Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,59
expected the Lady Penitent to reject the offer out of hand. The priestesses of Sshamath were weak; they’d been responsible for one of Lolth’s greatest defeats. The Lady Penitent, however, had decided to accept. T’lar remembered her words: “Where better to spin my web, than in the void where Lolth’s was torn asunder?” And so T’lar had been sent north.
Streea’Valsharess Zauviir had promised great things, describing Sshamath as an egg sac seething with discontent and ready to burst. She’d promised to deliver the entire city into the Lady Penitent’s hands. She’d liedT’lar could see that. The Conclave held this city in an adamantine grip. Instead of fighting the masters, the high priestess hoped to join them.
Weakness. The very thing the Lady Penitent most despised.
Streea’Valsharess Zauviir would have to be eliminatedsooner, rather than later.
The image in the mirror faded. Guldor at last relaxed. When he closed his eyes, T’lar hummed a melody that shifted her appearance to match what she’d just seen in the mirror, then sprang off the beam. She drew upon her dro’zress an instant before she landed, halting her downward momentum, and landed soundlessly on the floor behind the wizard. She jabbed stiffened fingers into pressure points on Guldor’s back, sending him into a spasm. Guldor gasped in pain. His eyes sprang open, and he saw T’lar’s reflection in the mirror. “How?”
Before he could complete the question, she grabbed his hair, yanked his head back, and sliced his throat.
Blood soaked the cushions of the divan and ran in streams onto the floor. T’lar caught some of the warm liquid in a cupped hand and raised it to her lips. “Strength,” she whisŹpered. Then she drank. Behind her, the invisible servitor mindlessly continued the task it had been set: massaging its dead master’s feet.
T’lar pointed her bloody dagger at the mirror. You’re next, she silently vowed. But before she dealt with the high priestŹess, there was something T’lar wanted to know. Like an itch, her curiosity had to be scratched.
She sang the hymn the Lady Penitent had taught her. She exhaled, and felt her body fold inward on itself and become gaseous. With a thought, she sent herself wafting toward the door Guldor had oh-so-carefully sealed with his magic. She slipped through the crack underneath it and was gone.
Q’arlynd sat on a low, round pillow, his legs crossed, deep in Reverie. He felt the heat from the darkfire hearth on his skin, smelled the remnants of his rothe-and-sporeball stew, and could still taste the last sip of wine he’d taken before settling into his trance. His eyes were open, but his mind was far away.
His thoughts wandered back several decades, to his days as a student in Ched Nasad’s Conservatory. He thought of Ilmra, one of the females who had made the rare decision to become a mage, rather than a priestess. She’d been a fine-looking female, one he’d fantasized about more than once during their time together as novices. He’d imagined himself victoriously battling Ched Nasad’s enemies beside her, then “surrendering” to a struggle of a very different sort.
During their days at the Conservatory, one of the first things the novices had been taught was a cantrip that revealed magical auras. Q’arlynd had mastered it readily enough. The gesture was a simple flicking of the fingers that mimicked an eye opening, and the trigger was a single word: faerjal. Yet Ilmra had miscast the spell when a magical item was brought out for her to examine, and had failed to identify the item correctly. She’d been strapped as a resulthard enough to fracture a finger. Later that cycle, when her turn came to list the colors of the auras around the items laid out on the table, she’d faltered a second time. Q’arlynd had tried to help her by signing the answers.
Instead of taking his help, she’d pointed out what he was doing to their instructoreven though this meant admitting her own failure. She’d watched, smiling, as he’d been lashed, then submitted to a lashing herself. Later, after Q’arlynd had been sent to his room to meditate on the folly and futility of trying to aid another, she’d slipped into his chamber and taken him. Even now, decades later, he vividly remembered her fingers digging painfully into the hot red welts that crissŹcrossed his shoulders as she mounted him.
It had been one of the sweetest experiences of his young life.
His forehead warmed: the kiira, absorbing the memory. An image formed in his mind: one of the ancestors who’d