Resurrection by Paul S. Kemp Page A

glance under his feet, and saw pits and holes gaping like open mouths all around them. Even above the wind he could hear the scrabbling of feet coming from within them, the eager clicking of fangs, the tapping of legs on stone. In his mind's eye, he pictured another million arachnids lurking just inside the darkness of the holes, waiting for the touch of the dim sun to set them free of their underground prisons. Pharaun had no idea how such an ecology could sustain itself and did not care. Though born in a city where slaughter was commonplace, even he found the level of violence repulsive.
    And soon they would be in the midst of it. The sun was rising. The light was coming.
    "Goddess be praised," Quenthel said, a rapturous look on her face.
    The wind gusted, pasting his robes to his body. The webs keened in answer. Pharaun thought the Baenre priestess must have lost her mind.
    Danifae emerged out from under her hood to greet the sun, not unlike the spiders emerging from their caves. Pharaun counted not less than seven tiny red spiders crawling in her hair,
    "Do we intend to simply stand here and wait?" he asked above the noise.
    Neither priestess replied, and he decided that was answer enough.
    "Afraid?" Jeggred asked, smirking.
    Pharaun ignored the draegloth and mentally activated the power of his ring of flight. With a silent command, he surreptitiously lifted his feet half a handspan off the earth. If the priestesses had a plan, that was well. If not, he saw no need to remain earthbound in the face of the madness.
    Together, the four of them watched as the light and violence churned its way toward them. As it grew closer, the clicking and screeching from the caves and pits around them grew louder, more eager, hungrier. The arachnids within sensed the approach of the light.
    Jeggred answered those sounds with a low rumble in his chest. He stepped before Danifae and assumed a fighting crouch. The priestesses did not even look at the ground around them. They had eyes only for the approaching slaughter.
    Pharaun decided to try again. "Mistress," he said to Quenthel, "would it not be wise to take shelter?"
    Quenthel looked at him sidelong and said, "No, mage. We must stand in the midst of this and bear witness."
    From around her neck, she removed her holy symbol of Lolth-a jet disk inlaid with amethysts arranged to look like a spider. The serpents of her whip stood upright and watched the wave of spiders approach. Quenthel chanted a prayer, the words in a language even Pharaun could not understand.
    Pharaun bit back the cutting reply that came to his mind, content that he could take flight if and when the need arose.
    Danifae put her hand on Jeggred's fur-covered back.
    "It is the Teeming," she said to no one in particular, recalling the words of the soul-eating creature Pharaun had taken prisoner. Awe colored her tone.
    Pharaun didn't care what it was called. He knew only that soon the sunlight would reach them, light the pits around them, and…
    He imagined his body buried under a mountain of bloated bodies, jointed legs, mandibles, and unforgiving eyes.
    Quenthel and Danifae both appeared lost in rapture, temporarily mad perhaps. Each held her holy symbol in her hands; each wore the wild but assured expression of an ecstatic.
    Pharaun knew that ordinary spiders answered the priestesses' commands, but he did not know whether the arachnids native to the Pits would. Besides, the priestesses' powers were limited. They could not command millions of spiders, could they?
    Pharaun liked the situation less and less. He reached into his piwafwi, removed a ball of sulfur-soaked bat guano, and held it between thumb and forefinger-just in case. Ordinarily, he would not have considered offering violence to Lolth's children, at least not in the presence of her priestesses, but if it came to killing spiders or dying himself under a heap of hairy bodies, the choice would be an easy one.
    As ready as he would get, he waited.
    The sunlight