Storm of the Dead - Lisa Smedman [12]
Valdar's eyes bored into his. "As a trial. He knew it would bring you face to face with me, and test your faith."
Kвras's body was still, but his thoughts churned. He searched for a counter argument, but couldn't find one. Nor did he want to. Something was breaking in him-breaking open. The brittle shell he'd encased his anguish in, these past four months.
"There's a way to test whether what I say is true," Valdar said softly. "Return to the female who gave you the order. Tell her I've been slain. See if divine retribution follows." He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "Or if reward follows, instead."
Without waiting to hear what Kвras would say next, he sheathed his dagger.
For several moments, Kвras remained motionless. Then he nodded to himself. "I think I'll do just that. If you're wrong, I can always kill you another day." Slowly, he slid his own dagger back into its sheath.
CHAPTER 2
The Month of Eleint
The Year of the Haunting (1377 DR)
Halisstra cringed on the floor, watching Lolth. The goddess was in her spider form, her body a glossy black, her eyes a burning crimson. She dangled upside down from the ceiling of the web-choked room, slowly spinning in place.
Halisstra kept her head bowed-she didn't dare look fully upon the goddess. As she watched, the hourglass-shaped pattern on the underside of Lolth's abdomen shrank as her body contracted. A crack appeared beside each of Lolth's fang-tipped jaws. With a sharp cracking sound it enlarged until the skin peeled back from her face.
The goddess shuddered. She contracted still more, tearing the rest of her head free from its hard coating of chitin. Then the cracks spread to the abdomen, releasing her. Lolth tumbled onto the cold iron floor, leaving her molted skin behind. The empty husk, still dangling from its strand of web, twisted above her.
As she stood, Lolth assumed her hybrid form, sprouting a drow head. Her spider body was enormous.Though Halisstra stood twice the height of a drow, she could have walked upright between the goddess's spider legs with room to spare. The new skin on that body, all wrinkled and soft, glistened with the fluids that had loosened the old skin. As the abdomen pulsed, drawing breath, the skin smoothed and hardened to glossy black.
The goddess twisted her head back and forth to work out kinks in her neck and flicked damp hair out of her eyes. Her face was the epitome of beauty: velvet-smooth skin, delicately pointed ears, arched white eyebrows and kiss-pout lips.
Danifae's face. The visage the goddess had worn since consuming her chosen one.
Lolth's pale gray eyes shone with malice. "Battle-captive. I hunger. Attend me."
Halisstra crept forward, trying not to reveal the loathing she felt, and prostrated herself before the goddess. Lolth moved over her, claws clicking like sword points against the cold black iron of the floor. Her cheeks bulged as two palps emerged from them. These probed Halisstra's bare back, parting the matted hair that covered it. Lolth vomited.
As the digestive juices struck her back, Halisstra gasped. There was a moment of warmth-then pain comparable to being scalded. The pain bored deeper, down into the flesh of her back. She could feel her flesh dissolving, sloughing away from her ribs and backbone. Could smell the reek of bile and hear Lolth taking the half-digested flesh up in great, greedy slurps.
Halisstra collapsed, the sudden weight of her body snapping two of the eight tiny legs that protruded from her chest. Yet the pain of cracking chitin was nothing compared to the raw, open mess that was her back. She lay, barely conscious, the jaws protruding from her cheeks gnashing weakly as Lolth loomed over her, eating her fill.
Halisstra had once been a drow, heir to the throne of House Melarn of Ched Nasad. Now she was the Lady Penitent. Doomed to suffer forever at the hands of the female she had formerly commanded. Danifae had once been Halisstra's battle-captive, but now she was Lolth's chosen one. No longer a drow, she had become part of the