The City of Ravens

by Baker, Richard

“What does it all signify?” Illyth interrupted. “Where does this magic come from?”

  “It comes from a device that I call the wild mythal,” said Jelan. “Raven’s Bluff is built on top of Sarbreen. Sarbreen was built on top of an older and deeper city, a drow stronghold thousands of years old. Here, in the deeps beneath us, the mightiest wizards of the drow once gathered to forge a mythal of their own, a font of power akin to those made by the most powerful elven wizards of centuries long past.”

  “A mythal?” Jack asked. He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “The mythals were the most powerful magics ever devised by the elven courts of old,” Illyth said, nodding. “At Myth Drannor, Evermeet, Calmaercor, and other places too, mythals were forged of elven high magic to serve the elven race. They guarded the elven realms against all harm and made possible works of wonder now forgotten.”

  “The dark elves did not overlook the potential of the mythal magic,” Jelan added. “In their long war against the surface elves, the drow came to desire a similar device of their own, one with the power to bend or break the surface mythals. And so they toiled for many long years, forging their own mythal stone somewhere in the ancient city under Sarbreen, but their mythal failed. It gathered an enormous amount of magic, but it could not be tamed to their will. They abandoned the whole city, and the warped magic of their failed device has slowly seeped into the very earth and air and water of this place for centuries now. Raven’s Bluff, by pure chance, was built upon a fountainhead of magic that is probably unique in all the world.”

  Jack looked at her with understanding. “That is why you raised your horde, my lady? To control the fountainhead of wildfire?”

  Jelan nodded. “I had other reasons, too, but yes, that is the primary one. I intend for the wild mythal to be the keystone of my kingdom, a source of power that would make my conquest unassailable. There are dozens of cities in the Vast that might be easier to take or more easily pacified. Raven’s Bluff, however, is unique in this regard, and the fools don’t even know what they have.”

  “What of the Sarkonagael? Why did I steal it for you, if the wild mythal is your real target?”

  “It contains spells that I needed Yu Wei to possess—”

  “The shadow simulacra!” Jack interrupted. “You are the source of the shadow copies! Do you have any idea of the kind of trouble those constructs are causing in the city?”

  The Warlord nodded. “A good idea, yes. You see, Jack, Raven’s Bluff is also unusual in that it is home to a disproportionate number of powerful individuals: swordsmen of epic stature, knights of unsurpassed faithfulness and strength, mages and priests and other magic wielders of dire power. The city is a city of heroes, and while Hawk Knights and Wizard’s Guilds and dozens of interfering bands of adventurers stand about keeping an eye open for trouble, I find it difficult to achieve my goals. Two years ago, my armies would have overrun the Ravenaar defenses with no trouble if it had not been for the heroes who flocked to the city’s defense. This time, I have decided to strike at the heroes first. When the city’s most powerful defenders are dead or discredited due to the actions of their simulacra, Raven’s Bluff will fall with hardly a blow.”

  “I am perhaps more sentimental than I thought I was,” Jack admitted, “since I find that I do not care for the idea of laying waste the city I grew up in.”

  “I do not intend to lay waste to the city, Jack. My quarrel lies against only a small fraction of the city’s inhabitants, the handful of powerful nobles, guilders and so-called heroes who rule this place. When they are gone, I shall stay my hand. I have no interest in devastating the people I intend to rule wisely and well.”

  “Your horde of two years past indicates otherwise,” Illyth remarked boldly. “Orcs, goblins, giants, and ogres, all eager to sack the city and carry off its population in their entirety. Your quarrel at that point would seem to include all within the city’s walls.”

  The Warlord lost her composure for a moment. Her face, until this moment set in a faintly amused and indulgent smile, hardened into something sharper than a blade.

  “Did you ever wonder,” she said with acid, “why, two years past, the battle for Raven’s Bluff turned when it did? I achieved my purpose without razing the city. When it suited me to do so, I allowed my army to be defeated. In fact, I contributed significantly to the security of my future conquest by bringing before its walls a generation of orc and ogre warriors, only to have them cut down in sight of their goal. It will be ten years at least before the tribes can muster another army like that one, and by then I intend to have made Raven’s Bluff completely unassailable.

  “Clearly, I succeeded in some goals and failed in others when I brought the horde against Raven’s Bluff. That was a tool that was wieldy for the job at the time. Now I find that other, subtler tools are better suited to my purpose. And that is all you need to know.”

  “I still do not understand how I fit into your plans,” Jack said.

  “In three ways. First, I have taken you into my service. That in itself is sufficient. Second, I believe that through you I may take control of the wild mythal. Third, your talents are particularly well suited for some tasks I have ahead of me.”

  There was a knock at the door. The Nar swordsman—Kel Kelek—appeared in the doorway. “My lady, the landing is near.”

  “Excellent. I’ll be up in a moment,” Jelan said. She stood and buckled on her swordbelt again. “Jack, I am no fool. I have little reason to trust you, even though I believe it would be in your best interest to serve me willingly. I would have asked Yu Wei here simply to work a geas upon you, but he informs me that the results may be unpredictable given your talents, so I have resorted to a more simple security—Illyth. I have no wish to harm her without cause, but I will if I have to. Do not give me cause.”

  Jack frowned and carefully controlled his response. “I understand. I will cooperate, but you must promise that Illyth will not be harmed.”

  Illyth recoiled. “Jack, don’t do it! Who knows what harm could come of her plots?”

  “The Warlord honors her word to the letter,” Jack admitted. “She will do exactly as she says. I don’t have a choice.”

  “A wise decision.” Jelan pulled leather gloves over her hands and strode past Jack, pushing her way past the Nar swordsman and climbing up the companionway. Then she turned on the stair, ducking a little to meet Jack’s eyes. “Yu Wei recovered your weapons and magical devices from the prison’s lockbox,” she said. “Ready yourself for an expedition into Sarbreen.”

  The Warlord’s party, Jack and Illyth included, entered the subterranean ruins of Sarbreen through a tunnel mouth excavated in the floor of an abandoned warehouse. The ancient dwarven city had few streets or thoroughfares. It was an endless series of chambers and halls and foundations, a lightless and directionless labyrinth that defied Jack’s attempts to perceive the underlying symmetry. Smooth polished granite blocks covered the walls, almost untouched by the passage of seven hundred years since the city’s destruction. Rainwater, run-off, and less pleasant waste dripped through the old dwarven hold from the human city above, turning some of the larger corridors into sewers.

  “I’ve never been in this part of Sarbreen before,” Jack said in a low voice to Jelan. “Where are we?”

  “The Armory,” the Warlord replied as they hurried through the darkness. “Many of Sarbreen’s dwarves died in this place, defending the priceless weapons stored here from the pillaging horde of orcs and goblins. They died in vain.”

  At the end of the hall they passed through a great gate of wrought iron, sundered long ago by some terrible magic that peeled back the iron plate like soft putty. Dozens of moldering skeletons lay scattered nearby, along with a few scraps of rusted armor and the shards of broken weapons. Hathmar, the drow swordsman, led them onward through a number of small, winding passages that wandered between stone living chambers, rooms graced with shattered statues and tattered banners. “Living quarters of the weapo
nsmiths,” the mercenary captain explained, “also looted long ago.”

  “Be careful, but hurry,” warned Jelan. “We were followed from the Ladyrock, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Hawk Knights are on our trail. Keep your voices low, and be ready to douse our lights if we spot any light behind.”

  They came to several broad halls that had collapsed into rubble, with great rockfalls spilling out onto the floor from the walls and the ceiling. At one time the rooms must have been noble and majestic, each sixty or seventy yards in length and perhaps half that in breadth, but now they were cluttered with mounds of debris. In single file Jelan and her companions picked their way between the rockfalls, slipping and clattering over the wreckage.

  “Revel halls,” said Hathmar Blademark. “Take care, the Dragon Hall is close by.”

  At the far end of the collapsed halls they found a broad alcove or antechamber filled by a great dark well. A set of stone stairs wound down into the pit, circling around and around.

  “Dim your light,” said Jelan. “We do not want to advertise our presence to anything that might wait below.”

  Yu Wei complied, masking the glowing golden ball his magic had conjured. Then they groped down through the darkness, each with his or her hand on the shoulder of the person in front, the drow leading the way with his superior dark vision.

  After several hundred steps they reached the bottom of the well and filed out into a high, sharply arched hall. The Tuigan and the Nar ran out ahead, weapons ready, but no dark-lurking monster waited; the vast chamber was empty.

  “The Hall of the Dragon,” Illyth whispered to Jack. “I never thought to see this place with my own eyes! It was the public meeting place of Sarbreen’s guilders and masters, the seat of the city’s government.”

  “I didn’t realize you were so well versed in Sarbreen lore, dear Illyth,” Jack replied.

  “Fully half of the adventurers whose careers I studied explored Sarbreen at one time or another, and a number of them died in these depths. I suppose it just stuck with me.”

  Jack nodded, concealing his nervousness at the notion of people just like them meeting terrible dooms in these darkened dwarven halls, and turned his attention to the chamber itself. Dark galleries ran along the walls, providing room for hundreds of dwarves to watch the proceedings on the floor of the hall. Now nothing but a soft wind sighed through the high balconies. At the far end of the hall, a great stone dragon was carved in bas-relief forty feet tall. Its noble features grimaced in a terrible battle challenge.

  “The Stone Dragon of Sarbreen!” Illyth breathed. “Jack, this is the stuff of legend! No one has seen this place in a hundred years and returned to tell the tale.”

  “That is not entirely true, my lady sage,” Jelan said, sauntering closer. Yu Wei, Amarana, Hathmar, and the others stood guard warily, watching the numerous dark tunnel mouths that opened into the great chamber. “I myself have been here three times in the last six months in attempts to reach the Wild Mythal, but this barrier—” she gestured at the massive relief on the chamber’s far wall—“has frustrated me every time. It is my hope that Jack can help me here.”

  Jack glanced up at the formidable structure. “I have no great skill at digging, but if you wish, I will take pickaxe in hand and do what I can.”

  “If only it were so easy,” the Warlord said. “Beyond that wall lies a rift or passageway descending into the true underdark beneath the very deepest dwarven works. Yu Wei’s divinations clearly show the way to the Wild Mythal, but to reach it we must pass through the doorway concealed in this wall. And that barrier has frustrated all the efforts of mighty wizards and priests both. It will not yield to me.”

  “But you, Jack Ravenwild, are a Ravenaar born and bred, infused with the chaotic energies of the device this barrier protects,” Yu Wei intoned. “We believe you can open this passage.”

  Jack sighed and followed Jelan’s gaze. He was inclined to allow the Warlord to stand frustrated before this wall until the end of time, but that was why Jelan had brought Illyth along. Clearly, this was not the time to challenge her.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Come here,” said Yu Wei.

  The Shou wizard stood at the feet of the great image. The dragon was head-down, as if it had been frozen in the act of descending the wall. Serpentine coils and vast batlike wings shadowed the upper portions of the bas-relief, lost in the darkness high overhead, while the creature’s fierce claws gripped a great orb ten feet across at the bottom, just beneath its open mouth and noble countenance.

  “This sphere in the dragon’s claws marks the doorway, but no opening spell at my command can part it, and more destructive spells are defeated outright.”

  “The wall is blank stone. What do you propose?”

  The Shou scowled. “If you know an opening spell, attempt it. Perhaps the stone will accept your magic where it refused mine.”

  Jack shrugged and did as Yu Wei suggested. He stepped close and murmured the words to his passage spell, reaching out to caress the cold stone of the sphere-shaped surface. For a long moment he felt nothing. Then, abruptly, a streamer of emerald energy caressed him, dancing up from some wellspring far below his feet and winding left and right to stay in contact with him, no matter where he went. He gasped in shock and opened his eyes to look on the spiraling magic with his human vision. He saw nothing at first, although he could still feel it nearby. Then he realized that Yu Wei stared silently at something in front of them.

  In the center of the stone sphere, beneath Jack’s hand, a blot of darkness edged in green-glowing magic had appeared. Emerald energy whirled and darted around the aperture, which rapidly widened to fill the blank stone between the dragon’s claws.

  “Jack, you opened it!” said Illyth. She hugged her arms around her shoulders, excited despite the circumstances.

  “Indeed,” said Yu Wei. The wizened sorcerer turned to the Warlord. “My lady, we should make haste. The aperture may not remain open for long.”

  Jack simply gaped. He hadn’t even finished the spell … or so he thought. Could he have cast a spell without even realizing it, simply by concentrating on the feel of magic from the floor beneath his feet? What else might happen if he tried to channel the power he could sense?

  “Excellent!” said Myrkyssa Jelan.

  She checked her arms and armor, then joined them by the doorway. The others in her party—drow swordsman, Shar priestess, Tuigan warrior, and the others—followed quickly. Jelan looked at Hathmar and inclined her head; without hesitation the drow ducked into the dark opening, scouting the path ahead. “Now we shall see what the dwarves chose to conceal.”

  “So where does it go?” Jack asked.

  “Down to the deeps,” Yu Wei answered. “My divinations show a—”

  “Silence!” hissed Jelan. She pointed at the stairwell behind them. A flicker of yellow light danced on the walls. She doused her own light. “Everybody, through the door! Someone is following us!”

  Jelan glanced at the dark doorway, then took Jack by the elbow and guided him toward a deep niche in the wall guarded by a mighty stone statue of an armored dwarf.

  “Go ahead!” she told her mercenaries. “I want to see who follows, but we’ll withdraw as soon as we know. Jack, you will stay silent or Illyth suffers.”

  Yu Wei and the others ducked through the archway in the shadows beneath the dragon claws, carrying Illyth away with them. At the rear of the hall, yellow light grew brighter, closer, in the circling stairwell descending from the halls above. A sudden clatter echoed from the antechamber, and the glimmer of light flickered and flared wildly. Jack leaned forward, watching carefully now. Footsteps clattered on the stairs above, followed by the ringing of steel and distant cries of distress. A voice cried out in pain, another shrieked words of magic, and then something inhuman roared in challenge, a deep-throated growl that echoed throughout the entire room.

  Jelan snorted softly beside him. “Be ready to move when I command,” she sai
d. “Someone is about to bring their battle into our presence, and I deem it wise to abandon the vicinity before we are caught up in an argument that isn’t ours.”

  The archway in the opposite wall filled with yellow light and motion as several figures clattered down the last of the spiraling stairs in the antechamber and retreated out into the floor of the great hall. Marcus and Ashwillow, at the head of a handful of city soldiers, turned to face whatever it was that pursued them.

  Out of the dark shaft in the adjoining chamber, six gray shapes suddenly dropped, with great leathery wings snapping out to break their plunge. They were about the size and shape of a man, but so heavy and powerful that the flagstones at the bottom of the shaft cracked under the impact of their descent. With roars of battle rage, the creatures surged out of the bottom of the well and assaulted the Hawk Knights and their soldiers.

  Blades flashed and steel rang as the knight slashed out at his attackers. One recoiled, cradling a mangled arm and hissing in pain, but two others pummeled Marcus to the ground with blows powerful enough to powder stone. Ashwillow barked out a magical word and sent a jet of scorching blue flame into the middle of the pack. The creatures—some kind of gargoyles, Jack guessed—were driven back for a moment. Two soldiers seized Marcus by the arms and dragged him up, retreating from their assailants.

  “That’s enough,” Jelan snarled. “Come on. We’ll leave these fools to their fate.”

  Jack cringed. Marcus and Ashwillow certainly wished him no good and it might solve some problems later if they met their doom in Sarbreen today. Still he begrudged no one a chance to escape a grisly death at the claws of a flight of gargoyles.

  Jack took one more look at the fight across the great room. The creatures had already recovered from Ashwillow’s fiery attack, ignoring the patches of black, cracked hide that smoked across their broad backs and massive wings. With cries of rage, they took to the air, streaking across the vast space of the dwarven greathall like catapult stones in flight. The rogue ducked into the open passage and found a long tunnel lined with cool, smooth stone that gleamed in the reflected light. Yu Wei, Illyth, and the others waited thirty yards down the tunnel.