Slip blinked. 'You've been there?'
Twilight's suspicion deepened. 'I've heard of it,' she said, truthfully. 'I've passed through the Shining South.'
Slip nodded. 'Have you heard of Arvor Brightbrows?' she asked gleefully.
'No,' said Twilight. 'A relation?'
'He's me da-the march warden of Crimel,' said Slip brightly. 'And Denrin Lightstep Brightbrows? Revered Nurturer Hubin Sharpears?'
Twilight shrugged.
'Me brother, silly!' she exclaimed. 'An' me second cousin, thrice removed! He's a priest o' the Matriarch.'
Finally. Someone Twilight knew, of the divine variety. Yondalla, mother of the halflings. Slip's mistress.
'How about Nola Treestump?'
'Your mother?' Twilight guessed.
'The quirky druid who's spent too long in the woods!' Her eyes rolled and Slip scoffed. 'Obviously.'
'Obviously,' Twilight said.
Something flickered across Slip's face. 'Have you heard of Reeman Lightspinner?' she asked softly. 'Though his full name would be Reethelmanath Ballufguts Bumper Lightspinner the twenty-sixth.'
'Ah, no,' said Twilight. 'I've not.' She raised a brow. 'A halfling? With such a name?'
'A gnome,' Slip said wistfully. 'From Lantan. A magician- well, illusionist-brilliant. He and I were handfasted.' Her face turned up at the ceiling and softened.
That caught Twilight by surprise-a halfling, bound to a gnome? She had heard of humans and elves mating- experienced it on more than one occasion, in fact-but the little folk? Curious.
'I see,' said Twilight. 'You 'were' handfasted?'
A cloud passed over Slip's eyes then. 'It didn't work out.'
'Oh.' She ached suddenly for Lilten-his companionship, his wonderfully smothering embrace-and she shook her head to clear it.
Twilight realized Slip was still staring at her. She wondered if the little one could read her thoughts, so intently did she…
'Well, good morrow!' Slip said brightly.
With that, the halfling was off, scurrying toward the companions' camp as though she had never stopped. There was a story there, and Twilight's instincts told her it was important. She touched the Shroud about her neck, briefly.
Twilight watched, then went on her way, finding a good shadowed place and thanking providence she carried thareea cloths wrapped in her boot tops. Small comforts. From her belt of thieving supplies, she pulled out her hand mirror and looked at her face. Her eyes strained to hold up dark sacks and her features seemed shrunken- shallow.
She saw a smudge. A smear of blood across her cheek.
She looked closer, and there were two curls, almost like two snakes wrapped around each other.
Suppressing a shiver, Twilight wiped it away roughly.
The others were ready to go by the time Twilight returned. They ate a simple meal of white cheese and acorn wafers, along with a wine-colored jelly of mixed berries. When a spell of Taslin's filled up a set of waterskins, even Davoren grudgingly admitted the cleric's usefulness. Quietly.
The seven quickly found an exit. A set of stairs behind a half-collapsed wall led up to another level. Twilight wasn't sure why she hadn't noticed it earlier-perhaps she had just been distracted. As before, with caution, they crept up, Twilight and Slip in front, Gargan at the rear, the others in the middle. Asson hobbled, coughing. He made surprisingly little sound for one his age with such injuries, and Twilight respected that.
She could not dismiss a feeling of trepidation, as though they were being stalked. Something wriggled in the back of her mind: a frightening suspicion.
Halfling and elf passed through a half-open grate into a large, round chamber with corridors leading in six directions. Eerie light came from phosphorescent fungus that grew along the walls and ceiling. For a moment, she might have thought they were in the Underdark, but these tunnels were of human make.
Mad human, more like it. The room's architecture curved, dipped, and swayed. In its center and leading down the six corridors, the floor formed a trough that might once have held water but had long since gone dry. The channels' walls and gutters were stained brown and green, and not from paint.
'Sewers,' Twilight said.
'Really old sewers,' Slip corrected. 'Even the stink's gone. Well'-she sniffed the air and coughed-'the stink of the living.'
Indeed, a faint odor of old musk-more dust than rot- adulterated the stale air.
'True enough.' Seeing no ambush or traps, Twilight waved up the others.
If these passages were truly sewers, then no one had used them for scores, if not hundreds of years. Mottled brownish stains striped the walls, as though a great battle had splashed up a river of putrescence. The ceiling was caked with stains as well. All liquid was gone, leaving no traces but the stains. The dust showed disturbances, as if someone had walked the rooms not long ago.
Twilight pursed her lips in thought, trying to derive clues as to the nature of their prison. Either they had found an abandoned sector of sewers, cut off from the main system for a long period, or they had found imprisonment in a long abandoned city. A ghost city? But what manner of necropolis included a magically altered, yet very much alive troll guardian?
Taslin and the others examined the hexagonal layout. Six corridors branched from the room, one leading from each corner. Most of the tunnels were blocked by rubble, leaving only two remotely passable. The tunnels were more or less straight, compared to the curving architecture.
Gargan pointed and spoke a word in his deep-throated language.
'What is it?' Twilight asked.
'He means, I believe,' said Taslin. 'To point us north.'
Twilight eyed her suspiciously. 'How did you-?'
Davoren misinterpreted her question. 'What difference does it make which direction is which?' he asked. 'Or do you know which way to go, leader?'
'I never said I did,' Twilight replied. 'We go east.' She gestured and headed in her chosen direction, moving quickly away from any possible protest.
'Why east?' Liet asked as she strode toward that tunnel.
'Ever onward,' Twilight murmured. 'Ever away.'
The others followed, keeping guard. No horrors like the wights lunged from the shadows, but Twilight kept the band on the lookout for ambushes and roving dangers. They reached a second chamber where more tunnels branched out, continuing the bizarre layout of the sewers. Twilight split the group, taking Davoren and Slip while she sent the others under Taslin. Though Twilight was reluctant to show favoritism toward the priestess over the warlock, Taslin was the only one she trusted-and then only halfway.
Working together, stalking cautiously but quickly through the rooms in their immediate vicinity, the adventurers got more of a sense of their surroundings.
It took the entire day.
The sewer system seemed to stretch forever in all directions, and nowhere could they find a way up or out. Many times, a black disk of metal like a hatch was seen in the ceiling, but they saw no way through. Even Gargan, empowered with flight by Asson's spell, could not push open the strange panels. The one in the dungeon was likely loose and weak, as though it had been used many times before. Twilight did not doubt that somewhere in these sewers was a ladder to a trapdoor above, or an entrance to stairs, but that seemed less than comforting considering the size of the complex.
In a few places, they found claw and nail marks on the floor and walls, giving evidence that others had occupied this sewer before the seven companions. Twilight redoubled her wariness.
Further complicating matters, Twilight discovered a network of unfinished tunnels that wove in and out of the
