"He did not succeed?"

"No."

The answer had been abrupt. There was more to the story than this, but whatever it was, Qilue wasn't going to tell him.

"There have been other attacks on our priestesses," she continued. "Other soulthefts."

Q'arlynd listened in silence, thinking of Rowaan. He felt a twinge of something. Guilt, he supposed.

"The males committing them are led by a Nightshadow named Malvag. They plan to use the soul-charged masks to open a gate between Vhaeraun's domain and Eilistraee's, so that Vhaeraun can slay our goddess."

Q'arlynd whistled softly. "Is that possible? The gate, I mean. I'm sure Eilistraee can take care of herself."

"To open such a gate, the Nightshadows would need to work high magic-something that requires complete cooperation between spellcasters and complete faith in one another." Qilue gave a tight smile. "Can you honestly imagine Nightshadows trusting each other?"

Q'arlynd chuckled. "Hardly likely."

"Even if they fail to conjure a gate, the attempt will consume the souls of the priestesses who were killed. I don't want that to happen. I want the magic that's binding their souls to the masks dispelled, and the priestesses freed-and that means stopping Malvag."

"You want him killed?"

"If he can be."

The "if" gave Q'arlynd pause, but only for a moment. He could guess what was coming. "You want me to impersonate the Nightshadow who was killed in the Forest of Lethyr."

Qilue nodded. "We know his name: Szorak, of House Auzkovyn. He was one of three Nightshadows who joined Malvag's scheme. He's the only one from House Auzkovyn. The other two were from House Jaelre, and it's doubtful they knew him well. Neither they nor Malvag himself have seen Szorak without his mask. You're about Szorak's height and build, and your eyes are the same color. We won't need to use a glamor on you, and we know much about Szorak, since his sister was one who converted to our faith."

As Qilue said this, a pained expression came to her eyes. There was a story there, but this was not the time to ask about it.

"So far so good," Q'arlynd said, "but if I show up without a soul-charged mask-"

"We will provide a mask," Qilue said. "Not Szorak's, but one that looks just like it. A square of cloth, created by polymorphing a gem-one that contains the body and soul of a priestess who has volunteered to risk herself in this venture."

Q'arlynd stroked his chin nervously. He was being asked to risk just as much. "Won't the Nightshadows be able to tell I'm not one of them?" he asked. "I've sworn myself to Eilistraee-I've taken the sword-oath."

"You spoke the words." She touched fingers to his chest. "But your heart…" The fingers lifted. "One day, perhaps, a song will dance there."

Q'arlynd gave a dutiful nod. He'd worry about that later. He had a job to do, and a potential matron to impress.

"Where is Malvag now?"

"We don't know. He's cloaked himself with powerful magic that prevents me from scrying him, but we do know where he and the other Nightshadows will meet on the night of the winter solstice: in a cavern lined with dark-stone crystals. The cavern has no entrance or exit; it's unconnected to anything else in the Underdark. The only way to reach it is to teleport." She smiled. "Fortunately that's something, Leliana tells me, that you claim to be quite adept at."

Q'arlynd allowed himself a modest smile. Qilue had obviously believed Leliana, or she wouldn't have sought him out. "Where is this cavern located?"

"Again, we don't know. We assume that it doesn't lie very deep in the Underdark, and that there's no faerzress near it, since teleportation to it is possible. All we have is a description of it, a brief description provided by the corpse."

Q'arlynd's eyebrows raised. "You expect me to teleport there on the strength of a description?"

"I realized that this would be impossible, without you having viewed the cavern. That is why I took the additional precaution of having the necromancer animate the body of the dead assassin. He then asked Szorak to 'describe' the cavern a second time-by drawing it."

"Ah," Q'arlynd said. "I see. You want me to study the drawing then try to teleport there."

Qilue gave him a measuring stare. "Can you do it?"

Q'arlynd carefully kept his thoughts from showing on his face. If the sketch had been done by the equivalent of a zombie, with only the shakiest of muscle control and no spirit to guide his hand, it wouldn't be very accurate. The resulting "drawing" would probably be no more than a few crude scratch marks.

He stroked his chin nervously. His stomach felt hollow at the very notion of what Qilue was asking-and he hadn't even jumped yet, but the thought of attempting an "impossible" teleport was tempting simply for the sheer challenge of it. Qilue was hanging upon his answer, every muscle in her body taut. If he pulled this one off, it would really impress her. If he managed to stop Malvag and save the souls of a couple of priestesses in the bargain, the rewards would be rich indeed. Qilue was a veritable conduit to Mystra herself. The very thought made him lightheaded.

"I can do it," he said.

Qilue beamed. "Good."

Part of him reveled in that smile. Another part wondered if he'd just signed his own death order. He crushed the second part mercilessly. To advance in life, one had to take chances.

"The geas, then," Qilue said.

Q'arlynd bowed his head.

The high priestess laid cool fingers on his forehead and invoked the names of both Eilistraee-and Mystra. "I command you to perform this service for me," she began. "To locate Malvag, and…"

When she finished, Q'arlynd's forehead tingled. A shimmer of silver magic shivered the hairs on his arms erect then was gone.

It was done. The geas had been laid upon him.

Now all he had to do was achieve the near-impossible.

"One favor," Jub whispered as he descended through the cavern on a thread of silk. "One favor I promised Qilue, and this is what she asks: to sneak into the lair of a dracolich."

The dracolich in question had already swooped past him once, causing Jub to spin madly on his thread. The undead wyrm was an enormous creature, black as old blood and with wings so broad they brushed the walls on either side of the passage. The monster left the stench of death in its wake and had a deep, unhealed wound in its left flank, yet it lived-after a fashion. Jub was awed by the amount of magic it must have taken for a dragon to transform itself into an undead creature.

Jub had magic, too-the tiny metal box, attached to a leather armband, that he wore above his left elbow. He'd gotten a real bargain on the phylactery from the thaumaturgical shop in Skullport because of its "curse." It didn't polymorph properly-it would only change its wearer into "vermin," but that was just fine with Jub. With it, he could change into pretty much any bug he could think of, big or small. He usually liked to turn into a fly-nobody ever suspected a fly of spying-but Qilue had warned him that that wouldn't be a healthy form to choose this time around. The males he was searching for worshiped Selvetarm, champion of the Queen of Spiders. They were bound to be hundreds of her pets around, wherever they were holed up, so Jub had polymorphed into a spider himself. It was, he reflected with sly grin that set his fangs quivering, the perfect disguise.

The spider body had come in pretty handy so far. It had gotten him past a bunch of traps. It was fist-sized-too light to trigger the spring-spikes or pits. It had also enabled him to scurry into a crack in the wall when a heavy block of stone smashed down. The body had its drawbacks, however. Shooting out strands of web left his ass feeling twitchy, and having three pairs of eyes took a lot of getting used to. All of the colors were flat, and he kept getting mixed up about what was close and what was far away-not to mention distracted by the rush of the walls going past while simultaneously seeing the cavern dwindling away behind him. He didn't know how spiders could stand looking in all directions at once.