She had long ago given up trying to hide her scars. They were part of her, as much as her faith, as much as her hate.
After Lolth had made her choice, the Spider Queen's resurrection had been completed and the
Yor'thae had come to Menzoberranzan in triumph. She had promised to usher in a new age for the Spider Queen and her worshipers.
But not for all of her worshipers.
The Yor'thae had punished Danifae for her presumption, forcing her to live a houseless life,
dispossessing her of almost all of her property, marring her features to make her ugly, denying her the dignity of an execution.
Even Lolth herself appeared to have turned her back on Danifae.
The goddess no longer granted the former battle-captive spells and instead merely haunted her dreams. When she slept, Danifae saw visions of eight spiders, eight sets of fangs, legs, eyes, and poison.
Despite it all, Danifae refused to accept the label of apostate. She worshiped Lolth still,
though she was a congregation of one.
Poor and disfigured, she sold her body to males to earn enough coin to eat. Though the
Yor'thae had scarred her face, men still lusted for her body and were willing to pay for its use.
Danifae abhorred their touch, despised making them feel as though she were subjugated to them,
but nevertheless did what she had to to survive-like any good spider.
The Yor'thae had laughed when she'd cast Danifae into squalor, thinking that a life of penury would make Danifae weak. But Danifae was a survivor, like all spiders, and her trials were but another test in a long line of tests. She had and would survive it. She would grow stronger. She could not be broken, not ever.
If Danifae had learned but one tenet from Lolth's worship, from her life as a slave to Halisstra
Melarn, it was that existence was a test. Always. The strong preyed on the weak and the weak suffered and died. There was nothing more to know.
And though Danifae was not the Yor'thae, she refused to be weak.
She left off the window, turned, and looked upon her sparsely furnished garret. She preferred to think of it as her web, an unassuming web, like that of the widow, within which lurked a predator.
A mushroom fiber pallet strewn with soiled blankets sat against the near wall. Every day, she carried the sheets to the shores of the Darklake to launder them-the routine had long ago taken on the significance of a religious ritual-but the smell of sweat and sex always lingered. She slept on the floor, refusing to take rest in the same bed that she shared with a male. A clay oil lamp sat on a stool near her bed, its tiny flame guttering in the stagnant air. In the corner stood a stone chair,
upon which she hung the few articles of clothing she owned. A chamber pot and washbasin sat on opposite walls.
Danifae owned nothing of significant value except her faith, her holy symbol, and the blackroot distillate that she kept in a vial at her sash. She refilled the vial every fourth tenday by giving her body to an old, half-drow apothecary who worked out of the bazaar. She had made herself immune to the poison long ago through slow exposure.
She had sunk far, she knew, much farther even than when she had been a battle-captive. But she refused to surrender her faith. Most thought her nothing more than an insane whore or a cast-
off hag afflicted with grand delusions. But she was neither. She was a spider, and she was being tested, nothing more and nothing less.
She had failed Lolth back in the Demonweb Pits-that was why she had not been chosen to be the Yor'thae-but she would atone for that failure and someday again find favor in the Spider
Queen's eight eyes.
In the meantime, Danifae murdered in Lolth's name. Every eighth client that came to her garret fell prey to her. The Spider Queen might not have been answering Danifae's prayers, but
Danifae offered sacrifices nevertheless.
She disposed of the corpses by selling them to an elderly drow fungus farmer. Danifae's prey ended up fertilizer in the mushroom fields of the Donigarten.
The weak fed the strong, she thought, and smiled through her scars.
A knock on her door turned her around.
" 'Fae," said a slurred voice from behind the door. "Open up. I want to taste your flesh."
Danifae knew the voice. Heegan, the second son of a failed merchant, who always stank of pickled mushrooms and mindwine.
"Hold a moment," Danifae said, and the male did as he was told.
Heegan was number eight.
Danifae pulled the vial of blackroot distillate from her pouch, daubed her finger, and coated her lips. Donning a smile, she moved to the door and opened it.
There in the hallway stood Heegan, his white hair mussed, his filthy shirt partially unbuttoned. Danifae stood two hands taller than the male. She looked at his watery, dull red eyes and thought, You are one of the weak.
"Well met, 'Fae," he said, leering at her breasts, covered only in her threadbare shift. "Aren't we a pretty pair?"
He dangled a pouch of coins under her nose.
Danifae snatched the coins and slapped him across the face. He smiled through his bleeding lip, seized her in his arms, and pressed his lips to her. His breath was foul, his excited grunts fouler. She abided, knowing that with each kiss he became more ensnared in her web.
She allowed him to steer her toward the bed. He tried to lay her down but she used her superior strength to turn him around and force him down instead. He grinned drunkenly,
muttering some ridiculous endearment.
She straddled him and he licked his lips in excitement. His hands fumbled with her shift, her sash, and she could tell from his movements that more than mindwine was clouding his mind.
His hand passed over the blackroot vial and never paused, so eager was he to get at her skin.
Smiling into his face, she teased him for another thirty count-until his eager expression grew confused, then alarmed.
"What's happening to me?" he said, his speech thick and sloppy. "What have you done to me,
bitch?"
He tried to shove her off him but the drug had already taken hold. His strength was gone, and he managed only to paw at her shoulders. In moments, he was fully paralyzed and could only stare up at her in horror.
She eyed him coldly, still smiling, and began her incantation. Her voice called upon Lolth,
offering the male's death for her amusement. When she finished her prayer, she put her hands on his throat and throttled him.
He died with bulging eyes and a wet gurgle.
"You are the weak," she whispered in his ear. "And I am the spider."
Chapter Seventeen
Halisstra stepped into the Pass of the Soulreaver and felt her body stretch through time and space. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep moving forward. Vomit raced up her throat, but she fought it down.
A narrow path stretched before her and behind her. Sheer walls rose to either side. A mist cloaked her ankles.
The mist screamed at her and hissed.
She clutched the Crescent Blade. She was not alone and she knew it.
"Come out," she said, her voice low and dangerous.
Ahead, the mist swirled and formed into a vast serpent whose body stretched behind it to infinity. Black, empty eyes stared into Halisstra's soul and pinioned her in place. The serpent opened its mouth and hissed. The sound turned Halisstra's legs to water.
Deep within the serpent writhed the tiny, partially consumed essences of millions of failed souls. Their screams, rich with despair, fat with terror, bombarded Halisstra. She struggled to stand her ground. She saw her own fate in them-she too was a failed soul-but instead of causing her despair, it raised her anger.