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“Is not a priestess,” Leliana said. “He’s a powerful wizard, yes, but he’s …”

She didn’t have to finish the sentence. Q’arlynd could do it for her. A male.

He bowed his head, silently acknowledging Leliana’s superiority. Whether one worshiped Lolth or Eilistraee, it was all the same. A priestess was a priestess.

Female.

But females, in his experience, often had a weakness for a handsome face, something Q’arlynd might just be able to use to his advantage. He smiled at Rowaan—the seemingly apologetic smile of a male who knew his place in the world but just couldn’t help wanting more. She gave the slightest of nods in return.

Rowaan, he was certain, trusted him.

He could use that.

Qilué stared with a mixture of pity and wariness at the creature that squatted before her. Little remained of the drow Halisstra Melarn had once been. Lolth had expanded Halisstra’s body to twice its size, enhancing it with wiry muscle and giving her face an elongated, bestial appearance. The spider legs protruding from her ribs and the fangs scissoring out of those bulges on her cheeks made her monstrous indeed, but despite her size and power, Halisstra’s eyes hinted that something still remained of the priestess she had once been. Qilué saw a yearning there, a faint spark of hope nearly lost amidst the anguish and rage.

They stood in the forest, Qilué wrapped in protective silver moonfire, Halisstra with a palpable taint surrounding her. Qilué had come armed with a singing sword, silver dagger, and her magical bracer in addition to her spells, but so far there had been no treachery. Halisstra had clearly been claimed by Lolth, but if this was a trap it had yet to be sprung.

Cavatina stood a few steps behind Halisstra, sword in hand. Moonlight glinted off her armor. “Repeat what you told me about the temple,” she prompted. “Describe it for Qilué.”

Halisstra bared pointed teeth in what Qilué supposed was meant to be a smile. “It stands on top of a tall spire of rock. Feliane, Uluyara, and I shaped it with our prayers from the stone of the Demonweb Pits. It’s intact and is sacred ground still. Lolth’s creatures cannot enter it.”

“Including Halisstra,” Cavatina added.

Halisstra bowed her head.

“Yet you were able to place the Crescent Blade inside this temple?” Qilué asked. She wanted to hear this part of the story again to see if there were any inconsistencies.

Halisstra nodded. “From a distance, yes. I tossed the broken pieces of the sword through the doorway. I had thought only to put the pieces somewhere safe, so that the weapon might later be recovered and repaired, but the temple must have worked some kind of magic on the sword. As I watched, blade and hilt slid toward one another and joined. Eilistraee’s sacred moonlight filled the temple, and the sword glowed white. The light blinded me for a time. When I could see again, I looked into the temple and saw the sword lying on the floor, reforged.”

It seemed strange to Qilué that Lolth had allowed that to happen within her own domain, stranger still that the temple to Eilistraee remained intact. The Spider Queen was known to permit spaces sacred to other deities to exist within her realm—the Demonweb Pits housed portions of the domains of Vhaeraun, Kiaransalee, and Ghaunadaur, after all—but they were deities who had allied with Lolth during her revolt against the Seldarine. Eilistraee was Lolth’s enemy. A temple to her within the Demonweb Pits should have been an unbearable burr upon the Spider Queen’s throne. Lolth was either suffering the temple to exist for some reason of her own, or—Qilué grimly smiled—she had been weakened by her Silence to the point where Eilistraee might, at long last, vanquish her.

Or Halisstra was lying about the existence of a temple.

“Tell me again how the Crescent Blade came to be broken,” Qilué said.

“After Danifae treacherously attacked me, I lay injured for a time. When I regained consciousness—miraculously, still alive—Uluyara and Feliane were dead. Danifae and the draegloth had disappeared. I realized they must have entered the Pass of