Extinction - Lisa Smedman [75]
Halisstra rolled onto her back, swinging the sword into an upright position as she did, then she thrust upward at the belly of the spider. Just as it had done the first time, it disappeared.
"Goddess help me," Halisstra groaned. "A phase spider."
There was no way to predict where the spider would appear next-but at least for the moment, it was safely in the Ethereal.
Halisstra rolled violently to one side across the snowy ground, praying that she'd chosen correctly-that the spider was moving in the other direction, its ethereal legs passing right through her.
Halisstra's guess had been a lucky one. The phase spider re-entered the material plane a pace or two away, allowing her the briefest instant in which to spring to her feet. Then it rushed forward again.
Grimly, Halisstra turned to meet it, knowing that she was in a fight she could not win-not even with Seyll's magic sword. All the spider had to do was wait her out, slipping into ethereal form each time she attacked, then skittering invisibly away to reappear somewhere else a moment later. One of those times Halisstra would guess wrong and it would wind up behind her. Unseen, it would inject its deadly poison and take its time as it sucked her dry.
There was, however, one thing she could fall back on: her bae'qeshel magic. Her voice shaking slightly, she chanted a song. It should have charmed the spider, rooting it to the spot in fascination, but nothing happened. The spider appeared, attacked, then disappeared again, forcing Halisstra to constantly whirl and defend herself with her sword. She cursed her luck, under her breath. Had she mispronounced a word-or were phase spiders simply resistant to the form of enchantment she'd attempted?
Dodging the spider once more she slipped on a patch of snowy ground and fell. The spider stepped on her sword, forcing Halisstra to release the weapon and roll to the side to avoid its jaws. When the spider disappeared once more, she sprang to her feet and snatched the songsword up again. To her dismay, she saw that the tip of the blade had been snapped off, rendering the blade useless as a thrusting weapon. But perhaps there was still hope.
Remembering how she'd used the songsword to augment the spell that had knocked the stirges from the sky, she quickly reversed the weapon and raised the hilt to her lips. The spell might not be enough to stun a creature as large as the phase spider, but at least she could try. Her fingers found the same holes that they had before, and she blew-hard and long, expecting the same shrill note-but nothing happened. The only sound the hilt-flute emitted was a sour phht. Slushy mud sprayed out of the hole.
Once again, the spider lunged, and Halisstra leaped away-but more clumsily. Frightened, she realized that she was tiring. The long sword felt heavy in her hand, its hilt gritty in her sweating palm. The next time the spider lunged forward, Halisstra was barely able to twist aside. Its jaws caught and held Eilistraee's symbol, yanking on the disk and pulling the chain tight around Halisstra's waist. Dragged forward, she flailed at the spider with her sword. Then the spider became ethereal once more, allowing her to stagger back.
If only she still had her clerical magic, she could have blasted the creature with a column of flame or held it at bay with a wall of wind. But those spells, like the charm she'd already tried, would in all likelihood also have failed. Lolth would hardly have granted one of her priestesses the power to kill one of her beloved, arachnid children, after all.
Eilistraee, however, would kill a spider without the slightest qualm. And if indeed the goddess was watching the battle-as Uluyara and Feliane almost certainly were-she just might grant her most recent convert the magic she needed to save her own life by restoring her spells to her.
Swept up in that revelation, that hope, Halisstra nearly missed spotting the phase spider when it re-appeared suddenly on a tree branch above her and dropped silently down in a direct line