Storm of the Dead - Lisa Smedman [124]
"Well?" Q'arlynd breathed. He asked the question both with his voice and with his heart.
Eldrinn lifted his kiira. "I'm convinced."
"As am I," Alexa said quickly.
Zarifar opened his eyes and silently nodded.
"Right," Baltak said. He tried to step in front of the other apprentices, to take charge, but Q'arlynd placed a hand on his shoulder, restraining him. Baltak, for once, relented.
"On my three-count," Q'arlynd said. "And be sure to keep your minds linked with mine. One… two… three!"
As the others pressed their lorestones against their foreheads, Q'arlynd felt the awarenesses that were the other five kiira join them. Each of the apprentices reacted as he'd expected: Baltak with a mental grapple, Alexa with tentative experimentation, Zarifar with a dreamy acceptance, and Eldrinn with cautious curiosity. An instant later, each succumbed as the kiira took hold. The lorestones spoke to one another through the linkage of the rings the six of them wore.
The combined awarenesses of Q'arlynd and the kiira he wore answered them.
It is time. Begin.
Together, they wove a spell. Guided by the kiira, the six drow in unison spoke the words to an enchantment. As the spell waxed, the Faerzress brightened. Though Q'arlynd had to squint against its glare, he forced himself to keep staring at it. The Faerzress was their link to Kiaransalee's minions, to the undead that drew their power from its negative energy, to the Crones who venerated and created those abominations-to the Goddess of Death herself.
From each and every one of those minds, something was about to be erased. Not a memory, but a single word.
In a roundabout way, the inspiration for the enchantment had come from Kiaransalee herself. When Q'arlynd had heard Leliana's story about Kiaransalee erasing Orcus's name from shrines and temples the length and breadth of Faerыn, he'd accepted the story at face value. The goddess must have acted out of simple vanity, he surmised. Ever the conquering queen, she wanted to obliterate all evidence of one who had ruled before her.
Q'arlynd had come to realize the deeper implications. All deities needed worshipers to survive. Without a steady stream of the faithful praying to them on Toril and later entering their domains after death, the gods and goddesses would slowly fade away.
What better way to end Kiaransalee's worship than by erasing her name from every worshiper's mind? Even from the mind of the very goddess herself.
Q'arlynd slapped a hand against the wall. "Kiaransalee!" he cried.
His spell rippled outward through the Faerzress. Like fire through dry kindling, it burned the minds of Kiaransalee's faithful. It arced through the Negative Energy Plane, streaking like a bolt of lightning through that vast void and exploding out into the corner of the Demonweb Pits that was Kiaransalee's domain.
Q'arlynd heard a tumultuous cry-thousands of voices, shrieking. Abruptly, they choked off into silence.
The silence of the grave.
It is done.
He bowed in thanks. When he rose, he saw that the Faerzress which filled the corridor was muted. Yet it was still there.
His eyes widened in alarm. "Did we fail?"
We succeeded. We halted the progression of the Faerzress. But even high magic can't turn back time.
Q'arlynd nodded, exhausted. He wondered how Sshamath fared. Was divination magic still possible there? Would the College of Divination teeter and eventually fall? If it did, Q'arlynd would be right back where he'd started, without a master to nominate his school.
At least he still had the kiira.
His apprentices stood next to him, glassy-eyed. In unison, they began to move. Stiff as golems, they removed the lorestones from their foreheads, traced the House glyph of their kiira on Kraanfhaor's