Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [48]
The tree considered her question. Its upper branches bobbed in the equivalent of a slow nod. It had indeed felt a creature like the one she described scuttle through its branches, but that creature had been moving fast and was long gone.
Cavatina asked a second question of the tree. The cedar considered its answer. It started to sway a negative reply then paused. A shiver ran out through its branches, shaking loose droplets of water that splattered the leaves at Cavatina’s feet. The shiver also stirred the branches of the trees next to it and was repeated a moment later by these trees. Cavatina’s question was passed on in a leafy whisper, in an ever-widening circle that rippled across the forest canopy. For several moments, there was only silence, as the cedar Cavatina was touching waited for their reply. Then that reply came rustling back. An elm tree reported a cocoonlike sack hanging from it, still sticky—freshly woven. It was hanging in a tree that a creature, exactly like the one Cavatina had described, had just scuttled away from.
“Where?” Cavatina asked, her voice a low drone.
Above her, a branch shifted. Splayed fingers of green pointed.
Cavatina smiled. The wind, praise Eilistraee, was blowing in exactly the right direction. She thanked the cedar then sprang into the air. As she rose through the branches, she drew her sword and prayed. Eilistraee granted her request, rendering her invisible. Slowly, she drifted over the treetops, blown by the wind.
She had to renew her invisibility twice before she spotted an oval of dirty white, twisting slightly in the breeze. The elm from which it hung stood close to an enormous hollow tree trunk—the perfect place for a creature to lay in ambush.
Too perfect.
Cavatina cast a detection spell on the hollow trunk and received the result she’d expected: there was nothing evil inside it. She widened her search, surveying the surrounding forest, turning in a mid-air dance and sweeping her sword around in a circle. Nothing. The air sang a song that was sweet and pure, with no taint of evil.
The creature was gone.
Wait—a faint note of discordance came from the cocoon itself. For a moment, Cavatina wondered if the creature had been even more clever than she’d thought, if it had sealed itself inside one of its own cocoons as a surprise for its stalker, but the aura Cavatina’s prayer had detected was weak, almost gone.
She landed beside the cocoon. Whoever was inside it was still alive. Barely. She could see the victim struggling, weakly, inside the sticky strands. Something bulged—an elbow? A faint gasping sounded from inside the tight binding of silk, someone struggling to breathe.
Cavatina flicked her sword, slicing the cocoon open over the spot where a face would be. Her sword point caught on something, yanking it out of the hole. A black mask. It fluttered to the ground and lay still, but it held her attention, much more than the ragged gasps coming from the other side of the hole she’d cut in the cocoon. Something about that scrap of black fabric was wrong—something far more disturbing than the fact that it was a holy symbol of a god who was one of Eilistraee’s chief enemies.
The mask was somehow alive. Cavatina could sense it, screaming at her. Just at the edge of her hearing, like a note that could shatter crystal.
She would deal with it in a moment. For now, there was the victim inside the cocoon. His eyes were still sealed shut by a thick layer of sticky silk, but his mouth was working. His lips were drawn back in agony, revealing a single gold tooth. From between gritted teeth he gasped out a blasphemous prayer, begging the Masked Lord to heal him, to banish poison