by Alex Irvine
“There’s where you’re wrong.” Lucan pulled a mug out of the ashes near the fire and tested the liquid in it with a fingertip. Satisfied, he took a sip. “Tombs mean plunder, young Remy. And even our paladin won’t object to us helping ourselves to whatever we find in this tomb. Not after the undead dragonborn the two of you saw back there.”
“She told you about that?”
“Why wouldn’t she? Biri-Daar’s proud, but she’s not one to hide things from us. You could live your whole life and not be part of a band whose leader cared more for your life than she does.” Lucan drank again, then sneezed. “She’s not much fun, but she’s a leader even I can trust. And I don’t trust leaders.”
Keverel and Paelias came up from the riverbank, where they had been trading travelers’ tales with the others passing through the landing. “The word is out that something got away from Avankil that wasn’t supposed to,” Paelias said quietly. None of them looked at Remy. “There are bounties. Whatever it is we’re doing with Remy’s package, we should do it quick or we’re going to have demons like orcs have lice.”
“And we need to get moving out of here now,” Keverel said. “It won’t be long before some of the more unsavory characters down there figure out that maybe we might be carrying what we’re asking about.”
Paelias looked pale and shaky, as if he had just finished vomiting. “Believe I should have something to eat,” he said. “But I don’t much feel like it.”
Keverel took his arm and pulled his sleeve back to reveal a bandage. Pulling the bandage back, he revealed a yuan-ti bite mark, four punctures that formed an almost perfect square on the eladrin’s forearm. “The poison’s not going to kill you. I made sure of that. But you are going to feel a bit under the weather for a day or so yet,” Keverel said.
“Wonderful news,” Paelias said. Then he bent over, Keverel still holding one arm, and threw up at his own feet.
Biri-Daar and Kithri approached from the other side. “We leave now,” Biri-Daar said. “Much of the morning is gone and we’re not going to want to spend a night anywhere near the tomb. That means we need to get to the Crow’s Foot in the Crow Road today and find a defensible place to make camp. Paelias, can you do it?”
“The real question is, does he want to do it?” Kithri asked. “Thought you were just riding along with us for a while.”
“A little poison isn’t going to stop me going into a tomb full of horrible monstrosities with my new companions,” Paelias said. Then he threw up again.
Kithri’s skepticism notwithstanding, Remy realized that at some point Paelias had become one of the group. No one had said anything about it, and he couldn’t tell exactly when it might have happened, but he was one of them, with the same mission.
They broke camp quickly. Remy wanted to ask Biri-Daar why the sigils on the box had glowed so brightly. Had someone put a charm on it, to call attention to it when certain kinds of creatures were near? Was it sensitive to the presence of the undead?
Or was something within it calling out to the undead? Or to the yuan-ti?
Remy had many more questions than answers. But he wasn’t going to be able to ask many of them that day, not with the pace they were going to have to set if they wanted to make the Crow’s Foot with enough light to set a fire and call the watches before dark.
They made it, just. The sun was low, touching the mountaintops, when they came over a crest on the Southern Fork and saw the Crow’s Foot ahead of them. The Tomb Fork led straight away to the east, along high ground. The tomb itself was obscured by the undulations of low hills, but above and beyond it they saw their destination, and each of them regarded it in silence for a moment, awed by the powerful sorceries that had made it possible.
High over the Whitefall, its towers burning in the sunset over the Draco Serrata, hung the Inverted Keep. “I fear what we will find within,” Biri-Daar breathed. Remy asked her why, but she would not answer. They camped in silence, and in the morning entered the tomb of the mad sorcerer and self-proclaimed king who had built the Crow Road.
BOOK IV
THE INVERTED KEEP
The next day as they broke camp, Remy couldn’t keep the questions out of his mouth any longer. He walked up to Biri-Daar and asked, “Did those… you know… Did they rise because of me? Because of what I’m carrying?”
She had been working a whetstone through the complicated curls on the back side of her blade. Without stopping, she said, “Perhaps.”
He waited. When she didn’t go on, he prompted her. “Should we open it? Should we know what we’re getting into if we go into a tomb? If this is going to raise undead, we’ll likely find our share of them in a tomb, won’t we?”
“We likely will,” Biri-Daar said. She paused in her sharpening and added, “But we have committed to a course. We are taking you to Karga Kul and the Mage Trust. They will know what to do. And if they do not, then I have no hope of figuring it out here. So it’s best not to think of it.”
Remy would have pushed the conversation further, but Biri-Daar stood. “Time to get moving.”
The Road-builder’s Tomb was ringed by the last paving stones of the Crow Road, at the terminus of the grand and terrible project begun somewhere near the Gorge of Noon a thousand years and more before Remy stepped onto those stones and said, “So. We have to go down to go up?”
“Yes,” Paelias said. “And then apparently up will be down.”
In the center of the keyhole created by the turnaround at the end of the Crow Road lay the open entrance to the Road-builder’s Tomb. “The story goes that he couldn’t stand the idea that the road could end,” Paelias said. “Once, I believe, there was a keyhole at the other end as well. Some say it was destroyed in the war between Arkhosia and Bael Turath. Others say it was never there at all.”
“I heard that the dragonborn of Karga Kul pulled up those stones and carried them off for their clan lair in Toradan!”
They turned as one. The speaker, standing on the far end of the ridge where they had made their camp, leaned on a tall shield, his face split in a broad grin. He was tall and broad, heavily built, his skin the color of old brick. His horns curled back from his forehead, carved with symbols of clan and god. “A tiefling,” Kithri said. “How about that?”
Biri-Daar took a step forward. “You provoke me, tiefling?” she asked.
“I jest, O mighty dragonborn, Biri-Daar, paladin of Bahamut.” The tiefling approached and dipped his head in formal greeting. “I am Obek of Saak-Opole. My ancestors and yours, dragonborn, did battle on the Bridge of Iban Ja. Now, though, events conspire to make us allies.”
“Do they?” Biri-Daar looked back at the rest of them. “What say you?”
“I am curious how a tiefling appears to bait our resident dragonborn just when we’re about to go into a tomb that is, according to legend, heaped to the ceiling with treasures beyond imagining,” Lucan said. “If this is a strategy, I cannot fathom its goal. Not to mention my curiosity as to how you know her name.”
“The goal is simple,” said Obek of Saak-Opole. “Word has spread on the river of a certain something headed to a certain place. You can always use another sword. I can use a chance to get back to Karga Kul and settle an old score there.”
“You don’t need us for that,” Keverel said.
“No, I need her.” Obek pointed at Biri-Daar. “She is known in Karga Kul, and I sought her specifically. Without her, the Mage Trust will strike me down as soon as I am within sight of the gate. With her, I at least have a chance to enter the city. That is all I ask.”
“And what do you offer?” Biri-Daar asked.
Obek drew his sword. “This. You’re going to need it.”
“You’re a fool,” Paelias said, and burst out laughing. “I thought I was the only one.”
Moving closer, Obek said, “You and I have nothing in common, eladrin. You’re a freebooter. I would sacrifice my life to get back inside Karga Kul. If the only way to do it is by going through that tomb and t
hat keep…” He spread his arms. “No one day is a better day to die than any other.”
Biri-Daar walked up to the tiefling. “In one hour we are entering the Road-builder’s Tomb. You will not enter with us.”
On schedule, in an hour, they began the entry of the tomb. From the rise, Obek watched but made no move to follow.
The Road-builder’s Tomb began with a broad flagstone plaza, each stone carved with a different rune. “Once I read that these stones are a code, and that whoever solved it would bring the Road-builder back to life,” Keverel said.
“I’ve heard that he brought himself back to life,” Lucan said.
Kithri looked at each of them in turn. “Any other stories?”
“I heard that he takes the guise of a tiefling and tries to come along with anyone stupid enough to want to enter his tomb,” Paelias said. They all looked at him. “Why not bring him along?”
“Because, idiot,” Lucan said. “He could as easily be coming after Remy’s little box. How do we know otherwise? How is that he appeared at exactly this moment?”
“Suspicion makes you die younger,” Paelias said.
“Unless you get murdered in your sleep because you weren’t suspicious enough,” Remy pointed out.
“Everyone be silent,” Biri-Daar said. “The tiefling does not come with us.”
The unpaved earth that formed the hole in the keyhole was overgrown with highland brush and a few stunted, wind-sculpted trees. “It’s supposed to be in the center here, the exact center,” Keverel said. They hacked a path into the undergrowth, stopping periodically so Keverel could get his bearings. At what he determined to be the center, they tore the brush out by the roots, first chopping the larger trees out with camp hatchets. Then, using the trunks, they levered the roots up out of the earth, leaving a pit… that in the middle seemed a bit deeper than it should have been, exposing a stone that was a bit too regular in edge…
Half an hour later they had exposed the entrance to the Road-builder’s Tomb.
A simple stone stair, just wide enough to descend single file, led down into the cleared and trampled earth. Below the natural roof formed by generations of root systems, its first eight steps were exposed. Below that abbreviated space, they found a solid seven feet of earth and brush, packed by the ages into nearly stonelike hardness. “Ah, the glories of adventuring,” Kithri said.
Two hours later they had cleared it out, chipping it into pieces and handing them up in a chain to toss them out onto the plaza. Kithri, by far the smallest of them, was stuck down in the hole, levering pieces loose and scooping helmets full of loose dirt and gravel. When the landing was clear, they brushed off the door and examined it.
Unlike the paving stones, the door was unadorned. It was constructed of simple bricks and mortar. Neither Paelias nor Lucan nor Kithri could find any magical traps or bindings. “Well,” said Keverel when they had cleared the door, “Erathis forgive me.”
The door was not designed to open. Neither was it designed to withstand repeated impacts from a steel mace. Its blocks, held together only with mortar, began to shift almost immediately. Half a dozen blows had knocked it loose enough that Biri-Daar and Remy could wedge the edges of their shields into the gap and pry it open far enough for them to enter.
Biri-Daar went first, her armor aglow with a charm Keverel placed on all steel they carried. Lucan and Remy came next, then Kithri, with Paelias and Keverel acting as rear guard. When they were just inside the door, Biri-Daar stopped and said softly, “Kithri. Quick, back to the top of the stairs. Is the tiefling still there?”
She vanished and returned a moment later, her coming and going nearly soundless. “No sign of him.”
“Too bad,” Lucan said. “We could have used the company.”
Paelias stopped. “Didn’t you just-”
“One thing you can always count on from Lucan,” Kithri said, “is that he’ll be contrary.”
“Quiet,” Biri-Daar said. They moved forward into the tomb.
The first passage was long and straight and angled slightly downward. The stone under their feet was dry, the air in their lungs musty with an odd hint of spices scattered centuries ago and never dispersed by wind or age. Light from their armor and ready blades suffused the passage with a glow bright enough to illuminate but not blind. On the smooth bedrock of the walls, the story of the building of the Crow Road unfolded in a painting that stretched from entry to a plastered-over doorway at the passage’s end.
“Any sign?” Biri-Daar asked quietly.
“None I can find,” Paelias said. Keverel shook his head. Kithri darted forward to look for the kind of mechanical ambush that even the most skilled magic never found. She, too, backed away without finding anything.
Biri-Daar gave the plaster an experimental tap. All of them could hear how hollow a sound it made. She hit it again with a forearm, sending a cloud of dust rolling along the floor and leaving a visible dent in the door. Lucan punched a hole through where she had hit it and he peered into the darkness on the other side. “Antechamber,” he said. Then he sneezed.
Remy and Biri-Daar broke out a hole big enough to step through, covering themselves with choking dust that picked up the magical glow. The effect was of walking into a faintly luminescent fog as they passed into the antechamber and saw what lay within. Like many prominent personages who built themselves extravagant tombs, the Road-builder had wanted his to reflect his station and achievements in life. So in the antechamber were arranged the tools and materials of exploration and roadbuilding. In wall sconces, bejeweled surveyor’s tools gleamed next to hanging picks and shovels of solid gold. On the ceiling, a sky map was picked out in diamonds.
Along the walls below the sconces, rows of shining silver wheelbarrows were piled high with uncut gems and chunks of ore representing debris. “Amazing,” Lucan said.
“Delightful, I would say,” Paelias added. He picked up an uncut ruby the size of an acorn. “Hard to believe nobody ever bothered to come find this before.”
A distant boom echoed in the chamber and down the hall. All of them looked back toward the tomb entrance, which was much too far away to see directly. “Our tiefling friend?” Kithri wondered.
Another boom came, and the rumble of what sounded like a collapse. “Well,” Lucan said to Biri-Daar. “I hope you’re right that we can get to the Keep from inside here. Now how were we going to get out of the Keep?”
“One thing at a time,” Biri-Daar said. She was still looking back to the entry passage, and she drew her sword. The rest armed themselves as well, as the guardians of the Road-builder’s tomb began to pour into the antechamber.
They were long dead, the last crew to work on the Crow Road, buried with the Road-builder instead of beneath the stones of his road. Their bodies were held together by the posthumous strength of his magic-some had once been human, others dwarves, even a few tieflings and orcs among them. They thronged in the entry hall, dully responsive to their single imperative: to destroy the intruders.
And, incredibly, to rebuild the tomb. As Paelias flung a searing splash of light onto the ceiling, they saw back toward the entrance that some of the reanimated workers were already moving stones and mixing mortar from the dust of the floor and the black fluids of their own bodies. How many times had this happened before? “I revise my earlier statement,” Paelias said. “Instead, I choose to find it hard to believe that anyone ever survived this to get into the Keep.”
“Hold them!” Keverel cried out suddenly, as within the antechamber more walking dead emerged from the stones of the walls. He forced them back with the channeled power of Erathis, blinding and confusing them, as the rest of the party dug for their lives. They used the picks and shovels and mauls, but gold was a poor material for weapons-heavy and soft and slippery in the hands of the half-decayed guardians. A heavy sledgehammer, its striking face set with a single great emerald, went over Remy’s head and rang against the wall, cracking the gem and bending the hammer’s handle. Remy fi
rst struck off the hands holding the hammer, then the head of the animated corpse. But right behind it loomed a great hulking corpse of what must have been an ogre in life, swinging a pick whose head was as long as Remy was tall. Keverel was smashing his way through the others, breaking them apart and crushing the skulls to make sure.
At the antechamber’s entrance, Biri-Daar and Lucan and Paelias made a wall too strong for the surge of undead to break. The corpses died again and again, some of them coming back to life beneath the marching feet of their successors only to be cut down again as soon as they could rise. It was going to be up to Remy to deal with the undead ogre.
It brought its great pick down, burying it a foot into the stone floor as Remy skipped aside and hacked at its arm. Once, twice, three times he struck as the great hulking zombie worked the pick free. On the third blow, he severed its arm just above the elbow. It swung the stump at him, spraying him with a foul black fluid. With its other hand it got the pick free and pivoted to gut him with a sideways swipe.
Remy ducked under it and dragged his blade along the underside of its wrist, cutting it to the bone. The pick flew from its hand and crashed into the other wall, crushing a smaller zombie against the row of wheelbarrows. The ogre’s severed arm still clung to the pick handle. It reached for Remy, its eyes infernally alight.
And then one of them went out, its light replaced by the gentle gleam of Keverel’s magic imbuing the steel haft of one of Kithri’s throwing knives. A moment later, the same happened to its other eye. Remy closed, swinging his sword as if cutting down a tree. He chopped through one of its legs and danced back as it fell. Behind him he heard Biri-Daar and Lucan shouting about something but he could not turn to see what it was; as the zombie hulk hit the ground, he struck again and again at its blinded head, eventually hacking away part of its skull and brain. Tremors ran through it, subsiding into silence.
Remy turned to see that everyone else had stopped fighting as well. All visible corpses were just that-corpses. Keverel was whispering blessings over them to permanently release those that had been rising again.