Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [61]
“Eilistraee’s tears,” Qilué murmured. “May they wash her soul clean.”
Beside her, Iljrene repeated the blessing.
The temple’s battle-mistress was a tiny woman, slender as a wand, with narrow features and highly arched eyebrows. Her voice was high-pitched, almost squeaky—like a child’s. Her muscles, however, were whipcord strong, and her skill at arms was renowned. She had been entrusted with the Promenade’s defenses and carried one of its cherished relics: one of the singing swords Qilué’s companions had carried into battle against Ghaunadaur’s avatar. She carried it, always, in the scabbard on her back.
“Why did you summon me?” Qilué asked. “The answer to our mystery seems straightforward enough. A carrion crawler consumed the novice and deposited her remains here.”
“That’s what the patrol that discovered this thought,” Iljrene said, “until they sang a divination. When they saw what else was here, they didn’t want to touch it. Try it yourself, and you’ll see.”
Qilué sang a brief prayer, passing her hand palm-down above the mangled bits of chain mail. An aura appeared around an oval lump that was buried within the mass. It glowed with a flickering purple light that was shot through with a tracery of black lines.
A flick of her finger levitated the object to eye level. She rotated her finger, turning the object around. The lines of magical force shifted back and forth across the face of the purple aura, one moment forming patterns that looked like a spiderweb, the next shaping themselves into something reminiscent of a grossly simplified Dethek rune. The aura, too, kept flickering, shifting back and forth between a benign sky-blue and a dark, evil-tainted purple. Qilué cast a spell that would analyze the dweomer, but pluck as she might at the strands of the Weave, the music the obsidian produced was a cacophony of tangled notes. She could tell that the gem held some sort of conjuration spell, but something blocked her from learning more. It was almost as if the magical item were being held in the hand of a spellcaster whose will was resisting her, though clearly that was not the case.
Qilué let her divination spell end. The magical lines of force it had revealed vanished. The object once again appeared no more than a polished oval of black obsidian.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Iljrene said.
“Nor have I,” Qilué said, “though it’s clearly a form of gem magic—and many thousands of years old, judging by the ancient form of that rune.”
“What word is it?”
“That depends on whether it was scribed by dwarves or gnomes. It’s read as thrawen, but it could mean either ‘throw’ or ‘twist.’”
Iljrene repeated the words softly. “Do you think it’s some sort of trap?”
Qilué slowly shook her head. “I don’t think so, or it would have gone off by now, unless it’s triggered by touch.” Gently, she levitated the stone back to the ground. Then she bent and studied the spot it had risen from, a hollow within the scraps of chain mail. “Has this been shifted?”
“No, Lady.”
Qilué pointed. “You see that scrap on the spot where the stone was resting? It looks like a fragment of leather. I’ll warrant Thaleste was carrying the stone in her pouch when she died. If so, she probably touched it—without setting off any trap.” She straightened. “The question now is, where did the novice pick this up? Her body must have been inside the carrion crawler for some time. She could have found the gem anywhere.”
That said, she pulled a soft leather pouch out of one of her pockets and laid it on the ground next to the stone. She nudged the stone into it with a flick of her dagger then drew the strings of the magical pouch shut.
“This isn’t far from the spot where the aranea was killed,” Iljrene observed. “Do you