Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [116]
Qilué realized what had just happened. The Selvetargtlin had temporarily halted time.
The metal rod should have landed with a clatter behind Qilué, but she’d heard nothing. She whirled and saw a fifth Selvetargtlin—the missing judicator—standing next to the statue. The rod was in his right hand, which was still raised from catching it. His head was shaved except for a braid at the back of his head that whipped around as he whirled to smash the rod against the statue.
“No!” Qilué cried.
Silver fire flashed throughout the cavern, momentarily blinding even her. She heard a smash as the metal rod struck the statue then a pattering sound: chips of stone, flying away. As her vision cleared, she saw, to her relief, that the magic of the seal held. Though a gaping hole had been smashed in the middle of the statue, nearly cutting it in two, it refused to collapse. The void-black ball at the head of the mace had vanished, temporarily snuffed out by Qilué’s silver fire.
The judicator snarled. The lines of glowing white that crisscrossed his skin in a web pattern flared as he cast the depleted rod to one side.
Iljrene, meanwhile, sagged away from the cleric who had just stabbed her. The other two closed in, swords raised to deliver killing blows. Qilué turned away from the judicator to hurl silver fire at them. The roaring, swirling cone of silver-white caught all three clerics, sending them reeling with robes and hair smoking. One immediately collapsed, dead. The battle-mistress, too, was caught by the edge of the blast, but it simply spun her around like a wind-blown leaf, leaving her unharmed.
Gasping her thanks, Iljrene slapped a hand over her wound and croaked out a prayer, healing herself.
Dealing with the other three clerics had given the judicator time to close with Qilué. His enormous two-handed sword swept down, and she barely had time to raise her own weapon to parry it. The singing sword wailed in a minor key as the judicator’s weapon crashed against it, smashing it to one side. The judicator followed with a hilt-punch that sent Qilué staggering back. Her face burned where the spider-shaped guard of the judicator’s weapon had struck.
She danced back, hurling herself out of range of his next blow. There was no time to cast a spell, no time to worry about Iljrene, who had plunged back into battle with the other two clerics, her sword singing furiously as she swung, parried, and swung. The judicator pressed Qilué with a flurry of blows, his eyes with their spider-shaped pupils glaring at her.
“Tonight,” he announced in a funereal voice, “you all die, and Eilistraee with you.”
Qilué fought back grimly, wondering if the Selvetargtlin were in league with Malvag. The fact that their attack had come on the night the Nightshadows planned to work their magic wasn’t lost on her. Selvetarm was, after all, Vhaeraun’s bastard child.
The judicator’s sword whistled uncomfortably close to Qilué’s face, reminding her of more immediate concerns. She returned with a slash that glanced off the judicator’s breastplate, scoring a groove in the adamantine across the holy symbol that was embossed there. Her opponent paid the blow no heed. Unlike the other two clerics, who kept shouting their god’s name, the judicator fought in silence, and not only with that massive sword. As his blade met Qilué’s and they strained against each other, face to face, his mouth parted, revealing fangs. He bit her hand then whirled away, the blood-clotted end of his braid smacking her in the face for good measure.
Qilué, thanks to Mystra, was immune to poison. At her whisper, the punctures in her hand healed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Iljrene cut the legs out from under one of the Selvetargtlin she fought, then sweep her sword around, bloody and still singing, in an upward arc that caught the other just above the ear, slicing off the top of his head.
Qilué whispered a prayer of thanks.