Sacrifice of the Widow: Lady Penitent, Book I

by Lisa Smedman

  The spider landed on a wall and immediately flexed its abdomen toward her. As its spinnerets opened, Cavatina flung out her left hand and shouted Eilistraee’s name. A shimmering, crescent-shaped shield sprang into being in front of Cavatina just in time to block the web the spider shot at her. The magical shield shuddered as the webs struck, then slowly sagged to the floor, weighed down by a mass of glowing golden webbing. Cavatina dispelled the shield, letting the sticky tangle fall.

  She attacked. Releasing Demonbane, she sang a prayer that sent the sword dancing through the air toward the monster—a feint that would allow her to mount a second attack. She expected the spider to shy away from the blade, but instead the monster watched, unmoving, as the sword, directed by Cavatina’s outstretched hand, wove through the air toward it. The spider sprang from the wall, directly at the sword. Twin fangs scissored against the metal. The spider sailed past Cavatina to land upside down on the ceiling, the sword between its fangs. Then it began to chew, as if savoring the taste of the blade.

  Belatedly, Cavatina realized what she must be facing. “A spellgaunt!” she cried. She yanked her hand back, trying to wrench Demonbane from its jaws, but they were locked around the sword. The spellgaunt stood utterly still for a heartbeat, a dribble of sparkling drool sliding out of the corners of its mouth. Then it spat the weapon to the ground. The sword hit the floor with a dull clank. It landed next to Cavatina’s foot, its midpoint dented with a neat row of tooth marks.

  That gave Cavatina an idea. She sang a prayer that called a curtain of whirling blades into being between her and the monster.

  “Come on,” she taunted, holding them steady over her head. “Take a bite of these, why don’t you?”

  The spellgaunt hungrily eyed the whirling blades—each composed entirely of magical energy—then dropped from the ceiling. With a sweep of her hand, Cavatina sent the blades into its gaping mouth, even as she dodged aside. The spider stretched its mouth wide and gulped them down as it fell, heedless of the chunks of flesh being slashed from its face. Palps were severed, multifaceted eyes imploded as blades stabbed into them, and blood dribbled from the gaping wound its mouth had become, but still the frenzied spellgaunt, standing on the floor, gulped the blades down, whipping its head this way and that to pluck them from the air. As it ate, its abdomen distended and began to quiver. Cavatina watched, holding her breath. The spellgaunt’s body burst with a loud crack. Bloody chunks of chitin skittered across the floor, leaving smears of pale blue blood. The spider wavered on its spindly legs, then collapsed. It lay on the floor, its jaws weakly gnashing.

  Cavatina picked up her sword. The spellgaunt raised its head groggily, empty eye sockets staring sightlessly in Cavatina’s direction as it strained to reach the magical items she still carried. A ragged tongue slimed her boot with blood. Cavatina drew her foot away and turned Demonbane point downward. Then she thrust. Chitin crunched as the point pierced the spellgaunt’s skull and scraped against the blade as she shoved it home. The monstrous spider quivered then collapsed, dead.

  Cavatina put a foot on the monster’s head and yanked her sword free. She held her palm over the blade, and a quick prayer confirmed what she already knew. The weapon had been completely drained of its magic. Demonbane had slain its last foe.

  She wiped the sword clean on the hem of her tunic then thrust it back into its scabbard. It stuck, momentarily, as the teeth-dented section caught on the edge of the scabbard. Cavatina forced it down. She wouldn’t be drawing it again.

  She stared down at the dead spellgaunt. “Abyss take you,” she growled. “That was my mother’s sword.” She gave the lifeless body a kick.

  Only then did she stop to wonder what a spellgaunt was doing there. She knew little about the creatures, but she didn’t think they were normally capable of turning themselves invisible.

  Even so, it shouldn’t have been able to enter the area undetected. It was a mere animal—albeit a magical one—bereft of either a good or evil aura, but it should have triggered the alarms. Most disturbing of all, it was one of Lolth’s creatures.

  That alone was cause for disturbing the temple’s battle-mistress.

  Cavatina sang a prayer that ended with Iljrene’s name. When she had the battle-mistress’s attention, she sent her silent message.

  I found a spellgaunt in the caverns south of the river and west of the bridge. It triggered no alarms. I killed it.

  Iljrene’s voice came back at once. It sounded high and squeaky, just as it did in person. A spellgaunt couldn’t bypass the alarms on its own; someone helped it get there. Begin a search. I’ll send other patrols.

  Cavatina immediately bent and inspected the spellgaunt’s corpse. Something on its back sparkled: diamond dust. Iljrene was right. Someone had helped the spellgaunt to bypass the alarms, someone capable of casting a nondetection spell. Those abjurations lasted only so long. Whoever had worked their magic on the spellgaunt would be close by.

  Cavatina remembered Thaleste, waiting below.

  She strode over to the broken window and peered down, but there was no sign of Thaleste. Cavatina hoped the novice was hiding behind a pillar somewhere. She cast a sending to Thaleste.

  Where are you? What do you see?

  The answer was a moment in coming. There’s another priestess down here. A dancer. I’m going over to talk to her.

  Cavatina frowned. It wasn’t yet time for the evening devotions, and even if it had been, a dancer shouldn’t be there. Eilistraee’s faithful danced naked, save for their holy symbols. While the area was well patrolled, it still had its dangers. Venturing into it unarmored would be a foolish thing to do. Losing oneself in a dance of devotion there would be more foolish, still.

  A chill slid down Cavatina’s spine as she realized what Thaleste might have just spotted. She sent a second, more urgent message.

  Thaleste! That may be a yochlol in drow form! They have powerful enchantments. Get away from it!

  No reply came.

  Cursing, Cavatina leaped through the gap in the floor. Descending swiftly, she looked around for Thaleste. She spotted movement: Thaleste’s legs, disappearing behind a column. Someone—or something—was dragging her away.

  Cavatina cursed. She should never have left the novice on her own. She crossed the cavern floor in great bounding leaps, levitating slightly with each step. As she ran, she cast a protection on herself. She no longer had Demonbane, a weapon that would have sliced neatly through a yochlol, even were it to shift to gaseous form, but she did have her magical horn. She raised it and blew a blast, aiming it at the column ahead. A blare of noise crashed through the cavern, rattling the loose stones on the floor and shattering the fragments of clearstone that lay there. The sound wouldn’t harm Thaleste—the magical horn had been attuned to do no damage to Eilistraee’s faithful—but it would stun and deafen everything else in its path, leaving larger creatures bleeding from the ears and killing lesser creatures outright. A yochlol would probably just teleport out of the blast, but at least that would drive it away from Thaleste.

  Releasing the horn, Cavatina wrenched her holy symbol from around her neck. Holding it aloft, she sang a prayer. A beam of light formed around the pendant then grew until it was the length of a bastard sword. The blade-shaped moonbeam crackled with magical energy as Cavatina held it aloft.

  “Come out from behind there,” she shouted. “I know what you are.”

  A naked drow female staggered out from behind the column, hands clapped over her ears and an anguished expression on her face. For a heartbeat, Cavatina still believed it to be a yochlol—a weak one that had been damaged by the blast. Then she saw the sword-shaped pendant hanging between the female’s breasts. No servant of Lolth’s would wear Eilistraee’s holy symbol, even a false one. When the priestess stumbled and fell to her knees, but the rubble she landed on neither shifted nor made a sound, Cavatina realized the whole thing was an illusion. She glanced up to see a mass of web hurtling down at her.

  “Eilistraee shield
me!” she shouted.

  The magical shield appeared above her just in time to send the web sloughing off to one side. Heaving the sticky mass behind her, Cavatina sprang into the air. She could finally see what she was dealing with: an aranea, a shape-shifting spider capable of assuming humanoid form. The aranea was in hybrid form, a drow female at first glance but with a strangely articulated jaw and black bristles growing out of her head in place of hair. She wore a blood-red robe that hung heavily due to its chain mail lining, but her legs were bare. Strands of webbing dangled from the bottom of the robe that was just long enough to cover the rounded bulge of her spiderlike hindquarters. She clung to the column of stone with bare feet and her bare right hand. Her left hand was encased in a gauntlet that had a dagger blade protruding from between the knuckles. A platinum disk hung around her neck on a chain. Cavatina knew what the medallion’s symbol would be by the vestments the aranea wore. She was one of Selvetarm’s faithful—a Selvetargtlin.

  The blast from Cavatina’s horn didn’t seem to have hurt her at all. The aranea had probably already been out of range above it before it sounded.

  All that flashed through Cavatina’s mind in an instant, followed by cold rage that the enemy had penetrated the caverns surrounding Eilistraee’s temple. The aranea shouted. A pleasant humming filled Cavatina’s head, but it was gone an instant later. Whatever spell the aranea had cast was too weak to affect the Darksong Knight.

  Cavatina countered with one of her own, a song of smiting. The aranea reeled as it struck her, eyes rolling back in her head, but she recovered in time to leap away from the column as Cavatina came at her with the moonblade.

  The aranea landed on the floor of the cavern, and Cavatina followed. She feinted with the moonblade, thrust, but the Selvetargtlin was too skilled to fall for such tactics. Suddenly she was inside Cavatina’s guard, the stench of her spider musk filling the Darksong Knight’s nostrils. Cavatina twisted to the side, anticipating a slash from the gauntlet blade as she shoved the enemy to arm’s length once more, but the aranea instead thrust her fingers out stiffly.

  “Selvetarm!” she screamed.

  Blades erupted from the aranea’s hands, legs, face, and scalp—even her clothing. Hundreds of them, slender and deadly. Still screaming Selvetarm’s name, she flung herself at Cavatina.

  It was a suicidal move. Cavatina thrust her moonblade at the aranea’s chest. Any other sword might have been turned or at least slowed by the chain mail lining of the cleric’s blood-red robe, but the moonblade was a thing of pure magic, like the blade barrier Cavatina had summoned earlier. It slid through the chain mail like a hot knife through soft wax, and Cavatina’s hand and arm were wet with blood. Even though the thrust was to the heart, the aranea had enough fight left in her to slam her arms together, driving the spike-thin blades in through the holes in Cavatina’s chain mail. Cavatina gasped in agony as they pierced her sides.

  The aranea sagged against Cavatina but still did not die. Hot purple blood sprayed Cavatina’s chest and face as the Selvetargtlin, her eyes rolling wildly, twisted her left arm, trying to bring her gauntlet blade to bear. The blade only managed to graze Cavatina’s right cheek, but the wound throbbed as if boiling oil had been poured into it. A foul smell rose from the cut, and Cavatina could feel herself weakening with each pulse of her heart. The periapt around her neck absorbed the initial injury—the cut itself—but there was something more.

  The aranea had used magic to envenom her.

  Furious, she thrust the aranea away from her, screaming out as the blades tore free of her flesh. The moonblade in Cavatina’s hand flared silver-white as the aranea’s blood sloughed off it.

  Selvetarm’s priestess fell to the ground and lay there, blood bubbling from her lips. “You’re too late,” she said in a voice choked with blood and insane laughter. “It’s already done.”

  A bloody hand trembled toward the holy symbol that hung at the aranea’s neck. Cavatina, in agony from her many wounds and with blood running down her sides in rivulets, realized that the Selvetargtlin was trying to cast one last spell. She slashed down with her moonblade at the aranea’s wrist, severing its hand. Blood rushed from the stump like water from a broken pipe. The aranea trembled then lay still.

  Cavatina had just started to turn away when the body exploded, pelting her with a rain of bloody flesh and slivers of bone. She ducked then glanced at the spot where the aranea had fallen. All that lay there was a blood-soaked robe, empty and loose on the cavern floor. The largest piece of the body was the size of a fingernail.

  There was no time to contemplate what had just happened. Blood loss had made Cavatina weak, and her legs felt ready to collapse at any moment. Calling upon her goddess, she sang a healing spell. Eilistraee’s moonlight illuminated her body, knitting flesh and replenishing the blood she’d lost. The shallow cut on Cavatina’s cheek, however, remained. It would close in time, but for a while the Selvetargtlin’s dark magic would deny it the benefits of magical healing.

  There was no time to worry about that, though. Cavatina hurried around the column, looking for Thaleste.

  The novice lay face-down on the cavern floor, buried under a thick tangle of spiderweb. Tearing the sticky mass away, Cavatina saw a bloody puncture in the back of Cavatina’s neck: a bite. The aranea’s venom wasn’t usually fatal—it typically sapped the strength, rather than killing outright—but in some instances it could kill. Dropping to her knees, Cavatina laid her palm across the wound and sang a prayer of healing. Under her touch, the wound closed. A second prayer drove the remaining toxins from the novice’s body.

  Groaning, Thaleste sat up. Cavatina placed a hand on her shoulder, steadying her. It was only then that she noticed the novice’s sword lying beside her. Its tip was blooded, but just barely—whatever wound the weapon had inflicted had been slight indeed.

  Thaleste touched the back of her neck with a shaking hand then stared at her fingers, obviously surprised to see no blood. She was still inexperienced enough to be astonished by the fact that another drow had come to her aid.

  “Did we kill her?”

  Cavatina hung her holy symbol around her neck. “We did. Your sword thrust weakened her, and I finished the job.”

  Thaleste smiled. A seed of confidence was in her eye, and over time, it would grow.

  Cavatina whispered a prayer and sent, Iljrene, it was a Selvetargtlin. I killed her. We were wounded but have healed.

  Iljrene’s reply came at once: Well done, but keep alert. Where there’s one Selvetargtlin, there’s usually more.

  Cavatina nodded, still troubled by the aranea’s final words. The Selvetargtlin hadn’t just been talking about the spellgaunt she’d somehow smuggled into the caverns surrounding the Promenade but about something else, something that had put an evil gleam of pleasure in her eyes even as she died.

  She’d gone to her death secure in the knowledge that Selvetarm would reward her for whatever dark service she’d performed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Q’arlynd pointed a finger at the jagged slab of rubble and whispered an incantation. The slab—a piece of calcified webbing that had once been part of the wall of House Ysh’nil—rose into the air, revealing a gap in the rubble beneath it.

  He nodded at the svirfneblin who stood next to him. “In you go.”

  The deep gnome cocked his bald head to the side. His eyes, black as pebbles, studied the gap in the rubble. “Looks unstable,” Flinderspeld said in a low, raspy voice.

  Q’arlynd’s nostrils flared in irritation. “Of course it’s unstable,” he snapped. “The city didn’t land in neat rows, like stacked blocks. It collapsed.”

  “I’d feel better if it was shored up first.”

  Q’arlynd moved his finger slightly, levitating the slab of rubble over the spot where Flinderspeld stood. He nodded meaningfully at it. “You’ll feel worse if I drop this on your head.”

  The deep gnome shrugged. “If you do, you’ll have no one to go in after whatever radiated that
magical aura you saw.”

  Q’arlynd’s eyes narrowed. He levitated the slab to one side and set it down, gently enough that the only noise it made was a slight grating of stone against stone. Then he held up his left hand and waggled his index finger—the one with the dull black ring on it, the ring whose only surviving counterpart was on Flinderspeld’s own hand. “Don’t make me use this.”

  The deep gnome glared. “All right, all right. I’m going.” He clambered toward the hole, muttering under his breath.

  Q’arlynd narrowed his eyes. He should discipline Flinderspeld, he knew, flay him and leave him staked out for lizards to feed on, but the deep gnome did have his uses. Like all those of his race, he showed up as little more than a blur—if at all—to anyone trying to scry him or otherwise locate him by magical means. It made Flinderspeld the perfect vehicle for carrying objects Q’arlynd didn’t want found—the rings Q’arlynd had recently lifted from the body of the dead priestess, for example.

  The deep gnome didn’t realize he was being utilized in such a way, and he had no idea that the new clothing Q’arlynd kept bestowing upon him had items sewn inside it. He regarded these “gifts” as kindness. He’d concluded that Q’arlynd must have purchased him out of some sense of compassion, after seeing the sorry state the slavers had reduced the deep gnome to. A notion that was laughable, really. Q’arlynd’s heart was as dark as that of any drow.

  “I see something!” Flinderspeld called out. “It’s a … dagger of some sort. It’s silver with a thin blade, shaped more like a sword than a dagger really. It’s strung on a chain like a pendant.”

  Q’arlynd knew this, of course. He’d placed the priestess’s pendant there himself for the detection spell to reveal.

  “There’s a much smaller sword next to it,” Flinderspeld continued. “It’s no longer than my finger. Another piece of jewelry, I think.”