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“Who are you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” The creature gestured at the glowing green platform on which it stood. “I, too, once tried to kill a god, but unlike the bard who destroyed Moander, I failed.”

Cavatina’s eyes widened. “You’re …”

“I was Halisstra Melarn.”

Cavatina reeled. “But you were killed! At the very gates of the Demonweb Pits. Qilué saw it in her scrying.”

Halisstra shrugged.

Questions tumbled from Cavatina’s lips. “How did you survive? Where have you been? What happened?”

“I told you, Lolth punished me.”

“But surely …” Cavatina paused. Shook her head. “It must have been Eilistraee who restored life to you after you were struck down. Why didn’t you call upon Eilistraee’s aid?”

Another shrug. “By then, I’d already lost my faith.”

“You can still be redeemed,” Cavatina insisted. “If you just—”

Halisstra gave a bitter laugh. “That’s what Seyll said, and look where she wound up.”

Cavatina felt a shiver pass through her. “What are you talking about?”

Halisstra stared up at her with eyes hollow as an empty pit. “Seyll sacrificed herself—she let her soul be consigned to oblivion. And for what?” Halisstra’s eyes suddenly blazed. “Nothing! I failed.”

Cavatina spoke softly, as to an injured child. “They asked too much of you. You were a novice priestess, and they asked you to slay a god.”

Halisstra shuddered. Weakened by the sickstone, she sank to her knees on the glowing platform. Water rippled across its sickly green glow.

Cavatina extended her hand. “Come away from there. You’ve suffered enough.”

Halisstra gave a heavy sigh. “I tried to serve Eilistraee. Even after I knew I’d failed her—after Lolth had her way with me and cast me aside—I tried to redeem myself. The Crescent Blade was broken, but I picked up the pieces and carried them to the temple that Feliane, Uluyara, and I had consecrated when we first entered the Demonweb Pits and laid them down inside it and watched as the sword mended itself together and—”

“What?” Cavatina shook her head. Halisstra was telling her too much, too fast. “Are you saying you created a temple sacred to Eilistraee within the Demonweb Pits?”

Halisstra nodded. There was a light in her eye.

“And that the Crescent Blade—a weapon capable of killing Lolth—still exists?” Cavatina asked.

Halisstra gave a trembling nod. Then a sly smile. “And it’s somewhere that Lolth can’t touch it. The temple we created is still standing, and the Crescent Blade is inside it.”

Cavatina let out a long breath. She held up a hand. “Just a moment.” She spoke Qilué’s name, and an instant later felt the high priestess link minds with her. In a low whisper, Cavatina sent a message back to the Promenade.

“I found the creature. It’s Halisstra Melarn, her body corrupted by Lolth. She said much that you should hear.”

The reply was a moment in coming. Take her to the shrine in the Velarswood. Wait for me there.

Cavatina nodded. Qilué had sounded worried about something. Distracted. Cavatina wondered what new threat had arisen since she’d left the Promenade.

She extended a hand to the creature that had once been a priestess like herself. “Come,” she told Halisstra. “Your chance for redemption may be at hand.”

Szorak crept through the darkened forest, muttering to himself behind his mask. He didn’t much care for the Lethyr, even though the thick canopy of intertwined branches above screened the moon’s harsh light. Despite the magical ring that had turned his skin and clothing the exact color of the shadows he passed through and the boots that enabled him to move in utter silence, stilling even the crack of a dead branch underfoot, he still felt as if he was being watched.

Which he was. The very trees were alive. They whispered the whereabouts of all who entered the forest to its guardians.

Fortunately, his mission that dark night had nothing to do with either trees or druids. It wasn’t a druid’s soul Szorak was after, but that of a priestess.

As he drew closer to Eilistraee’s shrine,