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while his other hand walked his sword through a series of masterful thrusts and parries that put the male off balance. Zak finished both in a single, blurring movement, snapping the whip-entwined female from the terrace with a twist of his wrist and spinning a kick into the male’s face that likewise dropped him to the cavern floor.
    Zak was then inside, where another guard rose up to meet him … but fell at his feet.
    Zak slipped along the curving wall of the stalactite tower, his cooled body blending perfectly with the stone. Soldiers of House DeVir rushed all about him, trying to formulate some defense against the host of intruders who had already won out the lowest level of every structure and had taken two of the pillars completely.
    Zak was not concerned with them. He blocked out the clanging ring of adamantine weapons, the cries of command, and the screams of death, concentrating instead on a singular sound that would lead him to his destination: a unified, frantic chant.
    He found an empty corridor covered with spider carvings and running into the center of the pillar. As in House Do’Urden, this corridor ended in a large set of ornate double doors, their decorations dominated by arachnid forms. “This must be the place.” Zak muttered under his breath, fitting his hood to the top of his head.
    A giant spider rushed out of its concealment to his side.
    Zak dived to his belly and kicked out under the thing, spinning into a roll that plunged his sword deep into the monster’s bulbous body. Sticky fluids gushed out over the weapons master, and the spider shuddered to a quick death.
    “Yes,” Zak whispered, wiping the spider juices from his face, “this must be the place.” He pulled the dead monster back into its hidden cubby and slipped in beside the thing, hoping that no one had noticed the brief struggle.
    By the sounds of ringing weapons, Zak could tell that the fighting had almost reached this floor. House DeVir now seemed to have its defenses in place, though, and was finally holding its ground.
    “Now, Malice,” Zak whispered, hoping that Briza, attuned to him in the meld, would sense his anxiety. “Let us not be late!”

    Back in the clerical anteroom of House Do’Urden, Malice and her subordinates continued their brutal mental assault on the clerics of House DeVir. Lolth heard their prayers louder than those of their counterparts, giving the clerics of House Do’Urden the stronger spells in their mental combat. Already they had easily put their enemies into a defensive posture. One of the lesser priestesses in DeVir’s circle of eight had been crushed by Briza’s mental insinuations and now lay dead on the floor barely inches from Matron Ginafae’s feet.
    But the momentum had slowed suddenly and the battle seemed to be swinging back to an even level. Matron Malice, struggling with the impending birth, could not hold her concentration, and without her voice, the spells of her unholy circle weakened.
    At her mother’s side, powerful Briza clutched her mother’s hand so tightly that all the blood was squeezed from it, leaving it cool— the only cool spot on the laboring female—to the eyes of the others. Briza studied the contractions and the crowning cap of the coming child’s white hair, and calculated the time to the moment of birth. This technique of translating the pain of birth into an offensive spell attack had never been tried before, except in legend, and Briza knew that timing would be the critical factor.
    She whispered into her mother’s ear, coaxing out the words of a deadly incantation.
    Matron Malice echoed back the beginnings of the spell, sublimating her gasps, and transforming her rage of agony into offensive power.
    “ Dinnen douward ma brechen tol,” Briza implored.
    “ Dinnen douward… maaa … brechen tol! ” Malice growled, so determined to focus through the pain that she bit through one of her thin lips.
    The baby’s head appeared, more fully this time, and this