Ascendancy of the Last - By Lisa Smedman Page 0,71

backed up by oozes, had invaded the Stronghall. Cavatina waved them on, saying she’d lend her sword to the battle in just a moment. Kâras turned to follow the priestesses, but Cavatina caught his arm.

“Kâras,” she said urgently, “Qilué was tricked. Her ‘trap’ is actually a portal—one that renders you ethereal. It leads to the bottom of the Pit. To a planar breach. That breach was intermittent when I saw it, but if the fanatics reach it, and open it fully, Ghaunadaur’s avatar will be able to pass through.”

Kâras’s voice came out as a croak. “I don’t understand. Why would the Masked Lor—Masked Lady permit—”

“I don’t have time to explain. What’s important is that we prevent the fanatics from getting to that portal. We’ll make for the ruined temple by different routes: I’ll go south, through the Stronghall, and you circle around through the Cavern of Song. Eilistraee willing, at least one of us will reach the portal in time.”

Kâras stood, unmoving. His mask wavered slightly; he must have been praying.

“Let’s move!”

He swallowed, then bobbed his head in a nod.

She watched long enough to make sure he was headed in the right direction, then sprinted down the corridor to the Stronghall. As she reached it, she saw a battle that could use her assistance. A priestess and three lay worshipers were fighting a jellylike mass of roiling shadow. Cavatina blasted it with the scepter as she ran by. Her attack drove it back, giving Eilistraee’s faithful the moment’s reprieve they needed to regroup. As she ran on, she heard them cheer her name behind her.

Everywhere she looked, the faithful desperately fought tentacle-wielding fanatics and a host of Ghaunadaur’s minions. Cavatina spotted an ooze that looked like an enormous puddle of blood, glowing with searing heat; another like congealed fog, chill as a wind from the grave. A third resembled a roiling cloud of snowflakes. Yet another flickered with a purple light that twisted into glowing symŹbols, deep within itself. The latter ooze spat out a snake from one puckered orifice, a centipede from another. Both animals glowed with a fiendish light that marked them as creatures summoned from the Abyss. Cavatina slashed at centipede and snake, killing both, and blasted the ooze itself with the scepter. The half-dozen lay worshipers who’d been retreating from the monster cried a prayer of thanksgiving.

She had run almost the length of the Stronghall; the corŹridor leading to the ruined temple was just a short distance ahead. She pounded around the corner of a building, only to find the street blocked by a bone white ooze that had overŹwhelmed a Protector. The priestess lay, screaming, as the mass flowed onto the lower half of her body.

Cavatina’s eyes widened. It was Tash’kla—the Protector who had fought so valiantly beside her during the expedition to the Acropolis.

She raised the scepter, but realized that its sound blast didn’t discriminate between friend and foe. She sang a moonŹbeam into existence instead, and hurled it at the creature. The ooze shuddered as twined moonlight and shadow bored through it, carving a wound that bled sour-smelling clay. The ooze pulled back from the fallen Protector.

It took Tash’kla’s bones with it, reducing her legs to empty, bloody sacks of muscle and skin. Cavatina watched, horrified, as the ooze splintered the bones and squeezed the marrow out.

Furious, she attacked the ooze with the scepter. It took more than one blast to kill the thing. When the ooze at last exploded from the sonic attack, a bone splinter whizzed past Cavatina’s ear. She didn’t flinch. She moved to Tash’kla, kneeled, and touched her throat.

No blood-pulse. Tash’kla was dead.

Fortunately, the ooze hadn’t consumed her utterly. Enough remained that Tash’kla might be resurrected—assuming anyone from the Promenade survived to revive her. In this cavern alone, there were so many oozes that Cavatina was starting to have doubts about how the battle would go.

She wiped a splatter of ooze from her forehead with a shaking hand. Was this how it had been for Qilué, when she and her companions battled Ghaunadaur’s avatar? Cavatina’s sword was slippery with foul-smelling slime, and its song was a dirge. She tightened her grip on the weapon, grimly wondering where the high priestess was. Trapped within her own body by the demon—forced to watch as her cherished temple fell?

No, Cavatina thought angrily. It wouldn’t come to that. Eilistraee wouldn’t permit it.

She ran down the street, and at last reached the corridor she’d been making for. It turned out to be choked with