Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,102

since then—but Q’arlynd might still be here. She couldn’t rely on invisibility alone to hide her. Not from a wizard.

Taking care not to give her presence away by knocking a loose stone, she moved to one side of the cleft in the bluff. She slid her spider-pommeled dagger out of its sheath. She wouldn’t make the mistake of using the spike-spiders on Q’arlynd, this time; he was obviously immune to their poison. The same couldn’t be said, however, of the svirfneblin wine merchant she’d left dead on the trail below.

She hummed the bae’qeshel tune that would ensure her invisibility was sustained, and eased into the cleft in the rock. Moments later, she cursed as she realized her target was no longer there. She’d been so close to catching him! Had he teleported away while she was climbing the bluff?

Thunder grumbled overhead. Rain pattered down. The drops blended with the sweat on T’lar’s forehead and shaved scalp, and trickled down her body. She tasted salt on her lips. She squatted beside the innermost of the pools within the cleft. The stream that fed it was obviously magical; water didn’t flow up a cliff and arc from one pool to the next of its own accord. She eyed it thirstily. Was the water’s magic harmful or beneficial—or simply decorative? Would drinking from the pool kill her, or simply quench her thirst?

The innermost pool was about three paces wide and no more than a couple of handspans deep. She could easily make out the bottom of it. There didn’t seem to be any fissures or gaps in the stone floor, yet the water flowed into the pool, but didn’t go anywhere. It simply… disappeared.

Just a moment. Was that a flash of something, between the pattering raindrops? As she leaned closer, a palm-sized portion of the pool stilled. It was like looking through a tiny window: she caught a glimpse of a tree branch, then a mosaic made of oddly shaped pieces of green glass, then the back of a head with white hair and pointed ears. As the figure turned, T’lar recognized his face. Q’arlynd.

She smiled. So that was what this place was: a portal.

She curled her fingers into a spider and kissed them. “Lolth be praised,” she said. The hunt hadn’t ended; it had just changed direction.

She stepped into the pool and was teleported away.

CHAPTER 12

Laeral stared into her scrying mirror, her hands on either side of the gilded frame. “Where is Cavatina?” she asked anxiously. “Show me!”

She could see the Darksong Knight, but only dimly. Cavatina’s body wavered within the mirror, indisŹtinct and ghostly. Her hair was wild, her expression anguished. She wore armor, but carried no weapon, while the tunic beneath her chain mail was stained and torn. Blood from a scalp wound had dried on her forehead. She moved, apparently aimlessly, through an utterly featureless, solid-gray landscape.

Laeral’s hands tightened on the frame. Was Cavatina dead? A spirit wandering the Fugue Plain? If so, why hadn’t her goddess claimed her?

The landscape behind Cavatina suddenly shifted, as if she’d just stepped out of shadow into light. She walked along a street now, her legs embedded in solid stone from the knee down. The corner of a building loomed ahead of her. She passed through it and continued on. All around her, the indistinct blurs of people hurried through the street, as none noticed her. A wall-mounted brazier, filled with glowing worms, threw shadows but cast no light on Cavatina. Its light passed, unimpeded, through the Darksong Knight.

“She’s ethereal,” Laeral breathed. “But… Where?”

Cavatina startled, and looked wildly around. She glanced up at something that was outside the mirror’s field of view. She “walked” upward, her body now parallel with the street below, to a metal cage that hung by a chain from a stout beam that spanned the street. A minotaur was inside the cage, gripping the iron bars. His face twisted with rage, and he repeatedly butted the inside of the cage with his massive horns.

Laeral recognized the landmark at once. Cavatina was in Skullport!

A short time later, Laeral stood outside the Deepfires Inn, wearing the disguise she habitually assumed while visiting Skullport: a plain, hooded cloak interwoven with protective dweomers and keep-watch magic. She’d teleported to Waterdeep, passed through the portal linking her former home with a cavern near Skullport, and hurried as quickly as she could through the Underdark city’s streets.

She worried that she wouldn’t make it in time—that Cavatina would already be gone. As she approached the Deepfires