Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,109

didn’t matter. After the horrors she’d experienced during the fall of the Promenade, she was ready to dance at the goddess’s side.

Halisstra seemed to have at last remembered whatever song she’d been attempting to play. Her clawed fingers settled into a rhythm, and the music became more melodic. Slowly, lest she make any noise, Cavatina drew the wooden sword. The fact that it didn’t kill no longer mattered, since Halisstra couldn’t die, anyway. It felt better to have a sword in her hand, even if it was only a wooden one. As the weapon cleared its sheath, Cavatina began the prayer that would send a bolt of twined moonlight and shadow through Halisstra’s heart.

Halisstra ended her melody with a single, shrill note. The Crescent Blade suddenly shrank and transformed, becoming an assassin’s strangle cord. Halisstra leaped down from her throne. As she reached for the transformed weapon, Cavatina unleashed her spell. Her moonbolt bored into Halisstra’s broad back, sending her staggering.

Halisstra whirled, her face twisted with rage. Her eyes widened as she spotted the now-visible Cavatina. As Cavatina sang a second moonbolt into existence, Halisstra yanked the assassin’s cord from Qilué’s hands and flicked it upward. The weapon transformed back into a sword once more. She raised it above her head with a manic grin. “Yours,” she said, her eyes wild, “will be the first soul reaped. Cast aside your feeble goddess, and pay homage to the Lady Penitent!”

Cavatina hurled her second moonbolt. It slammed into Halisstra’s chest, sending her staggering. Cavatina leaped in close, thrusting with the wooden sword. Halisstra grunted as the point of it entered her body.

“Surrender,” Cavatina told her, “and I’ll show mercy.”

“Never,” Halisstra hissed. She leaped back, unwounded— the wooden sword penetrated flesh, but left no mark—and lashed out with the Crescent Blade. Cavatina instinctively parried—and suddenly was holding nothing but a wooden hilt. Furious, Cavatina dropped it and danced back, resolvŹing to give her opponent no further chances. She sang a circle of blades into existence, and they whirred around her like a disturbed nest of steel-sharp bees. Qilué was directly in their path, but by the grace of Eilistraee she remained unharmed; the magical blades glanced harmlessly off her time-frozen body.

Halisstra seized upon Cavatina’s momentary distraction and sang a harsh note. The magical blades that had been protecting Cavatina exploded into shards of light and vanished.

“Redemption is at hand!” Halisstra shrieked, the strings of her throne reverberating in time with her cry. Spittle flew from her lips, and the spider legs twitched madly against her chest. She menaced Cavatina with the Crescent Blade, springing—fast as a spider—to block the chamber’s only exit. “Kneel before me, mortal!”

The words slammed into Cavatina’s mind, forcing her to the ground.

Halisstra sprang back to her throne and raked its strings with her clawed fingers. Random notes jangled together. “Dance!” she screamed.

Cavatina shuffled forward on her knees across the flagŹstone floor. She tried to lift her hands to direct a prayer, but they rose above her head, twisting in a terrible parody of the sword dance. “Laeral,” she cried. “Halisstra has—”

“Be silent!” Halisstra screeched.

Cavatina’s throat tightened, preventing her from comŹpleting her warning. Where was Laeral? What was keeping her? She glanced at the room’s only entrance, but it was empty. It was, however, faintly lighter, as if moonlight were filtering in from outside the mound. The spiders that had been in the outer chamber burst into this room in a wave, as if fleeing something. Cavatina heard a faint sound that might have been a song, drifting in their wake. The sound gave her hope.

Halisstra loomed over Cavatina, weaving the Crescent Blade back and forth, mockingly directing her “dance.” The strings of her throne reverberated in a dismal, unending chord. Cavatina fought with all her will as she scraped across the floor on her knees, but to no avail. Halisstra had grown strong—more powerful than Cavatina had anticipated. Had Halisstra truly been elevated to the status of demigod, as she claimed?

“Who’s the master now?” Halisstra asked mockingly. “I was your plaything once, but no more! Lolth’s cast you aside. You’re mine!”

Cavatina realized Halisstra wasn’t talking to her, but to the Crescent Blade. Halisstra stood, caressing it, oblivious to the dribble of blood the blade had just opened in her palm. “You will serve me,” she told it. She fingered the spot where the blade had been mended. “Or I will break you. Toss you away, like a piece of trash. Would you like to see how that feels?” She