Skein of Shadows (dungeons and dragons)

by Marsheila Rockwell

  “We need to get out of here!” she called, dispatching one of the flaming creatures that writhed in misery near her. She crossed over to where Greddark stood, Olog following her.

  “Is he-?” she asked, gesturing to Rahm as the dwarf thumbed his wand off and extinguished his blade.

  “Just unconscious, I think. Took a blow to the head, first thing.”

  “Can you get him up? We need to move.” The smoke from the burning webbing was getting thicker, and her eyes were beginning to water. Soon they would have trouble breathing.

  Greddark nodded.

  “I think I’ve got something that will do the trick. What about him?” he asked, jerking his head toward Olog.

  Sabira turned to the man.

  “That’s a good question. What about you?”

  Olog held up a hand, palm out, shaking his head.

  “I’ve got no quarrel with you, Marshal. My employer is dead; anything I was contracted to do for him is now void. I just want to get out of here and get back up to the surface, where I belong.”

  She looked over at Greddark, who shrugged.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Sabira glanced at Olog.

  “Well, let’s go see if your comrades agree, shall we?”

  She led him over to the two men who’d been fighting the scimitar-wielder, who was smoldering now at their feet from one of Zi’s blasts.

  Olog stepped up.

  “We’re done here. Thecla’s gone, and so’s any hope we had of payment. I say we cut our losses and get out of here while we still can.”

  The two men who’d been fighting alongside Skraad came over, as did the orc and Jester. Zi went to go check on Laven and Glynn. Sabira wanted to join the wizard, but she needed to see this resolved first. It wouldn’t do the Vadalis man and his former lover any good if she got them embroiled in yet another battle. Though the odds were better now, and technically they had Olog and his fellows outnumbered, Laven and Glynn weren’t the only ones who were hurt, and Sabira wasn’t sure how much more her group could take.

  “Who put you in charge?”

  “No one,” Olog replied matter-of-factly. “Stay if you want. Fight if you want. I’m leaving, and I’m taking the compass with me.”

  “Compass?” Sabira repeated, wondering what good knowing which direction was north would do when they were so far underground.

  “I believe he is referring to this.”

  They turned to see Xujil approaching them from the far side of the cavern, holding a golden divining rod in his hand.

  “Where in the name of Onatar’s bare chin have you been?” Greddark demanded suspiciously as he came toward them from the other side, supporting a still-woozy Rahm.

  The drow shrugged.

  “Hiding. The chitines are ancient enemies of my people. It seemed prudent.”

  “It seemed-?” Greddark began, but Sabira interrupted him, his murderous expression reminding her that she hadn’t gotten the chance to issue the moratorium on drow-throttling.

  “What is it?” she asked quickly, before Greddark could decide dropping Rahm and sending him back into unconsciousness was an acceptable price to pay for the chance to strangle the drow.

  “It uses some magic I am not familiar with to find a path. The hooked one carried it, along with this.” Xujil held up a bulging pouch that clinked with the movement. From the looks of it, Arach may well have paid Thecla the bounty on her head up front. No wonder the dwarf had been so eager to get back into his former employer’s good graces.

  “If you’re not familiar with the magic it uses, then how do you know what it does?” Greddark asked. Seeing Sabira’s warning look, he’d opted not to incapacitate Rahm, but his voice made it clear he was deeply unhappy with that choice.

  “The sorceress Donathilde carried one similar to this. I was unable to retrieve it when she was taken.”

  “Yes, I imagine that would be pretty hard to do when you’re hiding,” Greddark muttered. He looked as if he might continue, but Sabira’s furious glare changed his mind and he relented, lapsing into sullen silence.

  Olog moved forward in the quiet that followed, holding his hand out to the drow.

  “I’ll take that.”

  Xujil cocked his head to one side curiously.

  “I believe that is the Marshal’s decision. She commands here.”

  Sabira waved that off before anyone else could take umbrage. Tempers were running hot enough as it was-a coward ordering seasoned warriors around was only going to make things worse.

  “It’s fine, Xujil. Give it to him. We don’t need it; we have you.” Her smile was brittle, but the drow seemed not to notice. Inclining his head to her, he did as she ordered. “Give him the pouch too. Whatever’s in there, he and his men have more than earned it.”

  She hoped that her implied acceptance of Olog’s leadership would sway the others to do as he suggested. The fire still raged above them, though its flames were losing their greenish hue, and the smoke it was generating tickled the back of her throat like a fish bone. Worse, her nose was beginning to run. Somehow she didn’t think either dripping snot or a hacking coughing fit would impress her audience or help Olog’s case any.

  Olog took the rod and bag and looked over at the other men.

  “Well?”

  After a moment, the one who’d originally questioned Olog’s authority nodded.

  “We split the coin five ways?”

  “Of course.”

  “And what do we tell Arach if he comes looking?”

  Olog glanced over at Sabira.

  “We tell him the truth. That the last time we saw her, the Marshal was standing over Thecla’s dead body in the middle of a burning cavern and we don’t think there’s any way she could have made it back to Trent’s Well alive.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she muttered. Olog just grinned.

  “I think you’re going to need to take them with you too.”

  They turned to see Zi leading Laven and Glynn over to them. Laven’s abdomen was wrapped several times around with bandages and the stump of Glynn’s arm was a mass of freshly healed scars, but neither of them looked like they’d make it to the cave entrance, let alone any deeper into Tarath Marad.

  Laven met her gaze.

  “This is where we get off. Sorry we couldn’t stick with you for the whole trip.”

  Sabira crossed over to him and clasped his shoulder lightly.

  “Nothing you need to apologize for. You did your House proud.” She glanced over at Glynn. “And at least you weren’t bored, right?”

  The dark-haired woman gave her a wan smile in reply.

  Sabira turned to Olog.

  “You have any problem escorting my people back up to the surface?”

  He shook his head.

  “I think we can manage that.”

  She looked over at Zi and Rahm.

  “What about you two? You still in? Perfectly understandable if you want to head back with Laven and Glynn. No one would blame you, or think worse of you for it.”

  Rahm pulled away from Greddark and stood to his full height. The fire reflected off his battered chainmail, making it shine like gold.

  “Job’s not finished, and neither am I.”

  Sabira nodded, accepting the man’s pledge, then waited for Zi.

  The wizard’s response wasn’t as quick. He looked uncertainly at Laven, unconsciously chewing his lip. It wasn’t the gesture of a self-confident mage who’d navigated through untold horrors on his own, and Sabira wondered just what their history really was.

  “It’s okay, Zi,” Laven said. “Any debt between us has been paid.”

  Sabira arched a curious brow at that. Laven saw, and elaborated.

  “Zi saved my life back in Stormreach. According to the customs of his tribe, that makes him responsible for me. So he’s been hanging around with me ever since-doesn’t think I can survive on my own.” The Vadalis man cast a rueful eye at his bandage-swathed abdomen. “L
ooks like I proved him right.”

  Sabira felt for the wizard. As a Blademark and a Defender, she’d commanded her share of men-men whom she was responsible for, whether she’d saved their lives or not. It was a heavy burden that you never truly stopped carrying, and she was secretly convinced it was the reason so many of her fellows aspired to the ranks of the Sentinel Marshals. Because a Marshal was only responsible for herself and her partner. If she had one.

  “Go with Sabira,” Laven said. “Whatever mission she’s on, it’s far more important than anything you could do for me.”

  “How do you-?” Sabira began, surprised, but Laven interrupted her with a weak smile.

  “Please. Everyone knows Marshals don’t take vacations.”

  Once Zi had agreed to stay, they quickly scavenged what they could from the dead, divvying up supplies and giving the bulk of them to those remaining in the caverns. Olog wanted to build a pyre for his fallen companions, but as they started gathering the bodies, Greddark noticed blisters forming on the exposed skin of the corpses.

  “No time!” he declared, alarmed. He dropped Stugrim’s feet and quickly examined his own arms. “Everybody out! Now!”

  “What is it?” Sabira asked, even as she wrapped an arm under Glynn’s shoulder and started helping the other woman quickly toward the exit.

  “The smoke! It’s acidic!”

  So that’s what the green liquid that had streamed out of Greddark’s charm-wand had been. She had thought so at first, until it caught fire and wouldn’t go out.

  “What kind of acid burns for hours and poisons the air as it does?”

  They were at the entrance now, and Sabira handed Glynn off to Olog as she and Greddark waved the others through.

  “A few of them, actually, but this is the only one I know of that burns green.”

  The scratch at the back of her throat had become unignorable and she started to cough. When she’d recovered, eyes still stinging, she looked over at the dwarf. They were the last ones in the cave.

  “So what is it?” she croaked, trying to clear her throat.

  “A little something I created in my lab,” Greddark replied as they stepped into the passageway together. “It’s actually one of my biggest failures.”

  “Why do you say that?” Sabira asked, breathing easier as they hurried away from the smoke-filled cavern. “It seemed to work great… well, except for a few unpleasant side effects.”

  Greddark shrugged a little sheepishly.

  “I was trying to make tea.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Zol, Barrakas 17, 998 YK

  Tarath Marad, Xen’drik.

  Back in the main tunnel, she and Olog shook hands.

  “Olladra’s luck, Marshal,” he said.

  “To you, as well,” she replied. “Take care of my people.”

  “I will.”

  She shook Laven’s hand next.

  “Stay safe, Vadalis.”

  “Cleave some skulls, Deneith.”

  She grinned.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  After Olog led his group, limping and lorn, back up the tunnel and out of sight, Sabira turned to what remained of her own small group.

  Greddark, Skraad, and Zi appeared basically unharmed, though a few small blisters had appeared on the wizard’s scalp. Rahm’s color was returning and he looked more alert. Xujil was unruffled as always. But Jester hung back, and though his face could bear no expression, he looked positively despondent.

  She walked back to where he stood, staring down at something in his hands. As she neared, she could see it was the mangled remains of his lyre.

  She stopped next to him and he looked up, his rubylike eyes glowing dully.

  “She was destroyed in the chitines’ attack. She bravely took the brunt of a blow that would have disabled me.” He made it sound as if one of their companions had stepped between him and a strike at his heart, sacrificing herself to save him. Sabira supposed she shouldn’t be surprised-he was a bard talking about his instrument, after all.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, trying hard to be, and failing miserably. It was a mindset she couldn’t really comprehend. A lyre could be replaced; the same couldn’t be said for the men who’d died today. Even if some of them had been trying to kill her.

  Though come to think of it, she did feel worse about the lyre’s destruction than about Thecla’s death. And she could think of several people whose unfortunate demises would upset her less than, say, scratching the cheek of her shard axe would. So maybe she understood the warforged bard better than she thought.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “What good am I without her? If I can’t play, I might as well return to the Canniths and become the war machine they want me to be.”

  “Well,” Sabira began slowly, “you’re welcome to do that, of course, and no one will think any less of you if you do. But consider this-is your goal to play the songs of others, or to play your own? Because the only way to write those songs is to live the stories in them. You can do that if you stay here. I’m not so sure the same can be said about returning to House Cannith.”

  Jester looked as if he might be considering her words. It was so hard to tell with warforged.

  “But… she can’t be fixed.”

  “Maybe not, but would she want you to stop playing because of that?”

  Sabira was starting to feel a little foolish, talking about the lyre as if it were the bard’s lover. But she’d lost three good swords in a little over a week; if she had to coddle the warforged to keep that from becoming four, then so be it. It wasn’t as if she’d never looked the fool before, and for less cause.

  “No,” he said softly, the red crystals of his eyes brightening. Then louder, more resolutely, “No, she wouldn’t. She’d want me to go on, to honor her memory by living those stories and writing those songs, just as you said.” He squared his shoulders. “I’m in, Marshal, till the climactic battle and the convenient epilogue! I’m your bard.”

  Sabira’s smile was a little strained, but she doubted the warforged noticed, busy as he was composing “The Ballad of the Marshal and the Martyred Lyre” in his head.

  “Glad to hear it,” she said, turning to move back to the front of the group. Jester’s hand caught her on the shoulder before she could go. She looked back at him questioningly.

  “Thank you, Marshal,” he said quietly, his voice earnest.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied, uncomfortable with his gratitude and what she’d done to earn it.

  Back at the front, she fell in beside Greddark and motioned for Xujil to head out. Zi and Rahm took up positions behind them, and Skraad and the bard brought up the rear.

  “Touching performance,” the dwarf said under his breath, knowing his voice wouldn’t carry. “I almost believed you cared. Maybe you should think about taking up the lyre yourself. You certainly have a talent for telling stories.” Sabira thought she detected a slight emphasis on the word lyre.

  “Stuff it,” she hissed back angrily. But as she walked down the dark tunnel, she wasn’t sure who her ire was really directed at. The dwarf was the easy target-he’d called her on her manipulation of the naive warforged. But she was the one who, despite her own distaste for being used as a pawn, hadn’t hesitated to do it to someone else.

  Far, Barrakas 27, 998 YK

  Tarath Marad, Xen’drik.

  The next week and a half passed in a blur of shadows, sameness, and growing paranoia. The pervasive gloom coupled with tricks of light and sound had everyone on edge. The strange forces at work here in the depths-the ones, Xujil placidly informed them, that also made teleportation back to the surface an iffy proposition-manifested in new and fun ways at every turn. Pockets of magical darkness made both the everbright lamps on their helmets and their low-light goggles temporarily useless. Even when they could see, they couldn’t trust what their eyes told them. Sabira kept glimpsing movement out of the corner of her eye, multi-legged black shapes skittering
across wall and ceiling. Once she even thought she saw something that looked like a cross between a lizard and a spider watching her from the shadows, but of course when she blinked, nothing was there.

  Echoes sounded where nothing was there to make them, or returned to the group tenfold and distorted beyond recognition. The bland rations and water alternately took on the rancid taste of foul mud, or the coppery tang of blood. Some of the group had had hallucinations wherein the features of the person walking next to them had stretched and morphed into something evil and alien. Rahm had almost skewered Zi the first time it happened, and now none of them could stand to look any of their companions in the face, for fear of what they might see there.

  The only ones who seemed to be immune were Xujil and Jester. The drow was a creature of Khyber, so it was understandable that its madness would not faze him, but Sabira was surprised at the warforged’s resistance. Was it something in the air, or the water, neither of which he needed to survive here? Or did it have something to do with him being a construct, and the pathways to his fabricated brain just different enough to remain unaffected by the phenomena the rest of them were experiencing?

  Whatever the source of his apparent immunity was, Sabira wished she shared it. The nightmares were becoming both more intense and more frequent, and they were beginning to plague her waking hours now in addition to the few moments of sleep exhaustion forced upon her.

  Greddark’s face had become Orin’s, burning and melting as his legs had done beneath Frostmantle, leaving nothing but a grinning, accusing skull. Rahm had become Elix, leaning in for a kiss, only to have a tentacle covered with staring eyes snake out of his mouth, hungrily seeking hers. In reality, the chainmail-clad man had simply leaned toward her at a rest break, asking her to pass over a canteen of water.

  It got so bad that Sabira actually welcomed the few encounters they had with denizens of the deep. As soon as either Jester or Xujil confirmed that the threat was real, she was the first one in, wielding her urgrosh with abandon. Though the cave spiders and blood oozes-nightmares she had some hope of destroying-were a poor substitute for those she couldn’t.

  She found herself constantly fingering the half of Tilde’s medallion she carried in her pocket. Elix had given it to her before she’d left Vulyar. She didn’t ask how he’d acquired it, but she knew his father would have been loath to part with it. He told her it was for luck, but she knew him better than that. He was afraid that if Tilde was still alive when they found her, she might not be in her right mind. He knew that while the sorceress might not recognize Sabira as a friend, she would almost certainly remember Ned’s necklace. Elix hoped that would be enough to keep her from killing Sabira outright.