Sacrifice of the Widow: The Lady Penitent, Book I (17 page)

Q’arlynd hurried through the woods, Flinderspeld jogging obediently behind. As they drew closer to the blare of horns, Q’arlynd could hear women shouting as well as the thrum of arrows in flight and the wet, chopping sound of weapons hitting flesh. Above and ahead, he could see dozens of figures hurtling through the treetops. One passed close enough for Q’arlynd to recognize it as a combination of spider and drow.

A drider? On the surface?

The creature spotted Q’arlynd. It hurled a dagger, but the weapon was deflected by Q’arlynd’s protective spell and thunked into a nearby tree. The drider shrouded itself in a sphere of darkness as wide as the spreading branches of the tree. Before it could escape, however, Q’arlynd cast a spell, sending a pea-sized gout of fire streaking toward it. Heat bathed his face as it exploded, creating a fireball that filled the magical darkness. A heartbeat later, the blackened corpse of the drider tumbled from the tree, followed by burning branches.

Q’arlynd turned and plucked the drider’s dagger from the tree. He handed it to Flinderspeld. “Stay right here. Don’t fight unless you’re forced to.”

The gnome frowned. “I thought you said ‘we’ would join the battle.”

Q’arlynd made a point of looking down at the deep gnome. Flinderspeld was tiny, barely half his height,
the size of a child. “You’re too valuable to throw away in combat,” he told his slave. That said, he spoke the words to a glamor that rendered the deep gnome invisible. He drew his wand and strode toward the sounds of fighting.

The trees screened much of the battle, but it was well illuminated. Balls of silver-white light drifted through the trees, illuminating the scene with the brightness of several full moons, forcing the driders to squint. As he moved through the forest, Q’arlynd counted nearly three dozen of the creatures. The priestesses, many shielded by auras of protective magic, fought with sword and spell, singing as they attacked. Swords flew through the air as if guided by invisible hands, harrying the driders in the treetops.

The driders shifted position constantly, scuttling through the branches overhead and releasing arrows with deadly effect. One struck a priestess in the arm, a grazing wound, but she immediately reeled and fell. Poison. Another priestess rushed to her side and began a prayer, but a second drider dropped suddenly from a tree and landed on her back. As its fangs spread to bite, Q’arlynd blasted it with his wand. Jagged balls of ice smashed into the drider’s chest, knocking it away from the priestess. The blows weren’t enough to kill the thing, but the priestess finished the job, slashing with her sword in a backhand swing that decapitated the drider. As the head rolled toward Q’arlynd, he noted the pattern of fresh scars on its face which looked almost like a spiderweb. Odd.

The priestess looked to see who had come to her aid. Q’arlynd made a quick hand sign—
ally
—then bowed. The priestess nodded and went back to her healing spell.

Q’arlynd ran off to find more targets—making sure, whenever possible, that a priestess was on hand to observe him fighting. He battled the driders with blasts of ice, no longer caring if he depleted the magic of his wand. If the battle earned him a meeting with the high
priestess, it would be worth it. He fought as well with the evocation spells he’d learned at the Conservatory. It felt good to be using his talents again. He blasted the driders with magic missiles or punched holes through them with jagged streaks of lightning. Once, when several priestesses were watching, he used the fur-wrapped rod that was that spell’s material component to stitch a lightning bolt through four different targets, delighting in its flashy display of power.

At one point one of the driders—one also with a pattern of scars on its face—attempted to cast an enchantment on him. Q’arlynd had been trained to shield his mind, and he laughed aloud when the drider tried to implant a suggestion that he flee. He pummeled it with a blast from his wand and ran on, searching for Leliana and Rowaan.

He saw someone he thought was Leliana battling two driders, but when he got closer, he realized it was a different priestess entirely. She didn’t seem to need his assistance. Q’arlynd watched, fascinated, as she released her sword, which sang as it flew through the air. As the weapon slashed at one of the driders, keeping it busy, she sang a prayer. Her hands swept down, calling a brilliant white light down from the night sky. It slammed into the second drider, knocking it to the ground. In the same instant, her sword stabbed the first drider through the heart. Then it flew back to the priestess’s hand.

The streak of light had left Q’arlynd blinking. As his vision cleared, he realized the priestess faced yet another opponent—not a drider, but a drow, a male in armor as black and glossy as obsidian, holding a two-handed sword with an intricate basket hilt. The warrior’s skin was covered in a tracery of fine white lines, similar to the scars Q’arlynd had seen on the driders’ faces, except that the lines were glowing.

The warrior swung at the priestess, his blade hissing through the air. She dodged it—barely. The warrior
whirled, his long white braid whipping through the air as he turned and slashed again. This blow the priestess tried to parry, but the warrior’s sword sliced her blade off at the hilt. The priestess threw what remained aside and tried to cast a spell, but even as her lips shaped the first word of her prayer, the enormous black sword slashed straight down, cleaving through her body from head to groin. One half of the body toppled to the ground at once. The other half wavered a moment before falling. As Q’arlynd watched, both halves blackened then crumbled like soot. Soon all that was left was the woman’s boots and armor, surrounded by a pool of rapidly blackening blood. This began to bubble, resolving itself into a foul slick of tiny spiders. The warrior dipped the point of his sword into them, and they scuttled up its blade. They disappeared into the steel, as if absorbed.

Q’arlynd realized he was just standing there, staring. Suddenly coming to his senses, he rendered himself invisible a heartbeat before the warrior turned.

The warrior stared in Q’arlynd’s direction. He swung his sword in a slow arc until its point was aimed directly at Q’arlynd. The invisibility Q’arlynd had cloaked himself in vanished. He fumbled for his spell components, cursing his shaking hands. He was a
battle mage
, damn it. He’d faced down powerful enemies before. What in the Abyss was it about this warrior that made him so unnerving?

The eyes, Q’arlynd thought. Those pupils looked like spiders crawling around on the warrior’s eyeballs. It felt as though they were about to scuttle straight into Q’arlynd’s soul.

The warrior smiled.

Just as Q’arlynd finally found the spell components he’d been groping for, a drider called out to the warrior from overhead. “This way!” it shouted. “Another one that’s too strong for us.”

Shouldering the two-handed sword, the warrior strode
away in the direction the drider had indicated, leaving Q’arlynd behind.

Q’arlynd closed his eyes and shivered. The warrior had
let him go
.

Why?

It took Q’arlynd several moments to regain his composure. When he had, he continued through the forest—less brazenly this time, constantly glancing over his shoulder for any sign of the spider-eyed warrior. He’d almost forgotten that he’d been looking for Leliana when he suddenly spotted her just ahead. She was on her own, surrounded by three driders, all with scarred faces.

He reached into the pocket of his
piwafwi
then hesitated. No one else was around, and it looked as though Leliana would be fighting on her own. He decided to wait and see what happened. If the driders killed her, well and good. It would save him the trouble of doing something that a truth spell might later reveal.

He stepped back behind a tree, out of sight, and settled in to watch, arms folded across his chest.

Even though it was three against one, Leliana put up a good fight, but then a fourth drider pounced on her from above, dropping swiftly out of a cloud of darkness. The priestess smashed it aside with her sword, but one of the other three driders leaped forward and sank its fangs into her thigh, just below the hem of her chain mail. She cried out but didn’t immediately fall—possibly she had some magical protection against poison. Then the drider tore its fangs free of her flesh. Blood sprayed from the wound, splashing a tree several paces away. The bite had opened an artery. Leliana crumpled, her face ashen gray.

That was it then. The driders had done the job for Q’arlynd, just as he’d hoped.

Three of the driders levitated away from the body and scurried off into the treetops. The fourth, however, lingered. From behind the tree, Q’arlynd aimed his fur-wrapped rod
at the creature and spoke a word, hurling a lightning bolt at it. The drider never saw it coming. The bolt struck the back of its head, blasting it from the creature’s body. Spider legs crumpled beneath a smoking corpse.

Q’arlynd thought he heard movement in the woods behind him then. It was difficult to tell, with all of the noise of battle, but a quick glance revealed nothing. He walked toward Leliana, intending to ensure that she was dead. As he stared down at her body, he felt a momentary twinge of an unfamiliar emotion. It was unfortunate, really, that she had to die. Leliana was an attractive female, and he’d enjoyed their verbal sparring matches.

He shook off the feeling. The world was harsh. Leliana had been about to carve Q’arlynd up for the amusement of her goddess. But instead she wouldn’t be able to tell the others about the priestess who had died in Ched Nasad. What was done was done.

Or was it? Q’arlynd heard something that sounded like a ragged breath. He glanced down at his feet and saw the priestess’s eyelashes flutter. Was Leliana still
alive?

He readied a spell, one that would finish her off without leaving too much of a mark, but for some reason, he felt a lingering reluctance to do what must be done. Brutally, he shoved this useless sentiment aside and sighted along his finger at Leliana’s chest. A faint haze of magical energy danced at his fingertip.

Behind him, he heard someone shouting Leliana’s name. Rowaan. She was practically upon him—close enough that she’d witness whatever he did next. That changed things. Adopting a protective pose over Leliana, Q’arlynd sent the magical bolt into the body of the drider he’d already killed. Then he turned and prostrated himself on the ground.

“There were four of them, Mistress, attacking Leliana,” he cried. He gestured at the one he’d blasted with his lightning bolt. “I killed one and drove the others off.”

Behind him, Leliana’s breath rattled raggedly in and out. In moments she would be dead.

Rowaan barely acknowledged him. She fell to her knees at Leliana’s side, a stricken expression on her face. Q’arlynd raised his head slightly, watching. His wand was still in his hand, and he shifted position so that it pointed directly at Rowaan. As soon as an opportunity presented itself, he’d blast her with it.

Rowaan ignored him. She lifted her right hand and brushed her lips against the platinum band on her index finger, whispering something. Then she clenched her hand and closed her eyes.

Q’arlynd knew the moment he’d been waiting for had arrived, but curiosity stayed his hand. A moment later, his eyes widened as Rowaan cried out in anguish. He glanced around, expecting to see a drider, but no attackers were visible. By the time he’d returned his attention to Rowaan, she lay on the ground, her face gray and her breathing shallow and ragged. There was a ragged gash in her thigh, a wound identical to the one that had felled the other priestess, and Leliana, amazingly, was sitting up. There wasn’t a mark on her. It was as if the drider attack hadn’t even happened.

Rowaan gave one final gurgle then died.

Leliana’s first action was to glance at Rowaan and cry out. Her second, upon seeing Q’arlynd staring at her, wand in hand, was to raise her sword.

“Mistress, wait!” he shouted. He pointed at the lightning-blasted drider. “I tried to save your life by killing him. Is this the thanks I get?”

She hesitated. She glanced at the dead drider and slowly lowered her sword. She turned to Rowaan and pressed her fingers against the dead priestess’s throat in several places, searching for a life pulse without success. Still ignoring Q’arlynd, she raised her own ring to her lips.

Q’arlynd shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he
was seeing. Those weren’t slave rings, they instead seemed to transfer wounds from one person to the next. Rowaan had
willingly
forfeited her own life to save Leliana, and Leliana was about to attempt the same.

Eilistraee’s followers were insane.

Or perhaps there was some other reason for their actions that Q’arlynd didn’t know about yet. Perhaps priestesses who died in battle received some boon from their goddess after death. Rowaan might have just snatched that honor from Leliana by dying in her place, and the other priestess wanted to take it back again.

Except that the expression on Leliana’s face was not one of anger at having been cheated but of anguish.

Before Q’arlynd could ponder that mystery further, another priestess came rushing through the woods—one of those Q’arlynd had aided earlier. Leliana lowered the hand that wore the ring. Apparently she wanted to continue living, after all.

“Rowaan’s been killed!” she cried. “Help her!”

As the priestess set to work, Leliana whirled to face Q’arlynd. “You followed us here. Why?”

“I hoped to prove myself a worthy addition to Eilistraee’s forces, Mistress,” he said, bowing. He was used to angry females and knew exactly what to say, and his words were no longer constrained by a truth spell. “I thought that by joining the fight, I might atone for … that unfortunate accident in Ched Nasad. I arrived as you were battling the four driders. I managed to kill the one you see here, but the other three escaped. Surely, in light of the assistance I’ve just rendered, you will reconsider your earlier decision to kill me?”

Leliana blinked. “Kill you? What makes you think—”

A low groan interrupted her. The priestess who had just cast the restorative spell sat back and whispered a prayer of thanks to her goddess.