Resurrection

In a distant way, he knew the globe for what it was-a prismatic sphere. The colors lay atop each other, alternating spheres within spheres, like the layers of a flakefungus. The lichdrow must have found a way to make a prismatic sphere permanent. He had placed his phylactery within it and placed the whole within a specially constructed golem.

Gromph knew how to bring down a prismatic sphere. Certain spells defeated certain colors.

Touching certain colors without dispelling them resulted in harm or death. He would have to defeat all of the colors to get at the phylactery within.

It would take time. Time he did not have. Besides, he had another problem.

The transformative spell that had turned him into a warrior had temporarily modified his mind, closing the door on that part of him that interacted with and drew on the Weave. He knew that he could cast spells, but the knowledge that allowed him to link with the Weave was gone,

temporarily crowded out by the knowledge imparted to him by the transmutation spell.

He could not end the spell early. It had to run its course. Only after it had would he be able to bring down the sphere.

Above him, a portion of the conjured stone wall before one of the temple's windows shattered,

destroyed by some spell cast by one of Yasraena's wizards. The stone rained down on the temple floor.

Gromph had only the wall of force between him and the forces of House Dyrr.

He was almost out of time.

A scrabbling sound turned him around. What he saw caused a pit to form in his stomach.

Each of the pieces he had chopped from the golem-the legs, the chunk of thorax, the claw, the piece of abdomen-cracked and split. Eight legs of jet sprouted from the cracks, a pair of mandibles. The threescore chunks of golem that Gromph had left scattered around the temple had been reanimated as buds of the main golem. The battle was not over.

For the tenth time in the last hour, Gromph cursed the lichdrow.

Danifae looked through the tiny, unglassed window of her garret in the Braeryn. Narbondel glowed red two-thirds of the way up its shaft. It was late in the day.

Danifae had lost track of time. For her, one day seemed much like another, one hour bled into the next.

She found it easier to measure time not with Narbondel but with corpses. It had been thirty-

seven corpses since Lolth had selected her-Danifae could not so much as think her name-as

Yor'thae.

Though Danifae had never been to Menzoberranzan before Lolth had selected her Yor'thae,

she had come to know it well since. And to hate it.

To her right, far across Menzoberranzan's cavern Danifae eyed the mammoth steps of the great stairway that led up to Tier Breche. She could see it at such a distance only because of its enormous size and the violet faerie fires that illumined its steps. On the high plateau beyond the stairs-invisible to her at that distance-stood Lolth's grandest temple, Arach-Tinilith, the heart of the Spider Queen's faith. Danifae had never set foot within it and never would.

Within Arach-Tinilith presided the bitch, Lolth's Yor'thae.

Anger still boiled in Danifae, hate without end for the Yor'thae. She vented it on the males who came to her.

Danifae had created her own temple to Lolth, her own Arach-Tinilith: a tiny, stinking garret deep in the Braeryn. There, she spun her web and fed on her prey in Lolth's name.

She leaned out of the window-her holy symbol still dangled from her neck, the amber smudged with grease and soot-and looked down to the street below. Addicts haunted the alleys like sunken-eyed, dazed ghosts. Fellow whores loitered in the doorways below her, soliciting anyone and anything that passed them by.

Groups of filthy orcs and bugbears leered at the fallen drow females. Danifae could see that the whores had sold their dignity along with their flesh. Not her. She served the Spider Queen still and ever would, despite the Yor'thae.

A thick sludge of sewage and trash coated the street. "The Stenchstreets," they were called,

and rightly. Danifae could not but think of the whole of the Braeryn as an open sewer that she could not escape.

She would not let Danifae escape.

The odor of freshly emptied chamber pots carried up to the window and made Danifae wrinkle her nose. The expression felt awkward around the stiff scars that marred the left side of her face. Thinking of her disfigurement brought another flash of anger. She willed hate through the air and across the cavern to Tier Breche.

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,