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G                               rtal, but romph had forbidden it to do harm  to a

enough to stand between it and its appointed nyone but Quenthel unless she was fool prey. Wpast the sentry and on down the corridor. Soon it camith a pang of regret, it slipped e upon a row of cells. Within

the square little roomSo eager for bloodshed was the entity that s, students recited their devotions.the hall seemed to last forever

.  Soon

enough, though, the spirit reached the spider'sround, firelit heart of the tem          cephalothoraxes. This was the

ple, home to the grandest chapels, the holiest ofaltars, and the quarters of the tem

ple's  senior priestesses.The intruder flowed into a spacious and lar

gely empty octagonal chamberwhere the air was perceptibly cooler  than in the surrounding rooms and ,

and inlaid lines and curves of gold defihallways. Statues of Lolth stood betweenned a com the eight open rectangular doorways, plex magical sigil  on the  floora pentacle seemingly focused on a nexus                  ,

of  power  at  the exact center of the

room. The same  figure adorned the lofty ceiling, reinforcing the enchantment.

The netherspirit had no particular desire  to discover what that enchantment was. It crawled along the walls, m

aking sure not to touch the edge of the design.

Waves of power beat from  the middle of  the figure as some

becam                          thing woke or e more real in the center of the chamber.  A sharpness tore into the top  of

pain.the spirit's vapor like body, stunning it for an  instant with a burst of unexpected Som

ething jerked the living darkness toward the middle of the chamber.  It

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realized that despite its lack of solidity, someequivalent of a hook and line. It also  understood that simthing had caught it with the

ply avoidin  thepentacle hadn't been good enough. Apparently when one ente      g

red the  room,  one

was supposed to say a password or something.The pulling ended abruptly        inished. Shaking off its shock and

disorientation, the darkness cast about a, and the pain dimThe attacker was nearly as amorphous as itself, but the end discerned the being crouching over it.

ssence of it was fixed

hard, a m                               ,ass of knobs and angles.

piercing burned, mThe attacker extruded additional lengths of itself to transfix the darkness. The ade the spirit shake uncontrollably,  and seemout its strength.                      ed to be leeching

s agent realized with a kind of wonder,  was the cold that could extinguish a mortal life in This, Gromph'     a heartbeat. The intruder had never felt th

e  sensation

before—not in a painful way—and shouldn't have been fprisoner of the pentacle wasn'             eeling it at all, but the

t  just cold.

of cold given life, just as the nethersp  It was the essence of cold, the pure idea darkness.             irit to some degree embodied the concept of

which point they broke awayBits of the assassin began to clot, to gum. It wasn'  , and to harden to a brittle rigidity, at t  truly injured as yet, but if it wanted to keep it that way

,  it knew it had better strike back at its assailant.

hairline cracks, imperfect junctures. It washed its leading edge over the spirit of cold and discovered stress points, Of course—the prisoner's structureresembled a mass of ice.

weak spots. It slid thin planes of itselGromph's agent materialized members like hammers, which pounded at the forcing the edges apart.        f into the fissures,  then thickened them,

The cold spirit snatched  its frigid claws out of its  foe. Its mind babbled a psionic offer of surrender

.  The cloud of  darkness ignored it  and continued the

attack.

the spirit of darkness for a second then they were gone.The freezing prisoner of the sigil exploded into motes of frost. They peppered

trying to see if the battle had attracted Pleased with itself, the victor turned, inspecting each anyone'    of the doorways in turn, s  attention. Apparently not  dactually, that made sense. The struggle had been relatively quiet, conduc, an

ted

lar

The darkness reached the engely on another level of existence.trance to Quenthel's suite without further incident.

Another sentry waited there, a spiked mace all but crackling with mystic force inher hand. Left to her own devices, she might hear her supe

rior's  distress  and try to

intervene,  and the  spirit  decided to  prevent  such  an occurrence.  It rose around the

priestess, blinding her,  thickened a neck.              length of itself, and whipped it around her

The female thrashed a little, then passed out  for want of air.  Her assailant  laidher down and slid beneath the door

.

Scores of costly icons decorated Quenthel's private rooms, so many that the place seemed a temple of Lolth in its  own right. Beyond that,  however

,  the suite was sparsely furnished, albeit with exquisite pieces, as if the Mistress of ArachTinilith practiced an asceticism  at odds with the habits of the average sybaritic

Menzoberranyr.The darkness sent an intangible ripple of itself probing ahead. At once i

t

discovered an element of Quenthel's  personal defenses. It was not, as the spirit

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might have expected, a hidden mantrap woven of potent divine magic but a

simple set of crystal wind chimes rendered invisible and hung at a point where

any oblivious intruder would be sure to bump his head on them. Apparently theBaenre priestess believed that so long as

she would be able to handle the threat her-san assassin gave her a second's warning, elf.

Maybe she could. The netherspirit  would never knowintention of informing her of its comi         , because it had no

ng.  It took a certain ironic amusement in sliding its smoke like form

disturbing them  in the slightest. directly through the dangling crystals without

legged on a rug. Along the back wall, pulEyes closed, in Reverie no doubt, Quenthel sat straight-backed and cross-ses of mystical force throbbed  from a pair of iron ches

ts  and from  behind  a theoretically secret door

priestess had invoked som                  . The high e  formidable magic to protect her valuables. It wastoo bad she wasn'

t  sim

Gromph's agent flowed forward, and somilarly careful with her life.ething reared hissing atop a round

the mlittle table. It was the five vipers comprising an enchanted whip. Distracted by agical power blazing at the back  of the chamber,  the netherspirit had

mi

Fortunatelyssed feeling the lesser em, it didn't m  anations of the vipers.atter.  The animate darkness had skulked too close to its prey for anything to balk it. It solidified a twisting strand of it

self and slapped

the table over,  sending the whip flying. At the same  time it darted, stretching, to

pounce on Quenthel.Her slanted eyes opened but of course saw only blackness. She opened he

r

mouth to speak or shout, and the demon shoved a tendril inside.

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