easily imagine tiny gears whirring in his head as he struggled to find a rhyme for “fungus.”
“Gharad’zul,” Xujil supplied, “the Forest of Decay.”
“Lovely,” Sabira said. “How fast can you get us through it?” She didn’t even like mushrooms in her food; she certainly didn’t relish the prospect of traipsing around the gigantic fungi like tiny garden bugs begging to be squashed.
“As fast as your people can move,” the drow replied, and Sabira thought she detected a hint of alacrity in his voice. Considering the guide could travel much faster through his native environs without them, she supposed it was warranted. That didn’t make it any less annoying.
“Well, let’s put word to deed and see, then, shall we?”
The drow nodded and headed off at a brisk pace, skirting the swampy area. Bubbles rose from the surface, trailing them as they walked, but nothing emerged to confront them. Xujil led them under the forest canopy, which was really a series of overlapping mushroom caps with gills the size of the mainmast on a House Lyrandar galleon. Smaller mushrooms the height of a man grew about the trunks of the fungal trees and more of the variegated luminous fungus carpeted the forest floor like moss. Fluffy spores floated in the air, disturbed by their passing, and Sabira didn’t have to tell the others to cover their noses and mouths to keep from inhaling them. Who knew what the tiny things might begin to grow once inside a humanoid host? Sabira suppressed a shudder just thinking about it.
The forest was eerily quiet. No birds trilled in the nonexistent branches and no animals scampered through the absent underbrush. Even their footsteps were muffled, sloughing through wet fungus instead of crunching over pine needles or twigs. The air was stagnant and smelled of sweet rot and old dirt. Sabira found herself picking up her pace almost unconsciously, and the others followed suit, casting wary glances about them as they hastened through the alien woods.
Before long, she began to hear a soft, rhythmic sound. It started so gradually that she didn’t mark it at first, but when she found herself swallowing several times to moisten a suddenly dry palate, she realized what it must be.
“Are those… waves?”
Just as she asked, they broke free of the woods and found themselves standing on the rocky shores of a vast lake that stretched out into darkness. Black water lapped sluggishly at the jagged beach, driven by some unseen force out upon its impenetrable surface.
Xujil had mentioned traversing a body of water with Tilde’s group, but he hadn’t quite conveyed the size of said body. Sabira had been expecting a river like the one in Trent’s Well, or, at most, a pond. Nothing like this.
Sabira scanned the shoreline, looking for a way across and coming up empty. It was a dead end.
She rounded on their guide, suspicion flaring.
“You were supposed to lead us to Tilde. Unless the city she’s being held in is underwater, you’ve got some explaining to do.” She reached back to unharness her urgrosh. “ Now.”
“It is well you reach for your axe, Marshal,” Xujil replied. “You will need it.”
Was the drow actually threatening her?
He continued on, unperturbed by either her anger or the shard axe now in her grasp.
“There is a reason this path has remained untrodden by the surface-dwellers, save the sorceress and her men. They do not know the secret of crossing the sunless seas.” He paused, finally seeming to understand that he was in danger. “I do.”
Sabira lowered her weapon slightly, eyes narrowing.
“Continue.”
Xujil pointed behind her.
“That is how we cross.”
Turning, it took her a moment to see what he meant. A stand of mushrooms as tall as the mayor’s house sprouted from a nearby inlet. Two of the mushrooms lay on their sides, felled not by rot, but by blades. Their enormous caps were missing.
When she turned back to him, the drow’s smile hinted at smugness.
“We sail.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Far, Barrakas 27, 998 YK
Tarath Marad, Xen’drik.
They set to work hacking at the stem of another of the giant mushrooms, Sabira with her urgrosh and the others with small hand axes from their packs. Xujil, as usual, stood aloof. Zi watched from afar as well, his strength not lying in his woodcutting skills.
The mushroom’s stem was thick and rubbery, and even the adamantine blade of Sabira’s shard axe had some difficulty chopping through the odd pseudoflesh. The more mundane axes had even greater trouble, and it took the five of them working in concert to bring the towering fungus down. The sound of their blades hacking into the tough stem echoed off the cavern walls, and when the fungal tree fell, the noise ricocheted back at them like a distant avalanche.
“Well, that’s going to attract some attention,” Sabira commented as she and the others moved toward the cap to begin detaching it and hollowing it out. Skraad, who’d been doing double duty with an axe in both hands, hung back for a moment, catching his breath.
“Oh, no, I’m sure this cavern is ‘vacant,’ just like the last one was,” Greddark replied acerbically, casting a dark look over at the drow as they quickly severed the cap and began removing the planklike gills. The dwarf, not the most trusting of souls by nature, had become downright hostile toward Xujil ever since the guide had pulled his disappearing act back in the chitines’ cavern. In the Holds, the words “coward” and “welcher” were synonymous, and there was no more vile insult. The drow was lucky Greddark hadn’t already gutted him, just on principle.
“Technically, the cave was vacant when we entered. The chitines were likely attracted by the sound of our battle with Thecla’s men,” Jester offered from the other side of the felled trunk. Unlike the others, his voice betrayed no sign of strain, and no sweat touched his metal brow. Sabira wished, not for the first time, that Guisarme was still with them. She wondered if he’d made it back to Stormreach, and if so, if the artificers there had been able to repair him.
“Whose side are you on?” the dwarf growled, but Sabira ignored him, her mind elsewhere. Thoughts of the fallen warforged led inevitably to Laven and Glynn. Two more wounded under her command.
Wounded, but still alive, she reminded herself. According to Xujil, she was doing better than Tilde had at this point, and with fewer resources from the outset. Sabira supposed she should take some sort of pride in that fact, but such self-congratulation rang hollow and false. She couldn’t help feeling that if she’d been a better leader, her three missing companions would still be with them.
Then again, remembering the horrors of the past week, and the voice in the crawlway, they were probably better off where they were.
“Keep an eye out for-” she began, turning to speak to Zi. As she did, there was a whoosh as something hot blasted past her, followed by a scream that did not stop.
Whirling, she saw Skraad, his body engulfed in eldritch fire. Behind him, two man-sized mushrooms advanced on fleshy, leglike stalks, tiny eyes glowing within the round caps that served as their heads. Huge, bulbous arms sheathed in what looked like spine-covered greaves slammed down on him from either side, stabbing into the burning orc as he struggled frantically to put out the licking flames.
She looked back over at Zi, wondering how the wizard could have missed the mark so badly, only to see the bald man in the grip of another walking mushroom, this one with long, tentacle-like arms that were wrapped around his throat, squeezing. The wizard’s mouth worked soundlessly as he clawed at his neck, trying to free himself long enough to speak another spell. As Sabira watched, another shambling fungus stepped forward, driving a spiny staff into Zi’s gut, and pulling it away bloody.
“Myconids!” Xujil shouted. “Get the boat into the water! They cannot follow us there!”
The drow ran lightly along the shore to the severed cap and began pulling it out toward the lake, Jester and
