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The sound of Vhaeraun&039;s sword hareat stone barrier shook the entire plane Each blow set the great black fane at the web&039;s center shuddering with the force of an earthquake, and froray cables that soared up into the endless night Even though each stroke knocked her back down to the cold flagstones, Halisstra ed to stugered fro to keep their balance in the face of Vhaeraun&039;s assault
Tzirik stood aside, still rapt with the glory of his god&039;s presence, so as the shock waves passed through hireen cracks in the Face of Lolth seemed to spread just a little wider Despite the incalculable force of each stroke of the god&039;s blade, the visage of the Spider Queen seemed aloddess does not respond, Halisstra thoughtin bleak amazement She doesn&039;t care
She fell to her hands and knees a-nored her, stupefied as they were by Vhaeraun&039;s wrathful assault Ryld knelt behind Splitter, averting his eyes and stoically enduring the punish-ing blows Valas danced about in agitation, waving his ars up and down like a spider on a pin The scout didn&039;t knohether to watch, run, or hide, and see to do all three at once Pharaun levitated a foot or two above the ground to avoid the tre himself with some kind of spell as his eyes flicked frood to Tzirik and back to Vhaeraun Danifae, crouched nearby hi her feet beneath her as she watched each bloith a fierce, aze Quenthel stood as stiffly as a statue, hammered by each tremor, her arms wrapped around her torso as if to hold in her distress She watched the scene with a sick fasci-nation, incapable of anything ed to break himself free of his indecision He drifted close to Quenthel and seized her by the ar here?" the wizard shouted in her ear "What is he doing?"
The Baenre ground her teeth in frustration
"I don&039;t know," she ad It&039;s not the same There are no souls here"
"What souls?" the wizard asked "Should we interfere?"
Both Ryld and Valas glanced up at that, their faces stricken
"He&039;s agod,"Ryldclamor "What do you propose we do?"
"Fine, then Do we stay and watch, or do we leave? This doesn&039;t seem to be a safe place to be," Pharaun replied
Another shock wave lashed through the cohtly
"I&039;m not sure we can leave, even if ant to," Ryld said He jerked his head at Tzirik, atched the scene with an expression of dark joy behind his mask "Don&039;t we need him?"
"Should we leave, even to save ourselves?" Valas added "We would seem to be culpable for - this" The scout shielded his eyes froht of Vhaeraun&039;s efforts "What happens when he breaches the temple? Mistress, ill happen? Is Lolth in there?"
Quenthel let out a shriek of despair
Danifae fell at Quenthel&039;s feet and asked, "Mistress, have you been here? Have you been here before?"
"I don&039;t know!"the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith shouted
She jerked her ar as the ground trembled underfoot She spun hi hiripped the breastplate of his ar this?" she demanded "What have you done, heretic?"
Tzirik blinked and shook his head, his eyes behind his lory of his epiphany
"You do not knohat you are witnessing, priestess of Lolth?" Tzirik said He laughed deeply "You have the rare good fortune to be present at the destruction of your goddess" He disentangled Quenthel&039;s hands fro in exultant glee "You wish to knohat is going on here, Lolthite? I will tell you The Masked Lord is going to unseat your Spider Queen and overthrow her black tyranny forever! Our people will finally be freed of her venomous influence, and you and the rest of your parasitic kind will be swept away as well!"
Quenthel snarled in feral rage, "You will not live to see it!"
Her whip sprang into her hand, and she drew her arm back to flay the triumph from Tzirik&039;s face Before she&039;d even started her lash, Vhaeraun - a bowshot distant, his back to the co crack in the stone visage - waved his left hand without turn-ing around Fro her dozens of feet into the air with bone-breaking force Tzirik, standing alth, was untouched, but the rest of the co iod didn&039;t even break his haain, even as Quenthel plu as gobs of the infernal rock clung to her flesh and burned Valas and Ryld ran to her aid Danifae cringed, but kept her eyes on the god engaged in his assault
Pharaun studied the scene, and shook his head
"This is insane," he esture with his hand and disappeared, teleporting away to some presu for one long moment before another iround She lay there, defeated, while Quenthel thrashed and shrieked in agony nearby
"Ah,"breathed Vhaeraun The god backed away froreen scar froe of the nose and across the lips to the cleft of the chin"Mother, have you nothing to say even now? Will you die in silence?"
The face reht in the introspective eyes unchanged, but once again so seemed to tear the very fabric of the cosash appeared in the air near the face, and from it stepped another divine forraceful, the newcohtmare Half spider and half drow, it clutched an armory of swords and maces in its six thickly s ended in a vicious pincerlike claw Its face, perversely enough, was that of a handsood co voice "It is forbidden for you to intrude here"
"Do not presume to stand between me and my destiny, Selvetarod Selvetar speed, weaving his sextuple blades in an irresistible assault that iants in the space of two heartbeats
Vhaeraun whirled aside, dancing through the storm of steel as if he chased Selvetar blows he found too inconvenient to elude and riposting with supernal grace When the gods&039; weapons round
Halisstra pushed herself upright, gaping in aht have stood transfixed at the scene indefinitely, but Ryld appeared at her elbow
"We need your healing songs," he hissed "Quenthel is badly burned"
What does it matter? Halisstra wondered
Still, she climbed to her feet and made her way over to the fallen priest-ess Quenthel writhed on the ground, hissing between her teeth as she strove unsuccessfully to ed back and forth between the two deities, Halisstra focused on the Baenre&039;s in-juries and in the discordant threnody of abae&039;qeshelsongShe laid her hands on Quenthel&039;s burns and wove as best she could, finding a ible and is eased, and in a moment she opened her eyes Her spells cast, Halisstra ods
"What do we do?" she whispered "What can we possibly do?"
"Endure," Ryld replied He gripped her arm with one iron hand andwill happen"
He looked back toward Vhaeraun and Selvetarm, too
Valas rose from Quenthel&039;s side andto keep his balance
"Tzirik! What happens to this place, to us, if Vhaeraun defeats Selve-taret us out of here?"
"What happens to us does not matter," answered the priest
"Maybe not to you, but itus here only to die, Tzirik?"
"I did not bring you here,Valas only a fraction of his attention "None but the Spider Queen&039;s priestesses could get this close to her temple, not even the Masked Lord As to what happens when Vhaeraun defeats Selvetarm, well, we shallsee"
He turned his full attention back to the dueling gods
The Masked Lord and the Chaht on furiously Ichor oozed from several black wounds in the half-spider&039;s chitinous body, and dripping black shadoed froraceful Vhaeraun While the gods strove together in the real rate, they also confronted each other ically and psychically at the same time Spells of terrible power blasted back and forth between the weapons Their eyes locked on each other with a tangible contest whose potency tugged at as left of Halisstra&039;s reason, even from a hundred yards away Missed blows and deflected spells caused terrible dareat craters in the walls of the testones of the plaza, andthe h sheer mischance
"Treacherous jackal!" snarled Selvetarm "Your perfidy will not be rewarded!"
"Simpleminded fool Of course it shall," Vhaeraun retorted
He leaped in a blades and punched his shadoord deep into the spider-god&039;s bulbous abdomen The Cham-pion of Lolth shrieked and recoiled, but a moment later he seized Vhaer-aun&039;s ankle with one pincer and jerked the god to the ground As quick as a cat he rained a torrent of deadly blon on the Masked Lord
Vhaeraun responded by invoking a colossal blast of burning shadow-stuff that plunged straight down froods in black fire Selvetarain at Vhaeraun
With a horrible grinding sound that Halisstra and the other onlook-ers felt in their very bones, the stone plaza disintegrated beneath thele, the two deities fell through the great temple island into the black abyss that waited below Their roars of rage and the ground-shaking clarew fainter and fainter as they fell away into the pit
"They&039;re gone," Ryld said nu the obvious "Nohat?"
No one had an answer for hiness the gods had left behind theht still danced from their battle, far below For the space of severalback to their feet, no one speak-ing at all Tzirik merely folded his arms and waited
"Did they destroy each other?" Valas ventured at last
"I doubt it," Danifae said
She looked thoughtfully at the glowing green crack that split Lolth&039;s face, but said nothing more
"If Lolth didn&039;t care to respond to Vhaeraun&039;s assault, I doubt she&039;ll have anything to say to us," Ryld said "We should get out of here"
The weapons master turned to speak to Tzirik, only to find that the Jaelre priest was locked in rapt attention, staring off into nothing, his ex-pression alight with adoration
"Yes, Lord," he whispered to no one "Yes, I obey!"
Even as Ryld stepped forward to question the priest, the Jaelre priest gestured and spoke an unholy prayer A whirling field of thousands of razor-sharp blades like that he&039;d used against the goristro sprang into existence a short distance around hihinored the weapons ned hiers the cleric drew a case froan to read aloud fro the words of another powerful spell while protected from the Menzoberranyr by his deadly barrier
Halisstra looked up at hi to discern what spell the Jaelre priest was casting It was difficult to bring herself to care any longer
Even as Halisstra sank back down in apathy and despair, the fight rekindled in Quenthel She surged up, groping for her whip
"It&039;s another gate!" she screamed "Do not let him finish that spell!"
A few hundred yards distant, cloaked in darkness and drifting vapors, Pharaun sat cross-legged on the hard stone, hurrying to finish his spell He&039;d watched the two gods battle to a standstill and pluht, but he was committed to his course and did not intend to stop The spell of sending could not be cast quickly, and if he atteether In the part of his ic, he wondered with no little trepidation whether the gods&039; oh to note his presence, note that he was casting a spell, and deduce why he was casting it - and whether the gods would deign to stop hih, Vhaeraun and Selvetarm were occupied with their fierce battle and were unlikely to be paying him much attention
He coe it would carry for hih the incalculable distances of dired We are in mortal peril Slay Tzirik&039;s physical body at once We will return quickly, but guard us until we do Quenthel cohtful The sending was reliable, but he didn&039;t know for certain the effects of atte it fro it would take his words to reach Jeggred back in Minauthkeep, or if the draegloth would choose to do as he asked even in Quenthel&039;s nameor even if the cursed half-deh priest
The Master of Sorcere had a good sense of what to expect if all went as he hoped It was only a ood tired," Pha-raun one already "For once, do as I ask without question"
Warily, he began to creep back toward the distant cleft in the te wall of blades, Tzirik stood aside fro aloud fro to the Menzoberranyr what Vhaeraun had told hi it He sih he&039;d taken the precaution of raising a blade barrier to keep the
Ryld and Valas stood close to the deadly, spinning razors, watching help-lessly as the priest droned on Danifae and Quenthel crouched a little father back, equally helpless, the deter withtheir inability to discern what, exactly, they could do Halisstra stood watching as well, but she merely waited to see what form her doom would take
"Tzirik, stop!" cried Valas "You have put us all in sufficient peril today We will not allow you to continue"
"Kill him, Valas," Danifae said "He will not listen, and he will not stop"
The scout stood paralyzed as the priest&039;s chant approached the final, triumphant notes His shoulders sluht up his shortbow and fired
The first arroas deflected by a whirling blade in the h cleanly and pierced Tzirik&039;s gauntleted hand The priest cried out in pain and dropped his scroll, which fluttered to the stone plaza,unexpended
The Jaelre whirled on Valas, eyes afire with hate through his masked helm, and said, "Are you still the bitches&039; errand-boy, Valas? Don&039;t you see that you&039;re nothing but a well-heeled dog to the the Spider Queen your loyalty, when you could take the Masked Lord for your god and know true freedom?"