by Lisa Smedman
The first thing to do, they agreed, would be to force Wendonai back into the Crescent Blade. That would require an exorcism. “It will have to be a powerful one,” Cavatina said. “We’ll need as many priestesses as we can gather. We’ll remove Qilué to hallowed groundto the Dancing Dell in the Ardeep Forest. We’ll channel the power of the Ladystone.”
Laeral nodded. “But what of the binding? How can we remove Qilué from the throne?”
“Describe again what you saw in the vision.”
Laeral did.
Cavatina shook her head. “I don’t think Wendonai was bound. If he had been, he wouldn’t have been able to break the octogram with his hoof.”
“Then why did the demon submit?”
“Because Lolth ordered him to. She hoped he’d seed my ancestors with his taint. The coronal didn’t summon him. Lolth sent him.”
“But that would mean …” Laeral felt the blood drain from her cheeks.
Cavatina completed her thought. “That it wasn’t a binding rooting Qilué to the throne, but something else: Lolth’s invisŹible webs.” She shuddered, and glanced at Laeral. “Which goddess do you honor?”
“Mystra.”
“Pray to her,” Cavatina said grimly. “Pray that it isn’t too latethat Lolth hasn’t already claimed Qilué.”
Q’arlynd paced across the cavern where the teleportation circle was being drawn, fighting off the urge to clench his fists in frustration. “Qilué,” he whispered. “Can you hear me? It’s nearly time for the casting!”
Behind him, mages from the school of divination streamed into the cavern, carrying boxes filled with the enchanted items necessary to fuel the spells. The items were all from the vaults of Seldszar’s College, as attempting to persuade the highly suspicious Urlryn and Masoj to contribute would have strained their already fragile alliance to the breakŹing point.
Eldrinn supervised the placement of these valuables, while Alexa scribed the teleportation circle that would convey Q’arlynd and the other three masters to the ancient temple. She’d been forced to draw it well away from the city, in this damp cavern, in order to be clear of the Faerzress. The cool, bare walls with their trickles of water would have been soothŹing, in other circumstances.
“Qilué!” Q’arlynd hissed again. “It’s time! Where are you?”
“Is something wrong?” a voice behind him asked.
Q’arlynd spun. Seldszar sat cross-legged on a driftdisc, dark lenses shielding his eyes in preparation for his imminent journey to the World Above. Lying to him would serve no purpose. For all Q’arlynd knew, the Master of Divination was already reading his thoughts. “I can’t reach Lady Qilué,” Q’arlynd admitted. “She promised she’d participatethat she would come the instant she received my summons. But”
“Does she realize the importance of what we’re about to do?”
“Yes. Of course. It will be of enormous benefit to her faith. If the Faerzress no longer draws the drow below, her followŹers will have an easier time convincing them to come to the surface.”
Out of the darkness, and into the moonlight.
Q’arlynd startled. Had he just said that aloud? He cleared his throat. “Could we put the casting off for a little while? Until we’ve located her?”
Seldszar shook his head. “Too much is at stake. By now, spies from the other Colleges will have noticed the shifting of so many magical items. They’re bound to either make a grab for them or attack our Colleges while we’re away. To delay would give them time to marshal their forcesand it might cost us the other masters’ support.” His head shifted slightly as he scrutinized one of the crystals orbiting his head. “Speaking of which, Masters Masoj and Urlryn will be here momentarily.”
“I see. This cycle, then.”
“Immediatelyif not sooner.” Seldszar glanced briefly at Q’arlynd. “Where is Lady Qilué mostly likely to be?”
“In the Promenade.”
“Describe it. And describe her.”
“If she’s in the temple, you won’t be able to scry her,” Q’arlynd told him. “The Promenade is warded against…” His voice trailed off as he saw the look Seldszar was giving him over the top of those dark lenses.
He did as Seldszar asked. When he’d finished, Seldszar chanted a divination, and sat in silence for several moments. His lips parted, as if in surprise. Then a muscle in his jaw clenched.
“Were you able to see the Promenade?”
“I was. There were no priestesses there. Every cavern I scried was awash in oozes.”
Q’arlynd felt a profound sorrow. To his surprise, hearing at arm’s length that the Promenade had been lost struck even deeper than watching, first-hand, the violent demise of Ched Nasad, the city of his birth. “But surely it… Qilué …”
“Is neither within her temple, nor anywhere else I can divine. She’s gone.”
The certainty with which Seldszar said this worried Q’arlynd. He grasped at threads. “There’s another shrine, in the Misty Forest. I know the priestess who presides there. I saved her life, once. Lady Rowaan may know what’s become of Qilué. Even if she doesn’t, she may be able to provide someone of equal stature.”
“Go then. Don’t waste time.”
Q’arlynd bowed. He concentrated on the burl trees that housed the priestesses, spoke a word, and teleported. An instant later, he stood in a forest beside a massive tree. A thought sent him levitating to the nearest burl. As he rose, he saw its door was slightly open. Suddenly wary, he cast a protective spell. A flick of his fingers eased the door open from afar. He peered in and saw there was no one inside. The room within the hollowed-out burl looked as though it had recently been occupied, though: clothes hung from pegs, and the remains of a meal stood on the table, next to a half-full goblet. Wind blew through the branches above, making them creak and groan.
“Lady Rowaan?” he called. “Is anyone here?” He drifted upward, and knocked on the next door. It didn’t open. He tried again at another door: again, no response. He descended and stood in thought a moment, before hurrying through the forest to the shrine itself.
The dozen sword-shaped columns of black obsidian were just as he remembered them. There was no blood on the cirŹcular platform of white stone, nor any other sign of struggle. Q’arlynd, however, couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. He touched one of the sword-columns. The polished stone felt cool under his fingertips. Shouldn’t there have been a priestess here, guarding the shrine?
He felt the kiira tickling his memories. You took your sword oath here.
“Yes.” Q’arlynd didn’t have time for reminiscences. He hurŹried on through the forest, hoping to hear the sound of singing above the sighing branches. It was night, and the moon was up. Perhaps the priestesses were dancing in the glade.
They weren’t.
The mist that had given the forest its name swirled around his ankles like flowing water, reminding him there was one place yet to look. The sacred pool, he thought. There was always someone standing guard there. That priestess would know where Rowaan and the others had gone.
As he headed to the pool, the wind shifted. It carried a new smell to his nostrils: a stench like sour vomit. Cautiously, he approached the sacred pool. His eyes widened as he saw the tangle of toppled and rotting trees that surrounded it. The mist above the pool was a sickly greenish yellow. A bubble rose from the depths of the pool and ruptured, splattering the bushes next to Q’arlynd. Leaves sizzled, turned black, and dribbled away.
“By all that’s unholy,” he swore. He suddenly remembered that each of the sacred pools was connected, via portals, with the Promenade’s Moonspring Portal. Had all of Eilistraee’s shrines fallen?
A gurgling sound warned that the pool was about to erupt again. Q’arlynd backed hurriedly away.
What now, he agonized.
Are you the last?
“The last what?”
The last of Eilistraee’s faithful.
“Impossible!” he t
old the kiira. “The priestesses must be around … somewhere.” The emptiness of the forest, however, cried otherwise. Had Rowaan and her priestesses rushed to defend the Promenade, only to be consumed by oozes? For all he knew, the faithful at each of the shrines could have suffered the same fate: all plunging blindly into their sacred pools in an attempt to reach the Promenade, only to be consumed by the oozes that fouled them.
It must be you, then. You will be the one to call down the miracle.
“Me?” Q’arlynd laughed aloud. “I’m a wizard, not a cleric.”
You belong to Eilistraee.
Q’arlynd didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded too much like slavery.
We will guide you through the ritual.
“Why not take over my body and evoke the miracle yourselves?”
The prayer must be directed by the will of a living worshipera conduit to the goddess.
Q’arlynd nervously stroked his chin. He didn’t want to think of what might follow, were he to let the other masters down. “What if I can’t do it? What if it doesn’t work?”
If your heart is filled with light and your cause is true, we shall not fail.
Q’arlynd frowned slightly. Those words sounded familiarlike the text of some half-forgotten spell. He glanced down at the dancing-figure glyph on his House insignia. Was he Eilistraee’s? He’d spoken her sword oath for convenience’s sake, but much had happened since then. He’d changed.
He glanced around the empty forest, wishing a priestess would materialize. Any priestess.
He started as a voice spoke to him. Seldszar’s voice, clear and distinct, as if the Master of Divination were standing by his side. “The others are here. We’re ready to teleport. Have you found a replacement?”
Q’arlynd squared his shoulders. “I have.”
“Are you certain she’s inside?” Laeral breathed.
Cavatina tensed. She wished Qilué had taught her human “sister” the art of silent speech. “I’m not certain of anything,” she whispered back. “But the trail of corruption led this way.”
Laeral would have to take Cavatina’s word for it. Skilled in woodland lore the mage might be, but she lacked the training to detect the subtle signs of a demon’s passage: a wilted leaf, a strand of web twisting in the rot-scented breeze, the scuff of a claw on bark. Cavatina had followed the trail through the jungle to this spot. Just ahead, through a thick screen of trees and vines, she could see a blur of whitethe tangle of spiderwebs that draped a hill in the jungle. It reminded Cavatina of a trap spider’s lair. From somewhere within came a sound like a harp. The notes were jumbled and shrill, and the tempo kept changing, as if the player were uncertain of the melody, rushing through some parts and struggling with others.
“Keep watch,” Cavatina whispered. “While I pray.”
Laeral cast a spell, and Cavatina felt a protective screen of magical energy crackle to life around them. She touched the holy symbol at her throat and hummed. “Eilistraee,” she . implored in a voice no louder than a breath, “hear my prayer. Guide my footsteps through the dance that is to come, and answer my song. Is Lady Qilué within the ruin ahead?”
A voice, sweet enough to bring tears to Cavatina’s eyes, sang into her mind. Yes.
“How can we get her out of there?”
Cavatina felt her goddess’s hesitation. You can’t.
Despair filled her. She heard Laeral’s breath catch. The other female must have read the disappointment on her face.
“Is there no one who can save her?” Cavatina implored. “Not even you, Dark Maiden?”
A host of possible outcomes blurred through Cavatina’s mind. She had a sense of pieces moving across a sava board too rapidly to follow, as some unseen force tested first this move, then that. At last they stilled. Eilistraee’s reply came, in a voice tinged with a profound sorrow. If Ao so wills, it shall be.
Cavatina startled. What did Ao the Overgod have to do with this? As she pondered what Eilistraee’s answer might mean, she felt the goddess slip from her mind, silent as a shadow.
Cavatina glanced up at the moon. Selűne wore her half-mask this night, and seemed to be staring down at Cavatina. Waiting. Her cold scrutiny tempered Cavatina’s determination. “Go,” she whispered to Laeral, “swiftly, to each of Eilistraee’s shrines. Gather as many of the priestesses as you can. We must perform the exorcism here.”
Laeral glanced around the gloomy forest. The air was thick with the stench of rot and mold, and in the distance, the night twist tree wailed its anguished refrain. “But isn’t this the worst possible”
“This is where it must be done,” Cavatina said grimly. “Eilistraee has decreed it.”
Laeral stood. “What will you do while I’m gone?”
Cavatina nodded at the web-shrouded mound. “I’m going inside.”
“Shouldn’t you wait until”
“There may not be time,” Cavatina said firmly. “Besides, I hunt better alone.”
Laeral nodded. “Keep me alerted to everything you see. Speak my name, and I’ll hear what follows.”
Cavatina agreed.
Laeral spoke an incantation that whisked her away.
Cavatina rose to her feet. Her first impulse was to stride in boldly and challenge whatever foes might be within, but then she glanced at the wooden sword in her hand and nearly laughed. No, she decided, sheathing it. She’d take a page from the Masked Lady’s new songbook, instead. Slip in quietly, and scout around. If need be, she would sing moonfire into existence, and burn the place clean.
She sang a protective hymn, then a glamor that would screen her from sight until she chose to strike a blow. Her third prayer would allow her to slip through the tangle of webs unimpeded. She crept closer to the mound and eased her way into the tangle of web. The sticky silk slid past her body as if her skin were oiled. Just ahead was a haphazardly spun cocoon. Looking around, Cavatina saw dozens more, each of them easily large enough to contain a drow. Several bulged and rocked, as whatever was trapped within struggled to get free.
“By all that dances,” Cavatina breathed. “This looks like Halisstra’s handiwork!”
Was Halisstra still alive? After betraying Cavatina to the demon Wendonai, she had reappeared briefly atop the Acropolis, then vanished without a trace. That had been two years ago. No one had been able to learn where she had disapŹpeared tonot even Qilué.
A sound within the cocoon next to Cavatina drew her attention. Over the discordant music coming from within the mound, she made out a muffled female voice: a word or two of song, then a struggling gasp, then another faint note of song. She was debating whether to tear the cocoon open when another of the cocoons turned slightly, revealing a partially rotten hand protruding through a gap in its side. A spider-shaped ring adorned one of the death-stiffened fingers: Lolth’s symbol.
Cavatina sang a divination. A dim purple glow leaked out of the cocoons that were still twitching: the aura of evil. Cavatina’s eyes narrowed. Did each contain one of Lolth’s faithful? Had Halisstra turned against the Spider Queen?
The answers, Cavatina was certain, would lie within the mound.
She spoke Laeral’s name, and whispered what she’d just seen. As she did, she stared at the cocoons, debating what to do. Four years ago, she would have reveled in slaying an evil deity’s helpless faithful, but now she found the thought repugnant. She said a prayer for those inside, praying they might survive long enough to be cut down and freed by the priestesses Laeral would soon bring. “May you find redempŹtion,” she whispered, her fingers touching the cocoon in front of her.
She crept on through the tangle of webs, closer to the hill they covered. A tree near the base of the hill had fallen, its roots tearing a hole in the earth, and inside this gap lay an adamantine door. More webs dangled, like a curtain, in the empty doorframe. She slipped into a chamber with a depresŹsion in its black marble floor and blasphemous murals showing masked spiders. Drying blood was splattered everywhere. The metallic sme
ll of it overwhelmed the stench of the cocooned corpses outside. The far wall held a mural of a spider with a drow head and a lesser spider dangling from each arm; the abdomen was a dark hole in the masonry. The harp music came from inside it.
Beyond the hole was a second, stone-walled chamber. Cavatina spoke Laeral’s name again and described what she saw. Nine corridors radiated from the second chamber. The harp music came from the one in the middle of the rear wall. More murals adorned the walls of this chamber, but they were obscured by webs and ruptured egg sacs. Movements on the floor caught her eye. Thousands of tiny red spiders, none of them bigger than a drop of blood, coursed back and forth, scurrying first in one direction, then another. They seemed to be moving in time with the musicscurrying, then stopping, then moving in another direction again as its tempo and melody changed.
Cavatina smiled grimly. She liked a challenge. She sprang through the hole and ran through the chamber, leaping graceŹfully from one clear patch of floor to the next in an improvised dance. The spiders thinned once she was inside the corridor, allowing her to slow her pace. After a short distance, the corŹridor opened onto a third chamber. Cavatina, still invisible, peered inside, battling the urge to pinch her nostrils shut against the sulfurous smell within: the stench of demon.
The room was larger than the first two, and circular. It was dominated by an enormous, black marble throne, carved in the shape of an upside-down spider. Halisstra sat atop it, her clawed fingers plucking hair-thin strands of steel that stretched, like harp strings, between the throne’s curled spider arms. The harsh twang of the music trembled through Cavatina’s body, leaving a sludge of fear in its wake. Instinctively, she reached for her singing sword to ward off the music’s effect. Her hand closed around a wooden hilt, reminding her that the singing sword was gone.