Pathfinder Tales--Through the Gate in the Sea

by Paizo Publishing LLC.

  Trailing them all were a handful of wary guards.

  After the first few miles from Tradan’s mansion, they were forced to ride single-file along a newly cut jungle track. Monkeys called raucously down at them from high in the canopy. Other, larger animals moved through the bush without showing themselves, and Ivrian spotted a tree snake coiled around a limb overhead watching with placid, unreadable eyes.

  It was the Mzali he searched for most, though he expected them to be the most difficult to spot. Theirs was a city many leagues east, one that had attacked Kalabuto no less than three times in the last few years. The Mzali were both persistent and capable—and as they’d recently made clear, deadly.

  When Ivrian and his party emerged at last from jungle, it was with astonishing swiftness. One moment they were all but surrounded by greenery. The next they arrived at a small clearing, and here they left the horses and quartet of guards before advancing down the narrow path likewise carved out by machetes. As Tradan had said, the jungle was already fighting to reclaim its territory, reaching onto the trail with viny tendrils.

  Just as Tradan announced they were nearly to the ruins themselves, there was a rumble from above. Rain seemed imminent. Jekka halted Mirian and crouched down beside something along the trail. Ivrian crept closer so he could hear their discussion.

  “What kind of tracks?” Tradan asked.

  Jekka pointed to a patch of mud beside a fern, then indicated a series of naked, archless footprints. They looked almost human. But no human who wore shoes had such widespread toes. And the toes were clawed. One of the prints even revealed webbing. Ivrian groaned. He was no tracking expert, but he knew what creature made those kind of prints.

  “Boggards.” Mirian said the name like a curse. As well she might, for the frog people had attacked them en masse in the Kaava jungles and even captured some of their team.

  “There were four of them,” Jekka relayed. “They walked by in the last two days.”

  “It’s never easy, is it, Jekka?” Mirian asked.

  “I think it was a hunting party.” Jekka pointed to the tracks. “A spear butt.”

  “I hate those damned things,” Ivrian said.

  Jekka’s head bobbed. “I share your sentiment. We shall end some together when next we see them.”

  12

  THE DEAD KING

  MIRIAN

  The jungle had eaten the city. There was no wonder the buildings had gone unnoticed even lying less than a day’s travel from Port Freedom—five feet out from the city’s outskirts Mirian would never have known it was there. Trees and grasses had grown into its paving stones, and vines and creepers draped its walls.

  Tradan’s workers had cleared a narrow path through the low buildings on the outskirts, but already the greenery had thrust questing branches and creepers that she and Jekka cut with machetes as they advanced.

  At first, all they could see of the city were scraps of walls, remarkable only in that the stones were fitted so well the greenery had been hard put to root into its mortarless seams. Tradan urged them on, saying there was little here to see, that the best ruins lay at the city’s center. Mirian lamented there was once again no time to sketch anything she saw, and hoped she’d have a moment once they arrived at this courtyard Tradan kept speaking of.

  It proved so overgrown with trees Mirian would have thought they were in the jungle once more if the trail hadn’t loomed ahead. It stopped at last before a wall almost completely clear of plant growth. While Tradan jabbered in delight about how he’d had his men clear it as soon as he saw a spot of color, Mirian took in the art their labor had revealed.

  There, bright green and yellow on the stone, was an immense mural of lizardfolk bowing to one of their kind in a throne with a high back and elaborately flared arms. In one palm he held a teardrop-shaped crystal.

  The dragon’s tear.

  She grinned, then shook her head ruefully. If anything she’d seen lately deserved to be recorded for posterity, it was this image.

  “Do you think the tear’s inside that building?” Jekka asked.

  Mirian doubted it. “Maybe.”

  The building itself was constructed from closely interlinked stones, like the rest of the walls fitted without mortar. If anything, the work seemed even more advanced than that they had found in the city beyond the pool of stars.

  Mirian pushed through obscuring foliage into the shadowy recess of the temple’s opening. A wide stone door stood within, hidden behind a layer of grime. Mirian pulled out a cloth and wiped it clean. Behind her Jekka chopped vines with a machete, holding them in one hand as he worked so they wouldn’t fall on her.

  After delicate scrubbing Mirian discovered the entire door was inlaid with geometrical whorls. In its center were twelve tiny lines of lizardfolk glyphs.

  She stepped aside for Jekka to inspect them, her gaze flicking up to the vines, always alert for something within them or, Desna forbid, the vines themselves swaying hungrily to life. She knew Pathfinders who’d seen such things.

  Mirian glanced back at the others. “Keep watch,” she reminded Tradan, who was trying to crowd forward with Venthan. Ivrian at least was looking out into the jungle. Jeneta seemed poised half in between, one eye looking at the tomb, another toward the jungle, its leaves thick with rising mist as light rain began falling.

  Jekka stared at the lizardfolk icons carved into stone, then read from them. “This is the tomb of Reklaniss. Master of gates, ruler of the six clans. Enter and marvel.”

  “We’re being invited to enter?” Mirian had a hard time believing it.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure you read that right?”

  “I’m certain.”

  “Human tombs usually offer curses,” she said. “And extol the virtues of their occupants a little longer.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t expect to be forgotten,” Jekka speculated.

  “Any idea how to open it?” Mirian hadn’t seen any sort of door seal, handle, hinge, or lock.

  Jekka stepped closer to the letters, than ran his finger along the whorls. “Please pass that fabric you were using.”

  The moment she did, he scrubbed one long spiral on the left from the inside out. “Ah. There is writing here. Probably on the other curling feature as well.”

  “What do you see?” Tradan asked behind them. “Is there anything interesting?”

  “Watch our backs,” Mirian said. “We have Mzali and boggards out there somewhere.”

  “Here’s hoping they kill each other,” Ivrian muttered.

  “Ah, I see.” Jekka finished scrubbing out the spiral directly on the other side of the words. “It is simple.” So saying, he put a finger of either hand at the center of each whorl, then traced the patterns backward. Twelve times his fingers spun in widening circles, and when he removed his fingers at the last the whorls glowed a lovely violet. Mirian grabbed his arm and pulled him back as the other spirals in nearby stone lit up from within, one by one, and the stone door rumbled.

  Jekka tensed at her touch—the lizardfolk weren’t big on physical contact. She watched nervously as the door sank down, dislodging centuries, possibly millennia, of dirt and dried soil. The plant tendrils hanging from above shifted and swayed and a rain of beetles fell. Mirian brushed them from her shirt and shoulders, then froze in astonishment as singing rang from the darkness within.

  Behind her, the rest of the humans in the expedition erupted in surprised commentary and she silenced them with a swift command.

  Mirian’s heart sped. Could there really be living lizardfolk within? She dropped hand to sword hilt and checked with Jekka, whose frill was up. He was just as startled as herself, then.

  The voices warbled strange low and high notes with no discernible melody, as though the singers gasped out whatever sounds occurred to them, then held the notes as long as they could before taking another breath and starting anew.

  “Are the Mzali in there?” Venthan asked.

  She shook her head. Her
heart still raced, but reason had reasserted itself and she understood what was happening. “Lizardfolk magic.” They’d encountered something similar in the Kaava Lands. It had been just as creepy that time, too.

  Mirian pulled a glow stone from her shoulder pouch and activated it with a word. Immediately, the yellow-gold light poured into a stone corridor stretching away to their left. The illumination reflected from a wall of glass built into the inner wall. It astonished her that the glass had endured so long; she assumed it must have some magical or alchemical protection to improve its durability.

  She then considered the flawlessly laid stone flooring, mortarless like that outside. None looked obviously like pressure plates. Some of the ceiling stones were wet with moisture, and loose webbing hung in corners, though none seemed large enough to conceal anything monstrous. Poisonous, perhaps, but not monstrous.

  While Jekka stepped forward to gingerly test the floor with the blunt end of his spear, she turned to face the others. “All right,” she said softly. “Jeneta, you’re to stay here on guard with Ivrian.” If there were Mzali about, she didn’t want them sneaking up from behind, and they’d left the guards and horses back at the little clearing where Tradan’s work crew had erected a crude barracks and stable. She hadn’t wanted to leave the horses untended, and they couldn’t have brought them forward. “Tradan, Venthan—you’re with us.”

  Jeneta frowned, but nodded. No doubt she wanted to see what was inside as badly as Mirian did, but Mirian had to hand it to the girl—young or not, she was a soldier. Iomedae’s priestesses understood chain of command.

  Tradan and his assistant, meanwhile, clamored like seagulls hunting for biscuit crumbs, so desperate were they to see the source of the singing. Mirian urged them to calm once more and looked to Jekka.

  “It seems clear.”

  Mirian played her light over the glass case facing the doorway. Over three dozen pieces of glazed clay sat on shelves behind it. Each was shaped like human lips, painted a variety of shades of red. Most were closed. A few, though, were open, and the peculiar vocals still rang from them.

  As Mirian watched, two of the open mouths sealed their lips and ceased singing. A final low note washed over them and then a petite mouth in the upper corner shut. An eerie silence closed over them.

  “I expected sculptures of lizardfolk heads,” Mirian said to Jekka. After all, that was what the noisemakers had looked like in the lizardfolk ruins they’d seen earlier in the year. “Why would Reklaniss display carvings of human lips?”

  “I cannot say, Sister.”

  “They’re fascinating!” Tradan beamed. “We should take these for study.”

  “I’m not sure we should,” Mirian mused. “If there’s anyone nearby, you can be sure they heard that singing. So let’s keep moving. We’re after more important things.”

  Tradan gaped. “For the sake of preservation, we must take these with us. You see my point, surely?”

  Mirian glanced at Jekka, but he was already peering farther down the hall. To the right was a blank wall. There was only one way forward, left of the display case following the outer wall.

  “If we have time. Later. You might want to turn on that glow stone I loaned you. Jekka, head a few more paces in. Carefully.”

  She trusted Jekka’s wariness aboveground far more than beneath the water, but he was a veteran warrior, not an experienced salvager. So far he appeared to remember all the instructions she’d given him, and he was so capable it would be easy to forget to remind him of safety procedures. She didn’t want to risk getting him injured or worse, and she reminded herself again that she’d have to keep a close watch on him. “Keep testing the floor plates, and watch the ceiling and walls.”

  “I remember,” he said.

  As he moved into it, tapping the floor with appropriate caution, she smiled and breathed in the scent of wet stone and must. Was there something wrong with her that those smells pleased her? That they suggested adventure and mystery?

  She heard Venthan and Tradan whispering complaints behind her and resisted the impulse to hiss them silent. They sounded like children.

  The light reflected from something shining ahead of them in the wall. Jekka peered into the darkness, then halted.

  It was another display case, built into the outer wall. This one held four shelves of tiny wooden human figures. Shorts and shirts were suggested with bright splashes of blue and green paint.

  Jekka passed his staff to Mirian, then put his hands near the glass and clapped twice, loudly. The figures sprang vigorously from foot to foot, shaking wildly.

  “My father saw one of these, when he was a youngling. He spoke of it once.”

  “Gods!” Tradan said. “It’s amazing!”

  “An amusement for younglings. But they are well fashioned, don’t you think?”

  She would have loved to have sketched these figures, too. But, as seemed so often the case, there were more important things to worry about. When this was all over she’d have to return with a Pathfinder team.

  The hallway reached a corner and turned, by Mirian’s estimate still following the outer wall. Jekka investigated once more with proper caution, shining his own glow stone on floor and ceiling. But it was Mirian who spotted something in the dust of the floor.

  She muttered a soft curse and knelt, holding up her hand so Venthan wouldn’t advance past her.

  “What is it?”

  “Footprints. In the dust.”

  Prints were scattered in this hall ahead. Bare, amphibian feet, unarched. “Boggards,” she said slowly. “There must be another way in.”

  Jekka returned, crouched beside her, and brought his face very close to the tracks. “Not within the last few days,” he said, and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “But they aren’t very old.”

  The prints trailed back and forth in the hallway ahead, almost as though the boggards had been inspecting the display cases alternating along either side.

  They pressed ahead.

  In a few more paces they reached a case containing four shelves of sculpted human noses. Some were painted pink or black or brown, approximating human skin tones, but others were blue, or painted in polka dots.

  “Do you suppose they sniff?” Mirian asked.

  As they advanced along the hall they witnessed more and more—a case of human ears, a case of overlarge human eyes of various colors. As they turned right once more, Mirian assumed they were again following along the outer wall. They reached first a display of carved faces, then entire heads, each standing on its neck and carved with eerie precision except for the hair, which was represented by squiggly lines carved into the scalp.

  Soon they were heading north, and before much longer the corridor turned right once more. The hallways spiraled inward.

  “It looks like the museum winds all the way around the inside,” Tradan observed.

  It seemed an obvious comment, but she didn’t want to appear impolite. “Yes.”

  “Is that typical?” he asked.

  “This is as new to me as it is to you.”

  “It’s very interesting,” Jekka said. “And strange.”

  “So this isn’t typical of what you’d find in a lizardfolk tomb?” Tradan asked.

  “I have never seen one,” Jekka admitted.

  “Why do you think they were so interested in human anatomy?” Venthan asked.

  “Who can say? Apparently the designers found humans curious. Perhaps they studied their enemy to know them better.”

  The next case was stuffed with dark, rotting fabric squares, and in other cases nearby hung larger fabric samples that might once have been tunics or dresses.

  Around the next corner, as they turned inward once more, was the longest and most disturbing of cases yet, stretching all the way to the end of the corridor.

  Behind the glass, dried human bodies hung from wires, posed in different attitudes. One ran, another walked. A desiccated woman cradled an unstrung harp. A child stood on two legs, a se
cond on one leg, and a man stood on his hands. There were dozens of dead—men, women, and children in a variety of poses. Some sat at tables or stood beside simple wooden farm implements. One set had even been set up to simulate the act of intercourse. Had she not been mortified by the display, Mirian would have felt more impressed that the bodies had been so thoroughly protected they had not succumbed to rot.

  Venthan swore, and Tradan immediately reprimanded him before launching into a prayer to Pharasma.

  Mirian’s skin crawled, especially when she noticed the boggard tracks were thick in this hall. Apparently they liked looking at the dead people. “Jekka, please tell me you find this as unsettling as I do.”

  “I find it strange,” Jekka said. “I understand why the boggards have not eaten the long-dead flesh. But why did my people preserve it?”

  “It’s disgusting,” Venthan muttered.

  “Savage,” Tradan agreed.

  Jekka’s head swiveled to consider the two men before he looked into the darkness before them.

  “You said the lizardfolk might have been studying humans,” Mirian suggested.

  “Yes. How do you say it, my sister?” Jekka’s voice was low, solemn. “There has been little love between our people. First we hunted you. Now you hunt us.”

  As they wound carefully inward they found two items of interest. On their right stood a sealed archway. Further on, the corridor sloped down unevenly. The last several feet of floor, up to the corner and around it, had fallen in. It took little skill to see the telltale signs of footprints in the moist earth below the collapsed flooring, the scrabbling of claws on the stones nearby.

  “Now we know how they got in.”

  Mirian glanced around the corner, saw another display case of human bodies. “Tradan, Venthan, stand watch here. Don’t let your eyes rise from this hole.”

  Tradan cleared his throat. “Your pardon, Mirian. But I do have some expertise about these things.”

  What he meant was that he was a lord, and not a lackey to be used keeping watch. Tradan had spent a lifetime giving orders, not taking them.