Enter for the service

Teysa nodded toward the door. She didn't know if the "vow of silence" they were under covered gestures as well, and wasn't keen to find out. She couldn't wait to see if Aliara acknowledged her; instead, she affected what she hoped was a regal stride and made for the entrance to the chapel. It wasn't as though she had much choice in the matter; balancing on these heels required slow, dainty, measured steps. When she reached the stairs the real trial began. Each step brought with it a prayer that she would not topple over-- that really would blow their cover. Mercifully she made it to the top unscathed, and turned to see Aliara waltzing up the stairs as comfortably as in her leathers. Show-off, Teysa thought, and had to suppress a smirk.

The guard at the door looked them up and down. His gaze seemed more bored then lecherous, but he took his time all the same. Eventually he straightened up with a grunt and moved his glaive out of the way. With a deep breath Teysa stepped into the temple.

Inside they found themselves in a cool antechamber. The ambient temperature was a few degrees cooler than outside, and Teysa shivered. Water was splashing somewhere nearby and the air had a clammy feel. A pair of torches on wall sconces illuminated the rough-hewn stone walls. Aside from a pair of stone benches, there was no furniture. Aliara wrapped her arms around her shoulders, and they pressed forward. Beyond the entrance chamber was a long horizontal hallway. It curved away in both directions, deeper into the building, and the wall before them was lined with closed iron doors. Torches spaced at intervals illuminated the passageway.

Teysa hesitated on the threshold, and Aliara pushed past her. She looked left and right, then seemed to come to a decision and strode confidently leftward. Teysa wished she could talk to ask how her friend had come to that decision, but she had to trust her. Aliara's path-sense was superior, and she had guided them well many times on the surface. Without her armor, though, Teysa felt **** and exposed.

They followed the corridor for several minutes. It continued to curve gently inward. The outer wall was bare except for a torch every ten meters or so; the inner wall was irregularly studded with doors. Each was iron and closed tightly. Glimmers of torchlight flickered around the edges of some of the doors; others were haloed in a sickly, pallid glow. Pale fingers of green light escaped one door; an odd burbling noise from within made Teysa quicken her steps. Other sounds, even less identifiable, emanated from other doors. From one came a rattling like a bucketful of fingerbones dumped out on the ground. Another made a steady crunch-crunch-crunch, like a giant mouth chewing. For no reason she could identify Teysa suddenly had a vivid mental image of a massive, disembodied pair of lips chewing its way out of a coffin. The image was as grotesque as it was unexpected, and she shook her head to clear it. As they passed one rust-spotted door, something heavy flung itself at the other side with a heavy thump. The impact made the whole door rattle on its hinges. Aliara's eyes grew wide and she stifled a gasp, and both women hurried along.

As they traveled, Teysa grew suspicious. They had not passed another soul, yet she could not shake the feeling that she was being watched. Once it grew so acute that she swiveled around on the spot. The corridor was as bare behind her as it had been when they passed through it. And yet...

The curvature of the corridor was also troubling. Teysa had never been the one to map the dungeons-- Rodrik's earthsense made him a natural for that job-- but she felt that they had been walking quite a while. The building was stately but narrow, and the inward curve of the corridor was very slight. It seemed to her that they should have left the building some time ago, or at least looped back around to where they had started.

The flickering of the torches made her shadow jump and jitter against the wall. The motion made her queasy in a way she couldn't quite quantify. Her shadow bucked and writhed as the flames crackled and spat. It looked for all the world like a woman writhing in pain. Shuddering, she turned away.

Up ahead, Aliara paused. Teysa hurried to catch up. Ahead of them, the corridor stretched out as it had been. But one of the doors was open. Thick black velvet drapes hung over the entrance, blocking their view of whatever lay beyond. Aliara stood in the corridor, fidgeting slightly. She seemed unwilling to go further. Wordlessly Teysa took her hand, then with her other arm brushed the curtains aside and stepped through.

Inside they found themselves at the back of a vast sanctuary. The only illumination came from two giant braziers at the other end of the hall, whose flames crackled an unnatural purple. They served only to fill the room with gloom and shadows rather than dispel the darkness. Two rows of massive stone columns ran up the nave, dividing three rows of pews. The columns disappeared into the blackness overhead.

The pews were full of a motley collection of priests, prophets and cultists. No two of them seemed alike. Teysa saw a skull-helmed priest of Thorix, the Lord of ****, next to one of the robed Followers of B'laal. A knot of chittering cultists wore the Emerald Sign of Thi-kren. In the deeper shadows near the columns, things shifted that seemed not entirely humanoid. Teysa led the way into an unoccupied pew near the back. None of the room's inhabitants gave her a second look.

At the front of the nave, the braziers sat on a raised dais. Between them was a raised pulpit, from which a tall and skeletally thin drow woman with waist-length white hair was singing. Her voice was thin and reedy, but underpinning it was a hissing susurrus that almost seemed to be forming words. After a certain age, all elves took on a certain timeless look, but Teysa could tell at a glance that this woman was old even by the standards of her long-lived race. Her face was dignified but lined by time, and her movements were stiff.

The singing abruptly ended. A sigh of tension rippled across the crowd, an exhalation of a breath Teysa hadn't realized they were holding. The priestess paused a moment, then began to speak. To Teysa's surprise, she spoke in Undercommon, the argot of the caves.

"My friends, I tell you today a sacred and ancient story. Weep! For it is the story of our Great Lady, wise Lolth, and her betrayal!" She reached into a pouch at her waist and tossed something into the brazier at her right hand. The flames belched forth a great cloud of sparks, which did not dissipate but hung in the air like stars. The priestess waved her hand and the stars arranged themselves into a shape-- a stylized but unmistakable spider with a woman's upper body and head. A drider.

"Long ago, when the world was darkness and chaos, Lolth spun herself out of the primordial material of creature. She found that she could weave it, as we weave thread today, and delighted in creating herself a home: caves and tunnels, veins of beautiful gems and shimmering ores. Rivers that ran in the darkness and great lightless seas." As she spoke, the sparks rearranged themselves to show the drider spinning thread into the shape of a world. She smiled as it took form beneath her fingers.

"Lolth was lonely in the darkness, so she created servants after her form. The spiders spun their own webs and added to the tapestry she had woven, and she saw that it was good. And for a time, she was content." Tiny spiders scurried around the goddess in the image. The world grew every more complex. Teysa stifled a cough; a thick, pungent smoke was wafting off of the brazier now along with the sparks. Her eyes stung and she blinked them to clear her vision.

"But Lolth wanted more. She wanted children of her own, to fill her world. So she laid an egg, and into it she poured her hopes and dreams. She filled it with her wishes and part of her essence, and went to sleep dreaming of life." In the sparks, Lolth laid an egg, which pulsed with an inner beat like a heart.

"That night, the egg hatched, and it was the first drow. She looked up and saw her mother and knew her love. Lolth taught her daughter to build, to weave, to hunt, and all of the arts of civilization." The sparks formed a delicate elvish figure who ran alongside the spider-woman. Teysa imagined she could hear a child's tinkling laughter somewhere far off.

"But the spiders that Lolth had created were jealous of the drow. 'Why should our Mother love her more?' they asked. 'We were the ones who helped to spin the world!' So they conspired to steal Lolth's essence from the drow, that they might rule in her stead." The spiders swarmed over the elf, who cried out and disappeared in a spray of sparks.

"Lolth saw what they had done, and she was sore wroth. She cursed the spiders and cast them out from her design, saying 'you wanted the form of my child? You shall have it!' She twisted their bodies so that they were part drow, part spider, belonging in neither world, abominations, twisted miscreations whose bodies would remind them of their crime forever. And she cast them out into the darkness of the caves to dwell forever in the desolate reaches of Creation." The sparks rearranged themselves to form driders who, weeping in sorrow and pain, scattered to the four winds and blew away in puffs of smoke,

"Lolth created more drow, and all was well for a time. She lived with us in peace. But the driders plotted in their caves against her. Her heart was a mother's heart, soft with love for her children, and she had not destroyed them. They hated her, and one day they struck. With treachery they struck Mother Lolth a mighty blow, and she fell deep into the darkest recesses of the Underneath, below the world, mortally wounded!" The sparks flared up angrily as the driders struck, and the representation of Lolth fell apart into a shower of tiny lights that scattered and dissipated.

The priestess bowed low. "So it occurred in the mists of Creation. I am Riv'een, High Priestess of Lolth, and I will keep the knowledge alive so that as long as one drow lives we remember the crime and perfidy of the driders." She descended the pulpit and entered a small door behind the dais.

Teysa waited for a moment, but it seemed that the service was over. The other congregants were filing out of their pews. She took Aliara's hand and pushed forward down the aisle, making for the door. None of the others paid them the slightest mind. There were no guards here, either; Teysa supposed that nobody came to this chapel who wasn't supposed to be here. Until us, anyways. She slipped behind the dais, after looking both ways, tested the door. It swung open easily.

The room on the other side was almost disappointing. It was a bare stone cell, with a single stool in the corner and shelves of neatly folded clothing. A staircase ran out of the room to her left, and to her right a passageway traveled about ten feet and abruptly turned inward.