Storm of the Dead - Lisa Smedman [99]
With a grunt, Cavatina flopped the dead demon onto his side. His lips were pulled back, his fangs exposed in what looked like a grin.
"Go ahead and smile," Cavatina told him. "It's Eilistraee who has the last laugh." She planted a foot on his chest and yanked out the singing sword. She whirled it around her head, letting the dark blood slide from it. The sword pealed its joy.
What now? Cavatina thought as she glanced around. This is the Abyss, and I still need to escape.
Her eye fell on the pile of blackened skulls. A thin tendril of black seeped from the eye socket of one of them. She crouched and peered at its source.
The void she stared into left her mind spinning. For an instant, she felt nothing-not even the beating of her own heart. Her very soul teetered on a blade's edge: on one side, life; on the other… nothing. Just a terrifying emptiness.
Cavatina reeled back, sickened. The eye socket was indeed a portal. A portal to death itself.
There had to be another way out of there. Halisstra must have gone somewhere. And if she could escape, then so could Cavatina. She was a Darksong Knight. A slayer of demons. No, a slayer of demigods. She…
She smiled. There is was again. Pride. It had nearly been her downfall, more than once.
Still, she would find a way out of there. When she'd trained as a Darksong Knight, her instructors had foreseen just such an eventuality. More than one of them had followed a demon onto its home ground, slain it, and returned to tell the tale. They'd told her how it was done. The prayer was one Cavatina had never attempted before, but she was certain she could master it.
Anything was possible, with Eilistraee's grace.
Holding her sword in both hands, Cavatina raised it until the blade was horizontal with the ground. Then she spun and sang. Her blade tried to dip toward the skull portal, but she would not allow it. Muscles straining, she kept it level. Then suddenly the point plunged down, driving itself deep into the salt. A shaft of twined moonlight and shadow shot out from that point, a hair's breadth above the ground and thin as a sword blade. A path that only a devotee of the Masked Lady could see. A path to the next nearest portal.
Cavatina yanked her sword from the ground. With the softly humming blade balanced across one bare shoulder, she set out upon the path.
* * * * *
Kвras stepped down into the boat, taking care that his too-short legs didn't stumble. Getting used to being half his usual size was the easy part. Coping with having his face bare was harder. His mask- a bright red handkerchief-peeped out of the pocket of the leather vest his piwafwi had transformed into. He resisted the urge to touch it.
Gindrol and Talzir followed him, each seamless in his magically altered form. Their disguises were perfect to the last detail: bare scalps, mottled gray skin, wiry muscles, and pebble-black eyes. They even wore a deep gnome's suspicious glower. They might have been born svirfneblin, for all anyone could tell.
The rowboat was narrow and black, with blunted ends. The three disguised Nightshadows settled onto its bare wooden seats, Kвras in the front with the strongbox resting on his knees. Gindrol, just behind him, took the oars in hand. Each was a length of fused armbone, ending in a cupped hand.
The splashes of the oars were drowned out by the clattering of bone on bone. The lake-filled cavern was vast, but its entire ceiling was studded with skulls, giving it a bumpy, off-white appearance. The lake itself was utterly flat-the slight wake the rowboat produced immediately stilled. A chill emanated from the water, up through the wooden plank on which Kвras sat. He found himself shivering and tried to force his muscles to relax. He didn't want the others to think he was afraid.
The lake was deep, but the Faerzress that permeated the stone there shone up from below, lending the water a faint bluish glow. Silhouettes flitted through its depths: