The beetle lunged, snapping at her with its remaining mandible. Alerted by her sword's warning peal, Cavatina leaped to the side, avoiding all but a grazing blow. She retaliated with a prayer that summoned a whirling circle of magical energy, pale and sparkling as a moon halo. It coalesced into individual blades of flashing silver and blue-black steel, each as sharp as a freshly honed dagger. With a twist of her hand, Cavatina hurled the whirring circle of magical blades at the monster's head. Whipping her hand around in an ever-tightening spiral, she closed the circle. It tightened in a deadly noose that sent bits of black chitin flying in all directions. Even as it closed, Cavatina raced forward and plunged the singing sword into the beetle's thorax.
As it died, the beetle let out an angry whir. Then its stiffened front wings sprang open. The whirring noise intensified, drowning out the muffled singing of Cavatina's sword, buried to the hilt in the beetle's thorax. Something whizzed past Cavatina's head: a winged, wormlike creature half the length of her forearm. Then another, until the air was thick with flying creatures.
Cavatina yanked her sword free and jumped back as the beetle collapsed. The air was filled with dozens of the flying creatures: the beetle's young, launching themselves from beneath the hard exoskeleton that formed the front wings. Like wasps spilling from a smashed nest they buzzed through the air, forcing Cavatina to dodge and weave. She slashed right and left with her singing sword, slicing several of them in two, but the rest rose up through the trees and escaped.
"Eilistraee!" she cried. "Smite them!"
Whipping her hand forward, she clawed magic from the moon and hurled it at the departing swarm. Moonlight flared, illuminating the trees around her in a wide circle. Wings shriveled and larval bodies imploded under the sheer weight of the goddess's magic. What remained thudded to the ground like soggy hail. A handful of the brood, however-perhaps half a dozen insects-whirred away into the night.
When each landed, it would carve out a home for itself in the forest. There, it would feed, and grow. And if it was female, produce yet another brood.
Cavatina swore softly. She hadn't purged vermin from the forest this night. She'd just spread it around a little, like a demon sowing taint.
The sword in her hand sang a victory paean, but Cavatina didn't share its zeal. She'd killed a brood beetle-quite an accomplishment for a priestess hunting alone-but the rush of exultation that should have accompanied her kill hadn't come.
Part of the reason, she realized, was that nothing could ever live up to slaying a demigod. Any kill paled in comparison to the fierce joy she'd felt in the moment that her sword had severed Selvetarm's neck.
Her eyes narrowed. Not her sword. Not any longer. The Crescent Blade was Qilue's now.
She shoved the jealousy aside but couldn't shake off her melancholy. There had been streaks of darkness in the moon bolt she'd used to weaken the beetle, and black blades among the silver in the magical circle of steel. Reminders, each of them, of how much had changed.
Cavatina didn't want things to change. The sound of male voices singing the Evensong hymn was just wrong. So was the energy they added to the sacred dance. It was supposed to end in a shout of joy and the clash of swords, not in couples slinking off into the darkness to sheathe swords of a different kind.
She shook her head. She wasn't foolish enough to try to pretend that nothing had changed. Nor was she about to go to the other extreme and give up her faith entirely, as many of Vhaeraun's clerics-and a handful of Eilistraee's priestesses-had done. But that didn't mean she had to embrace the changes enthusiastically. Some rituals, at least, could be performed in solitude.
She nudged the severed mandible with the point of her sword. It was a trophy of the night's kill, one she normally would have carried back to the shrine. She decided to leave it there. To be burned, together with the rest of the brood beetle's body.
She trudged back down the bank, stepping over bits of shattered chitin and earth that had been torn up by the beetle's emergence from the ground. Kneeling beside the stream, she washed her blade clean, splashed water on her skin, and washed off the sticky beetle blood. Then she stood and waved the sword back and forth, drying it. The singing sword let out a low, contented hum, as if pleased with the night's work. It, at least, drew no distinction between degrees of victory.
Balancing the blade on her shoulder, savoring the feel of the silvered metal against her skin, Cavatina walked back the way she had come. For her, the High Hunt was over this night. Eilistraee had caused her to cross paths with a monster, and Cavatina had slain it. That the brood beetle had been about to release a swarm of young was something Cavatina could not have known, she told herself. Perhaps the goddess had been trying to remind her of something: that even the tiniest fragment of evil could beget more evil. That evil had to be eradicated at its root, before it could spread. That-
As she passed the spot where she'd seen the rats, a movement at the top of the bank caught her eye. A drow male stood there, silhouetted by the motes of light that trailed behind the moon on its passage through the evening sky. And not just any drow, but one of the recent converts who'd been invited to take part in the hunt this night.
Like her, he was naked, and his thin, muscular body gleamed with sweat from his run. A square of black cloth covered much of his face. His holy symbol. Vhaeraun's mask.
The mask that Eilistraee herself wore as a trophy of her kill.
Cavatina's eyes narrowed. Bad enough, having Nightshadows involved in the High Hunt. Worse luck still, that one had crossed her path. She glared up at him.
The male glanced down at something on the ground, then crouched and spoke in a voice just low enough that Cavatina couldn't make out what he was saying over the gurgle of the stream. He nodded, then pulled a ring off his finger and held it out. A small black rat-identical to the one Cavatina had killed a short time ago-rose up on its hind legs and plucked the ring from his fingers. The rat turned the ring with its forefeet, sniffed it, and slipped the ring onto one foreleg as if it were an armband. Then it scurried away.
As the male rose from his crouch, Cavatina strode up the hill. She knew full well what the male was doing: talking to the creatures of the forest, no doubt asking them where a suitably impressive monster might be found. One that would "prove" his worth as a hunter. But that wasn't how it was supposed to work. Participants in the High Hunt weren't meant to sneak up on their prey and stab it in the back. They were supposed to take down whatever monsters Eilistraee chose for them. Kill them using only their swords-not with the hand-crossbow that Cavatina could see strapped to the back of the male's left forearm. Nor were they supposed to wear magical protections, like the amulet that hung from a chain around his neck.
"What do you think you're doing?" Cavatina demanded.
The male whirled and raised his short sword. For a moment, Cavatina thought he would attack. She slapped it aside with the singing sword; the blades clanged together.
The male's eyes blazed with anger. "Dark Lady." His voice sounded surprisingly even, given his expression. "You startled me."
His accent hinted that he was fresh out of the Underdark, but surely he recognized her. Any moment now, he would whisper her name in awe or fold in a subservient bow. He did neither. Cavatina found herself getting even more annoyed by the way his amber-orange eyes refused to so much as blink under her challenge. "You're supposed to be killing vermin, not conversing with them."