Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [86]
Q’arlynd gave a dutiful nod. He’d worry about that later. He had a job to do, and a potential matron to impress.
“Where is Malvag now?”
“We don’t know. He’s cloaked himself with powerful magic that prevents me from scrying him, but we do know where he and the other Nightshadows will meet on the night of the winter solstice: in a cavern lined with darkstone crystals. The cavern has no entrance or exit; it’s unconnected to anything else in the Underdark. The only way to reach it is to teleport.” She smiled. “Fortunately that’s something, Leliana tells me, that you claim to be quite adept at.”
Q’arlynd allowed himself a modest smile. Qilué had obviously believed Leliana, or she wouldn’t have sought him out. “Where is this cavern located?”
“Again, we don’t know. We assume that it doesn’t lie very deep in the Underdark, and that there’s no faerzress near it, since teleportation to it is possible. All we have is a description of it, a brief description provided by the corpse.”
Q’arlynd’s eyebrows raised. “You expect me to teleport there on the strength of a description?”
“I realized that this would be impossible, without you having viewed the cavern. That is why I took the additional precaution of having the necromancer animate the body of the dead assassin. He then asked Szorak to ‘describe’ the cavern a second time—by drawing it.”
“Ah,” Q’arlynd said. “I see. You want me to study the drawing then try to teleport there.”
Qilué gave him a measuring stare. “Can you do it?”
Q’arlynd carefully kept his thoughts from showing on his face. If the sketch had been done by the equivalent of a zombie, with only the shakiest of muscle control and no spirit to guide his hand, it wouldn’t be very accurate. The resulting “drawing” would probably be no more than a few crude scratch marks.
He stroked his chin nervously. His stomach felt hollow at the very notion of what Qilué was asking—and he hadn’t even jumped yet, but the thought of attempting an “impossible” teleport was tempting simply for the sheer challenge of it. Qilué was hanging upon his answer, every muscle in her body taut. If he pulled this one off, it would really impress her. If he managed to stop Malvag and save the souls of a couple of priestesses in the bargain, the rewards would be rich indeed. Qilué was a veritable conduit to Mystra herself. The very thought made him lightheaded.
“I can do it,” he said.
Qilué beamed. “Good.”
Part of him reveled in that smile. Another part wondered if he’d just signed his own death order. He crushed the second part mercilessly. To advance in life, one had to take chances.
“The geas, then,” Qilué said.
Q’arlynd bowed his head.
The high priestess laid cool fingers on his forehead and invoked the names of both Eilistraee—and Mystra. “I command you to perform this service for me,” she began. “To locate Malvag, and …”
When she finished, Q’arlynd’s forehead tingled. A shimmer of silver magic shivered the hairs on his arms erect then was gone.
It was done. The geas had been laid upon him.
Now all he had to do was achieve the near-impossible.
“One favor,” Jub whispered as he descended through the cavern on a thread of silk. “One favor I promised Qilué, and this is what she asks: to sneak into the lair of a dracolich.”
The dracolich in question had already swooped past him once, causing Jub to spin madly on his thread. The undead wyrm was an enormous creature, black as old blood and with wings so broad they brushed the walls on either side of the passage. The monster left the stench of death in its wake and had a deep, unhealed wound in its left flank, yet it lived—after a fashion. Jub was awed by the amount of magic it must have taken for a dragon to transform itself into an undead creature.
Jub had magic, too—the tiny metal box, attached to a leather armband, that he wore above his left elbow. He’d gotten a real bargain on the phylactery from the thaumaturgical shop in Skullport because of its “curse.” It didn’t polymorph properly—it would only change its wearer into “vermin,” but that was