Lisa Smedman - Sacrifice of the Widow

Rowaan pointed across the flat ground at a spot up ahead, where the moon was setting against what looked like a row of jagged stalagmites. "There, in the Misty Forest."

Q'arlynd nodded. Those jagged bumps must be the "trees" he'd read about. "How much farther?"

"You asked the same thing last night," Leliana said. "Tonight, it's one night less. Count it on your fingers, if you have to."

Q'arlynd glanced away, pretending to be stung by her rebuke. He sighed. His feet ached. The World Above was just too damn big.

Rowaan touched his arm in sympathy. "We should reach the forest by dawn," she patiently explained. "Two nights more after that."

"Couldn't we just teleport there?"

"No," Leliana answered, her voice firm. "We walk."

"We only prepared one sanctuary," Rowaan explained. "The spot we teleported to in order to escape the lamias."

Q'arlynd frowned. "But that-"

"What?" Leliana snapped.

"Nothing," Q'arlynd murmured.

He'd been about to say that Rowaan's explanation made no sense. It would have been far more prudent to have chosen the shrine itself as the endpoint of the spell. Unless, he'd realized belatedly, you had a stranger tagging along with you. Teleporting a complete stranger directly to a holy shrine-even if that person bore a sword-token of Eilistraee-would be a foolish move indeed. Teleporting him into the middle of nowhere and observing him over the long, tedious slog to the shrine was much more prudent.

He smiled to himself. The females were drow after all. Despite living on the surface, they still possessed some measure of cunning.

He gave Rowaan his most winning smile. "I can teleport as well. I'm quite accomplished at it, in fact. If you'd just describe the shrine in detail, perhaps I could get us there."

"You could do that?" Rowaan's eyebrows raised. "Teleport, with just a description to go on?"

Q'arlynd nodded. "Indeed, Lady." In fact, he had never yet attempted such a thing, but one day, he was certain, it would be within his grasp.

Leliana gave a snort of laughter. "No thanks," she said. "Much as I look forward to one day dancing in Eilistraee's groves, for now I'd prefer to go on living."

Q'arlynd lowered his eyes, a gesture of submission. His mind, however, was mulling over the possibilities the surface afforded. He'd only ever used his teleportation spell over short distances within the confines of Ched Nasad-to escape the iron golem, for example. He was itching to test the spell's limits away from the Faerzress that surrounded the ruined city. Attempting to teleport to a destination he'd never seen before would be like a free-fall, exhilarating and terrifying in one.

The priestesses, however, seemed intent on doing things the hard way.

As they trudged along, Q'arlynd realized that Flinderspeld had moved out of his peripheral vision. Out of habit, he dipped into the deep gnome's mind, checking to ensure Flinderspeld wasn't up to anything. Flinderspeld disappointed him. The deep gnome was thinking of his former home, the svirfneblin city of Blingdenstone. Like Ched Nasad, it lay in ruin, destroyed five years ago by the Menzoberranyr. Flinderspeld remembered how that city's orc and goblin slave-soldiers had trampled through his shop, smashing display cases and helping themselves to the gemstones inside. A lifetime's work, scooped greedily into the pockets of those who would never appreciate the intricacies of…

Q'arlynd broke contact, not caring to hear any more of Flinderspeld's broodings. He stared at the landscape, instead.

The High Moor wasn't, he noted, entirely featureless. There were landmarks. Not of the type Q'arlynd was used to-rock formations, patches of crysstone, fungal growths and heat vents-but enough for the priestesses to find their way. To the right, for example, was a circular expanse of stone with tufts of blade-shaped vegetation growing up through it. "Grass," Leliana had called the stuff. The circular outcropping was the sixth Q'arlynd had noticed that night. It was the almost-vanished foundation of a ruined tower, but it was the grass that caught his eye. It had grown up through cracks in the stone floor: cracks that followed a peculiar pattern. It reminded him, a little, of the glyph in the Arcane Conservatory's main foyer.

Interesting. He committed the spot to memory, in case he wanted to return later. One never knew what secrets an old ruin might hold.

Leliana noticed him glancing at the ruined tower.

Q'arlynd gave her a bright smile and cocked his head. "Are those circles natural formations?" he asked. "Can they be found everywhere on the surface, or just here?" It was a deliberately foolish question, much like the ones he'd previously pestered the priestesses with: what a forest was, why water fell from the sky, and if the moon and sun always rose and set in the same place, or whether they sometimes reversed their course. He'd known the answers to all of those questions already, of course. It might have been his first time away from the Underdark, but he had read about the World Above and its strange phenomena. Years of dealing with the females of Ched Nasad, however, had taught him caution. "Handsome but dumb" males tended to be forgotten when plots were being hatched. The smart ones became targets. He'd learned that by watching his brothers die one by one.

It was Rowaan who answered him. "They're the bases of ruined towers," she explained. "A city once stood here. Millennia ago, in the time before the Descent-"

Leliana halted abruptly. "Enough," she told Rowaan. She turned to Q'arlynd, irritation plain on her face, and spoke directly to him. "If you want to know where we are, just ask. I'm tired of your oblique questions."

"All right, then," Q'arlynd said. "Where are we?"

"Talthalaran."

The name wasn't one Q'arlynd recognized-though it sounded a little like the formal term for a council of matron mothers. Curiosity warred with the need to continue to feign ignorance. Curiosity won.

"Was Talthalaran… the name of an ancient city?" he asked.

"Yes," Rowaan said. "One of the cities of Miyeritar."

"Miyeritar," Q'arlynd whispered, too surprised to purge the awe from his voice.

He stared across the moor with a new appreciation. Millennia ago, that dark elf empire had been scoured clean. It had rained acid, the legends said. Lightning bolts had smashed the cities of Miyeritar to the ground, and the thunderclaps that followed had shattered what remained like invisible hammer blows. Tens of thousands had died, and roaring winds had carried their remains high into the skies, shredding the corpses like rotten cloth. When it was all over, only bare, blood-soaked earth remained.

Such had been the magic the high mages of Aryvandaar had wrought.

Q'arlynd would have given anything to have seen it.

From a safe distance, of course.

Flinderspeld, listening all the while, stood scratching his bald head. "What's Miyeritar?" he asked.

Q'arlynd often permitted such questions from the deep gnome. Since the city's fall, there had been few others he could converse with. He enlightened his slave.

"It's a kingdom that existed at the time of the Crown Wars. Fourteen thousand years ago, during the Third Crown War, it was destroyed by Aryvandaar-a nation of surface elves-in a magical storm of unbelievable proportions. They say-" He broke off suddenly, aware that Leliana was staring at him.

He gave her a wistful shrug. "I'm a wizard. They taught us about Miyeritar at the Conservatory in Ched Nasad."

"But not about ordinary rain?" she scoffed. "It sounds like a strangely lopsided education."

Q'arlynd gave an embarrassed shrug.

"If you studied Miyeritar, then you know that we were all 'surface elves' once," she continued.

Flinderspeld turned to her. "Drow lived on the surface?"