Пол Кемп - Resurrection

Gromph nodded. He knew that. But the healing would be long, for himself and the city. For a moment, he wondered what had happened to the duergar axe with which he had destroyed the phylactery and taken the lichdrow’s soul. He had left it behind in the temple.

He put such thoughts from his mind. The lichdrow was destroyed for good.

He hoped.

“The healing salves, apprentice,” he called to Prath.

Quenthel stared up into Lolth’s face, into Danifae’s face, and tried to control her anger, her disappointment, her shame.

Danifae Yauntyrr, a Houseless battle-captive, was Lolth’s Yor’thae.

Quenthel’s rage burned so hot she could scarcely breathe. Her shame weighed so much she could hardly stand. Halisstra lay on her face beside Quenthel. The high priestess looked at her, looked at the eight bodies of Lolth, at Danifae’s form sticking out of the body of the largest, and slowly, with great difficulty, put her head to the floor.

Quenthel might not have been the Yor’thae but she remained a loyal servant of Lolth.

When she looked up, she dared ask, “Why?”

Anger crept into her voice, and once it started, it poured out.

“Why bring me back from the dead?” she demanded. “Why make me Mistress of Arach-Tinilith if only to do … this?”

She thought back to the many times she could have killed Danifae outright and rebuked herself for her mistake. She had been a fool, an arrogant fool.

Lolth’s eight bodies surged forward, with the eighth at their center. Quenthel thought she was going to die, but instead Danifae—Lolth!—reached forth with a drow hand and stroked Quenthel’s hair, an inexplicably gentle gesture. When she spoke, her voice was eight voices, but Danifae’s was loudest.

“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.