Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [12]
There was movement inside the chimney—a flutter of wings. Thaleste shrieked as something small and black burst out of it. Cavatina, who had started to draw her sword even as Thaleste flinched, slid it back into its sheath. She stared at the creature as it flew away, squeaking.
“A bat.” She sighed. “The next time something comes hurtling at you, Thaleste, try drawing your sword or casting a spell.” She nodded at the chimney. “Now check the glyph.”
Thaleste, blushing, murmured a prayer, casting a detection spell. Just inside the chimney, a glyph sprang into luminescence, sparkling like the light scattered by a diamond. Frowning in concentration, Thaleste studied its outlines, her finger tracing through the air in front of it.
“A songblast glyph,” she announced at last, letting the glow fade. “Untriggered. Nothing evil has passed this way.” Her shoulders relaxed a little as she said this.
“Unless it was ethereal,” Cavatina reminded her.
The shoulders tensed again.
“Fortunately, the ability to assume ethereal form is something that few creatures—and only the most powerful spellcasters—are capable of,” Cavatina continued. “And those that are capable of ethereal travel have no need for entrances like this one. They can pass through solid stone.”
Thaleste swallowed nervously and glanced at the wall next to her out of the corner of her eye.
“The walls here are thick,” Cavatina assured her. “Any spellcaster out on an ethereal jaunt would materialize inside solid stone long before reaching this spot.”
Thaleste nodded.
“We’re done here,” Cavatina said. “Let’s go back.”
As they made their way back along the winding corridor they’d just traveled, Cavatina once again saw Thaleste startle. “Have you spotted something, Novice?”
Thaleste pointed at the ceiling. “A movement. Behind that broken window.” She gave her mentor an apologetic smile. “Probably just another bat.”
Cavatina chastised herself for having missed whatever Thaleste had just spotted. She should have been paying more attention. Then again, Thaleste was a nervous one. She’d only occasionally ventured outside the walls of her residence in Menzoberranzan. Her trip to Skullport had been an act of desperation. Eilistraee only knew how Thaleste had managed to survive as many decades as she had inside the City of Spiders. She was prone to seeing monsters in every shadow.
Even so, Cavatina drew her sword. The temple’s battle-mistress had given specific orders to those on patrol. Any monster, no matter how small a threat it posed, was to be killed. The caverns the Promenade had recently claimed must be kept clean of vermin, and there were protocols to be followed. The use of silent speech during alerts, for example.
Stay here, Cavatina signed to Thaleste. I’ll investigate. Cast a protection upon yourself, just in case. Shouldn’t I come with you?
No. The last thing Cavatina needed was a novice getting in the way of a hunt, and even if it turned out to be a cloaker up above, it would all be over in a few moments.
As Thaleste hurriedly whispered a protective prayer, Cavatina spoke the word that activated her magical boots. They lifted her into the air toward the window the novice had pointed at. The ceiling was perhaps a hundred paces high, and the window was one of those that had fallen away. Only a few jagged shards of clearstone hung from a hole that gaped a dozen paces wide. As Cavatina levitated toward it, a palm-sized fragment of clearstone dislodged from the remains of the window frame and fell, shattering to pieces on the stone floor below. Thaleste flinched away from it, her sword shaking in her hand.
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