Sacrifice of the Widow: The Lady Penitent, Book I (25 page)

“And you do?”

“Yes.”

Leliana’s expression was openly skeptical, but she hadn’t thrown him out yet. She wanted to hear more.

“Let me explain. Many years ago, back when I was a novice wizard, a …” he searched for the right word—it wasn’t one the drow frequently used. “A
friend
of mine came to me for help. A Nightshadow. He had a problem he thought my magic could solve.”

“What problem was that?”

“He’d been cursed.” Q’arlynd walked to the center of the room, deliberately testing her willingness to let him invade her private space. When she made no move to block him, he leaned back against the table, stretching himself out. Showing off his body. He smiled, inwardly, as he saw her eyes linger on it.

“You’re familiar with Vhaeraun’s avatar?” he asked.

“Not personally—we’ve never met. Eilistraee willing, I’ll never have that pleasure.”

Q’arlynd chuckled. “Nor have I, but my friend enlightened me. The Masked Lord’s avatar, he said, looks just like a regular drow, except for his eyes. They change color, you see, to reflect his moods. Red when the god is angry, blue when he’s pleased, green when—”

“Let me guess—when he’s envious.”

“When he’s puzzled, actually.” Q’arlynd waved a hand. “But that’s neither blood nor water. What’s important to the story is that this Nightshadow had transgressed against his faith. He’d cast an illusion upon himself that made his eyes change color and tried to pass himself off as Vhaeraun’s avatar. It was a stupid thing to do, and he paid the price for his temerity. Vhaeraun cursed the Nightshadow so that his eyes would forever betray him. They continued to change color, even after his illusion ended, marking him as a cleric of Vhaeraun, and in Ched Nasad, that wasn’t a healthy thing to be.”

“So he asked you to remove the curse?”

“Exactly.” Q’arlynd sighed. “But that spell, unfortunately for him, was beyond my abilities. I was still just a novice, capable of no more than a few cantrips and simple spells.”

Leliana frowned. “Then why did he come to you for help?”

Q’arlynd shrugged and looked away. “He had his reasons.”

“Why? Because you were a Nightshadow, too?”

Q’arlynd stared up into her eyes unflinchingly. “No. For a time, I considered becoming a petitioner—my friend took me into his confidence and told me a great deal about the Nightshadows. I even attended one of their secret meetings, but I never did take up the mask.”

“So were you able to help your friend?”

Q’arlynd sighed. “In the course of telling him I couldn’t help him, it slipped out that I was studying how to render living creatures invisible. He begged me to cast this spell on him, so he could escape the city.”

She nodded. “Did he escape?”

Q’arlynd’s expression hardened. “No. Instead of invisibility, I cast a spell that rendered him unconscious. Then I handed him over to the matron mother of our House.”

That last “slip” had been deliberate. It took less time than he expected for it to sink in. Leliana’s eyes widened almost immediately. “You and this ‘friend’ were blood relatives?”

Q’arlynd nodded. “He was my younger brother.” He glanced away, letting the silence stretch for a moment. “I was ‘rewarded’ for turning him in by being allowed to watch when our mother sacrificed him. She cut his body apart, piece by piece, and offered it up to Lolth. It took …” he deliberately let his voice catch. “It took a very long time for him to die.”

Leliana looked ill. “You betrayed your own brother.”

“I had to. If I helped him, I’d have been marked for sacrifice myself.”

“Not if he escaped.”

“An invisibility spell wouldn’t have helped. It would have worn off long before he escaped the city, and his eyes would have given him away. He’d have revealed who aided him. Lolth’s priestesses, just like Eilistraee’s, have ways of wringing the truth out of a person.”

He sighed. “What I should have done was given Tellik a
swift, clean death, but I wasn’t strong enough to do that.” He glanced up at her. “You grew up in the Underdark. You understand what’s necessary. To survive. You must have … done things, things you later regretted.”

Leliana’s eyes narrowed. “I left all that behind.”

“So have I. I’ve taken Eilistraee’s vows. I’ve come into the light.”

Leliana cocked an eyebrow. “Have you?”

“Yes. That’s why I shared this story with you, painful though it was to relate. I wanted to give you a weapon you could use against any Nightshadows who try to sneak into your shrine in disguise.” He smiled. “This is what I came to tell you. If you word a curse carefully, you can create the same effect, cause a Nightshadow’s eyes to mirror his avatar’s. No matter what disguise he’s wearing, it will give him away.”

Leliana considered this for several moments. “An interesting story,” she said at last.

Q’arlynd felt his face grow warm. “You don’t believe me?” He pointed at her sword. “Then wave that around and cast your truth spell. Make me repeat my ‘story,’ and see if I’m telling the truth.”

Leliana’s mouth quirked in a smile. “No need,” she said. “Before inviting you in, I said a prayer that would cause me to hear a ringing sound, whenever you spoke a lie. It’s much more subtle than the truth-compelling spell I used on you earlier, don’t you think?”

Q’arlynd laughed, his anger having evaporated. Leliana was a drow female to the core. “Nicely done,” he said, tipping his head.

“And you,” she replied. “You told a heart-wrenching tale, complete with confessions and self-recriminations that should have earned my sympathy, and you’ve offered a possible method to reveal our enemies.”

“The method
will
work,” Q’arlynd said. “I’ve seen it tested.”

“I’m sure you have,” Leliana said, “but there’s just one small problem. None of us knows how to bestow a curse.”

Q’arlynd felt a rush of relief. Things were back on track again. “I realize that,” he said solemnly. “Vlashiri’s dead, but I overheard one of the priestesses saying that there are others at the Promenade who are familiar with curses. Send me there, and I’ll teach them how to word a curse to reveal a Nightshadow in disguise.”

Leliana laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Q’arlynd asked.

“They know how to
remove
curses, not bestow them. Eilistraee won’t permit anything else.”

Q’arlynd’s had to struggle to keep his emotions from showing. “I see.”

Leliana moved to the door. “You’re not ready to visit the Promenade yet.”

“Meaning you don’t trust me.”

“Not fully, no.” She opened the door, made ready to usher him out. “But I will send a message on your behalf to Qilué, if only to—”

The rest of her words were lost in a metallic crashing noise that came from below. It sounded like swords clanging together, but faster than any mortal hand could wield them. Doors banged open above and below Leliana’s room.

“The barrier!” a priestess shouted. “Something’s triggered it!”

Leliana sprang for her sword and armor. She shrugged on her chain mail as quickly as someone donning a shirt then ran for the open door. “Come on,” she shouted as she rushed past him. “If it’s the judicator again, we could use you.”

Q’arlynd didn’t wait for a second invitation. It was a chance to fight at Leliana’s side—to at last prove himself to her. He yanked his wand out of its sheath and followed her to the door. Glancing outside as she hurried down the
ladder, he saw magically animated blades whistling by several paces away from the tree, forming a circle around it. He wondered, briefly, why the magical trap hadn’t sprung earlier, when he himself had crossed whatever invisible boundary encircled the tree. Perhaps because he was one of the “faithful” now. Shrugging, he cast a protective spell on himself. Then he jumped and activated his House insignia. As he slowly levitated to the ground, other priestesses scrambled past him down the ladders, swords in hand. One of them already stood at the bottom of the tree, spinning in place, her sword held out in front of her.

She stopped abruptly, pointing with her sword. “There!” she shouted. “He went that way.”

Another priestess called a bolt of moonlight down from the sky. It lanced down into the woods and illuminated, just for a moment, the figure of a running man with black skin. He staggered as it struck the ground next to him and glanced over his shoulder. Even from a distance, Q’arlynd could see his mask.

“A Nightshadow,” he whispered under his breath.

One of the priestesses spoke a word, negating the barrier of blades. As it fell, the other priestesses charged after the assassin, one of them blowing a hunting horn. Leliana ran after them.

“Q’arlynd!” she shouted over her shoulder. “What are you waiting for?”

Q’arlynd hesitated. He’d noticed something she’d missed. Rowaan’s door was open, yet he hadn’t seen her during the mad scramble to chase the assassin. He levitated to the opening and peered inside.

What he saw didn’t surprise him. Rowaan lay on the floor of the room, her eyes bulging, a deep crease in her throat. The assassin must have been strangling her, even as Q’arlynd and Leliana were chatting.

And Q’arlynd had unlocked the door for him.

Leliana would realize that the instant she saw the
dispelled glyph. All of the suspicions she harbored about Q’arlynd would be “confirmed.”

That was it then. He’d never get an audience with the high priestess now, except, perhaps, as a prisoner.

He cursed and sheathed his wand. Then he teleported away.

Q
ilué was in the Cavern of Song, lending her voice to those of the other priestesses, when Iljrene’s urgent message came.
The Nightshadows have struck again. The Misty Forest this time. They’ve stolen another soul. Her body has just been brought to the Hall of Healing
.

I’ll be there at once
, Qilué replied. She hurried out of the cavern, gathering up her clothes from the floor as she went.

As she strode down the passageways that led to the Hall of Healing, Qilué’s expression was grim. It was the third soul Vhaeraun’s assassins had claimed: one from a priestess at the Gray Forest shrine, another from a priestess of the Chondalwood, and the third, from the Misty Forest.

Two other souls that had been stolen had been restored, praise Eilistraee. The soul of Nastasia, the first to fall, had been set free by unknown causes, and the priestess who had been killed at the shrine in the Forest of Lethyr had also been raised from the dead after the assassin who had attacked her was killed. His body had been questioned by a necromancer—an unpleasant, but necessary task. The corpse had revealed that Malvag was alive. The pair had met a day before the attack the Lethyr shrine. The plan to open a gate was indeed going ahead, and when it came to fruition, the souls of Eilistraee’s priestesses would be consumed.

Iljrene was waiting for Qilué in the Hall of Healing, beside another priestess Qilué knew well—Leliana. Qilué had taken Leliana’s sword-oath more than a century ago, when she had first come up from below.

Leliana turned, a stricken look on her face, as Qilué entered. “Lady Qilué,” she said. “It’s my daughter Rowaan. The Nightshadows killed her and Chezzara can’t raise her from the dead. Her soul …”

Qilué touched Leliana’s arm. “Let’s be certain first.” She glanced past Leliana at the alcove where two novice priestesses hastily prepared a bed on which to lay a body. Two other priestesses—both just teleported from the Misty Forest, judging by the snowflakes still melting in their hair—stood by, holding the corners of a damp blanket on which Rowaan’s body lay. Even in death, she looked remarkably like her mother.

Qilué moved closer and noted the telltale mark of an assassin’s cord around Rowaan’s neck. She murmured a prayer of detection, and a distinctive shadow appeared across the lower half of the dead priestess’s face.

Leliana moaned.

“Tell me about the attack,” Qilué prompted.

“It happened late last night,” one of the priestesses holding the blanket answered. “The Nightshadow who did
it got away. So did the one who aided him.”

Leliana’s face twisted with anguish. “It’s my fault,” she blurted. “I was stupid. I
trusted
him.”

Qilué frowned, not quite understanding. “This second Nightshadow—you knew him?”

Leliana nodded. “He posed as a petitioner.” A bitter laugh burst from her lips. “He even took the sword-oath, but he betrayed us in the end. He dispelled the glyph on Rowaan’s door then kept me talking while the other Nightshadow went into her room and …” Her voice faltered, and her eyes strayed to the priestesses who were gently laying her daughter’s body on the floor. “Stole her soul.”

Leliana tore her eyes away from the body of her daughter. She took a deep breath then spoke again, shaking her head all the while. “I still can’t understand it. I questioned him under a truth spell, and he gave his name and the details of his coming to the surface readily enough. He wasn’t truly a petitioner—he only sought us out in order to find his sister—but he fought beside us when the judicator attacked, and later, when he took the sword-oath, I thought that perhaps he had—”

“Leliana,” Qilué said, cutting the other priestess off in mid-flow with a touch on the arm. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. One piece of the story at a time, please. What name did this male give?”

“Q’arlynd Melarn.”

Qilué gasped. Moonfire danced on her skin, washing the cavern with light. There was the second coin, dropped at her feet. It had landed, as Eilistraee had foretold, on the side that was betrayal. “Tell me everything about this male—and swiftly, but start at the beginning this time.”

Qilué listened as Leliana’s tale unfolded, occasionally interrupting with a question. When it was done, she stood in thought for several moments. “It seems odd that he confessed his knowledge of Vhaeraun to you on the very night the Nightshadow struck.”

“Q’arlynd
must
be a Nightshadow,” Leliana insisted. “He even admitted attending their meetings.”

“Did he really?” Qilué said softly. An idea was beginning to take shape. “And now he’s promised himself to Eilistraee.” She paused. “Perhaps
he’s
the one that will aid her.”