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“Eilistraee!” she cried. “Hear me! Your Chosen needs your aid!”

Behind her, the six lesser priestesses shot uneasy glances at one another. They crowded closer, prayers tumbling from their lips. “Eilistraee,” they crooned. Swaying, they placed their hands on Qilué’s shoulders, lending power to her prayer. Silver fire built once more around Qilué, brighter than before, but slowly. Too slowly.

The ripples in the font cleared. Words bubbled up from its depths. Danifae’s voice, gloating.

“Good-bye, Halisstra.”

Then the whistle of a descending morningstar.

Qilué heard a dull crunch, a sound like wet wood splintering. She looked down and saw collapsed bone and blood where Halisstra’s face had been.

“No!” she cried as the image slowly faded from the font.

She plunged a hand into the water as if trying to pluck Halisstra from it. Holy water slopped over the edges of the font, trickling down its smooth stone sides like a flood of tears. Qilué channeled everything she had into one last spell and felt the water grow as warm as blood. Eilistraee had granted her the power to heal the most grievous of wounds with a touch. Even if Halisstra had slipped beyond life’s door, Qilué could resurrect her with a word, but could the spell reach her? Would it have any effect in the domain of Eilistraee’s greatest enemy?

It might. Lolth was silent, after all, her priestesses bereft of their power. That was why Halisstra had been sent on this quest, except that something had turned Qilué’s last spell, and the souls streaming into the darkened tunnel had been moving towards … something.

The font was quiet and still. Images no longer filled it. Qilué lifted her dripping hand from the water.

One of the priestesses leaned closer, stared down into the font’s blank depths. “Mistress Qilué,” she whispered—mistakenly addressing her, in a moment of extreme tension, as a drow of the Underdark would address her matron. “Is she … dead? Is all lost?”

The other priestesses held their breath, waiting for Qilué’s reply.

Qilué glanced up at the moon. Eilistraee’s moon. Selûne shone brightly, not yet diminished, the Tears of Selûne twinkling in its wake.

“There is still hope,” she told them. “There is always hope.”

She needed to believe that, yet deep in her heart was a sliver of doubt.

Qilué stood beside the font for the rest of the night. The other priestesses crowded around her for a time, and she answered their nervous questions as soothingly as she could. When at last they fell silent, she sought to touch the mind of Eilistraee.

In a moonlit glade, deep in a forest that needed only the moon’s light to thrive and grow, she found her goddess. Eilistraee was a drow-shaped glimmer of unspeakably beautiful radiance. Qilué touched that with her mind. She needed no lips to frame her question. The goddess poured moonlight into her heart, throwing the words that were scribed upon it into sharp relief. She answered in a voice that flowed like liquid silver.

“House Melarn will aid me yet.”

Qilué sighed her relief. All was not lost. Not yet. If Eilistraee had indeed heard Qilué’s prayer and revived Halisstra, there was still a chance that the Melarn priestess would slay Lolth.

“And House Melarn will betray me.”

The glow that was the goddess flickered and grew dim.

Qilué started. Her awareness was back in her body again. She stood in the forest beside the font, the connection with her goddess at an end. The priestesses who had aided in her scrying were seated on the ground, clothed. Snow dusted their hair and shoulders. More snow fell and the sun was rising, a blood-red smudge against the clouds to the east. Much time had passed since Qilué had slipped into communion with Eilistraee, and the hand that gripped the edge of the font was covered in snow. She shook it off and shivered.

Something was wrong. She could feel it in the sick hollow that had opened in her stomach. Turning to the font, she cast a second scrying. Far easier than the first had been, its target was on Toril, at least, not in some deep hollow of the Abyss. The target was