Ascendancy of the Last зкp-3

by Lisa Smedman

  Karas rode away from the hovels, onto the field that separated the two keeps. The House Philiom priests were just ahead, forming up their mounts. This done, they rode hard for their keep, following the line of bubbling black pools left behind by the tentacles' return to the earth. Some of the priests were wounded and clung to their saddles. One sagged, then tumbled backward across his lizard's tail. His body dragged for a moment, but then his foot slipped from the stirrup, and he fell away. The other riders ignored him and continued to ride.

  Karas rode with them. The priests of House Abbylan followed for a time, hurling spells at the retreating group, but soon gave up the chase. Eventually the priests of House Philiom reached their own, now empty fields. The slaves, rightfully fearing they might be gathered along with the slaves of House Abbylan, would have fled when the line of tentacles sprouted from the earth. Karas rode past the hovels, to the keep, and over its drawbridge. When the last of House Philiom's priests was inside, House boys sprang to the capstans and cranked the drawbridge shut.

  Karas dismounted. The surviving priests glanced around, taking stock. They'd lost five of their number, including Molvayas.

  "Where's Molvayas?" asked Shi'drin. He was their second-in-command, a stunted drow with a pustule-crusted face. "Did anyone see him fall?"

  "I did," Karas answered. "One of House Abbylan's priests killed him." He flicked his rod, sending a shiver through its three black tentacles. "I dealt with him in turn." He didn't bother explaining why he was mounted on Molvayas's lizard. Those who followed Ghaunadaur's creed took what they needed, scorning those who were too weak to keep it.

  Shi'drin nodded. He touched the eye on his tabard. "Ash to ash; mud to mud," he intoned. "May the Ancient One consume what remains."

  The other priests-all but one, who had collapsed after dismounting and was being eaten by his lizard, bringing the total lost to six-touched their tabards. Karas did the same, doing his best to ignore the wet rip of flesh and the gulps of the lizard as it bolted down the dead priest. He wanted desperately to escape to the solitude of the room he'd been assigned after he arrived on House Philiom's doorstep, claiming to be from Skullport. He wanted to cleanse his body of mud, shroud himself in magical darkness and silence, block out the shrill screams that echoed constantly down the keep's foul-smelling corridors, and pray. Pray for the strength to continue this blasphemous charade and see his mission through.

  In each of the keeps of Llurth Drier, other Nightshadows were, no doubt, thinking the same. Their counterparts were stationed in distant Eryndlyn, and in Shadowport, and in the surface cities of Waterdeep, Bezantur, Calimport, and Westgate-everywhere Ghaunadaur's foul cult festered.

  Karas wondered if the Nightshadows he and Valdar had chosen for this mission still lived. It had been a knife's-edge thing, this day, for Karas himself. By the Masked Lady's grace, Valdar had been there to step in, but it would only be a matter of time before one of the Nightshadows was caught and revealed them all.

  A boy took the reins of Karas's lizard. He climbed down from it and walked across the portico, edging his way through the crowd, to the exit. Before he reached it, a hand fell on his shoulder.

  "You will be rewarded," Shi'drin said in a low voice, his eyes gleaming. Then, louder, to all the priests, "Come! We will feed the altar this very cycle in celebration of our Gathering." He pointed at the nearest House boy. "You! Spawn! Tell the boys to prepare the sacrifices."

  Karas choked down his apprehension. He could tell by the look in Shi'drin's eye that the priest realized he was somehow responsible for Molvayas's death. Now one of two things would follow. Reward, for ensuring Shi'drin's promotion to Molvayas's former role as the keep's Eater of Filth. Or retribution.

  Both might very well take the same form: sacrifice, on Ghaunadaur's altar.

  Yet Karas could do nothing-not with a score of gleeful priests sweeping him along in their midst. Stinking of blood and sweat, babbling their joy at a successful Gathering, they hurried down the corridor to the shrine at the heart of the keep. Had Shi'drin not singled Karas out, he might have slipped away, perhaps even feigned collapse and been left behind. But the new Eater strode just behind Karas, prodding him forward.

  They burst through a curtain of damp, rotted black silk into a room with walls, ceiling, and floor polished to the slickness of glass, A dozen columns of the same mottled purple stone, each carved with a rune, ringed an irregularly shaped dais that rose in two tiers. Atop the dais stood a lump of porous black stone: the altar itself. A gong hung above the dais, its bronze deeply pitted by the acid that condensed on it, trickled down its sides, and dripped onto the altar.

  A purplish mist drifted through the chamber. As he passed through a patch of it, Karas touched his disguised holy symbol and silently prayed for strength. The mist left a stinging film on his skin and clung to him like lingering dread. Just setting foot in the shrine took all of Karas's courage. The air was so foul he felt as if he were wading through liquid sewage. The closer he got to the altar, the worse it got. He was an intruder here, a person from another faith. At any moment he'd be exposed, consumed.

  Then they'd be on him, like carrion crawlers on a corpse.

  He shook his head furiously. If he didn't get a hold of himself, he'd soon collapse in a gibbering heap on the floor. With a shaking hand, he gripped his disguised holy symbol. Masked Lady, he silently prayed, swallowing down his bile. See me through this. Help me to do your work. Shadow my doubts and cloak my fears.

  The priests halted in a loose-knit group before the altar. Shi'drin stepped to the front, turned, and raised his hands. His fingernails were filthy, the sleeves of his robe soaked with slime and blood. He caught Karas's eye. For one terrible moment, Karas thought Shi'drin might ask him to perform the sacrifice. Then Shi'drin closed his eyes.

  "Ghaunadaur, your faithful servant calls," Shi'drin intoned. "In your name, I feast." Then he transformed. His fingers melted into his hands, his arms trickled toward his body like melting candle wax, and his head turned into a blackened puddle on his shoulders. Soon all of him, including his robe and tabard, had turned to ooze. The black blob he'd become bulged against the lowest step of the dais, and flowed up to the altar.

  The other priests formed two lines, stretching from the doorway to the dais. Karas, by careful maneuvering, placed himself as far from the altar as he could get, beside the chamber's only exit. He pretended to follow along as the priests muttered their devotions and swayed back and forth. He moved his lips in time with the rest, mumbling what he hoped would pass as a prayer.

  Fortunately, Ghaunadaur's faithful had no set liturgy. Like the god they worshiped, their rituals were amorphous and ill-defined. Each priest praised the Ancient One in his own fashion. If any of the others noticed that Karas was uttering nonsense, it wouldn't matter. He just prayed that the Ancient One itself wasn't listening.

  A few moments later, the first of the sacrifices staggered into the altar room: an orc, her eyes glazed, a dribble of the drug she'd been forced to drink drooling from her mouth. Even from a distance, Karas could smell its licorice-sweet scent. The tempo of the priests' mutterings increased, found a rhythm. "Onward. Oblivion. Onward."

  With each word, the captured slave took a step forward, stumbling as if shoved by invisible hands between the two rows of priests. Compelled by their magic, the orc made her way, one halting step at a time, to the dais. At last she bumped her shins against it, fell forward, and cracked her head on the stone. She rose, her snout bloody. She levered herself up onto the first layer of the dais. Then the second. Then onto the altar stone itself.

  The priests fell silent. With a wet, slurping sound, the black ooze that was Shi'drin slithered onto the altar. As it engulfed the orc, the glaze fell from her eyes. Her cry of anguish was cut short as her flesh sizzled. The stench of burned hair filled the room. For a heartbeat or two she struggled, then fell still. A pitted bone poked momentarily out of the black ooze, then got slurped back inside.

  Now a second slave
stumbled into the room, this one a male half-orc. Like the first sacrificial victim, he stank of the drug he'd been forced to consume. The priests began their chant anew, compelling him forward.

  Sickened, Karas played along. "Onward. Oblivion. Onward."

  One by one, eleven more captured slaves marched to the dais, climbed to the altar, and were consumed. Feeling faint, Karas wondered if the sacrifices were ever going to end. He vomited in his throat, and harshly swallowed the bile down again.

  As the thirteenth captive was being dissolved, a sound like stone being slammed by a sledge rent the air. Instantly, the priests fell silent. Heads turned. Karas peered down his line and saw that a Y-shaped crack had opened in the altar stone and the altar had split into three pieces. Judging by the reactions of the priests, it was an auspicious omen. They seemed tense, anticipatory.

  Karas didn't like the thought of that.

  A greenish sludge oozed out of the. "The Great Devouring is at hand!"

  "They have cracks and puddled on the upper level of the dais. It dribbled onto the lower level, then onto the floor. Karas watched it, his every muscle tense. When it reached his boot, he shifted his foot slightly. Its stench made his stomach lurch. But he couldn't very well flee, not with the others watching. He stood his ground, sweating, as the sticky green ooze flowed past his boots. He prayed it wouldn't dissolve the leather, burn through to his feet, and reveal him as a spy.

  It didn't.

  No more victims staggered through the curtain; the sacrifice seemed to be at an end. Yet the priests continued to sway and chant Ghaunadaur's name. Karas glanced at the curtain, wondering if he could slip away without anyone noticing. He decided not to risk it. Meanwhile, the green stuff kept oozing from the altar like blood from a wound. It was obviously a manifestation of Ghaunadaur. But what did it mean?

  A moment later, one of the novices burst into the chamber. He threw himself onto the floor and wormed his way to the altar through the sludge, fouling his robes. "Masters!" he cried, his voice shrill with excitement. "The lake is in turmoil! It's turned a bright purple. A spawning has begun!"

  The black blob on the altar flowed upward, assumed the shape of a drow, and morphed back into Shi'drin. The Eater's eyes grew wild with anticipation. "It is come!" he criedcome!" the other priests chanted. "His servants have come!" As one, they turned and rushed from the room.

  As the other priests jostled each other in an apparent frenzy to be devoured by whatever was rising out of the lake, Karas hung back. He felt dizzy with fear. Llurthogl was spawning? Why now? Had Ghaunadaur sensed an enemy among his fanatics? Karas glanced nervously at the green ooze that fouled his boots, wondering if it was about to consume him.

  Soon, Karas and the prostrated novice were the only ones left in the shrine.

  "Go!" Karas shouted, his voice tight with strain. "Make your preparations!"

  The novice heaved himself to his feet and ran from the room.

  Karas wiped nervous sweat from his brow. Every instinct screamed at him to flee Llurth Dreir and never look back. There was an easy exit close at hand: the columns ringing the altar, with their teleportation runes. He reached into his pocket and found the lump of amber that had, at its heart, a crescent-shaped spark of moonlight. Touching the amber to any of the runes would alter its destination, linking it with one of the three columns in the Promenade that had, centuries ago, been ensorcelled by Ghaunadaur's cultists.

  He struggled to make his decision. Should he abandon everything he and Valdar had worked so hard to set in place these past few tendays, or stay here and try to brazen it out? He had, until now, been able to fool the Ghaunadaurian priesthood-even in the heart of the Ancient One's shrine, even during a sacrifice. But during a spawning? The oozes and slimes boiling up out of the lake were mindless creatures that couldn't tell the difference between friend and foe, but that was of little comfort. It only meant that his disguise wouldn't save him, if one of them decided to consume him.

  Karas swore. Until a few moments ago, it had all been going so well. All he'd needed to do was continue the facade, and wait for Qilue's signal. That would be his cue to reveal his "discovery"-a portal that had, "by the grace of Ghaunadaur," opened between one of the columns in their shrine and the Promenade. In a carefully choreographed dance, each of the other spies would do the same. One by one, at precisely timed intervals, they would usher their fanatics straight into the trap the high priestess had prepared. Qilue, meanwhile, would ensure the Protectors and other faithful kept well back, out of sight but ready to deal with the fanatics, should they stray from the designated path.

  Qilue had explained that the Masked Lady herself had approved this plan. Valdar, when first told of it, had seen the Masked Lord's hand in it at once. Inviting Eilistraee's most resolute enemies into the heart of the Promenade, he told Karas, was something the goddess would never contemplate. Eilistraee was a goddess who fought with song and sword, not shadows and subterfuge. This plan was Vhaeraun's doing.

  Karas had been convinced. He'd persuaded the high priestess to let him select the Nightshadows who would carry out "Eilistraee's" divine will, and ensured that Valdar was among them. When Qilue's call came, the hand-picked few would lead their Ghaunadaurians into the Promenade not in small, easily contained groups, but all at once-away from the trap. The temple would be overwhelmed, and the priestesses swept aside-while the Nightshadows sat out the battle in safety, downriver in Skullport. Later, when it was all over, they would re-assume their disguises and steer the fanatics into the trap Qilue had prepared, cleansing the temple a second time.

  Once the Promenade was theirs, converts would be drawn from across Faerun to a reinvigorated faith. And those of Eilistraee's priestesses who managed to survive would reap the bitter fruit of their misplaced trust. The females would be the ones given a choice, this time around: to don Vhaeraun's mask, and worship in silence and shadow, or to die by Vhaeraun's sword.

  That had been the plan-within-a-plan. And it had been a good one, needing only subterfuge and determination to see it through-until oozes and slimes had come boiling up out of the lake. Surely Vhaeraun didn't intend to fill the Promenade with such filth! It would take an army to scour the temple clean, after that.

  Masked… Lord, Karas silently prayed, the honorific feeling out of place after nearly four years of praying to the Masked Lady. Your servant seeks counsel. Is it your will we continue?

  No answer came.

  Karas stood, sweating. The future of his faith hung upon what happened next. Upon what he decided next.

  As he hesitated near the doorway, listening to the shouts of excitement echoing through the keep, a voice sang into his mind. Qilue's voice! Clear as a tolling bell, the high priestess called to her spies. It is time to begin the dance. Are you ready?

  The timing of the message couldn't be mere coincidence. The Masked Lord had to know what was happening, down here in Llurth Dreir. He obviously had confidence in Karas-confidence enough to allow Qilue to set everything in motion, spawning or no.

  Karas squared his shoulders. The Masked Lord was depending upon him.

  I stand ready, Lady Qilue, he thought back. Expect the first group in moments.

  Begin, then. And may Eilistraee guide your steps. Her voice faded from his mind.

  Karas pulled the lump of amber from his pocket and walked to the nearest column, his feet slipping in the green sludge coating the floor. He had to force his body to move in that direction; the closer he got to the altar, the more difficult it became. He could feel the Ancient One's presence, terrible and grim, evil beyond words. Forcing himself against it bent him almost double.

  He lifted the amber to the column and waited. Ready.

  He heard shouts, drawing nearer: Shi'drin's voice, urging the others back to the altar room. Overlaying them was a sound that sent shivers down his spine-the sound of oozes sliding over stone.

  Karas pressed the amber to the column. A hole opened. "Quickly, brethren!" he cried. "Come and see! One of the col
umns has opened. It will lead us to the Pit of Ghaunadaur!"

  *****

  Qilue strode through the Cavern of Song, past the faithful who gave voice to Eilistraee's eternal hymn. Those in her way took a quick step back as she passed, giving her room to pass by. One faltered in her hymn. Qilue strode on, not bothering to admonish her.

  Qilue fumed. How had this happened? She'd been so careful! Yet somehow, Cavatina had figured out that a demon was inside the Crescent Blade-not only that, but which one. She should have expected that, from the Darksong Knight. She'd been foolish to think she could keep Wendonai hidden, especially from the one who had "killed" him.

  She wished she could tell her priestesses that her strange behavior was just a charade, but she couldn't-not without also telling Wendonai, since he could see and hear everything within range of the Crescent Blade, including her otherwise silent mental communications. Fortunately, by Mystra's grace, he wasn't privy to her thoughts.

  Qilue! Wendonai bellowed. He'd learned, early on, that calling her name forced her to pay attention to him. The Darksong Knight knows. You should have slain her.

  I make the decisions, demon. Not you.

  Poor decisions. She'll tell the others-if she hasn't already.

  No point in killing her, then, is there?

  They'll banish me-destroy the Crescent Blade.

  Qilue almost wished someone would banish Wendonai. The cut on her wrist burned. The Crescent Blade felt heavy in her hand. She longed to have someone relieve her of this burden, yet she had to see this dance through to the end. The fate of hundreds of thousands of souls hung in the balance.

  You might as well have killed those two priestesses, the demon continued. Sealed inside the shrine, they'll die of thirst-a slow, lingering death, rather than a quick one. He paused, and she could imagine his sly grin. How very dhaerrow of you-something your ancestors would have appreciated.