Lisa Smedman - Sacrifice of the Widow

"Spawn of Lolth!" he shouted. "Exiles from Eryndlyn, from Ched Nasad, from Menzoberranzan, by Selvetarm's will, you are to be outcasts no longer! There is a place for you in the ranks of the Selvetargtlin, if you would take it!"

From above him came a rustling and the hiss of whispered speech. One of the driders sprang out of a tunnel and descended toward Dhairn, head-down, on a strand of web. The drider was male, his long, uncombed hair hanging from his scalp like scraps of cobweb. His face was pinched and thin, his eyes narrowed in what looked like a permanent wince. A curved fang protruded from each of his cheeks, its hollow point oozing venom. He turned slowly on the strand of webbing, twisting his head so that he could keep Dhairn in sight.

"You serve Lolth's champion?"

Dhairn's sword swept out, severing the strand. The drider hovered in mid-air a moment too long before falling to the ground, confirming Dhairn's suspicion. The dangling drider had been an illusion. Dhairn followed through with his swing, spinning around to slice through seemingly empty air behind him. His blade bit into something solid. A drider's head flew in one direction, while the suddenly visible body crumpled. Dark blood rushed from the severed neck like wine from a ruptured wineskin. The drider had a glove on one hand that glowed with an intense magical aura. The puddle of blood in which that hand had landed sizzled, disintegrating into nothing.

Dhairn looked up at the remaining driders as his sword drank in the blood that coated its blade. Eyes blinked. Several of the driders drew back into their tunnels. The one Dhairn had just slain had probably been their wizard. A pity, that. His talents would have been useful.

"We are all Lolth's champions," Dhairn told the driders, "drow and drider alike."

"That's not what her priestesses say." The voice was female, probably their leader. Dhairn glanced from hole to hole, trying to spot her.

"We are the damned," she continued. "We failed Lolth and were marked for our weakness. This is Lolth's punishment."

Dhairn spotted her. The female had reared up on her spider legs and held her arms wide. She might have been beautiful once. Her ears were delicately pointed, her eyes slanted to match. Her upper body was shapely above a slender waist. Even the venomous fangs that protruded from her cheeks did little to spoil her appearance, but life as an exile had left her no pride. Her hair was tangled, and her body fouled with the stinking drippings of the corpses the driders loved to eat. Her dark skin was streaked with smudges of rock dust.

"Has it never occurred to you," Dhairn asked, "to wonder why Lolth should have altered your bodies into a semblance of the holiest of creatures? Do you honestly conceive of your half-spider forms as a punishment? No, I say it again. You are her champions, as much as Selvetarm is."

He stood, waiting, letting the driders consider what he'd just told them.

Their leader frowned down at him and said, "Lolth's priestesses-"

"Lied to you," Dhairn said in a cold voice, "as Lolth herself orders them to. It is all part of the Spider Queen's plan. Your exile has made you stronger, more cunning. By preying upon the drow, you cull from our ranks the weak, the incapable. You make our race stronger." He paused to let that sink in. "If you had truly fallen from the goddess's favor, then why did she grant you such power? You have been stripped of your House insignia, but you can still levitate. You are no longer drow, but you can still cloak yourselves in darkness and reveal hidden enemies by limning them in magical light. You have powers that Lolth bestows only upon the most favored of her drow children, the ability to recognize your enemies by their auras and to magically spy on them from a safe distance while you plot your ambushes. Lolth has transformed you into the perfect weapon, a creature endowed with a drow's cunning, and a spider's venom and stealth. What you lack is the hand to wield you."

"And you are to be that hand?" the leader asked, a hint of bitterness in her voice.

Dhairn lifted his chin. "Selvetarm is to be that hand," he told her. "I am but his judicator." He lifted his sword. "Come and be welcome in his faith. It is time to reclaim your place among the drow."

It took a moment more, but the leader jumped from her tunnel and descended on a strand of web. As her spider legs touched the floor of the cavern, other driders followed her lead, some descending on strands, others scuttling down the walls. Soon Dhairn was surrounded by several dozen of the creatures, the majority of them male. None approached within sword range, and all had wary, distrustful expressions, but their eyes also held a cautious hope. They had lost their possessions, their status within their Houses, their ability to carve out their own destinies after their transformation and exile, and something more-the greatest sting of all. They bore the painful stigma of thinking they had been judged by their goddess and found wanting, of thinking that this failure had been branded upon their bodies for all the Underdark to see.

But someone had come to tell them that it was all part of the Spider Queen's plan, that Lolth still carried them close to her dark heart, that there was a place for them in the web of life. And it was not just anyone who told them that, but a powerful cleric of Selvetarm, Lolth's champion, a demigod whose form was similar to their own.

Dhairn could see that the driders ached to believe him, but they needed something more before they would allow themselves to accept his words as truth. Dhairn would give it to them-a bloody victory.

"There are indeed drow who are an abomination in Lolth's eyes," he told them, "drow who have strayed far from the web of life that Lolth intended us to weave, drow who live on the World Above and practice a blasphemous worship. This is to be your task: to be the scourge that either drives these blasphemers back into Lolth's embrace-or that flays their traitorous flesh from their bones. It will be your chance to prove yourselves, a test you will not fail."

He held his sword before him. Its blade was clean, the wizard-drider's blood completely absorbed by its steel. He glanced from one drider face to the next. "Who of you will be the first to join the ranks of the Selvetargtlin?"

The driders hesitated, looking to their leader. She met Dhairn's eye, taking his measure. Then she stepped forward, her spider legs clicking on the stone floor, and kneeled. "Chil'triss, of House Kilsek."

Dhairn nodded. It was probably the first time in decades that she had used her House name.

"Chil'triss of House Kilsek," he repeated, touching the tip of his blade to her cheek. Slowly, he drew the blade down her face, cutting a thin but bloody line diagonally from cheek to jawline. He repeated it, turning the line into an X. Two more lines, one horizontal, one vertical, completed the pattern: the radiating support lines of a web. "I welcome you to the ranks of the Selvetargtlin."

When it was done, she smiled through the blood that dribbled down over lips and chin. Her fangs twitched with excitement, and a determined fire had rekindled in her eyes.

"Kneel," she shouted at her people. "Join the swarm."

Dhairn smiled.

Q'arlynd sat some distance from the campfire, cross-legged on the damp forest floor. Well inside the forest, almost at the shrine, there was a chill in the air. The mist that gave the forest its name clung to the ground in patches, leaving a thin sheen of moisture on everything it touched, but at least it was a little less bright under the trees. Their spreading branches filtered out the worst of the moonlight.

He drew his quartz from a pocket of his piwafwi and peered through the magical crystal at the surrounding forest. All was as it appeared. There were no hidden watchers lurking in these misty woods. Flinderspeld and the two clerics sat a short distance away, next to a fire, warming themselves. The freshly killed and gutted body of a small woodland creature hung over the flames from a hook, slowly roasting.