Lance of Passion
From Glen Cook Wiki
The Lance is the spear used to carry the Company standard. It is twelve feet long, with a wooden handle and an ordinary looking steel head. It is the only artifact to have survived the Company's entire history.
In fact, each of the Free Companies of Khatovar (including the Black Company) carried a Lance of Passion. The spear is an extremely powerful magic weapon, inflicting a sorcerous poison on whoever it strikes that is potent enough to kill even one of the Taken. When The Howler is stabbed by the Lance, it takes Longshadow six days to overcome the poison.
History
There are origin legends about the Lances which say their heads were forged of metal taken from the sword of a demon king devoured by Kina during the great battle between Light and Shadow. That demon king's soul was imprisoned in the steel, fragmented amongst eight lance heads. As for the shafts, two were supposed to have been formed from the thighbones of Kina herself, taken after she had been tricked into endless sleep. One was supposedly the penis of the Regent of Shadow, that Kina had hacked off during the great battle. The rest were supposed to be of wood from the tree in which the goddess of brotherly love, Rhavi-Lemna, had hidden her soul shortly before the Wolves of Shadow ran her down and devoured her, soon after Man was created. Since Kina's body is in fact intact and doesn't seem to be missing any thighbones, this legend must be seen as at least somewhat mythological.
In fact, the Lance is a key to the Shadowgates, allowing passage into the Glittering Plain and hence between the worlds connected to the Plateau. The other Lances of Passion, like the other Free Companies, are lost to history; only the Black Company's Lance remains.
The last Lance of Passion is finally destroyed when Goblin uses it to stab the sleeping form of Kina in the Fortress of the Glittering Plain. It causes her great pain and she temporarily lapses into a deeper sleep, attenuating her contact with the world outside. Eventually, the shaft is consumed and Kina moves the head of the Lance through her body into her womb.
