them, and found it felt hot. Without healing, he would be dead by the time the sun rose.
T’lar pointed at the priestess. “She promised to cure you, didn’t she?” She touched the platinum disk that hung against her bare chest, fingers caressing the embossed spider, then pointed at the bites. “Would you like me to cure you?”
The wild elf stared at her. He couldn’t speak while gagged, but T’lar caught the slight widening of his pupils. He underŹstood her meaning, if not the words themselves. He believed she could cure him. He obviously hadn’t dealt with the drow before now. He grunted something from behind the gag and jerked his head in a nod.
She yanked him to his feet. “Yathzalahaun,” she ordered, giving him a rough shove.
He stumbled away from the river, into the forest. She followed.
They walked for some time, the wild elf forced by his hobble to take short, shuffling steps. With his arms bound behind him, he fell frequently. T’lar yanked him back to his feet each time and forced him on. The moon rose, round and full, throwŹing the forest into stark patches of light and shadow. T’lar squinted against the glare and carefully noted the direction they traveled. She would need to find her way back, later, to the cleft near the river that led back to the Underdark.
Fortunately, this region of the World Above had many landmarks. They passed a number of mounded hills, each capped by a thick tangle of trees and vines, and chunks of weathered stone half-buried in the ground. T’lar clambered over a fallen obsidian column, carved in the shape of a person with four arms folded across their chest. Whether it was meant to represent male or female, T’lar couldn’t tell; there were no obvious genitalia. Moonlight threw the glyph carved into its forehead into shadow. T’lar was no scholarshe couldn’t read the glyph itselfbut she recognized it as an archaic form of Espruar. She glanced around at the hills and realized they were the ruins of ancient structures. So perversely fertile was the World Above that soil and vegetation had completely hidden the tumbled buildings under a thick, loamy skin.
The wild elf halted before one of the hills and gestured by jerking his head in that direction. One of the trees sprouting from the hill had fallen, leaving a hole in the mound that revealed the masonry beneath. T’lar peered into the hole and saw a glint of metal: an adamantine door. Its hinges had torn free of the crumbling stone, allowing the door to fall inward. Now the metal formed a natural ramp into the darkness at the mound’s hollow center.
The wild elf glanced back at her, obviously reluctant to venture into it. T’lar shook her head. She snapped a kick at the back of his legs, knocking him to his knees, and pointed. “Inside.”
The wild elf glared at her, but complied. He wormed his way forward on his belly, into the hole. T’lar crouched and folŹlowed cautiously, Nafay’s dagger in hand. She smelled damp earth, and spider musk. A cobweb brushed her face. But the attack she had anticipated didn’t come. Though webs were everywhere, the inside of the ancient building did not contain a spider.
There was enough room inside to stand. T’lar looked around. The black marble floor had a bowl-shaped depresŹsion at its center. A tracery of white veins threaded through the marble: hair-thin lines reminiscent of a tangled web. The walls were carved, three of them in glyphs she couldn’t read that ran in narrow rows from ceiling to floor. The fourth wall bore a mural topped by a glyph T’lar did recognize: Araushnee. Lolth’s original name.
This was clearly an ancient temple.
T’lar fell to one knee and turned her head, exposing her neck. “Dark Mother of all drow, your servant offers herself.”
This ritual performed, she rose and studied the mural. It depicted an enormous spider with a drow face superimposed upon its abdomen. Eight drow arms radiated from its body. Each ended in a hand with eight fingers. Lines extended from each hand, linking the central figure to four pairs of smaller spiders, each with a face on its abdomen. The faces of the first pair were masked, while the second pair had gaunt, almost skeletal features and hollow eyes. The third pair had faces like melted wax, sagging and distorted, while the fourth pair had mouths open and spider arms lifted, as if they were singing the larger spider’s praises. The eight