Sacrifice of the Widow: Lady Penitent, Book I

by Lisa Smedman

  “No, she hasn’t,” Cavatina said fiercely. “As long as you hold her song in your heart, Eilistraee is with you still.”

  “No, she isn’t,” the creature spat back. “Once I was her champion. Now I’m her greatest disappointment. She abandoned me—and Lolth claimed me.”

  Cavatina stared down at the creature. The face was vaguely familiar, despite its elongated shape and bestial spider fangs. She tried to imagine the creature with hair that wasn’t sticky and matted, with a body the size and proportion of a normal drow. It proved impossible.

  “Who are you?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” The creature gestured at the glowing green platform on which it stood. “I, too, once tried to kill a god, but unlike the bard who destroyed Moander, I failed.”

  Cavatina’s eyes widened. “You’re …”

  “I was Halisstra Melarn.”

  Cavatina reeled. “But you were killed! At the very gates of the Demonweb Pits. Qilué saw it in her scrying.”

  Halisstra shrugged.

  Questions tumbled from Cavatina’s lips. “How did you survive? Where have you been? What happened?”

  “I told you, Lolth punished me.”

  “But surely …” Cavatina paused. Shook her head. “It must have been Eilistraee who restored life to you after you were struck down. Why didn’t you call upon Eilistraee’s aid?”

  Another shrug. “By then, I’d already lost my faith.”

  “You can still be redeemed,” Cavatina insisted. “If you just—”

  Halisstra gave a bitter laugh. “That’s what Seyll said, and look where she wound up.”

  Cavatina felt a shiver pass through her. “What are you talking about?”

  Halisstra stared up at her with eyes hollow as an empty pit. “Seyll sacrificed herself—she let her soul be consigned to oblivion. And for what?” Halisstra’s eyes suddenly blazed. “Nothing! I failed.”

  Cavatina spoke softly, as to an injured child. “They asked too much of you. You were a novice priestess, and they asked you to slay a god.”

  Halisstra shuddered. Weakened by the sickstone, she sank to her knees on the glowing platform. Water rippled across its sickly green glow.

  Cavatina extended her hand. “Come away from there. You’ve suffered enough.”

  Halisstra gave a heavy sigh. “I tried to serve Eilistraee. Even after I knew I’d failed her—after Lolth had her way with me and cast me aside—I tried to redeem myself. The Crescent Blade was broken, but I picked up the pieces and carried them to the temple that Feliane, Uluyara, and I had consecrated when we first entered the Demonweb Pits and laid them down inside it and watched as the sword mended itself together and—”

  “What?” Cavatina shook her head. Halisstra was telling her too much, too fast. “Are you saying you created a temple sacred to Eilistraee within the Demonweb Pits?”

  Halisstra nodded. There was a light in her eye.

  “And that the Crescent Blade—a weapon capable of killing Lolth—still exists?” Cavatina asked.

  Halisstra gave a trembling nod. Then a sly smile. “And it’s somewhere that Lolth can’t touch it. The temple we created is still standing, and the Crescent Blade is inside it.”

  Cavatina let out a long breath. She held up a hand. “Just a moment.” She spoke Qilué’s name, and an instant later felt the high priestess link minds with her. In a low whisper, Cavatina sent a message back to the Promenade.

  “I found the creature. It’s Halisstra Melarn, her body corrupted by Lolth. She said much that you should hear.”

  The reply was a moment in coming. Take her to the shrine in the Velarswood. Wait for me there.

  Cavatina nodded. Qilué had sounded worried about something. Distracted. Cavatina wondered what new threat had arisen since she’d left the Promenade.

  She extended a hand to the creature that had once been a priestess like herself. “Come,” she told Halisstra. “Your chance for redemption may be at hand.”

  Szorak crept through the darkened forest, muttering to himself behind his mask. He didn’t much care for the Lethyr, even though the thick canopy of intertwined branches above screened the moon’s harsh light. Despite the magical ring that had turned his skin and clothing the exact color of the shadows he passed through and the boots that enabled him to move in utter silence, stilling even the crack of a dead branch underfoot, he still felt as if he was being watched.

  Which he was. The very trees were alive. They whispered the whereabouts of all who entered the forest to its guardians.

  Fortunately, his mission that dark night had nothing to do with either trees or druids. It wasn’t a druid’s soul Szorak was after, but that of a priestess.

  As he drew closer to Eilistraee’s shrine, the spell he’d cast a few moments before picked up the first of the wards: a dim glow coming from underneath a pile of dead leaves, several paces ahead. Szorak pulled out a rod of black iron and held it at the ready. Then he walked forward. As the ward was triggered, sparkles of frost-white light erupted on his skin, causing him to gasp from their cold. The wand, however, drew the bitter cold down into itself, and after a heartbeat, it was gone.

  “Is that the best you can do, ladies?” Szorak muttered. “I expected something a little more lethal.”

  He continued forward, the rod held loosely in his hand. The pile of leaves exploded as a sword flew out of it. Szorak was barely able to bring his rod up in time. He smashed it against the sword in a desperate parry. Black iron met shining steel with a loud clank, and there was a silent explosion of magical energy. The sword tumbled to the ground, inert.

  Szorak took a deep breath. He stared down at the two glyphs engraved in the blade. Both incorporated the word ogglin. Enemy. Even a magical disguise wouldn’t have fooled them, and Szorak hadn’t expected a two-glyph ward. Had he not parried the sword, he might have already been dead.

  He chuckled. “That’s almost worthy of Vhaeraun, ladies, except that our sword thrust would have come from behind.”

  His detection magic revealed other wards to the right and left. The sword must be one of several placed in a ring around the shrine’s perimeter, but that ring had been broken.

  Szorak stepped across the neutralized sword. Then he activated the secondary power of his ring, disguising himself. Though he could still feel the soft velvet of his mask against his cheeks and chin, to an observer his face would appear bare, his cheeks smooth and feminine. He would seem taller than he really was, his body more shapely, and his black cloak, shirt, and trousers would instead look like chain mail, covered by a breastplate bearing Eilistraee’s moon and sword. The rod in his hand would appear to be a sword. Anyone touching him would instantly perceive that all was not as it seemed, but he fully intended that whoever got close enough for that wouldn’t live for more than a heartbeat.

  He walked on through the darkened woods. Up ahead, he could hear women singing and see shapes moving through the trees—Eilistraee’s faithful, worshiping at their shrine. He veered away from that spot, looking instead for the place where the priestesses made their home. On a hunch, he whispered a prayer that would lead him to the nearest cave.

  The cave turned out to be a slit in the hillside, screened by the flow of a stream that tumbled from above. The entrance, however, was protected by magic. Even from a distance, Szorak could feel its power. It produced a high, shrill note that grew in intensity the nearer he got to the cave. Try as he might, he could not get close enough to cancel it with his rod. Forcing himself in that direction made his ears pound until he thought they were going to burst.

  He backed away, muttering dark curses. He would have to steal a soul from one of the dancers, instead. “A challenge, Masked Lord?” he muttered. His eyes gleamed. “I accept.” He made his way back through the woods.

  The shrine turned out to be a natural pillar of black rock, twice the height of a drow, carved with crescent moons. A sword hilt protruded from the top of it. The pillar had been bored through with holes, and the breeze passing
through them created a sound like several flutes playing at once. The priestesses danced around the pillar in a loose circle, naked save for the belts that held their hunting horns and the holy symbols that hung around their necks. Each female had a sword which she held at arm’s length as she twirled. Blade clashed against blade as the women spun together, then apart again, their swords trailing sparkles of silver light.

  The dance might have been beautiful, had it not been a violation of the sacred order. Had Eilistraee not interfered, Vhaeraun might have united all of the darkelves under a single deity millennia ago, but Eilistraee had proved as greedy as Lolth and had stolen the females away from the Masked Lord’s worship. She’d taught them to exclude males from her circle, to subjugate and revile them instead.

  Vhaeraun’s followers had learned a bitter lesson. Females could not be trusted.

  Szorak watched long enough to determine that priestesses were joining and leaving the dance at what seemed to be random intervals. Though they danced in a group, there was no discernable pattern to their collective movements. Each female seemed to be following her own path. Satisfied, he altered his magical disguise, giving clothing the appearance of bare flesh. Then, holding his disguised rod like a sword, he danced into their midst.

  The women, fooled by his disguise, made room for him. He kept to the fringes, both unwilling and unable to approach the holy pillar. It, like the cave where the women lived, was warded with magic that clenched his belly and made him feel as though he were about to vomit, but the rod in his hand dampened it enough to make it bearable. The excitement he felt at having penetrated their holy dance gave him a sharp thrill. Blood pounded through his body as he danced, leaving him flushed.

  Spinning close to one of the dancing priestesses, he moved his rod like a sword. She, in turn, clanked her blade against it. The force of the blow numbed his fingers, but his rod, being metal, gave a convincing clang, meanwhile draining the sword of its magic. Quickly, he whispered a prayer.

  Before the woman could spin away, he leaned in close to her ear and whispered a harsh command: “Follow.”

  It was a gamble. If the spell failed, he would have just given himself away as a male, since his voice remained undisguised, but the dice seemed to have rolled in his favor. There was no commotion behind him as he spun out of the dance and strode away into the forest. The priestess he had singled out followed wordlessly, meek as a rothé culled from the herd.

  When they were some distance from the dance, he turned to face her. He was glad to see that she was drow and not one of those surface elves who stained their skin black. Killing one of those would be so much less satisfying.

  She was still panting from the dance, her breasts rising and falling, her long white hair damp with sweat. She frowned slightly, a hint of confusion in her eyes as she stared at Szorak. Her sword hung loose in her hand.

  “What do you want? Why have we left the dance?”

  Szorak beckoned to her, leaning forward as if to whisper a confidence in her ear. He had to stand on tiptoe to do it; like most females, she was taller than he.

  She leaned closer.

  He touched her cheek, whispering the word that would trigger his spell. Dark magic leaped from his fingertips. As her body convulsed, he pressed his lips against hers, sucking her soul into his mask.

  But the soultheft spell didn’t work. Instead of being slain by his magic, the priestess still lived. She smashed a hand against his chest, shoving him backward. Then she swept her sword through the air in a slash that should have decapitated him, but Szorak’s spell had done at least some damage. The priestess staggered as she swung her weapon, and he was able to duck just in time to avoid the blade. Muttering a curse, he sprang inside the arc of her next swing, shaking a weighted strangle cord out of his sleeve. He whipped it around her neck, twisting around behind her and catching it in his other hand. Then he leaped onto her back, wrapping his legs around her waist and levering his upper torso backwards to tighten the cord.

  The strangle cord bit into the priestess’s neck, preventing her from crying out or casting any spell that required prayer, but she was no fool. She hurled herself backward, smashing Szorak into a tree. The back of his head cracked against rough bark and he lost his grip on one end of the strangle cord. As the priestess wrenched herself away from him, he scrambled to his feet, yanking a poisoned dagger out of a wrist sheath. As he readied it for a throw, the priestess tried to call out, but her voice was still a half-strangled whisper from the cord that had scored a line across her throat. She started to reach for the hunting horn at her belt.

  Before she could wrench it free, Szorak threw. His dagger buried itself in her throat. The venom that coated it finished the job his strangle cord had begun. The priestess stiffened, her sword trembling in her hands and her eyes rolling back in her head.

  Szorak caught her as she fell. Once more, he pressed his mouth against hers and inhaled—and his mask drank in her soul. He pressed his body against hers, savoring the moment. Even through his clothes, her bare skin felt hot, slippery with sweat from their struggle and slick with blood from the wound in her throat. Fully aroused, Szorak fumbled with his trousers. He would take her, he decided fiercely. Just as the priestesses of Menzoberranzan had taken him, so many times when he was just a boy, to satisfy their dark and disgusting needs. Leering behind his mask, he savored the thrill of what he was about to do, mere steps away from Eilistraee’s sacred grove. While the song of her oblivious faithful wafted through the trees, he would—

  Something slid into his back, penetrating cloth and flesh, something cold and sharp. A sword blade. As pain rushed into the void it had pierced in his body, Szorak twisted his head, a shocked expression on his face. A priestess of Eilistraee loomed above him, her face obscured by the moonlight that haloed her hair in a fierce white blaze. For a moment, he thought he recognized her.

  “Seyll?” he gasped.

  If it was Seyll, she made no reply. Placing a foot on his back, the priestess yanked the sword free. The blood that coated it—Szorak’s own blood—dribbled from its point into his blinking eyes.

  Eilistraee, spitting in his face.

  Then blackness claimed him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Q’arlynd watched from a distance as Leliana, Rowaan, and the other priestesses who had survived the drider attack stood under the tree and sang, completing their sacred observances for the six who had died at the judicator’s hand. Normally, Rowaan had explained, the bodies of the faithful were lashed into a bier high in the treetops, but the judicator’s magical attack had left nothing behind of those he had slain. The priestesses had been forced to make do with empty clothing and armor. These they had bundled and lain to rest in the bare branches of the trees to be washed by moonlight—“Eilistraee’s tears.”

  At the moment, however, the night sky was overcast. It wasn’t moonlight that fell on the bundles in the treetops but snow. Q’arlynd had read about the stuff in books, but this was the first time he’d experienced it firsthand. It dusted his piwafwi like a thick layer of drifting spores—except that these “spores” of frozen water were cold and melted on contact with the skin. They soaked right through his piwafwi and into his shirt, making him shiver.

  He squinted as the wind blew snow into his eyes. Why he’d lingered to watch the singing, he couldn’t say. He was still very much an outsider, despite having spoken the vows that had admitted him to Eilistraee’s faith. Males weren’t invited to join the sacred dances, nor could they lend their voices to the Evensong. Eilistraee granted magic to her priestesses only, and males could play but a supporting role, just as in Lolth’s faith.

  Like mother, like daughter, Q’arlynd supposed.

  The song ended. The ritual was over. Q’arlynd waved at Rowaan, beckoning her over. She glanced at Leliana, who shrugged, then walked toward him, her boots crunching holes into the ankle-deep snow.

  Q’arlynd bowed his head as she approached. “Lady,” he said. “May I ask a question?”
>
  “Call me Rowaan. We’re all equals, in Eilistraee’s eyes.”

  Hardly, Q’arlynd thought.

  “What’s your question?”

  Q’arlynd took a deep breath. As a boy, he’d once asked this question of one of Lolth’s priestesses and gotten a thorough whipping in reply, but he was curious to know what awaited him in the afterlife, having accepted Eilistraee as his patron deity. “What was it like—being dead?”

  Rowaan was silent for several moments. “You want to know what awaits you in Eilistraee’s domain.”

  Q’arlynd nodded. “Do you remember much of it?”

  Rowaan smiled. “A little. I realized I was dead when I found myself standing, alone, in a place that was featureless and gray: the Fugue Plain. There were others around me—other souls—but I couldn’t see or touch them, just feel them. Then I heard a voice.” She blinked, her eyes shiny with tears. “An indescribably beautiful voice. It was Eilistraee, singing to me. Calling me. A rift opened in the gray, and a shaft of moonlight shone through. I moved toward it, but just as I was about to touch the moonbeam and ascend to the goddess, it was gone. I woke up in the forest, alive. Chezzara had raised me from the dead before I could enter Eilistraee’s domain.”

  She shrugged and gave him a shy smile. “So I really can’t tell you what dancing with the goddess is like.”

  “The shaft of moonlight,” Q’arlynd said. “It just appeared?”

  Rowaan nodded. “Of course. When Eilistraee sang. It’s the gateway to her domain.”

  “Probably just as well you didn’t go there.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “You might have been attacked and your soul consumed.”

  Rowaan frowned. “By what?”

  Q’arlynd hesitated. “Aren’t there usually … some sort of creatures your soul has to fight its way past, or some other trial you must endure before passing into the goddess’s presence?”

  “Why would you think that?”