The City of Ravens

by Baker, Richard

  A moment later, Jelan darted into the passage behind Jack. “Move quickly,” she called ahead. “We are pursued.”

  Three of the powerful gargoyles appeared in the darkness behind them, screeching with rage. They hurled themselves forward, crowding the small passageway and scrabbling past each other to reach Jelan first. The Warlord cast one cool glance over her shoulder and picked up her pace, keeping safely ahead of the flight. Jack decided to do the same. The passageway behind the sphere ran for almost a hundred yards, as straight as an arrow, before opening up on a tall, narrow cavern cleft by a great crevasse. The Warlord’s party was trapped on a wide ledge, unable to flee any farther. Wind howled up from below, a roaring blast of air that rumbled and echoed in the cavern like the thunder of a nearby waterfall.

  Illyth plucked at Jack’s sleeve and pointed. “Look!” A round stone platform floated in midair in the center of the crevasse, level with the floor on which they stood. A wooden dock or landing extended out over the abyss to meet the edge of the stone platform.

  Jack moved over to peer over the edge. As far as he could see, the crevasse plummeted down into the dark. He raised an arm to shield his eyes and blinked in astonishment.

  “What is this place?” he shouted.

  “The road to our goal,” Jelan replied. She turned and drew her blade, preparing to defend the mouth of the passageway against the pursuing monsters. Tenghar and Hathmar joined her, forming a hedge of steel to seal the tunnel’s exit. The gargoyles were almost upon them. “Yu Wei! Bar their passage!”

  The Shou sorcerer inclined his head and raised his hands, muttering words and weaving his fingers. Golden flames suddenly exploded from the stone floor to fill the tunnel behind them, creating a sheet of leaping death that sealed the tunnel mouth completely. Jack could feel a small warmth on his face and hands, no stronger than sunlight on a clear day, but the heat must have been far more intense on the opposite side of the fire barrier; the gargoyles bayed in misery and retreated, shielding their faces with their great dark wings.

  “The wall will hold them for a quarter hour!” Yu Wei cried. “After that, the monsters will be free to pass!”

  “Well done,” the Warlord said. “That will do for now. Turn your attention to the platform and determine how it operates. We will keep watch.”

  They waited a few minutes, buffeted by the winds, the scorching heat of the wizard’s shield defending them from the gargoyles in the tunnel. Yu Wei muttered and mumbled, inspecting the floating platform.

  At length he stepped back and said, “I believe I understand the device, Warlord, but it may be prudent to test it first in order to make sure that I have mastered the enchantment.”

  “I trust you implicitly, and we do not have much time,” Jelan replied. She brushed by the sorcerer and jumped across to the stone platform as if she had absolute confidence in the precarious engine. It bobbed a little under her weight but remained stable. “Come on, then, everybody aboard. Jack, you stay close by me,” she said. “I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”

  “I am completely trustworthy,” Jack protested.

  He followed Jelan and tried not to think about just how much of a drop might wait under his feet. He gave his hand to Illyth and helped her onto the platform, then moved aside to make room for the rest of Jelan’s picked warriors.

  “Nevertheless,” Jelan said. “Trouble follows you like gulls following a fisherman’s dory.” She turned to face the rest of the party. “Keep your eyes open, friends. I am very concerned about what might or might not come up behind us in the dark.”

  Yu Wei stepped aboard last and carefully touched the heel of his staff to the old dwarven stone, speaking a word that Jack did not recognize. After a moment, the platform began to sink, dropping quickly and smoothly down the crevasse as the walls seemed to climb away from them.

  The wind screamed like something flayed alive as they dropped into the darkness.

  “Dungeon delving,” mused Jack, “is an occupation for those unfortunate souls who have demonstrated that they are too stupid, ill-tempered, or incompetently noble to hold down any honest job.”

  He gazed out into the great vast darkness around him and shivered. For several minutes the stone platform had descended through empty air, as the crevasse had widened drastically hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of feet below its upper entrance. The walls were now well out of sight, and still they dropped. At least the platform hadn’t yet taken them into any life-threatening peril, but that, of course, was no guarantee that it wouldn’t at any moment. A cold, damp stream of air raked the open platform, hinting of vast subterranean spaces stretching away around them. The platform was a bubble of golden light, sinking into darkness like a coin dropped into a bottomless well.

  “Surely recovering treasures long forgotten is better than outright theft and burglary?” Illyth replied.

  “It’s dangerous, but it’s honest.”

  Jack stood close by her, holding her closely to keep her warm. Jelan had not provided Illyth with garb particularly suited for marching around in the frigid depths, and the noblewoman shivered constantly.

  Jack shrugged and threw his cloak over her shoulders. “I’ll trade risk for guilt any time,” he said with a laugh.

  Illyth’s disapproving look stung him, and he fell silent. They gazed into the limitless dark, wondering when the descent would come to an end.

  “Hathmar, what do you know of the depths beneath Sarbreen?” Jelan asked the drow swordsman. The Warlord did not take her eyes away from the wall of darkness around them, watching vigilantly for any sign of trouble. “Are there any monsters common to this region we should watch for? Hazardous conditions that might cause injury or death?”

  “I have never walked these ways, Warlord,” the drow said. “In Sarbreen’s day, the region beneath the city was vigorously patrolled by the dwarven city above. If drow had lived here when Sarbreen was great, there would have been war. My people lived in the deep Underdark near this region, but they must have been long gone by the time of Sarbreen’s founding. Certainly the Sarbreen-aar never had any truck with them.”

  “Silence,” hissed Yu Wei. “We’ve reached the bottom.”

  Around them long spires of rock now appeared at the edge of their bubble of light, gleaming wetly in the darkness and growing thicker and wider as they descended toward the giant stalagmites’ unseen bases. Jack had the curious fear that the platform would settle on one of the rocky points and upend itself, but the makers of the ancient mechanism were not so careless; the platform came to rest on a square of polished granite with a soft grating sound. Jack hopped to the floor of the chamber and helped Illyth down; the others dismounted carefully, searching for any signs of danger.

  “The gargoyles did not pursue us,” Jelan said, looking up into the darkness. The Warlord frowned in concern. “They have wings. Why didn’t they chase us down here?”

  “Perhaps they have not yet broken through Yu Wei’s wall,” Amarana, the Shar priestess, said.

  “Or perhaps they have no wish to be where we are now,” Jack muttered. “It could be that they feared to follow you into the chasm.”

  “A cheerful thought,” said Jelan. She shook herself and looked around the stone forest surrounding them. Great needles of stone rose into the darkness, as tall as the turrets of a castle. “Which way now?”

  “According to my divinations, we should seek a lake of darkness,” Yu Wei said. “We will find the wild mythal there.” He consulted a small, dark orb held in his left hand and studied it for a moment. Then he pointed off into the darkness. “That way.”

  “Hathmar, you lead,” said Jelan. “Amarana, would you join him? Your dark lady favors you with sight in places such as this. Yu Wei, Kel Kelek, follow them. Jack, you and I will stay close to Illyth. Tenghar, you and the rest cover the rear. And make sure you keep your eyes open.”

  With the drow and the Shar priestess in the lead and half a dozen swordsmen guarding their backs, they set off between th
e huge stalagmites, winding across an uneven floor of natural rock that surrounded the dwarven platform at the foot of the long descent. Jack offered Illyth an arm to steady herself and picked his way carefully across the damp stone. He could feel something now, even without closing his eyes or concentrating on it, a subtle tide that seemed to tug on his soul. It almost felt as if he were caught in an undertow, the race of water receding away from the shore to gather for a tremendous wave still unseen. And the power of the magic streaming past him resonated, recharged him, so that he felt full of power and skill and confidence. With every step he could sense his magical strength replenishing itself, a sensation he never experienced on the surface.

  “I think we’re getting close,” he told Illyth. “I can feel something ahead of us, a very strong magic indeed. I don’t think I’ve ever held this much power.”

  “The lake,” called Blademark from the front, softly.

  A moment later they all reached the shore. The water was oily and blacker than night, a great dark expanse whose farther shores might have been a hundred yards away or a hundred miles. Here, at least, the shore seemed to indicate a sizable body of water. Small waves lapped at the gravel strand, and a band of damp stones above the waterline hinted at a small tidal range. Left and right the shore was bare, marked only by boulder falls and rare pinnaclelike stalagmites rising up into the darkness.

  “Are we supposed to swim from this point forward?” Jack asked.

  “If necessary, I can arrange it,” Yu Wei retorted. “We will do what must be done.”

  “Quiet,” said Jelan. “Look.” She pointed toward the center of the black lake. Out over the water, hundreds of yards beyond the limit of their vision, a green aurora danced. Emerald energy twisted in an ever-changing spiral, weird and ethereal. Jack felt each undulation as a tremor in his bones. “The wild mythal. That must be where it lies.” She smiled and started forward—

  —only to be abruptly lassoed by a slimy, brown tendril from the darkness to their right. Two more shot out, tangling her arms and wrapping several times around the Warlord’s torso.

  “Look out!” she cried. “Ropers!”

  In the murk and shadows of a large fallen boulder, three dark, pulsing things shifted and gaped. Each looked like a stalagmite that had suddenly sprouted six long, thin tentacles. Jack caught a quick glimpse of bright teeth in their huge maws, and then more tentacles shot out, looping around Yu Wei, Amarana, and Jelan again.

  Tenghar shouted a battle cry and leaped forward to hew at the tendrils binding the Warlord, only to be caught in turn by four more tendrils. He had the curious misfortune of being lassoed by two of the creatures at the same time, and between them the monsters were far stronger than him. The Tuigan was hauled off his feet and dragged toward the waiting fangs.

  “Get off me!” he shrieked, flailing ineffectually with his tulwar.

  His cries rose to a fevered pitch as he was dragged within reach of the ropers’ maws. Something crunched in the darkness, and Tenghar abruptly stopped screaming.

  “Merciful Oghma!” Illyth choked. “Those monsters—”

  “I know,” said Jack.

  He looked around quickly. Jelan’s warriors rushed forward to hack at the monsters. Yu Wei burned away one tendril, but two more seized him. Amarana fought to invoke her dark powers, but whipping tendrils spoiled her magic. The Warlord fought silently to keep from being dragged closer. She suddenly dropped flat and braced her feet against a ridge of rock, wedging herself in place. Calmly she released her sword and drew a dagger to begin sawing at the tendrils binding her.

  “Kel Kelek! Hathmar! Aid Yu Wei and Amarana! The rest of you, slay those things!”

  Jack saw his opportunity. Every one of the Warlord’s followers was engaged by the ropers. He took Illyth’s hand and quickly worked the spell of shadow-jumping, moving several hundred yards into the darkness and broken rock of the cavern floor. One moment they stood in a circle of yellow light, caught in the middle of a furious battle against monstrous predators; the next, he and Illyth stood alone in the darkness, listening to the sounds of a far-off battle.

  Illyth recoiled in panic and cried out. Jack quickly caught her hand again.

  “Shhhh,” he said quietly. “We’re safe. I took the opportunity of the ropers’ attack to abandon the Warlord’s expedition.”

  The girl panted in the darkness nearby. Her breathing slowed after a dozen heartbeats, and her hand stopped shaking. “I understand,” she whispered back. “Jack, they’ll come for us as soon as they finish with those—things.”

  “They might,” he admitted, “but we will be hard to find. And it may be that Jelan has no further use for us and does not wish to spend the time tracking us down.”

  Illyth fell silent for a moment. Her hand gripped his tightly. “Jack,” she said, “Could you please make some light? I don’t like this.”

  “It’s not wise, Illyth. Even a glimmer might be seen from a long way, and remaining inconspicuous is our best defense at the moment.”

  “I know, but … what if something like those ropers, or worse, is waiting out here in the darkness?”

  Jack shivered despite himself. “Very unlikely,” he lied. He looked around, and noted a faint glow of green in the distance. “Look, over there. I suspect that the mythal lies in that direction, and the lakeshore as well. We will head in that direction and then backtrack toward the stone platform from there. I’ll have you out of here in an hour or two, and you’ll have an adventure of your very own to write about in your journals.”

  “Are we going to abandon the wild mythal to the Warlord?”

  “Illyth, what else are we supposed to do? She’s leading a dozen extremely skillful and ruthless mercenaries, including a very powerful mage and a couple of top rank swordsmen. And Jelan herself is quite competent, too. There’s only the two of us. Our best move is to get out of the way and hope that she doesn’t find what she’s looking for down here.”

  “Still, I feel that we ought to be doing something,” Illyth protested.

  “We’ll notify the proper authorities the moment we get out of Sarbreen,” Jack promised. “Now take my hand, and try to be quiet. We should keep moving.”

  Jack and Illyth spent the better part of an hour picking their way carefully through the darkness, listening for any signs of pursuit by the Warlord’s party—or the telltale sounds of some abominable monstrosity native to the Underdark preparing to make them its next meal. Although he knew it might be dangerous, Jack relented and created just a tiny glimmer of light, no brighter than candle flame, and used his magic to send it dancing ahead of them, illuminating dimly their path. Fortunately, they encountered nothing more dangerous than strange-looking lichens and odd, spikelike fungi sprouting from beneath heavy round boulders, and even then Jack gave the subterranean growths a wide berth.

  The sounds of battle from the Warlord’s encounter with the ropers had long since died away, but not before a pair of thunderclaps and a blast of searing white flame had blasted through the darkness hundreds of feet away. Jack decided that the wizardry probably meant that Jelan’s party had eventually bested their attackers, since ropers weren’t known to use lightning bolts to finish off their prey. The question was, what had the Warlord decided next? Had she ordered a search for Jack and Illyth, or had she continued on toward her goal?

  “Jack, look. I think that stalagmite looks familiar.” Illyth broke his train of thought, tugging on his sleeve and pointing. A towering peak the size of a castle turret rose above them, vanishing into the darkness. “The stone platform came to rest nearby.”

  “Illyth, we’ve passed a dozen just like in the last hour,” Jack said. “How do you know?”

  “I have a good sense of direction,” the noblewoman replied. “I think we’re near the platform.”

  Jack was inclined to argue the point, since he had been unsuccessfully trying to find that very spot for most of the last hour by navigating across the dark, featureless cavern floor, but he decided
to indulge her. “All right, but let’s be careful. Jelan may be lying in wait for us here, since she knows that this is our route back to the surface. I’ll render us invisible as a precaution; keep hold of my cloak, or we’ll never find each other again!”

  Illyth agreed with a nod, and Jack worked the spells. The magic came swiftly and easily to him, another sign that the wild mythal was nearby. In the darkness, it was hard to tell if anything had changed or not, but Illyth clung tightly to the hem of his cloak.

  “This way,” she said.

  Jack allowed Illyth to take the lead and followed her around the huge rock spire. At first he thought she’d missed her guess, but the square level came into view as they rounded a shoulder of the rock.

  The platform was missing.

  “Oh, dear,” said Illyth. She shivered and pulled closer. “How are we supposed to get back up to the top again?”

  “It might be a blessing in disguise, when you consider that the chamber above might be filled with angry gargoyles,” Jack mused. “Of course, I have no idea how we can get back home otherwise.” He looked up into the darkness overhead, trying to guess how far they’d descended on the levitating platform. A small globe of yellow light hovered far above, sinking toward them as Jack watched. He nudged Illyth and pointed before remembering that he was invisible and his arm could not be seen. “Look up. The platform’s coming back down, and someone with light is riding it.”

  “The Hawk Knights?”

  “It could be. I doubt that the Warlord has had time to return here, ascend, and start to descend again. Let’s find a good place of concealment and await their arrival. If nothing else, we need to use the platform when the current riders are done with it.”

  Jack drew her back a little ways behind the rock, and they settled down to wait. The platform descended quickly, dropping hundreds of feet in no more than two or three minutes. It slowed and stopped soundlessly atop the square plaza in precisely the same manner as before.