into the ground with her whip handle, spun, and lashed the priestess across her back with all five serpent heads.
Grunting, staggering, the Eilistraeen still managed to keep her feet. She whirled aside from a follow-up lash that would have tornher head from her shoulders.
The priestess of Eilistraee began to cast again, but Quenthel was too fast. The whip cracked once more, found flesh through the Eilistraeean's armor, and her scream of pain ruined her spell.
Pharaun could see that the combat was over. The Eilistraeen was no match for Quenthel Baenre.
Halisstra must have seen it too, through the ice wall. Her muffled shout carried through the barrier "Uluyara! Danifae, help her!"
But Danifae did nothing, declared her allegiance to no one.
Desperate, the priestessof the Dark Maiden rushed Quenthel, spinning, slashing, andstabbing. Quenthel parried the blows and answered with a shield smash that sent the Eilistraeen reeling.
Moving with her whip-enhanced speed, Quenthel withdrew from an inner pocket of her piwafwi a silvery rod of metal as long as her forearm. She pointed it at the prone Eilistraeen, and it discharged a mass of some kind of sticky, semiliquid substance. The stuff soaked the priestess and quickly hardened. The Eilistraeen struggled against it for a moment but could not move.
Quenthel grinned and walked over to the prone, immobilized priestess.
Pharaun, pleased that things had gone so easily, took a moment to survey the field. Jeggred remained stunned, though one of his hands was spasming. The elf priestess remained immobilized and squeezed in Pharaun's magical hand. Halisstra was temporarily trapped in a hemisphere of ice, though Pharaun could hear her weapon working at breaking throughand she would soon succeed.
Quenthel belted her whip and took from her robes a small, adamantine knife with a stylized spider hilt. A sacrificial knife, Pharaun knew.
She maneuvered behind the prone priestess so that Halisstra Melarn would have a clear view.
"I am not afraid," the immobilized Eilistraeen said, though Pharaun could not tell whether she meant the words for Halisstra or Quenthel.
"Of course you are," Quenthel said as she raised the blade high.
Halisstra's blade poked through the ice wall. "No!" she shouted.
Pharaun incanted a quick spell and sent five darts ofmagical energy from his fingertips and through the small hole Halisstra had opened in the ice. They slammed into the Melarn priestess, and she exclaimed with pain.
Meanwhile, Quenthel offered a quick prayer to Lolth and slit the priestess's throat open. The Eilistraeean's blood poured onto the rocky ground of the Demonweb Pits, and she died gurgling.
"No!" shouted Halisstra.
Quenthel rose, smiled at Halisstra, then at Danifae, and called up to Pharaun, "Come, Master Mizzrym. The Pass of the Soulreaver awaits. My sacrifice to the Spider Queen is complete."
Pharaun caught Danifae absently signing, And mine soon will be.
The mage spared a last look back at the elf priestess, still clutched helplessly in the magical hand. His spell would expire soon. Perhaps she would be dead by then, perhaps not. Pharaun did not care. The Eilistraeeans were no match for them.
He flew down to Quenthel's side. He did not so much as a glance at the sacrificed Eilistraeen. Together, the two of them strode toward the pass.
Behind him, Halisstra finally chopped a large enough hole through the globe of ice that the rest of the barrier collapsed around her.
Too, Jeggred uttered a soft growl. Apparently, he was returning to sensibility, at least inasmuch as he was ever sensible.
"Turn and face me, Baenre bitch," Halisstra challenged from behind.
Spellcasting sounded from behindit was Halisstra. Pharaun listened to the words and noddeda strike of flame.
Almost absentmindedly, he voiced the words to a counterspell and foiled her casting.
He could imagine Halisstra's consternation.
"Stop, Baenre!" Halisstra roared her voice desperate, angry. "Face us and let's see which goddess is the stronger."
Quenthel ignored her. She and Pharaun reached the very threshold of the Pass of the Soulreaver. The hole in the rock was as black and impenetrable up close as it had been from afar. Souls entered it and vanished one by one.
Halisstra sped after them, her boots crunching against the rock.
From behind, Quenthel seemed almost in a trance. To Pharaun she said, "The Reaver exists at the sufferance of Lolth. It is bound within and does her bidding."
Pharaun eyed the tunnel entrance as the souls continued to stream into it.
"What is her bidding?" he asked.
Quenthel did not look at him when she replied, "As it always is, male. To test those she wishes to test. Some souls pass through unchallenged. Some do not."
She turned to look him in the face, though