Resurrection

Lolth had fallen silent. Where had they all come from? How many worlds did Lolth's children populate? He hoped many. Otherwise, he feared he would return to find Menzoberranzan as empty as the space between Jeggred's ears. The fact that Gromph had stopped responding to his sendings did not allay his concerns. Possibly the Archmage was too preoccupied with the siege of Menzoberranzan to reply; possibly, Gromph was dead.

He shook his head, pushed away the doubt, and focused on the now.

Pharaun's magical boots allowed him to stride and jump with more ease than the rest, but even he found the footing treacherous. Jagged rocks edged as sharp as daggers, boulders as large as buildings, sheer drop-offs, hidden pits, and shifting fields of loose scree challenged their every step. Most of the pits turned out to be web-lined tunnels that snaked down into the darkness under the landscape. Pharaun assumed that the whole plane must have been honeycombed with them. The stink of rot and a soft, barely audible insectoid clicking floated up from the black depths of the holes. He did not like to think of what might be lurking under their feet.

After a few hours travel, they stopped for a moment to eat their rations of fungus bread,

cheese, and cured rothe-meat near the edge of a pit as large across as an ogre's arm span. A

disturbing clicking sound emerged from somewhere deep in the darkness of the hole. A musty stink wafted out of it.

"What is that sound?" Jeggred asked above the wind, around a slobbering mouthful of meat.

"What is that smell, you mean," Pharaun corrected. "It's almost as bad as your breath, Jeggred.

And I mean that in a brotherly way."

Jeggred answered him with a glare as he tore into another shank of rothe meat.

From under the hood of her cloak, Danifae whispered, "The sound is the voice of Lolth's children."

"Breeding pits, I would guess," Quenthel said by way of clarification and bit into a piece of dried meat.

She held forth her whip, and the serpents snaked their heads downward into the pit and hissed.

The clicking stopped. At the same time, the wind died, and the keening of the songspider webs went silent. The night grew still.

Pharaun's skin went gooseflesh, and the four of them sat motionless, staring into the pit and waiting, expecting a horror to crawl forth. It didn't, and after a time the wind started anew and with it, the keening.

Pharaun hurriedly finished his repast, rose, and said, "Shall we continue?"

Quenthel nodded, Jeggred stuffed another mouthful of cured rothe into his jaws, and they left the pit behind them and moved onward. As they walked Danifae smiled from under her hood at

Pharaun with undisguised contempt. She obviously found his discomfort with the plane amusing.

Pharaun ignored her and thought he had never imagined he could so miss Valas Hune. No doubt the mercenary guide could have led them along the path of least difficulty. Or perhaps it was Ryld he missed after all, who would have at least provided a nice partner for conversation.

Quenthel and Danifae, on the other hand, simply trekked along under the souls in silence,

oblivious to the difficulties of the terrain. And Jeggred was worth speaking to only to taunt.

Webs were everywhere, growing increasingly more common. They coated everything, from the ordinary-sized traps of a black widow to the monstrous, thick-stranded curtains of silver as large as the skin-sails on the Ship of Chaos. Pharaun's shoes were caked with webs. The air itself,

thick and irritating to his throat, seemed infested with invisible strands.

After several more exhausting hours of travel, webs coated them all in a sticky sheathe.

Pharaun had to continually remove the delicate strands from his face so that he could breathe. He felt as though the whole plane was really a giant spider, cocooning them all so slowly that they would not realize their peril until they were wrapped up, immobile, and awaiting the bite of fangs.

Pharaun shook his head and put the image out of his mind.

Despite the many large webs hanging between the boulders and tors, up to then Pharaun had seen only ordinary-sized arachnids, ranging in size from a fingernail to the size of a head. The narrow-bodied, long-legged songspiders were the largest spider he had seen, though he knew there had to be larger ones somewhere. Spiders lurked over, under, and between every rock and hole on the surface. The ground was acrawl with them. Pharaun assumed that the originators of the largest webs must have laired in the tunnels underground, where he hoped they would stay, at least for the time being. The small spiders were enough of an irritant.

Though he knew that not even the smallest of the creatures could sneak through the magical protections of his spells, Sorcere ring, and enchanted piwafwi, Pharaun could not shake a constant crawling sensation on his skin.