Ascendency of the Last

by Lisa Smedman

  The creature spat acid. The stream struck the magical shield she’d just sung into being and deflected to the side. Again she slashed at the monster, but as her sword descended, her right foot sank into something soft, throwing her off balance. She glanced down. The stone floor was quivering, like quicksand. As her left foot also plunged downward, she staggered and fell. She threw out a hand to halt herself, but her arm sunk into the floor, up to the elbow.

  The creature rested lightly upon the vibrating floor, as if floating gently atop it.

  That gave Leliana an idea. Instead of trying to rise, she dived into the quicksand. With her eyes tightly closed, she waited for the monster to pass her. When the quivering above her subsided, she twisted and found a solid surface with her feet. She shoved hard, and shot out of the quicksand behind the monster. Her sword flashed down in a deadly arc. Eyeballs exploded and teeth shattered as her sword sliced through the monster, cutting it in two.

  The quicksand began to congeal. Before it could trap her, Leliana scrambled out.

  The priestesses she’d led here all lay on the floor moaning, their skin burned by acid and covered in bloody bites. Leliana ached to heal them, yet there was no time. Not if the Promenade was to be saved. As she ran on to the Hall of Empty Arches, flakes of hardening stone fell from her body like dried mud.

  At last she reached the hall. As she entered it, she heard a slurping sound: an ooze, departing, by the sound of it, through the exit on the far side of the chamber. She squinted against the bright sparkle of Faerzress that filled the room. She ran along the wall, her feet slipping on the slime that fouled the floor. She peered down each of the spaces between the partitions in turn.

  “Naxil!” she shouted. “Are you here?”

  Up ahead, she spotted a misshapen lump of flesh, in front of the portal that led here from the abandoned mine tunnels. Her throat caught—until she realized, by the partially dissolved chunks of chain mail armor the body had been wearing, that this wasn’t Naxil. It must have been the priestess Chizra had left behind. Soggy fragments of curled paper lay next to the body: the scrolls the priestess had held. They were rapidly turning to mush as the acid dissolved them. One scroll, however, had landed just beyond the spray of acid that glistened on the walls and floor.

  Breathing in shallow gulps—the smell was nauseating—Leliana ran to the spot where it lay. A mottled purple eyestalk bulged out of the arch as she passed. She twisted aside to avoid it and scooped up the scroll, hoping it was one she could use. She whirled, shaking it open one-handed. She didn’t dare let go of the singing sword, as it was the only thing that would cut through another sound-based attack.

  To her infinite relief, the scroll held a portal-sealing spell. She began to sing the hymn inscribed on it.

  A second eyestalk bulged out of the portal, followed by the head of the creature: a purple slug the size of a horse, its mottled flesh studded with twisted chunks of rusted metal. One of these scraped against the side of the arch with a sound like a sword being dragged across a whetstone. Its rump slid through just as Leliana finished the hymn. A ripple of magical energy filled the archway, sealing the portal behind the monster.

  Leliana dropped the scroll—now blank—and lifted her sword. She braced herself as the slug slid toward her. She’d take off the eyestalks first.

  The slug halted. A loud humming filled the air. The acid-pitted remains of the dead priestess’s chain mail vest flew at the monster. So did the clasp on Leliana’s borrowed piwafwi. She felt a yank on her sword, and though she clung to it with all her strength, it flew from her hands. Last to go was her holy symbol. The mithral chain around her neck snapped and flew at the slug, the miniature sword trailing after it. All stuck to the creature’s slimy body—except the silver holy symbol, which by Eilistraee’s infinite grace dangled from its chain, refusing to adhere.

  The slug reared up, exposing a puckered mouth. It yawned open, revealing rows of needle-pointed teeth.

  Leliana was in no mood to be eaten. She leaped forward, grabbed her holy symbol, and yanked it free.

  Behind her, she heard suspicious sounds. She glanced back, and saw an ooze that looked like a boiling puddle of blood, blocking her way out. She was trapped! The ooze wasn’t moving toward her—yet. But it was expanding, rising like blood-leavened bread.

  With her singing sword, she might have fought her way out—but it was stuck fast to the slug. There was one song that could get her out of here, but with Faerzress crackling through the hall, it probably wouldn’t work.

  The metal-studded slug slithered closer. Behind her, she felt the ooze’s steadily growing heat on her back. Already, it felt as hot as the Abyss.

  She glanced at the archway next to her, remembering what Rylla had told Qilué earlier. The dretch had escaped through a portal in the Hall of Empty Arches. This portal! Was it still active? Rylla had said that it opened onto infinity. Maybe—just maybe—if Leliana sang her hymn of return as she passed through it, she could control where she wound up.

  With Eilistraee’s blessing, it just might work.

  She turned, poised to leap into the arch. As she began the hymn, the slug attacked. Shards of metal exploded from its body in a whirling storm. Several punched into her, tearing ragged gouges in her flesh …

  She leaped—and passed through the portal, still singing. Moonlight blazed around her …

  She fell, face first, onto a clump of ferns in a moonlit forest.

  For several moments, all she could do was lie there. Slowly, with blood-slick hands, she forced herself up. It took a moment before she stopped trembling. She was bleeding from more than a dozen lacerations, yet she didn’t care. The pale white fog hugging the ground was a sign she’d arrived at her destination: the Misty Forest shrine.

  “Praise Eilistraee,” she gasped. “It worked!” If she ever saw Q’arlynd again, it would be something to brag about. He wasn’t the only one capable of “impossible” teleports.

  She stood and sang a hymn to close her wounds. She was pleased with her night’s work. She’d sealed the portal that led to the Promenade from below, preventing any more of Ghaunadaur’s foul minions from oozing through it. That should buy the temple’s defenders some time.

  Now she needed to get back to the Promenade and continue the fight. Fortunately, the moon was above the horizon. She could use the sacred shrine and return through the Moonspring Portal.

  She walked through the woods to the sacred pool. As she approached it, she heard singing. Peering through the trees, she spotted a dozen or so priestesses. They jabbed the air with their holy daggers, their voices rising and falling in an urgent harmony. Leliana heard wet, popping noises, and saw that the surface of the sacred pool was rippling.

  The priestess directing the song was a younger version of Leliana: lean and graceful, but with yellow-shaded instead of ice white hair—her daughter. Rowaan’s eyes widened as Leliana entered the clearing. She ran forward and clasped Leliana’s arms. “Have you come from the Promenade? What’s happening there?”

  “It’s under attack. By Ghaunadaur’s fanatics—and a host of oozes. We have to get there, and quickly. Join the battle.”

  Rowaan’s face paled in the moonlight. She gestured at the pool, a stricken expression on her face. “We can’t reach it. The portal’s blocked.”

  Leliana moved closer. She saw, to her horror, that the pool was dappled with tiny oozes, each shaped like a pan-fried egg with a blood red center. The priestesses’ magic had destroyed scores of them already, but for each one their magic ruptured, two more bubbled to the surface.

  Leliana clenched her empty fists—a reminder that her singing sword was gone. The sacred sword had been one of those carried into battle by Qilué’s companions, centuries ago, during their victory over Ghauandaur’s avatar. Now, it was lost.

  Short of a miracle, the Promenade would be lost too.

  Rowaan guessed her mother’s thoughts. “The Promenade won’t fall,” she said determinedly. “Eilistraee won’t allow
it.” She turned back to the pool, and to the hopeless task of trying to clear the blood-slimed water.

  Leliana nodded, without conviction. She wanted to cling to hope, but couldn’t. Rowaan was denying the patently obvious. The oozes had reached the Moonspring Portal and were passing through it—something that would only have been possible if one of Eilistraee’s faithful had sung a hymn to open it. Leliana could guess whose deed that had been. Someone who was using her magic for ill, now that a demon rode her.

  Qilué.

  Leliana looked up at the sky. The moon would set soon. When it did, the portal in the Moonspring would close. Until the next moonrise, the Misty Forest would be secure from attack from the Promenade.

  That should have offered a shred of hope.

  It didn’t. Not at all.

  CHAPTER 9

  Kâras ran into the Cavern of Song. Two priestesses still sang the sacred hymn, their swords pointed at the ceiling, toward the spot where the moon passed through the night skies of the World Above. Their voices, however, were lost in the general commotion.

  The cavern was filled with people. Priestesses and soldiers ran south and east to the battle, while lay worshipers, too young or weak to fight, struggled in the opposite direction, to shelter in their living quarters in the Hall of the Faithful. The Protector Erelda, fully armored in chain mail and breastplate, stood next to the statue of Qilué, shouting orders. The statue had been moved aside to reveal a staircase that spiraled deep below. Another Protector disappeared down it, sword pealing.

  The ruined temple lay due south of here. The quickest route to it would be the one Cavatina had suggested: take the corridor past the Moonspring Portal, and strike south. Kâras didn’t go that way, however. He knew it would be impassable—too many of Ghaunadaur’s minions would block his path. His had been the first group of fanatics to come through the portal in the column south of the river. Scores of oozes, slugs, and slimes would have poured through since then.

  He had no idea how many of the other Nightshadows had made it through the column-portal. Kâras himself had been forced north, away from the river. He’d only managed to extricate himself from his fanatics after they entered the Stronghall. When he finally had managed to slip away from them, a fiery ooze had driven him farther north still. And then he’d run into Cavatina and learned about the planar breach.

  Was nothing going to go as he’d hoped this night?

  He elbowed his way through the crowd, to a narrow tunnel that snaked southeast from the Cavern of Song. One of the priestesses shouted at him to stop, that this corridor had been evacuated and was about to be sealed, but he ignored her. He entered it, leaving the commotion behind. He followed its twists and turns, squinting against the occasional glare of flickering Faerzress, trying to remember—and avoid—the side tunnels that branched off into dead-end caverns.

  There! He recognized the cavern up ahead. He was going the right way. A short distance beyond the cavern, he came to a spot where the corridor branched: one arm veered north, then east, to the ruined temple; the other bore south, then turned west to Skullport. He halted at the juncture, faced with a difficult decision. Skullport, and safety? Or make for the ruined temple and try to prevent the fanatics from releasing Ghaunadaur’s avatar?

  He kept going over what Cavatina had told him. “Qilué was tricked,” she’d said. By the Masked Lord, he’d assumed. But why would Vhaeraun want the fanatics to release Ghaunadaur’s avatar? That made no sense. Capturing the Promenade from within would have been an enormous coup for the Masked Lord, one that would rekindle the faith. If the temple fell to Ghaunadaur’s avatar, the Nightshadows might never reclaim it. The wealth of its Stronghall, the Promenade’s strategic position within the Underdark, its prestige—all would be lost.

  Perhaps—loath as Kâras was to think this—it was Vhaeraun who had been tricked. Or rather, outmaneuvered by Ghaunadaur. The Ancient One must have learned of the Masked Lord’s plans, and taken advantage of them. And Kâras had been the one who had set this in motion.

  He stood, racked by indecision. Should he try to undo what had been done? He was ill prepared for a prolonged battle against multiple foes. He had his dagger, a few magical trinkets, and his prayers. Cavatina, slayer of Selvetarm, was much better suited to make a stand in front of the portal and prevent the fanatics from passing through it. Yet what if the Darksong Knight didn’t even reach the ruined temple? She might have slain a demigod, but that didn’t ensure she would always be triumphant. It had been a near thing for her, atop the Acropolis. She’d only survived that battle with his help.

  “Masked Lord,” Kâras prayed. “Is it your will the breach be opened? Have you—” He hesitated, then forced himself to say it. “Have you allied yourself with the Ancient One?”

  This time, the god answered. Not in words, but in the distant peal of a hunting horn. That alone wouldn’t have convinced Kâras; it might have been one of the priestesses, signaling the others. But as the horn sounded, a rectangle of darkness with two eyeholes appeared in the air a short distance away, within the tunnel leading to the ruined temple. The bottom of this “mask” fluttered, as if the mouth behind it were lending its breath to the hunting horn’s peal. Dots of angry red blazed where the eyes would have been.

  That decided it. Kâras wouldn’t run. He’d fight.

  Just as he turned in that direction, a fanatic ran out of the tunnel Kâras had been making for. Kâras whipped up his dagger—but checked his throw as he recognized pink eyes.

  “Valdas!” he cried. “You made it through!”

  Valdas halted at the spot where the three tunnels converged. He was still disguised in the green robes and eye-embossed tabard of House Abbylan. His face was bare. He nodded at the other tunnels behind Kâras. “Can we reach Skullport through that?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Good. Let’s get going. The tunnel behind me is choked with oozes.”

  Kâras heard the wet slap of an ooze on stone, from somewhere behind Valdar. Would it be possible to get by it and reach the ruined temple? He pointed in the direction Valdar had just come. “We need to go back and stop the fanatics from entering Qilué’s trap, or they’ll summon Ghaunadaur’s avatar to the Promenade.”

  “They will?” Valdar’s pink eyes glittered. He laughed. “That’s perfect! It will take care of whatever priestesses the oozes and slimes miss.”

  “But we’ll lose the temple,” Kâras protested. “We need it as a base to rebuild our faith.”

  “We don’t need it. From here, we move on—and keep moving. Infiltrate Ghaunadaur’s temple in Skullport, and persuade the fanatics there to summon an avatar. Scour that city clean. Then we’ll do the same in Eryndlyn. After that, we’ll lure Ghaunadaur through one of the portals of Sschindylryn, and then—”

  “But …” Kâras felt his face grow cold, under his mask. “Our target is the matriarchies and their temples. Ghaunadaur’s avatar will devour everyone—male and female alike. Who’s going to be left to convert if—”

  Valdar leaned closer. Kâras could smell the sweat that clung to his dark skin. “I want to kill those spider-kissing bitches. Make them pay. Any male who didn’t have the guts to tie on the mask before now deserves to die with them.”

  “I see,” Kâras said. And he did. Valdar was insane. He didn’t want to build—only destroy. It didn’t matter to Valdar that he’d entered into what amounted to an unholy alliance with Ghaunadaur’s fanatics. Nor did he care what ultimately became of the drow. Whatever had happened in that crystal-lined cavern on the night that Eilistraee’s and Vhaeraun’s realms joined had twisted Valdar, made him blind to the consequences of his actions. He’d yanked the mask up over Kâras’s eyes as well. Until now.

  The wet hiss of something slithering on stone drew nearer. A chill seeped out of the tunnel behind Valdar.

  “You’re right,” Kâras lied. “We’d better get moving.” He pointed at the right-hand corridor. “That’s the way to Skullport.”

  Valdar turn
ed to the tunnel. “Lead the—”

  Kâras lunged—but Valdar leaped aside. Kâras’s dagger struck nothing but air.

  “So that’s how it is,” Valdar said in a soft, lethal voice. He drew his own dagger—a black-bladed weapon that Kâras didn’t remember him having before. “Let’s finish it, then—that little dance we began three years ago.”

  Kâras shifted his weight, as if readying for a lunge.

  Valdar’s other arm whipped up. The wide sleeve of his robe fell back, and his wristbow twanged. Kâras shouted a holy word and flicked his hand. The bolt glanced off the invisible shield the Masked Lord had just bestowed and shattered on the wall behind him.

  Valdar lunged. Kâras met it with a lunge of his own that drew blood from the other male’s hand. Their blades clashed, bright steel sliding past black metal. Valdar flicked a hand at Kâras and spat a word, but Kâras twisted aside. Whatever spell Valdar had been trying to catch him with missed its mark.

  Kâras feinted and hurled a prayer back at Valdar. It should have left Valdar shaken and open to attack, yet it had no visible effect. Was that their mutual deity, preventing them from harming one another with their prayers? Or was Valdar’s will simply too strong to be overcome by Kâras’s spell?

  They rushed each other. A blade whispered past Kâras’s ear, nicking it. The point of his own dagger snagged Valdar’s robe. They danced apart.

  As they circled, Kâras saw movement in the tunnel behind Valdar: a patch of roiling darkness, momentarily backlit by a temporary ripple of Faerzress. It looked like an enormous blob of shadow, smooth and bulging. Kâras’s pulse quickened as it flowed into the room. Shadow and ooze, together? Was its presence a sign that he’d guessed wrong? Perhaps the Masked Lord had indeed aligned himself with Ghaunadaur. Killing Valdar might have been the wrong choice.