Sacrifice of the Widow: The Lady Penitent, Book I (6 page)

A bloody hand trembled toward the holy symbol that hung at the aranea’s neck. Cavatina, in agony from her many wounds and with blood running down her sides in rivulets, realized that the Selvetargtlin was trying to cast one last spell. She slashed down with her moonblade at the aranea’s wrist, severing its hand. Blood rushed from the stump like water from a broken pipe. The aranea trembled then lay still.

Cavatina had just started to turn away when the body exploded, pelting her with a rain of bloody flesh and slivers of bone. She ducked then glanced at the spot where the aranea had fallen. All that lay there was a blood-soaked robe, empty and loose on the cavern floor. The largest piece of the body was the size of a fingernail.

There was no time to contemplate what had just happened. Blood loss had made Cavatina weak, and her legs felt ready to collapse at any moment. Calling upon her goddess, she sang a healing spell. Eilistraee’s moonlight illuminated her body, knitting flesh and replenishing the blood she’d lost. The shallow cut on Cavatina’s cheek, however, remained. It would close in time, but for a while
the Selvetargtlin’s dark magic would deny it the benefits of magical healing.

There was no time to worry about that, though. Cavatina hurried around the column, looking for Thaleste.

The novice lay face-down on the cavern floor, buried under a thick tangle of spiderweb. Tearing the sticky mass away, Cavatina saw a bloody puncture in the back of Cavatina’s neck: a bite. The aranea’s venom wasn’t usually fatal—it typically sapped the strength, rather than killing outright—but in some instances it could kill. Dropping to her knees, Cavatina laid her palm across the wound and sang a prayer of healing. Under her touch, the wound closed. A second prayer drove the remaining toxins from the novice’s body.

Groaning, Thaleste sat up. Cavatina placed a hand on her shoulder, steadying her. It was only then that she noticed the novice’s sword lying beside her. Its tip was blooded, but just barely—whatever wound the weapon had inflicted had been slight indeed.

Thaleste touched the back of her neck with a shaking hand then stared at her fingers, obviously surprised to see no blood. She was still inexperienced enough to be astonished by the fact that another drow had come to her aid.

“Did we kill her?”

Cavatina hung her holy symbol around her neck. “We did. Your sword thrust weakened her, and I finished the job.”

Thaleste smiled. A seed of confidence was in her eye, and over time, it would grow.

Cavatina whispered a prayer and sent,
Iljrene, it was a Selvetargtlin. I killed her. We were wounded but have healed
.

Iljrene’s reply came at once:
Well done, but keep alert. Where there’s one Selvetargtlin, there’s usually more
.

Cavatina nodded, still troubled by the aranea’s final words. The Selvetargtlin hadn’t just been talking about the spellgaunt she’d somehow smuggled into the caverns
surrounding the Promenade but about something else, something that had put an evil gleam of pleasure in her eyes even as she died.

She’d gone to her death secure in the knowledge that Selvetarm would reward her for whatever dark service she’d performed.

Q
’arlynd pointed a finger at the jagged slab of rubble and whispered an incantation. The slab—a piece of calcified webbing that had once been part of the wall of House Ysh’nil—rose into the air, revealing a gap in the rubble beneath it.

He nodded at the svirfneblin who stood next to him. “In you go.”

The deep gnome cocked his bald head to the side. His eyes, black as pebbles, studied the gap in the rubble. “Looks unstable,” Flinderspeld said in a low, raspy voice.

Q’arlynd’s nostrils flared in irritation. “Of course it’s unstable,” he snapped. “The city didn’t land in neat rows, like stacked blocks. It
collapsed.”

“I’d feel better if it was shored up first.”

Q’arlynd moved his finger slightly, levitating the slab of rubble over the spot where Flinderspeld stood. He nodded meaningfully at it. “You’ll feel worse if I drop this on your head.”

The deep gnome shrugged. “If you do, you’ll have no one to go in after whatever radiated that magical aura you saw.”

Q’arlynd’s eyes narrowed. He levitated the slab to one side and set it down, gently enough that the only noise it made was a slight grating of stone against stone. Then he held up his left hand and waggled his index finger—the one with the dull black ring on it, the ring whose only surviving counterpart was on Flinderspeld’s own hand. “Don’t make me use this.”

The deep gnome glared. “All right, all right. I’m going.” He clambered toward the hole, muttering under his breath.

Q’arlynd narrowed his eyes. He should discipline Flinderspeld, he knew, flay him and leave him staked out for lizards to feed on, but the deep gnome did have his uses. Like all those of his race, he showed up as little more than a blur—if at all—to anyone trying to scry him or otherwise locate him by magical means. It made Flinderspeld the perfect vehicle for carrying objects Q’arlynd didn’t want found—the rings Q’arlynd had recently lifted from the body of the dead priestess, for example.

The deep gnome didn’t realize he was being utilized in such a way, and he had no idea that the new clothing Q’arlynd kept bestowing upon him had items sewn inside it. He regarded these “gifts” as kindness. He’d concluded that Q’arlynd must have purchased him out of some sense of compassion, after seeing the sorry state the slavers had reduced the deep gnome to. A notion that was laughable, really. Q’arlynd’s heart was as dark as that of any drow.

“I see something!” Flinderspeld called out. “It’s a … dagger of some sort. It’s silver with a thin blade, shaped
more like a sword than a dagger really. It’s strung on a chain like a pendant.”

Q’arlynd knew this, of course. He’d placed the priestess’s pendant there himself for the detection spell to reveal.

“There’s a much smaller sword next to it,” Flinderspeld continued. “It’s no longer than my finger. Another piece of jewelry, I think.”

“Bring both to me.”

As Flinderspeld began crawling back through the crevice, Q’arlynd heard rubble shift behind him. That would be Prellyn, the velvet-gloved fist of Matron Teh’Kinrellz. As he’d arranged, she’d “spotted” him sneaking out of the Teh’Kinrellz stronghold earlier and had followed him here. Q’arlynd pretended to be startled by her approach.

“You’ve set up your own excavation, I see,” she said in a voice silky with menace. “Find anything interesting?”

“Nothing.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Just an empty hole.”

“Liar.”

Prellyn seized his chin and jerked his head up, forcing him to meet her eyes. Like most drow females, she stood head and shoulders taller than he. Red eyes smoldered under brows that pinched together in a perpetual frown. Her arms were more muscular than his own, her hands roughly calloused. The wrist-crossbow strapped to her forearm was loaded, its barbed point uncomfortably close to Q’arlynd’s cheek. If he turned his head, it would gouge his eye.

“Still,” Prellyn whispered, “I like a boy with some fire in his eye. A fire …” Her free hand drifted down between his legs, “that kindles at my command.”

She kissed him. Hard. Q’arlynd felt himself responding to her touch. Her air of menace was as exhilarating as a freefall. She was going to take him. Now. And when she was done, she’d punish him for daring to scavenge on his own. Not with a whipping, like those doled out to common
House boys, but with something far more subtle. A wounding spell, perhaps, one that would burn a thousand tiny spider bites into his flesh.

He hoped it was going to be worth it.

Prellyn forced Q’arlynd onto his back atop the rubble and straddled him. She ran a finger down his nose, lingering over the spot where it had been broken decades ago. Then she yanked open his shirt.

Aroused though he was, Q’arlynd had a more pressing need. Information.

Flinderspeld was hiding in the hole, unwilling to come out. He’d blurred himself and was all but invisible, though the ring he wore allowed Q’arlynd to overhear his every thought whenever his master wished. At the moment, Flinderspeld was mentally shaking his head at Q’arlynd’s infatuation for Prellyn—a drow female he knew his master feared as much as he himself did. Flinderspeld also watched for a chance to slip away and hide the magical booty his master had just found.

Sometimes, Flinderspeld could be a little too efficient.

Q’arlynd seized control of his slave’s body and forced Flinderspeld to drop his magical camouflage, crawl out of hiding, and attempt to sneak away.

Prellyn’s attention was drawn to the deep gnome. She stood, leaving Q’arlynd forgotten on the rubble. Her eyes locked on the pendant.

“Give me that,” she ordered.

Q’arlynd made Flinderspeld hesitate. “You heard her, slave,” Q’arlynd said in a harsh voice as he sat up. “Give it to her!”

Flinderspeld looked at his master, confused. What was Q’arlynd up to? Normally the wizard expected him to lie low so he could keep whatever booty he’d found to himself.

Q’arlynd, growing impatient, gave a mental jerk. The deep gnome’s hand shot forward. The pendant, which
Flinderspeld held by its chain, swung back and forth like a pendulum.

Prellyn reached out to grab it then suddenly recoiled as if she’d been about to touch something smeared with contact poison.

Q’arlynd climbed to his feet. Through the rings, he could sense Flinderspeld’s dawning understanding. His master
wanted
Prellyn to see the silver pendant. The deep gnome also wondered why she was so afraid of it.

Q’arlynd feigned ignorance. “What’s wrong?” he asked Prellyn. He moved toward Flinderspeld and bent for a closer look at the pendant, pretending to be observing it for the first time. “Interesting emblem on the blade,” he said, reaching out to touch it. “A circle and sword. If I’m not mistaken, those are the symbols of—”

The hiss of steel—a weapon being drawn from a scabbard—was his only warning. He jerked his hand back just as Prellyn’s sword cut through the chain Flinderspeld was holding. Had Q’arlynd not moved, the blade might have sliced open his hand. The pendant clattered to the ground.

Flinderspeld still held the tiny sword. Q’arlynd made the deep gnome place it on a flat chunk of rock then released his mental hold on Flinderspeld, letting him ease away. He didn’t want the deep gnome to wind up on the receiving end of Prellyn’s wrath. If he did, Q’arlynd would be without a slave, and without a coin to his name, he couldn’t buy another.

“That pendant is Eilistraee’s holy symbol,” Prellyn spat, her mouth twisting as if at a foul taste. “Be thankful I was here to keep you from touching it.”

“I am,” Q’arlynd said smoothly. He pointed. “And that tiny sword? Is it connected with Eilistraee’s worship, too?”

Prellyn used the tip of her sword to flick the tiny blade into a deep crevice in the rubble. “That’s not something you want to touch, either.”

“I won’t,” Q’arlynd said, “but what is a holy symbol of Eilistraee doing here, in Ched Nasad?”

“It must have been carried here by one of her priestesses before the city’s fall. They do that sometimes—come below to try to subvert Lolth’s children and seduce them up to the surface realms.”

“Where the simpletons who fall for it are immediately killed, no doubt.”

Prellyn laughed. “How little you know, male. Eilistraee’s followers actually welcome strangers into their midst.”

“Any stranger?” Q’arlynd asked, thinking of his sister. “Even one of Lolth’s faithful?”

Prellyn gave him a sharp look. For a moment, Q’arlynd thought she might not answer. “If the drow professes a willingness to turn to Eilistraee’s worship, yes.”

“But … Q’arlynd furrowed his brow, pretending to work the thought out aloud. “How do they know who is lying and who is a genuine petitioner?”

“They rely on …
trust,”
she said, switching to a word in the language of the surface elves. There was no true equivalent in either Drowic or High Drow. “They hand those tiny swords out to whoever asks for them. It is their greatest weakness, and it shows how low they have fallen. Trust among drow is like a shard of ice in lava, except that ice lasts longer.”

Q’arlynd dutifully laughed at her joke, though he knew full well that no drow would ever be as stupid as Prellyn had just made Eilistraee’s priestesses out to be. Assuming Prellyn was right, he’d just learned what those tiny swords were for.

“Those who are duped into turning away from Lolth are fools, of course,” Prellyn continued. “Not only do they face the Spider Queen’s wrath but the ravages of the surface realms as well. The sunlight blinds them, and they fall victim to strange diseases. Their armor and weapons crumble to dust, leaving them defenseless. Drow
aren’t meant to live on the surface. We’re creatures of the Underdark—Lolth’s children.”

Q’arlynd nodded dutifully. Prellyn was merely repeating what the priestesses at the temple taught. His instructors at the Conservatory had provided other even more dire warnings, back when Q’arlynd had been a novice wizard, teaching that all magical items crafted by the drow lost their powers when removed from the energies of the Underdark and exposed to the light of the sun. Though that as no longer the case, they continued to admonish against journeys to the World Above.

Q’arlynd, however, didn’t believe the stories of sickness and misery. He knew exaggeration when he heard it. He’d once met a drow who lived on the surface and survived there quite nicely, thank you very much, but that had been long ago.

He wondered whether Eilistraee’s worship was prevalent in whatever surface realm the portal led to and whether Halisstra, if she had survived, had embraced that heretical faith. If so, it would explain why she’d never returned to Ched Nasad. Halisstra’s professed worship of Lolth had always seemed, to Q’arlynd, a touch insincere.

He stroked his chin, pretending to stare thoughtfully at the rubble. “This ruin bears the glyphs of House Ysh’nil,” he said, naming the minor House whose surviving members were currently a thorn in House Teh’Kinrellz’s side. “Do you suppose someone in that House secretly worshiped Eilistraee?” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “That wouldn’t bode well for the survivors, especially if the Jaezred Chaulssin knew of it.”