyes. She fought her way through the pain and stared up into Lolth's sky. It was night, and she felt upon her the weight of the eight stars of Lolth.

Souls streaked above and past her, on their way to their dark mistress, heedless of her agony.

She fought through the pain and sat up.

Dizziness made her vision swirl, but she steadied herself with a hand on the ground until the feeling passed.

Feliane lay in a bloody pile not far from her, glistening in the dim light. Spiders crawled over the elf's small body, tasting her flesh and blood. Uluyara's corpse lay not far from Feliane. The substance that had held her immobile had dissolved. She lay on her back, facing the sky, and the slash in her throat gaped.

Arachnids crawled in and out of the hole.

To her surprise, Halisstra felt no sympathy for her fallen sisters. She felt nothing but anger, a white hot flame of rage burning in her gut.

As she watched, Feliane's body spasmed, and she emitted a wet gurgle. She was still alive.

Halisstra rode her rage to her feet and retrieved the Crescent Blade. Pain wracked her body. Crusted blood coated her ruined face. Her jaw was cracked, innumerable ribs were broken, and she could not see out of one eye. She could well imagine how she must appear.

The souls flew past her into the Pass of the Soulreaver, uncaring. Lolth's seven stars and their dim eighth sister looked down from the cloudy sky, also without a care.

Halisstra called to mind a prayer of healing but stopped before the words formed on her swollen lips.

She would not call on Eilistraee, not ever again. The Dark Maiden had failed her, had betrayed her.

Eilistraee was no better than Lolth. Worse, because she purported to be different.

"You could have warned me," she managed, through the bloody mess of her lips.

Halisstra realized then, fully and finally, that she had embraced the weakness of Eilistraee's faith out of guilt. She had worshiped a weak goddess out of fear. She was pleased that she had learned wisdom before the end.

She was through with Eilistraee. The part of Halisstra that had worshiped the Dark Maiden was dead.

The old Halisstra was resurrected.

"You are weak," she said to Eilistraee.

Gritting her teeth against the pain, she took her lyre from her pack and sang a bae'qeshel song of healing through her torn lips. When the magic took effect, the pain in her face and head subsided, the punctures closed. She sang a second song, a third, until her body was once more whole.

But the spells did nothing to close the emptiness in her soul. She knew how she could fill it, how she would fill it-she felt Lolth's pull stronger than ever. Since Lolth's Silence first began, Halisstra's faith had moved like a pendulum between the Dark Maiden and the Spider Queen. Like all pendulums, it must ultimately come to rest in its natural state.

She looked at the dark opening of the Pass of the Soulreaver. Souls flew in and vanished, swallowed by the mountain. Halisstra knew what lay beyond it: Lolth.

And Danifae.

She was going to kill Danifae Yauntyrr, kill her without mercy. She pushed from her mind everything that she had learned from Eilistraee. She had no more room in her soul for sympathy, understanding, forgiveness, or love. She had room for only one thing: hate. And hate would give her strength.

It was enough.

She consciously gave herself over to the seed of her former self that had long lain dormant within her.

From that point on, she would behave as a drow should. From that point on, she would be as merciless a predator as a spider.