He had to be the male Cavatina had described-the one who'd sacrificed himself. The fanatics must have raised him from the dead. But how, if his body had been consumed? And what was he doing here, in the Hall of Healing?
She spotted a ring on his finger. A gold ring. That told her how he'd gotten into this part of the temple. He'd used the ring to pass through the magical barrier in the level she and Naxil had discovered below, then come through the portal to the Hall of Empty Arches. Leliana wondered if the priestess she'd seen there, just a moment ago, was still alive.
The fanatic completed his circuit of the hall and turned, heading back for the door.
Leliana jabbed Naxil's stomach with a finger. Green eyes, she signed between them. Enemy in disguise. You stall; I'll sing a truth song and question. Go.
Naxil bowed, hiding the drawing of a dagger. He moved away, concealing the weapon under his piwafwi.
As Naxil made his way to the disguised fanatic, Leliana flicked her sword in a circle-a small circle, near her boot; she didn't want to draw attention to her prayer. Naxil greeted the fanatic, but instead of engaging him in conversation as planned, Naxil turned and walked to the exit. Did he mean to draw the fanatic into the corridor, where it would be more difficult for him to escape?
Leliana strode to the side of the fanatic and matched his pace. As she walked, she shifted her sword so it was pointing at his feet, and loosed the magic she'd just sung into being. "I need help carrying the wounded," she told him. "Where are you headed?"
Leaf-green eyes met hers. A puddle of warmth filled her. The urge to smile at him overwhelmed her.
"To the Pit. I'm needed there." His eyes glistened. "Won't you show me the way?"
Anxious to please him, Leliana nodded. As she did, her sword sang a warning. It sliced through his enchantment, dousing the warmth inside her like a slap of ice water.
Powerful magic. If it hadn't been for her singing sword…
The fanatic tensed. He'd realized she knew what he was. Leliana leaped back and swung. Steel flashed toward his neck.
The fanatic jumped aside-but not quickly enough. Her sword took off an outflung hand. She expected a spray of blood. Green slime oozed out instead. Before he could rally, she thrust at his vitals. Her blade plunged into soft, quivering flesh that offered no resistance. She reversed direction and yanked the sword back, but the fanatic's body-now a bright green and only vaguely drow-shaped-bulged outward, engulfing her weapon. The bulge solidified, and the mass twisted, tearing the weapon from her hands.
"A ghaunadan!" she shouted as she danced back from him. She'd heard of these creatures, but never seen one. Most oozes were mindless things, but ghaunadans were intelligent beings-budded fragments of the Ancient One itself. Fragments that could temporarily assume drow form.
Shouts of alarm filled the Hall of Healing. Priestesses leaped to their feet, singing. The ghaunadan slapped one of them; she toppled, body rigid. Then a barrage of spells struck it at once. The ghaunadan reeled as moonblades sliced it, holy words slammed into it, and magical wounds sprang open in its quivering flesh. Within moments it had been reduced to a smoking pile of green-smeared clothing and a pair of boots that lay on the floor, suppurating ooze.
Leliana stared down at them, glad the ghaunadan was dead. Unfortunately, there wasn't any corpse left to question.
"He came through the portal in the Hall of Empty Arches," she warned the others. "We need to seal it, before more ghaunadans come through!"
Someone handed her singing sword back to her. Leliana took it and ran for the room's only door. She glanced up and down the corridor, looking for Naxil. The battle with the ghaunadan had taken only a moment, yet Naxil was nowhere in sight. Where had the ghaunadan's magical compulsion sent him? North, to the Hall of Empty Arches, or south, toward safety?
"Naxil!" she shouted. Her voice was lost amid the hubbub as half a dozen priestesses crowded through the door. Leliana ordered one of them to hang back and chant a magical songwall to prevent enemies from reaching the Hall of Healing. She told the rest to follow her.
As they ran to the Hall of Empty Arches, Erelda's voice sang into Leliana's mind. Protectors! Fall back on the Cavern of Song. The oozes are converging upon it!
Converging? Leliana swore. Did that mean that oozes were headed to the Cavern of Song from the south, and from the north-from the Hall of Empty Arches?
The answer came as she rounded a bend in the corridor. The way ahead was blocked by a horrific creature: a waist-high, gray-brown lump covered in eyes and mouths that bulged from its body and were subsumed again. From these emanated a ghastly chorus of nonsensical words that tumbled over one another like pebbles in a gurgling brook.
Leliana shouted at the priestesses to halt, but the two up ahead didn't heed her. They walked on toward the monster, shouting nonsense. Leliana heard an overlapping babble of female voices behind her, and flung out her arms to hold back the other priestesses. As she did so, the creature attacked the two priestesses up ahead. It spat a stream of acid at one and bulged forward to wrap a limb around the other. The first priestess's gibbering turned to screams as her skin burned away; the second grew grayish-pale as the ooze's mouths bit hard and began to suck blood.
"Eilistraee!" Leliana cried, "Shield me!"
Her singing sword pealed out a steadying note that blocked the worst of the creature's magical effect. Even so, Leliana teetered at the edge of madness. Screaming her fury at the monster, she dodged around the priestess who had been felled by acid and hacked at the limb coiled around the other priestess. As the blade sliced through it, another limb bulged out to grab her; she sliced that one off too.
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.