Sacrifice of the Widow

by Lisa Smedman

  “You’re going to die in a few moments,” Cavatina told him. “Your lips are already starting to turn gray. You’ll be with your god soon enough, but I wonder if you realize that all you’ve been taught is a lie. Vhaeraun may claim to be working for the overthrow of Lolth, but the truth is that he exists only at her sufferance. The independence that he claims is a lie.”

  The head of the man inside the cocoon twitched slightly. Back and forth, a shake of the head. He refused to listen, to believe.

  “Ellaniath is not a place of refuge, but a prison,” Cavatina continued. “Why else would it lie within Colothys, fourth layer of the plane of exile? You who strive to join the god there are as much slaves of the Spider Queen as Vhaeraun is. Of all the Dark Seldarine—Vhaeraun, Kiaransalee, and Selvetarm—only Eilistraee offers any hope of escape from the evil that Lolth spins, or any hope of true reward.”

  She paused to let him consider that then added, “You don’t need to die. Eilistraee can banish the poison from your body, if only you will accept her. Renounce Vhaeraun, and embrace the only god who truly loves the drow race. You have already taken the first step in Eilistraee’s dance by climbing up to the surface realms. It’s not too late for redemption. If you answer is a truthful yes, I will know it.” She loosened his lips, just a little. “Will you embrace Eilistraee?”

  His response was a sharp puff of air that sent a dribble of spittle down his chin—the best spit he could manage, under the circumstances.

  Cavatina snorted. The answer was exactly what she expected. She’d been going through the motions, giving him the chance that was required by decree. Her obligation to him was at an end. She pinched his lips shut again, watching as they slowly paled. Sweat beaded on his lips, making them slippery, and his struggles became weaker and weaker.

  When they at last ceased, Cavatina released the lips. She stared at the dead man as he twisted slowly inside his cocoon. Her mother would have commented that his was one more soul that might have been redeemed, but that was lost instead. Her mother, however, was dead. And that kind of thinking had killed her.

  Cavatina reached down for the mask carefully, not really wanting to touch it. She’d heard rumors of such abominations. Vhaeraun’s faithful called the practice soultheft. Someone’s soul was trapped in that square of black cloth.

  She laid the mask across the blade of her sword and sang a prayer of dispelling. The faint wailing that had been coming from the mask stilled. The scrap of cloth smoothed then hung limp. Cavatina let it slide from her sword then slashed as it fluttered to the ground, slicing the holy symbol neatly in two.

  She walked away without looking back at either the scraps of cloth or the corpse in the slowly twisting cocoon.

  She continued her hunt.

  Long after the Darksong Knight had departed, Halisstra returned to the hollow tree. It was dark by then, but the moon had not yet risen. When it did, the Darksong Knight would be back on Halisstra’s trail again. The chase-me game would begin anew.

  For the moment, however, there were other things Halisstra had to attend to, as commanded by her mistress. Capricious as always, Lolth had changed her mind. Vhaeraun’s clerics were not to be killed, especially not the one Halisstra had just dispatched.

  Halisstra could see from the footprints on the ground that Eilistraee’s warrior-priestess had found the cocooned cleric. A hole had been cut in the cocoon over the dead man’s mouth. That hardly surprised Halisstra. Mercy was one of the greatest weaknesses of Eilistraee’s faithful. It hadn’t done Vhaeraun’s cleric any good, however. He was dead.

  Then she spotted his holy symbol. It lay on the ground nearby, slashed in two. Halisstra nodded. Perhaps that was why Eilistraee’s priestess had cut a hole in the cocoon, to retrieve the holy symbol and destroy it. The priestess might not be so merciful, after all.

  The thought made Halisstra smile.

  She clawed at the cocoon, shredding it. Her claws raked sharp lines across the dead cleric’s scalp, torso, arms, and thighs as she ripped the strands of webbing from his body. Blood seeped sluggishly from these wounds. Eventually, the corpse tumbled out onto the ground. Halisstra bent over it, the fangs in her cheeks at first spreading wide then retracting back into the bulges in her jowls that housed them. She would give the cleric another sort of kiss.

  His lips were cold and stiff. She pressed hers to them and whispered Lolth’s name, forcing a prayer-breath into the dead man’s lungs. Then she reared back, watching.

  The cleric’s eyes fluttered open and he exhaled a ragged breath, one that stank of spiders. For a moment, he stared blankly up at the cloud-dark sky, his pupils slowly dilating. Then he stared at the creature sitting on his chest.

  And screamed.

  Halisstra sprang off him, laughing, and vanished into the night.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Qilué brushed a strand of hair away from Nastasia’s face. The dead priestess’s body showed no signs of putrefaction, despite having lain in a treetop bier, exposed to the elements, for a tenday. The mark of Vhaeraun’s assassin could still be seen, an indentation in the neck, left by a stranglecord. Her dark skin was chafed around this wound, and her open, staring eyes were so bloodshot they were more red than white.

  The priestess was definitely dead, yet her body was uncorrupted. Even the smell of death was missing. This might have been construed as a sign from Eilistraee—save for the faint discoloration on the lower half of Nastasia’s face which Qilué’s detection spell had just revealed.

  A discoloration in the shape of a mask.

  Qilué turned to the four priestesses who had carried Nastasia’s body into the Promenade’s Hall of Healing. The novices from the shrine at Lake Sember shifted uneasily as Qilué examined the body, particularly at the revelation of a square of darkness shrouding Nastasia’s cheeks and chin. Their hands twisted nervously on the leather-wrapped hilts of swords, or fingered the silver holy symbols that hung against their breastplates.

  At last, one of them spoke. “Vhaeraun’s mark. What does it signify, Lady?”

  Qilué’s voice was grave. “Nastasia is not dancing with Eilistraee in the sacred groves. Her soul has been stolen—it’s trapped inside a Nightshadow’s mask. They call it ‘soultheft.’”

  Eyes widened. “But why, Lady? What does he want with her soul?”

  “I don’t know.” Qilué lied, loath to elaborate. The novices were rattled enough. She didn’t want them to panic. The Nightshadows typically used soultheft to revitalize the enchantments on a depleted magical item. In the process, the soul was consumed.

  From the look of Nastasia’s body, that hadn’t happened yet. Her soul was, apparently, still trapped within the mask, her body not yet truly dead, but at any moment, the assassin who had stolen Nastasia’s soul might annihilate it.

  “You were right to bring her here,” Qilué told the priestesses. “We must find the one who did this to her.”

  “We tried a scrying, immediately after the attack. It didn’t reveal—”

  “This will.”

  Lifting her arms, Qilué drew the moon’s chill light down into the Hall of Healing. Pale radiance limned her body as she began her dance. Singing a hymn to the goddess, Qilué spun in place, faster and faster until her body became a blur. The moonlight that enveloped her waxed brighter, filling her with radiance. In another moment, she would know the direction of the assassin she sought. That done, she would teleport to another of the shrines and repeat the dance there. The point where the two lines crossed would pinpoint the assassin. Then she could strike.

  The sudden, jerking halt of the spell’s culmination, however, did not come. Eventually, the glow that surrounded Qilué waned then disappeared. She slowed, lowering her hand.

  Her dance had revealed nothing. The assassin had either shielded himself with potent magic, fled to another plane, or died.

  Eilistraee might know the answer.

  Qilué began a second prayer. Invoking Eilistraee’s name, she sent her awareness up into a shaft
of moonlight to commune with her goddess. It would be a fleeting link, but it would serve. Radiance filled Qilué’s mind as the link was forged.

  She asked her first question of the goddess: “Does the person who killed Nastasia live?”

  Eilistraee’s face—a thing of unearthly beauty that Qilué was unable to look upon without tears—turned slightly, from side to side. The answer, just as Qilué had anticipated, was no.

  “Is his mask still with his body?”

  The face nodded.

  “Is Nastasia’s soul still—?”

  Wait.

  The word startled Qilué. The goddess ordinarily answered a question asked in communion with a simple yes or no. On top of that, Eilistraee’s voice sounded strange. The word had been layered with a deeper, rougher tone, one whose reverberations left an ache in Qilué’s mind. She could still see Eilistraee’s face, but it was more distant than it had been, dimmer than before. It unnerved her, but she did as instructed. She waited.

  Another word came: No.

  The communion ended.

  Qilué shivered. What had just happened? Had it been Eilistraee who had answered, or … some other goddess? If another deity, why had Eilistraee permitted the intrusion? And what question had just been answered? Had the other deity—if indeed, it had been another deity who had spoken—been saying that the assassin did indeed still have his mask, or had the answer been for the question that Qilué had not quite completed?

  The four priestesses were staring at her, waiting for answers. Qilué, badly rattled, took a breath to steady herself—and was surprised to smell the odor of decay. She looked down just in time to see the dark shadow that lay across the bottom half of Nastasia’s face split down the middle, as if it had been sliced in two. Then it faded.

  Hope shone into Qilué, bright as moonlight. She shoved aside the worries about whose voice had answered her.

  “Eilistraee be praised!” she said. Something—perhaps the goddess herself—had just broken the soultheft’s hold. Qilué immediately laid her hands on the corpse. “Join me!” she cried to the lesser priestesses. “A song to raise the dead.”

  The other four were startled but swiftly joined Qilué in prayer. Together, their voices washed over the dead woman, calling her soul back to her body. The song ended on Qilué’s sustained note, layered by the harmonies of the other four priestesses—and Nastasia’s eyes sprang open. She immediately flailed with one arm, as if shoving an attacker away. Her other hand groped for her sword. Then she recognized where she was. She stared up at Qilué, eyes wide.

  “Lady,” she gasped. She sat up and rubbed her throat, then stared at her own hand, a wondering expression on her face. Her joy at finding herself alive again was obvious, but so too was a hint of sorrow—understandable, in a priestess who for the briefest moment had been dancing at Eilistraee’s side. She looked up at Qilué. “You called me back.”

  Qilué spoke in a gentle voice. “Your soul was stolen, but something caused it to be set free again. All is well now.” She paused. “I called you back because we need to know what happened. Tell me what you remember. Everything that followed the assassin’s attack.”

  Nastasia swallowed. Winced. “I was dead.”

  “And then? Between that time and just now, when you found yourself dancing in Eilistraee’s grove?”

  Nastasia glanced off into an unseen distance. “Darkness. Nothing.”

  Inwardly, Qilué sighed. She’d hoped for more.

  “And …” Nastasia frowned, thinking hard. “There was a voice, the voice of the man who killed me.”

  The four novices whispered anxiously to each other.

  Qilué held up a hand. “Silence.” She gently touched Nastasia’s shoulder. “Try to remember. What was he saying? Could you make out any words?”

  Nastasia closed her eyes. Her frown deepened. She started to shake her head, but then her eyes sprang open in alarm.

  “He plans to open a gate.” She looked up at Qilué, her face gray with worry. “A gate to Eilistraee’s domain, so that Vhaeraun can attack her. He’s going to use our souls to fuel it.”

  “No!” one of the lesser priestesses gasped. She turned to Qilué. “Is it possible, Lady?”

  “The Nightshadows are adept at conjuring,” Qilué said, “but they would have to send one of their members into Eilistraee’s domain in order to open a gate there, and no follower of the Masked Lord can enter Eilistraee’s realm without her knowing it.”

  Nastasia shook her head, eyes wide. “They don’t need to enter her domain. The assassin told them they could cast the spell from Toril, from a cavern in the Underdark that lies inside a powerful earth node. He told the other clerics he knew a ritual of high magic that would accomplish this.”

  “Drow males?” Qilué’s lips quirked into a smile. “Casting high magic?”

  Even as the others chuckled, reassured, Qilué wondered. If it was possible, what then?

  Iljrene’s spy had turned in a report—something about Vhaeraun’s clerics and plans to “open” something. That report had cut off in mid-sentence and Iljrene had been unable to contact her spy since, but he had provided one detail: a name. Malvag. Qilué suspected that Malvag and the assassin who had stolen Nastasia’s soul were one and the same.

  “Did you overhear any names?” she asked Nastasia.

  The priestess closed her eyes, thinking. Then she nodded. “House names,” she answered. “Jaelre and Auzkovyn, and another name … Jezz. The assassin was angry with him. I think Jezz accused him of worshiping Lolth.”

  Qilué nodded, then turned to the others. “Whether Vhaeraun’s faithful are capable of high magic or not,” she continued, “this bodes ill for us.”

  “But the assassin’s dead, isn’t he?” one of the priestesses asked. “Isn’t that what Eilistraee said?”

  “That was her answer,” Qilué said.

  “Then there’s nothing to worry about. That puts an end to the scheme right there.”

  Qilué gave the priestess a brief nod. She remained troubled, however. Malvag might indeed be dead, but the other clerics were obviously still carrying out his plan. Two nights before, one of Vhaeraun’s faithful had been spotted trying to sneak into Eilistraee’s temple in the Yuirwood. He had been driven off, but just the past night another attack had come, this time against the shrine in the Gray Forest. It had only been discovered that morning, when the murdered body of a priestess had been found.

  As the four priestesses helped their revived companion to her feet, Qilué contacted the high priestess in the Gray Forest with a sending. The answer came a short time later in a whisper only Qilué could hear. It wasn’t good news.

  The priestess in the Gray Forest also had a square of darkness shrouding her lower face. Her soul, too, had been stolen.

  Q’arlynd hurried through the woods, Flinderspeld jogging obediently behind. As they drew closer to the blare of horns, Q’arlynd could hear women shouting as well as the thrum of arrows in flight and the wet, chopping sound of weapons hitting flesh. Above and ahead, he could see dozens of figures hurtling through the treetops. One passed close enough for Q’arlynd to recognize it as a combination of spider and drow.

  A drider? On the surface?

  The creature spotted Q’arlynd. It hurled a dagger, but the weapon was deflected by Q’arlynd’s protective spell and thunked into a nearby tree. The drider shrouded itself in a sphere of darkness as wide as the spreading branches of the tree. Before it could escape, however, Q’arlynd cast a spell, sending a pea-sized gout of fire streaking toward it. Heat bathed his face as it exploded, creating a fireball that filled the magical darkness. A heartbeat later, the blackened corpse of the drider tumbled from the tree, followed by burning branches.

  Q’arlynd turned and plucked the drider’s dagger from the tree. He handed it to Flinderspeld. “Stay right here. Don’t fight unless you’re forced to.”

  The gnome frowned. “I thought you said ‘we’ would join the battle.”

  Q’arl
ynd made a point of looking down at the deep gnome. Flinderspeld was tiny, barely half his height, the size of a child. “You’re too valuable to throw away in combat,” he told his slave. That said, he spoke the words to a glamor that rendered the deep gnome invisible. He drew his wand and strode toward the sounds of fighting.

  The trees screened much of the battle, but it was well illuminated. Balls of silver-white light drifted through the trees, illuminating the scene with the brightness of several full moons, forcing the driders to squint. As he moved through the forest, Q’arlynd counted nearly three dozen of the creatures. The priestesses, many shielded by auras of protective magic, fought with sword and spell, singing as they attacked. Swords flew through the air as if guided by invisible hands, harrying the driders in the treetops.

  The driders shifted position constantly, scuttling through the branches overhead and releasing arrows with deadly effect. One struck a priestess in the arm, a grazing wound, but she immediately reeled and fell. Poison. Another priestess rushed to her side and began a prayer, but a second drider dropped suddenly from a tree and landed on her back. As its fangs spread to bite, Q’arlynd blasted it with his wand. Jagged balls of ice smashed into the drider’s chest, knocking it away from the priestess. The blows weren’t enough to kill the thing, but the priestess finished the job, slashing with her sword in a backhand swing that decapitated the drider. As the head rolled toward Q’arlynd, he noted the pattern of fresh scars on its face which looked almost like a spiderweb. Odd.

  The priestess looked to see who had come to her aid. Q’arlynd made a quick hand sign—ally—then bowed. The priestess nodded and went back to her healing spell.

  Q’arlynd ran off to find more targets—making sure, whenever possible, that a priestess was on hand to observe him fighting. He battled the driders with blasts of ice, no longer caring if he depleted the magic of his wand. If the battle earned him a meeting with the high priestess, it would be worth it. He fought as well with the evocation spells he’d learned at the Conservatory. It felt good to be using his talents again. He blasted the driders with magic missiles or punched holes through them with jagged streaks of lightning. Once, when several priestesses were watching, he used the fur-wrapped rod that was that spell’s material component to stitch a lightning bolt through four different targets, delighting in its flashy display of power.