Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [57]
The woman looked at him with hollow, exhausted eyes. “You found her.”
Flinderspeld couldn’t believe his luck. He held up the finger that bore the slave ring. “Leliana said you could remove the curse from this slave ring.”
“That’s no longer possible.”
Flinderspeld blinked. “But Leliana promised. She—”
“Too late for promises,” the priestess said. “Vlashiri’s … gone. There isn’t anything left of her to resurrect.”
“Oh.” Flinderspeld looked down at the empty armor, suddenly realizing that the priestess he was speaking to wasn’t Vlashiri, after all. “Is there anyone else who could …?”
The look in the woman’s eye silenced him. “Not any more. Not at this shrine, at least.” Then she sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that … Try the Promenade, near Waterdeep. That’s our main temple. Several of the priestesses there are familiar with curses. Perhaps one of them could help you.”
Flinderspeld nodded politely, though he had never heard of the place. Even if this “Waterdeep” was only a league away, he was unlikely to reach it. He’d managed to avoid his master during the frenzy of the past night’s drider attack, but with the battle over, sooner or later Q’arlynd would—
As if on cue, he felt his master’s awareness slide into his mind, like a dagger into a well-oiled sheath. Flinderspeld turned and saw the wizard walking toward him.
“Ah, Flinderspeld. There you are. I was worried you might have vanished.”
Not a good choice of words, Master, Flinderspeld thought back, pointedly nodding at the empty armor.
Q’arlynd paled. Flinderspeld wondered why Vlashiri’s empty armor unnerved his master so.
“Vlashiri’s dead?” Q’arlynd asked, repeating aloud the information he had just plucked from Flinderspeld’s mind. The wizard glanced at the ring on Flinderspeld’s hand. “I suppose you’ll have to find someone else to remove that ring then, won’t you?”
If that’s meant to be a joke, it isn’t funny.
Q’arlynd wagged a finger at him. “Don’t be so bitter, Flinderspeld. This isn’t the time for it. I’m about to accept Eilistraee as my patron deity. You’re going to be my witness. Come.”
Dutifully, Flinderspeld trudged after his master. He had no choice. If he disobeyed, Q’arlynd would take over his body and march him along like a puppet. Flinderspeld had borne that stoically, back in Ched Nasad—as a slave in a drow city, his only chance at survival had been to obey his master, and Q’arlynd, for all his bluster, had never harmed him. After what Flinderspeld had seen the past night, he was starting to question his master’s decency. Flinderspeld, invisible, had followed Q’arlynd. He’d seen his master stand idly by while the driders killed Leliana. He’d also noted the flicker of magical energy around Q’arlynd’s hands as he stared down at her near-fatal wounds—a flicker that always preceded a deadly magical bolt. Until that moment, Flinderspeld had thought that his master joined the battle to prove himself to the priestesses, but he soon understood that Q’arlynd must have intended to kill Leliana and Rowaan all along.
It was something Flinderspeld should have anticipated. He’d been stupid to think that his master was different from other dark elves.
Q’arlynd led him to a section of the forest that was littered with broken chunks of stone, the ruins of buildings that had fallen long ago. Eventually, they came to an odd-looking structure that must have been a shrine to the drow sword goddess. It consisted of a dozen sword-shaped columns of black obsidian, set point-first into a circular platform of white stone. The hilts of the column-swords were flattened, and supported a circular roof, also of white stone, that had a hole at its center. The shrine looked ancient, its moon-shaped roof weathered until its edges were softly rounded.
Flinderspeld admired the columns as they approached the shrine through the ground-hugging mist. Obsidian was a difficult stone to work with, its brittle edges constantly flaking and splitting. Whoever had carved the rounded contours of those sword hilts