Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor (single books) Page 5

  Kestrel waited for someone else to enter first. She might have agreed to accompany these misguided do-gooders on their suicide mission, but she had no plans to stick her neck out an inch further than she had to. She'd do what she could to keep the party alive and intact-thus improving her own chances of survival-but her commitment ended there.

  "Go ahead, Corran," she prompted. The holy knight seemed to have appointed himself the leader of their little group anyway. "I'll be right behind you."

  "I assume that's supposed to reassure me," he said, "but I can't help wondering if I'll feel a knife in my back."

  Don't tempt me, she thought. Aloud she said, "Only if you keep us standing here much longer. The sooner we go in, the sooner we get this over with."

  "Let us enter, then." Sword in hand, Corran strode forward into the flickering torchlight "May Tyr guide our steps-and our hearts."

  "Whatever."

  The two women entered after the paladin, with Durwyn bringing up the rear. Corran chose the path that broke off to the right Kestrel thought they should have paused at the fork and listened for clues to what lay ahead in each direction, but she didn't care enough to speak up, and she didn't feel like arguing with him this early in the morning. If he wanted to believe that his god guided his steps, that was fine with her-she just wished he and Durwyn would make less noise clanking around the stone corridor in their armor. They must have alerted the entire undercity population to their presence already.

  When they reached the third fork, she couldn't hold her tongue anymore. "Do you have any idea where you're going?" she asked.

  He stopped, turning to face her. "Do you?"

  "No, but it might help to listen ahead instead of just parading through." No sooner had she spoken than she thought she heard a voice murmuring in the passage to their right.

  He opened his mouth to respond, but she covered it with her hand. "Hush!" She cocked her head, trying to make out the words.

  "What do you hear?" Ghleanna whispered.

  It was a low, guttural voice. An orc? Probably, but she wanted to find out for sure. "Wait here." At the mage's raised brows, she added, "I won't go far."

  She crept down the right passageway, moving soundlessly and keeping to the shadows created by the flickering torchlight. After a few dozen yards, she still couldn't see the speakers-she'd determined there were two of them- but she could hear them clearly, and the low rumble of many voices still further down the corridor.

  "Ugly wizard need more guards. Blood Spear Tribe come today. Meet here later."

  "Broken Skull Tribe show who boss."

  "No! Ugly wizard say no fight each other."

  They were orcs, all right. Either that, or the stupidest-sounding humans she'd ever overheard. She padded back to the fork, then trod about thirty yards down the other passage. She held her breath and listened closely but heard nothing but the crackle of torches. She returned to the group.

  "A couple tribes of orcs are gathering in the right passage," she said, deliberately leaving out the mention of the "ugly wizard"-one of the scarred mages they'd heard about? Knowing Corran, he would want to confront the spellcaster immediately. "I vote we go to the left."

  The others concurred. They headed down the left corridor, passing several solidly built wooden doors inscribed with glyphs-all of them different, none of them recognizable to anyone in the party. Kestrel tried to pick the locks of the first two doors, but discovered them magically, not mechanically, sealed.

  "They must require those other Words of Opening the clerics talked about," Durwyn said.

  "You think?" Kestrel retorted. Leave it to Durwyn to state the obvious.

  Several hundred yards farther, they came upon a doorway that glittered in the torchlight as they approached, as if it held a door of glass. When they reached it, they discovered the surface thick with frost and crystals.

  Ghleanna extended her hand to touch the surface. "It's ice. A solid sheet of ice."

  "Strange," Kestrel said. "I wonder what's inside?"

  Durwyn hefted his axe. "Let's find out." Before Kestrel could stop him, he swung the axe so hard it created an ear-splitting crash that echoed throughout the passageway. A huge web of cracks spread across the ice from the center of his strike. A second blow sent large chunks of ice flying into the room beyond.

  Kestrel grabbed his arm before he could swing again. She fought to keep her voice muted. "What in the Abyss are you doing?" she hissed. "Every orc in this dungeon will hear you!"

  Confusion spread across Durwyn's features. "I thought you wanted to-"

  "He might as well finish now," Corran said. "One more blow, and we'll be able to get through."

  Durwyn looked to Kestrel as if for permission. Corran was right-if breaking through was going to attract attention from the orcs, the alarm had already sounded. She supposed it was even possible that they were far enough away that the orcs wouldn't be able to determine the origin of the noise. Besides, for all they knew, the path to the House of Gems might lie beyond this frozen doorway. She shrugged her reluctant assent.

  The warrior struck a third time, shattering enough of the door to create a man-sized hole. They kicked aside hunks and shards of ice, then grabbed a torch from one of the wall sconces. Corran thrust it through the opening and peered in.

  "It's a small room," he said. "Maybe ten or twelve feet square. Looks like there's no one inside." He crawled through, followed by the others.

  Once inside, Kestrel shivered with cold. In the center of the room-taking up most of the room, in fact-was a large circular rune inscribed on the stone floor. Its intricate knot-work pattern was outlined in white frost. In the center, about waist-high, floated a golden sphere encrusted with icicles.

  She crossed to the levitating sphere, withdrew one of her daggers, and prodded it. The sphere did not move. She tapped harder, but her effort yielded only the clank of steel against ice. Finally, she put the dagger away and pushed against the sphere with all her strength. It felt as icy as it looked, but it would not budge.

  "Let me help," Durwyn offered. The big warrior threw all of his weight against the floating object, but it remained just as firmly in place.

  "I give up," Kestrel said. She glanced at their other companions. Ghleanna knelt at the edge of the rune, closely examining it. Corran stood facing one of the walls, his back to the group.

  "Ghleanna, what do you suppose this is?" the paladin asked.

  The mage approached, as did Kestrel and Durwyn. The wall held an engraved formation of four diamond shapes arranged in a column, with a vertical line bisecting them. A ruby was embedded in the lowest point of the bottom diamond.

  "I've never seen its like before," Ghleanna said.

  Corran traced the edge of the ruby with his index finger. "I tried removing the gem, but it's wedged in there pretty tight."

  "Not exactly your area of expertise, I imagine," said Kestrel. "Let me try." She removed a pointed metal file from one of her belt pouches and tried to insert it between the gem and the wall to pry out the ruby. Despite her best efforts, the stone remained firmly in place-now surrounded by scratch marks.

  "Apparently not your area of expertise either," Corran remarked.

  She shot him a dirty look. The failure of her thieving skills bothered her enough-she didn't need Sir Self-Righteous rubbing it in. "It must be magically frozen in place, like everything else in this room," she said stiffly. "Otherwise I would have had no problem removing it."

  Ghleanna offered to use sorcery in hopes of learning more about the room, but all agreed her spells were better saved for whatever lay ahead than to merely satisfy curiosity. "I'm sure this room isn't the only mysterious thing we'll encounter in Myth Drannor," Corran said.

  Kestrel hoped the others proved this benign.

  After a while, the party entered an area of the dungeons that appeared less frequented by the orcs. Fewer torches lined these walls, and many of them had sputtered out or been extinguished. The light became dim enough that Cor
ran removed one of the unlit torches from its sconce, lighted it off the next burning torch they came upon, and carried it with them. Soon, the passageway's illumination grew so bad that the others followed suit.

  As they neared a chamber with an open doorway, a sudden voice from within startled them. "Light? Oh-whoever you are, I beseech you! Please bring your light this way!"

  They exchanged glances, knowing that their torches would reveal them to the speaker well before they could see him.

  "A trap?" Kestrel mouthed.

  "I don't think so," Corran responded softly. "If he means to ambush us, why alert us to his presence?" More loudly, he called out, "We're on our way."

  Corran entered the chamber first. "Oh!"

  "What?" Kestrel darted in after him. "Oh!" she echoed. "Well, I'll be damned…"

  In the corner of the room stood a man-or at least, half a man. He looked ordinary enough from the torso up, with a medium build, long brown hair, and penetrating dark eyes. From the waist down, the unfortunate fellow was embedded in an enormous boulder. His body appeared to simply end, consumed by the rock.

  Behind her, Kestrel heard Durwyn and Ghleanna enter. The warrior gasped. "What happened to you?"

  "If you can believe it, a lovers' quarrel," the man responded. "I was exploring these dungeons with my fiancee, a fellow sorcerer, when we fell into an argument. The subject was so trivial that I can't even remember what the fight was about, but in the heat of the moment I renounced my love for Ozama. She flew into a rage and cast a spell that sealed me in this boulder until I solved a riddle:

  A quest of love

  Ends with me,

  Yet I am made

  Endlessly.

  If I drop,

  I say my name,

  If I touch rock,

  Freedom gain."

  Kestrel nearly snorted. "That old thing? Your sweetheart changed the ending, but the first half of it must have circulated through half the taverns between here and Waterdeep last year."

  "And all the courts the year before," Corran added.

  The man's face lit up, his eyes darting from one party member to the next. "Do you really know the answer?"

  "A ring," Durwyn said.

  Kestrel crossed the room and tapped her silver ring against the rock. A mighty crack! rent the air as the boulder broke into pieces. The long-trapped wizard immediately fell to his knees, his legs unused to supporting his weight.

  "A ring," he murmured, rubbing the atrophied muscles of his calves through the fabric of his purple robes. "So much lost time over such a simple answer." He remained absorbed in his own thoughts, an expression of regret settling onto his angular face. His musings, however, lasted but a few moments before he left the mournful thoughts behind and addressed the foursome. "My name is Jarial. Words aren't enough to thank you for releasing me."

  Corran introduced the party, then asked how long Jarial had been trapped in the boulder.

  "Since the Year of the Arch-1353 by the Dale calendar," he said. "What year is it now? There's no way to tell time in here."

  "The Year of the Gauntlet. 1369." Kestrel soberly studied him. Even though Jarial was a sorcerer, she felt sorry for him wasting so much of his life trapped alone in the darkness. He appeared only twenty or so, but he had to be much older. And the riddle that had imprisoned him had become so common while he endured endless isolation-even Durwyn had known the answer! "You mean this Ozama woman just left you down here for sixteen years and never came back?"

  "I believe she meant to return," Jarial said. "Something must have happened to her. She was angry but not vindictive enough to leave me here forever. We came here in the first place seeking a magical item called the Wizard's Torc, said to lie in the lair of a dark naga somewhere in these dungeons. I fear she continued looking for it alone and met with misfortune."

  "Or found it and left you here to rot while she kept it for herself," Kestrel said. "How did you survive, anyway? I mean, excuse me for asking, but why didn't you starve to death, or get killed by the creatures dwelling down here?" She noted that his jaw was not even roughened by stubble, nor his clothes frayed by sixteen years of constant wear.

  "Ozama's spell kept me safe from the ravages of time and enemies," Jarial said. "Though I did begin to fear I would go mad. At first, of course, I pondered the riddle every waking moment. When no solution came to me, I shouted myself hoarse calling for help. That attracted the attention of some of the undercity's more unpleasant residents, who offered no aid but found it entertaining to come in here and torment me."

  Jarial's little-used voice sounded scratchy. The poor man was probably parched. Corran offered him some water, which the mage accepted gratefully.

  "You're a sorcerer," Kestrel prodded. "Couldn't you use magic to free yourself?"

  "Believe me, I tried! After going through all the spells I knew, I started devising new ones." Jarial smiled ruefully. "Though I had the satisfaction of using some of my mocking antagonists for target practice, I still couldn't gain my freedom." He continued kneading the muscles of his legs, trying to rub life back into them.

  "After giving up on using sorcery to free myself, I spent probably another year just saying aloud every word I could possibly think of, hoping to accidentally stumble on the answer. Obviously, that strategy proved ineffective as well. Eventually, I stopped bothering to even use magic to light this room. I'd just consigned myself to spending eternity here, alone in the darkness with only my own thoughts for company." The lonely sorcerer tried again to rise, but his legs remained too weak to support him.

  "Here, drink this." Ghleanna offered him a small vial of bluish liquid, one of the potions they had found on Athan's band. Faeril had identified it as a healing potion made of blueglow moss, a local plant renowned for its curative properties but now in short supply. "You'll never manage to massage away years of disuse."

  Jarial swallowed the dose and within minutes was able to walk around the chamber. When his stride had steadied, he held the foursome in his gaze. "I can't thank you enough," he said. "What quest brings you to these dungeons? You must let me aid you."

  Kestrel laughed humorlessly. He was welcome to take her place.

  The band, now five in number, continued through the maze of passages. Jarial thought he remembered the location of a stairway that led up into the hill of the acropolis, so at his suggestion the party backtracked to a previous fork and headed down a different corridor.

  A few yards down, light spilled out of a doorway. Within, they heard sounds of shuffling and sporadic muttering as if someone were talking to himself. Kestrel snuck ahead and peered inside.

  Nottle the peddler bent over an open trunk, rummaging through its contents. "An' what's this? Ah, yes! Dwarven weapons always fetch a good price."

  Kestrel blinked. The peddler was foraging through the dungeons as casually as if he were shopping in Phlan's marketplace. Was the little guy trying to get himself killed? She motioned to the others to join her, then entered the chamber. Engrossed in his scavenging, the halfling didn't even notice her.

  "Nottle, what are you doing here?"

  "Yiaah!" The peddler jumped about a foot. The short sword he'd been holding clattered back into the chest. "Jeepers! Ye scared me!"

  "Worse things than us could stroll into this room," Kestrel said as her companions entered. "How did you get in here?"

  "I saw ye folks unseal the door, and I follow'd ye in. Them elven clerics mean well an' all, but thanks t' them I ain't been able to git in here fer weeks-all the good stuff's nearly gone."

  The paladin shook his head in disbelief. "You're telling us this whole dungeon complex has been plundered in a matter of weeks?" Corran asked. "By whom?"

  "Everyone!" Nottle retrieved the short sword he'd dropped and added it to the collection of booty he evidently intended to abscond with. "Since them horrible phaerimm and alhoon have been run outta this part o'the city, all sortsa creatures come here to loot their old hoards. Why do ye think there's so many orcs about? It
's a great time to be a scavenger!"

  "Aren't you afraid for your safety?" Ghleanna asked.

  "No more'n usual." The peddler struggled into his overstuffed pack and picked up his lantern. "A bit o'danger comes with the trade. If I wanted to play it completely safe, I'd open a borin' little shop in Waterdeep. 'Sides, the orcs're some o'my best customers, so they pretty much leave me alone."

  "Orcs aren't the only things haunting these passageways," Jarial said. "I've seen zombies and-"

  "Oh, I can handle a few zombies." Nottle headed for the door. "Nice chattin' with ye folks again. Let me know if ye need anythin'!" With that, he was gone.

  All five of them stared after the peddler. "He's going to get himself killed," Durwyn said.

  Kestrel shrugged. "Better him than us." In a way, she envied the halfling. Were the need for stealth not so great on this misguided mission of theirs, she would have enjoyed looting these ruins right along with Nottle. But she could ill afford the noise of carrying too much plunder.

  As they filed out of the room, Kestrel heard Durwyn whisper to Jarial, "What's an alhoon?" She'd wondered the same thing herself at Nottle's first mention of them but hadn't wanted to admit ignorance.

  "An undead mind flayer," the mage said. "Horrible creatures with heads that look like an octopus. Between their psionic powers and wizard spells they're deadly opponents."

  "And the phaerimm?"

  "Extremely powerful magic-using creatures, nearly all teeth, claws, and tail. I saw plenty of them-and alhoon-in the time I was trapped down here, but as the peddler said, they just up and disappeared one day. It must have taken something awfully strong to drive them away."

  Kestrel didn't want to dwell on what that "something" might be. If it was the same creature-or creatures- responsible for creating the new Pool of Radiance, their mission was even more futile than she'd thought.