Gal Tra’kalas was utterly destroyed from the breakwater that stood in the harbor to the last lovely outlying estate, leaving nothing but a barren plain of crumbling ruins. Yet the city and its inhabitants did not disappear completely. Strangely, Gal Tra’kalas remained as a phantom image, inhabited by spectral figures who continued to live their lives totally unaware of the monumental change in the world around them.
Griffin-riding elves from Silvanesti who flew over the ghostly city were appalled and reported that Gal Tra’kalas was cast down and inhabited by fiends. The elves immediately abandoned the ruin. Over the years the site came to be called the Missing City, and for centuries it hung only as an empty mirage on the edge of forgotten tales. It wasn’t until nearly four hundred years later that a Second Cataclysm occurred that once again changed the destiny of the city. Out of the empty reaches of the Plains of Dust came the Legion of Steel, who saw the potential of a shadow city, and swiftly on their heels flew a magnificent brass dragon with the strength and the desire to shape a new realm on the ruins of an ancient one. Together the Legion and the dragonlord Iyesta dwelt among the images of Gal Tra’kalas and rebuilt the city into a detailed copy of the mirage, and for years the people who flocked to the Missing City lived in peace with their ghostly neighbors.
Until nearly three months ago. On the eve of midsummer, an odd storm of ferocious intensity swept over the Missing City. When the sun rose the next day, the spectral city of the elves had vanished, obliterated once and for all. Since then, nothing had remained the same.
On this frosty night months after the storm, the old city still looked strangely forlorn and vulnerable to Linsha. In the distance, she could see the dark clusters of the real buildings that comprised the rebuilt districts and the new port. A faint light from a few torches and lamps glowed like a chain of dying embers in the darkness.
In her immediate vicinity there was nothing but sand, scrub, a few cold-hardy cacti, and some eroded piles of rock that hunkered down in the pale moonlight. One large mass of rock in particular held her interest. She concentrated on the area around the rocks but saw nothing that moved, human or otherwise.
Pursing her lips, she blew the soft cry of a night shrike, a small bird that inhabited the grassland.
Varia swooped overhead. “The way is clear,” she called in a whispery voice that only Linsha and Lanther could hear.
Lanther gestured to the others, and they hurried forward to the large heap of rock. In the dark the tall heap looked like an outcropping or a natural part of the landscape. It wasn’t until a closer inspection was made that the pile proved to be a collapsed heap of quarried stone so weathered and worn it seemed to be melded together.
“What is this?” Tanefer said sharply, for he had no experience with the labyrinth or its hidden entrances.
“Centuries ago it used to be a well until someone got the idea to turn it into a bath house,” Linsha said as she peered closely at the cracks and crannies in the rocks. She walked slowly around the old ruin. The entrance was here somewhere.
Then she remembered. The old door faced the west and was hidden behind a large rock that looked like a collapsed lintel stone. “Here,” she said and pointed to the wall.
It took three of the strongest centaurs to shove aside the slab of rock that Iyesta had once moved effortlessly. When it was done, the three stood aside, panting and sweating in the chilly air. They all looked into the black entrance that yawned before them.
“There is a short flight of stairs leading down,” Linsha told them. “It’s broad, but it’s in bad shape, so be careful. Don’t light the torches until you’ve moved the stone back.”
“Where are you going?” Lanther demanded.
“To talk to the water weird.”
The centaurs froze. “Wait,” Tanefer said. “No one said anything about a water elementalkin. Where did it come from?”
“Iyesta summoned it to protect this entrance. But I think we can get past it. Just give me a minute.”
Linsha ignored Lanther’s sharp stare and settled Varia once more on her shoulder. Moving out of the way of the group, she felt her way down the stairs to the chamber that had once been a bathing room. Behind her she heard thumps and grinding noises, the sounds of hooves on stone, and low voices muttering in annoyance. Putting the stone back in place was not as easy as moving it aside. She reached the last step and pressed back against the wall to stay out of the reach of the water weird.
“She’s not here,” Varia whispered.
Linsha blinked. “What?”
“She’s gone. The pool is empty.”
Linsha strained to see in the intense darkness, but there wasn’t even a beam of moonlight leaking through a crack to lessen her blindness. Frustrated, she pulled from a small pack a tiny lamp and the clay pot that held a precious coal. Breathing gently on the faint orange glow, she was able to light her lamp and cast just enough light in the chamber to see the pool.
Varia was right. The pool had once brimmed with clear water deep enough to swim in. Now it lay still and lifeless. Much of its water had drained or evaporated away, and what was left was muddy and covered with a stagnant scum of dust, dead insects, and old algae. The ancient floor tiles she remembered seeing on her first visit were now covered with dirt and piles of rock that had fallen from the ceiling.
The voices grew louder and hooves clattered down the stairs. The centaurs and the Legionnaires crowded into the chamber with Linsha. They stared at the pool.
“Is it here?” Lanther breathed near her ear.
“She’s gone. Probably back to her own elemental plane.”
“Really?” He sounded skeptical.
“Iyesta commanded her here. Perhaps when the dragon died, her hold over the water weird disappeared, allowing her to escape.”
“Good. Then let’s not dawdle.”
“Sir!” one of the Legionnaires called to Lanther. “Look here. Someone has been in here before us.”
He pointed to the edge of the pool and toward the ground at the furthest reaches of the small lamp. Several sets of tracks were barely visible in the dirt.
Linsha looked and recognized them. She chuckled, with slight undertone of sadness. “Those are our tracks from three months ago. Iyesta’s and mine, then mine and several other groups. We brought some of the militia out this way when the city fell.”
She led the way past the pool and down another set of stone stairs to a chamber on a lower level. Once there, underground where lights could not be seen above, they brought out torches and lit them from Linsha’s lamp. Holding their torches to light the way, the party tramped down another, longer, flight of stairs and moved into a high corridor.
The labyrinth beneath Missing City was as old as Gal Tra’kalas itself. Deep beneath the city it formed a massive maze of chambers, interconnecting corridors, and puzzling dead ends. Its purpose was long forgotten, but its lofty tunnels still bore evidence of the skill and aesthetic taste of its creators. The tunnels were arched, and in many places the graceful lines of fan vaulting helped retain the strength and beauty of ceilings that were centuries old. At the intersections of major corridors, the lintels were carved to resemble tree trunks that rose and burst into leaf in stone relief over the doors.
Only Lanther, Linsha, and a few of the Legionnaires had been in the tunnels before. Anxious for the eggs, they pressed on, following their own faint trail. Whenever they came to a turn or an intersection that gave them doubts, Varia whispered directions in Linsha’s ear. The owl had a phenomenal memory for dark places.
The rest of the Legionnaires and centaurs hurried behind, their eyes wide with wonder and surprise. They had heard of Iyesta’s death in the labyrinth near her palace, of the midnight escape of a few trapped pockets of militia and Legionnaires out of the city through the tunnels, and of the battle with Thunder in the egg chamber. But they never imagined anything as spacious and well-crafted as these tunnels, nor a space so well preserved after hundreds years of neglect and abandonment.
In silence the party walked deeper and deeper into the maze, making turns to the left and right that Linsha never would have remembered on her own. As they penetrated farther into the labyrinth, they began to pay less attention to the walls around them and more to the floor and to the heavy darkness that pressed close. They were far in now and had seen only the traces of the earlier small groups. If the Tarmaks had truly carried the eggs into the great chamber in the center of the maze, there should have been some evidence of their passing.
