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 headit 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 battlethe ring of steel, the screams of the dyingbrought 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