Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,107
changing, as if the player were uncertain of the melody, rushing through some parts and struggling with others.
“Keep watch,” Cavatina whispered. “While I pray.”
Laeral cast a spell, and Cavatina felt a protective screen of magical energy crackle to life around them. She touched the holy symbol at her throat and hummed. “Eilistraee,” she . implored in a voice no louder than a breath, “hear my prayer. Guide my footsteps through the dance that is to come, and answer my song. Is Lady Qilué within the ruin ahead?”
A voice, sweet enough to bring tears to Cavatina’s eyes, sang into her mind. Yes.
“How can we get her out of there?”
Cavatina felt her goddess’s hesitation. You can’t.
Despair filled her. She heard Laeral’s breath catch. The other female must have read the disappointment on her face.
“Is there no one who can save her?” Cavatina implored. “Not even you, Dark Maiden?”
A host of possible outcomes blurred through Cavatina’s mind. She had a sense of pieces moving across a sava board too rapidly to follow, as some unseen force tested first this move, then that. At last they stilled. Eilistraee’s reply came, in a voice tinged with a profound sorrow. If Ao so wills, it shall be.
Cavatina startled. What did Ao the Overgod have to do with this? As she pondered what Eilistraee’s answer might mean, she felt the goddess slip from her mind, silent as a shadow.
Cavatina glanced up at the moon. Selűne wore her half-mask this night, and seemed to be staring down at Cavatina. Waiting. Her cold scrutiny tempered Cavatina’s determination. “Go,” she whispered to Laeral, “swiftly, to each of Eilistraee’s shrines. Gather as many of the priestesses as you can. We must perform the exorcism here.”
Laeral glanced around the gloomy forest. The air was thick with the stench of rot and mold, and in the distance, the night twist tree wailed its anguished refrain. “But isn’t this the worst possible”
“This is where it must be done,” Cavatina said grimly. “Eilistraee has decreed it.”
Laeral stood. “What will you do while I’m gone?”
Cavatina nodded at the web-shrouded mound. “I’m going inside.”
“Shouldn’t you wait until”
“There may not be time,” Cavatina said firmly. “Besides, I hunt better alone.”
Laeral nodded. “Keep me alerted to everything you see. Speak my name, and I’ll hear what follows.”
Cavatina agreed.
Laeral spoke an incantation that whisked her away.
Cavatina rose to her feet. Her first impulse was to stride in boldly and challenge whatever foes might be within, but then she glanced at the wooden sword in her hand and nearly laughed. No, she decided, sheathing it. She’d take a page from the Masked Lady’s new songbook, instead. Slip in quietly, and scout around. If need be, she would sing moonfire into existence, and burn the place clean.
She sang a protective hymn, then a glamor that would screen her from sight until she chose to strike a blow. Her third prayer would allow her to slip through the tangle of webs unimpeded. She crept closer to the mound and eased her way into the tangle of web. The sticky silk slid past her body as if her skin were oiled. Just ahead was a haphazardly spun cocoon. Looking around, Cavatina saw dozens more, each of them easily large enough to contain a drow. Several bulged and rocked, as whatever was trapped within struggled to get free.
“By all that dances,” Cavatina breathed. “This looks like Halisstra’s handiwork!”
Was Halisstra still alive? After betraying Cavatina to the demon Wendonai, she had reappeared briefly atop the Acropolis, then vanished without a trace. That had been two years ago. No one had been able to learn where she had disapŹpeared tonot even Qilué.
A sound within the cocoon next to Cavatina drew her attention. Over the discordant music coming from within the mound, she made out a muffled female voice: a word or two of song, then a struggling gasp, then another faint note of song. She was debating whether to tear the cocoon open when another of the cocoons turned slightly, revealing a partially rotten hand protruding through a gap in its side. A spider-shaped ring adorned one of the death-stiffened fingers: Lolth’s symbol.
Cavatina sang a divination. A dim purple glow leaked out of the cocoons that were still twitching: the aura of evil. Cavatina’s eyes narrowed. Did each contain one of Lolth’s faithful? Had Halisstra turned against the Spider Queen?
The answers, Cavatina was certain, would lie within the mound.
She spoke Laeral’s name, and whispered what she’d just seen. As she did, she stared at the cocoons, debating