Perhaps, Inthracis thought and sighed.
Caught between one god and another, though, he knew he had no choice but to obey. He would do as Vhaeraun had demanded because to do otherwise would result in certain death. Or worse.
Outside, the wind howled its message.
Chapter Two
An unbroken line of drow souls extended before and behind Halisstra as far as she could see,
a ribbon of Lolth's dead stretching across the infinite, featureless gray aether of the Astral Plane.
With Lolth's power apparently returned, the souls were at last free to float toward the Spider
Queen's plane, where they would spend eternity.
One after another the souls streamed along in a procession as straight as that of marching soldiers. The orderliness of the line struck Halisstra as strangely incongruous for souls heading into the arms of a goddess who embodied chaos.
Formerly as drab as the gray aether in which they floated, Lolth's reawakening had sent a surge of power through the line of souls, through the Astral Plane, and perhaps through all of the other planes as well. The Spider Queen's stirring had painted the dead in hues reminiscent or life,
had reawakened the souls even as Lolth had herself reawakened from her Silence. By reinfusing them with color and purpose, Lolth had marked each of the souls as irrevocably and irretrievably hers.
The words bobbed uncomfortably in Halisstra's consciousness: Irrevocably and irretrievably
Lolth's. .
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?