shot forward with tremendous force, each flying like a spear into the ugly face of a surprised ghoul. The sickening splat of their butt ends cracking through skulls, one sounding wetter as it drove right through a ghoul’s eye, came as sweet music to the elf.
Everything seemed to freeze in place at that moment, Dahlia and the ghouls holding that macabre pose for what seemed like many heartbeats. The elf woman exploded into action again, tugging the ends free of the ghouls’ already rotten brains. They snapped straight back behind her own head where she shifted her hands ever so slightly to use that momentum to put them into reverse spins at her sides, then overhead with her right hand and down and across to smash the side of the skull of the ghoul on her left. At the same time, her left hand went up over her head and followed the same path as the first, only left to right, and that other ghoul’s head snapped to the side as it flew against the wall and crumbled into a dead heap.
Dahlia casually set the poles into motion again and stared back the way she’d come, though even with her keen elf vision, she couldn’t see much.
But there was no pursuit. She reformed her staff and buckled it once more into a single walking stick, then tapped it on the stone to bring forth the flickering blue light.
“Ah, Valindra Shadowmantle,” she whispered as she started away, “I do hope you’re worth all this trouble.”
Dor’crae was a vampire, and a vampire couldn’t sweat, of course, but still he felt the moisture all over his body, his clothes clinging uncomfortably to him. Normally, Dor’crae wouldn’t have needed a light to navigate subterranean chambers, but his complete inability to see anything piqued his curiosity.
He brought forth a candle and some flint and steel, and when the wick finally caught, the vampire peered around even more curiously. He was in a wide, high chamber, as he had suspected, but he still couldn’t see very much at all, just an opaque wall of steam brightened by his pitiful candle.
“What is this place?” he whispered to himself.
He had passed into a chamber full of steam that smelled like piles of rotten eggs, and that hissed as if he’d entered a pit of vipers. He’d traveled many miles from Luskan after several days following the inland “root” of the fallen Hosttower. The tunnels were of dwarven craftsmanship, surely, though it was obvious to Dor’crae that no dwarves had been there in a long, long time.
He kept the candle burning, though it was all but useless, and slowly navigated the chamber. He moved toward one hissing sound, and found it to be a vent in the floor, a crack in the stone through which poured more hot steam, and the awful smell only worsened.
He found no other easy exit from the chamber, but his eyes widened with surprise when he noted that the root of the Hosttower did not continue through it but snaked down one wall and disappeared through the floor. The vampire smiled, thinking his journey at its end. He blew out the candle and became as insubstantial as the steam around him. The vampire flowed through a crack in the floor, descending beside the root.
Several days later, somewhat shaken but thoroughly intrigued, Dor’crae arrived once more in the chambers of Valindra Shadowmantle.
The queen of Luskan’s underworld had many candles burning, and seemed more animated than usual, more lucid. She greeted Dor’crae pleasantly, even expressing her regret at not having seen him for a tenday.
“I followed the root of the Hosttower,” he explained. “You remember the Hosttower…?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know the place, the grand hall where it disappears under the ground?”
“She has no answers for you,” came another voice.
Dahlia stepped into sight from around one of the many decorative screens set about the chamber. She gave a little grin and nodded toward the skull gem on the shelf, the one inhabited by the spirit of Arklem Greeth. “But he does.”
“You’ve been…?”
“Tell me of this ‘grand hall’.”
“It’s a most remarkable place, as big as some cities in the Under-”
“Gauntlgrym,” Dahlia interrupted, and Dor’crae looked at her, obviously not understanding.
“The ancient homeland of the Delzoun dwarves,” Dahlia explained. “Long lost-some consider it a myth.”
“It is real,” said Dor’crae.
“You explored it?”
“I was turned away before I could get too far.”
Dahlia looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
“Ghosts,” the vampire explained. “Dwarf ghosts, and darker things. I thought it prudent to return to you with what I had unearthed. What did you call it? Gauntlgrym? How can you know?”
“Greeth told me. The Hosttower was tied to that most ancient of dwarven cities, and was built by dwarves, elves, and humans in a long-ago age, and for the benefit of all, though few dwarves ever lived in the Hosttower itself.”
“But its power benefitted this city, this ‘Gauntlgrym’?”
Dahlia crossed the room, shrugging as she went. “I would expect as much. Arklem Greeth knows little more, or at least I could discern little more, though I will try again soon enough. He is old-not that old, of course, but he seems confident of the work, masonry and magical, that built the Hosttower of the Arcane, and that it was indeed somehow tied to…” Her words trailed off as she noticed the puzzled look upon Dor’crae’s face.
“You wear two diamonds again in your right ear,” the vampire explained. “Eight in your left, and two, again, in your right.”
“Surely you cannot be jealous,” Dahlia replied.
“Borlann the Crow needed incentive, I expect?”
Dahlia merely smiled.
“Jealous?” Dor’crae replied then, with a laugh. “ ‘Relieved’ would be a better word. Better another in your right ear than you come to believe your left might look better with nine.”
Dahlia stared at him for a very long time, and the vampire feared that perhaps he hadn’t been wise to tip her off to the fact that he understood the significance of her jewelry.
“We know where to look now,” Dahlia said after a very long and uncomfortable silence. “I will continue my work with Arklem Greeth, gaining whatever insight he has to offer, and you must gather as much information as can be found about Gauntlgrym, or of how we might navigate its wards, like these ghosts you speak of.”
“It’s a dangerous road,” the vampire replied. “Were I trapped in this physical body, I would have had to fight my way in, and fight my way out, against formidable foes.”
“Then we will find even more formidable allies,” Dahlia promised.
Chapter 5. A DROW AND HIS DWARF
WERE IT NOT FOR THE MORNINGSTARS SET DIAGONALLY ACROSS HIS back, their glassteel heads bobbing with every stride, Athrogate might have struck passersby as a diplomat rather than a warrior. His thick black hair was well kept, and his long beard was neatly tied into three thick braids set with shining onyx gems. He wore another onyx-a magical one-set into a circlet on his head, and his broad belt, dyed black, imbued him with great strength. Black boots showed the scuffs of a thousand mountains and a thousand trails. The rest of his clothing was of the finest cut and style: breeches of deep gray velvet, a shirt the color of the darkest of amethysts, and a black leather vest that served as a harness for the mighty weapons strapped to his back.
He was a common sight in Luskan, and his shadowy relationship with the dark elves was the worst kept secret in the City of Sails. But Athrogate walked the streets openly and often, in appearance, at least, alone. It was almost as if he was inviting some opportunist to take a try at killing him. And the dwarf liked nothing more than a good row, though that pleasure had been hard to find of late. His partner frowned upon it.
