Storm of the Dead - Lisa Smedman [16]
Dark as a Nightshadow's heart.
Cavatina didn't want to think about that. Running alone through the moonlit woods, it was easy to pretend that the changes that began in the winter of that fateful Year of Risen Elfkin hadn't happened. That Eilistraee's worship was as it had always been. That the goddess herself was unchanged, more than a year and a half after assuming Vhaeraun's worshipers as her own.
Cavatina leaped across a fallen log as gracefully as a deer. She was tall, with a body narrow as a sword blade, her muscles honed by a lifetime of dancing and fighting. Her skin, black as a moonless night, contrasted with her long, ivory-colored hair. Normally, she wore her hair bound in a braid or bun so it wouldn't fall across her face and distract her while she fought, but tonight she'd left it loose. Tonight she let herself run wild, open to whatever the Shilmista Forest threw at her. She prayed whatever monster Eilistraee caused to cross her path would be a challenging one. Something worthy of the singing sword, and the Darksong Knight who held it.
She heard the blare of a hunting horn. Another of the priestesses had spotted something. A voice sang out through the night, calling for the others to join her. The cacophony of banging shields fell away; the beaters had done their work and were no longer needed.
Cavatina ignored the exhortations to join in the kill. She ran until the voices and horns faded in the distance. She plunged down a slope and found a shallow stream that sparkled with reflected moonlight. On impulse she followed it, her bare feet dancing lightly from stone to stone. At first, the stream wound through verdant forest, but as Cavatina followed it downhill, the vegetation on either side grew increasingly sparse. She clambered over a dead tree that had fallen across the stream-a tree whose trunk had been eaten away on one side. Other trees on both sides of the stream showed similar gouges. Their bark hung in tattered strips. Some had been stripped of their branches, leaving only skeletal trunks that were dark against the moonlit sky.
Something had been feeding on the vegetation there. Something big.
Cavatina slowed, her senses alert. She was panting heavily from her run, but the singing sword was steady in her hand. It, too, fell silent as if listening. The only sound came from the stream that flowed past Cavatina's ankles, chilling her bare feet.
A faint splash came from the bank to her left. A tiny head broke the surface a moment later: a small black creature with a pointed muzzle and rounded ears, its bare pink tail lashing behind it as it swam. A rat.
Swift as a striking hawk, Cavatina jabbed her sword down, skewering it. The creature squeaked as the sword point thrust it under water, a peculiar noise that almost sounded like a cry. When Cavatina lifted her sword again, the rat was dead. She flicked it from her blade, into the dead foliage at the side of the stream.
Something else moved on her right-a second rat. It emerged from the stream and scurried uphill through the shadows that had given the forest its Elvish name. Cavatina saw the disturbance it made through the scatter of dead sticks and leaves as it climbed the bank, but made no move to follow it. She was already sorry she'd sullied a singing sword with the blood of vermin.
She held the tip of the blade in the stream, letting the water wash it clean, and asked, "Is that the best you can send me, Eilistraee? A rat?"
This hunt was already a disappointment.
She walked on, following the stream. After several dozen paces, she noted movement to her left. The hillside shifted. She whirled to face it just as a tree toppled across the stream with a splash.
A creature erupted from the earth: an enormous beetle the size of a cabin, with mandibles as big as stag antlers and a curved claw at the end of each of its six legs. Chunks of soil slid off its gleaming black carapace as it reared up; it must have been hiding just below the surface. It