Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [40]
A carrion crawler.
Thaleste’s hand shook so violently her sword was like a quivering leaf. Backing slowly away, she began a prayer that would strengthen her, but before she could complete it, two tentacles lashed out. Thaleste dodged one, but the other struck her sword hand. The skin felt as if it was on fire. The sensation spread swiftly up her arm, leaving numbness in its wake. Within a heartbeat, it had reached her torso. A heartbeat more, and her face and legs were also affected. She stood, paralyzed, her prayer halted in mid-word. Her breath came in short, fluttering gasps—all her lungs could manage.
Knowing that she was about to be devoured, she tried to bring her hands up to her belt. At the very least, she would spill the stone she’d found from her pouch where a patrol could find it. She strained until tears welled in her eyes, but her arms refused to move.
The carrion crawler advanced, its body undulating, its clawed feet making soft clicking noises on the stone floor. Thaleste watched in horror as the crawler reared above her then descended. Its mouth enveloped her head, and its teeth lanced into her shoulders. The pain was intense. She let out a suffocated gurgle that would have been a scream had her vocal cords not also been paralyzed. The crawler’s teeth sawed back and forth, ripping apart Thaleste’s chain mail tunic. There was more pain, and blood, flowing down her body in hot streams that soaked her shirt and trousers. Then a sharp pain, deeper than anything she had experienced before, and—
Thaleste blinked. The pain, the stench—all sensation was gone. She drifted on a gray, featureless plain, cradled in soothing song. Moonlight fell gently on her from above. She raised something—arms? No, that wasn’t quite it. She could no longer feel her body, but the moonlight understood. The song intensified, the moonlight lifted her toward its source: a swirling dance that filled the air above.
“Eilistraee,” she sighed.
The soul of the drow who had once been called Thaleste joined the dance and found peace.
CHAPTER FIVE
Deep in the Underdark below the Misty Forest, the judicator Dhairn stood in a vast cavern whose walls were honeycombed with tunnels that had been bored out centuries ago by a long since vanished purple worm. Above him, webs crisscrossed the ceiling. Cocooned corpses hung from them, dripping putrid liquid onto the floor, and a rancid smell thickened the air. Dozens of faces peered down at Dhairn from the tunnels, faces with ebon-black skin and glowing red eyes. Driders—drow from the waist up, but with the eight-legged lower thoraxes and bulbous abdomens of spiders.
Dhairn himself was a drow—a race the driders would ordinarily attack on sight, but his sudden entrance had given the creatures pause, as had his appearance. His scalp was shaved, save for the circle of hair at the back of his head that was braided into a long strand, the end of which was crusted solid by repeated drippings in blood. His black skin was webbed with lines of glowing white, the hallmark of the deity he served. His eyes had no color, only black dots where the pupils were. Anyone looking closely might have seen the faint yellow lines that formed a web pattern across the white of each eye and noted that his pupils were not truly round but shaped like spiders.
The driders weren’t getting that close, however, not after having noted the massive two-handed sword the judicator carried. The hilt of the magical weapon had two guards, each shaped like a spider. One of these had its legs clenched tightly around Dhairn’s right fist. He wore no sheath, and he could let go of the weapon with his left hand but never with his right.
Dhairn swept back his cloak with his free hand, revealing red robes and an adamantine breastplate embossed with Selvetarm