Sacrifice of the Widow: The Lady Penitent, Book I

She expected him to scream as her fangs punctured his soft flesh again and again, driving venom into his body.

He did not.

He continued fighting her, shouting the words of a prayer of dismissal.

It might have worked, had Halisstra been a demon, but she was much more than that.

She was the Lady Penitent, higher in stature than any of Lolth’s demonic handmaidens, battle captive and left hand of the dark elf who had become

Lolth.

Also by Lisa Smedman
HOUSE OF SERPENTS

Book I
Venom’s Taste

Book II
Viper’s Kiss

Book III
Vanity’s Brood

R.A. SALVATORE’S
WAR OF THE SPIDER QUEEN

Book IV
Extinction

SEMBIA:
GATEWAY TO THE REALMS

The Halls of Stormweather

Heirs of Prophecy

T
wo deities stared at each other across an immense gulf: a gate, forged between two domains. Lolth and Eilistraee, mother and daughter. Goddess of darkness and cruelty, goddess of kindness and light.

Eilistraee stood in a forest, bathed in moonlight. Branches heavy with blue-white moonstones the size of apples twined in a bower above her head. The goddess was naked, her silvery white, ankle-length hair flowing over velvet-black skin like streams of liquid moonlight. Twin swords floated in the air, one at each hip. Their silver blades vibrated softly, their blended music like women’s voices raised in wordless song. Eilistraee’s face was proud and perfectly formed. Those few priestesses who had gazed directly
upon it were only able to recall, in tear-choked voices, that it was beautiful beyond description. Her eyes were what these mortal women remembered best: irises that held a shifting hint of blue, the elusive glint found in moonstone.

Lolth, goddess of spiders, sat on a black iron throne, its bulbous seat as bloated as an egg-filled abdomen and supported by eight segmented legs. Above her, shrieks of tortured souls filled a boiling black-and-purple sky. Lolth wore her drow form—just one of the eight aspects the goddess had fragmented into after ending her Silence. Her ebon skin was clothed in strand upon strand of spider silk that wove itself, at her shoulders, into her bone-white hair. Tiny red spiders spilled from her mouth as she spoke and dangled from her lower lip on hair-thin strands of webbing, swaying in the foul breeze. Her eyes blazed red with the reflected fires of the Demonweb Pits, but they were the only points of light on her body. Darkness seemed to fold itself about her like a cloak.

Between the two goddesses, straddling the gate, was a
sava
board. Shaped like a web and formed from a living slab of wood that was both part of the World Tree and separate from it, the board floated at waist height, suspended by its own magic. The game being played upon it had been going on for as long as mortals drew breath. Hundreds of thousands of playing pieces covered the circular board, the vast majority of them Slaves. A few thousand were of higher merit: the Priestess, Wizard, and Warrior pieces.

The usual arrangement of white pieces and black pieces did not hold in this game. All of Lolth’s pieces were black as the ebon skin of a drow, as were the vast majority of Eilistraee’s, yet the goddesses knew their pieces by feel. Each held a mortal soul.

Lolth had been sitting in stillness for several turns, the result of her self-imposed Silence. During that time, Eilistraee had made tremendous gains. For the first time
in many, many ages, she felt confident of victory, so when Lolth stirred and proposed the addition of an additional playing piece on each side, Eilistraee’s interest was piqued.

“What sort of piece?” she asked cautiously. Her mother was, above all else, treacherous.

“The Mother.”

Eilistraee gave a sharp intake of breath. “We enter the game ourselves?”

Lolth nodded. “A battle to the death. Winner take all, with Ao as witness to our wager.” She gave her daughter a taunting smile. “Do you agree to those terms?”

Eilistraee hesitated. She stared across the board, her face drawn with lines of pity, deep sorrow, and hope. This might end it, she thought. Once and for all time.

“I agree.”

Lolth smiled. “Then let us begin.” Her hands gave darkness and malice shape, creating a midnight-black spider—another of her eight aspects. She placed it on the board at the center of her House.

Eilistraee shaped moonlight into a glowing likeness of herself and placed it at the center of her House. That done, she looked up—and saw something that startled her. Lolth was no longer alone. A familiar figure crouched to the right of her throne: an enormous spider with the head of a drow male—Lolth’s champion, the demigod Selvetarm. He laid his sword and mace down and spun a likeness of himself. He placed it on the board beside Lolth’s Mother piece.

“Unfair!” Eilistraee cried.

“Scared?” Lolth taunted. “Do you wish to capitulate?” She leaned forward, as if to gather up the pieces on the board.

“Never,” Eilistraee said. “I should have expected this of you. Play.”

Lolth reclined on her throne. She glanced at the board then casually moved a piece forward. A Slave, the hood of
his
piwafwi
shadowing his face, a dagger held behind his back. Strands of webbing from Lolth’s hand clung to the piece then tore free as she set it down, causing it to rock gently.

Lolth sat lazily back on her throne, and said, “Your move.”

A furtive movement behind Lolth drew Eilistraee’s eye. A figure lurked in the shadow of her throne. An exquisitely beautiful drow male, the lower half of his face hidden by a soft black mask: Eilistraee’s brother Vhaeraun. Had he slipped a piece onto the board as well—and if so, on which side? He was as much Lolth’s enemy as Eilistraee’s.

Perhaps he was just trying to distract her.

Ignoring him, Eilistraee studied the
sava
board. She could see now why her brother might have wanted to pull her attention away from the game. Lolth had just made a foolish a move, one that left her Slave piece completely exposed. It could easily be taken by one of Eilistraee’s Wizard pieces—a piece that had entered the game only recently. She lifted the Wizard from the board, weighing its strength and will in her hand. Then she moved it forward. She set it down, nudging Lolth’s piece aside.

“Wizard takes Slave,” Eilistraee announced. With slender fingers, she removed Lolth’s piece from the board. Her eyes widened as she took its measure and realized what it was. Not a Slave piece at all.

Lolth sat forward, her eyes blazing. “What?” Her fists gripped the knobbed legs of her throne. “That’s not where I placed …”

She glanced behind her throne, but Vhaeraun was no longer there.

Eilistraee hid her smile as Lolth turned back to the board, a deep frown creasing her forehead. Then, abruptly, the frown vanished. The Spider Queen laughed, a fresh gout of spiders cascading from her lips.

“Poorly done, daughter,” she said. “Your impulsive counter move has opened a path straight to the heart of your House.”

Lolth leaned forward, reaching for the Warrior piece Selvetarm had placed on the board. She moved it along the line that led to Eilistraee’s Mother. Beside her, Selvetarm watched intently, eyes gloating above the weapons he held crossed against his spider body.

“You lose,” Lolth gloated. “Your life is forfeit and the drow are mine.” Eyes blazing with triumph, she lowered the piece to the board. “Warrior takes—”

“Wait!” Eilistraee cried.

She scooped up a pair of dice that sat at one edge of the
sava
board. Two perfect octahedrons of blackest obsidian, each with a glint of moonlight trapped within: a spark of Eilistraee’s light within Lolth’s dark heart. The dice were marked with a different number on each side. The one was the round dot of a spider, legs splayed.

The dice rattled in Eilistraee’s cupped hands like bones clattering together in a chilling wind. “One throw per game,” she said. “I claim it now.”

Lolth paused, the drider-shaped Warrior piece nearly hidden by the webbing that laced her fingers. A look of unease flickered in her red eyes then disappeared.

“An impossible throw,” she smirked. “The odds against double spiders are as long as the Abyss is deep. Corellon is as likely to forgive our betrayal and call us home to Arvandor as you are to make that throw.”

Anger swirled in Eilistraee’s blue eyes.
“Our
betrayal?” she spat. “It was your dark magic that twisted my arrow in mid-flight.”

Lolth arched an eyebrow. “Yet you accepted exile without protest. Why?”

“I knew there would be some among the drow, despite your corruption, who could be drawn into my dance.”

Lolth sank back into her throne, still holding the
Warrior piece. She waved a disdainful hand, and strands of web fluttered in its wake.

“Pretty words,” she said with infinite scorn, “but it’s time for the dance to end. Make your throw.”

Eilistraee held her cupped hands before her like a supplicant, gently rattling the dice inside them. She closed her eyes, extended her hands over the
sava
board, and let the dice fall.

Q
ilué leaned over the scrying font, waiting for images to coalesce in its depths. The font was of polished alabaster, its yellow-orange stone the color of a harvest moon. An inscription ran around the rim, carved in ancient Elvish characters reminiscent of the slashes left by swords. The water inside the font was pure, made holy through dance and song by the six drow priestesses who stood in a loose circle around Qilué, waiting. At the moment, however, all the water held was Qilué’s own reflection, haloed by the full moon above.

Her face was beautiful still, its ebon-black skin unwrinkled, though her world-weary eyes betrayed her age. Six centuries of life weighed heavily upon her shoulders, as did the responsibilities of
attending to the goddess’s many shrines. Qilué’s hair had been silver since birth and glowed with the same sparkling radiance as her robe. A strand of it fell across her face, and she tucked it behind one delicately pointed ear.

The other priestesses knew better than to interrupt her, despite their tense anticipation. They stood, still breathing heavily from their dance, naked bodies glistening with sweat. Waiting. Silent as the snow-dappled trees that hemmed this glade in the Ardeep Forest. It was winter, and late at night, yet the women were still too warm to shiver. The footprints left by their dance were a dark ring in the snow.

Something stirred in the water within the font, something that broke the moon’s reflection into swirling ripples.

“It comes,” Qilué breathed. “The vision rises.”

The priestesses tensed. One touched a hand to the holy symbol that hung at her throat while another whispered a prayer. Still another raised on tiptoe in an attempt to see into the font. This vision would be a rare thing. Only the combined powers of Eilistraee and Mystra could draw aside the dark veil that had shrouded the Demonweb Pits for the last few months.