"I just did," Kiaransalee gloated. "Squish. Squish squish." A babble of taunting laughter followed. "Aren't you sorry now, for yanking my domain into yours?"

Eilistraee interrupted the tirade. "Let her play."

Lolth looked up sharply. Her eyes bored into Eilistraee's for several moments. Then her gaze drifted to the sava board. She pretended to look at it idly, but Eilistraee could tell that Lolth was studying the pattern of pieces intently. The Spider Queen wasn't stupid. She would know what Eilistraee hoped: that Kiaransalee's chaotic moves would provide a screen for Eilistraee's own, more careful maneuvers.

Lolth smiled. A spider the size of a bead of sweat crawled across her upper lip, then disappeared into the crack between her parted teeth. "Yes, indeed," she breathed. "Why not?"

"With Ao as witness," Eilistraee added. "And under the same terms that we agreed to. A contest to the death. Winner take all."

Kiaransalee's voice issued from the crack between realms. "To the death," she chortled.

The crack widened, revealing the goddess and her realm.

Kiaransalee was horrible to look at, gruesome as any mortal lich. Her coal-dark skin stretched tight over a near-skeletal face, and her hair was lusterless as bleached bone. The rotted silks that hung from her wasted body had faded to gray, mottled with mold. A multitude of silver rings hung loose on her bony fingers. She sat cross-legged on a slab of marble: a tombstone whose inscription had been obscured by moss. A field studded with other gravestones stretched behind it, under an ice-white sky.

Kiaransalee pulled a maggot from her flesh and shaped its soft, dough-like mass into a Mother piece, giving it the form she wore when appearing before her worshipers: that of a beautiful drow female. As it darkened to black, she placed it on the sava board, then swept an arm in a scythelike motion. A host of lesser pieces appeared in the crook of her arm: skeletal Slaves, slavering ghoul Warriors, lich-like Wizards, and Priestess pieces in black robes with hooded cowls. These she sprinkled across the board, letting them fall like a scattering of ashes over an open grave.