“How dare she speak to me like that?” Olorra said with a snarl, both hands clenched tightly into fists. “She’s a common-blooded elg’caress and she–”

The other priestess seized her by the upper arms and shook her violently before she could continue her rant. “Shut up, you fool! Do you want her to hear you say that?” Zarniss said, keeping her voice low. “You know she has spies everywhere!”

“Shebali!” the steely-eyed drowess said, spitting on the smooth stones that lead up to the Fane’s stairs. “At least I have noble blood!”

Zarniss released the impetuous high priestess and slapped her across the face, sending her sprawling into the gray dust. “I wouldn’t care if you were the daughter of the Goddess herself. You will mind your tongue when I tell you. Let’s not forget which of us is in charge.”

“Yes, Revered Zarniss,” Olorra said, poisoning her elder’s title with all the venom she dared. The other female wasn’t intimidated in the slightest by the glare leveled at her. Zarniss had seen far worse looks in her century as a priestess of Lloth with those almost colorless gray eyes, oddly flat and shifty as they took in the world. This plan was, in her educated opinion, bad.

“Playing, children?” a smooth voice said, flowing like oil over ice. Both priestesses felt their blood run cold in their veins and looked up, captured by sea-green eyes filled with an amused contempt.

“Arch Priestess, what a surprsie,” Zarniss managed. The rebuke would have invited retribution had it been any cleric besides the woman before them who uttered it.

Malavin Ken’ar stood a full head above the standing drowess, easily making six feet tall in her bare feet. She gazed down from that impressive height with a more benign form of malevolence, obviously less than impressed. Olorra’s temper would have acted up, had she not been frozen in terror.

The Arch Priestess of Lloth sighed ponderously and pushed her hair behind one ear, its color seeming to shift slightly. It appeared silver except in natural light when its true shade could be seen, a faint golden blond. Some aspiring clerics had tried to spread the rumor she was tainted with surface elven blood, but their efforts amounted to naught. Matron Mother Ilmniss Ken’ar OUsstyl was not a woman to tarry with non-drow, let alone faeries.

“I saw neither of you at the surface,” she said finally, studying their faces closely. Her voice broke the sudden silence that had filled the air for a brief space. “But excuse me, perhaps I slipped into some archaic tongue. Or is there some part of the word ‘mandatory’ the two of you have difficulty comprehending? Is it possible I was unclear?”

The two of them went as pale as their dark skin would allow. “Ah…ah…” Olorra struggled to find the words she needed and failed miserably.

“Yes, no doubt you have something to say, High Priestess Olorra. You never seem to have a shortage of singularly useless comments,” Malavin said with a humorless smile. “That tongue of yours may get you into trouble some day, when you cross the wrong person.”

She knows. Oh, by Lloth, she knows, Olorra moaned in her thoughts. I’m doomed…we’re doomed!

Zarniss couldn’t look away from the Arch Priestess’s mesmerizing gaze, unaware that her thoughts mirrored Olorra’s perfectly. She just prayed that her face didn’t betray anything.

“Reverend Daughter Zarniss, the C’rintrin Talthara is convening at the peak of Faer’Ssussun and I am regrettably obliged to attend. I leave the Fane in your charge while I’m gone,” Malavin said dismissively, glancing up at the magical timekeeper in the center of the Ghetto of Scholars. She started down the path past them.

Before Zarniss’s chest could swell too far with self-importance, Malavin halted as though a thought had occurred to her. “Oh, and make sure the Fane’s still standing when I return,” she said over her shoulder.

“Yes, Arch Priestess,” the Reverend Daughter said, pride stung. Olorra let out an unpleasant snicker once their superior had continued on her way and was well out of earshot.

“You look a touch humiliated, Zarniss.”

“Revered Zarniss to you, whelp,” the older drowess snapped. “Get up. The Fane will have to be in perfect order when she returns.”

* * *

“These reports are disturbing,” Malavin said, the Matrons quieting slightly as she spoke. “People and shipments disappearing in the tunnels…we can’t afford to lose the trade. However, flying into a blind panic isn’t going to help either. We have to find whatever’s responsible and deal with it.”

“The scouting parties we’ve sent haven’t returned,” Sabinil Vae said sourly. Her face was as dour as ever, disguising a particularly poisonous temper. “How then are we supposed to identify our foes? Why don’t–”

“We found a survivor,” Ilvistin Tormtor interrupted. “Of one of your scouting parties, Matron Sabinil.”

“And why wasn’t I informed of this?” Vae’s Matron Mother snapped.

“He didn’t survive very long. We did learn that he was beset upon not only by former companions that had no memory of him or desire to stop fighting, but some nameless horror that had stripped them of their will and enslaved them. He apparently barely managed to escape the latter. When we found him, there were circular bruises on his face, and a lot of them.”

A horrified silence blanketed the room, the air itself opressive and heavy with dread. “Illithids,” the Matron of House Everhate whispered.

Only Malavin’s face remained impassive. “A company of dread fangs will be sent to learn the truth of this. Until they return, no one is to know of this. A city in panic would prove easy prey to mind flayers.”

“So be it. This council has ended,” Matron Ilvistin said. “It may be prudent to consult with Mistress Xanaphia as well. She and Tsavyr will be exceedingly valuable if things do go badly.”

The Arch Priestress restrained a groan. She would rather confront mind flayers on a battle field than speak with those two arcanists. “Perhaps,” she said aloud, despite her inner thoughts. “If they can be convinced.”

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