Resurrection

I will contact you again and provide evidence of its destruction."

Triel laughed. "Do not be foolish, Yasraena," she said. "You will demonstrate your worthiness to be a vassal House to House Baenre by finding and destroying the phylactery even while House Agrach Dyrr is under siege by the Xorlarrin. And if the Archmage decides to try your defenses, then you will abide that too. Or you will not. And if not, then destruction is what your House warrants."

Yasraena bit back the angry words that flew to her lips. She had little choice but to accept.

"Your terms are reasonable," she said through gritted teeth.

"I'm pleased you find them so," Triel answered. "Do not contact me again, Yasraena, unless it is to provide evidence of the lichdrow's destruction."

With that, the connection went quiet. A heartbeat later, the sensor in Yasraena's reception hall dematerialized.

Yasraena sat in her throne and thought, her mind racing. She had made her play but was not sure how it would unfold. If she did in fact locate the phylactery, she was undecided whether she would honor the terms of the deal or instead safeguard it until the lichdrow could reincorporate.

A part of her very much desired the permanent destruction of the meddling undead wizard, but the pragmatist in her knew that she weakened her House, if not her own personal position within it, by destroying the lichdrow. But to throw herself on the mercy of House Baenre. .

Yasraena shook her head. She had no decision to make if her House fell to the Xorlarrin or

Gromph Baenre found the phylactery before her. She rose and went searching the halls for

Larikal.

Silence reigned for the next several leagues of travel as Pharaun and his cohorts picked their way through the towers of stone and the blasted ground. The entire plane, the very air, felt restive and stretched, as though about to explode.

Over the hours, the wind grew steadily more forceful, with intermittent gusts so strong that

Pharaun had to lean forward to avoid being blown off his feet. The gusts howled between the towers of stone, set the songspider webs to screeching, and stirred up a blizzard of spiders, dirt,

webs, and loose scree. Jeggred protected Danifae from the living hail with his hulking body.

Pharaun shielded himself with his magical piwafwi. Quenthel merely smiled into the storm and held her arms outstretched to provide a haven for any spiders that blew onto her. After a time,

spiders teemed in her hair and on her piwafwi.

She was home, Pharaun realized, and pulled the hood of his magical cloak lower to protect his face. The Yor'thae was returning home.

The gusts grew more frequent and still more intense with each passing hour. An increasingly powerful hail of pebbles, webs, and spiders pelted them, like a blizzard of sling bullets. The keening webs sounded more and more like the agonized wail of a creature in pain. Pharaun had little experience with surface weather patterns, but even he could smell a storm on the wind.

"Perhaps we should find shelter," he said above the shrieking winds.

"Faith is our shelter, mage," Quenthel answered back, the wind whipping her hair around her face. A small black spider crawled over her eyelid, down her nose, and over her lips. She only smiled.

Danifae put back her cloak hood and cocked her head as though she heard something. Red spiders thronged her hair too, and her face.

"Can you not hear it in the keening, mage?" Danifae shouted. "The Spider Queen calls us onward. We continue."

Pharaun squinted into the wind, looked from one priestess to the other, and said nothing. He heard nothing in the wind but the abominable screech of the webs. And as for faith providing a shelter? He knew better than that. He had seen Lolth's faithful trapped in a web atop a tor,

waiting to be fed upon. That was the shelter provided by faith in the Spider Queen.

Still, he bit his tongue and trudged forward, bent against the wind and hurtling debris. Time passed; fatigue dulled his mind and body.

The storm and winds continued to build as the hours dragged on.

When the sky to his left lightened enough to afford a better view of the landscape, he decided to call that direction "east." Despite Quenthel's assurance to Jeggred that the sun would not harm them, Pharaun found himself squinting, bracing for its impact.

To the west, perhaps another five or six days' of foot travel away, were mountains. The great triangular peaks soared high into the sky, forming a wall of dark stone with sides as sharp, sheer,

and craggy as fangs. Caps of red ice crowned them. So too did storm clouds, an expanding bank of black as thick and as dark as demon's blood-a storm the likes of which Pharaun could never have imagined.

And it was moving toward them. The cutting wind and screaming webs were its prophets.

The line of souls, unbothered by the swirling wind and gathering storm, poured toward the base of one of the mountains. There, they congregated at a dark point, perhaps a valley or a pass,

between two of the largest peaks.