Sacrifice of the Widow: The Lady Penitent, Book I (33 page)

Malvag glanced at the drift disc where the prayer scroll waited. What Valdar was suggesting would be extremely difficult. Malvag would have to control the wizard’s mouth while speaking the words of the prayer himself at the same time, but perhaps it could be done. He’d read the spell in silence enough times that he could have recited it aloud from rote.

“Raise him from the dead,” he told Valdar. “The instant the gate is open, and Vhaeraun passes through it, we’ll kill the infiltrator. Permanently, this time.”

Qilué grasped the edges of her scrying font, staring down with intense concentration into the holy water that filled it. The wide alabaster bowl glowed like a harvest moon from the light that filled the room in which it stood—the silver fire that poured off Qilué’s body like light from a torch. Qilué was barely aware of Jasmir, the moon
elf priestess standing behind her. The scenes unfolding in the holy water that served as her window on the world beyond were deeply disturbing.

“Send another six priestesses and two score warriors to the Chondalwood,” Qilué commanded.

The pale-skinned Jasmir whispered a sending, relaying the command. She was fully dressed for battle in leather armor whose spiral patterns matched the tattoos on her forearms. Her long white hair was in two braids, tightly bound into a bun at the back of her neck.

Qilué stared into the scrying bowl, tense with anticipation. It was focused on the shrine in the Chondalwood, far to the southeast. There Eilistraee’s priestesses fought a bloody battle against driders who had boiled up out of the Underdark without warning—just as they had in the Misty Forest last month. Even as Qilué watched, a drider knocked a priestess to the ground with a web and landed on her back, opening its spider fangs wide to bite.

Qilué stabbed a finger down into the water and sang a note that was strident and shrill. The drider shook his head, disoriented. As it did, a sword came dancing through the air, slashing the monster nearly in half. A priestess ran into view behind it, and the sword returned to her hand. She kneeled on the snow-covered ground beside the first and tore away the webs, freeing her companion.

Qilué didn’t wait to see the rest. She shifted the scrying’s focus to a frozen pool of water not far from the shrine itself. A moment later, its icy cap exploded upward as a priestess burst out of the shallow pool from below, sword in hand, the first of the reinforcements Qilué had just ordered to the Chondalwood.

Qilué shifted the scrying rapidly from one location to the next, checking the other shrines. From the Moonwood to the Shaar, more than half of Eilistraee’s holdings were under attack. Priestesses, backed up by lay worshipers, fought pitched battles at the Dancing Dell,
in the Velarswood, the Gray Forest, the Yuirwood, the Forest of Shadows. Each battle involved creatures of the Underdark not normally found on the surface: driders, fighting with webs, poison, and spells; neogi—creatures that looked like spiders with wormlike necks and tiny heads filled with needle-like teeth—using their magic to dominate those who fought them, turning Eilistraee’s faithful against each other; and chitines, fighting with four weapons at once, one in each spindly hand. Through it all, spellgaunts dashed here and there, gobbling up magic. Their presence alone hinted at the authors of the highly coordinated attacks—the Selvetargtlin, yet none of Selvetarm’s clerics could be seen.

Where were they?

“A dozen priestesses and a score of warriors to the Gray Forest,” Qilué ordered.

Jasmir dutifully repeated the order. She closed her eyes a moment, listening, then relayed the reply. “Iljrene can only send nine priestesses. That’s the last of them, unless you want to start sending the Protectors.”

Qilué shook her head. “Keep the Protectors here,” she ordered. “We’ll need them if the Promenade is attacked.” And that it would be attacked, she was certain. It was too glaring an omission, but when? And from which direction? Two Protectors, each armed with a singing sword, stood guard at every possible entrance, including the portals. Qilué scried each of those pairs of priestesses in turn, but all was quiet.

She frowned. Should she really hold her best fighters back? A singing sword would certainly help tip the balance in any of the battles she’d just observed.

A faint tapping sounded at the room’s only door. Qilué looked up as Jasmir hurried to answer it. Iljrene would have used a sending to contact her, and a lay worshiper had no business here, not now. Before Qilué could caution Jasmir, the priestess opened the door.

A feather zipped inside the room and fell at Qilué’s feet. Its silver spine was bent nearly double and its vanes were split and fouled with spiderwebs and dust, but Qilué recognized it at once as the magical token she’d given Jub. She’d been wondering where the spy had gotten to, and by the looks of the webs sticking to the quill, he’d had some bad luck.

Turning from her font, she bent and picked up the quill. She straightened the spine then touched the nib to the floor. She spoke the command word and watched as the quill slowly and laboriously scratched out its message in glowing silver letters on the dark stone floor.

Yes, Qilué thought. She’d guessed that already. The attacks took place after the moon had risen, ensuring that the Moonspring could be used to send reinforcements.

She nodded. Just as she’d suspected. But why sixty-six? And why hadn’t the attack come yet?

Qilué knew who her enemies were. Most likely the exiles, the renegade Selvetargtlin who were tossed out of Eryndlyn for “blaspheming” by worshiping Selvetarm in his own right instead of as a servant of Lolth.

The quill was still scratching out its message. THEYR GOING TO JUMP ON THE TEMPLE, it wrote. Then it fell to the floor.

Qilué stared down at the quill a moment more, as if willing it to continue, but the message was at an end. And it hadn’t told her much. The feint Jub warned of was already in progress, and though Qilué had been forced to send troops to reinforce the shrines, she’d held back her Protectors—two dozen of her best warriors—to maintain the Promenade’s defenses. The Protectors would be outnumbered three to one if sixty-six Selvetargtlin did attack, but each Protector was armed with a singing sword and powerful spells. Whatever direction the Selvetargtlin chose to attack from, they would be forced to fight their way in through a choke point that would allow Eilistraee’s faithful to concentrate their spells. One or two Selvetargtlin might be able to battle their way inside the temple, but they wouldn’t last long.

Qilué turned her attention back to the scrying bowl. Shifting her awareness, she concentrated on Jub. For the past few days, her attempts to scry him had been blocked by something. She’d assumed that to be Daurgothoth’s doing. The undead black dragon didn’t appreciate anyone peering into his lair, but as the marketplace of the abandoned city came into focus, she began to wonder. Why, suddenly, was she able to scry the dracolich’s lair? Had some protection suddenly fallen—or been removed?

The water in the bowl rippled then stilled. Qilué looked down on a severed head. Jub’s. It lay next to a foul-looking pool. What remained of the head was deeply pitted by acid.

“Eilistraee have mercy,” Qilué whispered.

Jasmir peered over her shoulder. “Who was it?”

“A lay worshiper. One who deserved better than that.” There was no time to mourn Jub’s loss. Later, when the crisis was at an end, she would send a priestess to recover what was left of Jub so that he could be resurrected.

She pulled her focus back, noting the vast, empty cavern. The Selvetargtlin seemed to have abandoned it, but where were they?

“Send a warning to each pair of Protectors,” she ordered. “An attack by the Selvetargtlin is imminent.”

“Lady, I have already told Iljrene about the warning,” Jasmir said, nodding down at the message on the floor. Her leaf-green eyes gleamed in anticipation of the battle to come. One slender hand rested on the hilt of her sword. Ready. “Iljrene is relaying it to the Protectors even as we speak.” She glanced down at the floor, her brow furrowed. “‘Jump on the temple,’” she repeated. “Does that mean the attack will come from above?”

Qilué shook her head, only half listening. The tide had finally turned in the Moonwood. The priestesses there were beating the chitines back. The battle in the Gray Forest was the same. The extra priestesses Qilué had sent had managed to drive the neogi off, and in the Shaar …

Something moved against her hip. Her bag bulged and thrashed, as if an animal were trapped inside it and was trying to claw its way out. Qilué swore and tore the bag from her belt, tossing it to the ground. She started to sing a spell, but before she could complete it, a knife blade pierced the bag from within. The bag suddenly ruptured in a tremendous explosion of magical energy that sent the water in the font sloshing back and forth.

Her ears still ringing from the blast, Qilué stared down at the spot where the magical bag had lain. The gem it had held was gone. No, not gone. Qilué kneeled and touched what felt like sharp-edged but sticky grit—the crumbled remains of the gem. Her fingers came away dotted with tiny flecks of blood.

All at once, she understood what form of conjuration magic the gem had contained. It had been the focus of a teleportation spell. Whichever Selvetargtlin it had been attuned to had teleported into Qilué’s magical pouch, realized something was wrong, and tried to cut his way free. Piercing the bag from within had ruptured the extradimensional space it enfolded—with disastrous results. The
Selvetargtlin was as good as disintegrated.

This was the jump Jub had warned her about. And the cleric who’d teleported into her pouch wasn’t the only one making it. Sixty-five others would have made similar jumps. To other gems, like the one Thaleste had found. Gems that must have been somewhere close to the spot where Thaleste and Cavatina had encountered the aranea—the Selvetargtlin who had carried the gems inside the Promenade and died to protect that secret.

“Lady Qilué,” Jasmir asked, her voice tight with worry.

“What is it?”

Qilué didn’t bother to answer. She whirled and grasped the sides of her scrying bowl. Images flashed through the holy water one after another: the caverns south of the Sargauth River, and the rooms in the ceiling above them. Nothing. All were empty.

“Where?” she said, her voice tight. “Where?”

Jasmir tensed. Her lips parted to frame a question. Closed again.

Qilué shifted her attention to the Promenade itself. She made a sweep of the Hall of Healing, the priestess’s cavern, the main living quarters, the garrison and armory, the Cavern of Song and the Moonspring. Nothing. Nothing.

All empty. No Selvetargtlin.

Where were they? One of the connecting corridors, perhaps?

As a corridor near the river came into view, Qilué saw what she’d been dreading. Selvetargtlin dropped into that corridor through a hole in the ceiling and fanning out into adjoining passages like an erupting hill of termites. Half a dozen of them, led by a judicator, had already reached the Cavern of Song. As Qilué watched, horrified, they toppled the statue, revealing the hidden staircase that led to the Pit of Ghaunadaur and disappeared down it. The Selvetargtlin immediately behind the judicator carried an iron rod, its perfectly spherical head so dark that
looking at it was like staring down the deepest well. Qilué recognized it at once as a rod of cancellation, its disjunctive magic capable of snuffing out even the most powerful of magic, including the seals on Ghaunadaur’s Pit.

Silver fire flared around Qilué as she used her magic to shout a warning to all of the Protectors at once.

The Selvetargtlin have breached the southern corridors of the Promenade. All Protectors converge there at once! Iljrene, to me, at the Mound
.

Jasmir gasped. She, too, had heard the warning. Metal rasped as she drew her sword from its scabbard.

“Ready, Lady!” she cried.

Qilué touched the other priestess’s shoulder. “I need you here. Continue scrying. Direct the Protectors to where they’re most needed.”

Jasmir’s shoulders slumped, but only for a moment. “Yes, Lady,” she said briskly, turning her attention to the font.

Qilué meanwhile sang a prayer that would send her to Eilistraee’s mound.

As Jasmir and the scrying room vanished from sight, Qilué wondered who would arrive at the Mound first. She and Iljrene—or the judicator and his Selvetargtlin.