Ascendancy of the Last зкp-3

by Lisa Smedman

  Asking questions was futile. No one knew anything-except that the Promenade was under attack from the south by Ghaunadaur's fanatics: the demon's plan, put in motion. It was the second attack, the one from within, Leliana dreaded. Where was Qilue?

  A lay worshiper ran by-with, of all things, a lute strung across her back.

  "Hold it!" Leliana cried. "You there. Is that lute Rylla's?"

  The novice halted and glanced over her shoulder at the instrument as if seeing it for the first time. "I-I don't know. I must have slung it over my shoulder when I helped carry the body to the Hall of Healing."

  Leliana stiffened. "Whose body? Rylla's? Is she dead?"

  "Whoever it was, she was wounded. Bad." She swallowed hard, then shuddered. "Her face…"

  Leliana touched her holy symbol. If it was Rylla, and the battle-mistress could be healed, perhaps she might know where the high priestess was.

  She sprinted down a corridor in the direction of the Hall of Healing. As she neared the Hall of Empty Arches, she passed Chizra, leading six lesser priestesses in the opposite direction. A seventh priestess remained on guard within the hall, a bundle of prayer scrolls tucked under one arm. She looked unhappy at being left behind. Leliana saluted her and ran on, following the corridor to the enormous hall that had been reclaimed in Eilistraee's name.

  The Hall of Healing was choked with people. Lay worshipers bustled in with the wounded on makeshift stretchers. Priestesses moved from one injured person to the next. The revived rushed out again to rejoin the fight. At the far end of the room stood a golden statue of a pair of scales, balanced on a warhammer: a reminder of life's delicate balance, and the forces that could tip a soul toward death. Leliana looked for Rylla but didn't see her.

  She questioned the head healer, who assured her the battle-mistress had not been among those they'd treated.

  "Is she among the dead?"

  "No time to check," the healer curtly replied. She bent over a burned male, a holy symbol in her hand. "Too busy." She touched his injuries, and prayed.

  "Leliana!"

  She whirled. Naxil! His face was a mottled gray-his flesh healed, but still discolored. His eyes were bright above his makeshift mask. He clasped her arms, and she returned his light squeeze.

  "Have you seen the battle-mistress?" she asked him. "Or the high priestess?"

  "Aren't they in the Stronghall directing the battle? That's where the oozes and slimes are coming from: out of the river. There's a lot of them, but by the Masked Lady's grace, we'll push them back again."

  "Oozes and slimes?" she gasped. "But I thought it was supposed to be fanatics who came through the…"

  She caught sight of a lay worshiper who had just entered the Hall of Healing. He peered about as if looking for someone. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood, yet he waved away the healers' offers of assistance. He was strikingly handsome. But that wasn't what had drawn Leliana's attention-it was the extremely rare color of his eyes: leaf green.

  He had to be the male Cavatina had described-the one who'd sacrificed himself. The fanatics must have raised him from the dead. But how, if his body had been consumed? And what was he doing here, in the Hall of Healing?

  She spotted a ring on his finger. A gold ring. That told her how he'd gotten into this part of the temple. He'd used the ring to pass through the magical barrier in the level she and Naxil had discovered below, then come through the portal to the Hall of Empty Arches. Leliana wondered if the priestess she'd seen there, just a moment ago, was still alive.

  The fanatic completed his circuit of the hall and turned, heading back for the door.

  Leliana jabbed Naxil's stomach with a finger. Green eyes, she signed between them. Enemy in disguise. You stall; I'll sing a truth song and question. Go.

  Naxil bowed, hiding the drawing of a dagger. He moved away, concealing the weapon under his piwafwi.

  As Naxil made his way to the disguised fanatic, Leliana flicked her sword in a circle-a small circle, near her boot; she didn't want to draw attention to her prayer. Naxil greeted the fanatic, but instead of engaging him in conversation as planned, Naxil turned and walked to the exit. Did he mean to draw the fanatic into the corridor, where it would be more difficult for him to escape?

  Leliana strode to the side of the fanatic and matched his pace. As she walked, she shifted her sword so it was pointing at his feet, and loosed the magic she'd just sung into being. "I need help carrying the wounded," she told him. "Where are you headed?"

  Leaf-green eyes met hers. A puddle of warmth filled her. The urge to smile at him overwhelmed her.

  "To the Pit. I'm needed there." His eyes glistened. "Won't you show me the way?"

  Anxious to please him, Leliana nodded. As she did, her sword sang a warning. It sliced through his enchantment, dousing the warmth inside her like a slap of ice water.

  Powerful magic. If it hadn't been for her singing sword…

  The fanatic tensed. He'd realized she knew what he was. Leliana leaped back and swung. Steel flashed toward his neck.

  The fanatic jumped aside-but not quickly enough. Her sword took off an outflung hand. She expected a spray of blood. Green slime oozed out instead. Before he could rally, she thrust at his vitals. Her blade plunged into soft, quivering flesh that offered no resistance. She reversed direction and yanked the sword back, but the fanatic's body-now a bright green and only vaguely drow-shaped-bulged outward, engulfing her weapon. The bulge solidified, and the mass twisted, tearing the weapon from her hands.

  "A ghaunadan!" she shouted as she danced back from him. She'd heard of these creatures, but never seen one. Most oozes were mindless things, but ghaunadans were intelligent beings-budded fragments of the Ancient One itself. Fragments that could temporarily assume drow form.

  Shouts of alarm filled the Hall of Healing. Priestesses leaped to their feet, singing. The ghaunadan slapped one of them; she toppled, body rigid. Then a barrage of spells struck it at once. The ghaunadan reeled as moonblades sliced it, holy words slammed into it, and magical wounds sprang open in its quivering flesh. Within moments it had been reduced to a smoking pile of green-smeared clothing and a pair of boots that lay on the floor, suppurating ooze.

  Leliana stared down at them, glad the ghaunadan was dead. Unfortunately, there wasn't any corpse left to question.

  "He came through the portal in the Hall of Empty Arches," she warned the others. "We need to seal it, before more ghaunadans come through!"

  Someone handed her singing sword back to her. Leliana took it and ran for the room's only door. She glanced up and down the corridor, looking for Naxil. The battle with the ghaunadan had taken only a moment, yet Naxil was nowhere in sight. Where had the ghaunadan's magical compulsion sent him? North, to the Hall of Empty Arches, or south, toward safety?

  "Naxil!" she shouted. Her voice was lost amid the hubbub as half a dozen priestesses crowded through the door. Leliana ordered one of them to hang back and chant a magical songwall to prevent enemies from reaching the Hall of Healing. She told the rest to follow her.

  As they ran to the Hall of Empty Arches, Erelda's voice sang into Leliana's mind. Protectors! Fall back on the Cavern of Song. The oozes are converging upon it!

  Converging? Leliana swore. Did that mean that oozes were headed to the Cavern of Song from the south, and from the north-from the Hall of Empty Arches?

  The answer came as she rounded a bend in the corridor. The way ahead was blocked by a horrific creature: a waist-high, gray-brown lump covered in eyes and mouths that bulged from its body and were subsumed again. From these emanated a ghastly chorus of nonsensical words that tumbled over one another like pebbles in a gurgling brook.

  Leliana shouted at the priestesses to halt, but the two up ahead didn't heed her. They walked on toward the monster, shouting nonsense. Leliana heard an overlapping babble of female voices behind her, and flung out her arms to hold back the other priestesses. As she did so, the creature attacked the two priestesses up ahead. It spat a stream of
acid at one and bulged forward to wrap a limb around the other. The first priestess's gibbering turned to screams as her skin burned away; the second grew grayish-pale as the ooze's mouths bit hard and began to suck blood.

  "Eilistraee!" Leliana cried, "Shield me!"

  Her singing sword pealed out a steadying note that blocked the worst of the creature's magical effect. Even so, Leliana teetered at the edge of madness. Screaming her fury at the monster, she dodged around the priestess who had been felled by acid and hacked at the limb coiled around the other priestess. As the blade sliced through it, another limb bulged out to grab her; she sliced that one off too.

  The creature spat acid. The stream struck the magical shield she'd just sung into being and deflected to the side. Again she slashed at the monster, but as her sword descended, her right foot sank into something soft, throwing her off balance. She glanced down. The stone floor was quivering, like quicksand. As her left foot also plunged downward, she staggered and fell. She threw out a hand to halt herself, but her arm sunk into the floor, up to the elbow.

  The creature rested lightly upon the vibrating floor, as if floating gently atop it.

  That gave Leliana an idea. Instead of trying to rise, she dived into the quicksand. With her eyes tightly closed, she waited for the monster to pass her. When the quivering above her subsided, she twisted and found a solid surface with her feet. She shoved hard, and shot out of the quicksand behind the monster. Her sword flashed down in a deadly arc. Eyeballs exploded and teeth shattered as her sword sliced through the monster, cutting it in two.

  The quicksand began to congeal. Before it could trap her, Leliana scrambled out.

  The priestesses she'd led here all lay on the floor moaning, their skin burned by acid and covered in bloody bites. Leliana ached to heal them, yet there was no time. Not if the Promenade was to be saved. As she ran on to the Hall of Empty Arches, flakes of hardening stone fell from her body like dried mud.

  At last she reached the hall. As she entered it, she heard a slurping sound: an ooze, departing, by the sound of it, through the exit on the far side of the chamber. She squinted against the bright sparkle of Faerzress that filled the room. She ran along the wall, her feet slipping on the slime that fouled the floor. She peered down each of the spaces between the partitions in turn.

  "Naxil!" she shouted. "Are you here?"

  Up ahead, she spotted a misshapen lump of flesh, in front of the portal that led here from the abandoned mine tunnels. Her throat caught-until she realized, by the partially dissolved chunks of chain mail armor the body had been wearing, that this wasn't Naxil. It must have been the priestess Chizra had left behind. Soggy fragments of curled paper lay next to the body: the scrolls the priestess had held. They were rapidly turning to mush as the acid dissolved them. One scroll, however, had landed just beyond the spray of acid that glistened on the walls and floor.

  Breathing in shallow gulps-the smell was nauseating-Leliana ran to the spot where it lay. A mottled purple eyestalk bulged out of the arch as she passed. She twisted aside to avoid it and scooped up the scroll, hoping it was one she could use. She whirled, shaking it open one-handed. She didn't dare let go of the singing sword, as it was the only thing that would cut through another sound-based attack.

  To her infinite relief, the scroll held a portal-sealing spell. She began to sing the hymn inscribed on it.

  A second eyestalk bulged out of the portal, followed by the head of the creature: a purple slug the size of a horse, its mottled flesh studded with twisted chunks of rusted metal. One of these scraped against the side of the arch with a sound like a sword being dragged across a whetstone. Its rump slid through just as Leliana finished the hymn. A ripple of magical energy filled the archway, sealing the portal behind the monster.

  Leliana dropped the scroll-now blank-and lifted her sword. She braced herself as the slug slid toward her. She'd take off the eyestalks first.

  The slug halted. A loud humming filled the air. The acid-pitted remains of the dead priestess's chain mail vest flew at the monster. So did the clasp on Leliana's borrowed piwafwi. She felt a yank on her sword, and though she clung to it with all her strength, it flew from her hands. Last to go was her holy symbol. The mithral chain around her neck snapped and flew at the slug, the miniature sword trailing after it. All stuck to the creature's slimy body-except the silver holy symbol, which by Eilistraee's infinite grace dangled from its chain, refusing to adhere.

  The slug reared up, exposing a puckered mouth. It yawned open, revealing rows of needle-pointed teeth.

  Leliana was in no mood to be eaten. She leaped forward, grabbed her holy symbol, and yanked it free.

  Behind her, she heard suspicious sounds. She glanced back, and saw an ooze that looked like a boiling puddle of blood, blocking her way out. She was trapped! The ooze wasn't moving toward her-yet. But it was expanding, rising like blood-leavened bread.

  With her singing sword, she might have fought her way out-but it was stuck fast to the slug. There was one song that could get her out of here, but with Faerzress crackling through the hall, it probably wouldn't work.

  The metal-studded slug slithered closer. Behind her, she felt the ooze's steadily growing heat on her back. Already, it felt as hot as the Abyss.

  She glanced at the archway next to her, remembering what Rylla had told Qilue earlier. The dretch had escaped through a portal in the Hall of Empty Arches. This portal! Was it still active? Rylla had said that it opened onto infinity. Maybe-just maybe-if Leliana sang her hymn of return as she passed through it, she could control where she wound up.

  With Eilistraee's blessing, it just might work.

  She turned, poised to leap into the arch. As she began the hymn, the slug attacked. Shards of metal exploded from its body in a whirling storm. Several punched into her, tearing ragged gouges in her flesh…

  She leaped-and passed through the portal, still singing. Moonlight blazed around her…

  She fell, face first, onto a clump of ferns in a moonlit forest.

  For several moments, all she could do was lie there. Slowly, with blood-slick hands, she forced herself up. It took a moment before she stopped trembling. She was bleeding from more than a dozen lacerations, yet she didn't care. The pale white fog hugging the ground was a sign she'd arrived at her destination: the Misty Forest shrine.

  "Praise Eilistraee," she gasped. "It worked!" If she ever saw Q'arlynd again, it would be something to brag about. He wasn't the only one capable of "impossible" teleports.

  She stood and sang a hymn to close her wounds. She was pleased with her night's work. She'd sealed the portal that led to the Promenade from below, preventing any more of Ghaunadaur's foul minions from oozing through it. That should buy the temple's defenders some time.

  Now she needed to get back to the Promenade and continue the fight. Fortunately, the moon was above the horizon. She could use the sacred shrine and return through the Moonspring Portal.

  She walked through the woods to the sacred pool. As she approached it, she heard singing. Peering through the trees, she spotted a dozen or so priestesses. They jabbed the air with their holy daggers, their voices rising and falling in an urgent harmony. Leliana heard wet, popping noises, and saw that the surface of the sacred pool was rippling.

  The priestess directing the song was a younger version of Leliana: lean and graceful, but with yellow-shaded instead of ice white hair-her daughter. Rowaan's eyes widened as Leliana entered the clearing. She ran forward and clasped Leliana's arms. "Have you come from the Promenade? What's happening there?"

  "It's under attack. By Ghaunadaur's fanatics-and a host of oozes. We have to get there, and quickly. Join the battle."

  Rowaan's face paled in the moonlight. She gestured at the pool, a stricken expression on her face. "We can't reach it. The portal's blocked."

  Leliana moved closer. She saw, to her horror, that the pool was dappled with tiny oozes, each shaped like a pan-fried egg with a blood red center. The priestesses' magic had d
estroyed scores of them already, but for each one their magic ruptured, two more bubbled to the surface.

  Leliana clenched her empty fists-a reminder that her singing sword was gone. The sacred sword had been one of those carried into battle by Qilue's companions, centuries ago, during their victory over Ghaunadaur's avatar. Now, it was lost.

  Short of a miracle, the Promenade would be lost too.

  Rowaan guessed her mother's thoughts. "The Promenade won't fall," she said determinedly. "Eilistraee won't allow it." She turned back to the pool, and to the hopeless task of trying to clear the blood-slimed water.

  Leliana nodded, without conviction. She wanted to cling to hope, but couldn't. Rowaan was denying the patently obvious. The oozes had reached the Moonspring Portal and were passing through it-something that would only have been possible if one of Eilistraee's faithful had sung a hymn to open it. Leliana could guess whose deed that had been. Someone who was using her magic for ill, now that a demon rode her.

  Qilue.

  Leliana looked up at the sky. The moon would set soon. When it did, the portal in the Moonspring would close. Until the next moonrise, the Misty Forest would be secure from attack from the Promenade.

  That should have offered a shred of hope.

  It didn't.

  Not at all.

  CHAPTER 9

  Karas ran into the Cavern of Song. Two priestesses still sang the sacred hymn, their swords pointed at the ceiling, toward the spot where the moon passed through the night skies of the World Above. Their voices, however, were lost in the general commotion.

  The cavern was filled with people. Priestesses and soldiers ran south and east to the battle, while lay worshipers, too young or weak to fight, struggled in the opposite direction, to shelter in their living quarters in the Hall of the Faithful. The Protector Erelda, fully armored in chain mail and breastplate, stood next to the statue of Qilue, shouting orders. The statue had been moved aside to reveal a staircase that spiraled deep below. Another Protector disappeared down it, sword pealing.