Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [35]
“It’s winter,” Rowaan had said. “If you think the sun’s hot now, just wait until summer.”
Winter. Summer. Q’arlynd knew the terms, but until that they’d had little meaning for him. Rowaan had patiently explained to him what “seasons” were, but even that didn’t help. She said he would understand, once he’d spent a full year upon the surface.
A full year up here? He found it hard to imagine.
“Leliana,” he said, catching her attention. “Forgive my ignorance, but I still don’t see any temple.”
“You wouldn’t,” she answered dryly, “not unless you were capable of seeing over many leagues, and through stone.”
“Lady?”
Rowaan chuckled. “What she means is there’s only one temple: the Promenade. It’s in the Underdark. The lesser places of worship are all called shrines.”
“I see,” Q’arlynd said. He glanced around. “And the shrine we’re going to is …?”
Rowaan pointed across the flat ground at a spot up ahead, where the moon was setting against what looked like a row of jagged stalagmites. “There, in the Misty Forest.”
Q’arlynd nodded. Those jagged bumps must be the “trees” he’d read about. “How much farther?”
“You asked the same thing last night,” Leliana said. “Tonight, it’s one night less. Count it on your fingers, if you have to.”
Q’arlynd glanced away, pretending to be stung by her rebuke. He sighed. His feet ached. The World Above was just too damn big.
Rowaan touched his arm in sympathy. “We should reach the forest by dawn,” she patiently explained. “Two nights more after that.”
“Couldn’t we just teleport there?”
“No,” Leliana answered, her voice firm. “We walk.”
“We only prepared one sanctuary,” Rowaan explained. “The spot we teleported to in order to escape the lamias.”
Q’arlynd frowned. “But that—”
“What?” Leliana snapped.
“Nothing,” Q’arlynd murmured.
He’d been about to say that Rowaan’s explanation made no sense. It would have been far more prudent to have chosen the shrine itself as the endpoint of the spell. Unless, he’d realized belatedly, you had a stranger tagging along with you. Teleporting a complete stranger directly to a holy shrine—even if that person bore a sword-token of Eilistraee—would be a foolish move indeed. Teleporting him into the middle of nowhere and observing him over the long, tedious slog to the shrine was much more prudent.
He smiled to himself. The females were drow after all. Despite living on the surface, they still possessed some measure of cunning.
He gave Rowaan his most winning smile. “I can teleport as well. I’m quite accomplished at it, in fact. If you’d just describe the shrine in detail, perhaps I could get us there.”
“You could do that?” Rowaan’s eyebrows raised. “Teleport, with just a description to go on?”
Q’arlynd nodded. “Indeed, Lady.” In fact, he had never yet attempted such a thing, but one day, he was certain, it would be within his grasp.
Leliana gave a snort of laughter. “No thanks,” she said. “Much as I look forward to one day dancing in Eilistraee’s groves, for now I’d prefer to go on living.”
Q’arlynd lowered his eyes, a gesture of submission. His mind, however, was mulling over the possibilities the surface afforded. He’d only ever used his teleportation spell over short distances within the confines of Ched Nasad—to escape the iron golem, for example. He was itching to test the spell’s limits away from the Faerzress that surrounded the ruined city. Attempting to teleport to a destination he’d never seen before would be like a free-fall, exhilarating and terrifying in one.
The priestesses, however, seemed intent on doing things the hard way.
As they trudged along, Q’arlynd realized that Flinderspeld had moved out of his peripheral vision. Out of habit, he dipped into the deep gnome’s mind, checking to ensure Flinderspeld wasn’t up to anything. Flinderspeld disappointed him. The deep gnome was thinking of his former home, the svirfneblin city of Blingdenstone. Like Ched Nasad, it lay in ruin, destroyed five years ago by the Menzoberranyr. Flinderspeld remembered how that city’s orc and goblin slave-soldiers had