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.Her mother would have commented that his was one more soul that might have been redeemed, but that was lost instead.Her mother, however, was dead.And that kind of thinking had killed her.Cavatina reached down for the mask carefully, not really wanting to touch it.She'd heard rumors of such abominations.Vhaeraun's faithful called the practice soultheft.Someone's soul was trapped in that square of black cloth.She laid the mask across the blade of her sword and sang a prayer of dispelling.The faint wailing that had been coming from the mask stilled.The scrap of cloth smoothed then hung limp.Cavatina let it slide from her sword then slashed as it fluttered to the ground, slicing the holy symbol neatly in two.She walked away without looking back at either the scraps of cloth or the corpse in the slowly twisting cocoon.She continued her hunt.¦ ¦©¦¦©¦Long after the Darksong Knight had departed, Halisstra returned to the hollow tree.It was dark by then, but the moon had not yet risen.When it did, the Darksong Knight would be back on Halisstra's trail again.The chase-me game would begin anew.For the moment, however, there were other things Halisstra had to attend to, as commanded by her mistress.Capricious as always, Lolth had changed her mind.Vhaeraun's clerics were not to be killed, especially not the one Halisstra had just dispatched.Halisstra could see from the footprints on the ground that Eilistraee's warrior-priestess had found the cocooned cleric.A hole had been cut in the cocoon over the dead man's mouth.That hardly surprised Halisstra.Mercy was one ofthe greatest weaknesses of Eilistraee's faithful.It hadn't done Vhaeraun's cleric any good, however.He was dead.Then she spotted his holy symbol.It lay on the ground nearby, slashed in two.Halisstra nodded.Perhaps that was why Eilistraee's priestess had cut a hole in the cocoon, to retrieve the holy symbol and destroy it.The priestess might not be so merciful, after all.The thought made Halisstra smile.She clawed at the cocoon, shredding it.Her claws raked sharp lines across the dead cleric's scalp, torso, arms, and thighs as she ripped the strands of webbing from his body.Blood seeped sluggishly from these wounds.Eventually, the corpse tumbled out onto the ground.Halisstra bent over it, the fangs in her cheeks at first spreading wide then retracting back into the bulges in her jowls that housed them.She would give the cleric another sort of kiss.His lips were cold and stiff.She pressed hers to them and whispered Lolth's name, forcing a prayer-breath into the dead man's lungs.Then she reared back, watching.The cleric's eyes fluttered open and he exhaled a ragged breath, one that stank of spiders.For a moment, he stared blankly up at the cloud-dark sky, his pupils slowly dilating.Then he stared at the creature sitting on his chest.And screamed.>Halisstra sprang off him, laughing, and vanished into the night.CHAPTER SIXQilue brushed a strand of hair away from Nastasia's face.The dead priestess's body showed no signs of putrefaction, despite having lain in a treetop bier, exposed to the elements, for a tenday.The mark of Vhaeraun's assassin could still be seen, an indentation in the neck, left by a stranglecord.Her dark skin was chafed around this wound, and her open, staring eyes were so bloodshot they were more red than white.The priestess was definitely dead, yet her body was uncorrupted.Even the smell of death was missing.This might have been construed as a sign from Eilistraee—save for the faint discoloration on the lower half of Nastasia's face which Qilue's detection spell had just revealed.A discoloration in the shape of a mask.Qilue turned to the four priestesses who had carried Nastasia's body into the Promenade's Hall of Healing.The novices from the shrine at Lake Sember shifted uneasily as Qilue examined the body, particularly at the revelation of a square of darkness shrouding Nastasia's cheeks and chin.Their hands twisted nervously on the leather-wrapped hilts of swords, or fingered the silver holy symbols that hung against their breastplates.At last, one of them spoke."Vhaeraun's mark.What does it signify, Lady?"Qilue's voice was grave."Nastasia is not dancing with Eilistraee in the sacred groves.Her soul has been stolen—it's trapped inside a Nightshadow's mask.They call it 'soultheft.'"Eyes widened."But why, Lady? What does he want with her soul?""1 don't know." Qilue lied, loath to elaborate.The novices were rattled enough.She didn't want them to panic.The Nightshadows typically used soultheft to revitalize the enchantments on a depleted magical item.In the process, the soul was consumed.From the look of Nastasia's body, that hadn't happened yet.Her soul was, apparently, still trapped within the mask, her body not yet truly dead, but at any moment, the assassin who had stolen Nastasia's soul might annihilate it."You were right to bring her here," Qilue told the priestesses."We must find the one who did this to her.""We tried a scrying, immediately after the attack.It didn't reveal—""This will."Lifting her arms, Qilue drew the moon's chill light down into the Hall of Healing.Pale radiance limned her body as she began her dance.Singing a hymn to the goddess, Qilue spun in place, faster and faster until her body became a blur
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