Sacrifice of the Widow lp-1

by Lisa Smedman

  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 dark elves 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 discernible 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 rothe 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?"

  "Lolth's domain is filled with monsters that consume souls," Q'arlynd explained. "If your soul manages to avoid those, there's still the Pass of the Soulreaver to get through. From what the priestesses teach, it's the equivalent of being flayed alive. Only the toughest and most tenacious survive the passage to eventually stand by Lolth's side. The rest are annihilated." He shrugged. "I expected Eilistraee to at least throw up a wall of swords or something to whittle out the faithful from the dross, to select those who are truly worthy."

  Rowaan smiled. "Eilistraee doesn't test her faithful. We test ourselves. It's what we do here on Toril, before our deaths, that matters."

  "What about those who convert to the faith?" Q'arlynd asked. "What if, before they sought redemption, they did things that Eilistraee found abhorrent?"

  Rowaan stared at him for several moments. Then she nodded. "Ah. I see. You're worried that Eilistraee won't accept you."

  "Actually, I was thinking about Halisstra," he lied.

  Rowaan touched his arm, not really listening. "It doesn't matter what you were before your redemption, which deity you worshiped. You belong to Eilistraee now."

  His heart nearly skipped a beat at that. Had Halisstra told the priestesses about his earlier, half-hearted "conversion" to Vhaeraun's worship? Q'arlynd opened his mouth, intending to explain that the dalliances of his youth were just that-mere flirtations, the sort of thing any boy might make the mistake of getting caught up in. He paused before speaking, worried that anything he said might bring his more recent conversion into question. If he protested that he hadn't been serious back then, the priestesses might think him less than sincere with them, too-something that would be a mark against him, when he finally got to meet their high priestess.

  Rowaan, perhaps sensing his unease, gently touched his arm. "The Spider Queen has no hold upon you any more."

  Q'arlynd relaxed as he realized she'd been talking about Lolth, not Vhaeraun.

  "I only paid Lolth lip service," he said. "I spoke the words, because her priestesses ordered me to, but I never gave the Spider Queen my heart." He touched his chest as he said that, an earnest expression on his face.

  Part of what he said was true. He certainly hadn't made the Spider Queen any promises, let alone claimed her as his patron deity. He'd never seen the point. For the living worshipers of Lolth, there was great reward-power and glory-but only if you were female. Males were told their reward would come after death, but from all Q'arlynd had heard, Lolth handed out only more suffering.

  "You've left all that behind in the darkness," Rowaan continued. "You've come up into Eilistraee's light. As long as you've truly taken her song into your heart, you'll dance forever with the goddess."

  "Eternal reward," Q'arlynd whispered, adding a touch of reverence to his voice. He needed to appear suitably awed, even though he knew what Rowaan was saying was too good to be true. "But only, surely, for the souls of those who proved themselves worthy of it in life by aiding the goddess in some substantial way."

  "No," Rowaan said, her voice firm. "To Eilistraee, struggle and success are the same. It's the intent behind the act that truly counts."

  Q'arlynd stroked his chin, mulling that over. If what Rowaan said was true, Eilistraee offered eternal life to anyone who stuck to their vows of aiding the weak and working to convert other drow to the faith. It didn't matter if they actually succeeded in achieving those goals, only that they had tried.

  It was an astonishing doctrine, one that contradicted everything Q'arlynd had learned in life thus far. From all that he'd observed and been taught, the gods demanded either everything or nothing of their faithful. Vhaeraun, for example, insisted on perfection from his followers. The slightest failure in following the Masked Lord's decree would earn his eternal wrath. Even those who had hitherto been the most devout of his followers could find themselves forever barred from his domain. Lolth, in contrast, reveled in chaos and didn't seem to care what her faithful did. Nor did she take much of a hand in the trials they faced after death, leaving that to the minions of her domain. Souls-from the lowest male lay worshiper to the highest female priestess-succeeded in making the passage across the Demonweb Pits by chance as much as anything.

  In contrast, Eilistraee made demands of her followers but showed mercy to them, even when they failed.

  Q'arlynd supposed that was a comforting thought to most, but to him the idea of a deity who weighed not just deeds but intentions was more than a little unnerving, and it seemed a little unfair. Vhaeraun's followers, as long as they produced results that were to their god's liking, could harbor whatever rebellious thoughts they liked in their hearts. Lolth's priestesses could do and think whatever they wanted, since the rewards their goddess bestowed were so often arbitrary. Eilistraee's faithful, on the other hand, had to always be asking themselves not just if they were doing the right thing but if they were doing it for the right reasons.

  Q'arlynd didn't want to have to live up to that. After a lifetime of lying to survive, he wasn't sure himself when he was telling the truth.

  Most of the other females had returned to their quarters. Leliana, however, lingered, talking to another priestess who had also remained behind. Q'arlynd could see that Leliana was keeping an eye on her daughter. Despite his avowed conversion, she still didn't trust him. Not fully.


  "One other question… Is Eilistraee's domain truly a place where the dead are happy?"

  Rowaan seemed startled by his question. "Of course. What could bring more joy than slowly becoming one with the goddess herself?"

  Q'arlynd lowered his voice. "Then why were you so sad when Leliana died?"

  "Because I'd miss her," Rowaan said. She paused a moment then added, "Imagine if someone you loved suddenly disappeared, and you knew it might be many years-perhaps centuries-before you'd see them again. You'd be terribly sad to see them go. You'd cry, too."

  No, I wouldn't, Q'arlynd thought. I didn't, not three years ago, and not now.

  "Then why did you use your ring to change places with her?" he asked. "The same would apply. You would be dead, and she would be alive, and it might be many years before you met again."

  Rowaan winced. "My mother is a powerful priestess. She can do more to further Eilistraee's cause here on Toril than I can."

  She glanced up at the bundles in the trees. "We raise our dead because we must. We're few in number and we can't afford to lose a single one of the faithful from our ranks. That's why the judicator's attack was so devastating. Without a body, we can't resurrect the dead, and there's so much work yet to be done. So many drow haven't yet been brought up into the light. Every one of Eilistraee's faithful is going to be needed in the coming fight." She stared down at Q'arlynd, and for a moment he felt as if a divine being stared into his soul. "Every one."

  Q'arlynd shivered.

  Behind Rowaan, Leliana ended her conversation with the other priestess and walked toward them. Q'arlynd bowed as she approached.

  "What are you two talking about?" Leliana asked.

  Rowaan turned, smiling. "He was asking about Eilistraee's domain and what it's like to dance with the goddess."

  Leliana cocked an eyebrow and turned to Q'arlynd. "Why? Are you planning on dying some time soon?"