She exhaled and sank beneath the surface, letting the tangle of creeper vine drift on alone. She kicked, sending herself shoreward, then twisted so that her feet touched bottom. She burst out of the water hands-first, and in the same motion hurled the spike-spiders. One struck the male square in the forehead. He immediately stiffened and toppled sideways. The second sailed toward the priestess. Before it struck, one of Nafay's whip vipers reared. It snapped the spike-spider out of the air and swallowed it.

The whip viper thrashed wildly as the spike-spider jammed in its throat. The other two snake heads hissed in fury.

Nafay whirled. The holy disk hanging from her neck whipped around like a pendulum. She shouted a prayer and wove her hands together, glaring at T'lar through the tangle of her fingers.

T'lar felt the spell brush against her body. It pulled at her abdomen, bloating it unnaturally. It teased two strands of flesh from her left side, attempting to twist them, together with her left arm and leg, into thin insectoid legs. Her mind was yanked toward the priestess. Web-sticky fingers plucked at her thoughts, trying to weave them to Nafay's will.

T'lar fought back with all her will. With a jolt, her body returned to normal. She leaped from the water. In mid-leap she used the dro'zress within her to pass into invisibility. A mid-air tumble and a kick off a tree trunk placed her where the priestess wouldn't expect her. She jabbed stiffened fingers into the priestess's upper-left abdomen, into the vital spot over the blood-sac. Her other hand punched into Nafay's throat.

The priestess gagged and buckled at the knees, unable to breathe and bleeding within. She grasped her holy symbol and tried to flutter her fingers in a silent prayer, but T'lar spun and slammed a heel into Nafay's temple. The priestess collapsed, unconscious.

One of the whip's heads lashed out. T'lar leaped back. The snake's poison-filled fangs snapped at air. T'lar stepped carefully around the whip and crouched behind the priestess. She pressed hard against the neck, where the blood flowed, and choked off the pulse. Nafay's legs kicked once, and then her body relaxed. She was dead.