Sacrifice of the Widow

by Lisa Smedman

  Leliana’s eyes narrowed. “I left all that behind.”

  “So have I. I’ve taken Eilistraee’s vows. I’ve come into the light.”

  Leliana cocked an eyebrow. “Have you?”

  “Yes. That’s why I shared this story with you, painful though it was to relate. I wanted to give you a weapon you could use against any Nightshadows who try to sneak into your shrine in disguise.” He smiled. “This is what I came to tell you. If you word a curse carefully, you can create the same effect, cause a Nightshadow’s eyes to mirror his avatar’s. No matter what disguise he’s wearing, it will give him away.”

  Leliana considered this for several moments. “An interesting story,” she said at last.

  Q’arlynd felt his face grow warm. “You don’t believe me?” He pointed at her sword. “Then wave that around and cast your truth spell. Make me repeat my ‘story,’ and see if I’m telling the truth.”

  Leliana’s mouth quirked in a smile. “No need,” she said. “Before inviting you in, I said a prayer that would cause me to hear a ringing sound, whenever you spoke a lie. It’s much more subtle than the truth-compelling spell I used on you earlier, don’t you think?”

  Q’arlynd laughed, his anger having evaporated. Leliana was a drow female to the core. “Nicely done,” he said, tipping his head.

  “And you,” she replied. “You told a heart-wrenching tale, complete with confessions and self-recriminations that should have earned my sympathy, and you’ve offered a possible method to reveal our enemies.”

  “The method will work,” Q’arlynd said. “I’ve seen it tested.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Leliana said, “but there’s just one small problem. None of us knows how to bestow a curse.”

  Q’arlynd felt a rush of relief. Things were back on track again. “I realize that,” he said solemnly. “Vlashiri’s dead, but I overheard one of the priestesses saying that there are others at the Promenade who are familiar with curses. Send me there, and I’ll teach them how to word a curse to reveal a Nightshadow in disguise.”

  Leliana laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Q’arlynd asked.

  “They know how to remove curses, not bestow them. Eilistraee won’t permit anything else.”

  Q’arlynd’s had to struggle to keep his emotions from showing. “I see.”

  Leliana moved to the door. “You’re not ready to visit the Promenade yet.”

  “Meaning you don’t trust me.”

  “Not fully, no.” She opened the door, made ready to usher him out. “But I will send a message on your behalf to Qilué, if only to—”

  The rest of her words were lost in a metallic crashing noise that came from below. It sounded like swords clanging together, but faster than any mortal hand could wield them. Doors banged open above and below Leliana’s room.

  “The barrier!” a priestess shouted. “Something’s triggered it!”

  Leliana sprang for her sword and armor. She shrugged on her chain mail as quickly as someone donning a shirt then ran for the open door. “Come on,” she shouted as she rushed past him. “If it’s the judicator again, we could use you.”

  Q’arlynd didn’t wait for a second invitation. It was a chance to fight at Leliana’s side—to at last prove himself to her. He yanked his wand out of its sheath and followed her to the door. Glancing outside as she hurried down the ladder, he saw magically animated blades whistling by several paces away from the tree, forming a circle around it. He wondered, briefly, why the magical trap hadn’t sprung earlier, when he himself had crossed whatever invisible boundary encircled the tree. Perhaps because he was one of the “faithful” now. Shrugging, he cast a protective spell on himself. Then he jumped and activated his House insignia. As he slowly levitated to the ground, other priestesses scrambled past him down the ladders, swords in hand. One of them already stood at the bottom of the tree, spinning in place, her sword held out in front of her.

  She stopped abruptly, pointing with her sword. “There!” she shouted. “He went that way.”

  Another priestess called a bolt of moonlight down from the sky. It lanced down into the woods and illuminated, just for a moment, the figure of a running man with black skin. He staggered as it struck the ground next to him and glanced over his shoulder. Even from a distance, Q’arlynd could see his mask.

  “A Nightshadow,” he whispered under his breath.

  One of the priestesses spoke a word, negating the barrier of blades. As it fell, the other priestesses charged after the assassin, one of them blowing a hunting horn. Leliana ran after them.

  “Q’arlynd!” she shouted over her shoulder. “What are you waiting for?”

  Q’arlynd hesitated. He’d noticed something she’d missed. Rowaan’s door was open, yet he hadn’t seen her during the mad scramble to chase the assassin. He levitated to the opening and peered inside.

  What he saw didn’t surprise him. Rowaan lay on the floor of the room, her eyes bulging, a deep crease in her throat. The assassin must have been strangling her, even as Q’arlynd and Leliana were chatting.

  And Q’arlynd had unlocked the door for him.

  Leliana would realize that the instant she saw the dispelled glyph. All of the suspicions she harbored about Q’arlynd would be “confirmed.”

  That was it then. He’d never get an audience with the high priestess now, except, perhaps, as a prisoner.

  He cursed and sheathed his wand. Then he teleported away.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Qilué was in the Cavern of Song, lending her voice to those of the other priestesses, when Iljrene’s urgent message came. The Nightshadows have struck again. The Misty Forest this time. They’ve stolen another soul. Her body has just been brought to the Hall of Healing.

  I’ll be there at once, Qilué replied. She hurried out of the cavern, gathering up her clothes from the floor as she went.

  As she strode down the passageways that led to the Hall of Healing, Qilué’s expression was grim. It was the third soul Vhaeraun’s assassins had claimed: one from a priestess at the Gray Forest shrine, another from a priestess of the Chondalwood, and the third, from the Misty Forest.

  Two other souls that had been stolen had been restored, praise Eilistraee. The soul of Nastasia, the first to fall, had been set free by unknown causes, and the priestess who had been killed at the shrine in the Forest of Lethyr had also been raised from the dead after the assassin who had attacked her was killed. His body had been questioned by a necromancer—an unpleasant, but necessary task. The corpse had revealed that Malvag was alive. The pair had met a day before the attack the Lethyr shrine. The plan to open a gate was indeed going ahead, and when it came to fruition, the souls of Eilistraee’s priestesses would be consumed.

  Iljrene was waiting for Qilué in the Hall of Healing, beside another priestess Qilué knew well—Leliana. Qilué had taken Leliana’s sword-oath more than a century ago, when she had first come up from below.

  Leliana turned, a stricken look on her face, as Qilué entered. “Lady Qilué,” she said. “It’s my daughter Rowaan. The Nightshadows killed her and Chezzara can’t raise her from the dead. Her soul …”

  Qilué touched Leliana’s arm. “Let’s be certain first.” She glanced past Leliana at the alcove where two novice priestesses hastily prepared a bed on which to lay a body. Two other priestesses—both just teleported from the Misty Forest, judging by the snowflakes still melting in their hair—stood by, holding the corners of a damp blanket on which Rowaan’s body lay. Even in death, she looked remarkably like her mother.

  Qilué moved closer and noted the telltale mark of an assassin’s cord around Rowaan’s neck. She murmured a prayer of detection, and a distinctive shadow appeared across the lower half of the dead priestess’s face.

  Leliana moaned.

  “Tell me about the attack,” Qilué prompted.

  “It happened late last night,” one of the priestesses holding the blanket answered. “The Nightshadow who did it got away. So did the o
ne who aided him.”

  Leliana’s face twisted with anguish. “It’s my fault,” she blurted. “I was stupid. I trusted him.”

  Qilué frowned, not quite understanding. “This second Nightshadow—you knew him?”

  Leliana nodded. “He posed as a petitioner.” A bitter laugh burst from her lips. “He even took the sword-oath, but he betrayed us in the end. He dispelled the glyph on Rowaan’s door then kept me talking while the other Nightshadow went into her room and …” Her voice faltered, and her eyes strayed to the priestesses who were gently laying her daughter’s body on the floor. “Stole her soul.”

  Leliana tore her eyes away from the body of her daughter. She took a deep breath then spoke again, shaking her head all the while. “I still can’t understand it. I questioned him under a truth spell, and he gave his name and the details of his coming to the surface readily enough. He wasn’t truly a petitioner—he only sought us out in order to find his sister—but he fought beside us when the judicator attacked, and later, when he took the sword-oath, I thought that perhaps he had—”

  “Leliana,” Qilué said, cutting the other priestess off in mid-flow with a touch on the arm. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. One piece of the story at a time, please. What name did this male give?”

  “Q’arlynd Melarn.”

  Qilué gasped. Moonfire danced on her skin, washing the cavern with light. There was the second coin, dropped at her feet. It had landed, as Eilistraee had foretold, on the side that was betrayal. “Tell me everything about this male—and swiftly, but start at the beginning this time.”

  Qilué listened as Leliana’s tale unfolded, occasionally interrupting with a question. When it was done, she stood in thought for several moments. “It seems odd that he confessed his knowledge of Vhaeraun to you on the very night the Nightshadow struck.”

  “Q’arlynd must be a Nightshadow,” Leliana insisted. “He even admitted attending their meetings.”

  “Did he really?” Qilué said softly. An idea was beginning to take shape. “And now he’s promised himself to Eilistraee.” She paused. “Perhaps he’s the one that will aid her.”

  “Aid who, Lady Qilué?” one of the other priestesses asked.

  Qilué, lost in thought, didn’t answer. If Q’arlynd was the Melarn who would aid Eilistraee, that meant Halisstra would betray the goddess. Cavatina knew how to take care of herself—she was skilled in hunting demons, and used to trickery—but even so, Qilué worried that she might have sent the Darksong Knight to her death. She steeled herself, telling herself it had to be done. Such sacrifices were necessary, if the drow were to be brought into Eilistraee’s light. In the meantime, the new development had to be dealt with.

  She stared down at the faint square of black that shrouded Rowaan’s face. “Q’arlynd came directly from Ched Nasad, you say?”

  Leliana nodded. “Through the portal in the ruins of Hlaungadath.”

  “Let’s hope he tries to return the same way.”

  Q’arlynd squatted in the tiny patch of shadow cast by the wall, squinting at the portal. An entire night he’d tried to activate it, and nothing had happened. He’d thought it would be a simple matter—a repetition of the phrase that had triggered its magic from the other side back in Ched Nasad, but though he’d read the Draconic characters precisely as written, the space inside the arch remained a blank stone wall. He might as well have knocked on it with his head, for all the good it had done.

  In full daylight, the sun beating down overhead, the glare rendered him almost blind. He wondered, for the hundredth time, if he should just give up on the portal and make his way to the closest Underdark city instead. Eryndlyn lay somewhere beneath ancient Miyeritar. Perhaps one of its merchant Houses could use a battle mage to accompany their trading missions. It would be a big step down from his hopes, but it would at least be something.

  A sudden noise made him startle. Another lamia? Quickly, he rendered himself invisible. As he rose to his feet, he reached inside his pouch for components for a fire spell. He waited, sulfur-gum in hand, as footsteps approached the doorway to the room in which he stood.

  A shadow fell across the floor, a shadow with the outline of a drow. A naked drow—and female, too.

  Q’arlynd almost laughed. How stupid did the lamias think he was? Still, he had to admire the detail they’d put into their illusion. Those curves were very enticing.

  He pulled the quartz crystal from his pouch. With it, he’d be able to see through the lamia’s illusions—and pinpoint the creature so that he could incinerate it where it stood. As the shadow lengthened, he activated his insignia and rose into the air, out of the roofless building.

  Below him, a drow female appeared to step into the room. Q’arlynd squinted through the crystal at her, expecting to see either the bare stone of the floor below the illusion—or a lamia, underneath a drow-shaped glamor. Instead he saw a female who was tall and beautiful, with silver hair and a proud bearing, like the matron mother of a noble House. She wore a gauzy silver robe that did little to hide the dark curves beneath. A sword hung from a scabbard on her belt, and she wore a bracer on her right forearm that served as a sheath for a dagger. In her left hand, she held a curious looking metal wand with a knob at either end. Eilistraee’s holy symbol hung from a chain around her neck. She had a deeply lined face and somber expression, but despite her age she looked as fit as a female in her first century of life. Regardless of the obvious threat she posed—perhaps because of it—he found her intensely attractive. She was, quite simply, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  Q’arlynd lowered his crystal. The priestess was real. She must have been sent to find him, to kill him. He placed a foot atop the ruined wall and gently pushed off, at the same time taking aim with the sulfur-gum.

  Without warning, his levitation ended, sending him crashing into the street below. He rose, gasping and spitting blood from a cut lip. As he did, the priestess turned and glanced out into the street. She stared straight at him—seeing him. His invisibility must also have ended.

  “Q’arlynd?”

  He flicked the pinch of sulfur-gum at her and shouted the words of his spell. The tiny ball streaked through the air, igniting in mid-flight. It struck the priestess on the shoulder, immediately expanding into a violent ball of searing fire. Much of it washed back onto Q’arlynd—something it shouldn’t have done.

  He scrambled to his feet, his hair and skin singed from the blast, furiously blinking away the fiery afterimage that obscured his vision. He expected to see a charred body lying on the ground, but when his vision cleared the priestess was just standing there, completely unscathed. A nimbus of silver fire surrounded her naked body like a second skin, and her hair was one long, sparkling streak of silver. A candle-sized flame flickered at one end of the wand she held, and she raised it to her lips and blew it out.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” she said in a dry voice.

  Then she flicked a hand. A silver-white ray flashed from her fingertips to Q’arlynd, striking him in the chest. He touched fingers to the spot where it had struck, but felt no wound. A second flick of the priestess’s fingers, and a wall of blades sprang up around Q’arlynd, completely enclosing him. They whizzed in a tight circle around him, giving him no space to move.

  “If you try to attack me again,” she said, “I’ll tighten the ring.” She made a squeezing motion with her hand, and the curtain of whirling blades cinched closer.

  Q’arlynd, however, had no intention of letting her slice him up. With one word, he could teleport away. He spoke that word—

  Nothing happened. He stood in the same spot as before. The magical blades swirled around him, filling the air with a dangerous hum.

  “Your spells won’t work,” the priestess told him. “You’re inside a field that negates magic.”

  “Impossible,” Q’arlynd breathed. At the Conservatory, they’d taught that an antimagic field could only be cast by a wizard—on the wizard himself. It wasn’t something a
priestess hurled at someone else from a distance.

  He tried a dispelling, but the whirling blades remained. He tried a second spell, but the magical armor that would have protected him from the blades failed to appear. Not wanting to press his luck—the priestess was watching his every move—he refrained from further spellcasting. His chest was tight with tension.

  “Who … are you?”

  She smiled. “Someone you’ve been hoping to meet. Lady Qilué Veladorn, high priestess of Eilistraee and Chosen of Mystra.”

  Q’arlynd’s breath caught. He was certain, deep in his gut, that the high priestess was going to kill him. That she hadn’t done so already was only because she wanted to question him. His best chance lay in appearing as compliant as possible in the hope that she would show lenience and kill him swiftly. He tried to crouch, in order to prostrate himself on the ground and barely avoided a nasty gash on the forehead. He settled for a partial bow instead.

  “Lady Qilué, my profound apologies for attacking you,” he said. “Had I known who you were, I never would have dared.”

  She made no comment, just stood there as the silver sparkle gradually faded from her skin and hair. Q’arlynd kept his eyes firmly on the ground, staring at a patch of sand beside her feet.

  “Leliana told me about last night’s attack,” Qilué said. “She says you made it possible for the Nightshadow to enter Rowaan’s room.”

  Q’arlynd clenched his jaw. His stomach felt cold and hollow. Best to get this over with. He wondered where his soul would wind up once the priestess killed him. Probably in the Demonweb Pits, where Lolth’s demonic minions would ensure that he received endless torment for his fall from grace, brief though it had been.

  “I did dispel the glyph on her door, it’s true,” he said slowly, “but not for the reason you think. I simply wanted to talk to Rowaan—to give her some information about the Nightshadows that I thought your priestesses might find useful. I changed my mind and spoke to Leliana instead.”