Leliana was in no mood to be eaten. She leaped forward, grabbed her holy symbol, and yanked it free.

Behind her, she heard suspicious sounds. She glanced back, and saw an ooze that looked like a boiling puddle of blood, blocking her way out. She was trapped! The ooze wasn't moving toward her-yet. But it was expanding, rising like blood-leavened bread.

With her singing sword, she might have fought her way out-but it was stuck fast to the slug. There was one song that could get her out of here, but with Faerzress crackling through the hall, it probably wouldn't work.

The metal-studded slug slithered closer. Behind her, she felt the ooze's steadily growing heat on her back. Already, it felt as hot as the Abyss.

She glanced at the archway next to her, remembering what Rylla had told Qilue earlier. The dretch had escaped through a portal in the Hall of Empty Arches. This portal! Was it still active? Rylla had said that it opened onto infinity. Maybe-just maybe-if Leliana sang her hymn of return as she passed through it, she could control where she wound up.

With Eilistraee's blessing, it just might work.

She turned, poised to leap into the arch. As she began the hymn, the slug attacked. Shards of metal exploded from its body in a whirling storm. Several punched into her, tearing ragged gouges in her flesh…

She leaped-and passed through the portal, still singing. Moonlight blazed around her…

She fell, face first, onto a clump of ferns in a moonlit forest.

For several moments, all she could do was lie there. Slowly, with blood-slick hands, she forced herself up. It took a moment before she stopped trembling. She was bleeding from more than a dozen lacerations, yet she didn't care. The pale white fog hugging the ground was a sign she'd arrived at her destination: the Misty Forest shrine.

"Praise Eilistraee," she gasped. "It worked!" If she ever saw Q'arlynd again, it would be something to brag about. He wasn't the only one capable of "impossible" teleports.

She stood and sang a hymn to close her wounds. She was pleased with her night's work. She'd sealed the portal that led to the Promenade from below, preventing any more of Ghaunadaur's foul minions from oozing through it. That should buy the temple's defenders some time.

Now she needed to get back to the Promenade and continue the fight. Fortunately, the moon was above the horizon. She could use the sacred shrine and return through the Moonspring Portal.

She walked through the woods to the sacred pool. As she approached it, she heard singing. Peering through the trees, she spotted a dozen or so priestesses. They jabbed the air with their holy daggers, their voices rising and falling in an urgent harmony. Leliana heard wet, popping noises, and saw that the surface of the sacred pool was rippling.

The priestess directing the song was a younger version of Leliana: lean and graceful, but with yellow-shaded instead of ice white hair-her daughter. Rowaan's eyes widened as Leliana entered the clearing. She ran forward and clasped Leliana's arms. "Have you come from the Promenade? What's happening there?"

"It's under attack. By Ghaunadaur's fanatics-and a host of oozes. We have to get there, and quickly. Join the battle."

Rowaan's face paled in the moonlight. She gestured at the pool, a stricken expression on her face. "We can't reach it. The portal's blocked."

Leliana moved closer. She saw, to her horror, that the pool was dappled with tiny oozes, each shaped like a pan-fried egg with a blood red center. The priestesses' magic had destroyed scores of them already, but for each one their magic ruptured, two more bubbled to the surface.

Leliana clenched her empty fists-a reminder that her singing sword was gone. The sacred sword had been one of those carried into battle by Qilue's companions, centuries ago, during their victory over Ghaunadaur's avatar. Now, it was lost.

Short of a miracle, the Promenade would be lost too.

Rowaan guessed her mother's thoughts. "The Promenade won't fall," she said determinedly. "Eilistraee won't allow it." She turned back to the pool, and to the hopeless task of trying to clear the blood-slimed water.

Leliana nodded, without conviction. She wanted to cling to hope, but couldn't. Rowaan was denying the patently obvious. The oozes had reached the Moonspring Portal and were passing through it-something that would only have been possible if one of Eilistraee's faithful had sung a hymn to open it. Leliana could guess whose deed that had been. Someone who was using her magic for ill, now that a demon rode her.

Qilue.

Leliana looked up at the sky. The moon would set soon. When it did, the portal in the Moonspring would close. Until the next moonrise, the Misty Forest would be secure from attack from the Promenade.

That should have offered a shred of hope.

It didn't.

Not at all.

CHAPTER 9

Karas ran into the Cavern of Song. Two priestesses still sang the sacred hymn, their swords pointed at the ceiling, toward the spot where the moon passed through the night skies of the World Above. Their voices, however, were lost in the general commotion.

The cavern was filled with people. Priestesses and soldiers ran south and east to the battle, while lay worshipers, too young or weak to fight, struggled in the opposite direction, to shelter in their living quarters in the Hall of the Faithful. The Protector Erelda, fully armored in chain mail and breastplate, stood next to the statue of Qilue, shouting orders. The statue had been moved aside to reveal a staircase that spiraled deep below. Another Protector disappeared down it, sword pealing.

The ruined temple lay due south of here. The quickest route to it would be the one Cavatina had suggested: take the corridor past the Moonspring Portal, and strike south. Karas didn't go that way, however. He knew it would be impassable-too many of Ghaunadaur's minions would block his path. His had been the first group of fanatics to come through the portal in the column south of the river. Scores of oozes, slugs, and slimes would have poured through since then.

He had no idea how many of the other Nightshadows had made it through the column-portal. Karas himself had been forced north, away from the river. He'd only managed to extricate himself from his fanatics after they entered the Stronghall. When he finally had managed to slip away from them, a fiery ooze had driven him farther north still. And then he'd run into Cavatina and learned about the planar breach.

Was nothing going to go as he'd hoped this night?

He elbowed his way through the crowd, to a narrow tunnel that snaked southeast from the Cavern of Song. One of the priestesses shouted at him to stop, that this corridor had been evacuated and was about to be sealed, but he ignored her. He entered it, leaving the commotion behind. He followed its twists and turns, squinting against the occasional glare of flickering Faerzress, trying to remember-and avoid-the side tunnels that branched off into dead-end caverns.

There! He recognized the cavern up ahead. He was going the right way. A short distance beyond the cavern, he came to a spot where the corridor branched: one arm veered north, then east, to the ruined temple; the other bore south, then turned west to Skullport. He halted at the juncture, faced with a difficult decision. Skullport, and safety? Or make for the ruined temple and try to prevent the fanatics from releasing Ghaunadaur's avatar?

He kept going over what Cavatina had told him. "Qilue was tricked," she'd said. By the Masked Lord, he'd assumed. But why would Vhaeraun want the fanatics to release Ghaunadaur's avatar? That made no sense. Capturing the Promenade from within would have been an enormous coup for the Masked Lord, one that would rekindle the faith. If the temple fell to Ghaunadaur's avatar, the Nightshadows might never reclaim it. The wealth of its Stronghall, the Promenade's strategic position within the Underdark, its prestige-all would be lost.