by James Wyatt
“How so?”
“I mean, the idea that gnolls had dragged Gaele and Marcan away without leaving signs of a struggle was unlikely. I was trying to come up with a theory that fit, and it becomes easier if we abandon the idea that gnolls were the captors.”
“Perhaps there’s some kind of mind control at work,” Roghar said. “Someone enchanting them, luring them away.”
“That opens a whole world of unpleasant possibilities. The best is that it’s some rogue enchanter, more or less a common criminal with magic at his disposal.”
“While the worst is … a lot worse.”
Travic nodded. “A vampire or succubus, maybe even a mind flayer.”
Roghar glanced at Tempest, who had turned away to look out at the ruins again. “Or some kind of possessor,” he whispered to Travic.
The priest’s eyes widened and shot to Tempest as well. Roghar had told him about Tempest’s experience with the possessor demon, and warned him that it was a painful memory for her. “Should we turn back?” Travic said, keeping his voice low. “I can find other help—”
Roghar shook his head. “It’ll be all right.”
“What will?” Tempest asked, turning back to face them. “What are you two whispering about?”
Roghar stammered, trying to find a plausible and gentle lie. While he struggled, Travic stepped forward and put a hand on Tempest’s shoulder.
“I’m just concerned for you,” the priest said. “I don’t want to put you into a situation that’s going to bring up too many difficult memories.”
Roghar rolled his eyes. Honesty was always Travic’s preferred approach, even if it was insensitive or vaguely insulting. But he was a kind man in general, which usually allowed him to speak the truth without hurting feelings.
“You think Nu Alin is involved in this? Here?”
“We have no idea,” Roghar said. “We were just discussing the possibilities. The demon that possessed you, or something like it, is at the outer edge of those possibilities.”
“It’s far more likely an enchanter, maybe a vampire,” Travic added.
“A comforting thought,” Tempest said, the hint of a smile touching her lips. “You know you’ve found success as an adventurer when a vampire is one of your better possibilities.”
Roghar guffawed as a sense of relief washed through him. Such glimpses of Tempest’s wry humor were rare since her possession, and he missed them terribly.
Travic looked toward the morning sun. “Well, if a vampire is what we’re after, we’ve chosen the right time of day,” he said. “Shall we explore farther into the ruins?”
Tempest nodded, still almost smiling, and Roghar’s heart felt light as he lifted his sword to rest on his shoulder and stepped onto the crumbling street that led deeper into the ruins of Nera.
The road that Roghar had chosen more or less at random led quickly to the lip of a crater, one of a few places in the ruined city where the earth had opened up and swallowed the streets and buildings. The largest such crater marked the site of the imperial palace, but several smaller ones were arrayed around it. He sighed and chose a different path that would take him around that obstacle, but Tempest put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Look.” Tempest pointed into the crater.
The depression was a couple dozen yards across, the sides worn almost smooth by a century of rain. Larger chunks of rubble littered the bottom, including recognizable pieces from some of the buildings that lined the edges, as though the crater were slowly expanding and drawing more of the ruins down to its heart. Roghar followed Tempest’s pointing finger and saw what looked like the mouth of a tunnel in the crater’s wall, about halfway down the side opposite where he stood.
“The gods have led us true,” Travic said.
Roghar nodded. The tunnel mouth was clearly in use. Even from his position, he could see a rough path leading up the side of the crater from the tunnel mouth, and the pattern of debris beneath the tunnel suggested that rubble had been cleared out from the interior to make a clear route—presumably leading to some secret lair.
“I never met a tunnel mouth I didn’t like,” Roghar said. “Adventure awaits!”
He started circling around the edge of the crater toward the path, and Tempest hurried after him.
“Roghar, wait!” Travic called.
“What’s the matter?”
Travic frowned, staring down into the crater. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I have a strange feeling about this place.”
“You said it yourself. The gods led us here. You’re not getting cold feet now, are you?”
“Of course not. I just think we should approach with caution.”
“Live while you can, my friend!” Roghar said, starting toward the path again. “No telling how long you have left.”
“I’d prefer to prolong those days by exercising the caution and discretion I’ve been given,” Travic muttered, quickening his steps to catch up.
Roghar laughed, but he stopped abruptly when the bowl of the crater sent the sound echoing back to him, louder and harsher. He frowned at the echo and started down the path. His armored feet crunched in the gravel, sending a trickle of pebbles off the side of the path and down into the crater. The crater seemed to magnify every sound.
He made his way along the path, cringing at every sound the crater echoed back to him. As the path took him lower and the earth took him in, the echoes surrounded him—his own footfalls and those of his companions, every crunch of gravel and rustle of cascading debris. He started hearing whispers in the echoes, words he couldn’t understand, although they felt threatening. He stopped and turned to look at Travic and Tempest, and found them glancing around as he was to find the source of the whispers.
“Now I see what you mean about that strange feeling, Travic,” Roghar rumbled. The sound that came back to his ears was like rolling thunder.
Travic and Tempest both nodded, unwilling to speak. Roghar swallowed his fear and continued down the path, treading as lightly as he could manage.
Tempest’s scream echoed into a shrieking assault on his ears. He tried to turn to see what was wrong but found the world spinning around him, and he lurched sideways, nearly hurling himself off the path. He crouched and put one knee down to steady himself, and managed to look over his shoulder without falling over.
Travic was sprawled on the ground, his back to the crater wall. He clutched one of Tempest’s hands in both of his own, struggling to pull her back up over the rough edge of the path.
Roghar turned himself and dove for Tempest’s other hand, which was scrabbling for purchase at the edge. Flat on his belly, he caught hold of her, then braced himself as she started pulling herself up. In the space of a few pounding heartbeats she was back on the path, leaning against the crater wall, terror showing in her wide eyes.
“What happened?” Roghar asked. The flurry of echoes made him wince, and Travic’s face grew a shade paler.
“I slipped,” Tempest whispered. Her eyes met his, and he saw the same fear he often saw when he rushed to her bedside in the middle of the night. He furrowed his brow in concern, but she gave the slightest shake of her head before turning to Travic. “Thank you for catching me.”
“The echoes of your scream threw me off balance,” Travic whispered back. “You almost had a nasty tumble.”
“Sorry,” she said. “It just came out.”
Roghar got to his feet and helped Travic stand. He put an arm around Tempest’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Are you all right?” he said.
She nodded, but her eyes couldn’t hold his gaze.
“We can still go back,” he said.
“No.” She shrugged out of his half embrace and nodded toward the tunnel mouth, no more than ten yards away. “It was just a slip.”
Roghar scowled. The storm of whispering echoes was growing unbearable, making it impossible to think. He resolved to discuss the “slip” with Tempest late
r, and he started back down the path. The echoes of their footsteps grew more intense as Roghar went on, but despite his growing sense of anticipation, he reached the tunnel mouth without further incident.
The tunnel had been dug out of the earth, and it was shored up with a mix of fresh lumber and ancient stone columns. It ran even more steeply downward than the path in the crater, and curved sharply around to the left, cutting off Roghar’s view. He saw no sign of light coming up the tunnel, so Roghar reached into the pouch at his belt and found a sunrod. Before he could light it, Travic came and stood beside him.
“I’ll take care of the light,” the priest said. He rested a hand on the seal of Bahamut that adorned Roghar’s shield and closed his eyes for a moment, then a mote of light like a tiny sun sprang to life on the shield.
“Now my enemies can have no doubt where I am,” Roghar said, smiling.
“It’s no different than if you were carrying that sunrod,” Travic replied.
“I wasn’t complaining. Let them try to get past this shield and my armor. Better that than have them attacking the two of you.”
“Roghar,” Travic whispered, with a glance at Tempest. The tiefling was staring into the crater.
Roghar raised an eyebrow.
“She screamed before she fell,” Travic said. He stepped back and gestured toward the tunnel mouth. “Shall we?”
Roghar watched Tempest as she turned back toward them, her eyes still wide and her mouth set into a thin line. Had she experienced some kind of vision? Perhaps her nightmares had come to plague her by day as they did every night. Was she going mad?
Just a slip, he thought. But a slip of her foot? Or a slip of her self-control?
Tempest kept such tight rein on her thoughts and her emotions—it was part of what allowed her to keep control over the sinister power she wielded. If that control was slipping …
“What are we waiting for?” Tempest demanded. She met Roghar’s gaze with a mischievous smile, and he couldn’t help but smile back at her.
“Travic needed a moment to pluck up his courage,” Roghar said. “The older he gets, the longer it takes.”
Travic laughed. “That’s true of a lot of things, but not this. Let’s move.”
Roghar turned to the tunnel mouth. He’d have to duck his head to enter, and if anything attacked in the tunnel he’d be at a disadvantage, fighting in very close quarters. On the other hand, the curve to the left was slightly to his advantage, giving him better reach with his sword hand than an opponent coming up the other way. Assuming his hypothetical opponent used weapons.
“Who’s plucking up his courage now?” Travic said behind him.
Shooting a grin back to the priest, Roghar stooped and entered the tunnel. The bedeviling echoes ceased at once, and his footsteps seemed muted by comparison. The light Travic had put on his shield shone clear and bright, filling the tunnel until it curved out of sight. Alert for any sound around the curves, Roghar advanced as fast as the low ceiling would allow.
He saw nothing to indicate who might have excavated the tunnel or why. The shoring was crude but effective, employing scavenged materials that had evidently been well chosen for strength and size. The tunnel spiraled down until Roghar figured they were lower than the bottom of the crater and then, without warning, it opened up into a wider hallway with a gentler downward slope. The hall looked like it had been part of a manor house above ground before the cataclysm that dragged it into the earth. Smooth stone walls gave him ample room to move and swing his sword, and the ceiling accommodated even his nearly seven-foot height. The hall showed signs of its displacement, though—jagged cracks ran through the walls, crumbling masonry littered the floor, and the two doorways Roghar could see leading off to the sides were half collapsed. Roghar eyed the ceiling cautiously, wondering how many tons of rock were overhead now.
He paused as Tempest and then Travic emerged from the corkscrew tunnel and found their bearings in the new hallway. “I see light coming around that corner,” he said, pointing down the hall.
“Smells like incense,” Tempest added.
Roghar took a deep breath through his nostrils and noticed it as well—sandalwood or something similar.
“I’d wager we’re about to walk into a secret temple,” Travic said. “Tiamat?”
Roghar bristled. As a paladin of Bahamut, he had a special loathing for the cults of Tiamat, mirroring the enmity between the two dragon gods, the twin children of Io. But this didn’t feel like a cult of Tiamat to him. The whole arrangement suggested devils—the temple nestled in the ancient ruins, the menacing whispers in the crater, and the spiraling descent, like a passage through the Nine Hells. “Five gold says it’s Asmodeus,” he said.
Travic sniffed the air and smiled. “You’re on. There’s no hint of brimstone.”
Roghar scowled. “I stand by my bet. Come on.” He shifted his grip on his shield and started down the hall.
“Stop!” Tempest said quietly, but with an urgency that stopped him dead. She moved up to stand beside him and pointed at the floor just in front of his feet.
Roghar crouched and squinted, and finally saw the slender tripwire stretched across the hall a few inches off the floor. “Thank you,” he breathed. He cast his eyes around the hallway but didn’t see any other sign of a trap—no block of stone rigged to fall from the ceiling, no slits in the walls where blades might spring out. It didn’t matter. Even if it was only rigged to ring a bell in the secret temple, alerting the cultists to their approach, he’d almost walked right into it. He stood and put a hand on Tempest’s shoulder. “Do you see anything else?”
“Not from here. But maybe I should go first.”
Roghar didn’t like the idea—it would make her more vulnerable in an attack, and possibly cost them precious time in a fight as she fell back behind him. On the other hand, she was probably more likely to notice signs of an ambush or hear approaching attackers than he was, as well as being more likely to spot traps and tripwires. He nodded and squeezed to the side of the hall so she could get past him.
Tempest stepped carefully over the tripwire and paused to make sure Roghar crossed it safely. Roghar mimicked her motions, provoking a snicker that Tempest quickly hid with a cough. He grinned at her, then pointed out the tripwire to Travic so the priest could step over it as well.
Roghar nodded to himself as he followed Tempest down the hall. This is how it’s supposed to work, he thought. Teamwork, each member of the team relying on the others’ strengths and covering each other’s weaknesses.
I’m starting to sound like a priest of Erathis, he thought with a laugh. The god of civilization promoted the ideals of people working together to build and invent and civilize, sometimes even to conquer. But those ideals were not far from Bahamut’s—the Platinum Dragon exhorted his followers to protect the weak and defend just order, order that might be established in Erathis’s name.
Tempest led them past several collapsing doorways, the rooms beyond mostly or completely caved in, showing no sign of having been touched or inhabited in the last century. An alcove on the left side of the hall held a decorative guardian, a stone sculpture in surprisingly good condition, depicting a proud human knight in plate armor. Roghar paused as the knight’s stone eyes caught his gaze—they were so lifelike, so expertly carved, that he found himself wondering for a moment if the statue might be a living man turned to stone by a medusa or basilisk. But the pose was that of a watchful sentinel, not a man turned to stone in midstride, and he dismissed the thought.
Travic lingered at the statue as well, admiring the sculptor’s art. Tempest held up a hand and hissed a warning, wrenching Roghar’s full attention back to the end of the hallway.
“I hear voices,” she mouthed, pointing to her ear.
Roghar tried to listen, but a sudden sound of rumbling stone from behind him drowned out all other sound. He whirled around in time to see the stone knight, emerged from its alcove, swing its sword down in a deadly arc toward Travic’s he
ad.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The way to Sherinna’s tower lay across the Plain of Thorns, the aptly named expanse of brown bush and sharp briers that stretched from the edge of the forest for miles to the south and east. Albanon led the way through thorny vines that did, he had to admit, seem to yield at his approach. He moderated his pace to make sure Kri could keep up—the thorns started closing in behind Albanon as soon as he passed, forcing Kri to pick his way more carefully through the brambles.
The sun settled on the horizon, bathing the dry plain in blood-red light. Albanon frowned at the sky, looked back to the forest where his father’s palace stood hidden among the trees, and searched the fields ahead for a sign of the tower.
“I don’t relish the thought of having to find the tower in the dark,” he said to Kri.
“It can’t be much farther,” Kri replied. “And the sky is clear—we’ll have moonlight to guide us.”
“Can you see the tower? Am I just blind?”
“If you are, it’s because you rely too much on your eyes instead of letting yourself feel the magic around you.”
Albanon sighed. “It’s overwhelming here. So much magic.”
“That’s what makes it so useful. If you can open yourself to it, it will show you more than your eyes ever could. Imagine you’re a fish that can feel everything the water in the ocean touches.”
“I’d go mad.”
“No!” The vehemence of Kri’s reply surprised Albanon. “If you’re unwilling to use the power given to you, you’ll never learn anything.”
“Moorin always taught me to use my power with caution.”
“Moorin held you back.”
Albanon glanced up to where Splendid circled in the sky, glad the little drake wasn’t present to hear her late master insulted. He knew he should probably take offense as well, but he couldn’t quite manage it. He had loved Moorin—”like a father” didn’t seem to quite cover it, considering his relationship to his own father. But he’d also long felt exactly what Kri had just said, that Moorin was holding him back, unwilling or unable to see his true potential. Moorin had dismissed his grumbling as the discontent common to every young apprentice, but now Kri seemed to be validating it.