Ascendancy of the Last - Lisa Smedman [55]
Shi'drin nodded. He touched the eye on his tabard. "Ash to ash; mud to mud," he intoned. "May the Ancient One consume what remains."
The other priests-all but one, who had collapsed after dismounting and was being eaten by his lizard, bringing the total lost to six-touched their tabards. Kвras did the same, doing his best to ignore the wet rip of flesh and the gulps of the lizard as it bolted down the dead priest. He wanted desperately to escape to the solitude of the room he'd been assigned after he arrived on House Philiom's doorstep, claiming to be from Skullport. He wanted to cleanse his body of mud, shroud himself in magical darkness and silence, block out the shrill screams that echoed constantly down the keep's foul-smelling corridors, and pray. Pray for the strength to continue this blasphemous charade and see his mission through.
In each of the keeps of Llurth Drier, other Nightshadows were, no doubt, thinking the same. Their counterparts were stationed in distant Eryndlyn, and in Shadowport, and in the surface cities of Waterdeep, Bezantur, Calimport, and Westgate-everywhere Ghaunadaur's foul cult festered.
Kвras wondered if the Nightshadows he and Valdar had chosen for this mission still lived. It had been a knife's-edge thing, this day, for Kвras himself. By the Masked Lady's grace, Valdar had been there to step in, but it would only be a matter of time before one of the Nightshadows was caught and revealed them all.
A boy took the reins of Kвras's lizard. He climbed down from it and walked across the portico, edging his way through the crowd, to the exit. Before he reached it, a hand fell on his shoulder.
"You will be rewarded," Shi'drin said in a low voice, his eyes gleaming. Then, louder, to all the priests, "Come! We will feed the altar this very cycle in celebration of our Gathering." He pointed at the nearest House boy. "You! Spawn! Tell the boys to prepare the sacrifices."
Kвras choked down his apprehension. He could tell by the look in Shi'drin's eye that the priest realized he was somehow responsible for Molvayas's death. Now one of two things would follow. Reward, for ensuring Shi'drin's promotion to Molvayas's former role as the keep's Eater of Filth. Or retribution.
Both might very well take the same form: sacrifice, on Ghaunadaur's altar.
Yet Kвras could do nothing-not with a score of gleeful priests sweeping him along in their midst. Stinking of blood and sweat, babbling their joy at a successful Gathering, they hurried down the corridor to the shrine at the heart of the keep. Had Shi'drin not singled Kвras out, he might have slipped away, perhaps even feigned collapse and been left behind. But the new Eater strode just behind Kвras, prodding him forward.
They burst through a curtain of damp, rotted black silk into a room with walls, ceiling, and floor polished to the slickness of glass, A dozen columns of the same mottled purple stone, each carved with a rune, ringed an irregularly shaped dais that rose in two tiers. Atop the dais stood a lump of porous black stone: the altar itself. A gong hung above the dais, its bronze deeply pitted by the acid that condensed on it, trickled down its sides, and dripped onto the altar.
A purplish mist drifted through the chamber. As he passed through a patch of it, Kвras touched his disguised holy symbol and silently prayed for strength. The mist left a stinging film on his skin and clung to him like lingering dread. Just setting foot in the shrine took all of Kвras's courage. The air was so foul he felt as if he were wading through liquid sewage. The closer he got to the altar, the worse it got. He was an intruder here, a person from another faith. At any moment he'd be exposed, consumed.
Then they'd be on him, like carrion crawlers on a corpse.
He shook his head furiously. If he didn't get a hold of himself, he'd soon collapse in a gibbering heap on the floor. With a shaking hand, he gripped his disguised holy symbol. Masked Lady, he silently prayed,