Ao had spoken.

Eilistraee stared at the empty place on the sava board where the Spider Queen's champion had once stood. "You wanted Selvetarm to die. You arranged it."

Lolth gave a lazy shrug. "Of course. And now it's your turn to lose a piece of my choosing."

"No," Eilistraee whispered. A tear squeezed from eyes that had turned a dull yellow. It trickled down the goddess's face, and was absorbed by Vhaeraun's mask.

"Yes." Lolth answered. Smiling cruelly, she extended a web-laced hand to point at a Priestess piece. "That one. I demand her sacrifice. Now."

T'lar slipped silently into the blood-warm river and clung to a gnarled tree root so the sluggish current wouldn't carry her away. The river slid smoothly over her skin without impediment; upon acceptance in the Velkyn Velve, she had shaved her body from scalp to ankle-there would be no incriminating flashes of white to give her away. Floating on her back, she pulled a tangle of dead creeper vines across her naked body to conceal herself. She stared up at the sky, awash with the light of thousands of stars, and listened to the rustling of the night's predators and the startled screeches of their prey. The World Above was a noisy place compared to the cool silence of the Underdark, but even over this restlessness she could hear the soft murmur of voices: the wild elf, and the female T'lar had been sent to kill.

She let go of the root. The current caught her. As she drifted toward the voices, concealed under the tangle of vines, she adjusted the grip of her fingers on her spike-spiders, two walnut-sized metal throwing balls filled with poison and studded with hollow metal needles. A prick from either would numb her hands. Used against someone who hadn't built up an immunity to their poison, they would render the entire body as rigid as petrified wood.

Through the veil of creeper vine, T'lar observed her target: a drow female standing on the river bank, turned sideways to the water, her attention focused on the strange-looking male who squatted at her feet. The female was about T'lar's size, but there the resemblance ended. The priestess had long, bone white hair, wound in a tight coil and bound by a black web-lace hair net at the back of her head. Black gloves embroidered in a white spiderweb design covered her hands and arms up to the elbow. She wore a thin silk robe, cinched at the waist by a belt from which hung a ceremonial dagger and whip. The whip's three snake heads twisted beside her hip, forked tongues tasting the air, alert for danger.

T'lar's target was a noble of House Mizz'rynturl. T'lar knew her slightly. She had once been of that House, and had even played with Nafay on occasion when both had been girls-games like Stalking Spider and Flay the Slave. But T'lar had given up all other allegiances the day she was shorn. From her second decade of life, she had served Lolth alone.

And Lolth had decreed that Nafay must die.

T'lar hadn't asked why-to have done so would have been insolence bordering on suicide. But she'd heard the whispers: that Nafay, who had only recently joined the Temple of the Black Mother, served Lolth only superficially. That her true devotions lay elsewhere-with Vhaeraun, it was rumored-though a female being accepted into the Masked Lord's faith was about as likely as the moon turning into a spider and scuttling away from the sky.

Still, Nafay had done something to incur Lolth's wrath. Something that had prompted the valsharess to set T'lar on the hunt. And what a long chase it had been. Guallidurth lay more than four hundred leagues from here, as the spider crawled. What had drawn Nafay to the World Above and prompted her to seek the company of such a strange-looking male?

The wild elf was heavily built-almost as muscled as a drow female. He had duskier skin than most surface elves. Yellow paint ringed his eyes, and his hair hung in tiny braids, each tipped with a tuft of downy white feathers. His only clothing was a baglike loincloth that accentuated his genitals. From its string ties hung a dart pouch. He squatted before the priestess, arms resting on his knees, holding a blowpipe, and spoke in a high-pitched, melodic voice that reminded T'lar of the chirping of a cave cricket.

The priestess answered him in the same language.

T'lar gave a silent mental command. Her earlobe tickled as the spider-shaped black opal on her earring stirred to life. She tilted her head slightly, encouraging the spider to crawl into her ear, and waited as it spun a web that thrummed like a second eardrum in time with the voices. Then she listened.

"… lead me to it," the priestess said.

The male shook his head. "They will kill you. Strangers are not even permitted within the forest, let alone at the yathzalahaun."

The word had the cadence of High Drow. T'lar's spider-earring translated it as "temple of first learning."

"Yet I am here, within the Misty Vale."

"Yes."

The priestess leaned closer to him. "And you will lead me to the temple."

The male sighed. "Yes," he whispered. He gave her a tortured look of equal parts anguish and anticipation, as if she had promised him something-something he would pay dearly for.

T'lar drifted even with the spot where Nafay stood; in another moment or two, the current would carry her past. She exhaled and sank beneath the surface, letting the tangle of creeper vine drift on alone. She kicked, sending herself shoreward, then twisted so that her feet touched bottom. She burst out of the water hands-first, and in the same motion hurled the spike-spiders. One struck the male square in the forehead. He immediately stiffened and toppled sideways. The second sailed toward the priestess. Before it struck, one of Nafay's whip vipers reared. It snapped the spike-spider out of the air and swallowed it.

The whip viper thrashed wildly as the spike-spider jammed in its throat. The other two snake heads hissed in fury.

Nafay whirled. The holy disk hanging from her neck whipped around like a pendulum. She shouted a prayer and wove her hands together, glaring at T'lar through the tangle of her fingers.

T'lar felt the spell brush against her body. It pulled at her abdomen, bloating it unnaturally. It teased two strands of flesh from her left side, attempting to twist them, together with her left arm and leg, into thin insectoid legs. Her mind was yanked toward the priestess. Web-sticky fingers plucked at her thoughts, trying to weave them to Nafay's will.

T'lar fought back with all her will. With a jolt, her body returned to normal. She leaped from the water. In mid-leap she used the dro'zress within her to pass into invisibility. A mid-air tumble and a kick off a tree trunk placed her where the priestess wouldn't expect her. She jabbed stiffened fingers into the priestess's upper-left abdomen, into the vital spot over the blood-sac. Her other hand punched into Nafay's throat.

The priestess gagged and buckled at the knees, unable to breathe and bleeding within. She grasped her holy symbol and tried to flutter her fingers in a silent prayer, but T'lar spun and slammed a heel into Nafay's temple. The priestess collapsed, unconscious.

One of the whip's heads lashed out. T'lar leaped back. The snake's poison-filled fangs snapped at air. T'lar stepped carefully around the whip and crouched behind the priestess. She pressed hard against the neck, where the blood flowed, and choked off the pulse. Nafay's legs kicked once, and then her body relaxed. She was dead.

"Lolth tlu malla," T'lar whispered, giving the ritual thanks for a successful kill. "Jal ultrinnan zhah xundus."