“You seek reasons, daughter, purpose, and that is your failing. Do you not see? Chaos offers no reasons, has no purpose. It is what it is and that is enough.”
Quenthel heard the words and in them understood how she had failed her goddess. In that failure, she had failed her House and herself.
She did not have it in her to cry at her failure, not in front of her goddess, especially not in front of her goddess. She would not give Danifae, or what was left of Danifae, the satisfaction.
She lifted her head and looked into Lolth’s gray, drow eyes—Danifae’s eyes. “Kill me, then. I will not beg for my life.”
She almost added the blasphemous, “from you,” to the end of her statement, meaning Danifae.
But Danifae was no longer just Danifae, and Quenthel had to come to terms with that. Danifae was part of Lolth, the Spider Queen, the Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Quenthel’s goddess, and in a form greater than before.
Lolth’s full lips curved back in a smile to reveal not teeth but a spider’s fangs.
“And that is why you will live,” Lolth said.
Quenthel was not sure if she felt relief, shame, or both. She said nothing, merely bowed her head.
“Leave my tabernacle, Mistress of Arach-Tinilith,” Lolth said. “Return to Menzoberranzan and continue to head my faith in that city. Tell what you have seen here.”
She stroked Quenthel’s hair a second time, less gently, as though controlling an impulse to kill.
“Now,” the goddess said. She indicated Halisstra with a nod and added, “Leave this one with me.”
Quenthel did not question. She rose, turned, and strode between the abyssal widows until she was out of the temple.
Halisstra could not move. She had heard the Spider Queen speak to Quenthel, but the words did not register, simply skipped off of Halisstra’s hearing.
Danifae was the Yor’thae. Lolth was reborn.
After a time, Quenthel turned, gave Halisstra one final look—a mixture of hate and respect—and exited the temple.
Lolth had promised that only one would leave the temple alive. Quenthel had just left—alive.
Halisstra was going to die.
The goddess looked upon her. She felt the weight of Lolth’s gazes. She awaited the bite of the goddess’s mandibles, as she had seen in her vision.
It did not come.
She dared a look up into Lolth’s face and saw Danifae there, but also so much more. She still clutched Seyll’s sword. She released it and shoved it from her.
“I’m sorry, goddess,” she said to Lolth and abased herself fully, “Forgive me.”
She knew that her apostasy was beyond words. She had danced to Eilistraee on Lolth’s plane, erected a temple to the Dark Maiden atop the Spider Queen’s tor. She was the worst kind of heretic.
All eight of Lolth’s aspects regarded her, and the silence stretched. When the goddess at last spoke, her voice was Danifae’s only, but pregnant with power, thick with anger.
“You have been away from me too long, daughter,” Lolth said. “I do not forgive.”
Lolth leaned toward her, over her. The seven other bodies of Lolth encircled her. Halisstra could not move. Lolth bent. Halisstra’s heart pounded.
Lolth’s sibilant voice, more Danifae’s than ever, whispered in her ear, “Good-bye, Mistress Melarn. What you could have been is not what you are.”
Halisstra screamed when the goddess’ fangs sank into her neck, twin rods of agony. The other seven spiders too lurched forward and sank their fangs into her flesh. The pain was agonizing, exquisite. The venom set her skin afire, turned her body red hot. Pain and an inexplicable exaltation caused a spasm to course through her body. Her vision went blurry. She opened her mouth to curse Lolth, to thank her, but she could make no sound. Her life ebbed, ebbed. Briefly, she wondered what would become of her soul in death. She longed for the same annihilation as Seyll.
She smiled as the end came for her.
But Lolth’s venom did not kill her. She lingered between life and death.
“Not death, wayward daughter,” Lolth said in all eight of her voices. “Your sins were too great for such an easy release. For your apostasy, you will give me an eternity of service as my Lady Penitent, my... battle-captive,” she said in Danifae’s voice, “neither living nor dead. You are charged to shed the blood of the heretics who follow my daughter, son, and once-husband. Pain will eat at you ever. Hate will fuel you. And guilt will plague you but never stay your hand. This is to be your penance. Your eternal penance.”
Horrified, Halisstra grasped for death. Futile.
“There is no escape,” Lolth said. “Like me, you too will be transformed and resurrected.”
The eight body of the Spider Queen took Halisstra in her pedipalps and pulled her under her thorax. Halisstra hung limp in the arms of her goddess. From her spinneret, Lolth drew forth silken webs and with fearsome grace, spun Halisstra into them.
She was being cocooned. It started at her legs and crept up her body. She barely felt it. She barely felt anything. The strands covered her eyes, and she saw only darkness. Lolth dropped her to the floor.
Within the cocoon, Lolth’s venom transformed her. She retreated from the edge of death. The venom saturated her to her soul, wracking her with pain, pain that she knew would never end.
Something in the webs sank into her skin.
Lolth’s power probed her heart and found there the hate that Halisstra had never been able to extinguish, found there the forgiveness and love that she had never fully been able to nurture.
Lolth’s touch brought the hate to full bloom, and reduced the weakness of love and forgiveness to little more than a single spore.
Her skin grew as hard as her soul. Her strength and stature increased to match her hate. The pain of rebirth was agonizing. She opened her mouth and screamed. It came out as a hiss. She ran her tongue over her lips and felt fangs. She tore through the webs with her newfound strength and freed herself from the cocoon. She rolled out onto the floor of the tabernacle, covered in slime.
The yochlols oozed forward to her and wiped her clean with their tentacles. The eight bodies of Lolth retreated to their web, finished with her.
Beside her, Halisstra saw a sword, Seyll’s sword. She closed her hand over its hilt and rose.
Violet flames rose from the blade.
Somewhere deep inside, a tiny part of her watched it all in horror. The small spore of her former self, that piece of her that had found joy dancing under the moon, could only watch and despair.
The rest of her remembered her old life, a life of sacrifice, power, and debauchery. She eyed the blade in her hand, longing to use it.
Perhaps the Velarswood, the Lady Penitent thought, and smiled through her pain.
“Welcome home, daughter,” said the eight voices of Lolth.
Quenthel stood outside the temple. She did not look back, even when she heard Halisstra Melarn scream. She looked up at the sky. There, the eight satellites of Lolth burned red, and all burned equally bright. The eighth had been reborn.
She swallowed her frustration, took out her holy symbol, prayed to Lolth, and once more took the form of the wind.
She flew off the tabernacle, descended past Lolth’s crawling city, and over the Infinite Web toward the misty Plains of Soulfire. Abyssal widows, yochlols, and spiders still thronged the plains.
She alit on the plains and took her normal form amidst the milling arachnids. None paid her any heed.
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.