Storm of the Dead - Lisa Smedman [60]
The priestess sang a brief melody and stared off into the darkened woods, as if looking across a great distance. For several moments, she was silent. She frowned slightly, then nodded. "Lady Cavatina cannot come to the Shilmista. Not now. Lady Qiluй is sending her away on an urgent mission. One that must preclude all else."
"Where?" Halisstra hissed. "Where is she being sent?"
Her outburst startled Shoshara. The priestess blinked. "I asked, but she wouldn't…" Her eyes strayed to the prone cleric. Then they widened. "Glorst!" she gasped. She gaped at Halisstra, eyes wide. "You-"
The charm had broken.
Halisstra lashed out, slapping the priestess's face so hard her fingers left a mark. "Die!" she shouted.
Without so much as a cry, Shoshara crumpled atop the body of her consort.
Halisstra stared down at them, her mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. "Weak!" she spat at the priestess. "You're weak!" Her voice rose to a shriek. "Just look at what you've done!"
She yanked the priestess's body into her arms and bit it savagely on the face, throat, and arms. Again. And again. It was a bloody ruin when she at last threw the priestess down. Panting, she shook her head, clearing it. When her breathing slowed again, she bent and-very deliberately, this time-inflicted several bites on the already cooling body of the male.
She drew the priestess's sword and placed it where it might have fallen, had it tumbled from Shoshara's dead hand, and shrouded both bodies with web. Halisstra couldn't mimic a spider's digestive juices, but she could strew web about the bushes, as if it had been shot from above by spinnerets.
Halisstra was angry at herself-angry for not having first asked where the portal to the Promenade was. But she could hazard a guess. During her time at the Velarswood shrine, she'd observed priestesses, recently arrived from the Promenade, who were dripping wet. There had been a pool near that shrine, innocent looking, yet always heavily guarded from moonrise to moonset. She'd seen a similar pool in the Shilmista Forest.
She squinted through the branches at the night sky and smiled.
Eilistraee's moon would light the way to her prey.
* * * * *
Cavatina squinted as she swam upward through the ice-cold water. The surface of the lake, bright with the light of the full moon, rippled above. They'd portaled in deep; the surface was farther above her than she'd expected. Already her lungs strained from the lack of air. When she broke the surface, she gasped in a long, grateful breath.
Treading water, she twisted around. The Moondeep Sea glowed with moonlight-bright enough to illuminate the ceiling, nearly two hundred paces above.
A head broke the surface next to her: Kвras. His mask was plastered against his mouth; a shake of his head freed it. "You should have… warned us… the portal was… so deep," he gasped.
Cavatina thought the same thing-of Qiluй.
"Watch for the others," she told Kвras. "If any don't make it, we'll have to revive them."
That said, she levitated. A quick glance around revealed no imminent threats. Aside from the disturbance caused by the portal, the Moondeep Sea was quiet and still. She'd been wrong about it being moonlight illuminating the ceiling. Everywhere she looked, the stone that made up the cavern was infused with a faint glow. It shimmered with a pale blue light that was almost white: the largest Faerzress she a ever seen.
She counted heads as the Protectors and Nightshadows broke the surface, one by one. Some used prayers to stand upon the moonlit ripples, and others hovered just below the surface, breathing water, then rose and sprayed water from their nostrils in fine sheets.
Two of the wizards sputtered up without any visible magical aid: Q'arlynd and the young mage from the College of Divination. A short distance from them, the female conjurer rose to the surface in a swell of water, the cupped hands of an elemental she must have summoned. As it was subsumed into