“Aye,” Horgar said. “How will you draw them out, now that you’ve taught them caution at the Pillars of Woe?”
Nimor smiled. It didn’t escape him that Horgar and Kaanyr were examining the tactical problem of defeating Menzoberranzan, instead of quarreling over what they expected to gain from their efforts.
“My brothers and I expect to help in that regard,” he said. “We’re not numerous but we’re well-placed, and, my lords, you have forgotten House Agrach Dyrr.”
Horgar and Kaanyr exchanged a nod, even a smile.
Prepare well, Menzoberranzan, Nimor thought. I’m coming.
“I never imagined so many demons in my life,” Ryld grunted. He leaned on Splitter, watching as a huge, bat-winged, bloated form spiraled feebly down into the darkness, vainly trying to fly with its wings savaged by blows of the weapons master’s greatsword. He straightened and wiped the back of one hand across his brow. “It’s getting hotter, too. I hope we’re close to whatever we’re looking for.”
Halisstra and the rest of the company stood nearby, swaying with nausea or trembling with fatigue as the environment and their exertions warranted. For what seemed like hours, they’d continued to fight their way down strand after strand. Sometimes they descended for miles past strands that were empty or held nothing but corpses, but more and more frequently they encountered demons that were alive and hungry. Most of the infernal creatures threw themselves headlong into battle as if all reason had deserted them, but a few retained enough of their intelligence to employ their formidable magical abilities against the interlopers.
With fang, claw, sting, and unholy sorcery the denizens of the Demonweb Pits scoured and scored the drow company. It didn’t help that Quenthel had commanded Pharaun to hoard his spells carefully so that the company met each new demonic threat with steel, not the wizard’s magic.
“Save your breath, Master Argith,” Quenthel said. She slowly straightened from her own fighting crouch, her whip splattered with the gore of a dozen demons.
“We must press on.”
The company hadn’t gone more than another forty yards before their strand shuddered, and an enormous taloned hand appeared from beneath. Clawing its way around from the unseen bottom side of the web, a massive, bison-headed demon with foul, coarse fur sprouting from its shoulders and back hauled itself to the top of the strand and bellowed a vast challenge.
“A goristro!” Pharaun cried. “What in all the hells is that doing here?”
“Some pet of Lolth’s that’s gotten loose, I don’t doubt,” Tzirik replied. The Vhaeraunite priest began to chant a spell, while the others leaped into action. Before the monster could clamber to its feet, Valas feathered it with at least three arrows, the black shafts sprouting from its shoulders and thick neck like pins in a cushion. The goristro snorted in pain and anger, and reached out one hulking hand to pick up the corpse of a small spider-demon nearby. It flung the corpse at Valas, catching the scout as he fished in his quiver for more arrows. The impact staggered Valas, who stumbled and slipped down the side of the strand, cursing in several languages.
Ryld ran forward with Splitter held high, Quenthel at his side, while Halisstra and Danifae carefully tried to circle the beast to one side as best they could on the narrow strand, hoping to surround it on all sides.
Tzirik finished his spell and shouted out a deep, rolling word of power, creating a great whirling disk of spinning razors across the goristro’s torso. Blades bit and blood flew, but still the monster came on undeterred.
“What will it take to stop this thing?” Halisstra called. “Does it have any weaknesses?”
“It’s stupid,” Pharaun replied. “Barely sentient, really. Don’t meet it blow for blow.”
The wizard gestured and struck the monster with a gleaming green ray of energy that chewed into the goristro’s chest, while Tzirik moved in behind Ryld and Quenthel to help them against the monster. The weapons master and the high priestess leaped and slashed at the creature’s belly and torso, while dodging the ponderous blows of its enormous fists. One glancing blow spun Quenthel to her hands and knees, but she managed to scramble out of the way before the creature could finish her off.
“Noooot stuuuupiiiid!” roared the goristro.
It lifted one hoofed foot and stamped it down on the strand with such astonishing power that the whole miles-long cable thrummed like something alive. The shock wave threw all of the drow into the air, yet the goristro had failed to anticipate the consequences of its mighty stomp, for the shock threw it into the air as well. The monstrous demon landed awkwardly on its side and slid off the strand, catching itself by one arm dug into the upper surface. It scrambled and kicked, its struggles shaking the strand even more.
Quenthel picked herself up from the trembling surface, and weaved her way past the brute’s arm to look down at its face. With a deliberate motion, she flicked her snake-headed whip at one of its beady eyes and destroyed the organ in a sickening burst of gore. The goristro howled in agony and recoiled, losing its grip on the strand and tumbling down into the abyss. Its bellows of rage continued for a long time, diminishing as it fell away from them. She didn’t bother to watch it fall. Instead she turned to the rest of the company.
“Get up,” she snarled. “We’re wasting time.”
Halisstra picked herself up from the web and glanced around. Valas scrambled back into view from his precarious position on the side of the strand. Danifae climbed to her feet as well. They followed after Quenthel as the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith set off again at once, moving at an impatient lope as she bounded down the strand. Halisstra was too tired to keep up the pace for long, but she had even less energy for an argument with the single-minded priestess, and so she merely set her jaw and endured.
They reached the bottom—almost.
For some time they’d noticed converging strands drawing closer to their own, and Halisstra could see the reason why. A great ring of webbing a dozen times thicker than any of the gray strands was suspended below them, binding the ends of the strands together. Its circumference was so great that Halisstra could hardly describe a curve at all in the ring’s vast arc. In the center there was something—a titanic black structure or island of sorts hanging in the mighty web. The drow paused, surveying the scene, until Valas broke the silence.
“Is that it?” he said in a low voice.
“The entrance to Lolth’s domain,” Tzirik answered, “lies somewhere within that ring.”
“Are you sure?” asked Ryld.
“I am,” Quenthel replied for the priest.
She didn’t look aside or hesitate, but simply set off again at the same hard pace.
As the strand approached the central ring its steep pitch gradually flattened and thickened somewhat, and for the first time in seemingly endless hours and miles the company found itself traversing something like level ground instead of picking their way down the sloping cable. More demonic and spidery corpses appeared, some half-buried in the strand as if they’d fallen from the limitless heights above—which they most likely had.
The travelers reached the thick ring and crossed one more stretch of twisted webbing only to find that the structure in the center was some kind of immense stone temple, a baroque building of gleaming black obsidian miles in diameter. Spiked stone buttresses soared across the bottomless space, linking the structure to the ring around it. Vast dark plazas of smooth stone large enough to swallow cities surrounded the temple’s flanks. Without speaking, the company picked their way over to one of the colossal flying buttresses and advanced toward their goal.
Halisstra found herself trembling, not with exhaustion, but with a combination of terror and ecstasy as she realized that she must soon withstand Lolth’s scrutiny in the flesh.