Little sign remained of the battle with the yugoloths. The field had been picked clean by the horde.
As before, souls exited the Pass of the Soulreaver to be caught in the violet flames of the
Plains of Soulfire, burning and writhing until weakness was purged from their flesh. Quenthel wondered when next she passed through the plains how long her own her soul would hang in the air, burning, until her weakness was adequately purged.
She saw movement near the ledge before the Pass of the Soulreaver. A towering form called out to her and loped down the path-Jeggred.
She walked forward over the broken ground to meet her nephew. The draegloth picked his way over the plains, through the arachnids. Blood and gore covered him. Ribbons of yugoloth skin still hung from his claws. His own flesh, torn open by innumerable scratches, cuts, and oozing wounds, looked as broken and battered as the plains around them. One of his inner arms was nothing more than a bloody stump. He slowed as he approached, obviously surprised to see her.
His eyes narrowed in a question, and he looked up and past her, to the city, to the tabernacle.
"I knew it," he said, grinning like the idiot he was. "It was her."
Her whip stung his hide, and he whirled on her, claw raised. Her stare stopped him cold.
"You were but a fortunate fool," she said, pent up rage making her voice tight. "Lolth is reborn, and now things are as they were. You answer to House Baenre."
The serpent whips flicked their tongues and hissed.
Jeggred stared at her, indecision on his face.
"Disobedience will be punished severely, male," she added.
Jeggred licked his lips, bowed his head, and bent his knee. "Yes, Mistress."
Quenthel smiled. Cowing Jeggred brought her some small satisfaction but not enough. She stared at the top of the draegloth's head, thinking, her anger unsated.
She incanted a prayer, cast a spell that charged her touch with enough power to kill almost anything.
Jeggred heard her casting and looked up, his gaze wary. Quenthel smiled at him.
"You well served the Spider Queen, nephew," she said, and reached out to stroke his mane.
Jeggred visibly relaxed.
Quenthel's smile faded. She grabbed a handful of the draegloth's course hair and discharged into the draegloth all of her hate, all of her anger, all of the power in her spell.
It hit Jeggred like a giant's maul. His bones twisted and shattered; his skin tore itself open;
blood erupted from his ears, eyes, and mouth. He fell to the ground and writhed with agony,
roaring.
"But you poorly served me," she said.
She brandished her whip for a killing blow but hesitated.
She had a better idea.
The half-demon clawed his way to his feet, bleeding from a hundred wounds.
"She will kill you for this," he said, spitting blood. "I will kill you."
Quenthel was not sure whether Jeggred meant Triel or Danifae but either way, she could only smile. Jeggred understood little.
"You've served your purpose," she said into Jeggred's bloody face. "And you are but a male."
Around them, the arachnids began to gather, perhaps attracted by the smell of Jeggred's blood.
Quenthel looked into his red eyes and said, "Farewell, nephew. You are my first sacrifice to the reborn Spider Queen."
With that, she held her holy symbol in her hands and offered a prayer to her reborn goddess.
Magic swirled around her, magic that would return her to Menzoberranzan.
She had much to tell her matron mother.
Just before the spell moved her away from the Demonweb Pits, she saw a thousand spiders clamber forward, coat Jeggred's body, and begin to feed.
The draegloth's screams made her smile.
EPILOGUE
Invisible, Aliisza called upon the arcane heritage of her demon blood and transported herself in an instant to the Plains of Soulfire, in Lolth's Demonweb Pits.
She appeared on the broken, cratered landscape amidst caustic pools, steaming fumaroles, and clouds of green vapor. Her demon blood prevented the environment from harming her. She was alone on the plain.
Behind her, Lolth's Infinite Web stretched over a limitless abyss and outward toward forever.
The Spider Queen's city, capped with its pyramidal tabernacle, crawled the strands. So too did more spiders than there were demons in the Abyss.
Before her rose sheer jagged mountains as tall as Aliisza had ever seen. Spiders crawled all over them too. Aliisza didn't know what Lolth saw in spiders. The alu-fiend thought them hideous creatures, as ugly as a dretch.
She still did not know exactly what had transpired. She knew only that Lolth had been reborn as something greater than she had been.
And that Pharaun Mizzrym was dead.
The acknowledgment stirred a strange sensation in her, not unlike the way she'd once felt after going without food for a few days. Her stomach hurt, and her legs felt weak. She felt a sense of loss, or at least of missed opportunity. She would miss Pharaun's companionship, his ready wit.
And I bedded him only once, she thought with a pout, though she supposed that was better than not at all.
