Sacrifice of the Widow: The Lady Penitent, Book I (14 page)

Q’arlynd sat some distance from the campfire, cross-legged on the damp forest floor. Well inside the forest, almost at the shrine, there was a chill in the air. The mist that gave the forest its name clung to the ground in patches, leaving a thin sheen of moisture on everything it touched, but at least it was a little less bright under the trees. Their spreading branches filtered out the worst of the moonlight.

He drew his quartz from a pocket of his
piwafwi
and peered through the magical crystal at the surrounding forest. All was as it appeared. There were no hidden watchers lurking in these misty woods. Flinderspeld and the two clerics sat a short distance away, next to a fire,
warming themselves. The freshly killed and gutted body of a small woodland creature hung over the flames from a hook, slowly roasting.

Q’arlynd spoke a word and rendered himself invisible. He removed his belt, laid it across his knees by feel, and placed the magical crystal on the inside of the broad strip of leather close by the buckle. Though the rest of the belt remained invisible, the section of it that was immediately under the crystal became visible. On it were words written in tiny glyphs: Q’arlynd’s spells. Holding the belt close to his eyes so he could read the script, he moved the crystal slowly across the belt, committing his “spellbook” to memory again.

Halfway through, he paused and looked up. Flinderspeld had been talking with the two priestesses as they waited for their end-of-night meal to cook, but he had gone to lean toward Leliana in a conspiratorial pose, one shoulder twisted slightly forward.

Q’arlynd attempted to listen in on Flinderspeld’s thoughts, but the link wouldn’t come. His eyes narrowed. The deep gnome was certainly close enough for Q’arlynd’s rings to have worked their magic upon him. The priestesses must have done something to block the link. That was something Q’arlynd would have to deal with in future, but for the time being he let them think they had their privacy. He had other means, honed over a lifetime of peering around corners and into locked rooms. He cast a spell that would allow him to observe and listen from a distance.

Flinderspeld had removed his gloves. Leliana held his hand and studied the slave ring on his finger.

“… remove it,” she was saying. “When we reach the shrine, I’ll ask Vlashiri to do it. She knows the prayer you need.”

Q’arlynd nodded to himself. Such treachery was to be expected, especially of slaves. Nevertheless, it irritated
him. The ring on Flinderspeld’s finger was the last of Q’arlynd’s slave rings. The other four that had formed a set with his master ring had been buried—together with the bodies of the slaves who had worn them—when Ched Nasad collapsed. Q’arlynd would
not
let the last slave ring be taken from him as well.

Leliana dropped Flinderspeld’s hand and leaned closer to the other priestess. Her voice dropped to a low whisper that Flinderspeld wouldn’t be able to hear but that Q’arlynd’s magic conveyed quite nicely.

“I’m going to have a word with this ‘master’ of his. He’s not acting much like a petitioner, if you ask me.”

Rowaan looked startled. “But he bears a sword-token,” she whispered back.

Leliana looked unimpressed. “So what?” she hissed. “Our tokens have fallen into the wrong hands before. You heard him when I said the name of the priestess who went to Ched Nasad was Milass’ni—he didn’t correct me.”

Rowaan shrugged. “Some people simply aren’t good with names.”

“He’s not that stupid. He’s a wizard, and the academies don’t accept dullards.”

Flinderspeld had risen to his feet as the priestesses whispered together. He backed out of the circle of firelight slowly, trying not to draw attention to himself. He eased down into a crouch and started to blur …

Leliana whirled to face him. “Hold it right there!” She’d drawn her sword, and it was in her fist. Ready.

Q’arlynd scrambled to his feet, one hand darting to his pocket for a spell component.

Flinderspeld halted. He returned to normal again, paler by several shades.

“You’re going to answer some questions, too,” Leliana told him.

Q’arlynd paused, component in hand. It looked as though Leliana wasn’t about to hack his slave in two after
all. She just wanted some answers, and if all went well, Flinderspeld would tell her exactly what she hoped to hear. Q’arlynd put the spell component away.

Instead of questioning the deep gnome, however, Leliana did the unexpected. She spun her sword above her head it in a tight circle until it hummed through the air. Then she halted the blade over Flinderspeld’s head.

“Tell me how your master came to have Eilistraee’s token,” she demanded.

Q’arlynd cursed. Leliana had obviously just cast a spell on his slave, and Q’arlynd could guess what its effects would be. As Flinderspeld opened his mouth to answer, Q’arlynd once again tried to slip into his slave’s mind. Finally, it worked. Whatever magical shield the priestesses had placed between the two rings had lapsed. Q’arlynd heard Flinderspeld mentally rehearsing the story he’d been coached with before they’d stepped through the portal. Flinderspeld was about to say that he’d seen a priestess of Eilistraee give his master the token, but the words never made it from mind to mouth. The deep gnome instead began to babble something else entirely.

“We found the token in the rubble. My master told me to say—”

Furious, Q’arlynd seized hold of his slave’s body. Flinderspeld’s jaw snapped shut so quickly his teeth nipped his tongue. Q’arlynd forced the deep gnome’s face into a smile, preventing him from wincing at the pain that flared in his tongue.

“To tellanyone … that … he … foundthetoken. The … priestess … toldhimshe … didn’t … wantanyoneto … know … she … hadcometo … Ch-Ch-Ched … Nas-Nas …”

Q’arlynd frowned. Why was he being so difficult? Even with a truth spell in effect, he should have been able to control Flinderspeld, yet the words staggered out of the deep gnome’s mouth one moment, spilled out in a rush the next. All the while, Flinderspeld’s mind screamed like a
shrieker, desperately fighting Q’arlynd’s hold on his body while trying to blurt out the truth.

Rowaan stared at Flinderspeld, her mouth open. Leliana was quicker on the uptake. “The wizard’s controlling him,” she hissed at her companion. “He must be close by. Find him.”

Rowaan touched her pendant, whispering the words of a prayer.

Q’arlynd withdrew from Flinderspeld’s mind. The deep gnome continued babbling the rest of his answer to Leliana’s question, but Q’arlynd was no longer concerned with what Flinderspeld might be telling the priestesses. The damage had been done, and if Leliana worked her truth-compelling magic on Q’arlynd and learned what he’d done, things would only get worse. The killing of a fellow priestess—even by accident—was something no drow female would forgive.

Q’arlynd’s hopes of meeting Qilué had just burned up as quickly as a torch-touched web. It was time to end his little jaunt through the World Above and return to Ched Nasad.

But not without his slave.

Who, strangely enough, stood stock still, instead of backing slowly away as he usually did when trouble reared its head.

Q’arlynd cursed, realizing that Flinderspeld must be magically held. Q’arlynd paused just long enough to fasten his belt around his waist then teleported to the deep gnome’s side. A second, quick teleport would—

“There!” Rowaan shouted, pointing straight at him across the crackling fire.

Rowaan’s spell had allowed her to spot him, but it didn’t matter. Q’arlynd slapped his invisible hand down on his slave’s head and spoke the word that would teleport the pair of them to—

Q’arlynd felt his body stiffen. Unbalanced, he toppled
over. He landed heavily on the ground next to Flinderspeld, narrowly missing winding up with his face in the fire. The earthy smell of fallen leaves filled his nostrils.

He heard Rowaan chanting. Suddenly, he could see his nose again. His invisibility had been dispelled.

Leliana rolled him over. She poked his shoulder with the point of her sword, notching a shallow wound in his flesh. If he’d been able to, Q’arlynd would have yelped.

Leliana smiled. “You’re wondering what just happened.”

Indeed he was.

Leliana flipped up the back of Flinderspeld’s vest and pointed at something: a glyph, drawn on the inside of it. Q’arlynd didn’t recognize the glyph, even though it was written using the drow script. It must have been sacred to Eilistraee.

“Rowaan got the idea from watching you reading your belt,” Leliana told him.

Q’arlynd’s eyelids were still working, so he gave an involuntary blink of surprise. He barged his way into Flinderspeld’s thoughts. The deep gnome was the only one who knew where Q’arlynd kept his travel “spellbook,” but Flinderspeld gave the equivalent of a mental head shake. He hadn’t told the priestesses.

Q’arlynd decided that Rowaan was more cunning than he’d given her credit for. She must have spied on him, on an earlier occasion, as he’d replenished his magic.

Leliana let the vest fall. “The glyph was triggered by whatever spell you just tried to cast on your former slave,” she told Q’arlynd. Her eyes were gleaming, triumphant. She took great pleasure in having outwitted him.

Eilistraee’s priestesses, he decided, were no different from any other females. He’d been stupid to let down his guard around them.

“Now you’re going to tell us who you really are,” Leliana continued, “and why you’re so keen on meeting Qilué.”

With that, Leliana spun her sword around her head,
repeating the prayer she’d used earlier, casting a truth spell. Inwardly, Q’arlynd smiled. She would no doubt remove the magical hold only from his mouth and leave the rest of his body enspelled, and when she did, a word would suffice. He’d strike both priestesses blind, dispel the magic that held him rigid, and teleport away with Flinderspeld.

Leliana touched his lips, freeing them, then held the sword over his head.

Q’arlynd tried to cast his spell. His mouth, however, refused to cooperate. Concentrate as he might, he couldn’t speak the arcane word that would trigger his spell. Instead, he found himself meekly answering Leliana’s questions, while the rest of his body remained stiff and uncooperative. He told her about finding the sword-tokens on the priestess’s body, about taking the magical boots and rings for himself, about the rock that had struck her dead.

At this, Rowaan gasped then exchanged a pained look with Leliana.

“Where is her body?” Leliana asked.

“In Ched Nasad. I rendered it invisible then left it where it was.”

“And her pendant?”

“Taken by Prellyn.”

“Who’s Prellyn?”

“Weapons mistress of House Teh’Kinrellz, the House I was serving.”

She let that go without further explanation. “Where are the other sword-tokens she was carrying?”

“Hidden, together with the boots and rings, except …” Q’arlynd tried to choke back the rest but couldn’t. “Except for the one that’s sewn into the collar of Flinderspeld’s new cloak.”

Leliana signaled to Rowaan. The other priestess ran her hands along the deep gnome’s collar, located the sword-token within then cut the seam, removing it. Q’arlynd was
relieved when she didn’t search the cloak further. Inside the hem were things he’d prefer to keep.

Q’arlynd continued babbling as Leliana questioned him some more. He confirmed that he was, indeed, a Melarn, and Halisstra’s brother, that he had used the portal because he was curious about his sister’s fate, that he had no intention of converting to Eilistraee’s faith but wanted to meet Qilué so he could offer his services to her as a battle mage.

By the end of it, when Leliana at last touched his lips again, stilling them, he was sweating. The priestess stared down at him, her expression grim. She was thinking, no doubt, about the priestess who had died in Ched Nasad. She obviously intended to execute him, but not swiftly—she wasn’t nearly enraged enough. She was probably trying to decide which bits of him to slice off first. She was a female, after all, and drow females delighted in nothing so much as torture.

If Q’arlynd had been capable of it, he would have cupped his hands protectively over his groin. That was usually the spot the blade sliced first. It always, the females agreed, produced the most amusing screams.

Leliana glanced at Rowaan. She said something to her in the drow’s silent speech—holding her hand where Q’arlynd couldn’t see it. Rowaan glanced briefly down at Q’arlynd then shook her head.

Leliana sheathed her sword and drew a dagger. She bent down and grabbed Q’arlynd’s
piwafwi
and lifted him slightly from the ground. Behind her, Flinderspeld leaned forward, struggling to speak. His lips struggled to form a word.

Q’arlynd barely managed to prevent his eyes from widening in surprise. The hold spell Leliana had cast on Flinderspeld was wearing off. The deep gnome’s hands twitched slightly as he strained against the spell’s ebbing magic. The moment that hold spell ended, Q’arlynd
could use the deep gnome as a distraction. He thrust his awareness deep into Flinderspeld’s mind, preparing to take it over …

And nearly lost his connection, so surprised was he by what he heard. Flinderspeld hoped to plead with Leliana to spare his master’s life! Or to grab the priestess’s hand, if need be, to prevent her from harming Q’arlynd.

It was inconceivable. Slaves simply didn’t do that, especially slaves who had recently been promised their freedom by that very same priestess. Q’arlynd wondered what Flinderspeld thought he could gain through such an action. Something, surely.

Leliana, meanwhile, moved her dagger closer to Q’arlynd’s throat. His punishment was about to begin. Q’arlynd wished he could close his eyes. In another instant, the priestesses would carve off something painful. Judging by where the knife was, it would probably be the flesh of his face or throat. He braced himself, mentally whispering a prayer to Lolth. A token effort, really, but the goddess was just capricious enough that she might allow his soul to enter her domain once he was dead.

A horn sounded deep in the woods, a strident blare, loud and long.

Both priestesses were startled. The horn sounded again, a sharp, complex series of notes.