by Lisa Smedman
“Daffir’s prophecy,” Cavatina said. “He said he knew where it was ‘going.’” She pointed back toward the main cavern. “To the Moondeep. In pieces.” She shook her head. “No wonder he was so nonchalant when the rest of the group scattered. He foresaw victory.”
Kâras nodded. He peered down the tunnel. “Was there just the one head?”
Cavatina was suddenly angry. “‘Just the one’ was enough to kill Halav,” she snapped.
Kâras looked contrite. “My apologies, Lady. I meant no disrespect.”
Cavatina sighed. “Where is her body now?”
“I ordered Gilkriz to ready his magical boat and place her body in it, so she could be rowed back to the portal. I realized she would need to be returned to the Promenade. She’ll need resurrection, since she’s not … whole.”
Cavatina nodded wearily. So soon into their mission, and already one of those under her command was dead. Halav would be resurrected and made whole again, Eilistraee willing, but that was a process that took time. Kâras was correct in his guess that the prayer couldn’t be attempted there. Surprisingly, he’d anticipated the very order Cavatina had been about to give. He’d even done her the courtesy of waiting, so she might give the order herself. “Thank you, Kâras.”
She considered her options, speaking aloud. “We’re going to need the Protectors if we encounter more of these heads. We’ll send one of your Nightshadows back with the body to the Promenade.”
“That won’t be possible.”
“Why not?”
Kâras gave an elaborate shrug. “None of them knows the hymn that opens the portal.”
Cavatina was startled. “They weren’t taught it?”
“No. It’s as if our voices weren’t wanted.”
“That’s not true.”
Kâras shrugged. “You could teach one of us the hymn of opening, of course, but by then the moon will have set—and the body’s return will be delayed until tomorrow. If another of those heads shows up in the meantime….” Kâras glanced over his shoulder—probably hiding the smirk in his eyes.
Cavatina clenched her teeth and stared past him. Kâras was right, Abyss take him. It would have to be a Protector who took Halav’s body back.
The goodwill she’d been feeling earlier evaporated. Kâras was using Halav’s death to tip the scales in his favor. With one of her Protectors slain and a second returned to the temple, only four Protectors would be left under Cavatina’s command. As compared to six Nightshadows—including the openly rebellious Kâras. That imbalance would persist until tomorrow’s moonrise, when whichever priestess accompanied Halav’s body back to the Promenade was at last able to return. The group would probably be long gone from the Moondeep by then.
Without another word, she strode back to the main cavern and instructed the most junior of the Protectors to return to the temple with the body. That priestess looked angry at being ordered back, but immediately bowed. “Eilistraee’s will be done, Lady.”
The Protector climbed into Gilkriz’s boat and sat down next to Halav’s body. Gilkriz settled in beside her and spoke its command word. The paddles rose and fell of their own accord, swiftly carrying the boat out toward the shimmering crescent of moonlight at the middle of the lake.
Cavatina, meanwhile, signaled for the others to gather around her. “I’ve reached a decision,” she told them. “That … thing … was obviously the Crones’ work. They must be patrolling this far, so we have to expect more of the same. As soon as Gilkriz rows back, we’re going to move away from here, without our guide. We’ll see if Khorl can show us the way. But one of us will remain here, in case the guide shows up.” She glanced around the group. “Who else of you, besides the Protectors, can sing a sending?”
The Nightshadows glanced at Kâras. He made no noticeable gesture, but a heartbeat later they all shook their heads. So did the wizards.
“None of you?” Cavatina asked. She found that hard to believe. It was more likely a matter of nobody wanting to be left behind on their own. Such cowardly behavior was to be expected of Nightshadows. In the wizards it was inexcusable.
“Q’arlynd,” she said.
The wizard tensed.
“You’re on good terms with the svirfneblin. You’re the logical choice. You will stay.”
He looked imploringly at her. “But I can’t cast a sending. How will I—”
“Simply follow us. Catch up. You studied the map carefully; I’m sure you know the way.” Anticipating his next protest, she added, “You need only wait here until the next moonrise. When Chizra returns, you’ll have a sword at your side.” As she spoke, she surreptitiously touched her holy symbol, weaving Eilistraee’s magic into her words.
Q’arlynd cocked his head at the young wizard next to him. “With your permission, Lady Cavatina, I’d like Eldrinn to remain here as well. To watch with me, until Chizra’s return.”
The younger mage glanced sidelong at the other two diviners. “I can’t, Q’arlynd. Father ordered me to—”
“Eldrinn comes with us, and you stay,” Cavatina told Q’arlynd. “That’s final.”
She saw Q’arlynd’s jaw tense, but he was quick to hide his anger. His face was expressionless as he bowed. “As you command, Lady Cavatina.”
CHAPTER 8
Halisstra picked at the callus on her palm as she squatted on a ridge above the opening in the forest. At the center of the clearing, the dark waters of a pool reflected the stars above. Soon these pinpricks of light would be joined by the reflection of the rising moon. Then Halisstra would strike.
Two priestesses stood watch over the Shilmista Forest pool. Each wore chainmail and a mithral breastplate embossed with Eilistraee’s moon and sword and had a hunting horn slung at her hip. One walked back and forth at the far side of the pool, her sword blade lightly resting on her shoulder. The other stood in a more formal guard position a few steps deeper into the forest, her two-handed sword held point-up in front of her as if ready for inspection. Both were drow, capable of seeing equally well in moonlight and shadow.
Though both watched the surrounding forest carefully, Halisstra observed something interesting. Neither paid much attention to the ridge where she hid. A quick bae’qeshel song revealed why: a third guard stood directly below Halisstra on the near side of the pool, cloaked in invisibility. He was clad all in black and wore Vhaeraun’s mask. A brace of throwing daggers was strapped to his chest, and a hand crossbow was on one wrist.
Halisstra was twice the size of any one of the drow below and more powerful than the three of them combined. She could easily rend them with her claws or dispatch them with venomous bites. But she could not take down three at once, even with magic. One would certainly sound the alarm before they all died. To use the portal pool, Halisstra needed time to puzzle out its mysteries. She needed to kill all three guards swiftly and silently. But how?
She picked at her hand. The callus constantly burned, the pain secondary only to the throb of the punctures that Lolth’s handmaidens had inflicted—punctures that would never heal. These were constant reminders of Halisstra’s servitude to the goddess Lolth—and to Lolth’s demonic minion.
“Wendonai,” Halisstra breathed. Her lips twisted with the word. She hated the demon almost as much as she hated herself. She needed to deliver Cavatina to him. To free herself, and even more importantly, to prove herself to Lolth. The priestesses and cleric, below, were boulders that blocked that tunnel.
A warm breeze shivered through the leaves next to her, carrying with it a strange scent. None of the three below reacted to it, yet Halisstra’s heightened senses detected it at once. A strange combination of sweetness and putridity, it smelled like perfume sprinkled on rotten meat. She’d smelled it once before, while roaming the Demonweb Pits.
She sniffed again to be sure.
Dread blossoms? Here, on Toril?
The breeze stilled.
“Wendonai,” Halisstra whispered again—with a smile.
She crept away f
rom the ridge and sprang into the tree-tops. Scuttling through them like a spider, leaving a trail of webs in her wake, she headed in the direction the scent had come from. It took her a while to locate its source, but eventually she spotted a dead moose. The massive creature lay on its side, legs thrust out stiffly. Lodged in its flesh were half a dozen dread blossoms. Their stalks pulsed as they extracted the last of the animal’s blood. Gold and black pollen drifted out of the cup-shaped crimson flowers, dusting both the dead animal and the forest floor on which it lay.
Halisstra clambered down from the tree branch and squatted a few paces away from the carcass. The dread blossoms yanked their stems out of the dead animal. Chunks of flesh clung like dirt to the tendrils surrounding the lance-sharp point of each stalk. Swift as hummingbirds, the flowers twisted in mid-air, petals fluttering. Then they zipped to the spot where Halisstra waited.
They circled above her like swarming bees, loosing their pollen. It drifted down onto Halisstra’s head, shoulders, and arms, fouling her web-sticky hair and clogging her nostrils. She breathed deep, savoring the nausea produced by the sickly sweet odor. The pollen tingled, and numbed her skin, but failed to paralyze her.
She threw her arms wide and froze, inviting attack. A dread blossom hummed away from the rest then reversed itself. It slammed into her stomach point-first with the force of a thrown lance. But instead of penetrating, the stalk splintered on her stone-hard skin. The dread blossom fell to the ground, limp.
Halisstra pouted. She’d hoped it would at least sting.
She loped away through the forest, the five remaining dread blossoms humming in her wake. They were mindless things, drawn by body heat and motion; the destruction of the first dread blossom was not something they had registered. They would keep trying to paralyze her until they ran out of pollen—or until they sensed another, easier target.
Halisstra led them back the way she had come. As she neared the ridge, she slowed to a walk. She stopped at the edge of the ridge and rendered herself invisible.
She smiled as first one dread blossom zipped away over the edge, then another. When the last of them vanished, she crept forward and peered down.
The dread blossoms circled just above the pool, dusting its surface with their pollen. The two priestesses stood below, already rendered motionless by the dread blossoms. One of them was pointing up, head thrown back and mouth open. The other was frozen in her on-guard position; she’d neither seen nor heard the dread blossoms coming. The Nightshadow, however, was nowhere to be seen. Halisstra repeated the bae’qeshel melody that had revealed him the first time, but saw no trace of him.
The dread blossoms plunged down in attack. One of them sank its tendril directly into the throat of the priestess whose head was upturned, and another slammed into the thigh of the second priestess. Halisstra watched the remaining three dread blossoms carefully. None of them veered from their course. All three sank into one or another of the priestesses and began feeding.
Halisstra sprang from the ridge, drifted down on a strand of spider silk, and landed beside the pool. She expected the Nightshadow to return at any moment, but no attack came. As she watched, first one of the priestesses toppled, then the other. The first landed with a splash in the pool. Blood trickled from the point in her throat where the dread blossom had attached itself, and a murky red stain rippled across the pool. Reflected pinpricks of light—the Tears of Selûne—danced in its wake.
Still no attack from the Nightshadow.
Satisfied he had fled, Halisstra bit her tongue and spat a gob of blood and spittle into the pond. She stirred it with her finger and sang softly. Webs trailed through the water from her fingers as she worked her magic.
“Cavatina,” she breathed. “Show me Cavatina.”
The water remained unchanged. The only thing Halisstra’s fingers stirred up was mud.
Halisstra swore and yanked her fingers from the water. She had gambled that Cavatina would have journeyed on from the Promenade through its portal, which in turn was linked to this one. Halisstra’s scrying should have shown the next link: Cavatina’s destination. Yet nothing had been revealed.
Halisstra stared at the spreading ripples. Perhaps Cavatina had warded herself against magical intrusions. Or perhaps she held too much of Eilistraee’s grace. Halisstra’s hand ached after its immersion in the water, the callus on her palm was throbbing like—
Something slammed into the back of her neck, rocking her forward. Snarling, Halisstra clawed at her hair, yanking a shattered wristbow bolt from it. A second bolt plunged into her back, just below her left shoulder.
She whirled. The Nightshadow stood just a few paces away, next to one of the fallen priestesses. The dead female’s hunting horn was in his hand. His eyes bulged as he saw Halisstra turn, the shattered wristbow bolt in her hand.
“Masked Lady, aid me!” he cried. “Slay the fiend!”
He thrust his free hand forward. A bolt of intertwined shadow and moonlight shot from his palm and struck Halisstra in the face. A blaze of white light filled one eye, a pall of darkness the other. Pain flared in her temples. Then Lolth’s restorative magic asserted itself, and Halisstra could see again.
The Nightshadow was gone. A blare of noise came from close by in the woods: the hunting horn. A moment later, answering blares came from the direction of Eilistraee’s shrine.
Halisstra snarled. She yearned to race through the woods after that Nightshadow and rip out his heart and squeeze it to bloody mush before it even stopped beating, but that would do little good. The damage was already done. A host of priestesses would be there in mere moments, intent on their hunt.
She smashed a fist into a nearby tree, splintering its bark. The tree groaned and fell across the pool, sending up a spray of water. Halisstra ground her teeth in frustration. She’d hoped the pool would lead her to Cavatina. A stupid idea. Now all she could do was flee or fight.
Pain pulsed through her palm—the demon’s claw, shifting like a maggot under her skin. A word hissed into her ear like a trickle of hot sand. Wait.
Halisstra blinked in surprise. “Wendonai?”
A crack sounded nearby—a sharp sound, like rock splitting in a fire. A hot wind stirred the branches next to Halisstra. Grit tickled her skin and blew into her eyes.
“Wendonai,” she said. With certainty, this time.
She tensed as something stepped out of the forest. It looked like a mummified drow, with skin that glinted in the moonlight as though it had been dusted with rock salt. Its eyes were an outgrowth of salt-crystal, their orbs replaced with jagged prisms. The thing clawed its way toward the pool, tearing at the vegetation that impeded it. Leaves withered and died on the branches it touched.
With jerking steps, the salt mummy moved past Halisstra and stumbled into the pool. When it was barely as deep as its ankles, its feet and lower limbs started to dissolve. Moaning, it collapsed to its knees and thrashed about in the water. Holes opened in its skin where the water splashed it, and pieces of its salt-impregnated flesh fell away.
The blare of horns drew nearer as the hunters closed in. The pool shrank as the salt mummy thrashed about in it. A crust of salt ringed the pool and the smell of brine filled the air. The plants that rimmed the pool withered.
Halisstra touched a hand to what remained of the water. This time, the callus in her palm didn’t burn. Instead it drew in the water, lapping it up with the eagerness of a thirst-crazed dog.
Laughing, Halisstra stepped into the pool. The salt mummy was gone save for a rapidly dissolving lump that had been its head. Its jaw was still working; the callus in Halisstra’s palm pulsed in time with its words. Follow …
She waded to the center of the pool. Near her feet, she spotted a faint sparkle of pale blue light that looked like faerie fire. She touched it with a foot and felt an emptiness, a hollow, waiting to swallow her. As the first of the priestesses of Eilistraee burst out of the woods, singing a spell that sent her sword dancing through the air, Halisstra sneered. A f
lick of her hand cast a web that tangled the sword in mid-flight.
Then she plunged headfirst into the reeking water, and into the portal that opened beneath her.
Q’arlynd stood in the tunnel as the rest of the group departed. No one had spared him so much as a backward glance—not even Eldrinn, though Q’arlynd could tell by the set of the boy’s shoulders that he didn’t like leaving his mentor behind.
When the last footfall faded, Q’arlynd waited for a thousand-count, then tried to follow. He managed no more than half a dozen steps before his body refused to move farther. Straining against the compulsion only made his stomach cramp. He doubled over and vomited on the floor. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth clean.
He attempted to dispel the magic that compelled him to remain there, but without success. That was as he’d expected, but at least he’d tried.
“Abyss take those priestesses and their geas spells,” he muttered.
He fumed at being forced to stay behind. He was the only one with a vested interest in keeping Eldrinn alive. If the boy was killed …
No. That didn’t bear thinking about.
Q’arlynd wondered what his other apprentices were doing—how much progress, if any, they’d made in unlocking the door’s secrets. He eyed the glowing wall beside him. Scrying was supposedly impossible in this place, but he wouldn’t know that for certain until he tried. If the destination being scried was far enough from the source of the problem, the scrying just might work.
As a precaution—just in case any more of those enormous, undead heads came slithering along—he rendered himself invisible. He briefly considered which of his students to scry, then decided upon Baltak. The transmogrifist had been the most keen on the puzzle of Kraanfhaor’s Door; likely he was still there, studying it. Or, knowing Baltak, trying to bash it down with brute magical force.
Q’arlynd concentrated on Baltak and activated his ring. The result was like staring full on into the sun. A flash of violet light filled his vision, sending him reeling. Blinking, blinded, he groped at the wall beside him for support. Slowly—too slowly—the tunnel around him came back into view again. The pale blue light that suffused its walls pulsed in time with the ache that filled his head.