lifted an eyebrow. “Will they?” A dark chuckle rose from her throat like a bubble of blood. “Guallidurth,” she whispered, her eyes hungry.
T’lar nodded her head in a bow. “What is your pleasure, Lady Penitent? Shall I return to Guallidurth and announce your birth?”
The Lady Penitent smiled, a feral gleam in her eye. “Yes. Do that.”
CHAPTER 2
The Month of Flamerule
The Year of the Lost Keep (1379 DR)
Leliana leaned on the railing of the bridge that spanned the Sargauth, watching as the three fisherfolk below hauled on the line that would bring in their net. Over the rush of the underground river, she heard voices from the Cavern of Song: the faithŹful, singing Eilistraee’s praises. Though most of the voices were female, a few held a lower timbre. Even after three and a half years, it still seemed odd to hear male voices echoing through the caverns of the Promenade.
A shaft of moonlight sprang into being a short distance away, slanting down to the river. It was as if a window had opened in the rock overhead, allowing light to shine in from the World Abovelight that overpowered the shimmer of Faerzress that permeŹated the cavern walls. The moonbeam was magical, a manifestation of Eilistraee’s songa reminder that the goddess was watching over her faithful in this, her holiest of shrines.
The moonbeam played briefly over the river, making the water’s ripples sparkle. The fisherfolk tucked the line under their arms and made the sign of the goddess, touching foreŹfinger to forefinger and thumb to thumb to form a full-moon circle. Only when the moonbeam disappeared did they resume hauling in the net. The line suddenly pulled taut, drops of water flicking from it. The three pulled harder on it, but the net didn’t budge. It appeared to have snagged. Likely it had caught on the jumble of masonry on the river bottom: the remains of the original bridge.
One of the fisherfolk was a drow male; the second, a human female with skin so pale it seemed ghostly in the darkened cavern. The third was a muscular half-orc. He bared tusklike teeth in a grimace and pulled as hard as he could, but the net refused to come unstuck.
“Jub!” Leliana called down to him. “If you keep pulling like that, you’ll tear the net.”
The half-orc gave one last grunting pulland sprawled backward on top of the other two fisherfolk as the tension left the line. A portion of the net rose from the river, dripping and filled with wriggling white blindfish. So did something else. Large and metal and rusted, it creaked as it moved. It looked like an enormous hook, thick as a heavy tree branch and tipped with a barbed point. The base of the hook, now bent, was attached to something deeper in the river that was too large and heavy to move.
Leliana belonged to the third of the temple’s watches. Her patrol didn’t begin until moonset. But she was a Protector, entrusted with one of the temple’s legendary singing swords. Anything this unusual warranted her immediate inspection, on duty or off. She strode along the riverbank to the spot where the three lay worshipers stood.
She nodded at them and touched the ceremonial dagger that hung against her chest. Then she sang a prayer: one that began softly, but that rose steadily to a crescendo with the power of a waterfall. At its conclusion, she chopped a hand through the air like a sword blade slicing down. Forced apart by her magic, the river split in a V-shaped trough that extended almost to its center. The depression widened, forcŹing the water back on either side. The remainder of the river rushed on swifter than before, compensating in speed for the narrowed space.
The gap in the river revealed an enormous mass of rusted iron, large enough to fill a small room. It lay, tipped sideways, on the river-smoothed blocks of stone from the original bridge. It was the statue of an enormous scorpion, its legs twisted beneath it and one pincer claw splayed out to the side. Its barbed tail had snagged the net.
The human stared at it through dark-lensed goggles that allowed her to see in the Underdark. “What is it?” she asked. “A statue from the first bridge?”
Leliana shook her head. She’d been assigned to the Promenade little more than a year and a half ago, but she’d made it her business to learn all she could about the temple since then. In the earliest days of the