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 broken sword. She watched it as it sank its fangs into her flesh.

She felt no pain, but a coldness suffused her being. The venom entered her veins, and as it spread through her body it brought- Halisstra arched her back and screamed as the spells that Eilistraee had stripped from her mind were restored by Lolth. Tears flowed again, but at least she knew why.

Overflowing with power, she wiped her face dry and hurried to the lip of the ledge.

A battle raged below her between demons, yugoloths, and drow. Lolth's city beckoned in the distance, an infinite web shimmered over a bottomless gulf, and Lolth's damned burned in violet fire in the sky above the plains.

Halisstra paid little heed to any of it. She had eyes only for Danifae Yauntyrr, who fought Quenthel Baenre on a narrow path that led down from the ledge.

Holding her holy symbol in her hand, Halisstra chanted a prayer to Lolth. When she completed the spell, she felt her strength increase. She smiled at the feel of again casting spells in Lolth's name.

She sang the words to a bae'qeshel spell-song and turned herself invisible.

Ready, she drew Seyll's sword from the scabbard on her back and hurried down the path toward her former battle-captive.

Pharaun hovered in the air and watched the nycaloths bearing down on him. He pulled a small glass flask of alchemist's fire from his piwafwi, coated his fingers in the sticky, flammable substance, and hurriedly recited the words to a powerful incantation. When he finished, he mentally selected several points in the air next to the nycaloths flying toward him, beside the nycaloths flying toward the priestesses, and a few points at random amidst the mezzoloths on the ground.

Little balls of fire appeared at the loci he had selected and exploded into small but incredibly intense bursts of flame and heat. The nycaloths roared. The explosion sent them all spiraling off course. One of the four coming at him fell smoking to the ground, trailing its mirror images.

Yugoloths were resistant to fire but not fire of the intensity that Pharaun could summon.

The mezzoloths below answered Pharaun's spell as three score balls of flame exploded in the air around him. His protective spells partially shielded him, but his non-magical clothing burst into flame and his skincharred.

The explosion spun him around, and he struggled to recapture his bearings. At last he found the three nycaloths as they streaked toward him. Just as he prepared another spell, all three of the nycaloths winked out.

Teleportation, Pharaun realized with a curse.

Before he could respond, they appeared beside him.

He caught only a chaotic glimpse of muscular, scaled bodies, fanged muzzles, black horns, beating wings, armor, claws, and axes.

Steel and claws rained down on him. His enchanted piwafwi, as hard to penetrate as plate armor, turned most of the attacks, but a claw rake opened his shoulder, and the wound poured blood.

He went straight up into the air and spun a long, vertical loop-his field of vision went from ground, to mountains, to sky and back again. The nycaloths and their illusionary duplicates pursued, harrying him the while, but he was more agile in the air than they.

While he flew, he spoke the arcane words to his next spell. Midway through the incantation, he produced a small glass mirror and held it in his palm.

One of the nycaloths flew past him and caught him by his ankle. Another crashed into him from the other side. The three of them went into a mad, twirling spin. Centrifugal force stripped the grip of the nycaloth on his ankle.

Pharaun could not tell up from down. He turned from ground to sky, ground to sky, ground to sky.

A lightning bolt from the ultroloth ripped into him. It had no effect on the nycaloths-yugoloths were immune to lightning, he knew-but its power sliced through his protective wards, burned holes in his skin, and set his hair on end. He gritted his teeth and continued his casting.

The nycaloth grappling him growled in his ear, its wings and claws beating frantically. Pharaun held it off as best he could while holding the rhythm of his spell.

Claws tore through Pharaun's piwafwi, ripped the skin of his mid-section. Blood leaked from the wound, but Pharaun managed to mouth the final word of his spell while simultaneously slamming the mirror against the flesh of the nycaloth holding him. Green energy flared, and the nycaloth's roar was cut abruptly short as the magic took effect.

The creature's entire body turned to clear glass.

It started to fall, along with its illusionary doubles, dragging Pharaun with it.

Pharaun wriggled free of its stiff grasp and watched with satisfaction as the transformed creature shattered on the rocky ground below. The other two nycaloths and their illusionary duplicates circled back at him, roaring.

Pharaun turned and flew away from them, speeding around a series of burning drow souls, gathering for another spell.

He spared a glance to his right, over at the ultroloth. Already, a shimmering globe of magical energy surrounded the yugoloth wizard, and the creature was in the midst of casting yet another spell. Pharaun knew the globe would make the ultroloth invulnerable to a whole host of Pharaun's less powerful spells.

Pharaun pulled up hard and wheeled to his right. The clumsy nycaloths flew past him, cursing.

Hoping to disrupt the ultroloth's casting, Pharaun pulled a crystal cone from his piwafwi and hurried through an incantation.

The ultroloth finished first and pointed his open palm at Pharaun.

Almost all of the protective spells on Pharaun's person winked out at the same time, dispelled by the yugoloth's counterspell.

Pharaun cursed. The ultroloth must have been powerful to have so disposed of Pharaun's protective magic.

Pharaun put his vulnerability out of his mind and finished his own spell. He flew at the ultroloth, pronounced the final word, put the cone to his lips, and blew.

An expanding blast of ice and freezing air erupted outward and engulfed the ultroloth. The creature spun backward, coated in a sheath of freezing cold.

Pharaun could see that his spell had harmed the ultroloth, but far from mortally.

He rotated a circle in the air, looking back for the nycaloths.

He saw them nowhere. Either they had abandoned the field or they had turned invisible.

He accelerated upward, anticipating an axe blow with every breath, and at the same time triggered his ability to see invisible creatures. The power took effect just in time for him to see the nycaloths swooping in from either side, axes high.

He veered aside but too slow. An axe sank deeply into his shoulder. The other would have split his skullbut he managed to duck under it at the last moment, so it only tore his scalp.

Wings beat in his face. The nycaloths grabbed at his piwafwi, clawed at his flesh. Their weight dragged him downward. He used the ring of flying to resist their pull, but he was slowly drifting down.

Below, hundreds of mezzoloths waited.

Bleeding, mildly dazed, Pharaun voiced the single word to one of his more powerful spells. The incantation used sound as a weapon, and Pharaun thought it unlikely that the yugoloths would have protected themselves against sonic energy.

When the magic took effect, he felt it gather in his throat. He let it build, then exhaled it in a high-pitched scream that resounded over the battlefield. The magic of the scream tore into and through the nycaloths, killing them both, and continued downward in an invisible wave until it smashed into the waiting mezzoloths and killed fully half of them where they stood.

He righted himself in the air, bleeding profusely from the wounds inflicted by the nycaloths' claws, and turned to face the ultroloth. Souls burned in the air between them, writhing in pain.

Pharaun, burned and torn, sympathized.

Chapter Twenty

Inthracis shook off the last lingering effects of the drow wizard's cone of cold. His ears still rang from the wizard's banshee wail, but he had been too far away for the magic to affect him otherwise. His nycaloths had not been as fortunate.

Things were not going as Inthracis had hoped. The klurichir and swarm of spiders were churning through the regiment. His troops were fighting well, but the huge demon and spider swarm were more than he had anticipated. The dead littered the battlefield. He could have summoned his own additional aid, of course, but nothing to match either the klurichir or the swarm.

He had to keep the klurichir and swarm occupied, at least until he could kill the priestesses.

He pulled a thin rod of basalt from his thigh sheath and summoned its power.

A pulse of black energy went out and down from him and rippled across the battlefield. Where it passed, slain mezzoloths and nycaloths clawed and shambled their way to their feet, even those just killed by the drow wizard. The undead yugoloths would not be as effective combatants as his living troops, but they would be of help against the swarm of arachnids and perhaps even the klurichir.

He sent his mental projection across the field, commanding the newly risen undead: Attack the klurichir and spider swarm until they are destroyed.

The dead moved to obey, joining their living comrades in the desperate melee. Satisfied, Inthracis considered his options.

Vhaeraun wanted him to kill the three priestesses. He saw only two. They were battling each other on the path leading down from the mountain. He decided that he would see them dead quickly or not at all.

Vhaeraun would be satisfied or he would not. Inthracis had seen enough.

To every surviving nycaloth in the Black Horn Regiment, he projected, Two of the three priestesses are on the ledge leading down from the Pass of the Soulreaver. Teleport there, kill them, and retreat from the field.

That done, Inthracis's thoughts returned to the drow wizard. He called to mind the words to one of his more powerful necromantic spells.