"It is not a false hope!" Valdar snapped, his pink eyes blazing. "Nobody saw Vhaeraun die. Not even me-and I was here, staring through the gate as it opened. Think about it. Vhaeraun has tricked Eilistraee's faithful into joining our fight. He's using her shrines as a stepping stone. A staging ground for the eventual overthrow of Lolth and her matriarchies. Then the natural order will be restored. We Nightshadows will return to the Underdark, and males will rule." He paused to catch his breath. "Vhaeraun's plan is a brilliant one, in every detail. What more perfect treachery can there be than to feign one's own death and infiltrate the very body of one's enemy? It's the perfect disguise."

Karas had been listening intently. But the time for talking was almost at an end. In another moment, he'd finish it-kill his target, and probably take a fatal wound himself. If he survived, he might very well wind up trapped in this cavern, eventually dying of starvation. He was resigned to that. But before he pressed home his attack, there was one last question he had to ask.

"It all sounds plausible," he said. "But what proof can you offer that it's true?"

Valdar's eyes gleamed. "The order to kill me came from a priestess. And that priestess-whoever she is-takes her orders from her deity. Do you honestly believe Eilistraee would condone an assassination of one of her own? Or does that strike you as being more like an order that Vhaeraun would give?"

"Why would he order you killed? If, as you say, you only did as he commanded."

Valdar's eyes bored into his. "As a trial. He knew it would bring you face to face with me, and test your faith."

Karas's body was still, but his thoughts churned. He searched for a counter argument, but couldn't find one. Nor did he want to. Something was breaking in him-breaking open. The brittle shell he'd encased his anguish in, these past four months.

"There's a way to test whether what I say is true," Valdar said softly. "Return to the female who gave you the order. Tell her I've been slain. See if divine retribution follows." He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "Or if reward follows, instead."

Without waiting to hear what Karas would say next, he sheathed his dagger.

For several moments, Karas remained motionless. Then he nodded to himself. "I think I'll do just that. If you're wrong, I can always kill you another day." Slowly, he slid his own dagger back into its sheath.

Halisstra cringed on the floor, watching Lolth. The goddess was in her spider form, her body a glossy black, her eyes a burning crimson. She dangled upside down from the ceiling of the web-choked room, slowly spinning in place.

Halisstra kept her head bowed-she didn't dare look fully upon the goddess. As she watched, the hourglass-shaped pattern on the underside of Lolth's abdomen shrank as her body contracted. A crack appeared beside each of Lolth's fang-tipped jaws. With a sharp cracking sound it enlarged until the skin peeled back from her face.

The goddess shuddered. She contracted still more, tearing the rest of her head free from its hard coating of chitin. Then the cracks spread to the abdomen, releasing her. Lolth tumbled onto the cold iron floor, leaving her molted skin behind. The empty husk, still dangling from its strand of web, twisted above her.

As she stood, Lolth assumed her hybrid form, sprouting a drow head. Her spider body was enormous.Though Halisstra stood twice the height of a drow, she could have walked upright between the goddess's spider legs with room to spare. The new skin on that body, all wrinkled and soft, glistened with the fluids that had loosened the old skin. As the abdomen pulsed, drawing breath, the skin smoothed and hardened to glossy black.

The goddess twisted her head back and forth to work out kinks in her neck and flicked damp hair out of her eyes. Her face was the epitome of beauty: velvet-smooth skin, delicately pointed ears, arched white eyebrows and kiss-pout lips.

Danifae's face. The visage the goddess had worn since consuming her chosen one.

Lolth's pale gray eyes shone with malice. "Battle-captive. I hunger. Attend me."

Halisstra crept forward, trying not to reveal the loathing she felt, and prostrated herself before the goddess. Lolth moved over her, claws clicking like sword points against the cold black iron of the floor. Her cheeks bulged as two palps emerged from them. These probed Halisstra's bare back, parting the matted hair that covered it. Lolth vomited.

As the digestive juices struck her back, Halisstra gasped. There was a moment of warmth-then pain comparable to being scalded. The pain bored deeper, down into the flesh of her back. She could feel her flesh dissolving, sloughing away from her ribs and backbone. Could smell the reek of bile and hear Lolth taking the half-digested flesh up in great, greedy slurps.

Halisstra collapsed, the sudden weight of her body snapping two of the eight tiny legs that protruded from her chest. Yet the pain of cracking chitin was nothing compared to the raw, open mess that was her back. She lay, barely conscious, the jaws protruding from her cheeks gnashing weakly as Lolth loomed over her, eating her fill.

Halisstra had once been a drow, heir to the throne of House Melarn of Ched Nasad. Now she was the Lady Penitent. Doomed to suffer forever at the hands of the female she had formerly commanded. Danifae had once been Halisstra's battle-captive, but now she was Lolth's chosen one. No longer a drow, she had become part of the Spider Queen.

The slurping noises stopped. Lolth laughed-a gloating sound that was all Danifae. Halisstra felt herself gathered up off the floor by arms-drow arms-and cradled against a woman's chest. Lolth had assumed drow form. Despite the disparity in their sizes, she rocked Halisstra back and forth like an infant, one hand caressing the half-dissolved flesh of Halisstra's back as it slowly regenerated. Then she kissed Halisstra-a long, brutal kiss. The kind a matron would force on a House boy.

Halisstra tore her mouth away and retched.

Lolth stood, dumping her to the floor. "Weakling," she spat.

Halisstra hung her head. Even after nearly five years, the word still stung.

Lolth strode in a circle around the room, her arms extended. Webs stuck to her skin, covering the body that had once been Danifae's in a layer of overlapping white filaments. With a snap of her fingers, she summoned tiny red spiders. These scurried back and forth, weaving the webs into a long white gown. When they were done, the spiders dangled from the hem and cuffs in a living fringe.

Huddled on the floor, Halisstra watched the goddess out of the corner of her eye, not daring to say what she was thinking. Before her fall from grace, Lolth had been the Weaver of Destiny. The goddess needed the help of arachnids to construct so much as a simple garment. Everything Lolth touched turned into a tangled mess; every web Halisstra had seen her spin had been lopsided and asymmetrical. As skewed in their design as the restless and confused mind of the Queen of Spiders herself.

Halisstra felt the prickle of flesh knitting back together as her muscles grew into place, and the stretch of new skin spreading across her back. When she was strong enough, she rose to her feet and waited for the goddess to speak.

"Do you know why I summoned you to my chamber, Halisstra?"

"To feed?"

The goddess laughed. "More than that. Guess again."

Halisstra felt her pulse quicken. It had been almost two years, by her rough reckoning, since Lolth had sealed her inside a cell, deep within her iron fortress. In all that time, she had removed Halisstra from the cell perhaps a dozen times, in order to feed. What new torment did the goddess have in mind this time?