Extinction

As a dozen priestesses raised horns to their lips to signal the start of the night's hunt, Halisstra felt a thrill rush through her body. Part of it was a shiver. The wind was picking up, and a few flakes of snow had started to fall. Like the others, she wore nothing save for a heavy silver chain around her waist, hung with the silver disk that bore the symbol of Eilistraee.

Tipping her head back, she raised the hunting horn they'd given her to her lips, staring past it at the moon. She drew a deep breath and blew, adding her horn's strident voice to the others. There was an urgent rush of raw sound as each of the horns found its own note, then held it in perfect harmony with the others. The very air shivered and for several heartbeats was still. Then the wind resumed, stirring the tree branches overhead.

As if the goddess had given her a signal, Halisstra suddenly cut short her note at precisely the same moment that the other women did. She lowered her horn and stared expectantly as the leader of the hunt?Uluyara, the drow who had killed the troll the previous night?drew from the ground the sword they had been dancing around a moment before. Holding it straight out in front of her, the high priestess slowly turned in place.

Like Uluyara, Halisstra's only weapon was a sword, Seyll's long sword. Her hand gripped its hilt tightly, covering all but one of the holes. Through that single hole the wind blew, producing a faint, insistent note.

Feliane, who had stayed close to Halisstra throughout the dance, caught her eye.

"Use it well," she said, nodding at the songsword. The moon elf had dyed her skin black, once again, in preparation for the night's hunt. Too small and innocent looking to ever be taken for a drow at close range?especially with her brown hair?Feliane nonetheless gripped her own sword like someone who knew how to wield it.

"What do we hunt?" Halisstra whispered.

"Whatever monster Eilistraee causes to cross our path," Feliane answered, an enigmatic smile on her lips.

Uluyara began to spin faster. Her sword flashed in the moonlight as she whirled in tight circles: once, twice, three times. . then she jerked to a halt, her blade quivering.

"This way!" she shouted.

Like a hunting lizard suddenly unleashed, she sprinted into the woods.

A rush of excitement swept through Halisstra as she leaped to follow the high priestess. All of the other priestesses did the same, and just behind her, Halisstra could see Feliane running swiftly, her eyes eager and bright. Urged on by an emotion that was part elation, part lust for the hunt, Halisstra wove through the trees, leaping over snow-dappled logs and clumps of fern, and shouldering her way through branches whose pine needles slapped her skin. She ran, following the others, and plunged after them down a gully. She splashed through a wide stream at the bottom of it, slipping on the ice that crusted the river stones under her feet. Then she was scrambling up the far bank, fighting to keep her balance as she climbed the steep slope with a sword in one hand and a horn in the other.

At the top she paused, uncertain which way to go. She could no longer hear the other priestesses in the forest ahead. The only sound was the noise of Feliane scrambling up the slope behind her. Then she heard a horn, coming from a distance and to her right.

"That's Uluyara," Feliane gasped. "She's found it."

Halisstra didn't stop to ask what the high priestess had found. Panting, sweating even though the air was cold, she plunged on into the forest, running in the direction from which the sound had come. As she ran, she noted to her disgust that, unlike her, Feliane wasn't even breathing hard. Like the other priestesses, Feliane was swift and sure of her footing on the snowy ground. Halisstra, accustomed to a noble's life in a city where one strolled along smooth streets and levitated from one avenue to the next, had never had cause to run and climb so hard or for so long.

This must be the «trial» Feliane had spoken of when I was lifted from the cave, Halisstra thought. That's why she's holding herself back, watching my every move.

Determined not to show herself to be wanting, aware that Eilistraee herself might be watching, Halisstra ran on, ignoring the pain that was pinching her side like a centipede's jaws.

At least the moon provided ample light to run by?to Halisstra, accustomed to the Underdark, the forest appeared brilliantly lit. But the trees were thick, the spaces between them filled with low bushes and ferns. Halisstra had long since lost sight of all the priestesses save Feliane. When Uluyara's horn sounded a second time, immediately in front of Halisstra, the closeness of it surprised her. An instant later, Halisstra burst through a tangle of tree branches that felt strangely sticky, into a moonlit clearing.