Mother piece completely, preventing it from moving. Unless Lolth found a way to take the Priestess, her Mother piece would be held out of play.
Taking out the Priestess piece Eilistraee had just moved, however, didn’t seem likely. It was in an unassailable position, protected on all sides.
Eilistraee leaned back, satisfied. “Your move.”
Lolth’s palps twitched. Her abdomen pulsed restlessly, and the webs of her realm quivered in response. She studied the board with her unblinking eyes. At last she rocked back on her eight legs, resting her bulbous abdomen on the ground.
“Perhaps luck will favor me,” she said. She shifted into her drow aspect and reached for the dice. They were as they had been since Eilistraee had made her throw, earlier in the game: two octahedrons of translucent moonstone, each with a spider trapped deep within. Seven sides bore numbers; the eighth, a full-moon symbol representing the numeral one. One circle was the solid white of a full moon; the other dark, with only a new-moon sliver of white on one side.
“One throw per game,” Lolth said. “I’ll take it now.”
“I thought you preferred to weave your own destiny.”
“That I do, daughter,” Lolth said in a silken voice. She rattled the dice in cupped hands.
Eilistraee waited, tense and silent. If Lolth threw double ones, Eilistraee would be forced to sacrifice one of her pieces. She knew which one Lolth would choose: the Priestess that threatened Lolth’s Mother piece. Yet there was little cause to worry. The odds of both dice landing circle-uppermost were sixty-three to one. An unlikely throw. Except that Eilistraee herself had accomplished it earlier in the game, forcing Lolth to sacrifice her champion, Selvetarm. And now it was Lolth’s turn to try.
Eilistraee nodded at the dice Lolth rattled between her slim black hands. “No tricks,” she warned. “If I see any web sticking to those dice, I’ll demand a re-roll.”
Lolth arched a perfect white eyebrow. She wore the face of Danifae, her Chosenthe female she had consumed upon ending her Silence. Her features were beautiful: the lips seductive, the cheekbones high, the eyes a delicate hue. Yet her expression was as cold as winter ice.
“No webs,” Lolth promised.
Then she threw.
The dice clattered onto the board between the pieces. One die rolled to a stop immediately, full moon symbol uppermost. The second came to rest against one of Lolth’s Priestess pieces. The die lay edge-uppermost, balanced halfway between the eight and the one.
“The die is cocked,” Eilistraee said. “The roll is”
The spider inside it twitched.
The die toppled, landing moon-uppermost. The new moon. Slowly, its stain spread throughout the die, rendering it as black as the Spider Queen’s heart.
“You cheat!” Eilistraee cried.
“Of course,” Lolth said with a smile.
Eilistraee turned her face skyward. “Ao! I require a witŹness, Lord of All, and your judgment. Lolth has broken the rules, and must forfeit the game.”
Ao’s reply came not in words or gestures, but as a sudden knowing. The dice, he revealed, had always been loaded. Moonlight had tipped the balance, the first time. Lolth had arranged thisa form of cheating, it was truebut the first result had been in Eilistraee’s favor. The second die roll would also stand.
Ao had spoken.
Eilistraee stared at the empty place on the sava board where the Spider Queen’s champion had once stood. “You wanted Selvetarm to die. You arranged it.”
Lolth gave a lazy shrug. “Of course. And now it’s your turn to lose a piece of my choosing.”
“No,” Eilistraee whispered. A tear squeezed from eyes that had turned a dull yellow. It trickled down the goddess’s face, and was absorbed by Vhaeraun’s mask.
“Yes.” Lolth answered. Smiling cruelly, she extended a web-laced hand to point at a Priestess piece. “That one. I demand her sacrifice. Now.”
CHAPTER 1
The Month of Ches
The Year of the Cauldron (1378 DR)
T’lar slipped silently into the blood-warm river and clung to a gnarled tree root so the sluggish current wouldn’t carry her away. The river slid smoothly over her skin without impediment; upon acceptance in the Velkyn Velve, she had shaved her body from scalp to anklethere would be no incriminating flashes of white to give her away. Floating on her back, she pulled a tangle of dead creeper vines across her naked body to conceal herself. She stared up at the sky, awash with the light of thousands of stars, and listened to the rustling of the night’s predators and the startled screeches of their prey. The World Above was a noisy place compared to the cool silence of the Underdark, but