Jack gave a small shrug. “I intend to investigate that question at my earliest convenience … well, just as soon as I devour a meal fit for a king, soak in a warm tub for at least half a day, burn these foul rags and dress myself in good clean clothes, and sleep for a tenday. Of course, I am penniless at the moment, which may make it difficult to sample each of those pleasures.”
“Do not worry about that, Jack. If we reach the surface, I believe I can arrange all those things for you. The hospitality of Norwood Manor is yours.”
“As my social calendar is a century out of date, I gratefully accept.” Jack glanced up; there was a gleam of dim light above them, steadily growing brighter. They were drawing near to the lower levels of the dungeon of Sarbreen, which meant that Raven’s Bluff was only a few hundred rather perilous yards farther. “With a little luck, we’ll be back in the streets of the city in less than an hour. Strange to think that Chûmavhraele and Raven’s Bluff could coexist in such proximity, isn’t it?”
Seila frowned in the gloom. “Coexist? Hardly! The drow are a blight on the city. They don’t come to the surface, of course, but they have spies and agents everywhere. Slavery, smuggling, trade in drugs like kammarth or ziran, they’re at the bottom of at all.”
“Indeed? Why doesn’t the Lord Mayor do something about them?”
“No one seems to know what to do. My father’s been urging the Lord Mayor to act, but other lords and merchants and guildmasters are afraid to provoke the drow, while some don’t seem to care at all.”
Jack found that interesting; he wondered how many of the city fathers who didn’t seem to care were actually profiting by allowing affairs to continue in their current state. If the dark elves didn’t come to the surface themselves, they had to be working through human intermediaries to catch their slaves and peddle their illicit wares. It seemed that civic corruption was every bit as widespread as it had been in his own time, if not more so. The thought was a little comforting in its own way; there would be opportunities for a clever, resourceful fellow such as himself in the world above, including plenty of wealthy people who deserved to be separated from their ill-gotten gains.
“I think we’re near the top,” Seila said, interrupting his thoughts.
Jack glanced up again, and saw that the dim beacon overhead was indeed drawing near. “So we are. The platform stops at a small landing in the ceiling of this great cavern. We’ll leave the elevator there, and make our way through Sarbreen.”
“I’ve heard that Sarbreen is full of monsters,” Seila said.
“It was in my day. I’m afraid this part of my plan relies on luck; I’m hoping we can creep past anything dangerous without attracting notice.” They climbed to their feet, crouching low to make themselves just a little harder to see as the ancient dwarven elevator ascended into its upper landing. “Ah, there we go. Quiet now, dear Seila. The disk may carry us into danger.”
Just as Jack remembered, the disk came to a stop hovering in mid-air in the upper end of a narrow crevasse. A wide ledge of even stone with a dark doorway marked the place where the dwarves of old Sarbreen had carved their way into the uppermost reaches of the titanic cavern below their buried city. A single lamp of yellow crystal was fixed to the wall like an odd little porchlight. Whatever magic it held still endured after all the years, casting a warm golden glow over the landing. Between the stone ledge and the floating disk a battered wooden pier or walkway leaned out over the dreadful drop; the walkway creaked softly and swayed in the strong draft flowing down to the depths below.
Seila eyed the catwalk nervously. “The bridge doesn’t inspire confidence,” she said.
“That is our path,” Jack replied. “Remember, the dark elves use this elevator enough to keep a watch posted below; I’m sure it’s perfectly safe. Would you prefer that I go ahead to test it, or should I follow behind to steady you?”
“I’m not quite that frail, thank you. After you, Jack.”
Jack walked to the edge of the disk, trying not to dwell on the way it bobbed gently in the air currents. It’s just like stepping from a boat onto a dock, he told himself. Gingerly he tapped his toe on the other side of the foot-wide gap of darkness between the stone platform and its wooden dock, then leaned across to put more weight on the ramp. It seemed steady enough, so he stepped all the way across and trusted his whole weight to the ancient woodwork. It creaked, but held. “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” he said.
He turned and held out his hand for Seila, who started to step over the gap—just as the platform gave a small lurch and started to sink again. Caught in mid-stride over the unthinkable drop, Seila gave a small cry and flailed for balance, but Jack quickly seized her arm and pulled her up to the old wooden ramp. They retreated to the safety of the stone ledge, and stood trembling by the dark doorway as the elevator platform descended out of sight.
“It dropped out from under me,” Seila said, gulping for breath.
“The dark elves must have summoned it to its lower landing,” Jack replied. He belatedly realized that he’d just assumed that the disk had to complete its ascent before returning to the lower landing, and tried not to dwell on what would have happened if he’d been wrong about that. “I expect it will be back soon enough with angry dark elf warriors aboard.” He glanced at the old wooden ramp again, and briefly considered sabotaging it in some way to delay their pursuers. Even the fierce drow might be daunted by a ten-foot leap to reach the ledge, if the ramp could be removed in its entirety … but that would take quite a bit of work. He settled for wrenching one timber handrail out of place, and heaved it over the edge.
“What was that for?” asked Seila.
“Well, with luck, that board will fall a thousand feet or so and find a dark elf’s pointy head,” Jack answered. “Failing that, I hope it might make them pause and wonder if we will drop more debris on them as they ascend, or whether the ramp has been sabotaged. Now, let’s see what waits for us in Sarbreen.”
Seila reached up and took the ancient glowing crystal out of its place by the doorway. Its glow dimmed, but it still threw off enough light to see by. Jack took her hand again, and led the way into the doorway. They found themselves in a long, straight tunnel with a smooth floor of joined stone blocks, which was much as Jack remembered it. A walk of eighty or ninety yards brought them to a circular doorway at the end of the passage.
He motioned for Seila to shield her crystal lamp, hoping to avoid giving off any more light than they absolutely had to, and turned his attention to the round stone plug. There was no handle or mechanism in sight, but Jack remembered this door well. He whispered the words of an opening spell, and reached out to rest his palm on the cold stone. For a moment, nothing happened, and he wondered for one terrible instant if their drow pursuers would find them here in half an hour or so, stymied by the door. Then the stone seemed to grow misty and fade into nothingness, creating a doorway to a wide, dark space beyond. Jack hurried forward and peered out into the great hall beyond the vanished door; nothing was waiting to eat him, at least not right away.
“Come on,” he whispered to Seila, motioning for her to follow. Together they advanced through the doorway into a striking chamber. The room was the size of a king’s banquet hall, with shadowed galleries ringing its walls and an arched ceiling high overhead. He turned and looked behind them; the round doorway they’d come through was part of a colossal frieze on the chamber’s rear wall. A coiling dragon of stone, easily forty feet tall, was carved into the chamber wall, posed in such a way that its foreclaws appeared to grasp a mighty orb or pearl—the round aperture they’d just emerged from.
Jack turned Seila to see the great image behind them. She gasped in wonder. “My friend Ilyth called this the Stone Dragon of Sarbreen,” he said softly. A pang of loss touched him in the center of his chest; Ilyth must be in her grave fifty years or more by now. Seila reminded him of her, when he thought about it. “We are standing in the Hall of the Dragon, the meeting-place of Sarbreen’s nobles and guild
masters.”
“It’s magnificent,” the noblewoman said. “I never knew anything like this was just below my feet.”
“Most sane and well-balanced people are naturally ignorant of what lies in the dungeons below the city,” said Jack. “Adventurers, on the other hand, are familiar with a number of such landmarks, although I hasten to add that dungeon-delving was something I indulged in only under the most unusual circumstances. Remind me to tell you about my discovery of the Guilders’ Vault someday; it’s quite a story. Now, let’s be on our way. This is no good place to linger.”
He led her down the length of the Hall of the Dragon toward another shadowed archway at the foot of the hall. Near the middle of the room they passed two broken skeletons, still dressed in the torn remnants of mail and leather. A sword snapped cleanly in two gleamed on the floor just beyond the outstretched fingers of one of the old bodies. Jack hurried Seila past the two corpses, trying not to think too hard on the question of what ripped open armor of mail and plate and broke the bones of the men inside. Most likely the skeletons had been lying in that spot for years, but it was far from a certainty. Sarbreen’s dungeons had their share of small scavengers that could strip a corpse to bare bone in a matter of days.
The archway at the far end of the hall led into the bottom of a great shaft or well. Old stone steps climbed upward out of sight, spiraling up the wall of the shaft. “This part is quite a climb,” he said softly. “Keep your shoulder to the wall in case the steps prove dangerous. And be ready to cover that crystal light when I tell you to.”
Seila nodded in reply, and they began to climb the stairs. Jack lost count after fifty or so, but the steps continued to wind up and up long past that place, until his legs trembled and ached and he panted for breath in the cold, dank air. After all, rediscovering how to work magic did nothing to make up for tendays and tendays of meager rations and exhausting labor. Seila was breathing hard behind him, but she seemed to be standing up to the effort quite well; she was far from frail, and Jack guessed that slaves in the kitchens found ways to eat better than those condemned to work in the quarries and fields. Finally, when he felt as if he couldn’t make himself climb one more step, he glimpsed the end of the stairs. Slowly they clambered out onto level ground again, and found themselves standing in an alcove in the side of a long, broad passageway. Archways and chambers beckoned in several directions.
“Where are we now?” Seila whispered.
“A region of the old dwarven city known as the Armory,” Jack replied between breaths. He leaned forward, massaging his trembling legs with his hands as he rested for a moment and tried to remember his bearings. “Sarbreen’s weaponsmiths and armorers lived and worked in this area. We’re not very far from the surface.” Seila started to ask another question, but he motioned her to silence, and calmed his breathing to listen for any signs of pursuit.
At first he heard nothing, which was more or less what he expected; he didn’t really believe that the drow could have overtaken them yet. The dungeon’s depths were eerily still, with a near-complete absence of sound that seemed almost pregnant with menace. Then he caught a soft clicking sound from the passage to his left, with a sort of dull scraping thump.
Seila heard it as well. “Jack—” she whispered.
“Hide the light,” he hissed, drawing her quickly to the right. He pulled her across the hallway and ducked into another archway as Seila hurriedly swaddled the old rock-crystal from the landing in the folds of her tunic. Darkness settled around them, relieved by only the merest hint of a dull warm glow shining through the cloth. Jack held his breath, hoping that whatever was passing by would keep on its way. The clicking came closer, now accompanied by a strange creaking sound. Then the sounds stopped. Peering down the hallway from their hiding place, Jack realized he could make out several dim violet lights gleaming in the shadows, hovering near the passage ceiling. The faint lights swayed slowly from side to side, moving in unison, then more came into view … eyes! Jack realized. Four eyes, and they’re looking right at us.
With a sudden loud clacking and an eager roar, something barreled down the hallway toward the two humans. Jack pulled Seila back into the passage behind him, and discovered a floor strewn with rubble that shifted and clattered under his feet. The girl stumbled on the uneven ground, but even as their unknown assailant lunged closer, she yanked out the cloaked crystal-lamp and revealed its full strength. “Get back!” she shouted—either advising Jack to flee or trying to scare off the monster closing in on them.
The lamp was not terribly bright, but in the near-blackness of the dungeon hallway, it was as dazzling as a careless glance at the sun. Jack caught a glimpse of giant mandibles and huge armored claws, an apelike body covered in plates of chitin, and two pairs of eyes reflecting golden light. “Oh, damn it all,” he muttered. “An umber hulk. Why not?”
He almost jerked Seila out of her shoes as he sprinted away, fleeing across the rubble-strewn chamber. He had never seen an umber hulk before, but he’d heard plenty of stories from battered adventurers recounting the terrors of Sarbreen in taprooms and alehouses. “Try not to look it in the eye,” he said over his shoulder. “It can knock you senseless or mesmerize you with its gaze!”
“I’m more worried about its gigantic claws and fangs, thank you,” Seila cried.
They fled from one chamber to another, darting across room after rubble-filled room while the massive umber hulk crashed along through the stonework and debris behind them like a living avalanche. Jack didn’t remember this part of Sarbreen all that well, but he tried to head in the general direction of the dungeon entrance he knew was somewhere nearby. He took a wrong turn that very nearly proved lethal, ducking into a blind alcove where he expected a passageway. The monster roared and smashed one huge armored claw at its small prey; Jack leaped aside, and instead of crushing him the blow hammered into the stone wall with such force that the polished stone blocks dressing the walls bounced out of place and fell in a shower of dust and stone.
The hulk roared again as heavy stone blocks pummeled its carapace, and then it retreated. “Come on!” Jack shouted to Seila. He took one step to flee while the monster was on its heels, but the noblewoman stood stock-still, gazing up at the monster’s glimmering eyes with a blank expression. Jack swore viciously, realizing that she’d been disoriented by the hulk’s confusing gaze. Turning his back on the massive creature so that he wouldn’t catch even an inadvertent glimpse of all four eyes at close range, he shoved her headlong through a narrow gap in the masonry wall and scrambled after just as the next huge claw hammered down in the spot where he’d been standing.
The monster screeched in anger at their escape and began tearing at the wall with such force that rock and rubble flew from its claws. It would only be a moment before it forced its way after them; Jack dragged Seila to her feet and ran through the next doorway. He found himself in a small, twisting passage linking the weaponsmiths’ halls and workshops, and darted away from the crashing and roaring of the huge creature behind them. By a stroke of great good fortune he’d found a hallway that was somewhat too small for the monster pursuing them. The umber hulk had to crouch and twist to ram itself into the passageway, flailing great chunks of masonry out of its way as it sought to widen the opening.
They emerged in a larger hallway, near a great gate of iron that had been twisted and pulled from its place hundreds of years earlier. Scores of ancient, yellowing skeletons, some still dressed in the rusting remnants of their armor, were scattered around the floor—defenders of Sarbreen who had fallen defending the iron gate. “I know where we are,” Jack said to Seila.
She was coming out of the stupor the umber hulk’s gaze had inflicted upon her; she shook her head vigorously, as if to clear the cobwebs from her thoughts. “Go, go!” she cried. “It’s still behind us!”
Together they ducked under the twisted remnants of the mighty doors and ran down the hallway beyond. Several dark doorways and passages branched off to either sid
e, but Jack ignored them. At the third doorway on their left, he turned and found a dusty old stairway climbing up into the gloom. Without hesitation he led Seila up the steps, taking them two at a time, until he came to an old wooden trapdoor at the top. Jack pushed, but found the trapdoor too heavy to move. “This may prove unfortunate,” he said aloud. “Quickly, Seila—put your shoulder to the door. Together, on three—one, two, three!”
Jack and Seila threw themselves up at the trapdoor, straining with all their might. The door rose a little and stopped, seemingly blocked or held … and then something above gave way with a crash, and the trapdoor flew open. They scrambled up into a dusty old warehouse full of small barrels, casks, and heavy sacks of burlap. Jack saw that a rusty iron clasp with a bolt had secured the trapdoor from above; he and Seila had pushed hard enough to strip the bolts securing the clasp to the door, at which point the whole thing had flown open. Quickly he slammed the trapdoor shut again, and began stacking heavy barrels on top of it.
“You don’t think that thing will follow us all the way up here?” Seila asked.
“I have no idea, but the drow might,” Jack replied. Seila joined him in rearranging the casks and crates stored in the warehouse, until the trapdoor was virtually buried beneath them. Then Jack looked around for an egress, and spotted a bolted door on the other side of the room. He gestured to Seila; they hurried over, drew the bolt, and threw open the door to find a small city alleyway on the other side.
They emerged from the cluttered warehouse into a gray, foggy morning. It was probably fortunate that it wasn’t broad daylight; even the gray gloom of early morning seemed overwhelmingly bright to Jack, and he had to shade his eyes with his hands and squint to keep from being blinded outright. He took a deep breath and tasted the myriad familiar odors of the city: The damp salty smell of the sea, the acrid smoke of countless cooking fires, the reek of furnaces and kilns, the delightful aroma of bread baking and meats sizzling, even the earthy stink of dung and refuse clinging to the gutters and outhouses. Not all of it was pleasant, but it was vital and alive, and the happy clamor of his city waking to a new day was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.
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