Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [81]
She stopped abruptly, pointing with her sword. “There!” she shouted. “He went that way.”
Another priestess called a bolt of moonlight down from the sky. It lanced down into the woods and illuminated, just for a moment, the figure of a running man with black skin. He staggered as it struck the ground next to him and glanced over his shoulder. Even from a distance, Q’arlynd could see his mask.
“A Nightshadow,” he whispered under his breath.
One of the priestesses spoke a word, negating the barrier of blades. As it fell, the other priestesses charged after the assassin, one of them blowing a hunting horn. Leliana ran after them.
“Q’arlynd!” she shouted over her shoulder. “What are you waiting for?”
Q’arlynd hesitated. He’d noticed something she’d missed. Rowaan’s door was open, yet he hadn’t seen her during the mad scramble to chase the assassin. He levitated to the opening and peered inside.
What he saw didn’t surprise him. Rowaan lay on the floor of the room, her eyes bulging, a deep crease in her throat. The assassin must have been strangling her, even as Q’arlynd and Leliana were chatting.
And Q’arlynd had unlocked the door for him.
Leliana would realize that the instant she saw the dispelled glyph. All of the suspicions she harbored about Q’arlynd would be “confirmed.”
That was it then. He’d never get an audience with the high priestess now, except, perhaps, as a prisoner.
He cursed and sheathed his wand. Then he teleported away.
CHAPTER NINE
Qilué was in the Cavern of Song, lending her voice to those of the other priestesses, when Iljrene’s urgent message came. The Nightshadows have struck again. The Misty Forest this time. They’ve stolen another soul. Her body has just been brought to the Hall of Healing.
I’ll be there at once, Qilué replied. She hurried out of the cavern, gathering up her clothes from the floor as she went.
As she strode down the passageways that led to the Hall of Healing, Qilué’s expression was grim. It was the third soul Vhaeraun’s assassins had claimed: one from a priestess at the Gray Forest shrine, another from a priestess of the Chondalwood, and the third, from the Misty Forest.
Two other souls that had been stolen had been restored, praise Eilistraee. The soul of Nastasia, the first to fall, had been set free by unknown causes, and the priestess who had been killed at the shrine in the Forest of Lethyr had also been raised from the dead after the assassin who had attacked her was killed. His body had been questioned by a necromancer—an unpleasant, but necessary task. The corpse had revealed that Malvag was alive. The pair had met a day before the attack the Lethyr shrine. The plan to open a gate was indeed going ahead, and when it came to fruition, the souls of Eilistraee’s priestesses would be consumed.
Iljrene was waiting for Qilué in the Hall of Healing, beside another priestess Qilué knew well—Leliana. Qilué had taken Leliana’s sword-oath more than a century ago, when she had first come up from below.
Leliana turned, a stricken look on her face, as Qilué entered. “Lady Qilué,” she said. “It’s my daughter Rowaan. The Nightshadows killed her and Chezzara can’t raise her from the dead. Her soul …”
Qilué touched Leliana’s arm. “Let’s be certain first.” She glanced past Leliana at the alcove where two novice priestesses hastily prepared a bed on which to lay a body. Two other priestesses—both just teleported from the Misty Forest, judging by the snowflakes still melting in their hair—stood by, holding the corners of a damp blanket on which Rowaan’s body lay. Even in death, she looked remarkably like her mother.
Qilué moved closer and noted the telltale mark of an assassin’s cord around Rowaan’s neck. She murmured a prayer of detection, and a distinctive shadow appeared across the lower half of the dead priestess