Where Vhaeraun was lean and impossibly graceful, the newcomer was a thing of nightmare. Half spider and half drow, it clutched an armory of swords and maces in its six thickly muscled arms, and each of its chitinous legs ended in a vicious pincerlike claw. Its face, perversely enough, was that of a handsome drow male.
“Depart, Masked One,” the spider-god commanded in a tortured, burbling voice.
“It is forbidden for you to intrude here.”
“Do not presume to stand between me and my destiny, Selvetarm,” Vhaeraun snarled.
The monstrous spider-god Selvetarm waited no longer, but darted forward with blinding speed, weaving his sextuple blades in an irresistible assault that might have dismembered a dozen giants in the space of two heartbeats.
Vhaeraun whirled aside, dancing through the storm of steel as if he chased Selvetarm’s weapons instead of the other way around, parrying blows he found too inconvenient to elude and riposting with supernal grace. When the gods’ weapons met, thunderclaps shook the ground.
Halisstra pushed herself upright, gaping in amazement. She might have stood transfixed at the scene indefinitely, but Ryld appeared at her elbow.
“We need your healing songs,” he hissed. “Quenthel is badly burned.”
What does it matter? Halisstra wondered.
Still, she climbed to her feet and made her way over to the fallen priestess. Quenthel writhed on the ground, hissing between her teeth as she strove unsuccessfully to master her pain. Ignoring the impossible duel that raged back and forth between the two deities, Halisstra focused on the Baenre’s injuries and managed to begin the discordant threnody of a bae’qeshel song. She laid her hands on Quenthel’s burns and wove as best she could, finding a momentary calm in the exercise of her talents for a tangible and immediate end. Quenthel’s thrashings eased, and in a moment she opened her eyes. Her spells cast, Halisstra merely slumped down again and stared at the battling gods.
“What do we do?” she whispered. “What can we possibly do?”
“Endure,” Ryld replied. He gripped her arm with one iron hand and met her eyes.
“Wait and watch. Something will happen.”
He looked back toward Vhaeraun and Selvetarm, too.
Valas rose from Quenthel’s side and made his way over to Tzirik, crouching to keep his balance.
“Tzirik! What happens to this place, to us, if Vhaeraun defeats Selvetarm and destroys the face? Can you get us out of here?”
“What happens to us does not matter,” answered the priest.
“Maybe not to you, but it matters greatly to me,” Valas muttered. “Did you bring us here only to die, Tzirik?”
“I did not bring you here, mercenary, you brought me,” the priest replied, giving Valas only a fraction of his attention. “None but the Spider Queen’s priestesses could get this close to her temple, not even the Masked Lord. As to what happens when Vhaeraun defeats Selvetarm, well, we shall see.”
He turned his full attention back to the dueling gods.
The Masked Lord and the Champion of Lolth fought on furiously. Ichor oozed from several black wounds in the half-spider’s chitinous body, and dripping black shadow flowed from a handful of sword cuts that had kissed the graceful Vhaeraun. While the gods strove together in the realm of the physical, exchanging blows at a dizzying rate, they also confronted each other magically and psychically at the same time. Spells of terrible power blasted back and forth between them, deadlier even than Selvetarm’s six weaving weapons. Their eyes locked on each other with a tangible contest whose potency tugged at what was left of Halisstra’s reason, even from a hundred yards away. Missed blows and deflected spells caused terrible damage all around the two deities, gouging great craters in the walls of the temple and the flagstones of the plaza, and more than once coming perilously close to annihilating the mortal onlookers through sheer mischance.
“Treacherous jackal!” snarled Selvetarm. “Your perfidy will not be rewarded!”
“Simpleminded fool. Of course it shall, ” Vhaeraun retorted.
He leaped in among Selvetarm’s flurrying blades and punched his shadow sword deep into the spider-god’s bulbous abdomen. The Champion of Lolth shrieked and recoiled, but a moment later he seized Vhaeraun’s ankle with one pincer and jerked the god to the ground. As quick as a cat he rained a torrent of deadly blows down on the Masked Lord.
Vhaeraun responded by invoking a colossal blast of burning shadow-stuff that plunged straight down from some impossible height overhead and bathed both gods in black fire. Selvetarm roared in divine anguish, even as he hammered again and again at Vhaeraun.
With a horrible grinding sound that Halisstra and the other onlookers felt in their very bones, the stone plaza disintegrated beneath them.
Still locked in their furious struggle, the two deities fell through the great temple island into the black abyss that waited below. Their roars of rage and the ground-shaking clamor of their weapons grew fainter and fainter as they fell away into the pit.
“They’re gone,” Ryld said numbly, stating the obvious. “Now what?”
No one had an answer for him, as the company gaped at the castle-sized shaft into nothingness the gods had left behind them. Distant flickers of light still danced from their battle, far below. For the space of several minutes the drow did nothing, climbing back to their feet, no one speaking at all. Tzirik merely folded his arms and waited.
“Did they destroy each other?” Valas ventured at last.
“I doubt it,” Danifae said.
She looked thoughtfully at the glowing green crack that split Lolth’s face, but said nothing more.
“If Lolth didn’t care to respond to Vhaeraun’s assault, I doubt she’ll have anything to say to us,” Ryld said. “We should get out of here.”
The weapons master turned to speak to Tzirik, only to find that the Jaelre priest was locked in rapt attention, staring off into nothing, his expression alight with adoration.
“Yes, Lord,” he whispered to no one. “Yes, I obey!”
Even as Ryld stepped forward to question the priest, the Jaelre priest gestured and spoke an unholy prayer. A whirling field of thousands of razor-sharp blades like that he’d used against the goristro sprang into existence a short distance around him, barricading Tzirik behind a cylindrical wall of tumbling metal. Ryld yelped a curse and leaped backward, throwing himself out of the path of the murderous blades.
Tzirik ignored the weapons master, continuing with whatever task Vhaeraun had assigned him. With fumbling fingers the cleric drew a case from his belt and extracted a scroll, unrolled it, and began to read aloud from the parchment, beginning the words of another powerful spell while protected from the Menzoberranyr by his deadly barrier.
Halisstra looked up at him in dull surprise, trying to discern what spell the Jaelre priest was casting. It was difficult to bring herself to care any longer.
Even as Halisstra sank back down in apathy and despair, the fight rekindled in Quenthel. She surged up, groping for her whip.
“It’s another gate!” she screamed. “Do not let him finish that spell!”
A few hundred yards distant, cloaked in darkness and drifting vapors, Pharaun sat cross-legged on the hard stone, hurrying to finish his spell. He’d watched the two gods battle to a standstill and plummet out of sight, but he was committed to his course and did not intend to stop. The spell of sending could not be cast quickly, and if he attempted to rush it, he would lose it all together. In the part of his mind that was not absorbed in the shaping of the magic, he wondered with no little trepidation whether the gods’ omniscience might be complete enough to note his presence, note that he was casting a spell, and deduce why he was casting it—and whether the gods would deign to stop him. As best he could tell from his safe distance, though, Vhaeraun and Selvetarm were occupied with their fierce battle and were unlikely to be paying him much attention.