Sacrifice of the Widow: The Lady Penitent, Book I (5 page)

Cavatina smiled as she rose toward the hole in the ceiling.
Something
was inside the room above. She gripped Demonbane in both hands, adjusting her grip on the worn leather of its hilt. Whatever it was, she was ready for it.

The window opened onto what had once been a grand hall. Pedestals along each wall held stone busts of those who had once inhabited the noble manor. Several of the busts had fallen and lay in pieces on the floor, but others had survived. A dais at one end of the room had probably once supported a throne. Behind the dais were the remains of a mosaic, most of its tiles long since fallen out. Enough
remained, however, to show drow kneeling in submission before an altar, though the object of their veneration was indistinguishable. Side passages led off from the left and right.

All this, Cavatina took in at a glance. To all appearances, the room was as empty as any other in this area, but appearances could be deceiving. She twisted as she rose through the window, pushing off from what remained of the sill. Another piece of clearstone fell—something else for Thaleste to flinch at. As Cavatina drifted toward a more solid piece of floor, she sang a prayer. Divine magic surged out from her in a rippling circle, filling the room. If whatever was in here with her was invisible, the magic that cloaked it from sight was about to be purged.

The creature was revealed in mid-leap: a spider the size of a large dog, its spindly legs twice as long as Cavatina was tall. It came at her with its fang-tipped jaws distended, its mouth trailing drops of saliva that sparkled like golden faerie fire.

Cavatina slashed at the creature as it hurtled toward her, but the spider twisted in mid-leap, avoiding the blade. A slash that should have cleaved its body in two instead merely sliced off a couple of the bristles protruding from its cheek. Odd, that the spider had twisted its head toward the sword—it almost seemed to be trying to bite the weapon.

The spider landed on a wall and immediately flexed its abdomen toward her. As its spinnerets opened, Cavatina flung out her left hand and shouted Eilistraee’s name. A shimmering, crescent-shaped shield sprang into being in front of Cavatina just in time to block the web the spider shot at her. The magical shield shuddered as the webs struck, then slowly sagged to the floor, weighed down by a mass of glowing golden webbing. Cavatina dispelled the shield, letting the sticky tangle fall.

She attacked. Releasing Demonbane, she sang a prayer
that sent the sword dancing through the air toward the monster—a feint that would allow her to mount a second attack. She expected the spider to shy away from the blade, but instead the monster watched, unmoving, as the sword, directed by Cavatina’s outstretched hand, wove through the air toward it. The spider sprang from the wall, directly at the sword. Twin fangs scissored against the metal. The spider sailed past Cavatina to land upside down on the ceiling, the sword between its fangs. Then it began to chew, as if savoring the taste of the blade.

Belatedly, Cavatina realized what she must be facing. “A spellgaunt!” she cried. She yanked her hand back, trying to wrench Demonbane from its jaws, but they were locked around the sword. The spellgaunt stood utterly still for a heartbeat, a dribble of sparkling drool sliding out of the corners of its mouth. Then it spat the weapon to the ground. The sword hit the floor with a dull clank. It landed next to Cavatina’s foot, its midpoint dented with a neat row of tooth marks.

That gave Cavatina an idea. She sang a prayer that called a curtain of whirling blades into being between her and the monster.

“Come on,” she taunted, holding them steady over her head. “Take a bite of these, why don’t you?”

The spellgaunt hungrily eyed the whirling blades—each composed entirely of magical energy—then dropped from the ceiling. With a sweep of her hand, Cavatina sent the blades into its gaping mouth, even as she dodged aside. The spider stretched its mouth wide and gulped them down as it fell, heedless of the chunks of flesh being slashed from its face. Palps were severed, multifaceted eyes imploded as blades stabbed into them, and blood dribbled from the gaping wound its mouth had become, but still the frenzied spellgaunt, standing on the floor, gulped the blades down, whipping its head this way and that to pluck them from the air. As it ate, its abdomen distended and began to quiver.
Cavatina watched, holding her breath. The spellgaunt’s body burst with a loud
crack
. Bloody chunks of chitin skittered across the floor, leaving smears of pale blue blood. The spider wavered on its spindly legs, then collapsed. It lay on the floor, its jaws weakly gnashing.

Cavatina picked up her sword. The spellgaunt raised its head groggily, empty eye sockets staring sightlessly in Cavatina’s direction as it strained to reach the magical items she still carried. A ragged tongue slimed her boot with blood. Cavatina drew her foot away and turned Demonbane point downward. Then she thrust. Chitin crunched as the point pierced the spellgaunt’s skull and scraped against the blade as she shoved it home. The monstrous spider quivered then collapsed, dead.

Cavatina put a foot on the monster’s head and yanked her sword free. She held her palm over the blade, and a quick prayer confirmed what she already knew. The weapon had been completely drained of its magic. Demonbane had slain its last foe.

She wiped the sword clean on the hem of her tunic then thrust it back into its scabbard. It stuck, momentarily, as the teeth-dented section caught on the edge of the scabbard. Cavatina forced it down. She wouldn’t be drawing it again.

She stared down at the dead spellgaunt. “Abyss take you,” she growled. “That was my
mother’s
sword.” She gave the lifeless body a kick.

Only then did she stop to wonder what a spellgaunt was doing there. She knew little about the creatures, but she didn’t think they were normally capable of turning themselves invisible.

Even so, it shouldn’t have been able to enter the area undetected. It was a mere animal—albeit a magical one—bereft of either a good or evil aura, but it should have triggered the alarms. Most disturbing of all, it was one of Lolth’s creatures.

That alone was cause for disturbing the temple’s battle-mistress.

Cavatina sang a prayer that ended with Iljrene’s name. When she had the battle-mistress’s attention, she sent her silent message.

I found a spellgaunt in the caverns south of the river and west of the bridge. It triggered no alarms. I killed it
.

Iljrene’s voice came back at once. It sounded high and squeaky, just as it did in person.
A spellgaunt couldn’t bypass the alarms on its own; someone helped it get there. Begin a search. I’ll send other patrols
.

Cavatina immediately bent and inspected the spellgaunt’s corpse. Something on its back sparkled: diamond dust. Iljrene was right. Someone had helped the spellgaunt to bypass the alarms, someone capable of casting a nondetection spell. Those abjurations lasted only so long. Whoever had worked their magic on the spellgaunt would be close by.

Cavatina remembered Thaleste, waiting below.

She strode over to the broken window and peered down, but there was no sign of Thaleste. Cavatina hoped the novice was hiding behind a pillar somewhere. She cast a sending to Thaleste.

Where are you? What do you see?

The answer was a moment in coming.
There’s another priestess down here. A dancer. I’m going over to talk to her
.

Cavatina frowned. It wasn’t yet time for the evening devotions, and even if it had been, a dancer shouldn’t be there. Eilistraee’s faithful danced naked, save for their holy symbols. While the area was well patrolled, it still had its dangers. Venturing into it unarmored would be a foolish thing to do. Losing oneself in a dance of devotion there would be more foolish, still.

A chill slid down Cavatina’s spine as she realized what Thaleste might have just spotted. She sent a second, more urgent message.

Thaleste! That may be a yochlol in drow form! They have powerful enchantments. Get away from it!

No reply came.

Cursing, Cavatina leaped through the gap in the floor. Descending swiftly, she looked around for Thaleste. She spotted movement: Thaleste’s legs, disappearing behind a column. Someone—or
something
—was dragging her away.

Cavatina cursed. She should never have left the novice on her own. She crossed the cavern floor in great bounding leaps, levitating slightly with each step. As she ran, she cast a protection on herself. She no longer had Demonbane, a weapon that would have sliced neatly through a yochlol, even were it to shift to gaseous form, but she did have her magical horn. She raised it and blew a blast, aiming it at the column ahead. A blare of noise crashed through the cavern, rattling the loose stones on the floor and shattering the fragments of clearstone that lay there. The sound wouldn’t harm Thaleste—the magical horn had been attuned to do no damage to Eilistraee’s faithful—but it would stun and deafen everything else in its path, leaving larger creatures bleeding from the ears and killing lesser creatures outright. A yochlol would probably just teleport out of the blast, but at least that would drive it away from Thaleste.

Releasing the horn, Cavatina wrenched her holy symbol from around her neck. Holding it aloft, she sang a prayer. A beam of light formed around the pendant then grew until it was the length of a bastard sword. The blade-shaped moonbeam crackled with magical energy as Cavatina held it aloft.

“Come out from behind there,” she shouted. “I know what you are.”

A naked drow female staggered out from behind the column, hands clapped over her ears and an anguished expression on her face. For a heartbeat, Cavatina still
believed it to be a yochlol—a weak one that had been damaged by the blast. Then she saw the sword-shaped pendant hanging between the female’s breasts. No servant of Lolth’s would wear Eilistraee’s holy symbol, even a false one. When the priestess stumbled and fell to her knees, but the rubble she landed on neither shifted nor made a sound, Cavatina realized the whole thing was an illusion. She glanced up to see a mass of web hurtling down at her.

“Eilistraee shield me!” she shouted.

The magical shield appeared above her just in time to send the web sloughing off to one side. Heaving the sticky mass behind her, Cavatina sprang into the air. She could finally see what she was dealing with: an aranea, a shape-shifting spider capable of assuming humanoid form. The aranea was in hybrid form, a drow female at first glance but with a strangely articulated jaw and black bristles growing out of her head in place of hair. She wore a blood-red robe that hung heavily due to its chain mail lining, but her legs were bare. Strands of webbing dangled from the bottom of the robe that was just long enough to cover the rounded bulge of her spiderlike hindquarters. She clung to the column of stone with bare feet and her bare right hand. Her left hand was encased in a gauntlet that had a dagger blade protruding from between the knuckles. A platinum disk hung around her neck on a chain. Cavatina knew what the medallion’s symbol would be by the vestments the aranea wore. She was one of Selvetarm’s faithful—a Selvetargtlin.

The blast from Cavatina’s horn didn’t seem to have hurt her at all. The aranea had probably already been out of range above it before it sounded.

All that flashed through Cavatina’s mind in an instant, followed by cold rage that the enemy had penetrated the caverns surrounding Eilistraee’s temple. The aranea shouted. A pleasant humming filled Cavatina’s head, but it
was gone an instant later. Whatever spell the aranea had cast was too weak to affect the Darksong Knight.

Cavatina countered with one of her own, a song of smiting. The aranea reeled as it struck her, eyes rolling back in her head, but she recovered in time to leap away from the column as Cavatina came at her with the moonblade.

The aranea landed on the floor of the cavern, and Cavatina followed. She feinted with the moonblade, thrust, but the Selvetargtlin was too skilled to fall for such tactics. Suddenly she was inside Cavatina’s guard, the stench of her spider musk filling the Darksong Knight’s nostrils. Cavatina twisted to the side, anticipating a slash from the gauntlet blade as she shoved the enemy to arm’s length once more, but the aranea instead thrust her fingers out stiffly.

“Selvetarm!” she screamed.

Blades erupted from the aranea’s hands, legs, face, and scalp—even her clothing. Hundreds of them, slender and deadly. Still screaming Selvetarm’s name, she flung herself at Cavatina.

It was a suicidal move. Cavatina thrust her moonblade at the aranea’s chest. Any other sword might have been turned or at least slowed by the chain mail lining of the cleric’s blood-red robe, but the moonblade was a thing of pure magic, like the blade barrier Cavatina had summoned earlier. It slid through the chain mail like a hot knife through soft wax, and Cavatina’s hand and arm were wet with blood. Even though the thrust was to the heart, the aranea had enough fight left in her to slam her arms together, driving the spike-thin blades in through the holes in Cavatina’s chain mail. Cavatina gasped in agony as they pierced her sides.

The aranea sagged against Cavatina but still did not die. Hot purple blood sprayed Cavatina’s chest and face as the Selvetargtlin, her eyes rolling wildly, twisted her left arm, trying to bring her gauntlet blade to bear. The blade only
managed to graze Cavatina’s right cheek, but the wound throbbed as if boiling oil had been poured into it. A foul smell rose from the cut, and Cavatina could feel herself weakening with each pulse of her heart. The periapt around her neck absorbed the initial injury—the cut itself—but there was something more.

The aranea had used magic to envenom her.

Furious, she thrust the aranea away from her, screaming out as the blades tore free of her flesh. The moonblade in Cavatina’s hand flared silver-white as the aranea’s blood sloughed off it.

Selvetarm’s priestess fell to the ground and lay there, blood bubbling from her lips. “You’re too late,” she said in a voice choked with blood and insane laughter. “It’s already done.”