Authors: Bruce R. Cordell
“We’ve just descended below the water level,” Nogah commented. “If we were outside, we’d be swimming now.” She said this last bit somewhat wistfully.
“And I’d have turned back,” replied Seren.
The stairs continued their descent, mercifully clear of water.
Past a switchback, the stairs leveled into another straight passage. The passage was slightly narrower than the stairs, and the lights Were less frequent.
The sound of falling water slowly grew, as did Seren’s frown.
The tunnel opened into a wide space lit by a trio of sculpted kuo-toa busts some thirty or forty feet above. The area was dominated by a central pool, around which several shrub-like plants grew. An aroma that mingled honey and blueberry hinted at flowers, though Japheth spied no blooms. A dry platform rose marginally above the water’s surface at the pool’s center. Bones lay scattered upon the platform, along with bits of cloth, spilled coins, and other objects. On the far side of the pool, Japheth discerned an archway leading into a completely lightless passage.
Ripples dappled the pool. Thoster advanced alone and gazed down. “Albino fish, everywhere,” he reported, “and a spiral staircase, drowned beneath the pool. It descends a long way…”
“It is not a pool, it is our path,” intoned the ex-whip.
“What!” exclaimed Seren. “I told you I cannot and will not swim!”
“Don’t you have a spell to give yourself gills?” asked the first mate, Nyrotha, his voice hoarse from disuse.
The wizard replied, “Not since the Spellplague, damn it all! I’m heading back to the ship. I’m done with this foolish expedition!”
The ex-whip strode to stand next to Thoster, then looked back to regard the rest of them. She said, “Fear not. You may descend these stairs without drowning. The pale fish, see them? They are rune-charged creatures. In their presence, you could walk the depths of the sea floor as if strolling through a green meadow.”
“Really?” Seren’s interest in magical lore battled with her anger at the thought of drowning. Anger that cloaked healthy fear, Japheth figured.
Seren and the warlock both eased up to the pool’s edge, Japheth saw eyeless slivers darting about, each pulsing with pale radiance. Seren extended a hand, her brow furrowed with concentration. Then she smiled. She reported, J “How extraordinary! I’ll have to take a few of these with me after”
A twinkle of greenish light wrenched Japheth’s attention up. Concern struggled to pierce his dust daze. He should probably warn the others. When they approached the pool, he had I vaguely noticed several figures on the garden’s periphery, hiding in the shadows. Perhaps the figures were not mere statuary as he’d first assumed. Perhaps…
Crossbows snapped. Twin bolts appeared in Nogah’s body, one in her chest, the other protruding crazily from one eye. An acrid odor curled Japheth’s nose even as the whip began to scream. Poison! 1
Nyrotha and Thoster dropped as quarrels buzzed the space formerly occupied by their heads. A third struck Thoster in the shoulder, but he made no sound. Seren stood unmoving, shock momentarily freezing her limbs, but no quarrels found her. Japheth felt a faint tug as two or three bolts struck his cloak, without conscious direction from the warlock, the black folds of his garment deflected the bolts onto a trajectory beyond the world, one that ended in the darkness of a bat-filled cavern.
His pulse quickened, and the lackadaisical demeanor lent him by the dust shattered. Japheth gasped, “Ambush!” Too late.
Someone grabbed him, pulled him clear. A line of coruscating acid just missed him. “Thank you,” he mumbled, assuming his rescuer was Anusha’s dream.
The ex-whip yelled, her voice shaking with pain, “Gethshemeth knew!”
A granite block boomed down from the ceiling, neatly filling the passage they’d used to enter the strange garden hollow. The light fell by half.
More figures scurried around the periphery of the chamber. All kuo-toa except for onea giant quadruped with too many limbs and skin darker than coal. Were those wings unfurling, and a serpent’s tail? It was hard to make out through the odd growths surrounding the pool. It loosed a primal hunting scream that tried to root them all in place with fear alone.
“The pool! Into the pool,” gurgled Nogah.
As if on cue, the rippled water disgorged a blob of bluish green slime. The amorphous mass poured forward, extruding long pseudopods ending in starfish-like appendages of goo.
“Nogah,” said Thoster, rising, “what…”
The ex-whip fell to her knees, staring dumbly down with one good eye at the blood-soaked bolt buried in her chest. “My species… will become as these? How could I have been so blind? The Dreamheart poisoned my mind! Sea Mother, forgive”
She coughed a spray of vicious fluid, shivered as if devil-possessed, then collapsed. Nogah lay without breath on the beslimed flagstone.
Thoster tore the quarrel from his shoulder with hardly a flinch. The air around him seemed to burn, and he drew his clicking, whirring blade.
Nyrotha stumbled upright and began to hack at the tentacle-like streamers of slime. His eyes bulged, and spittle flecked his lips. A pseudopod lanced forward. The flayed grasping pad struck the man’s face full on, sealing his voice behind a gag of putrescent ooze.
Flesh and blood began to boil under the grasp. In moments, there was only bone and cartilage where Nyrotha’s face had been.
Disgust and stomach-churning terror dispersed the last of Japheth’s dust haze. He grabbed for Seren’s and Thoster’s shoulders, one in each hand, and tried to propel them around the pool toward the arched passage he’d spied upon entering. “This way, or we all die!” he yelled. Seren was weakly accommodating in his grip, but Thoster shrugged away.
Savage, small-eyed kuo-toa converged from all sides. Japheth grabbed the captain again, mouthing a spell as he did so. They all fell into his cloak.
And immediately appeared on the opposite side of the pool, as if having made a single step. A warlock’s transpositionthe spell had only strength enough to move him, and him alone, hardly more than ten paces. But with the Lord of Bats’s own skin wrapping his body, he was able to bring others along.
“Now follow me!”
Japheth ran into the darkness, Thoster and Seren at his heels. Behind, a great roar of fury drowned out the gurgling of slime-digesting flesh.
The tunnel punched downward into stone-lined darkness.
Behind him came the swish of the wizard’s slippers, and Captain Thoster’s iron boot tips ringing on the stone floor. Following them, monsters scrabbled and shrieked.
Japheth uttered three fell words, and his vision returned, though distant objects remained cloaked in black haze. He said, “I can find”
The tunnel beneath their feet fractured. They plunged into ice-cold saltwater.
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Plague-wrought Land, Vilhon Wilds
City-sized blocks of granite churned within the crater, forming a vortex that sucked air and anything unfortunate enough to fall within its grinding grasp. The clamor of stone on stone was a physical thing. The sound threatened to dislodge Raidon Kane from the wooden span that somehow, even without visible supports, bridged the ravenous gap.
Streamers of blue fire scudded across the sky, like rivulets of water finding their way down a cliff side. Or, Raidon thought, like blue veins pulsing close under the skin of a giant’s fleshy back.
The monk blinked away the unwelcome image and fixed his attention on his companions.
“Well? What have you decided? Leave the bridge here or continue across the vortex?”
Finara, the gray-haired former mage, shook her head with exaggerated care. “Both choices could prove fatal. I cannot decide.”
“I can!” broke in the youth. “The bridge, we stay on the bridge! The path is safe, up to its terminuswe all know this to be true!”
“The Granite Vortex has moved. That is a change. Other things may be different too,” explained Finara. “Nothing is certain here.”
“We stay on the bridge,” Hadyn repeated, defiance hardening his face.
Raidon considered. He couldn’t predict which route was safer. If the bridge spanned the horrendous gap, they should be able to do the same by staying on it. Perhaps leaving the bridge sooner than necessary was the worst choice. He said, “Hold tight to the handrails as we cross. The vibration will try to shake you to a long fall.”
They passed over the vast empty gulf, ringed by swirling stones whose fluid mobility and resounding impacts attempted to knock them physically from their footing and mentally from their belief in the world’s comprehensibility.
Though he owed his traveling companions nothing, the monk found himself periodically glancing back to monitor their progress. They were nearly across when Raidon saw a portion of the old wood railing give way beneath Hadyn’s desperate clutch.
Hadyn pitched out over the chasm, his face convulsing in terror. The ringing granite crashes blotted out his scream.
Raidon lunged for the man’s hand. His fingers found the flailing youth’s wrist. The weight yanked the monk down to his chest against the bridge’s wooden slats. Pain jangled up his arm. Raidon gritted his teeth and retained his hold.
Hadyn dangled over the churning maw, his eyes fixed on Raidon’s, pleading. Save me, they said.
The monk began to haul Hadyn up. From the periphery of his vision, Raidon noticed a single streamer of blue fire. Its flow dipped uncomfortably close to the bridge. The streamer bucked, became erratic, and dispersed into disconnected globules of blue fire.
A second streamer twisted out of the sky and speared the youth in the chest.
Regardless of its flickering, flame-like guise, it wasn’t fire. The radiance spreading across the youth’s suddenly convulsing body was naked, potent, active spellplague. It was a germ that infected earth and stone, flesh and blood, magic, and even space itself.
Raidon overrode his first instinct to let go.
The youth’s convulsions redoubled. His skin began to glow blue. Hadyn’s eyes gleamed like those in the grip of a divine vision. His hair whipped and sawed as though underwater. Unaccountably, he grew heavier.
Muscle suddenly rippled on Hadyn’s forearms, shoulders, and chest. The youth’s frame lengthened, as if to accommodate even more strength, and yet more muscle rolled onto him. The pressure of Hadyn’s grip on Raidon’s hand doubled, and then redoubled. Raidon heard the bones in his hand grind together.
“I feel… strong!” yelled Hadyn.
Then the youth screamed.
Already Hadyn’s boots were a blaze of fire, and Raidon could see naked bones in his lower legs. White sticks burning. His upper legs were like translucent wax melting inside a stone oven. Or like Hadyn was a candle, and spellplague, the flame.
In three more heartbeats, Hadyn was consumed. Burning ash dispersed in the wind.
Raidon rose, looked into Finara’s terrified eyes. He didn’t really see her.
His mind remained fixed on Hadyn’s death. Or, more accurately, the manner of his death. A vision of the dissolving caravan chief who died so long ago assaulted him for the hundredth time. As always, he couldn’t help wondering if Ailyn had perished similarly. Had she screamed like Hadyn? Had she called his name? Or cursed it?
The monk’s gritted teeth couldn’t restrain the groan at the image of Ailyn’s death clawing its way into his mind.
If he wanted to end that personal misery, now would be an easy time to do it. Just a step or two…
No. The weakling’s way was not his, no matter the provocation, even his own failure to follow through on his promise to protect Ailyn. He let the images flow away from him like a river until his mind was empty. Let focus be his only emotion.
The sound of the Granite Vortex returned. The past faded, for the moment.
Ahead, the bridge terminated in a meadow of tall, scarlet grass strewn with boulders. The boulders didn’t actually rest in the grass; each hovered a foot or two off the ground. Some were stationary, but several drifted in random directions. By the scars each bore, it seemed likely they’d all survived impacts.
Raidon checked the map. Some previous traveler called the meadow Cyric’s Table. According to the legend, their route required they leave the bridge and pass through it until they reached the roots of something labeled Grandmother Ash. Glancing up, the monk spied a fantastically tall tree in the misty distance. Its topmost branches bore a canopy of blue fire.
He motioned with his head to the bridge terminus.
Finara stood rooted in place, morose and muddy-eyed. She clutched her own copy of the map in one hand; the other held tight to the burro’s reins.
“I can’t do it, Raidon. I can’t step off the bridge. Hadyn was… The odds are against me.”
He nodded.
She looked at him, her eyes beseeching him for words of encouragement. He had none. He replied, “Perhaps this is not your day.”
Tears broke from her left eye, but she nodded as relief struggled with anguish and fear.
“Gods willing, I will see you back in Ormpetarr in three days,” she said. “If you return with a spellscar, then I know it is possible and not merely a tale told to bilk the incredulous.”
Raidon clasped her shoulder, then turned to regard his path. He excised concern for her safe trip back from his consciousness.
A drifting cube obscured “the distant tree for a moment. Above, a jagged trail of blue lightning split the sky, sending a flash across the plain. Blinking away the after-image, Raidon left the bridge and entered the plain of red grass. He did not look back.
The long-bladed, crimson grass crunched beneath his feet. The boulders drifted like tiny versions of the earthmote he’d seen west of Nathlekh. Unlike that massive air island, these moved and left wakes of bluish radiance. He wondered if the masses were solidified spellplague. He avoided the darting masses with the diligence they deserved.
He left the unmoored rocks behind and reached the edges of the exposed, tangled root mass. The field of burrowing roots, stretched perhaps a mile, maybe more, surrounding the tree in the distance. He’d misjudged the tree’s size. It was larger than he’d thought. At least no grass grew between the great, fingerlike roots that clutched at the earth so fiercely. He studied the roots for a time. It seemed they slowly twined and churned the earth, moving, but only as quickly as earthworms through soil.