Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [121]
Urz gave a howl of anguish, startling all three of them. “He’s dead,” he cried. Eyes closed, mouth a grimace, he pounded with his hands against the crystal floor until his hands were bloody. “He’s … dead!”
“Who’s dead, you idiot?” Valdar snapped.
Malvag, however, didn’t have to ask. A chill slid into his gut like an ice-cold blade. He said a hurried prayer, seeking communion with his god.
“Vhaeraun?” he whispered, his mouth dry. “Are you there?”
Valdar stared at him, tense.
Urz continued to wail and beat the floor. “Dead!”
The answer came to Malvag at last, a strangely double-timbered voice, as if a male and female were speaking at once.
“I … am … here,” it said, the voices blending into one by the final word.
Malvag felt his face pale. His legs no longer seemed willing to support him. He sagged, felt the points of crystals jab into his knees as the enormity of what he’d just done came down on his shoulders like a collapsing tunnel. That was Eilistraee who’d just spoken, not Vhaeraun. Instead of the Masked Lord absorbing her power into himself, the opposite had happened. Eilistraee was posing as Vhaeraun and answering his clerics’ prayers, tainting them with moonfire, and there was only one way she could have done that.
By killing Vhaeraun.
Malvag tried to convey that to Valdar, but all that would come out was a dry croak. “Eilistraee … No use … Vhaeraun is … gone. We can’t …” He gestured weakly at Q’arlynd. They could hurl all the spells they liked at the wizard, but he was under Eilistraee’s protection—even if he didn’t know it himself.
Valdar glanced at the still-howling Urz, then back at Malvag. “No!” he raged. The slender cleric summoned darkfire to his hand a second time—darkfire tainted with moonfire—then hurled it. Not at the cleric, as Malvag had expected, but at Malvag himself.
It sloughed off Malvag, just as it had the wizard. As the dark glare of it died down, Malvag noticed that Q’arlynd was gone. He must have teleported away. So had Valdar, it seemed, after hurling the darkfire. The cavern was empty save for Urz, who, by the sound of his hoarse cries, had been driven mad by the loss of his patron deity.
Everything Malvag had worked for was in ruin. The bond, strong as adamantine, that had allowed drow to cast high magic was broken. Not that it mattered anymore.
“It’s true,” Malvag said, answering a Valdar who was already gone. “Vhaeraun’s dead. We helped Eilistraee kill him. I was a fool to think she wouldn’t prevail within her own domain.” He lowered his face into his hands—a mask that no longer held any power. Then his hands fell away. One brushed against the dagger that was sheathed at his hip.
Slowly, he drew it. He stared at the poison-coated blade for several long moments. There was no longer any god to claim his soul when it entered the Fugue Plain, but that suited Malvag just fine. The torments of the demons would be nothing compared to what he felt at that moment, and if Eilistraee tried to claim him, he’d spit in her face.
Touching the blade to his arm, he drew it across his wrist.
Q’arlynd staggered through the Promenade looking for a priestess, the mask that had been his disguise clenched in one hand. He was in the cavern where the lay worshipers lived—buildings reared up around him on either side—but the passageways between them were empty. Where was everyone? His face throbbed and his limbs felt leaden: the wristbow bolt’s poison doing its work. He wasn’t going to last much longer without a healing spell, but if he died there, Qilué would surely see to it that he was restored to life. She’d have to, in order to learn what had just happened.
Unless, of course, she simply had a necromancer speak with his corpse.
No, Q’arlynd thought. Qilué wouldn’t do that. She’d want details—descriptive nuances the stagnant mind of a corpse couldn’t provide, and even if she used a truth spell on him, Q’arlynd had the perfect