Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [83]
A shadow fell across the floor, a shadow with the outline of a drow. A naked drow—and female, too.
Q’arlynd almost laughed. How stupid did the lamias think he was? Still, he had to admire the detail they’d put into their illusion. Those curves were very enticing.
He pulled the quartz crystal from his pouch. With it, he’d be able to see through the lamia’s illusions—and pinpoint the creature so that he could incinerate it where it stood. As the shadow lengthened, he activated his insignia and rose into the air, out of the roofless building.
Below him, a drow female appeared to step into the room. Q’arlynd squinted through the crystal at her, expecting to see either the bare stone of the floor below the illusion—or a lamia, underneath a drow-shaped glamor. Instead he saw a female who was tall and beautiful, with silver hair and a proud bearing, like the matron mother of a noble House. She wore a gauzy silver robe that did little to hide the dark curves beneath. A sword hung from a scabbard on her belt, and she wore a bracer on her right forearm that served as a sheath for a dagger. In her left hand, she held a curious looking metal wand with a knob at either end. Eilistraee’s holy symbol hung from a chain around her neck. She had a deeply lined face and somber expression, but despite her age she looked as fit as a female in her first century of life. Regardless of the obvious threat she posed—perhaps because of it—he found her intensely attractive. She was, quite simply, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Q’arlynd lowered his crystal. The priestess was real. She must have been sent to find him, to kill him. He placed a foot atop the ruined wall and gently pushed off, at the same time taking aim with the sulfur-gum.
Without warning, his levitation ended, sending him crashing into the street below. He rose, gasping and spitting blood from a cut lip. As he did, the priestess turned and glanced out into the street. She stared straight at him—seeing him. His invisibility must also have ended.
“Q’arlynd?”
He flicked the pinch of sulfur-gum at her and shouted the words of his spell. The tiny ball streaked through the air, igniting in mid-flight. It struck the priestess on the shoulder, immediately expanding into a violent ball of searing fire. Much of it washed back onto Q’arlynd—something it shouldn’t have done.
He scrambled to his feet, his hair and skin singed from the blast, furiously blinking away the fiery afterimage that obscured his vision. He expected to see a charred body lying on the ground, but when his vision cleared the priestess was just standing there, completely unscathed. A nimbus of silver fire surrounded her naked body like a second skin, and her hair was one long, sparkling streak of silver. A candle-sized flame flickered at one end of the wand she held, and she raised it to her lips and blew it out.
“That wasn’t very nice,” she said in a dry voice.
Then she flicked a hand. A silver-white ray flashed from her fingertips to Q’arlynd, striking him in the chest. He touched fingers to the spot where it had struck, but felt no wound. A second flick of the priestess’s fingers, and a wall of blades sprang up around Q’arlynd, completely enclosing him. They whizzed in a tight circle around him, giving him no space to move.
“If you try to attack me again,” she said, “I’ll tighten the ring.” She made a squeezing motion with her hand, and the curtain of whirling blades cinched closer.
Q’arlynd, however, had no intention of letting her slice him up. With one word, he could teleport away. He spoke that word—
Nothing happened. He stood in the same spot as before. The magical blades swirled around him, filling the air with a dangerous hum.
“Your spells won’t work,” the priestess told him. “You’re inside a field that negates magic.”
“Impossible,”