Sacrifice of the Widow: The Lady Penitent, Book I (29 page)

D
hairn stared down at the head Daurgothoth had tossed on the cavern floor. The grisly trophy was deeply pitted with acid, but enough of it remained to show that the intruder had been a half-breed—drow tainted with orc, by the look of the oversized incisors.

“You and I had an agreement,” the great black wyrm hissed.

Only its head and neck were visible. Its body was still submerged in the pool that filled one end of the cavern. Foul-smelling water dripped from its emaciated flesh into the water below. A moment before, the pool had been clear, but it had grown murky and stank like rotting garbage. The Selvetargtlin would have to expend magic on purifying it before they could drink from it again.

The dracolich’s withered tail swept back and forth through the foul water in obvious agitation. “You agreed that your priests would use only certain parts of the city, and not disturb me.”

“He’s not one of ours,” Dhairn told the dracolich. “He must have been a treasure hunter from the World Above.”

Bone scratched against rock as the dracolich flexed its claws against the rocky edge of the pool. “He was climbing up from below. He could only have come from a spot near this cavern.”

Dhairn stiffened. “You’re certain?” Leathery muscles creaked as the dracolich nodded. Its skin was dark as soot, its wrinkled eyes like enormous wrinkled balls. “Yes,” it hissed. Its acid-tinged breath reeked enough to make Dhairn’s eyes water.

Dhairn scowled at the remains of the half-orc head in frustration. The jaw hung by a thread of muscle and the tongue was an acid-eaten stub. The lips were burned away, exposing the teeth. There wasn’t enough left of the head to get any intelligible answers out of the corpse. The dracolich had acted rashly. Dhairn would have liked to have learned whether the intruder was alone.

He poked the head with the tip of his sword, rolling it over. “Did the intruder say or do anything before he died? Anything that would lead you to believe he was of a particular faith?”

“He couldn’t speak. He’d polymorphed himself into a spider.”

Dhairn inhaled sharply. “Lolth.” He whispered the name under his breath, the word sharp as a curse.

That didn’t bode well. The priestesses of Eryndlyn must have sent out another spy. When that one also failed to return, they would retaliate, but if all went well, the exiled Selvetargtlin that Dhairn led would have a permanent home soon enough, and a powerful new ally once the seals on the Pit were removed.

“Your presence here is drawing unwanted attention,” the dracolich observed.

“I agree.” Dhairn lifted his sword and rested the heavy blade on his shoulder. “But our forces are ready to strike. I’ll send a summons to our knights. As soon as they’ve loosed their respective companies and assembled here, we’ll mount our attack.”

The dracolich’s eyes glinted. “And my payment for providing the gems and the magic to attune them?”

Dhairn met the undead dracolich’s eye with a level stare. “The secrets to the creation of the chitines,” he promised, an irresistible lure for Daurgothoth, who had been trying for centuries to magically breed his own unique race of servitors, “and a one-sixth share of all the plunder we wrest from Undermountain over the next six hundred years.”

The dracolich gave Dhairn a baleful look. “See to it that you deliver on your promises.”

Dhairn bowed, the blade of his sword balanced on his shoulder. “By the strength of Selvetarm’s sword arm, we shall.”

Cavatina followed Halisstra through the woods. The shrine at Lake Sember was only two days behind them, but they had come to a region of Cormanthor that few trod. The elm and birch trees gradually thinned, giving way to towering black oaks with trunks as twisted as a wizard’s tower. Thorn trees grew thickly between them, their long, sharp spines tearing at Cavatina’s cloak. Halisstra shouldered her way through the undergrowth, the thorns snapping like glass against her tough skin.

Cavatina’s breath fogged in the chill air. So late in the year, the days were short and frost sparkled on the ground from sunrise to sunset, but under the twisted oaks, the
ground was bare, black and soft, as if something had melted it from below. Instead of the clean tang of impending snow, Cavatina smelled a sickly-sweet odor, like rotting flesh. As the ground began to descend sharply, she realized where Halisstra was leading her.

“The Darkwatch,” she breathed.

Her mother had told stories of the place. Millennia ago, in an age before Myth Drannor was founded, the surface elves had imprisoned an ancient evil there—according to some, the god Moander. The taint lingered still. To venture into the Darkwatch was to court madness, a madness that unleashed unspeakable violence, the kind that would set sister against sister. Cavatina could feel it nibbling at her awareness even then. She hacked at a thorny branch, barely containing the urge to slash and slash until the tree was a splintered ruin.

Halisstra grinned back over her shoulder. “Scared?”

Cavatina gritted her teeth. “I’m a Darksong Knight. We don’t scare that easily.”

Halisstra nodded.

Cavatina wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her sleeve. She didn’t trust Halisstra, despite what Qilué had said. Just before Cavatina had set out, the high priestess had told her of the prophecy she’d received three years before about the Melarn. One from that House would aid Eilistraee—but another would betray her. As was foretold, two Melarn had shown up at a time of great need: Halisstra and one of her brothers. Which one would betray the goddess was still an open question, but if it was Halisstra, Cavatina would be ready for it. Forewarned was forearmed.

She’d attributed her uneasiness at first to that warning, but she soon realized its cause must have been the Darkwatch itself. Why did the valley unnerve her so? She had slain yochlol in the deepest regions of the Lightdrinker, a chasm whose magic had prevented her
from seeing farther than the tip of her outstretched sword, and she’d once battled a chaos beast on the lip of Throrgar, where shrieking winds had nearly torn her from the cliff’s edge, but there was something about the Darkwatch—something that ate its way into her resolution like dry rot into wood.

A dry branch cracked behind her. Cavatina whirled, singing sword at the ready.

A dog stood watching her—a hunting hound. It was thin, ribs standing out sharply against its sides. One flank was matted with dried blood. The hound must have been injured by whatever game animal it had been tracking. It whined softly, eyes pleading.

Cavatina hesitated then decided it posed no threat. The animal was in need of healing, something Eilistraee could provide.

Halisstra had halted at the same time as Cavatina. She loomed over the Darksong Knight, her spider legs twitching. “Kill it,” she hissed.

The dog let out a low groan.

“No,” Cavatina said. Halisstra was obviously spooking the dog. “By Eilistraee’s mercy, I’ll heal—”

The dog launched itself at Cavatina. Teeth snapped at her outstretched hand with a fury that made her gasp. She yanked her hand back and backed away, singing a prayer that should have soothed the beast, but instead of calming, the dog only became more savage in its attacks. Cavatina batted it away with the flat of her sword, but still it came at her, snarling.

Behind her, Cavatina heard Halisstra laughing, high and shrill. The sound worried at something in Cavatina—something brittle as a dried twig. Her restraint snapped, and she found herself returning the dog’s fury blow for blow, slashing at it again and again with her sword. Rather than singing in a sweet voice, the magical weapon keened. Blood splattered her arm and face, and soon she found
herself on her knees, the sword in both hands, hacking at the fallen dog with furious swings that slammed her blade deep into the ground. Screaming with rage, she pounded the ruined body again, and again, and again …

A distant corner of her mind saw what she was doing and was sickened. The dog was a mutilated mess of splintered bone and pulverized, bloody flesh. With a wrench that she felt through her entire body, she at last halted her attack. Panting, trembling, she climbed to her feet.

Halisstra moved closer, sniffing at the bloody corpse. A low chuckle burst from her misshapen mouth. “Eilistraee’s mercy …” she muttered.

“Get away from it!” Cavatina shouted. “And shut up. Shut …
up!”
She flailed with her sword. A harsh note pealed from it.

Halisstra scampered back.

Cavatina closed her eyes and whispered a fierce prayer: “Eilistraee, help me. Protect me from this madness.” A moment later, the last vestiges of the rage ebbed. She opened her eyes again and took a deep, steadying breath—and winced, as the stench of blood filled her lungs. She turned her back on what she’d just done and spoke to Halisstra. “How much farther to the portal?”

Halisstra cocked her head, as if listening to something Cavatina couldn’t hear. “Not far.” She pointed at a rocky outcrop farther down in the canyon. A stunted black oak grew on top of it. “It’s under that tree.”

Cavatina grimly nodded. “Let’s go.”

They walked some distance farther, descending into the valley filled with stunted trees whose limbs seemed to claw at the sky above. As they drew closer to the outcrop, Cavatina could see that it was a jumble of square-cut masonry, the edges of the blocks worn down by the elements. Tufts of blade-stiff grass grew from crevices in the rock, and the tree atop the pile had a trunk so contorted it might have been twisted by a giant’s hand. Several
large roots spread down over the pile of stones below like black fingers. As Cavatina walked around the rocks, she counted eight such roots—a number she was certain was no coincidence.

Halisstra clambered up onto the pile, which stood about twice Cavatina’s height. The bottom of the trunk was slightly raised, as if poised on its roots like a hunting spider about to spring. There was enough clearance between trunk and stones for even the monstrous Halisstra to have crawled through on hands and knees without touching the tree above.

“In here,” she said, hunkering down beside it and gesturing at the space beneath the tree.

Cavatina climbed warily up to where Halisstra waited. If it was indeed a portal to Lolth’s domain, Cavatina would have it sealed once the expedition was over. For the time being, she cast a spell that would allow others of her faith to find it. If she didn’t return from her quest, someone else could deal with it later.

She heard a faint, high-pitched sound like the wind whistling through taut-strung wire. It was an eerie wail, one that made Cavatina’s skin crawl. “The songspider?” she asked.

Halisstra nodded. “She must have repaired her web.”

Cavatina squatted beside Halisstra and peered between the roots. She could see faint lines of violet against the darkness—brief shimmers of hair-thin light that were there one moment, gone the next.

“Silence it,” she ordered.

Halisstra ducked her head—the best nod she could manage, with those thickly corded neck muscles—and reached into the hollow under the tree. Her fingers plucked at the strands of violet light. As she worked, a low, rasping sound came from her throat: a song. When it was done, Halisstra pulled her hands back. Her long, dark fingers were sticky with violet threads. The sound that had been
coming from inside the hollow had stopped.

“It’s done,” she said. “The way is clear.”

“Good,” Cavatina said. “You first.”

Halisstra bowed her head. “Mistress.”

The look she gave Cavatina made it clear she understood that the Darksong Knight didn’t fully trust her. She turned and scrabbled her way into the space beneath the tree and stood, the upper half of her body vanishing from sight. One foot stepped up, then the other—and she was gone.

Cavatina took a deep breath. She had fought demons on the doorsteps of the Abyss as they emerged from portals, but she had never traveled to the outer planes herself. She fairly tingled with the thrill of it, even though it was not truly a hunt but a recovery mission. She cast a spell that would allow her to resist the negative energies of the Demonweb Pits then followed, singing sword in hand. As her body penetrated the spot occupied on the Prime Material Plane by the tree, the smell of moldy sap filled her nostrils. An instant later, her head forced its way through strands of web, snapping them with vibrations she could feel but could not hear. A thin film of stickiness covered her hair, shoulders, and clothes—strands of the songspider web. She climbed up, as Halisstra had done—and suddenly was standing somewhere else.

The first thing she did was search for the spider whose web they had just broken, but it was nowhere to be seen. A divination spell revealed nothing.

“Where’s the songspider?” she asked.

Halisstra shrugged. “Gone.” She pointed at something that lay a few paces away that looked like a bundle of old sticks. “I think her children ate her.”

Cavatina nodded as she recognized the dried husk as the remains of a spider. She’d expected a living foe. The passage had been easy. Too easy.

She looked around. The Demonweb Pits looked nothing
like she’d expected. She’d always envisioned them as a vast cavern filled with steel-strong webs, upon which Lolth’s iron fortress crept like a spider. Instead the portal had delivered them to a blasted plain of barren, purple-gray rock, under a sky that was utterly black, save for a cluster of eight blood red stars that glared down like the eyes of a watchful spider. Hanging down from the sky on strands of web—so far overhead that they appeared little more than dots—were off-white balls. Every now and then, one of them burst, releasing the ghostly gray form of a drow—a soul, freshly dead. The souls were caught by the wind, which blew steadily in one direction, toward a distant line of cliffs.