Ascendancy of the Last - Lisa Smedman [77]
Cavatina glanced at where Meryl was looking. Bare, sickly-pale feet protruded from behind an overturned table: a dretch, lying prone and unmoving. A vial, its silver tarnished, lay on the floor nearby.
"My mother's name," Cavatina demanded, her sword point against the halfling's chest. "What is it?"
Puzzlement crowded out Meryl's fear. "Why… it's Jetel. Jetel Xarann."
Cavatina lifted her sword. This was Meryl. She walked around the overturned table and ensured the dretch was dead.
Leliana, who had run past, returned to the doorway. "What's wrong?"
Cavatina waved her away. "It's under control. Go. Find Rylla. She'll need your help."
Leliana nodded curtly and raced away.
Cavatina knelt beside the halfling. She noted the tears spilling down Meryl's cheeks, and the bloody scratches on the little female's arms and hands. Cavatina patted her shoulder. "Good work, Meryl. You fought well."
The halfling sniffed. She picked up the blast scepter and held it out to Cavatina. "I couldn't figure out how to work it. I had to use it like a club." Her lips trembled. "That thing… scared me so. I wasn't brave. Not like you."
"Yes you were. There aren't many who can stand up to a demon's magical fear." Cavatina gently took the blast scepter from Meryl. "Stay here. Lock the door. Don't answer unless you're sure it's a priestess."
"But how will I-?"
"Get whoever knocks to sing a stanza of the Evensong."
Meryl drew herself up and wiped away her tears. "Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. Go. You're needed elsewhere."
Cavatina saluted the halfling with her sword, and hurried away down the corridors, to the residence's main entrance. As she drew closer to the open double doors, she heard shouting over the ring of the alarms. From the distance came a dull whumph that sounded like an explosion.
She sang a protective hymn and stepped outside. Just ahead, a priestess herded a gaggle of lay worshipers away from the direction the explosion had come from. A half-elf and a drow staggered after them, carrying a body on a drift disc that no longer worked. Cavatina couldn't tell if the victim was male or female, as much of the body had dissolved. A Protector charged by in the opposite direction, singing sword pealing.
She heard what sounded like a battle raging to the south, in the direction of the Stronghall. She hurried to the corridor that linked the cavern with that one. As she drew closer, she saw a figure running down the corridor. The floor behind him was covered in glittering sparks. These surged forward like a moving ankle-high carpet, contained within a gelatinous mass.
An ooze-within the Promenade! How had it penetrated so deep into the temple? The Protectors should have thrown up a songwall to contain it.
The running figure wore a purple robe with a leering black eye on the front of his tabard-Ghaunadaur's symbol. His anxious expression and frightened glances over one shoulder suggested he wasn't in control of the ooze. As it threatened to overtake him, he halted and raised his tentacle rod. He whipped it forward, lashing at the ooze with its tentacles. In that same instant, the monster bulged and squirted out a line of emberlike motes. Tentacles met glitterfire in a thundering explosion. Waves of heat and cold exploded out of the corridor.
Qiluй's scepter grew warm as it absorbed the heat. But it proved no protection against the cold. Cavatina drew in a lungful of icy air, and shivered. She marveled at what she'd just seen: Ghaunadaur's faithful, fighting each other?
Before the fanatic could turn, she sang a hymn that rendered him rigid. He toppled. She ran to where he lay, intending to drag him out of harm's way and question him at sword point. The glittering ooze was faster however. It was about to engulf her fallen foe.
She