Extinction

The head was the last thing to disappear. As it did, the undead officer's lips curled into a smile, and its eyes brightened.

Thank you, it whispered.

A heartbeat later, it was gone.

Shuddering at his close escape, Ryld stared at the sword in his hands. The blade was unblemished; its plunge into the undead officer didn't seem to have tarnished it. He peered carefully in each direction to make sure there were no more of the foul creatures. Seeing none, he returned his short sword to its sheath, then picked up Splitter and sheathed it as well. He resumed his journey, following Halisstra's trail.

The sooner she finds this sword she's looking for and leaves the Cold Field, the weapons master thought, the better.

Halisstra sank, exhausted, into a crouch, feet crunching the dusting of snow that had fallen just after the moon rose. She'd been searching for a night and a day?and on into a second night?without pausing for rest. She'd tried to cast the spell that would help her to locate the Crescent Blade several times, but though she was certain she'd committed the words of the song to memory correctly, she might have confused the melody slightly. Either that, or the darksong was still beyond her limited reach. She'd felt none of the tingling certainty that should have led the way to the object she was seeking. The only thing she'd felt was the incessant cold wind sweeping across the desolate plain.

She sat in the darkness, peering through the gloom at the object she'd just pulled from the breast pocket of her piwafwi: her House medallion. When she converted to Eilistraee's faith, she'd decided to set it aside with the rest of her past, but something had made her hesitate. The brooch was magical, after all, and gave her the ability to levitate?but there was more to it than that. She sensed that it was not only a link with her past but with her future as well.

Setting the brooch beside her on the snowy ground, she drew Seyll's songsword from its sheath and raised the hilt of the weapon to her lips. How did that melody go again? It seemed strange to be playing a song from the bae'qeshel tradition on an instrument forged for a priestess of the Lady of the Dance … or did it? Wasn't the raising of the skills and talents of the Underdark to the World Above the very end for which Eilistraee strove?

For a time, Halisstra concentrated on her fingering, trying the melody in different keys and pausing, from time to time, to warm her fingers by blowing on them. Though she tried to concentrate, her mind kept drifting, and her eyelids felt heavy. After more than a cycle and a half of constant searching, she was desperately in need of the release that Reverie could give. She longed to let it claim her, to drift among her memories until they soothed her, but she couldn't give up her search. Exhausted though she was, she would master the spell before she rested. But the bitterly cold wind seemed to snatch away the notes and fling them into the night, scattering her efforts like dead leaves in a wind.

Lowering the songsword, Halisstra stared at the scraps of bone and rusted metal that protruded through the snow all around her. Centuries before an army had taken the field against a foe who counted dragons among their allies. Knowing that they would almost certainly be defeated, those soldiers had nonetheless marched bravely into battle?and been slain.

Centuries later, at the urging of a dead priestess, Halisstra was about to face even more impossible odds. It was madness to think that she could defeat a goddess. Even armed with the Crescent Blade?assuming she could find it?Halisstra would surely be defeated. Lolth's power was unimaginably vast and all encompassing; no one could escape her web of destruction and vengeance. Halisstra was foolish to even think of trying.

Perhaps it would be better if she didn't find the Crescent Blade.

Suddenly Halisstra sensed someone looking over her shoulder. Someone whose breath came in thin, chill gasps.

Startled, she sprang to her feet, songsword in hand. She whirled but saw no one. Quickly, she sang the spell that would allow her to see invisible creatures. The few flakes of snow sharpened as the air took on a magical shimmer, but still she saw nothing.

Then a ghostly figure materialized right in front of her.

It was a drow female, but one who had been horribly disfigured. Long white hair clung in straggling clumps to a scalp that was puckered with deep pits, and her face was terribly burned. Where the nose had been was nothing but a gaping hole, and the eyes were likewise missing. Skin had bubbled in enormous blisters on the face and on those portions of the arms and legs that were bare. The torso, thankfully, was hidden by a chain mail tunic, but the metal links were corroded and loose as though the armor had been hurled into a lake of acid.

Halisstra clutched the broken songsword, heart pounding, wishing desperately that she held a better weapon. The ghostly figure, however, made no threatening moves. Instead it stooped and reached for something on the ground: Halisstra's brooch. As it did, a medallion that hung from its waist by a metal chain swung forward. Like the chain mail, the medallion was blackened and pitted, but Halisstra could see a faint trace of the design it once bore: Eilistraee's symbol.

Halisstra glanced at the corroded sheath at the figure's hip?a sheath that was curved like a crescent moon. Slowly, she lowered her sword.

"You're Mathira Melarn," she whispered.

The ghost nodded.

"I'm looking for the Crescent Blade," Halisstra told the ghost. "Will you help me?"

Once again the figure gave a slow, mournful nod.

"Where is it?" Halisstra asked.

The ghost opened its mouth, but all that came out was a gurgling groan. The tongue was missing, burned away by the acid that had consumed the rest of the woman's body. The wyrm that had killed her must have been a black dragon. Halisstra shuddered at the thought of the agonies its acid spittle must have wrought upon the priestess in the moments just before her death.

Can you sign? Halisstra asked.

In answer, the ghost let Halisstra's medallion fall to the ground and raised hands that were lumps of pitted flesh, the fingers burned away to skeletal stubs. Then, turning stiffly as if still suffering the agonies of her wounds, she motioned with one arm in a gesture whose meaning was clear enough: Come.

Halisstra glanced at her House insignia and saw that the ghost's touch had left it pitted and blackened. Not wanting to touch it, Halisstra left the medallion where it lay and followed the ghost.

Chapter Thirty

When Ryld saw the metal object peeking out of the snow, he thought it was another bit of battlefield debris. Corroded and pieced with black spots, the brooch looked centuries old. Then the shape of the piece caught his eye. Quickly he stooped to pick it up, then winced as something on the brooch stung his hands. Holding the brooch by the edges, he sniffed, and caught an acrid odor. Acid?

Turning the brooch over confirmed his guess. Only portions of it looked ancient. The clasp on the back was undamaged, and sections of the metal were still brightly polished. It was no battlefield remnant.

He peered at it more closely, trying to make out what design had been on the front of it. When he at last confirmed his guess, he shuddered.

It was Halisstra's brooch?the insignia that marked her as a noble daughter of House Melarn. Something must have surprised her, out on the wind-blasted plain. Had she been wearing the brooch on her piwafwi? If so, she might have been injured when whatever had aged the metal had struck her.

Searching the ground carefully, Ryld saw none of the usual signs of a struggle. Two deep footprints and a mark made by the hem of a piwafwi showed where Halisstra had squatted for a time, and a confused overlapping of footprints showed where she had whirled rapidly around, but there were no other prints in the snow.