Sacrifice of the Widow

by Lisa Smedman

  A priestess, still in blood-splattered chain mail and with the fresh scars of magically healed wounds visible against her black skin, waited at the center of the shrine. As Q’arlynd and Flinderspeld approached, she beckoned them to join her. Q’arlynd stepped into the shrine without hesitation. Flinderspeld was more wary. He could sense the haze of magic that surrounded the shrine. It was accompanied by a sound like the high-pitched voices of women distantly singing. Flinderspeld tested the space between two of the sword-columns with a finger, half expecting to encounter some sort of magical barrier. Then, cautiously, he stepped into the shrine.

  As the priestess drew her sword, Flinderspeld edged behind his master. He watched warily as she handed the weapon to Q’arlynd, wondering what his own part was to be.

  His master “swore on his sword,” cutting a nick in his palm as he spoke. Prompted by the priestess, Q’arlynd vowed that he did, indeed, want to honor Eilistraee above all other deities, by joining her faith as a lay worshiper. He promised to use his magic to aid the weak and to battle Eilistraee’s enemies, and to obey her priestesses—something that would probably come naturally to Q’arlynd after a lifetime spent in subservience to the women of Ched Nasad. The final oath was a vow to work selflessly to “bring other drow into the light” and treat everyone he met with kindness, until they should prove themselves unworthy of receiving it.

  Flinderspeld would believe that when he saw it.

  Q’arlynd completed his oath and handed the sword back to the priestess. She bent and offered the blade to Flinderspeld. It took him a moment to realize that he was being asked to join her faith. He glanced, sidelong, at his master. What do you want me to do?

  Q’arlynd waved a hand dismissively. “That’s up to you.”

  Then, surprisingly, Q’arlynd withdrew from his mind.

  It was a test of some sort, but Flinderspeld had no idea how to pass it. Did his master expect him to swear allegiance to the drow goddess? Or to refuse, and make Q’arlynd’s “conversion” all the more significant?

  The priestess stared down at him. Waiting.

  At last, Flinderspeld summoned up the courage to shake his head. Firmly. He had his own patron deity. He wanted no part of any drow religion. “I cannot join your faith,” he told the priestess. “I am sworn to Callarduran Smoothhands.”

  “Very well.” The priestess seemed unconcerned by his refusal. She slid the sword back into its sheath and turned to Q’arlynd. “It is done. Welcome to the light, Q’arlynd Melarn. May you serve Eilistraee well.”

  Q’arlynd bowed. “Would you excuse us, Lady?” His hand gripped Flinderspeld’s shoulder. “My friend here is leaving. I’d like a few moments to say good-bye to him.”

  Flinderspeld’s heart beat rapidly as the priestess left the shrine. What did his master not want her to see? It was pointless to call out to the priestess, for Q’arlynd would only clamp down with his mental hold. Instead Flinderspeld obeyed the wizard’s mental command, following him into the woods. They walked in silence for several hundred paces before Q’arlynd halted and slid a hand into a pocket of his piwafwi—the pocket where he kept his spell components. Flinderspeld’s eyes widened.

  “Wait!” he told his master. “I won’t tell anyone!”

  Q’arlynd frowned. “You won’t tell anyone what?”

  Flinderspeld swallowed nervously. “You must have read my mind,” he whispered. “You know I was there, watching, when you let those driders kill Leliana.”

  “Ah. That.” Q’arlynd spread his hands. “There were four of them, and my magic was almost depleted,” he said smoothly. “I couldn’t possibly have killed them all. I knew another of the priestesses would come along, sooner or later, to revive Leliana, but I wasn’t sure if they’d do the same for me. I couldn’t run the risk of being killed.” The expression of regret he adopted looked genuine, and Flinderspeld wondered if he might have been wrong about what he saw after all.

  “Now give me your hand,” Q’arlynd ordered.

  Flinderspeld did, wondering what was coming next.

  Q’arlynd batted the hand aside. “Not that one, fool. Your left hand.”

  When Flinderspeld hesitated, Q’arlynd bent down and grabbed it, then yanked off the glove. The wizard spoke a few words in the drow language then pulled the ring from Flinderspeld’s index finger.

  The slave ring.

  Off.

  Flinderspeld gasped. “What are … Why did …?”

  The wizard flipped the ring into the air, caught it, then tucked it away into a pocket of his piwafwi. “I’m one of Eilistraee’s faithful, now,” he said. “That’s what we do. ‘Treat everyone with kindness.’”

  “But …”

  Q’arlynd sighed and spread his hands. “All right, so I have an ulterior motive. Consider this: I’m going to remain on the surface, at least for a time, among Eilistraee’s priestesses. If I keep you with me, you’re certain to stumble across another priestess who can remove curses. The ring was coming off your finger sooner or later—and if a priestess removed it, the ring’s magic would be forever negated.” He patted the pocket into which he’d slipped the ring. “This way, I hang onto my property, or,” he quirked an eyebrow, “part of it, at least.”

  “I see,” Flinderspeld said, and he was starting to.

  Q’arlynd liked to pretend he was as cruel and heartless as any drow, but his actions too often were at odds with his words. It wouldn’t have been hard for the wizard to keep Flinderspeld firmly in tow and prevent him from asking the priestesses for help.

  Q’arlynd stood with his hands on his hips. “Now I’m going to make sure that you don’t tell anyone what you saw.”

  Flinderspeld blanched. “You’re not going to blast me as I walk away, are you?”

  Q’arlynd snorted. “Why would I want to kill you? You’re valuable property.”

  “I’m your property no more.”

  “That’s true.” Q’arlynd said. He stroked his chin. “What I’m going to do is send you away. Somewhere far from here, ideally—somewhere Eilistraee’s priestesses are not. You can choose wherever you’d like to go. Just name the place, and I’ll teleport you there.”

  Flinderspeld’s jaw dropped. He searched his master’s face, looking for some clue as to whether the offer was genuine. “Really?”

  Q’arlynd’s lips twisted. “Really.”

  Flinderspeld scratched his bare scalp, thinking. Despite all of the times he’d fantasized about escape, he’d never quite settled that question. “I don’t know where I’d like to go,” he answered truthfully. “Blingdenstone’s destroyed—there’s even less left of it than of Ched Nasad. Perhaps one of the lesser svirfneblin settlements—if there’s a guild that will have me.”

  Q’arlynd nodded. “I understand. You have no home, no House. Nothing.” He gave an overly harsh laugh, probably intended to sound cruel. “All you have is—”

  The wizard halted abruptly and glanced away.

  Flinderspeld looked up into his former master’s face, suddenly realizing what Q’arlynd was trying to say. The drow wizard had actually grown fond of him over the past three years. They shared a common bond, after all—home and family, destroyed. Q’arlynd was going to miss Flinderspeld.

  Perhaps, he thought, they weren’t so different after all. Flinderspeld himself had remained hidden while Q’arlynd had battled his way through the woods thick with driders. For a few moments, when he’d lost sight of Q’arlynd, he’d hoped that his master was dead.

  Flinderspeld shrugged. “You weren’t such a bad master,” he told the wizard. “Any other drow would have killed me for my ‘insolence’ long ago.”

  Q’arlynd snorted. “Don’t remind me of my faults.” His voice hardened. “Choose where you want to go. Quickly, before I change my mind and decide to blast you after all.”

  “All right,” Flinderspeld said. “How about Silverymoon? Our city maintained a trading post there.”

  “Fine.”

  “Have you ever been to Silver
ymoon?”

  Q’arlynd smiled. “Never.”

  Flinderspeld didn’t like the sound of that. “Then how will you teleport me there? Don’t you need to have visited the city yourself?” He wet his lips nervously. “I heard that if a teleportation misses its target, a person could get ‘scrambled,’ maybe even die.”

  Q’arlynd reached into the pocket where he’d placed the slave ring. “If you’re afraid of a little jump, then perhaps I should rescind my offer.”

  “No, no!” Flinderspeld said quickly. “I’ll go. It just sounds … dangerous.”

  “It is,” Q’arlynd said. “That’s what makes it so much fun.” He pulled out the slave ring and held it out. “I want you to put this on again.”

  Flinderspeld frowned. Had Q’arlynd been teasing him? Was this all some sort of elaborate joke?

  “You only need to wear it for a moment,” Q’arlynd said impatiently. “Just long enough for me to observe your thoughts while you visualize a specific location in Silverymoon, one I can teleport to. I need to be able to ‘see’ it in order to target my spell.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Flinderspeld held out his hand. “There’s a cavern, close to the surface, under the main marketplace. That’s where the svirfneblin merchants camp when they visit the city.”

  “Good.” Q’arlynd dropped the ring into Flinderspeld’s palm. “Visualize it, in as much detail as you can.”

  Flinderspeld slipped on the ring and scrunched his eyes shut. He pictured the cavern as he’d last seen it, carefully picturing every rock and cranny. After several moments, the wizard tapped him on the head.

  “That’s enough,” Q’arlynd said. “You can stop now.” He removed the ring from Flinderspeld’s finger and pocketed it again. He whispered something, and glanced down at Flinderspeld, magic crackling faintly around his fingertips. “Ready?”

  Flinderspeld gulped. Nodded. “Good-bye, Q’arlynd, and thanks. If you ever—”

  Q’arlynd laughed. “Idiot,” he said. “Don’t say good-bye yet. I’ll be accompanying you.”

  Q’arlynd’s stomach lurched as he found himself plummeting in empty space. Flinderspeld howled in terror as the cavern floor rushed up to meet them. Q’arlynd tightened his hold on the deep gnome’s shirt and activated his House insignia, halting their descent just before they hit the floor. He twisted upright and his feet found the floor.

  The cavern was just as Flinderspeld had pictured it—a wide space with a leveled floor and a stalactite-studded ceiling. Crates, baskets, pack lizards, and camp gear filled it. The two dozen svirfneblin who were camped there leaped to their feet, shouting in alarm, as Q’arlynd and Flinderspeld materialized in front of them. One of them threw a dagger, which glanced off the protective shield Q’arlynd had surrounded himself with.

  Flinderspeld held up his hands and shouted something in his own language, but the other deep gnomes only glared at him. Q’arlynd was probably making them nervous.

  “Go on,” he said, giving Flinderspeld a gentle shove forward. “Talk to them. I’m sure they’ll come around eventually. They seem friendly enough.”

  Flinderspeld looked unconvinced.

  Q’arlynd saw another of the deep gnomes load then crank a crossbow. He waved to his former slave. “Good luck!” Then he teleported away.

  He returned, still laughing, to the forest. Now that had been a leap! He hadn’t expected the ceiling to be so low. As remembered by Flinderspeld, the cavern had seemed huge.

  He wondered if he’d ever see the deep gnome again. He hoped the other svirfneblin didn’t kill his former slave, even though he realized that that would ensure the deep gnome would never betray him. He told himself there were practical reasons for setting Flinderspeld free. For one thing, if Q’arlynd was subjected to another truth spell, he would be able to honestly say that the deep gnome had gone willingly on his way and come to no harm. And if he ever needed the deep gnome to perform a service for him in the future, Flinderspeld’s gratitude at having his life spared could be manipulated into a sense of obligation.

  Even so, Q’arlynd was going to miss him.

  Q’arlynd shoved the thought aside. It was no time for sentiment. He had to get on with the task at hand—meeting Qilué and winning a place for himself in her House.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Qilué stared down at the tangled links of metal, the pitted remains of a chain mail tunic that had passed through the gut of a crawler. The mystery of the novice’s sudden disappearance, it seemed, had been solved. There was no hope of raising Thaleste from the dead. Not even a scrap of bone remained, just a few pieces of chain mail and a misshapen lump of silver that had once been a holy pendant.

  “Eilistraee’s tears,” Qilué murmured. “May they wash her soul clean.”

  Beside her, Iljrene repeated the blessing.

  The temple’s battle-mistress was a tiny woman, slender as a wand, with narrow features and highly arched eyebrows. Her voice was high-pitched, almost squeaky—like a child’s. Her muscles, however, were whipcord strong, and her skill at arms was renowned. She had been entrusted with the Promenade’s defenses and carried one of its cherished relics: one of the singing swords Qilué’s companions had carried into battle against Ghaunadaur’s avatar. She carried it, always, in the scabbard on her back.

  “Why did you summon me?” Qilué asked. “The answer to our mystery seems straightforward enough. A carrion crawler consumed the novice and deposited her remains here.”

  “That’s what the patrol that discovered this thought,” Iljrene said, “until they sang a divination. When they saw what else was here, they didn’t want to touch it. Try it yourself, and you’ll see.”

  Qilué sang a brief prayer, passing her hand palm-down above the mangled bits of chain mail. An aura appeared around an oval lump that was buried within the mass. It glowed with a flickering purple light that was shot through with a tracery of black lines.

  A flick of her finger levitated the object to eye level. She rotated her finger, turning the object around. The lines of magical force shifted back and forth across the face of the purple aura, one moment forming patterns that looked like a spiderweb, the next shaping themselves into something reminiscent of a grossly simplified Dethek rune. The aura, too, kept flickering, shifting back and forth between a benign sky-blue and a dark, evil-tainted purple. Qilué cast a spell that would analyze the dweomer, but pluck as she might at the strands of the Weave, the music the obsidian produced was a cacophony of tangled notes. She could tell that the gem held some sort of conjuration spell, but something blocked her from learning more. It was almost as if the magical item were being held in the hand of a spellcaster whose will was resisting her, though clearly that was not the case.

  Qilué let her divination spell end. The magical lines of force it had revealed vanished. The object once again appeared no more than a polished oval of black obsidian.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Iljrene said.

  “Nor have I,” Qilué said, “though it’s clearly a form of gem magic—and many thousands of years old, judging by the ancient form of that rune.”

  “What word is it?”

  “That depends on whether it was scribed by dwarves or gnomes. It’s read as thrawen, but it could mean either ‘throw’ or ‘twist.’”

  Iljrene repeated the words softly. “Do you think it’s some sort of trap?”

  Qilué slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so, or it would have gone off by now, unless it’s triggered by touch.” Gently, she levitated the stone back to the ground. Then she bent and studied the spot it had risen from, a hollow within the scraps of chain mail. “Has this been shifted?”

  “No, Lady.”

  Qilué pointed. “You see that scrap on the spot where the stone was resting? It looks like a fragment of leather. I’ll warrant Thaleste was carrying the stone in her pouch when she died. If so, she probably touched it—without setting off any trap.” She straightened. “The question now is, where did the novice pi
ck this up? Her body must have been inside the carrion crawler for some time. She could have found the gem anywhere.”

  That said, she pulled a soft leather pouch out of one of her pockets and laid it on the ground next to the stone. She nudged the stone into it with a flick of her dagger then drew the strings of the magical pouch shut.

  “This isn’t far from the spot where the aranea was killed,” Iljrene observed. “Do you think the gem might be connected with the Selvetargtlin?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping Horaldin can tell us.”

  Eyes closed, the druid Horaldin held his hands over the stone Qilué had just tipped from her pouch. It lay on his workbench, a thick slab of clearstone that had been balanced on the tops of two enormous petrified mushrooms. Living mushrooms sprouted from the walls and ceiling of his quarters. The druid had somehow coaxed them to grow on solid stone.

  Horaldin himself was pale as a mushroom, his moon elf skin practically glowing white. His blue-black hair was as tangled as lichen and hung to his waist. One of his slender-fingered hands moved stiffly. The priestesses had healed the mangled ruin the slavers had left it in, but the druid favored it still. Ever since his rescue from Skullport, he’d lived in the Promenade among the faithful. He worshiped the Leaflord still, but served Eilistraee equally faithfully.

  After a moment, his eyes sprang open. “Your priestess did indeed touch the gem,” he said. “She picked it up from a flat expanse of stone—a floor, by the sound of it, but I can’t tell you where, exactly.” He spoke softly, barely above a whisper—a habit formed over more than a century of living alone in the woods. “Not too long before the priestess touched it, the stone was handled by a spider-shifter. Before that, a drow with a ‘leg’ growing from the back of his head—I think the stone means a braid of hair—and a ‘shining chest.’ A polished breastplate, perhaps.”

  “A Selvetargtlin?” Qilué asked. Followers of the Spider Queen’s champion were known for their single braids.