'I'm going to have a word with this 'master' of his. He's not acting much like a petitioner, if you ask me.'
Rowaan looked startled. 'But he bears a sword-token,' she whispered back.
Leliana looked unimpressed. 'So what?' she hissed. 'Our tokens have fallen into the wrong hands before. You heard him when I said the name of the priestess who went to Ched Nasad was Milass'ni-he didn't correct me.'
Rowaan shrugged. 'Some people simply aren't good with names.'
'He's not that stupid. He's a wizard, and the academies don't accept dullards.'
Flinderspeld had risen to his feet as the priestesses whispered together. He backed out of the circle of firelight slowly, trying not to draw attention to himself. He eased down into a crouch and started to blur…
Leliana whirled to face him. 'Hold it right there!' She'd drawn her sword, and it was in her fist. Ready.
Q'arlynd scrambled to his feet, one hand darting to his pocket for a spell component.
Flinderspeld halted. He returned to normal again, paler by several shades.
'You're going to answer some questions, too,' Leliana told him.
Q'arlynd paused, component in hand. It looked as though Leliana wasn't about to hack his slave in two after all. She just wanted some answers, and if all went well, Flinderspeld would tell her exactly what she hoped to hear. Q'arlynd put the spell component away.
Instead of questioning the deep gnome, however, Leliana did the unexpected. She spun her sword above her head it in a tight circle until it hummed through the air. Then she halted the blade over Flinderspeld's head.
'Tell me how your master came to have Eilistraee's token,' she demanded.
Q'arlynd cursed. Leliana had obviously just cast a spell on his slave, and Q'arlynd could guess what its effects would be. As Flinderspeld opened his mouth to answer, Q'arlynd once again tried to slip into his slave's mind. Finally, it worked. Whatever magical shield the priestesses had placed between the two rings had lapsed. Q'arlynd heard Flinderspeld mentally rehearsing the story he'd been coached with before they'd stepped through the portal. Flinderspeld was about to say that he'd seen a priestess of Eilistraee give his master the token, but the words never made it from mind to mouth. The deep gnome instead began to babble something else entirely.
'We found the token in the rubble. My master told me to say-'
Furious, Q'arlynd seized hold of his slave's body. Flinderspeld's jaw snapped shut so quickly his teeth nipped his tongue. Q'arlynd forced the deep gnome's face into a smile, preventing him from wincing at the pain that flared in his tongue.
'To tellanyone… that… he… foundthetoken. The… priestess… toldhimshe… didn't… wantanyoneto… know… she… hadcometo… Ch-Ch-Ched… Nas-Nas…'
Q'arlynd frowned. Why was he being so difficult? Even with a truth spell in effect, he should have been able to control Flinderspeld, yet the words staggered out of the deep gnome's mouth one moment, spilled out in a rush the next. All the while, Flinderspeld's mind screamed like a shrieker, desperately fighting Q'arlynd's hold on his body while trying to blurt out the truth.
Rowaan stared at Flinderspeld, her mouth open. Leliana was quicker on the uptake. 'The wizard's controlling him,' she hissed at her companion. 'He must be close by. Find him.'
Rowaan touched her pendant, whispering the words of a prayer.
Q'arlynd withdrew from Flinderspeld's mind. The deep gnome continued babbling the rest of his answer to Leliana's question, but Q'arlynd was no longer concerned with what Flinderspeld might be telling the priestesses. The damage had been done, and if Leliana worked her truth-compelling magic on Q'arlynd and learned what he'd done, things would only get worse. The killing of a fellow priestess-even by accident-was something no drow female would forgive.
Q'arlynd's hopes of meeting Qilue had just burned up as quickly as a torch-touched web. It was time to end his little jaunt through the World Above and return to Ched Nasad.
But not without his slave.
Who, strangely enough, stood stock still, instead of backing slowly away as he usually did when trouble reared its head.
Q'arlynd cursed, realizing that Flinderspeld must be magically held. Q'arlynd paused just long enough to fasten his belt around his waist then teleported to the deep gnome's side. A second, quick teleport would-
'There!' Rowaan shouted, pointing straight at him across the crackling fire.
Rowaan's spell had allowed her to spot him, but it didn't matter. Q'arlynd slapped his invisible hand down on his slave's head and spoke the word that would teleport the pair of them to-
Q'arlynd felt his body stiffen. Unbalanced, he toppled over. He landed heavily on the ground next to Flinderspeld, narrowly missing winding up with his face in the fire. The earthy smell of fallen leaves filled his nostrils.
He heard Rowaan chanting. Suddenly, he could see his nose again. His invisibility had been dispelled.
Leliana rolled him over. She poked his shoulder with the point of her sword, notching a shallow wound in his flesh. If he'd been able to, Q'arlynd would have yelped.
Leliana smiled. 'You're wondering what just happened.'
Indeed he was.
Leliana flipped up the back of Flinderspeld's vest and pointed at something: a glyph, drawn on the inside of it. Q'arlynd didn't recognize the glyph, even though it was written using the drow script. It must have been sacred to Eilistraee.
'Rowaan got the idea from watching you reading your belt,' Leliana told him.
Q'arlynd's eyelids were still working, so he gave an involuntary blink of surprise. He barged his way into Flinderspeld's thoughts. The deep gnome was the only one who knew where Q'arlynd kept his travel 'spellbook,' but Flinderspeld gave the equivalent of a mental head shake. He hadn't told the priestesses.
Q'arlynd decided that Rowaan was more cunning than he'd given her credit for. She must have spied on him, on an earlier occasion, as he'd replenished his magic.
Leliana let the vest fall. 'The glyph was triggered by whatever spell you just tried to cast on your former slave,' she told Q'arlynd. Her eyes were gleaming, triumphant. She took great pleasure in having outwitted him.
Eilistraee's priestesses, he decided, were no different from any other females. He'd been stupid to let down his guard around them.
'Now you're going to tell us who you really are,' Leliana continued, 'and why you're so keen on meeting Qilue.'
With that, Leliana spun her sword around her head, repeating the prayer she'd used earlier, casting a truth spell. Inwardly, Q'arlynd smiled. She would no doubt remove the magical hold only from his mouth and leave the rest of his body enspelled, and when she did, a word would suffice. He'd strike both priestesses blind, dispel the magic that held him rigid, and teleport away with Flinderspeld.
Leliana touched his lips, freeing them, then held the sword over his head.
Q'arlynd tried to cast his spell. His mouth, however, refused to cooperate. Concentrate as he might, he couldn't speak the arcane word that would trigger his spell. Instead, he found himself meekly answering Leliana's questions, while the rest of his body remained stiff and uncooperative. He told her about finding the sword-tokens on the priestess's body, about taking the magical boots and rings for himself, about the rock that had struck her dead.
At this, Rowaan gasped then exchanged a pained look with Leliana.
'Where is her body?' Leliana asked.
'In Ched Nasad. I rendered it invisible then left it where it was.'
'And her pendant?'
'Taken by Prellyn.'
'Who's Prellyn?'
'Weapons mistress of House Teh'Kinrellz, the House I was serving.'
She let that go without further explanation. 'Where are the other sword-tokens she was carrying?'
'Hidden, together with the boots and rings, except…' Q'arlynd tried to choke back the rest but couldn't. 'Except for the one that's sewn into the collar of Flinderspeld's new cloak.'
Leliana signaled to Rowaan. The other priestess ran her hands along the deep gnome's collar, located the sword-token within then cut the seam, removing it. Q'arlynd was relieved when she didn't search the cloak further. Inside the hem were things he'd prefer to keep.
