Resurrection

slashing and stabbing. They looked as though they were dancing-they leaped, spun, twirled, and tumbled, serving the Lady of the Dance even while they slaughtered. Both sported cuts and bites,

and Feliane had a dark puncture on her bare forearm. Still, Halisstra thought them beautiful.

Their blades whistled through the air, an answer and a challenge to the strange keening. Halisstra caught Feliane's eye as both cut their way through the never-ending tide of spiders.

"Halisstra!" Feliane called. Cutting, chopping, her round face was splattered with blood and ichor.

Uluyara whirled a circle beside the elf priestess, her blade a blur, and met Halisstra's eyes for a moment.

"Here!" Halisstra answered.

Without stopping, she opened the abdomen of a spider, then another and another. She was fifteen paces from her sisters.

From out of the maelstrom of bodies a brown sword spider leaped high above the fray. Time slowed for Halisstra.

Easily as large as a pack lizard, the creature's eight arms ended in claws that looked like short swords and killed just as effectively. Halisstra's breath caught as the creature reached the apex of its leap. She had seen sword spiders fight in the basement arena of House Melarn, cutting down out-of-favor male warriors with bloody, brutal efficiency.

As the sword spider descended toward Feliane, it clustered its swordlike claws together to form a single impaling blade, pointing downward at the slight elf priestess.

"Above!" Halisstra shouted but could not be sure that Feliane heard her. "Feliane!"

A large spider appeared before Halisstra, and she hacked off two of its legs with the Crescent

Blade.

The shadow of the descending sword spider must have blotted out the dim red light of the sun.

Feliane looked up, saw it, slipped to the side, and tried to raise her blade defensively. She was a heartbeat too slow. The sword spider crashed down on her, knocking her blade aside and driving her to the ground, flat on her back. Its clustered legs sheared through her armored shoulder and sank into her flesh. She screamed in pain, and blood spouted. Her sword fell from her hand,

skittered away, and was lost under a throng of arachnids.

The sword spider straddled her small form, caging her in its bloody legs. She struggled beneath it, punching with her good arm, kicking, but she was already growing weak from blood loss. The blows crunched into the spider's huge body but seemed to have little effect other than to elicit an angry hiss.

A pack of giant tarantulas drove Uluyara from Feliane's side, and Halisstra lost sight of the

High Priestess.

Halisstra shouted again and cut her way toward her sisters, hacking mercilessly at anything in her path. She left a trail of severed legs and pedipalps in her wake. Fourteen paces, twelve, ten.

She killed with every step. Ichor covered her; soaked her. Small arachnids teemed over her exposed skin, her face, and her hair. She devoured those that got near her mouth and spat the pieces to the ground.

She knew that she would not reach Feliane in time.

The swords of its claws still glistening red with the elf's blood, the sword spider pinned the dying Feliane with three of its legs and raised its forelegs high in a strike that would lay open her chest and pierce her heart.

Uluyara materialized out of the madness to the sword spider's right, blade held high. The High

Priestess charged forward, calling on the Dark Maiden, and swung her blade in a crosscut designed to split the sword spider's abdomen from head to spinneret.

But the spider saw her coming. It shifted slightly atop the wounded Feliane, parried Uluyara's blow with one of its claws, and lashed out with another. The blow hit Uluyara squarely in the chest, sent mail links flying, and drove her backward. She stumbled, tripped on the carcass of a large spider behind her, and was instantly swamped with smaller arachnids.

The sword spider returned its attention toward Feliane. The arachnid again raised its forelegs high and drove them into Feliane's chest. They split mail links, broke bones, and drove into the organs and flesh beneath. Feliane's back arched with the agony, and blood pooled around her.

"Feliane!" Halisstra cried and cut down another spider and another.

She was five paces from the elf. Too far.

The elf's eyes were still open but glassy. Blood poured from her chest and dribbled from the corner of her mouth. The sword spider bared fangs as long as knives and sank them into Feliane's flesh. Her head sagged to the side. The spider made as though to pick the elf up and carry her back to its lair.

Halisstra had no time to think, so she did the only thing she could. She forced back the spiders near her with a flurry of vicious slashes, reached back over her head-a difficult maneuver with a shield slung on her arm-and flung the Crescent Blade with both hands at the sword spider.