even over this restlessness she could hear the soft murmur of voices: the wild elf, and the female T’lar had been sent to kill.
She let go of the root. The current caught her. As she drifted toward the voices, concealed under the tangle of vines, she adjusted the grip of her fingers on her spike-spiders, two walnut-sized metal throwing balls filled with poison and studded with hollow metal needles. A prick from either would numb her hands. Used against someone who hadn’t built up an immunity to their poison, they would render the entire body as rigid as petrified wood.
Through the veil of creeper vine, T’lar observed her target: a drow female standing on the river bank, turned sideways to the water, her attention focused on the strange-looking male who squatted at her feet. The female was about T’lar’s size, but there the resemblance ended. The priestess had long, bone white hair, wound in a tight coil and bound by a black web-lace hair net at the back of her head. Black gloves embroidered in a white spiderweb design covered her hands and arms up to the elbow. She wore a thin silk robe, cinched at the waist by a belt from which hung a cerŹemonial dagger and whip. The whip’s three snake heads twisted beside her hip, forked tongues tasting the air, alert for danger.
T’lar’s target was a noble of House Mizz’rynturl. T’lar knew her slightly. She had once been of that House, and had even played with Nafay on occasion when both had been girlsgames like Stalking Spider and Flay the Slave. But T’lar had given up all other allegiances the day she was shorn. From her second decade of life, she had served Lolth alone.
And Lolth had decreed that Nafay must die.
T’lar hadn’t asked whyto have done so would have been insolence bordering on suicide. But she’d heard the whispers: that Nafay, who had only recently joined the Temple of the Black Mother, served Lolth only superficially. That her true devotions lay elsewherewith Vhaeraun, it was rumoredthough a female being accepted into the Masked Lord’s faith was about as likely as the moon turning into a spider and scuttling away from the sky.
Still, Nafay had done something to incur Lolth’s wrath. Something that had prompted the valsharess to set T’lar on the hunt. And what a long chase it had been. Guallidurth lay more than four hundred leagues from here, as the spider crawled. What had drawn Nafay to the World Above and prompted her to seek the company of such a strange-looking male?
The wild elf was heavily builtalmost as muscled as a drow female. He had duskier skin than most surface elves. Yellow paint ringed his eyes, and his hair hung in tiny braids, each tipped with a tuft of downy white feathers. His only clothing was a baglike loincloth that accentuated his genitals. From its string ties hung a dart pouch. He squatted before the priestess, arms resting on his knees, holding a blowpipe, and spoke in a high-pitched, melodic voice that reminded T’lar of the chirping of a cave cricket.
The priestess answered him in the same language.
T’lar gave a silent mental command. Her earlobe tickled as the spider-shaped black opal on her earring stirred to life. She tilted her head slightly, encouraging the spider to crawl into her ear, and waited as it spun a web that thrummed like a second eardrum in time with the voices. Then she listened.
“… lead me to it,” the priestess said.
The male shook his head. “They will kill you. Strangers are not even permitted within the forest, let alone at the yathzalahaun.”
The word had the cadence of High Drow. T’lar’s spider-earring translated it as “temple of first learning.”
“Yet I am here, within the Misty Vale.”
“Yes.”
The priestess leaned closer to him. “And you will lead me to the temple.”
The male sighed. “Yes,” he whispered. He gave her a tortured look of equal parts anguish and anticipation, as if she had promŹised him somethingsomething he would pay dearly for.
T’lar drifted even with the spot where Nafay stood; in another moment or two, the current would carry her past. She exhaled and sank beneath the surface, letting the tangle of creeper vine drift on alone. She kicked, sending herself shoreŹward, then twisted so that her feet touched bottom. She burst out of the water hands-first, and in the same motion hurled the spike-spiders. One struck the male square in the forehead. He immediately stiffened and toppled sideways. The second sailed toward