Stardeep d-3

by Bruce R Cordell

  My presence, or perhaps my twin's, Nis projected into his mind, has awakened a thing that lay quiescent in Stardeep's basements since before Stardeep was delved. Splintered desires fuel this ancient shell, desires so potent they bleed out from the host and share animation with petrified remains of a murdered species.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Stardeep, Underdungeon

  The demon gauntlet snuffled and coughed, straining forward, following the fading scent of those who'd gone before. Gage was pulled along in the fiend's wake, his gloved hand held forward and down, slinking from tree to silvery tree. His quarry's path had steered wide of chill mist rivers that sliced through the nighted landscape. He was happy to avoid intersecting the impenetrable vapor-even his bound demon shuddered and bucked when he'd tried to insert it into the first standing bank he'd passed.

  At length he came to the forest's edge. A margin of dead rock lay beyond, decorated with craggy boulders and narrow fissures. Beyond that lay a sea of colorless fog, chill and endless. He drew in a quick breath when he saw several corpses littering the beach, the decaying bodies matching those he'd dispatched earlier. One group of dead monsters lay near the edge of the fog, though several marked the perimeter of a large boulder about thirty paces from the mist's edge. The demon gauntlet bleated and tried to pull forward. Kiril and the other two had come this way. Had they entered the mist?

  Gage studied the scene a moment longer, then moved.

  The boulder was splashed with green and black ichor-the thief counted at least six of the loathsome creatures, battered, burnt, and..

  An opening! A rectangular portal pierced the boulders overhanging side that faced the fog sea. A massive iron gate lay torn from its hinges, scratched and partially crumpled. The lower portion of the cavity was choked with monsters, all dead, many showing signs of flashburn. Blasting magic had separated many of these from their putrid lives. He didn't see evidence of any blade-work. Kiril had not drawn her Cerulean sword to defeat these beasts. Or was the slaughter the work of someone else? Impossible to say without a witness to describe what had occurred.

  His demon glove strained toward the portal. Gage spent another ten heartbeats examining the doorway before darting forward, diving to clear the sprawled bodies at the last moment. He tucked his shoulder and rolled to absorb the impact of his quick entrance. The steep stairs beyond made this tricky feat even more difficult, but Gage executed the maneuver with panache.

  At the stair's foot a tunnel led off, its downward slope noticeable. The tunnel's rock walls were streaked with deposits of white stone, but the light from the entrance topping the stairs didn't reach far. Gage produced a clear glass vessel and shook it vigorously. The chemicals within were inimical to each other, and given time, slowly separated. When mixed, the hostile essences fought, producing light.

  His gauntlet yanked forward with surprising strength.

  Gage grunted and resisted. His glove muttered, "Never forget, your soul is forfeit."

  "I quaver in my boots," the thief replied. "Behave. Don't forget, acid burns. Remember what happened last time?"

  The glove muttered something too quietly for Gage to hear. "Better. Now lead on. Quietly."

  Gage advanced down the tunnel, surrounded by a dim sphere of light, his eyes wide for any evidence of his quarry.

  Gage gave his light another vigorous shake to rejuvenate its intensity. How long had he walked these strangely smooth tunnels?

  "More importantly," he muttered aloud, "how'd Kiril and her friends get so far ahead of me?" He gave his gauntlet a suspicious squint.

  Ahead, a hole in the floor gaped nearly the entire diameter of the tunnel. His light picked out individual strands of thickly intertwined webs that obscured the hole's sides, but opened into a twisting funnel at the hole's center. A cold, dusty wind blew from the gap, as did a rushing, full-throated roar of moving water.

  His eyes lit on a papery scrap that lay ensnared in the web about two body lengths down the funnel. Though stuck, its outer edge wavered in the chill breeze.

  "I am on the right trail," he whispered, relief washing over him. The chance of the glove misleading him wasn't out of the question. It had grown more willful since the other glove, with the eye, was burnt to ash by Angul.

  Gage stared into the webbing, wondering who had dropped the scrap of paper-Kiril, or one of the other two? Vellum was expensive. In fact. .

  The thief removed his pack. From it he produced an elven rope, a selection of iron spikes with eyeholes, and a battered mallet. He selected a point on the wall and sunk the spike with three strikes. The echoes of the malletfalls made him wince. Too late for second thoughts!

  He threaded the rope in the anchored spike, tied one end into his belt, and let himself over the edge of the webbed hole. Hand over hand he lowered himself until he was close enough to snatch the lone vellum scrap from the sticky strands. It took a little careful tugging to extract his prize without ripping it. It was blank. Unpenned and already-spent spell scrolls possessed the same sense of limitless possibility in their clean expanse. They seemed eager for the next spell, the wilder and more potent, the better. Of course, they also represented a tidy sum of gold. He stowed his prize, worth a tenday's lodging in the finest festhall in Laothkund.

  As Gage hauled himself out of the hole, he heard the unmistakable cry of a wailing infant below.

  "What in Akadi's name. .?" He glanced down. A many-limbed white bulk filled the web tunnel beneath him. Dozens of pale, stone-hard eyes fixed on his own. From its mandibled mouth came the pitiful mewls of a crying baby.

  Gage screamed. The gargantuan thing, its legs shaking off the dust of ages, rose beneath him. Its flesh was stone, as if a statue come to life.

  The thief groped at his belt, his terror-numbed fingers finding the proper clasp more through luck than skill. He grasped a warm bulb-his most prized alchemical item, and worth considerably more than a tenday in a festhall.

  The arachnid was too close, but dangling as he was, he had no other option. He dashed the bulb down, whipping it with as much strength as he could muster. The bulb detonated on the creature's face only a body length away.

  The explosive fount punched up into his body. It reminded him of the time he'd leaped for a neighboring roof but missed and fell three stories. Except this time he was on fire. But, just like then, he blacked out a moment later.

  Flickering light on a smooth white ceiling. Torchlight? A numbness slowly faded under a barrage of tingling-and pain. Gage blinked. Why would that be? He groaned as he sat up. His entire body was one contiguous bruise. Then he recalled the spider and the detonation.

  The webbed hole lay several dozen paces away, its gooey coating ablaze. The explosion had propelled him past the gap. About halfway between him and the burning pit crouched a figure silhouetted by the flames. At first the thief took it for a detached portion of the spider, blown loose in the blast. Then he noticed the black scales, the horns, and as it slowly stood from its crouch, its flaring batlike wings.

  Those black, finely grained scales looked familiar. .

  Gage dropped his gaze to his right hand. His gauntlet. Gone!

  He jerked his eyes back to the figure. It stood now to its full height and beyond, reaching and stretching its long, clawed limbs as if waking from sleep. Or as if freed from an enchantment that bound its shape into something far smaller. Say, a glove?

  The creature, clearly a demon, began to chuckle. One of its eyes fixed the thief with a sinister, gleeful glare. A mass of burned flesh and scars festered where its other eye should have been. Gage recalled again how Angul had burned his other gauntlet to a cinder, the one with the single, enchanted eye.

  He scuttled backward on hands and legs. A sharp rock cut his palm.

  The demon flared its wings. It interrupted its mirth to speak. "Recall the payment I've reminded you that you owe me, mortal, time and again. I'm afraid our acquaintanceship is over. The time has come for me to eat your soul!"

  Fear tried t
o break his normally professional detachment, bringing an unfamiliar and unwelcome quiver to his limbs as he sprang upright. His voice, too, sounded weak and pitiful in his ears. "Demon! Uh. . Hold, will you? Wait! I have more value to you alive than dead, if you hear me out. I offer a bargain!"

  The scaled wings pulsed and the razor-sharp tail lashed, but the demon remained at the edge of the hole. Its single eye narrowed, and it growled, "Explain." Gage's wit failed him. He stammered then turned and ran.

  The thief heard the demon laugh. Then, oddly enough, it screamed.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The stone spider was back! Its upper body protruded from the burning hole at the demon's back, the pale stone of its carapace blackened and cracked with alchemical scorch marks. The wail of a baby burst anew from the insectoid maw like a little one hungry to suckle.

  The spider's mandibles clamped the demon around its waist. The demon's wings burst into a fit of mad flapping, as a moth that is caught too near a flame. It bit, clawed, raked, and bucked with such ferocity the tunnel floor shook. All to little effect. With a chilling finality, the spider retracted its head and body back into its lair, dragging the hapless, howling demon with it.

  The demon gave one final, soul-shattering scream, which ended abruptly.

  Gage, without his gauntlets and unable to see, sprinted, whimpering, into the unrelenting darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Stardeep, Underdungeon

  A wind, bearing alien odors, brushed Raidon's face. He wondered by what dark, subterranean route the air had traveled, and for how long before caressing his face with its feathery, unseen hands. Black lakes, unlit mansions of stone, warrens of crystal, caverns housing forgotten secrets-who knew the depths of these passages whose extent was large enough to generate its own breezes, perhaps its own weather?

  Raidon followed a conflicted woman. As they strode white-washed subterranean tunnels, Kiril muttered and mumbled as if possessed. More than once he saw her hand move toward the hilt of the blade she wore on her hip, only to flinch away before contact.

  An obsession, certainly, perhaps something like the tie that bound him to his grandfather's daito? True, his fixation had given way to something less obviously lethal. The amulet bequeathed him by his mother had led him into a world beyond any he could have imagined. Was it not obsession that yet held him fast to Erunyauv?'s legacy? This amulet of a Sign whose significance he didn't fully comprehend would point him toward his missing mother. With it, he could discover why she left him. If not obsession, something powerful, whatever its name, gripped him.

  "Look at this!" came Adrik's startlingly loud call from behind. Raidon whirled, ready to defend the small group.

  The sorcerer pointed to a greenish stripe of mold running along the wall of the tunnel, only a half-pace above the level of the floor. Raidon had earlier noticed the mold and discounted its appearance as unimportant. A sputtering light flamed and smoked from the coin Adrik clutched in his left hand. The illumination was born of a quick series of syllables the sorcerer uttered when they'd left Sild?yuir's light behind.

  Kiril turned, one eyebrow raised in a question. Xet, riding her shoulder, belled a short, rising tone.

  "Fungus wouldn't grow in such a uniform line unless this tunnel periodically floods," replied Adrik. "But then we'd see a parallel stripe on the other wall."

  "What of it?"

  "No matching stripe, no flooding. The only answer is that there must be a reservoir of water behind this wall. It must seep through, providing moisture enough for this growth!"

  The swordswoman snorted, turned, and continued stalking forward.

  The sorcerer swiveled to flash Raidon his eager expression. The monk said, "I missed that, Adrik-you have eyes for this sort of delving, it seems."

  The sorcerer smiled at the compliment, at the same time raising a finger as if to make a further point. The monk turned and followed Kiril before the man could expound upon mold, moisture, their musty relationship, or some related topic likely to interest the monk not in the least. He appreciated Adrik's boundless enthusiasm for diverse topics-truly, he did-but in their present circumstance, he preferred to avoid such distractions.

  Even as Raidon allowed introspection to sap his focus, he noticed the narrow tunnel through which they'd progressed was gradually widening. Far ahead, blue-green illumination seeped into the tunnel, staining its white walls with alien color.

  "Kiril," Raidon said, "pause a moment. What does that glow ahead presage?"

  The elf shook her head. She muttered, "How would I know what lies ahead? The only way to know is to move forward and look. One way or another, these tunnels lead into Stardeep's heart. Don't ask stupid questions, Telflammer."

  Raidon cocked his head, wondering if she baited him purposefully. Now that they both knew his mother was native to Sild?yuir, referring to his Shou origin seemed a slap in the face. Or perhaps it was her implication that he had asked a frivolous question. Or perhaps he was merely losing his focus. .

  He pushed the irritation from his thoughts with an old mantra: Have no limitation as limitation. His thoughts couldn't be swayed by her words or attitude-only he could channel his mind-others' words imparted information only. They couldn't change the tracks of his knowledge or attitudes unless he allowed them to do so. He was free unto himself, not bound to limitations others tried to place upon him.

  It was becoming clear, however, that Kiril Duskmourn would try even the serenity of Xiang Temple master.

  The intensity of the light grew as they approached, and the tunnel fell away to reveal a wider space. One side of the tunnel fell away to become a ledge skirting the edge of a deeper cavern filled with strange growths.

  Puff balls, fungal draperies, fronds, and toadstools grew in thick profusion within the wide depression, all glowing with varying shades of bioluminescence. Sprouting up through a layer of turgid black ooze were small, yellow protrusions, as wide and thick as fingers. A few toadstool caps grew so tall they towered above the level of the catwalk to brush the ceiling and spread flattened, mushroomlike canopies overhead. A smell like baking bread, citrus, and rotting flesh wrinkled Raidon's nose. A bluish glow hazed the air.

  "Breathe carefully," advised Adrik, who placed a fold of his robe over his mouth. His muffled voice came again. "Spores."

  Kiril grunted, "I wouldn't have guessed such a garden could survive in these darks. I wonder on what sort of rot this plot grows." The crystal dragonet belled unhelpfully.

  She shrugged and walked onto the tunnel catwalk. Some hundreds of paces ahead, the ledge plunged into a smaller tunnel.

  Raidon and Adrik followed her. Halfway across, the monk glimpsed a shape moving through the fungalscape. Turning his head, he saw some sort of. . humanoid. It was a bulky, hunch-backed humanoid composed of mushroomy flesh partly covered in a bony black carapace. Its head was a puffball suffused with wavering filaments. The creature used daggerlike obsidian claws to slash its way through the fungal garden. Luckily, it was moving away from them. Raidon estimated its size equal to a giant.

  The monk monitored the lumbering fungus hulk as they made their way along the ledge. Just as they reached the edge of the cavern, he saw the creature pause, then swivel its bulk. Before its polyp-sprouting face fully turned to regard the travelers, they ducked out of the wide cavern into the narrow confines of another tunnel.

  Raidon doubted the creature could fit into the tunnel if it decided to follow. While the monk was confident of his prowess, he wondered if the techniques he favored against living foes might be useless on beasts composed of animate fungus. Could it even feel pain? Still, flying elbows crushed vegetable flesh as readily as animal.

  Like before, the tunnel walls they traversed were smooth and white, except for the stain of fungus running in a widening stripe along the right wall. The blue, luminescent haze remained as thick as ever in the tunnel. Also. .

  "Adrik, bring your light closer, will you?" asked Raidon.

  The sorcerer ste
pped over to Raidon with his lighted coin. Embedded in the wall were shells, bones, and teeth. More notable was a complete human figure, fully embedded in the wall and composed of the same white stone.

  "What does this mean?" asked Raidon.

  The sorcerer shook his head. "Magic, a massive concentration, once burned through here, but it is impossible to say how long ago."

  "Did the elves do it when they created Stardeep? Or Sild?yuir?" asked Raidon.

  Kiril, who'd paused at Raidon's first words, snorted. "This was here before Sild?yuir or the Traitor's dungeon were called out of the emptiness. Imagine the wizards' chagrin when they discovered the 'emptiness' was not so empty as everyone assumed. Races older than elves roam the worlds, and not all ancient events are recorded in history books."

  Adrik brushed his right hand along the forehead of the encased figure.

  The air cracked as a fossilized arm suddenly burst from the wall and snatched the sorcerer's wrist. Adrik screamed in concert with a wet grinding sound. The squeezing hand mashed the sorcerer's wrist like a piece of rotten fruit.

  More loud cracks, and jagged lines appeared and lengthened on both walls. Pale limbs thrashed within widening fissures.

  Raidon snatched the collapsing sorcerer and threw him over his shoulder. The hand gripping the sorcerer's wrist didn't relinquish its grasp but. . there was little left for it to hold. Adrik was a familiar weight across the monk's back. Time to push concern from his mind and act in the moment.

  "Go!" yelled Raidon as he dashed past Kiril. The swordswoman broke into a run, and Raidon led her down the empty but rapidly filling tunnel. The forms breaking free of the passage walls were-what? Undead? Undead whose flesh had so long rested beneath the earth that rotting skin, organs, and bone had become hard as stone. Or undead whose life was drained by some unspeakable ritual.