Lisa Smedman: Sacrifice of the Widow

Sensing Qilue scrying her, Lolth's priestess stared a challenge at her observer. Wild laughter, joyous and cruel, bubbled from the font as she began a magical attack.

Qilue had seen enough. She ended the scrying.

One of the priestesses of Eilistraee who had waited with Qilue rose to her feet. "Lady Qilue?" she asked. She sounded nervous, uncertain. "Is something wrong?"

The other priestesses also rose, some whispering tense prayers, others silent with dread anticipation.

Qilue closed her eyes. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. "Halisstra has failed," she told them. "Lolth lives. Her Silence is broken."

Q'arlynd stood, hands laced together behind his back, at the broken lip of what had once been a broad street of calcined webbing. Across the wide chasm he could see a jagged protrusion, the spot where the street had anchored to the far wall. Similar protrusions dotted the walls above and below him. The city that had filled the vast cavern had been more than a hundred layers deep. This once-intricate stone web lay in a shattered heap far below, together with fragments of the noble Houses, temples, and academies that had hung from it like glowing pendants. The magical glow that had suffused the stone was all but extinguished, hidden under the scab of mold and fungi that had grown in the three years since the city's fall.

He shivered. The air was cool and moist, humidified by the constant trickle of water that dampened the cavern walls. He'd grown up in Ched Nasad, but a century of life there still hadn't inured him to the climate. He could feel the chill deep in his bones.

Ched Nasad had once been home to nearly thirty thousand drow. Perhaps one-tenth of that number remained, scrabbling out an existence in the ruins while trying to salvage whatever the duergar stonefire bombs hadn't burned. And fighting. Always fighting. Only a handful of the hundred or so noble Houses had survived the fall of the city-Houses of no consequence whose strongholds had been at the less desirable, outer edges of the web, against the damp cavern walls. They squabbled amongst themselves still, unable to come together in an alliance that might rid what remained of the city of its Jaezred Chaulssin masters.

Somewhere under that dark jumble of stone lay the ruins of House Melarn. It had been the first of the noble Houses to fall, and it had taken a good chunk of the city down with it, which was fitting, since House Melarn's matron-Q'arlynd's mother-had been murdered by those below her. That murder had set the other eleven noble Houses squabbling with one another, rendering them unable to meet the duergar threat.

"Divided we fall," Q'arlynd murmured.

He lifted his left arm and stared at the House insignia he wore on a wide leather band around his wrist. Carved into the adamantine oval was House Melarn's symbol, a glyph vaguely reminiscent of a stick-figure person, arms bent and one leg raised as if dancing. The insignia counted for little now. Q'arlynd was the only one of his House to survive, and he was male. Since inheritance and title passed through the female line, he could make no claim on any of the property that had been salvaged from the ruins of his former home. He'd had to watch, powerless, as it was looted by others.

Lowering his hand, he leaned forward to stare down at the bulge, low on the opposite wall, that was the domicile of House Teh'Kinrellz-the House he had reluctantly offered his services to after the city's fall. Below it was a depression in the rubble: the salvage excavation. The uncovered stones glowed faintly with faerie fire, a jumble of lavender, indigo, and crimson that looked like an iridescent puddle from above. A platform slowly rose over the hole as it was winched up from a high ledge. The dozen dark shapes slumped on it would be the slaves, exhausted from a cycle of digging.

The effort seemed futile. Though some magical treasures must have survived the fall, so deeply did they lie buried that excavating them would have taken an army of dwarves and the better part of a century. The efforts of House Teh'Kinrellz offered one thing, however-a semblance of organization. Under the leadership of that once-insignificant House, the drow of Ched Nasad might yet reclaim their cavern.

Q'arlynd snorted with bitter laughter. Who was he fooling? The city was as likely to be reclaimed as rothe were to suddenly sprout wings and fly.

Stone shifted under his left foot. It gave him the instant's warning he needed to pull his foot away. A chunk of stone tumbled from the edge, smaller fragments falling in its wake. Q'arlynd listened but couldn't hear them land. The bottom of the cavern was too far below.

Enough of this.

He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and took a step back from the edge, then another. He ran forward, flinging himself into space.

The air snatched at his piwafwi as he fell, yanking its hood back from his head. It pressed his shirt and trousers against his body and plucked at his shoulder-length white hair, turning it into a ragged streamer. He opened his eyes, feeling the wind squeeze tears from them. He flung out his arms to let air whistle through his splayed fingers. His heart hammered wildly in his chest, and it felt as though his stomach flattened against his spine. Grinning, he watched in morbid fascination as the floor of the cavern rushed up to meet him. That jumble of stone below-that was death.

Closer, closer…

Now!

Q'arlynd mentally shouted a command, activating the magic of his House insignia. His body jerked to a halt so close to the ground that his neck purse bounced off an up-thrust slab of stone. In the instant that he went from falling to levitating, his vitals felt as if they were being pulled from his body by an invisible hand. Bright sparkles of light crackled across his vision. Blackness roaring with blood nearly claimed him, but he shook it off and fought down the urge to vomit.

He floated, dizzy but exultant. A laugh burst from his lips, wild as that of the victim of a hideous mirth spell. Then he got hold of himself. It wasn't the first time he'd free-fallen from a great height. As a student at the Conservatory, he'd competed with the other novice mages to see who had the most nerve, but that had been years ago.

Never had he come so close to hitting the ground.

Twisting his body upright, he gave a second mental command, one that would summon a driftdisc to carry him back to House Teh'Kinrellz. As he waited for it, something caught his eye. The body of a drow female lay on the rubble. A corpse in the fallen city was unremarkable in itself, but he hadn't heard of any recent quarrels, and the body looked fresh.

Very fresh.

He sank to the ground, landing gracefully. The back of the female's head looked like a hollow, broken cup.

Something had smashed it in. The patch of red that stained her hair and the rubble she lay on was still spreading.

Q'arlynd looked around warily, certain he'd just interrupted something, but he didn't see anyone nearby. Even a glance through his crystal revealed no invisible enemies lurking nearby. Tucking the magical quartz back into his pocket, he cast an incantation that revealed obvious magical items on the dead female-the sword in her scabbard, her boots, two rings on an outflung hand. Mediocre dweomers all.

As Q'arlynd stepped closer on shifting rubble, part of the mystery resolved itself. A chunk of calcified web, also bright with blood, lay near the corpse's feet.

"By the Dark Mother," he whispered. He looked up, trying to calculate the odds of the stone that had been dislodged by his foot falling in precisely the right spot to strike the female on the head. Lolth's work, surely.

He shook his head.

Kneeling on the unstable rubble, he rolled the body over to see if she wore a House insignia. She did not, but there was a silver chain around her neck that held a sword-shaped pendant with blunted edges. On the blade was engraved a circle on which a sword was superimposed-the holy symbol of Eilistraee.