"Bless me, father for I have--"

"Shhh." Father Efreth held a finger up to the privacy screen between himself and the novice. "Your confessions are for our Master alone."

"Oh...right. sorry."

Father Efreth closed his eyes and focussed the blessing of Silence toward the novice, who sat meditating with slow, even breaths, no doubt earnestly confessing some indiscretion in prayer. Silence was a discipline hard-learned, but once learned, it was sublime...serene.

But Efreth's mind was not silent today. It journeyd elsewhere, somewhere far from the borders of Vesturia, with a woman.

---

Nine months since Desermas. On that night he had been certain he would die. The Ender Marshall himself had signed the warrant. Only his cloth in the Church of Silence had saved him--by night he worked in the temple serving his Master, and by day he slept in one of their many, safe, Silent Vaults.

But on that night, the Night of Nights, when he most feared death, he did not seek refuge in the temples, but in the arms of Morning-Glory, his lover.

Efreth stumbled into the clearing, panting. Overhead, a black, starless sky, even the moons hid their faces. Only his Drow night-vision had allowed him to navigate the woods. He braced himself up on his knees, wheezing, his breath fogging in front of him, and finally collapsed against a tree, seated.

For harboring known criminals against the state.

Had he really? He had promised them refuge in the Silent Vaults, if they could make it to the temple. He had only done his duty, according to the temple treaties.

But his foot had been over the line, just off the Temple grounds and into the public street, Vesturian territory.

He closed his eyes. Even if he had not descended the temple steps to usher them to safety, Mordred would have concocted some excuse. He hated the Salvatore family.

If only they could have kept quiet.

"Efreth!" He jumped, and would have screamed had he not been so out of breath, as the pale arms of Morning-Glory wrapped around him, pressing his head to her faery breast.

"Oh gods..."

"What's wrong?" she pulled back, looking sternly into his white eyes. "Tell me!"

"They're going to kill me if they find me."

"Who?" She cast her eyes about in determined fear.

"Mordred...I gave safety to the Salvatore family."

She looked at him horror-struck. "Then what are you doing out here?! Why aren't you in a vault?!"

"I...I had to see you."

"Why?"

"A fate priest came to me yesterday."

---

Efreth closed the door to the silent meeting room. "And what service may I be to you, Reverend?"

The old Ender regarded Efreth with eyes of blood red. "It's about your daughter, Father."

Efreth squinted. "I...have no daughter."

The fate-priest regarded him with a deadpan. "Interesting, then, that I should have visions of her."

Efreth sat down, conceding to let the Fate Priest direct the discussion. "What of her?"

"The vision was of a girl with your face, your eyes, but pale skin. Your same, silent facial expression. I saw her in a tower of Hell, decked in cobwebs, conversing with a being woven of love. In the background, a sealed sword and an angel with eyes of blood."

"These images hold no meaning for me."

"I saw her standing on a great chessboard, armies of hundreds of thousands behind her and above her, as she and a woman with one eye and spider-webbed skin contended with each other in brutal and intricate combat."

The Spider.

Efreth regarded the Reverend with caution. "That is the second time I have heard prophesy of the Spider."

"The being woven of love is present at his prophetess's...apotheosis. Your daughter, Efreth, is involved."

---

Still Dark.

For the first time that night, Efreth felt no fear. He looked through the dark to the starless, moonless sky overhead, his chest rising and falling with each breath. Morning-Glory breathed deeply with him, sound asleep on his chest.

The Night of Nights. The Church of Silence, ever lost in their terse poetics, called it "The Long Dark Night of the Soul," and spoke of it as a time to turn inward, and reflect. It was a holy sacrament Efreth had forsaken to be here.

And yet, here, in a place and time where no words needed to be spoken between himself and his Faery lover, was he not truly honoring his god?

"Silence is the god within," his master had taught him, when he entered the church as a neonate at age 12, "Like Celebration, love, hate, hope, peace, and despair, but different in that he does not rule the heart--he rules the mind. The will. He manifests in calm patience, and the act of listening. Listen..."

---

Crack.

Efreth stopped his horse, and listened, as the gentle afternoon rain fell around him, deadening any hope of hearing the very sound he strained to hear. With a gesture of his hand, he silenced the rain, muting it out of his experience.

And heard slow, careful breathing, and the drawing of a bowstring.

"YA!" With a kick, he spurred his horse onward. An arrow passed six inches from his neck as he leaned forward. Efreth hoped against hope that whoever they were had to dismount to get so close to him so silently, but the two dire wolves that cleared the cover of trees not fifteen feet behind him told him the hope was idle.

the riders were pale-blue-skinned, their white hair tied behind their heads in buns, women both of them, with the angular features and pointed ears of elven-kind. Their pendants bore blood-red teardrops--priestesses of The Mother of the Dark, no doubt set to the task by Mordred. They drew their swords and prepared to set upon him with merciless efficiency.

"Father of Silence please cover my passage..." Without checking that his prayer was heard, he took the leap of faith, right off his horse and aside a mere two feet in front of the wolf to his right. He hit the ground with a roll, and ran, not looking back to see if they followed. He could hear they did not.

And then, a shock of pain crackled through his body with unexpected force, and he thrashed helplessly on the ground, unable to stop the scream. His skin burned with the sensation of being emersed in boiling water, while his insides stirred with sickening viscosity. After two seconds of eternity, it stopped. He shuddered, trying to move, but his muscles did not obey him.

"I got him!" One of the elves shouted, "He's somewhere close!"

"Yoohoo!" the other cajoled, "Come out come out wherever you are!"

"Or I'll do that again!" the first one added. Her mount sniffed the ground not ten feet from where he now lay, and snarled. Clearly his first prayer had been answered--they could neither see nor hear him.

Efreth thought of Morning-Glory, and his daughter, to be born any day now. With the last of his will, he forced the coherance for one last spell and prayer.

"Father...power...my magic...to still their hearts..." The last act of desperation, to ask a god to power magic, something that had never worked. He focussed, weaving the spell, turning to gesture back over his shoulder the way he had come, as the two priestesses drifted ever closer to his location. He focussed on the beating of their hearts.

The first one glanced curiously at her left arm, flexing it, then shaking it. The second gasped and clutched her chest. The first turned to look at her, now breathing laboriously and wavering under heavy eyelids, and then slumped off her wolf.

But the wolves remained, apparently unaffected by his spell. They snarled at Efreth, ignoring their now dead masters, and began to circle.

Efreth closed his eyes, resolved to meet the Long Dark Quiet with the dignity of a Priest of Silence.

And then, the unspoken instinct in the back of his mind. release the silence.

One of the wolves readied to pounce.

Efreth followed his instinct, and released the silence of the rain.

A crash of thunder not a hundred yards away accompanied the sudden roar of the downpour. The luck of the gods itself startled the beasts. Efreth struggled up and ran through the sheets of rain, down the embankment and across a stream.

---

"What's her name?"

the baby yawned peacefully, her skin drow-dark, her eyes blue like her mother's.

Efreth sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over to show Morning Glory the face of their child. The other faeries in attendance waited for Efreth's decision.

So this was the bane of the Prophetess of the Spider, foreseen by two fate-priests. She was so small.

In that instant, Efreth did not care for fate, or the gods, or any spiders. Today, this was his daughter.

"That is between her and the Father of Silence," he said, "But I will call her Theresa, until she tells me otherwise."