Resurrection (War of the Spider Queen #6) - Page 6

As she stepped through the portal, Halisstra felt spread across a distance vast and deep. In only a fraction of a heartbeat, the portal moved her from the relatively calm gray nothingness of the Astral to She found herself in mid-air, falling.

Before she could activate the levitation power of her brooch, she dropped five paces and hit the ground with a grunt. She managed to keep her feet and found herself standing under a dim sun on blasted ground in the midst of a nightmare.

Spiders surrounded her, swarmed her, engulfed her, from hand-sized arachnids scurrying underfoot to horrid monsters twice her height. The creatures tore each other to pieces all around her. Hisses, clicks, and squeals filled her ears; black, brown, and red ichor stained the ground and splattered her face. Halisstra was aswim in an ocean of Lolth's maddened children. The Spider Queen must have caused Halisstra to arrive in the midst of the chaos as penance for her apostasy.

She steadied her stance, brandished the Crescent Blade, and took in her environment with only a single glance. She stood on a bleak, pit-ridden rockscape in the shadow of a slim spire of unusual looking rock, a tor of black stone that looked as though it should have toppled of its own weight in the gusting wind. The whirlpools of Lolth's reawakened power dotted the cloudy sky. She had been ejected from one such and thanked the goddess that it had not been higher off the ground. A line of souls streamed through the heavens, all of them floating in the direc tion of a distant mountain range, drawn there by the lodestone of Lolth's power.

An eerie keening rang in her ears, the sound of songspider webs whistling in the blustery wind, like some obscene attempt to mimic the sound made by Seyll's songsword. In it, she heard the echo of the word she had heard on the Astral, the word that made the hair on the nape of her neck stand on end Yor'thae.

She had no time to consider the sound further. The spiders around her noticed her. A sea of frenzied fangs, pincers, legs, and hairy bodies broke around her. Arachnids scuttled over rocks, over each other, over her. She slashed and cut but there were too many. They bit and tore indiscriminately, killing and devouring anything in their path. Spider bodies thumped into her; fangs tried to bite through her mail; claws sent her spinning, knocked her to her knees.

She refused to die on her knees.

"Goddess! she screamed and swung the glowing Crescent Blade in a wide arc.

As if in answer, Feliane and Uluyara appeared in the air through a short-lived gate that appeared perhaps twenty paces to her right and five paces high in the air. They fell to the ground, and she saw them for only an instant moreboth wore expressions of surprise and horrorbefore they too were buried under a mass of writhing, leaping spiders.

From her knees, Halisstra swung blindly, hitting spider flesh with every pass. Ichor sprayed, splattered her face and hands. Hissing and clicking filled her ears; squeals of pain.

She fought her way back to her feet, impaling a large blue spider on the end of her blade. She slipped in itsgushing fluids and nearly fell. A huge, black, hairy arachnid leaped on her back and sank its fangs into her shoulder, but her mail withstood the attack. She flung it from her and stomped its thorax to mush as another huge spider reared before her, lunged forward, and bit at her legs. She dodged backward and fended it off with the Crescent Blade. She felt as though she were up to her waist in the creatures; with each step, she crushed half a dozen small spiders under her boots. She saw no way out, no way she would ever get free. She would die under their fangs, and her body would be left a desiccated husk blowing in the screaming wind.

"Goddess!" she cried again, hacking wildly with the Crescent Blade.

The enchanted steel killed where it struck, slicing arachnid flesh easily, but there were thousands of them. Eilistraee had no particular power over the creatures, and in her desperation Halisstra almost fell back into her old habit of channeling Lolth's power to command spiders. It would be so easy to simply order them back to Uluyara's horn rang, and Halisstra latched onto the sound with the desperation of the drowning. She remembered the first time she had heard its clear call, on the World Above under the silver light of the moon. She centered herself, at least for a time, and with effort resisted Lolth's pull.

If she were to live, she would have to save herself with the tools that Eilistraee, and only Eilistraee, had put into her hands.

Holding the Crescent Blade in both hands, Halisstra slashed about her with an abandon born of hopelessness, sending legs and spider flesh flying. Her small shield made her two-handed grip on the Crescent Blade a bit awkward, but she managed. She wanted the extra force to her swings.

Fangs clamped on her arm, her leg, and pierced her mail and flesh. Agony raced through her body, and warm poison throbbed into her veins. She grabbed the hairy blob on her forearm and squeezed it until it popped. She stabbed downward at another spider, impaling it, cross cut to her right, and took the mandible from another. She found it strange that killing Lolth's creatures did not elicit the same elation she had felt back in the forest of the World Above when she had killed the phase spider in the name of Eilistraee.

Instead, she felt out of balance, dirty, guilty.

"I'm sorry," she murmured as she killed but was not sure what she meant. The words just seemed to fit. Spider blood splattered her hands, her cloak, her face. "I'm sorry."

Despite her words, she hacked her way through the roiling mass of bodies, legs, mandibles, and ichor toward where she had last seen her fellow priestesses. To her relief, she saw that both Feliane and Uluyara had found their feet and their blades. They dodged nimbly amidst the chaos, slashing and stabbing. They looked as though they were dancingthey leaped, spun, twirled, and tumbled, serving the Lady of the Dance even while they slaughtered. Both sported cuts and bites, and Feliane had a dark puncture on her bare forearm. Still, Halisstra thought them beautiful. Their blades whistled through the air, an answer and a challenge to the strange keening. Halisstra caught Feliane's eye as both cut their way through the never-ending tide of spiders.

"Halisstra!" Feliane called. Cutting, chopping, her round face was splattered with blood and ichor.

Uluyara whirled a circle beside the elf priestess, her blade a blur, and met Halisstra's eyes for a moment. "Here!" Halisstra answered.

Without stopping, she opened the abdomen of a spider, then another and another. She was fifteen paces from her sisters.

From out of the maelstrom of bodies a brown sword spider leaped high above the fray. Time slowed for Halisstra.

Easily as large as a pack lizard, the creature's eight arms ended in claws that looked like short swords and killed just as effectively. Halisstra's breath caught as the creature reached the apex ofits leap. She had seen sword spiders fight in the basement arena of House Melarn, cutting down out-of-favor male warriors with bloody, brutal efficiency.

As the sword spider descended toward Feliane, it clustered its swordlike claws together to form a single impaling blade, pointing downward at the slight elf priestess.

"Above!" Halisstra shouted but could not be sure that Feliane heard her. "Feliane!"

A large spider appeared before Halisstra, and she hacked off two of its legs with the Crescent Blade. The shadow of the descending sword spider must have blotted out the dim red light of the sun. Feliane looked up, saw it, slipped to the side, and tried to raise her blade defensively. She was a heartbeat too slow. The sword spider crashed down on her, knocking her blade aside and driving her to the ground, flat on her back. Its clustered legs sheared through her armored shoulder and sank into her flesh. She screamed in pain, and blood spouted. Her sword fell from her hand, skittered away, and was lost under a throng of arachnids.

The sword spider straddled her small form, caging her in its bloody legs. She struggled beneath it, punching with her good arm, kicking, but she was already growing weak fromblood loss. The blows crunched into the spider's huge body but seemed to have little effect other than to elicit an angry hiss. A pack of giant tarantulas drove Uluyara from Feliane's side, and Halisstra lost sight of the High Priestess.

Halisstra shouted again and cut her way toward her sisters, hacking mercilessly at anything in her path. She left a trail of severed legs and pedipalps in her wake. Fourteen paces, twelve, ten. She killed with every step. Ichor covered her; soaked her. Small arachnids teemed over her exposed skin, her face, and her hair. She devoured those that got near her mouth and spat the pieces to the ground.

She knew that she would not reach Feliane in time.

The swords of its claws still glistening red with the elf's blood, the sword spider pinned the dying Feliane with three of its legs and raised its forelegs high in a strike that would lay open her chest and pierce her heart.

Uluyara materialized out of the madness to the sword spider's right, blade held high. The High Priestess charged forward, calling on the Dark Maiden, and swung her blade in a crosscut designed to split the sword spider's abdomen from head to spinneret.

But the spider saw her coming. It shifted slightly atop the wounded Feliane, parried Uluyara's blow with one of its claws, and lashed out with another. The blow hit Uluyara squarely in the chest, sent mail links flying, and drove her backward. She stumbled, tripped on the carcass of a large spider behind her, and was instantly swamped with smaller arachnids.

The sword spider returned its attention toward Feliane. The arachnid again raised its forelegs high and drove them into Feliane's chest. They split mail links, broke bones, and drove into the organs and flesh beneath. Feliane's back arched with the agony, and blood pooled around her.

"Feliane!" Halisstra cried and cut down another spider and another.

She was five paces from the elf. Too far.

The elf's eyes were still open but glassy. Blood poured from her chest and dribbled from the corner of her mouth. The sword spider bared fangs as long as knives and sank them into Feliane's flesh. Her head sagged to the side. The spider made as though to pick the elf up and carry her back to its lair. Halisstra had no time to think, so she did the only thing she could. She forced back the spiders near her with a flurry of vicious slashes, reached back over her heada difficult maneuver with a shieldslung on her armand flung the Crescent Blade with both hands at the sword spider.

The blade flew true, point first, and sank halfway to its hilt into the thorax of the huge arachnid. The creature uttered a hiss of agony, and its entire body spasmed. It withdrew blood-slicked fangs and claws from the elf's flesh and started to turn toward Halisstra. The Crescent Blade stuck out of its flesh like a pennon. Another spasm wracked its body, another hiss escaped its fanged mouth, and it collapsed atop Feliane, dead.

Feliane did not move.

Using her shield, Halisstra bashed another spider in its face as it lunged for her. She jerked Seyll's songsword from the scabbard on her back. With its fluted hilt whistling a counter melody to the eerie sound of the wind, she slashed another spider, a nother, and rushed to Feliane's side.

She kneeled, and blew a sigh of relief when she saw that Feliane was unconscious but alivebarely. Halisstra had no time to take a longer look. She whirled around and beat back a trio of giant widows, opening a long slash in one. Afterward, she turned, bent, and heaved the sword spider carcass off of the elf.

Unmolested for the moment by any spiders, Halisstra flipped her grip on Seyll's sword and put the hilt to her lips. Placing one hand on Feliane's wounded chest while still trying to keep an eye on the arachnids around her, she blew a single, soothing note. The sound served as a focus for her bae'qeshel healing magic.

The punctures in Feliane's chest closed to pink dots, and her breath came easier, though she did not regain consciousness. Halisstra could not risk another spell amidst the swarming spiders. She took the hilt in her hands as three spiders the size of rats landed on her back. Their fangs could not penetrate her mail, and she pulled them from her as she rose and stabbed each in turn.

Standing over Feliane, she scanned the madness for Uluyara.

The High Priestess fought nearby against a red and black spideras large as a rothe. Already she had severed two of its legs.

"Uluyara!" Halisstra screamed. "Here!"

Uluyara spared her a glance, and nodded. The High Priestess unleashed an overhead cut at the spider, drove it backward a step, turned, and raced for Halisstra. The creature bounded after her with astonishing speed.

Halisstra reversed her grip, put the hilt of the songsword to her lips, and blew a series of dissonant notes. The bae'qeshel sent a wave of sound over Uluyara's head and blasted the spider with its discordance. The power of the spell flattened the enormous arachnid, opened its exoskeleton, and a host of smaller spiders leaped upon it to feed.

Uluyara wove and danced her way through still more arachnids until she reached Halisstra's side. She looked at Feliane, concern in her eyes.

"She's alive," Halisstra said, breathing heavily, "but we must get out of here now!" Uluyara smiled fiercely, put a hand to Halisstra's shoulder, and said, "Give me a moment's protection." Halisstra nodded agreement, and while the high priestess chanted a prayer beside her, Halisstra used Seyll's songsword and shield to slice and smash any arachnids that came near. The violence of the slaughter nauseated her. Spider parts lay everywhere, and blood stained the ground dark.

When Uluyara finished her prayer to the Lady, a ring of silvery blades took shape around them. Thousands of magical blades, all of them spinning and buzzing, formed a ring ten paces high. Two spiders caught in the wall as it materialized were slashed to gory ribbons.

"The Lady's spells serve us well even in the Demonweb Pits," Uluyara said, her voice and eyes hard. Halisstra nodded, though only then did she realize that it had not occurred to her during the combat to cast one of the spells granted her by Eilistraee. She wondered why but feared the answer too much to consider the question overlong.

Perhaps two dozen spiders remained within Uluyara's ring of blades. Halisstra knew a spell that would finish them, but an unexpected reluctance caused her to hesitate.

"We should go," she said.

"First, these," Uluyara answered, stepping forward. "Eilistraee has put them in our hands. We must finish them."

Uluyara brandished her weapon, but Halisstra caught her arm and stopped her advance. She eyed the hairy wolf spiders prowling within the circle of blades.

"I'll do it," she said.

Uluyara hesitated but finally nodded and said, "You bear the Crescent Blade."

With effort, Halisstra pushed through her reluctance, put her fingertips to the symbol of Eilistraee on her chest, and prayed. She had a terrifying moment when the words momentarily escaped her, but she recalled them presently and her voice grew in strength. When she finished the incantation, an invisible, circular wave of power went forth from her. It hit all of the spiders and drove them, scrabbling and hissing, backward into the wall of blades. All two dozen of them vanished in a spray of legs and slashed flesh.

Halisstra felt sick and elated all at once.

She turned to find Uluyara looking at her, head cocked. The high priestess seemed to want to say something but instead gave Halisstra a nod of approval and kneeled beside Feliane. She took the elf's face in her hands and whispered healing words. After a few moments, Feliane's remaining wounds closed completely, color returned to her face, and her eyes fluttered open. Uluyara helped her to her feet and held her steady.

"The Lady watches her faithful," Uluyara said to the elf, and Feliane nodded.

The slight elf warrior-priestess eyed the carcass of the sword spider. She looked thanks at Halisstra. Halisstra gave her an absent half smile but found her gaze reaching out, beyond the wall of blades. There, the slaughter went on unabated. Spiders bit, clawed, tore, and devoured one another in a nonstop orgy of violence. From time to time, one ventured or was carried by the combat into Uluyara's wall of blades, where it vanished in a spray of gore.

In a way that made her sick to admit, Halisstra found the slaughter somehow rational. The strong would devour the weak and become stronger still.

She knew that she was looking upon the pith of Lolth's doctrine made flesh, a metaphor for the Spider Queen's entire creed.

"This has to end sometime," she said. "We should hole up until it does."

Feliane, recovering her blade from the ground, asked, "Where will we go?"

"There," Halisstra replied, and nodded at the spire of stone looming over them. Few spiders prowled its sheer, strangely angled heights. They would be able to hold their ground atop it until the madness came to its bloody end. "We'll fly."

Seeing agreement in the eyes of Uluyara and Feliane, she again touched the medallion affixed to the chest of her mail and whispered a prayer to Eilistraee.

"Halisstra," Uluyara interrupted, her voice low and urgent. "The Crescent Blade."

The words to the prayer died on Halisstra's lips, and she felt her cheeks burn. She had left Eilistraee's blade in the carcass of the sword spider.

She had forgotten it.

"Of course," she said, in a poor attempt to cover her neglect.

Without meeting Uluyara's or Feliane's eyes, she sheathed Seyll's songsword in the scabbard over her back, walked over to the dead sword spider, and withdrew the Crescent Blade. She cleaned it on the spider's carcass before putting it back in the scabbard at her waist.

When she turned, she saw the doubt in Uluyara's eyes and the embarrassment in Feliane's. She chose to ignore them both.

"You're wounded," Uluyara said, and pointed at the seeping wounds in Halisstra's legs and the holes in her arm.

Halisstra had forgotten them too. She was certain she had been poisoned by the bites. The magical ring she wore allowed her to sense as much, and yet she showed no ill effects. She didn't want to acknowledge why that might be.

"It's nothing," she said and began her spell anew.

When she completed the prayer, her body and gear and those of her fellow priestesses metamorphosed into an insubstantial gray vapor. She could still see, though her field of vision seemed to swell, contract, and roll. She could somehow still feel her body, or at least a body, though it felt thin and stretched, not unlike her soul.

The gusting wind tugged at her but she resisted its pull and willed herself into the air. Feliane and Uluyara, both appearing as vaguely humanoid clouds of vapor beside her, followed after.

Free of her flesh for at least a few moments, Halisstra felt free of her doubt, of her inner struggle. She felt unburdened by the world, as light as one of Lolth's souls streaming through the sky high above. She wished she could feel that way forever.

Flying up the sheer, rocky side of the black, twisted outcropping, she looked for a likely place to wait out the slaughter. She was pleased to see no webs anywhere on the spirethough other tors had manyand the gusting wind seemed to keep the spiders from reaching its heights.

At its top, the spire looked as though it had been sheared off by a keen blade, forming a round, featureless plateau twenty paces in diameter. The wind would whip at them there, but they would be sheltered from the violence below.

Halisstra alit on the plateau, waited for Feliane and Uluyara to follow, anddispelled the magic. As one, the three priestesses regained their normal forms. Halisstra's doubt returned with her flesh. The gusting wind nearly lifted her from her feet.

"We'll need shelter," Halisstra said above the wind.

Even there, the keening webs called to her. Yor'thae, they whispered.

In the distance, she could see ominous clouds forming over a distant mountain range and moving rapidly in their directiona storm was coming.

"Gather here," Uluyara said, pulling Halisstra and Feliane into a circle.

Wrapped in the arms of her fellow priestesses, Halisstra felt a sense of sisterhood that reassured her, at least for the moment.

"We will form a sanctuary together," Uluyara said above the wind. "A place of safety in the midst of this obscenity."

Feliane and Halisstra nodded, though Halisstra did not understand exactly what she meant. Uluyara stepped back from their circle, removed her silver medallion from under her mail, and spoke a prayer to Eilistraee. The wind swallowed her words, but when she was done, she joined her hands, pointed them at the stone of the tor as through they were a knife, and parted them.

The stone answered her gesture. Her magic turned the rock malleable, and she shaped it as though it were clay in her hands. Moving with precision, she used the spell to raise two walls from the flatness of the plateau. They met at a right angle and shielded them from the wind. She stepped forward and shaped them more carefully with her touch, smoothing them as best she could with her palms.

" Now you," Uluyara said to Feliane.

The elf smiled, nodded, and mirrored Uluyara's casting. She raised a third wall, and a fourth, leaving a narrow archway in the middle of one to serve as the doorway.

"And you," Feliane said to Halisstra.

Halisstra spoke the prayer that allowed her to shape stone to her will. When she finished, her hands felt charged, as though they were attached to the earth. She moved them gently, as if she was a potter, thinning the walls and drawing the excess up into a flat roof to form a crude, boxlike shelter. She felt pleasure in working so closely with her fellow priestesses. They were creating. When priestesses of Lolth worked together, it was always to destroy, though Halisstra knew that sometimessometimesdestruction too brought pleasure.

When she finished her work, she and her fellow priestesses shared a smile. The wind whipped their hair into halos.

Inspired, Halisstra unsheathed the Crescent Blade and with its tip etched Eilistraee's symbol into the still-malleable stone above the open doorway.

"A temple to the Lady in the heart of Lolth's domain," Uluyara said, her voice defiant above the howling wind. "Well done, Halisstra Melarn."

Halisstra saw that the doubt that previously had clouded the expressions of her sisters was gone. Under their accepting gazes, the doubt in her own soul shrank until it was little more than a tiny seed in the center of her being, barely noticed.

At that exact instant, a knife stab of pain raced up Halisstra's leg. Her vision blurred. She grimaced and would have fallen had she not caught herself on Eilistraee's temple.

The spider poison.

Uluyara and Feliane crowded around her, concern in their expressions. Uluyara examined Halisstra's wounds, found the blackened holes in her leg.

"Poison," Uluyara concluded.

"Let me," Feliane said and took Halisstra's hands in her own.

Feliane sang to the Dancing Goddess above the howl of the wind, and her song purged the poison from Halisstra's veins.

Halisstra felt as though something else might have been purged from her veins too. She thanked Feliane, who hugged her.

Afterward, the three priestesses of Eilistraee entered the temple they had raised. Uluyara quickly walked the interior, holding her holy symbol medallion and chanting the while.

When she was finished she looked at her two companions and said, "This is hallowed ground now, reclaimed from Lolth in the name of the Dark Maiden. At least for a time."

Halisstra could not help but smile. The interior of the temple did feel different, cleaner, purer. Within its rough walls, she felt sure of herself for the first time in days.

All three priestesses sank to the floor, spent, their backs to the wall, their legs extended. Exhaustion showed in both Uluyara's and Feliane's expressions. But elation too. They had reached the Demonweb Pits and survived the attack of a spider swarm.

After a few moments' respite, Uluyara healed them all of their minor cuts, scrapes, and bites. Feliane conjured a meal of vegetable stew and fresh water into some small bowls she carried in her pack. After the repast, Halisstra said to them, "We should take watch in shifts, just to be safe, while we wait. I doubt the spiders will dare the top of this spire in the wind, but we cannot be sure. When things grow calmer below, we can continue on. I'll take first watch."

Uluyara nodded, shifted against the wall, and closed her eyes. She vented a sigh and soon was in Reverie. Feliane followed her quickly.

Both were seasoned warriors, Halisstra realized, taking rest wherever and whenever they could. Halisstra quietly positioned herself near the open door. She drew the Crescent Blade, laid it across her thighs, and settled in for her watch.

Outside, the wind railed against the temple for the effrontery it was. In its angry wails, Halisstra still heard it calling to Lolth's Chosen, but she knewor at least she thought that she knewthat it was no longer calling to her.

"I'm coming for you," she softly promised. "Soon."

Being little more than nests of legs, the chwidencha charged forward with alarming rapidity. Pharaun willed himself into the air as they closed and his ring answered. In one hand, he still held the ball of guano; with the other,he pulled a bit of flakefungus from a cloak pocket and shouted the words to aspell. As he uttered the last word to the incantation, he crushed the flakefungus in his hand and cast the powder in the direction of one of the charging chwidenchas. It uttered a squeal of agony as the magic engulfed it, flensed it of flesh, stripped it of its carapace, and left nothing more than a shapeless pile of gore. The rest of the pack did not so much as slow.

Jeggred bounded forward in front of Danifae and met three onrushing chwidenchas with a charge of his own. He caught the first of them in mid-jump, plucking it from the air in his powerful fighting arms and tearing off its legs by the bunch while the creature squealed and slammed its remaining claws against the draegloth's flesh, leaving bloody welts. Ichor sprayed, coating the draegloth, mixing with his own blood. In three heartbeats, the draegloth had disarticulated the creature, leaving only a round lump of hair and flesh.

Two other chwidenchas leaped atop Jeggred, one on his back and one on his side. Their weight knocked him to the ground and the three fell in a snarling tangle of legs and claws. Jeggred still clutched a handful of the legs from the first chwidencha he had killed. Chwidencha claws rose and fell like miners' picks, churning earth and flesh. Fanged mouths tried to penetrate the ironof the draegloth's flesh. Jeggred roared and answered with his own claws. Pieces of chwidencha flew high into the air.

The rest of the pack continued forward and swarmed the priestesses. Danifae barely had time to pocket her holy symbol and free her morningstar before the chwidenchas were upon her. She careened backward and struck one with the spiked weapon, snapping some of its legs. She spun away from a claw swipe from another and slammed the head of the weapon into another chwidencha's front, but a third leaped high and landed atop her. She tried to utter a spell, but the creature wrapped its legs around her as tightly as a cloak and tried to drive her to the ground. She turned a circle, its weight causing her to stumble, all the while offering a muffled chant. Finally she went down, and five chwidencha swarmed over her. Pharaun could barely see the priestess under the squirming mass of legs and claws. Claws pounded into her mail, her flesh.

To his surprise and to her credit, Danifae did not stop fighting. She pulled a dagger from a belt sheath and fought from the ground, kicking, stabbing, screaming, driving the dagger repeatedly into the flesh of chwidenchas that coated her. Pharaun figured her for dead and put her out of his mind. Below and to Pharaun's right, Quenthel's whip cracked. All five serpents extended to twice their ordinary length and clamped their fanged mouths onto the legs of a chwidencha. Almost instantly, the creature's legs went rigid, and it fell over dead from the whip's venom. Unperturbed, its fellows trampled over it. Chwidenchas closed on Quenthel from all sides.

Quenthel uttered a hasty prayer to Lolth and instantly grew to half again her size. A violet glow suffused her flesh, the power of Lolth made manifest. Using her magical buckler as a weapon, and driven by her spell-enhanced strength, she smashed its steel face into the front of a chwidencha, snapping a mass of legs like twigs. Three claws from a chwidencha to her right slammed into her in rapid succession, driving her backward but seemingly doing no real harm. Her whip struck again, driving back one of the creatures. She caught another chwidencha in her buckler hand, gripping two thick legs in her fist, and threw the creature across the battlefield.

Before Pharaun could shout a warning, another two chwidenchas leaped onto Quenthel from behind. She bore the weight better than Danifae, tried to throw them over her back, but six others rushed forward. Claws thumped against her armor and tore gashes in her exposed flesh. Her serpents lashed out but missed. She fell, buried under a pile of seething, churning legs and claws.

Pharaun heard Danifae shout a warning, he turned in mid-air And saw only a curtain of legs, claws, coarse hair, and an open, fang-filled mouth before the creature was upon him. A chwidencha had leaped high enough into the air to reach him. It hit him full force in the chest and wrapped its legs around him. The impact drove him backward and down, despite the power of his ring of flying. He hit the earth in a heap, entwined with the creature, his breath gone. The chwidencha wrapped him up with some of its innumerable legs, while it bit with its dripping fangs and flailed with its free claws like a mad thing. Blows slashed against Pharaun's sides, his arms, his face, into the earth around him.

Only Pharaun's enchanted piwafwi prevented the claws from disemboweling him, but he still felt blood flowing down his torso, and the impacts to his head nearly knocked him senseless.

He tried to fend off the blows with his hands and feet and roll out from under the chwidencha, but it was too heavy and too determined to hang on. Unable to fly, he mentally summoned his rapier from his ring, remembering too late that he had los