tilted her head, as if listening, then laughed. “Why should I believe you?”
She listened again, stared thoughtfully at the Crescent Blade, and smiled. “Yes. I can kill you, can’t I? I can kill anyone!”
She strode over to Qilué, and touched the blade to her throat. The high priestess remained as still as stone. Cavatina, mute and shuffling on bloody knees, felt a rush of fear. Laeral had said that nothing could harm Qilué while she was frozen in time, but that was before Halisstra had found a way to tease the Crescent Blade from her hands. She watched, horrified, as Halisstra slowly drew the blade across Qilué’s throat.
Eilistraee! she silently cried. Your high priestess needs you! Save her!
The chamber brightened slightly. Eilistraee, answering with moonlight?
Halisstra abruptly stopped cutting. She pulled the sword away and inspected Qilué’s neck. The blade had left a hair-thin line of red, but no blood flowed from it.
Praise Eilistraee! Laeral’s spell had saved Qilué! Cavatina wept with reliefbut then the Crescent Blade began to glow with a ruddy light. An instant later, it burst into flame. Halisstra cocked her head again, laughed, and touched the sword’s edge once more to Qilué’s throat. The fire licked across the curved blade, and slid from it onto Qilué’s neck, encircling it in flickering orange light. Then it disappeared into the cut on her neck.
Qilué’s eyelids fluttered. Her head twitched. A creaking sound filled the air as wings burst from her shoulders and unfurled, and she rose. Her mouth opened, and a gurgling laugh came out. Low, deep, masculine.
Wendonai’s voice. He was inside Qilué’s bodydominating it!
The chamber seemed to spin around Cavatina. She felt ill, faint. Not this, Eilistraee, she prayed. Anything but this!
Wendonai held out a hand. Halisstra reached for it.
“No!” Cavatina shouted.
She didn’t cry out alone. At the same moment that she spoke, moonlight filled the chamber. A voice sang out with a power that sent Halisstra reeling. Throne strings parted with a shrill twang. Spiders shriveled and died. The Crescent Blade vibrated in Halisstra’s handso violently that she nearly dropped it.
A shaft of pure silver light coalesced at the center of the room: moonlight so intense Cavatina was forced to turn her head. It centered on Wendonai. Taint boiled from his body and fled across the floor in a wave of tarry black smoke, and the reek of brimstone filled the air. Much of the floor-hugging, sticky cloud was burned away by the silver moonlight, but a wisp of it lapped at Cavatina’s bloody knees. She could feel it trying to force its way into her body through these wounds, but the strength of her faith forced it out. Then the last of it was gone, fled back to the Abyss, back to Wendonai’s corpse, to revive it. But that was a trivial matter, compared to the events unfolding in this chamber.
The silver moonlight continued to burn down. Demonic flesh melted away like wax, revealing a drow female so beauŹtiful Cavatina could barely breathe. She had Qilué’s face, but framed with moon-white hair, streaked with shadow, that draped her naked body like a robe. A masked-shaped shadow screened much of her face. The eyes that stared out of it brimmed with silver tears as she stared at Halisstra, who cowered before her.
Cavatina’s heart pounded so fiercely in her chest she thought it would burst.
Eilistraee’s avatar!
Nosomething more. Qilué had become a vessel, and the goddess had filled it. Eilistraee had saved the high priestess, as promised. She’d stepped into Qilué’s body and assumed mortal formsomething that hadn’t happened since the Time of Troubles.
It will end where it began, a female voice sang.
It will begin where it ends, a male voice harmonized.
Cavatina was no longer bound by Halisstra’s foul magic. She rose, weeping and exulting, and cried out in praise. “Masked Lady,” she sang joyfully, lifting her arms. “Lead me in your da”
She remembered Halisstra too late.
The Crescent Blade flashed.
Cavatina felt cold steel meet her throat and heard the dull crunch of her spine being severed. The world spun crazily as her head tumbled to the floor. Then all went gray.
Q’arlynd glanced around. All was in readiness. A domed wall of force had been erected atop the glade where the ancient temple had once stood, to keep intruders out. Spheres of silver light circled its perimeter, ready to intercept and negate any hostile spells. The possibility of an enemy locating this spot, however, was remote. Anyone attempting to spy on the four masters would see only what Seldszar’s glamor