Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [75]
Halisstra paused, her spider fangs quivering. After a moment, she composed herself.
“I still had Seyll’s sword,” she continued, “so I carried on. I fought Danifae and Quenthel, but in the middle of that battle we were drawn into Lolth’s city, to her very throne. Lolth had awakened from her Silence. I tried to fight the goddess herself, but without the Crescent Blade …” A shudder ran through her body. “I had no hope. Lolth was too powerful. She forced the three of us to kneel before her. Danifae, she killed and consumed. She was the most worthy, in Lolth’s eyes, and the goddess wanted to add her substance to her own. Quenthel she spared and sent back to Arach-Tinilith, where she serves the Spider Queen still. I was deemed unworthy for having renounced my faith to embrace Eilistraee. For this, Lolth said, I would do eternal penance. She seized me and bit me.” Halisstra touched the puncture marks on her neck. “Eight times she sank her teeth into my flesh. Then she spun me into a cocoon. When I emerged, I was … like this.”
Qilué nodded. “What happened then?”
“I made my way out of Lolth’s fortress. It was filled with yochlols, but they made no move to stop me. I stumbled away across the plain, back to the Pass of the Soulreaver. I recovered the pieces of the Crescent Blade and entered the pass. This time, nothing attacked me. I made my way to Eilistraee’s temple and placed the sword inside.”
“Tell her how you escaped from the Demonweb Pits,” Cavatina prompted. “It was a very clever tactic.”
Qilué shot the Darksong Knight a look. Thus far, Qilué herself had offered neither praise nor criticism of anything Halisstra had said. Qilué wished that she had been able to come more swiftly to the Velarswood. Halisstra had obviously told her story more than once to Cavatina, something that would have allowed Halisstra to smooth out any wrinkles in the tale. Normally, Qilué would have used a spell to tell what parts of the story rang true and which were lies or embroideries, woven onto a slim thread of truth, but whatever hold Lolth had on the tragic creature that Halisstra had become was strong. Even Qilué’s magic could not penetrate it.
Qilué wondered what Lolth was trying to hide.
“I escaped by observing Selvetarm,” Halisstra continued. “By following him, I learned where one of the portals that leads from Lolth’s domain was located. It was guarded by a songspider, a creature whose webs create music that can enslave or even kill. This barrier would have barred my way, had I not been schooled in bae’queshel. I used that magic to play the strands of the web like a lyre, plucking it open. The portal led back to this plane, to a place east of Lake Sember.”
“Halisstra can show us where it is,” Cavatina said, her eyes gleaming, “and lead us to the temple in the Demonweb Pits. The Crescent Blade—”
Qilué held up a hand for silence. She didn’t like the look in Halisstra’s eye. A former priestess she might be, but her eyes held a gleam as malicious as Lolth’s own. Her desire to return to the Demonweb Pits was just a little too strong.
Yet the pain and desperation that Qilué could sense in Halisstra seemed real enough. Part of her, at least, still yearned for a second chance at redemption, but because Halisstra could not die, she would, for all eternity, be in bondage to the Spider Queen, unless the sticky webs with which Lolth held her could somehow be broken.
Qilué suspected that Halisstra was, consciously or not, trying to play both sides of the sava board at once. Redemption lay on one side of the board. On the other was the possibility of a reward from the Spider Queen for delivering a priestess of Eilistraee into her hands, except that Lolth was capricious