by Alex Irvine
“Remy.”
He looked up into the concerned face of Lucan. “You were far away for a minute there,” Lucan said.
“History,” Remy said. “I was thinking about history.”
Lucan whistled. In the trees, crows ruffled their feathers at the sound. “They will talk to me a little because I know some of their language,” he said. “Crows don’t like it when you assume that they will learn your speech and you don’t have to learn theirs.”
“Is that right,” Remy said. He wasn’t sure whether Lucan was joking or not.
Lucan raised his arm and whistled a complicated pattern. Out of the setting sun fell a crow. It landed on his forearm and cocked its head at him. “See?” he said to Remy.
“I see you can call it,” Remy said. “I haven’t seen that it can talk.”
“Awk,” the crow said. “Talk.”
Lucan clucked at it. “Slow, slow. No need to rush.” He looked up at Remy. “It has been a very long time since they received their gift. Most of them never use it and it comes back slowly when they try.”
“Time,” the crow said.
With a wink at Remy, Lucan said, “Time, right. Plenty of time.”
“No time,” the crow said.
“Why not?” Remy asked it.
“No time to talk,” the crow said. It flapped over to Remy and landed on his shoulder. Leaning in close to his ear, it said, “Found you. They found you. Time to watch you die.”
He would learn later that some of those who had died building the Crow Road returned as spectral undead, yearning for their bodies to live again-or, failing that, to at least be buried with the ceremonies of their gods. There were undead in Avankil, of course. Bodies rose from the slack waters under the piers, or dug their way out of the rubbish heaps where murderers disposed of their victims. Ghosts haunted the lower corridors of the keep and the places near the walls where the specters of soldiers remembered invaders long since gone to their own rewards. The Crow Road, though, built on death, gave rise to undeath with every step.
They turned after the crow spoke and saw behind them the insubstantial shapes of wraiths and specters. They did not pursue; they shepherded. “We’re being walked ahead to meet something,” Paelias said. “I wonder what.”
“I’d rather not find out,” Kithri said. She rubbed at her forehead over her right eye. Remy had noticed her making that gesture frequently these past few days. He wondered if she was still suffering the effects of the ogre’s kick back in the orc lair. Lucan seemed to have recovered, but the Eye of Gruumsh’s spear point had passed only through meat; his joint and bones were unhurt, and Keverel had sewn his wounds up so well that Lucan was already complaining that the scars would be too small to impress the barmaids of Karga Kul.
The crow still sat on Remy’s shoulder. “Ever get the feeling that you had a crow on your shoulder so the enemy knows who to aim at?” Paelias said loudly.
Feathers rustled in the surrounding trees, and out of the deepening darkness came more crows, to festoon the party and the horses. “Wrong again,” croaked the crow on Remy’s shoulder. They kept a stead pace, moving forward, always forward, even though the time for camp had long since come. Remy’s eyes jittered back and forth from fatigue. He couldn’t focus on anything for long.
“Found me, you said,” he said to the crow.
“Awk,” the crow said. “Aye.”
“How come they don’t attack, then?”
“Because of us,” the crow said. Its voice grew clearer the more it was used.
“How droll,” Lucan said. “It tells us it’s time to watch us die, then says that we are not dying because of it.”
“Perhaps you have failed to attune yourself to the crow sense of humor,” said Biri-Daar. She was riding out in front of the rest of them, scouting to make sure the mass of undead behind them had not somehow raised reinforcements ahead.
“Are you suggesting that a crow has more of a sense of humor than I do?” Lucan said.
“If she wasn’t, I will,” Kithri said.
The crow on Remy’s shoulder followed this back-and-forth with cocked head. “Awk,” it said at the end.
“Really, they’re not attacking us because of you?” Remy asked it.
“Really.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“The elf, awk,” the crow said. “Speaks our language. Few Tenfingers care. Awk.”
“Who would like to apologize first?” Lucan said smugly.
“What I want to know,” Kithri said, “is why the wraiths back there are afraid of a bunch of crows.”
Paelias chuckled. “This is the Crow Road, isn’t it?”
The crows on their shoulders and on the pommels of their saddles awked.
All night they rode, until the horses’ heads drooped and their riders were slumped forward over the horses’ manes. Even some of the crows rode silently, heads tucked under one wing. Remy remembered little of that night except the occasional flutter next to his ear as his first crow passenger shifted in its sleep.
The sun rose directly ahead, bringing them out of sleep with sandy eyes and frayed nerves, not to mention bruised backsides. The crows were gone. When they looked behind them, so were the wraiths. “Well,” Paelias said. “If that’s the appetizer, I wonder what the main course will be?”
Biri-Daar yawned, showing teeth that seemed to go all the way down her throat. “That will be funny exactly until we find out.”
“Remember that the builder of this road poured more and more of his madness into it as he went, and his madness grew more and more consuming,” Keverel commented. “It could well be that the crows will not want to confront whatever comes tonight.”
“Then perhaps we should sleep during the day,” Kithri said. “As much as I hate to suggest it.”
They could all tell how much she hated to suggest it by how her eyes stayed half-lidded and her head lolled a little while she spoke.
“Not a terrible idea,” Biri-Daar pronounced after some consideration. They rode off the road and found a sheltered spot in a dell over which the branches of trees had knit into a canopy. There they staked out the horses, attended to their immediate needs, and slept.
“Awk,” said a crow. Remy awoke and saw it staring into his eye. He flinched. Then he realized that if the crow had intended harm, the harm would already have come. Shadows were deepening under the trees; in the gaps through their branches he could see both orange and blue in the sky.
“Right,” he said, sitting up. “Time to go. Thank you.”
The crow awked and flew away into the trees.
Remy went around the camp waking everyone up. Even Lucan and Paelias, who did not sleep, muttered and blinked and had a hard climb back to wakefulness from their quiet meditative state. “It’s a twilight world out here. Up here. On this road.” Paelias stretched and cracked his neck. “One can only wonder what awaits us around the next bend.”
“An unholy abomination that will catch those words and shove them down your throat, sideways,” Kithri growled.
“Oh halfling, do excuse me,” he said. “I do not mean my humor to offend little people with headaches.”
She spun, knife in hand. “Stop!” Biri-Daar commanded. She stepped between them. “Sheathe the knife, Kithri. And Paelias, if you must speak, perhaps not all of your speech could be dedicated to aggravating those who must ride with you.”
The eladrin appeared to consider this. “Perhaps,” he allowed. He swung up into the saddle and went out onto the road to await the rest of them.
Perhaps inspired by Paelias’s example, Remy found himself trying to pick a fight later that day, when they had stopped for water and Kithri started her sparring with Paelias again. Remy listened to it as long as he could, Paelias coolly provoking her and Kithri gladly being provoked to complain about the unfairness of the larger party members to her-the horses were too large, the portions of the meals poorly considered, the tasks given her were demeaning and mundane… finally Rem
y had had enough. He had a few things he needed to say, too. “What’s unfair is that I keep on fighting with you and keeping the enemies from your backs, and then the minute you have a chance to gather your thoughts you get suspicious again. When does the fighting count for something?” Remy was going to have trouble stopping himself, he knew. He always did once he started to let his feelings run. “And how do I know I can trust you? You keep me along because I have this box, maybe, and maybe you know what to do with it and you’re just waiting for the moment to do it and then I’m going to get a knife in the back. How do I know that’s not going to happen?”
None of his companions could answer… except Paelias. “Simplest of questions,” he said. “You don’t know. None of you do. Remy, you could be waiting to kill us all. Biri-Daar could be waiting to do something unspeakable to Remy at the correct moment. And I,” he added with a dramatic gesture, “might be scheming to do you all in. We can’t know. Shall we kill each other now, or shall we assume that we are working toward a common goal for the moment?”
No one spoke.
“Perfect,” Paelias said. “Then we should ride. It’s a long way to the Inverted Keep, and this Crow Road has us all at each other’s throats. Remember that.”
Several uneventful days passed, enlivened only by bickering. Then, one afternoon, Biri-Daar dropped back from her customary position at the front of the group. When she was next to Remy, she said, “So. I have told you part of why we must go to Karga Kul. Would you like to hear the rest?”
Looking straight ahead, Remy nodded. “Yes, I would,” he said.
Karga Kul! Where demons fear to tread…
When the Crow Road was built, Karga Kul was there. When Arkhosia and Bael Turath destroyed each other in blood and sorcery and the smoke of sacked cities, Karga Kul was there. Its scholars claim seven cities have risen on the great cliff where the Whitefall meets the sea, and seven times seven languages have been spoken in the halls of its keep, and seven times seven times seven rooms are built below the lowest level in a dungeon from whose furthest corners one can step, incredibly, up into the Underdark.
And in one of those seven times seven times seven rooms is a door that leads nowhere on the mortal plane. This door is bound in iron, its hinges ruined with acid, molten lead poured into the cracks and the magical sigils of seven civilizations inscribed into the lead.
Over all of this, forming an unbreakable barrier, is the eldritch Seal of Karga Kul.
If any man or woman knows who put the seal on that door, the story has never been told, or it has been lost over the centuries. What is known is that on the other side waits Doresain, the Exarch of the Demon Prince Orcus. For a century of centuries he has waited for that door to open. His demonic allies and underlings wait with him: the apelike barlgura, insectoid mezzodemon, avian vrock and great pincered glabrezu, six-armed marilith with the serpent’s tail. The Abyssal chamber where Doresain held his watch was lit by the infernal glare of the immolith, and the hulks of goristro muscled smaller demons out of the way along the walls.
Somewhere in the world, it was said, secret cults worshiped Orcus. The most dedicated of these cults spawned powerful death priests, anointed by Orcus himself and given power over men’s dreams. These cults work to open gateways between the Abyss and the mortal realms; their methods are assassination, infiltration, seduction… rarely do they show themselves. Karga Kul is their greatest prize, and the one they have never gained. Other armies have marched on Karga Kul, and broken on its walls. Never has the seal been broken, and never have the demons of the Abyss been unleashed to ravage the city from the inside, and, with it destroyed, spill into the mortal world.
Periodically the seal grows weak, and must be reinscribed. The quill that may inscribe the seal is kept far away, in a location known only to the Knights of Kul, the dragonborn elite given the Duty of Moidan’s Quill after the great victory at the Bridge of Iban Ja…
“That’s you, isn’t it?” Remy said.
Biri-Daar nodded. “Me, and my ancestors stretching back perhaps a hundred generations. I am given a most sacred trust.”
“We have the quill now?”
“No.” Biri-Daar looked out over the Crow Road, where shapes danced in the gloaming as the sun fell into the mountains behind them and the sky darkened through violet and toward black in the distance ahead. “Moidan’s Quill was first held by Bahamut himself. He inscribed the symbols that hold the Abyss bottled in the bowels of the dungeons below Karga Kul. Never have the dragonborn guardians of the quill failed to present it when the seal grew faint and needed reinscription. I will not be the first.”
Remy worked out in his head what he was already assuming to be the truth. “It’s in the Inverted Keep.”
“Yes,” Biri-Daar said. “It’s in the Inverted Keep.”
“How did the Inverted Keep get… inverted?” Remy asked. Also he wanted to ask what were those shapes dancing at the edge of the darkness ahead of them, but they were far enough not to worry about just yet… and in any case could be just illusions born of the road’s bizarre origins… and the story Biri-Daar told was too fascinating. Remy couldn’t imagine listening to anything else…
There was a jerk around his waist, and Remy flew off his horse and hit the ground hard. The impact jarred something loose in his shoulder, and also in his mind. He had been ensorcelled! Something…
The thing wrapped around his waist was a vine. Remy dug his heels into the earth and found his knife. He slashed at the vine until it snapped, and fell backward against the embankment of the Crow Road.
Suddenly the earth around him was alive with the vines-no, they were roots. And one of the great old trees at the edge of the road was moving. “Treant!” shouted Lucan. “A blackroot!”
Treants, those legendary guardians of the forests, were as vulnerable as other kinds of life to the undead transformations that occurred along the Crow Road. This one moved with the sound of crackling bark and the whisper of long-dead leaves that did not fall from its branches. The roots binding Remy dragged him toward it. “Behind it,” he called out as the rest of the group leaped off their horses. “There’s something behind it!”
From either side of the treant, sword wraiths appeared, their blades catching the moonlight. Remy struggled to draw his own sword but his arm was bound fast. All he could do was saw with his knife at the roots that drew him ever closer to the treant’s great fists, which would pound him into a bloody paste in the undergrowth.
If the sword wraiths didn’t kill him first.
Keverel was the first to reach him. Forbidden by his oaths to use bladed weapons, he lent his weight to Remy’s struggle against the roots, while raising his holy symbol high with one hand and calling out. “Back, spawn of the Shadowfell! By Erathis, you shall not have this boy!”
The wraiths paused and flitted smoothly away from Keverel, keeping Remy between them and the cleric. “We will have either him or what he carries, holy man,” one of them said. “Or perhaps both.”
“And perhaps we bring you along as well. The Shadowfell has delights for the mortal who denies himself worldly pleasures,” the other added. One of Lucan’s arrows passed right through it, wisps of black the only sign of its passage until it thunked into the trunk of the treant. Rumbling, the undead tree spirit took a step toward Remy.
Paelias landed next to Remy, sword drawn and ready to engage the wraiths. “You surely draw a lot of attention, youngling,” the eladrin said. His sword flicked out and was parried by one of the wraiths. “Lucan! Even the odds, mind?”
From the wraiths’ side, Lucan attacked, driving one of them into the other. Both glided out of his reach, but Paelias was watching the shadows and was ready when the first emerged from the shadowglide. His sword struck home, bringing a miserable screech from the wraith, whose return stroke caught only Paelias’s blade. Pressing his advantage, the eladrin struck again, and with a trailing scream the swordwraith vanished. Lucan awaited the other’s return from its shadowglide, looking h
ard for any trace of moongleam on its blade.
Biri-Daar thudded to the ground next to Keverel as the blackroot treant took another slow, implacable step forward. “I am loath to do this,” she said.
Landing next to her with flint and steel in one hand and an oil-soaked torch in the other, Kithri said, “If you let it squash Remy, it will probably go away.”
“Life is never that easy,” Biri-Daar said. She took a running step and leaped, new twin katars from Crow Fork Market reversed in her hands to use as improvised climbing axes. Below her, Kithri ignited her torch.
Lucan and Paelias backed slowly toward each other, keeping Remy and Keverel in the corner of their fields of vision. “You didn’t accidentally hit both of them?” Lucan asked.
Paelias shook his head. “Just the one. Might have killed it. Or whatever it is you do to finish a wraith.”
Then the second swordwraith appeared, all the way on the other side of Keverel, emerging from the shadows cast when Kithri lit her torch. She reared back and threw it at a knot of branches halfway up the treant’s trunk, on the side opposite where Biri-Daar slowly worked her way up to the suggestion of a face in the dead branches of its crown. It swatted at her but could not dislodge her, and the torch caught its bark on fire. Immediately the treant devoted all of its attention to putting out the flames; using the distraction, Biri-Daar reached the base of the crown, where its ears would have been if the treant had been human. Instead of ears it featured a knotted hole on either side, with a multitude of tiny branches sprouting like whiskers above and around it.