Thaleste silently cheered. She'd done it! She stared into the passage beyond the door, wondering if she should go any farther. She wished she knew the prayer that would have allowed her to report her discovery to Battle-mistress Iljrene immediately, but that spell was beyond her, and what if she was wrong, and the passage led nowhere? That would give the other priestesses even more reason to doubt Thaleste's capabilities. Even if the passage did lead somewhere, calling Iljrene in too soon would only mean that Thaleste's discovery would be overshadowed. Iljrene might not deliberately claim the honor that came from finding the answer to the mystery, but it would accrue to the battle-mistress just the same.
Thaleste squared her shoulders. She was a priestess of Eilistraee. By song and sword, she'd see it through herself.
As soon as she released the pedestal, the door started to slide shut. Thaleste caught the pedestal and stood a moment, wondering if she should prop the door open then decided she'd rather have a wall at her back. If she left the door open, some creature might follow her inside. Besides, the door had a handle on the inside of it, carved into the stone. It obviously could be opened from inside. Releasing the pedestal, she stepped through the door and let it shut behind her.
The passageway extended for quite some distance-north, as far as Thaleste could reckon-sloping gently up then down again. At its highest point, she heard a distant murmur of water. She pressed her ear to the wall then to the floor. The sound came from below. The passage, she guessed, must arch over the Sargauth.
At last the corridor ended in a blank stone wall. Peering closely at it, Thaleste could see a rectangular crack, thin as a hair: another hidden door. To her right was a spiral staircase, carved into the stone, that led downward from that point. Deciding to leave the door for later, she descended the staircase instead, counting the steps as she went. The walls became damp-she must have been level with the river-but still the stairway kept spiraling downward. She looked around as she descended, searching for traces of web that would confirm that the aranea and spellgaunt had come that way. There were none.
Thaleste's foot slipped, and she nearly fell. Looking down, she saw that the steps no longer had square edges. They were rounded, as if from heavy wear. Just around the bend, the staircase ended in a large, open space, a cavern whose floor was utterly smooth, as if an ooze had flowed over it, polishing it clean.
Thaleste stood for several moments, breathing rapidly. What if there was an ooze down here? The drow who had built the city above her had worshiped Ghaunadaur. The lonely hole might hold one of his altars. It might even be an entrance to the Pit itself.
Her legs felt weak and wobbly. Her stomach was churning. Every instinct screamed at her to turn and flee back the way she'd come, but giving up would be even worse than never having tried at all.
In a quavering voice, she sang a prayer that would protect her against evil. It helped bolster her courage a little. Then she crept down the last few stairs and peeked into the room.
It was empty, utterly empty. There were no exits, no gaping pits in the floor or holes in the ceiling. The chamber was perhaps ten paces across and more or less round. The walls and ceiling were just as smooth as the floor. It had obviously once been the lair of an ooze, but that creature was long gone. The walls were dry, and the air smelted only of cold stone.
There were, however, several objects scattered across the floor. They were the size and shape of eggs-about sixty of them, by Thaleste's quick estimate. She stepped into the room and squatted down next to one. It turned out to be a polished oval of black obsidian. She whispered a prayer and saw that all of the stones glowed with magic. She had no idea what this signified, but it was certainly worth reporting to Iljrene. She picked up one of the stones and slipped it into the pouch on her belt.
By the time she reached the top of the stairs, she was breathing heavily. In Menzoberranzan, she'd traveled everywhere by drift disc. Even after two years of training she still wasn't used to such exertion, especially in a heavy chain mail tunic. Even so, she all but ran down the corridor, back to the first secret door she'd found. She opened it a crack and peeked out, but the chamber beyond was empty. Stepping out of the passage, she let the door slide shut behind her. She climbed swiftly down the column, and breathlessly hurried back in the direction of the Promenade, keen to report to Battle-mistress Iljrene what she'd just found.
An alarm sounded, just a few paces away. Thaleste started, nearly dropping her sword then realized she'd neglected to sing the hymn that would prevent the magical alarms from sounding. She did so, but the alarm continued to clang.
Something soft and squishy tapped her on the back then pulled away with a soft sucking sound, plucking at the chain mail it had just touched.
Thaleste shrieked and spun. Behind her was a creature from a nightmare, an enormous wormlike thing as thick. around as a large tree trunk. Eight tentacles waved in front of its face, and its teeth clicked together hungrily. Eyestalks swiveled this way and that as its mouth opened. A foul, rotting-meat stench came from it, together with a dribble of maggots.
A carrion crawler.
Thaleste's hand shook so violently her sword was like a quivering leaf. Backing slowly away, she began a prayer that would strengthen her, but before she could complete it, two tentacles lashed out. Thaleste dodged one, but the other struck her sword hand. The skin felt as if it was on fire. The sensation spread swiftly up her arm, leaving numbness in its wake. Within a heartbeat, it had reached her torso. A heartbeat more, and her face and legs were also affected. She stood, paralyzed, her prayer halted in mid-word. Her breath came in short, fluttering gasps-all her lungs could manage.
Knowing that she was about to be devoured, she tried to bring her hands up to her belt. At the very least, she would spill the stone she'd found from her pouch where a patrol could find it. She strained until tears welled in her eyes, but her arms refused to move.
The carrion crawler advanced, its body undulating, its clawed feet making soft clicking noises on the stone floor. Thaleste watched in horror as the crawler reared above her then descended. Its mouth enveloped her head, and its teeth lanced into her shoulders. The pain was intense. She let out a suffocated gurgle that would have been a scream had her vocal cords not also been paralyzed. The crawler's teeth sawed back and forth, ripping apart Thaleste's chain mail tunic. There was more pain, and blood, flowing down her body in hot streams that soaked her shirt and trousers. Then a sharp pain, deeper than anything she had experienced before, and-
Thaleste blinked. The pain, the stench-all sensation was gone. She drifted on a gray, featureless plain, cradled in soothing song. Moonlight fell gently on her from above. She raised something-arms? No, that wasn't quite it. She could no longer feel her body, but the moonlight understood. The song intensified, the moonlight lifted her toward its source: a swirling dance that filled the air above.
"Eilistraee," she sighed.
The soul of the drow who had once been called Thaleste joined the dance and found peace.
CHAPTER FIVE
Deep in the Underdark below the Misty Forest, the judicator Dhairn stood in a vast cavern whose walls were honeycombed with tunnels that had been bored out centuries ago by a long since vanished purple worm. Above him, webs crisscrossed the ceiling. Cocooned corpses hung from them, dripping putrid liquid onto the floor, and a rancid smell thickened the air. Dozens of faces peered down at Dhairn from the tunnels, faces with ebon-black skin and glowing red eyes. Driders-drow from the waist up, but with the eight-legged lower thoraxes and bulbous abdomens of spiders.