She drifted with them, observing with detachment as her mind skipped from one to the next, like a stone skipping on water. Memories of the first day of her service in the temple of House Melarn and her instructors caning her palms until they bled after she mispronounced the words of the daily prayer. And of the satisfaction Halisstra had felt the next day, when she was called to lead the prayer - and did so with a precision that earned a brief smile from the priestess who had beaten her. Memories, too, of the footraces she and her sister Jawil had run, as children, along the roads of Ched Nasad - and the ter-rifying plunge after Jawil had pushed her over the edge in retaliation when Halisstra at last won a race. Only the fact that Halisstra had "borrowed" an aunt's House insignia - one that provided levitation magic - had saved her. Later, Jawil had said that she'd known about the insignia all along.
Those older, well-visited memories jostled against newer, fresher, somehowcleaner ones. Of the night she had been lifted from the cave and embraced by the priestesses of Eilistraee. Of the fierce joy she'd felt after defeating the phase spider. Her mind even drifted over brand-new memories that were only then being engraved upon her soul.
All of the other males Halisstra had lain with had been eager, yes, but an undercurrent of fear ran just beneath the surface of their lust. Perhaps it was because they knew they were being taken by a priestess of Lolth and feared that Halisstra, like the spiders she held sacred, might casually kill them and cast them aside. When she had first started kissing Ryld, Halisstra had seen a fleeting trace of that fear in him, but then it had disappeared. At some point during their lovemaking, he had surrendered - not to fear, or even to Halisstra, but to something larger. It was not so much that she had taken him. Instead he had given himself.
That realization acquired, Halisstra's mind drifted on to other recent memories. One of them, harsh and insistent, rose to the fore: Seyll. Or rather, her death at Halisstra's hands. Strangely, that image was garbled. Halisstra's memory of Seyll, dying, blood leaking from her side into the stream in which she lay had some-how become confused with that of Seyll in the moment just be-fore she died, when the priestess had turned and was reaching out with both hands, preparing to help Halisstra cross the stream. In that false recollection, Seyll was reaching up toward Halisstra and speaking - whereas in truth, Seyll had actually been lying so still that Halisstra had thought her already dead. And the words were wrong - they were not the words of hope that Seyll had offered after Halisstra had dragged her "body" from the stream and begun strip-ping it of its weapons and armor. Instead they seemed to be a mes-sage, and an urgent one.
Halisstra, still deep in Reverie, leaned forward to hear it.
You will need the sword,Seyll whispered.
Halisstra, her eyes still closed, patted the floor beside her and her fingers came to rest upon the broken-tipped songsword, nested in its scabbard.
"I have it," she whispered aloud.
In the dream-memory, Seyll shook her head.
Not that one.Blood bubbled from her lips as she spoke.Only with the Crescent Blade can you defeat her.
"Defeat who?" Halisstra asked. "I don't - "
It was lost on the Cold Field,Seyll interrupted, her voice gurgling as her breathing became ragged. She was close to death, almost un-able to speak.The priestess was carrying it. . . and was slain. The . . . worm has it now.
Halisstra puzzled over that one: was it "worm" Seyll had said - or "wyrm?" She decided it must have been wyrm. Dragons were known to covet treasure - especially magical weapons. And judging by the reverential way in which Seyll had said the words "Crescent Blade," magical was exactly what the sword was.
Seyll was still speaking - so faintly chat Halisstra could barely hear her.
Find the Crescent Blade. . . and use it. . . to defeat her.
"Defeat who?" Halisstra cried.
From beside her came a swift, rustling noise. Her Reverie broken, Halisstra opened her eyes and saw Ryld in a ready crouch, Splitter in hand. He glanced swiftly around the darkened room, then at Halis-stra, eyebrows raised in a silent question.
"It was nothing," she answered. "I was in Reverie. It was just a dream."
Ryld relaxed and slid the greatsword back into its