Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [71]
Q’arlynd nodded. “Do you remember much of it?”
Rowaan smiled. “A little. I realized I was dead when I found myself standing, alone, in a place that was featureless and gray: the Fugue Plain. There were others around me—other souls—but I couldn’t see or touch them, just feel them. Then I heard a voice.” She blinked, her eyes shiny with tears. “An indescribably beautiful voice. It was Eilistraee, singing to me. Calling me. A rift opened in the gray, and a shaft of moonlight shone through. I moved toward it, but just as I was about to touch the moonbeam and ascend to the goddess, it was gone. I woke up in the forest, alive. Chezzara had raised me from the dead before I could enter Eilistraee’s domain.”
She shrugged and gave him a shy smile. “So I really can’t tell you what dancing with the goddess is like.”
“The shaft of moonlight,” Q’arlynd said. “It just appeared?”
Rowaan nodded. “Of course. When Eilistraee sang. It’s the gateway to her domain.”
“Probably just as well you didn’t go there.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“You might have been attacked and your soul consumed.”
Rowaan frowned. “By what?”
Q’arlynd hesitated. “Aren’t there usually … some sort of creatures your soul has to fight its way past, or some other trial you must endure before passing into the goddess’s presence?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Lolth’s domain is filled with monsters that consume souls,” Q’arlynd explained. “If your soul manages to avoid those, there’s still the Pass of the Soulreaver to get through. From what the priestesses teach, it’s the equivalent of being flayed alive. Only the toughest and most tenacious survive the passage to eventually stand by Lolth’s side. The rest are annihilated.” He shrugged. “I expected Eilistraee to at least throw up a wall of swords or something to whittle out the faithful from the dross, to select those who are truly worthy.”
Rowaan smiled. “Eilistraee doesn’t test her faithful. We test ourselves. It’s what we do here on Toril, before our deaths, that matters.”
“What about those who convert to the faith?” Q’arlynd asked. “What if, before they sought redemption, they did things that Eilistraee found abhorrent?”
Rowaan stared at him for several moments. Then she nodded. “Ah. I see. You’re worried that Eilistraee won’t accept you.”
“Actually, I was thinking about Halisstra,” he lied.
Rowaan touched his arm, not really listening. “It doesn’t matter what you were before your redemption, which deity you worshiped. You belong to Eilistraee now.”
His heart nearly skipped a beat at that. Had Halisstra told the priestesses about his earlier, half-hearted “conversion” to Vhaeraun’s worship? Q’arlynd opened his mouth, intending to explain that the dalliances of his youth were just that—mere flirtations, the sort of thing any boy might make the mistake of getting caught up in. He paused before speaking, worried that anything he said might bring his more recent conversion into question. If he protested that he hadn’t been serious back then, the priestesses might think him less than sincere with them, too—something that would be a mark against him, when he finally got to meet their high priestess.
Rowaan, perhaps sensing his unease, gently touched his arm. “The Spider Queen has no hold upon you any more.”
Q’arlynd relaxed as he realized she’d been talking about Lolth, not Vhaeraun.
“I only paid Lolth lip service,” he said. “I spoke the words, because her priestesses ordered me to, but I never gave the Spider Queen my heart.” He touched his chest as he said that, an earnest expression on his face.
Part of what he said was true. He certainly hadn’t made the Spider Queen any promises, let alone claimed her as his patron deity. He’d never seen the point. For the living worshipers of Lolth, there was great reward—power and glory—but only if you were female. Males were told their reward would come after death, but from all Q’arlynd had heard, Lolth handed out only more suffering.
“You’ve left all that behind in the darkness,” Rowaan continued. “You’ve come up into