Sacrifice of the Widow_ Lady Penitent - Lisa Smedman [89]
The weirdest thing was that the dead priestess was still lying there. She’d been killed a while ago, judging by the dried blood, but the Selvetargtlin didn’t seem to have noticed her yet.
When they did find her, things were going to get hot. Selvetarm was Lolth’s champion. His followers would be furious as a swarm of stirges when they found one of the Spider Queen’s priestesses murdered. They’d turn the cavern upside down looking for her killer.
Jub’s leg hairs suddenly vibrated. It took him a moment to identify the sound as the clash of steel on steel. It came from inside one of the nearby buildings—a windowless, two-story structure that looked as though it might have once been a warehouse. The doorway was invitingly open, its shattered double doors lying on the ground nearby, but Jub wasn’t stupid enough to blunder in that way. Instead he scrambled up a wall to the roof. Centuries of dripping water had pitted it, leaving holes in the thin stone just big enough to scuttle through. Jub crawled inside and clung to the ceiling, staring down.
Below him, two Selvetargtlin in blood-red robes danced around each other, one with an adamantine sword in hand, the other with a spiked mace of black iron. Both had long white hair that hung in thick braids that whipped around as they spun, parried, and thrust. Their robes barely moved. As one flipped back, Jub saw it was lined with chain mail. Both males wore steel gauntlets over their hands. A nasty looking blade stuck out of the back of each gauntlet.
The pair fought furiously, sword and mace clanging in a flurry of parried blows. They battled in silence—something that, he’d heard, was unusual for a Selvetargtlin. Selvetarm’s priests usually worked themselves up for a fight by shouting out their deity’s name. Nor were they using spells against each other. Odd, for a fight that seemed to be in deadly earnest.
The male with the mace feinted—then spun backward, the blade on his gauntlet slicing a line through the other male’s robe, exposing the gleaming chain mail that lined it. The second male retaliated by slashing at the first one’s neck, torso, and hamstrings—but the first avoided all three swings. He leaped into the air, his lower body twisting sideways. His boots struck the wall and stuck. Running up it like a spider, he crouched, ready to spring, but the Selvetargtlin with the sword was equally quick. He, too, ran up the wall as if it was a horizontal surface. The battle continued until suddenly the sword went spinning to the ground, smashed out of the hands of the male who had been wielding it. The disarmed Selvetargtlin leaped after it, but the male with the mace was just as fast. He landed on the floor a heartbeat after the first and smashed down with an overhand blow that should have left his opponent sprawling and bloody, but though the first had lost his sword, he still had his bladed gauntlets. He twisted and sprang inside the arc of the descending mace, punching both blades into the other male’s chest.
The death grunt was loud enough to set Jub’s hairs quivering. The mortally wounded Selvetargtlin collapsed on the floor, blood bubbling from his chest as the gauntlet blades yanked free. Shuddering with effort, he twisted his head to the side—an invitation to his opponent, who was at last retrieving his sword, to finish him.
The other drow laughed. “Well fought,” he said between gulps of air, sheathing his sword. Then he kneeled and slapped both gauntleted hands down on the other’s chest, a palm over each wound, and began to pray. Darkness, threaded with a tracery of white webbing, coalesced around his hands then bled down into the wounds. The threads of white stitched themselves back and forth, sealing the wounds shut, preventing the other from dying.
A moment later, the victor helped the healed Selvetargtlin to his feet. The other male wiped bloody lips with the back of his sleeve then picked up his mace. “You fought well, too,” he said, pausing to spit the last of the blood