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nails. “I am a priestess of Lolth, and you, whatever else you may be, are nothing but a male!”
    As she shrieked out the last words, a jolt of power seared through her. Something stirred between them, and suddenly the incubus was rearing back, shrieking in agony.
    Shakti scrambled away and staggered to her feet. To her astonishment, a skeletal snake head rose to regard her, black eyes glowing like living obsidian in the once-empty sockets. The snake’s fanged jaws parted, and it spat.
    The priestess regarded the bloody trophy, then threw back her head and laughed with triumph and delight. She raised her whip high and lashed forward. All five skeletal heads dived in for the kill, their fangs bright, sharp, and eager in their bony jaws.
    She worked her whip until her shoulders sang with pain, until the incubus huddled and cowered before her, flayed of every inch of its hide.
    “Death,” it pleaded.
    “This is the Abyss,” Shakti said coldly. “We’re already dead.”
    She turned on her heel and marched off, feeling better than she had since her defeat at Liriel’s hands. In that battle, Lolth had chosen to honor the Baenre brat, but the pleasant rasp of bone as the undead snakes wound themselves around her was like a hymn of dark redemption. Her priestess whip had been restored to life—or something close to it. Surely that was a sign of Lolth’s favor!
    Drunk on this triumph, the drow passed a giant mushroom without giving it much heed. She did not notice until too late that the thing crouched and clenched itself like a hideous fist. The cap suddenly unfurled, and greenish spore exploded toward the drow in a noxious, stinging cloud.
    Mushroom spore burned down her throat and into her chest, searing her like droplets of black dragon venom. Shakti fell to her knees in a paroxysm of coughing. She fumbled for her whip and silently commanded the reptilian skulls to tear the mushroom to shreds.
    They rose but did not strike. As soon as she could, Shakti wiped her streaming eyes and struggled to her feet.
    She immediately fell back to her knees.
    The “mushroom” had taken new form. A tall creature resembling nothing so much as a column of melted wax regarded her with blood-red eyes the size and shape of dinner plates. It possessed no other recognizable features, but the fluid, rippling undulation of its body suggested that it could take any form it fancied.
    “Yochlol,” Shakti breathed, naming the creature that served as handmaiden to the Spider Queen. Their appearances were few and usually limited to the great priestesses. Never in her life had Shakti aspired to this honor. So far, her death showed far more promise!
    You are not dead.
    The yochlol’s voice sounded in Shakti’s mind, feminine and somehow familiar. She recalled vaguely a theology class at Arach Tinileth, the priestess academy, concerning the nature and origin of yochlol. That had been an academic debate, something of little interest to the practical Shakti. Now she wished she had paid closer attention.
    “I am in the Abyss,” Shakti said carefully, not wishing to openly contradict the handmaiden. “I challenged another priestess and lost. If I am not dead, what am I?”
    Here, the yochlol responded. You are here, no more or less. Even in the Abyss, there are many ways of being or not being. Before you stands the glorious form to which a priestess of power and prestige might aspire!
    Beneath the proud words lay a level of irony, and beneath that, despair. Shakti’s suspicions hardened into certainly.
    “You are not long dead,” she ventured. “You still remember your life and your name.”
    In time, all this will fade, the yochlol recited. The priestess will be forgotten. Only Lolth will remain.
    “Her name be praised and feared,” Shakti said, adding slyly, “as is the name of the House she honors above all.”
    The yochlol’s form shifted and flowed, taking on an oddly wistful expression—and the faint outline of the face it had worn