Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,50
Drier, other Nightshadows were, no doubt, thinking the same. Their counterparts were stationed in distant Eryndlyn, and in Shadowport, and in the surface cities of Waterdeep, Bezantur, Calimport, and Westgateeverywhere Ghaunadaur’s foul cult festered.
Kâras wondered if the Nightshadows he and Valdar had chosen for this mission still lived. It had been a knife’s-edge thing, this day, for Kâras himself. By the Masked Lady’s grace, Valdar had been there to step in, but it would only be a matter of time before one of the Nightshadows was caught and revealed them all.
A boy took the reins of Kâras’s lizard. He climbed down from it and walked across the portico, edging his way through the crowd, to the exit. Before he reached it, a hand fell on his shoulder.
“You will be rewarded,” Shi’drin said in a low voice, his eyes gleaming. Then, louder, to all the priests, “Come! We will feed the altar this very cycle in celebration of our Gathering.” He pointed at the nearest House boy. “You! Spawn! Tell the boys to prepare the sacrifices.”
Kâras choked down his apprehension. He could tell by the look in Shi’drin’s eye that the priest realized he was somehow responsible for Molvayas’s death. Now one of two things would follow. Reward, for ensuring Shi’drin’s promoŹtion to Molvayas’s former role as the keep’s Eater of Filth. Or retribution.
Both might very well take the same form: sacrifice, on Ghaunadaur’s altar.
Yet Kâras could do nothingnot with a score of gleeful priests sweeping him along in their midst. Stinking of blood and sweat, babbling their joy at a successful Gathering, they hurried down the corridor to the shrine at the heart of the keep. Had Shi’drin not singled Kâras out, he might have slipped away, perhaps even feigned collapse and been left behind. But the new Eater strode just behind Kâras, prodding him forward.
They burst through a curtain of damp, rotted black silk into a room with walls, ceiling, and floor polished to the slickŹness of glass, A dozen columns of the same mottled purple stone, each carved with a rune, ringed an irregularly shaped dais that rose in two tiers. Atop the dais stood a lump of porous black stone: the altar itself. A gong hung above the dais, its bronze deeply pitted by the acid that condensed on it, trickled down its sides, and dripped onto the altar.
A purplish mist drifted through the chamber. As he passed through a patch of it, Kâras touched his disguised holy symbol and silently prayed for strength. The mist left a stinging film on his skin and clung to him like lingering dread. Just setting foot in the shrine took all of Kâras’s courage. The air was so foul he felt as if he were wading through liquid sewage. The closer he got to the altar, the worse it got. He was an intruder here, a person from another faith. At any moment he’d be exposed, consumed.
Then they’d be on him, like carrion crawlers on a corpse.
He shook his head furiously. If he didn’t get a hold of himself, he’d soon collapse in a gibbering heap on the floor. With a shaking hand, he gripped his disguised holy symbol. Masked Lady, he silently prayed, swallowing down his bile. See me through this. Help me to do your work. Shadow my doubts and cloak my fears.
The priests halted in a loose-knit group before the altar. Shi’drin stepped to the front, turned, and raised his hands. His fingernails were filthy, the sleeves of his robe soaked with slime and blood. He caught Kâras’s eye. For one terrible moment, Kâras thought Shi’drin might ask him to perform the sacrifice. Then Shi’drin closed his eyes.
“Ghaunadaur, your faithful servant calls,” Shi’drin intoned. “In your name, I feast.” Then he transformed. His fingers melted into his hands, his arms trickled toward his body like melting candle wax, and his head turned into a blackened puddle on his shoulders. Soon all of him, including his robe and tabard, had turned to ooze. The black blob he’d become bulged against the lowest step of the dais, and flowed up to the altar.
The other priests formed two lines, stretching from the doorway to the dais. Kâras, by careful maneuvering, placed himself as far from the altar as he could get, beside the chamŹber’s only exit. He pretended to follow along as the priests muttered their devotions and swayed back and forth. He moved his lips in time with the rest, mumbling what he hoped would pass as a prayer.