Resurrection

Floating in the same gray aether, as anchorless as the souls drifting past, Halisstra looked at her slim black hands. On them, she saw the blood of the countless screaming victims she had sacrificed in Lolth's name. Did not their blood mark Halisstra as irretrievably Lolth's, the same as the souls around her? Wasn't her soul too colored, stained crimson?

She clenched her fists, and looked past the souls and out into the gray nothingness. The same hands that had murdered in Lolth's name were to wield the Crescent Blade of Eilistraee. With it,

Halisstra was to kill Lolth.

Kill Lolth. The thought excited her, repulsed her.

Halisstra saw her course clear before her, a path as straight as the line of souls, but she still felt lost. She was marked by a goddess, by two goddesses, and at the moment she was not certain whose mark she preferred.

The feeling shamed her.

She felt both Lolth and Eilistraee pulling at her, tugging her in opposite directions, stretching her as thin as parchment. Lolth's reawakening had roused in Halisstra something she had meant to leave for dead in the silver moonlight of the World Above, when she had given herself to the

Dancing Goddess.

But it had not died, not really. Could it ever? Lolth's inexplicable pull on Halisstra remained, a troublesome, seductive memory of power, blood, and authority. Halisstra had only her infant faith in Eilistraee with which to shield herself from a lifetime of indoctrination. She did not know if it would be enough. She did not know if she wanted it to be enough.

She had spent her life in service to the Spider Queen-killing, ruling-and had turned her back on all of it in less than a fortnight. How could that have been a genuine conversion? She had been

Houseless, her city destroyed, everything she knew gone. Turning to Eilistraee had been an impulse, almost flippant, and driven by fear of an uncertain future.

Hadn't it?

She did not know, and the uncertainty shook her.

Even while Eilistraeen prayers filled Halisstra's mind, she found herself looking longingly at the manifestations of Lolth's reawakened power that surged through the endless gray of the

Astral.

After the Spider Queen's power had traversed the line of souls and revivified them, the Astral

Plane itself had exploded in chaos. Maelstroms of colored energy formed here and there in the aether, churning vortexes of violence that spun rapid circles for a few heartbeats or a few hours and dissipated into glorious, acrid showers of sparks. Jagged bolts of black and red energy several leagues in length intermittently knifed across the void, ripped it into pieces for a moment,

and raised the hairs on Halisstra's arms and head. Lolth's power fairly saturated the plane.

And it felt different than Halisstra remembered-more vital, but also somehow incomplete.

Halisstra found the flashing storms of power a tantalizing suggestion of the Spider Queen's might, a seductive reminder of different prayers, of a different kind of worship. Lolth's power was everywhere around her. Lolth herself seemed everywhere around her, knowing her, tempting her, whispering to her.

And always the whispers were the same: Yor'thae.

The word was promise, threat, and imprecation all at once.

Halisstra did not know whether to smile or cry each time she heard the word sigh across the

Astral winds. As a bae'qeshel, she was trained in lost lore and knew what the word meant. Its etymology came from two words in High Drow: Yorn, meaning "servant of the goddess"; and

Orthae, meaning "sacred." The Yor'thae was Lolth's Chosen, her sacred servant, the vessel through which Lolth would … do something.

But Halisstra did not know what the something was. Though she knew the meaning of the word, she did not understand the word's meaning for her or for Lolth. More uncertainty.

Halisstra knew the power of words-her bae'qeshel magic depended in part upon words for its power. And like a bae'qeshel spell-song, the whispered recitation of Yor'thae had enspelled her, had wormed its way into her soul and there planted the seed of doubt. She was at war with herself and struggling to stay whole.

She and the two priestesses of Eilistraee, Uluyara and Feliane, had been following the line of drow souls for what felt like an eternity. A trio of the living trailing an army of the dead, they propelled their bodies through the endless gray mist of the Astral Plane through the force of their will.

The aether appeared to extend forever in all directions, the gray emptiness broken only by the line of souls, occasional islands of floating, spinning rock, and the colorful, whirling maelstroms of Lolth's returned power. Swimming through emptiness, Halisstra felt her senses dulled by the uniformity. Time and again she had to fight down a sense of vertigo, though she couldn't tell whether its source was the infinite space under her feet or the internal struggle taking place in her soul.

"We must be getting closer to the portal," Uluyara said from behind her.

Halisstra didn't turn, only nodded.