Forgotten Realms - The Lady Penitent - Ascendancy of the Last

by Lisa Smedman

  Slowly, an image filled the crystal. At first, it was too small to make out. But as Q’arlynd stared at the crystal and concentrated, the vision filled his mind, obliterating the room in which he sat. It was as if he were a bird, looking down upon a clearing in a forest. Tiny figures—surface elves, but too distant to make out their individual features—moved back and forth across the clearing, entering and exiting a round building whose domed roof reflected flashes of sunlight. The dome, he saw as the image drew closer, was constructed of thousands of leaf-shaped shards of pale green glass that had been fitted together like a puzzle. They were held together not by strips of lead, but by the interwoven branches of trees whose trunks buttressed the building’s sides.

  An awed female voice whispered from inside the lorestone: One of his temples.

  Q’arlynd’s heart quickened. He didn’t need to ask which god the temple honored. The ancestor who had spoken had lived at a time when the Seldarine were still worshiped by the dark elves, and had paid homage to this one, in particular. Q’arlynd knew, without needing to ask, which god she was referring to: Corellon Larethian, First of the Seldarine.

  Creator and protector of the elves, she added in a hushed, reverent voice.

  The god who condemned us, another voice said harshly—a male voice, this time. Q’arlynd recognized it as belonging to one of his post-Descent ancestors.

  Q’arlynd had drifted away from the vision while speaking to the ancestors; he saw it anew as a gauzy curtain, overlayŹing the room. The other three masters stared at the crystal in silence, their eyes squinted against the World Above’s harsh glare. All three wore slight frowns. They obviously didn’t recognize the building.

  “It’s a temple to Corellon Larethian,” Q’arlynd told them. “In the forest of…”

  He waited for his ancestor to supply the name, but there was only silence.

  I never worshiped at that temple, the female said. I have no idea where it is situated.

  Nor do I, the male added.

  Like echoes rippling through a cavern, other voices folŹlowed: Neither do I. Nor do I. Nor I…

  Q’arlynd felt his cheeks grow warm. He turned slightly to Seldszar. He hated to pressure the more senior master. Yet he had no choice.

  Seldszar, however, didn’t acknowledge Q’arlynd’s cue. His eyes remained locked on the temple. “If it’s Corellon’s, that would explain the oak trees,” he observed.

  Thirteen of them, the female voice said. One for each branch that supports the Creator.

  Three fewer, after the Fall, the male added. They withered, without Corellon’s grace.

  At first, Q’arlynd couldn’t understand what they were talking about. Then he remembered what he’d been taught during his short tenure at Eilistraee’s shrine in the Misty Forest. Corellon Larethian had, indeed, once ruled thirteen lesser Seldarine. Two betrayed him—Lolth and her son Vhaeraun—and a third allowed herself to be banished from Arvandor, together with her mother and brother, so the drow might one day find redemption: Eilistraee.

  That number grew to eleven, during the time I trod the Underdark, the male voice said. The Black Archer’s priests slew several of our House.

  Q’arlynd’s ancestor supplied the name of the god who had found favor in Corellon’s court: Shevarash the Black Archer, the once-mortal surface elf who had vowed never to rest, smile, or laugh, until the last drow was slain. A slaughter Corellon condoned—despite the fact that its victims included Eilistraee’s drow faithful, even though they had rejected the wanton cruelty of their race.

  Q’arlynd snorted. So much for the surface elves’ high ideals.

  He realized the other masters were staring at him. They too had withdrawn from the vision. The crystal that had proŹvided the vision left its spot above the table and resumed its orbit around Seldszar’s head.

  Q’arlynd cleared his throat. He repeated what his ancesŹtors had just told him. “You’ll have noted there were thirteen oak trees supporting the dome,” he told the other masters. “A significant number. The vision showed us a temple that was built at a time when Lolth, Vhaeraun, and Eilistraee were still counted among the Seldarine.”

  “But that was thirty millennia ago—before the first Crown War!” Urlryn blurted.

  “Indeed.” Seldszar wet his dry lips. “The vision tasted of dust.”

  “Surely the temple no longer stands,” Urlryn continued.

  Masoj waved a bony hand. “As long as the abjuration is cast in the same spot, it won’t matter if the temple’s fallen.”

  “You miss my point,” Urlryn said. “Without knowing what the spot currently looks like, we can’t teleport to it. Even the most experienced teleportation mage couldn’t find it.” He nodded in Q’arlynd’s direction.

  Q’arlynd inclined his head, proud that the other master was acknowledging his expertise in that field.

  Masoj stared pointedly at Seldszar, “Do you know where the temple stood? Does your lorestone?”

  Seldszar sat quietly a moment, communing with his kiira. “No,” he said at last. He stared pointedly at Q’arlynd’s kiira.

  “My ancestors …” Q’arlynd swallowed nervously. “They, ah, didn’t recognize the forest.”

  It would be somewhere in Aryvandaar, the female voice said. Or Keltormir.

  “But it’s somewhere in the lands that were once home to ancient Aryvandaar, or Keltormir,” he repeated aloud. A memory sprang into his mind. He stared, through the eyes of one of his long-dead ancestors, at a map spread on a table. Kingdoms were labeled, in a flowing hand: Aryvandaar, Illefarn, Miyeritar, Shantel Othreier, Keltormir, Thearnytaar, Eiellur, Syopiir, Orishaar, and Ilythiir. He knew where Miyeritar was—today that portion of the World Above was known as the High Moor. Aryvandaar, he saw, lay just north of it, while Keltormir was well to the south of that.

  Q’arlynd described what he’d just seen.

  “That’s hardly very helpful,” Masoj said.

  “At least it’s better than ‘somewhere on the surface,’” Urlryn countered. “That’s the best most drow can do, when it comes to ancient geography.”

  Q’arlynd stroked his chin, thinking hard, as Masoj and Urlryn traded glares. Something niggled at him. At last he worked out what it was. “There’s something that’s botherŹing me,” he told them. “Sages date the Descent to just over eleven thousand years ago. Yet Master Seldszar’s vision showed us a temple that had to have been built at least thirty thousand years ago. That’s a difference of nineteen thousand years.”

  Urlryn shrugged. “A mythal could have sustained the temple for that long.”

  “That’s indeed possible,” Q’arlynd agreed. “But if the temple was still standing at the time of the Descent, why didn’t my ancestors recognize it? Some of them are dark elves—one of them worshiped Corellon Larethian.” He paused. “I think she didn’t recognize the temple because it was gone before her time. Smothered by the forest, perhaps. But the site must have remained holy, at least until the time of the Descent. I think that’s why the high mages whose magic invoked the Descent chose the spot: because no one, save them, knew where it was.”

  Seldszar tapped his fingers together in a patter of applause. “Well done, my boy, well done.” He nodded at the others. “You see why I chose to nominate him to the Conclave?”

  “We’re still no further ahead,” Masoj protested. “We already knew the casting was done at one of Corellon Larethian’s temples.”

  No, we didn’t, Q’arlynd thought. But he held his tongue.

  Seldszar tapped the empty decanter. “The question we should be asking ourselves,” he told the others, “is why the gorgondy wine gave an image that didn’t precisely answer the question I posed. ‘Where was the spell cast that turned the dark elves into drow?’ was how I phrased it. The vision should have showed us what the area looks like now, not thousands of years ago.”

  Urlryn frowned. “Are you suggesting the high mages stepped back in time?”

  “It’s possible,” Seldszar said. “Gorgon
dy wine is a gnomish vintage, made using water drawn from a series of magical pools whose waters provide glimpses of the past. The pools are also rumored to have other enchantments. Their ripples, for example, are said to spontaneously form teleportation circles to the place being viewed—though it’s unclear whether the traveler arrives there in the present day, or slips into the past.”

  Q’arlynd nodded. He already knew that much. Years ago, when listening in on Flinderspeld’s thoughts, his former slave had briefly thought about the pools. The svirfneblin had been pondering the very question Seldszar just posed—whether he could use the so-called Fountains of Memory to slip back to a time before Blingdenstone fell, and warn its residents of the impending attack. Flinderspeld had decided they couldn’t, for one, very obvious, reason.

  “The pools couldn’t send a traveler into the past,” Q’arlynd said aloud. “If they did, the svirfneblin would have used them already, to do just that, and a number of the calamities that befell their race would never have happened. The fall of Blingdenstone, for example. If the pools do hold teleportaŹtion magic, they must be a gateway to the present.”

  “Past or present—it doesn’t matter,” Urlryn said. He rocked his bulk forward on his cushion, not bothering to hide his excitement. “We can still use the pools to reach the spot where the temple stood. As long as they take us to the right spot, the magic can be undone!”

  “Precisely!” Seldszar agreed. “There is, however, one probŹlem.” He glanced at the empty goblet. “Only the deep gnomes know where the pools lie—and they’re not telling.”

  “Easily remedied,” Masoj said with a chuckle. He nodded at the decanter. “Detain the svirfneblin who sold you the wine. Slice the information out of him one finger at a time. Give him five chances to talk—ten, if he’s stubborn.”

  Q’arlynd felt the kiira grow cool against his forehead. He heard his ancestors’ whispered disapproval. He interrupted. “No need for that, Master Masoj. A svirfneblin who owes me a favor knows the location of these pools. I’ll have the answer, soon enough.”

  Urlryn snorted skeptically, and Masoj made a sour face. Seldszar, however, looked thoughtful. After a moment of staring at the crystals orbiting his head, he slowly nodded. “Do it. Ask him.”

  Q’arlynd hadn’t mentioned the svirfneblin’s gender. Seldszar might have guessed it, of course. He’d have had an even chance of being right. Yet Q’arlynd doubted the diviner ever guessed—about anything.

  Seldszar must have foreseen success.

  Funny, how Eilistraee’s dance worked, Q’arlynd mused. After all these years, he would finally learn what had become of his former slave, Flinderspeld.

  Halisstra walked around the throne, her fingers caressŹing its smooth black marble. The throne was carved in the shape of a spider, resting on its back. The head formed a foot stool; the cephalothorax, the seat; and the bulging abdomen, the backrest. Four legs served to support the chair, while the other four splayed out from either side of the seat and curved toward the ceiling. Between these stretched steel-thread webs festooned with tiny red spiders. Halisstra plucked a strand of web with the tip of her claw. The steel thread vibrated, shedding spiders like drops of blood and filling the audience chamber with a shrill note. The sound sent a visible shiver through the priestess who crawled behind Halisstra, never once lifting her glance from the flagstone floor.

  “Beautiful,” Halisstra said. She closed her eyes to savor the way the note—chill as a draft from the grave—made the hair on her arms rise. Then she leaned down and curled her fingers in the priestess’s long white tresses. She yanked the smaller female into the air and whispered in her ear. “I am pleased with its song. You will be rewarded.”

  The priestess, clad in a bodice-hugging black robe that would have vanished against her skin in the darkened room but for its hair-thin tracery of white lines, winced at the pain of being held aloft by her hair. “Your pleasure is my reward, Lady Penitent.”

  Halisstra leaned closer, until the jaws protruding from her cheeks brushed the priestess’s neck. “And your pain is my pleasure.” She bit, just deep enough to puncture the skin. Then she opened her fingers and let the priestess drop. The priestess fell to her hands and knees, and grunted as the poison took hold, rendering her body rigid.

  Halisstra settled herself on the throne. The marble felt cool against her bare skin. She sang a breeze into existence and used it to set the webs vibrating. A thousand shrill notes encircled the throne, like the hum of fast-spinning blades.

  “Send in the first petitioner,” she ordered.

  Unseen hands pushed a female out of the magical darkness that clouded the arched doorway: a priestess of Eilistraee.

  She staggered into the room. Her eyes had been seared blind, and her fingers broken. Her dark skin was welted from the beating administered by Halisstra’s worshipers, and her lips were swollen and bloody. Yet even as she faltered to a halt, she drew herself erect with a remarkable inner strength.

  Halisstra despised her.

  “Kneel,” she shouted. She wove magic into the word, turnŹing it into a compulsion the priestess could not help but obey. The priestess fell to her knees as if smashed with a hammer. One broken hand lifted to her chest—to the spot where her holy symbol used to hang—then jerked away as it brushed against the obsidian spider that now hung from the silver chain. Her head, however, remained erect. “Eilish … tray … hee…”

  “Blasphemy!” Halisstra shrieked. “Do not utter that foul name in the presence of the Lady Penitent, or it will go harshly for you!”

  The priestess made a gurgling noise. She laughed! Halisstra sprang from her throne. “You… dare!” she hissed. She towered over the priestess, her spider jaws clacking in fury. The eight legs protruding from her chest arched open, ready to grab. Her jaws fairly ached with the desire to bite and rend.

  The priestess spat.

  Halisstra snarled and swept the priestess up to her mouth—then realized this was what Eilistraee’s bitch wanted. A quick, clean death: to be delivered into the arms of her goddess. “I’m not going to give it to you,” Halisstra muttered. She tossed the priestess aside, spun on her heel, and settled herself on the throne. She idly stroked the head of the female who still kneeled, paralyzed, beside the throne, properly subŹservient. The webs continued to shrill.

  She had an idea. “You will be redeemed,” she told Eilistraee’s priestess with a smile. “I give you a choice: the song or the spider.”

  The priestess shook her head. “Nuh.”

  Halisstra shrugged. “Very well then. I’ll choose for you.” She tapped her claw-tipped fingers against the arm of her throne, pretending to consider. In fact, she’d been lying when she’d offered the priestess a choice: the spider’s venom was reserved for those truly worthy of it. “I think you’ll choose … the song.” She turned to the webs beside her and began to play.

  Magic jerked the priestess to her feet. Tugged by the comŹpulsion Halisstra’s bae’qeshel music wove, she staggered in a circle around the throne. Halisstra plucked faster, and the dancer’s tempo increased. The priestess spun in a ragged pirŹouette, her arms flailing and broken fingers raised above her head as she circled the throne. Halisstra gave a gleeful peal of laughter and played on. And on. The priestess staggered and fell, but immediately rose to her knees and continued her dance. Her knees left bloody smears on the flagstones.

  Halisstra watched, gloating. In a moment or two, it would be over. The priestess would crack and repent. She would shed Eilistraee’s faith and cast the tattered skin aside. Embrace the pain, the sorrow, the self-loathing. Sacrifice herself to a force greater than herself. She would become a penitent, redeemed through sweat, blood, and suffering.

  Halisstra would break her.

  The priestess suddenly lunged at the throne. Halisstra reared back in alarm, but it wasn’t an attack. The priestess flopped forward, bringing her neck down atop the web. Steel threads sliced into her neck. Hot, sticky blood sprayed as she fell limp across the arm of the t
hrone like a loose heavy cloak, her head lolling on a near-severed neck

  The web strings fell silent.

  Halisstra hissed her fury. She yanked the priestess off the web, snapping a strand of it, and stared into the slack-jawed face. “You smile?” she screamed. “You fool! You will never, never be redeemed!” She hurled the body across the room.

  The kneeling priestess twitched; her paralysis was startŹing to wear off. Halisstra leaped off the throne and grabbed her minion, intending to tear her apart for her insolence—she hadn’t been given permission to move, Abyss take her—but a whisper of song distracted her. It was coming from the webs on the throne. Halisstra cocked her head, listening. The voice belonged to T’lar, the assassin who’d been the first to accept penitence and redemption.

  Lady Penitent, the webs sang. News from Sshamath.

  Halisstra dropped the priestess and climbed back onto her throne. Sing on, she ordered. It had better be good news, she thought. She wasn’t in the mood for more insolence.

  Streea’Valsharess Zauviir is dead. The temple is ours.

  Halisstra barked out a delighted laugh.

  There is something else you should know. There is a wizard in Sshamath who opposes us.

  “Hardly news,” Halisstra laughed. “All of Sshamath’s wizards are hostile.”

  This one will bear watching. His name is Q’arlynd Melarn.

  Halisstra’s breath caught. Her brother Q’arlynd, alive? “Impossible! He died in the collapse of Ched Nasad!”

  The webs fell silent for a moment. Halisstra frowned. “T’lar? Are you still there?”

  I do not believe the one who calls himself Q’arlynd Melarn to be an imposter, Lady Penitent, T’lar sang back. He told the Conclave he had a sister who was a bae’qeshel bard—a sister who died. He said her name was Halisstra Melarn.

  “Halisstra!” Halisstra howled. She broke into shrill laughŹter. “She’s Halisstra no more. She’s—” Suddenly realizing what she was saying, she snapped her mouth shut. Her spider legs drummed against her chest; She forced them still with an effort. “Describe this wizard,” she ordered.