'Oh,' Asraf answered after he saw that his two companions were just beyond hearing, 'I haven't learned about all of the tunnels. I don't think I could know them if I dedicated the rest of my life to studying them.'
'There are that many under Calimport?' Tazi asked, wanting to keep him talking.
'There are as many tunnels as there are grains of sand in the Calim Desert,' he answered with a little reverence in his voice.
'And yet you know your way well enough in these,' she replied.
'I know many,' he answered proudly. 'And I certainly know where most of the dangerous ones are in our area, but even some of the ones we're passing through right now are new to me.'
'But you move through the darkness as though it were day,' she said.
Asraf gave her a smirk in the gloom and answered, 'That's because I walk the Dark Path of Ibrandul. It's a very basic spell that all the novices know.'
'It lets you see in the dark,' Tazi deduced.
Asraf laughed.
'You're quick,' he complimented her, 'but that's not quite it. The spell doesn't let me see in the dark so much as it lets me know where things are. You recognize the difference?'
Tazi tipped her head.
'Of course I do. I'm quick,' she said, smiling warmly.
Asraf laughed again, and Tazi thought his voice had some of the same musical qualities that Fannah's possessed.
Steorf heard their merriment and dropped back to join them. Tazi could see that the beardless novice and his silent companion didn't notice their exchange. The two had switched to speaking Alzhedo and it looked to Tazi as though they were arguing over some marks on the wall. The silent novice was motioning back, but his beardless friend shook his head fiercely and pointed forward.
Wouldn't it be funny if they were lost for a change? Tazi laughed to herself.
'What trouble are you brewing back here?' Steorf asked Tazi, but included Asraf with a glance.
Tazi could see that he was trying to make amends for his first encounter with Asraf.
I don't know if Asraf will understand what he's doing, she thought.
'Nothing that any quick person couldn't work their way out of,' she said aloud, with a wink to Asraf.
'Are you both going to wink your way to the Dark Bazaar?' he asked them.
'If that's what it takes, that's what we'll do. Right, Asraf?' Tazi asked as she clapped him on his shoulder.
The smiling Child of Ibrandul grew silent. Tazi was afraid she might have offended him either by making a joke of the Dark Bazaar or by using his name or both. She was about to ask him which was true when the other two Children of Ibrandul backtracked to them.
'What are you standing here for?' the beardless novice demanded abruptly.
'It's my fault,' Tazi volunteered. 'I tripped in the darkness, and my companion and this Child of Ibrandul stopped to help me.'
She pointedly avoided using Asraf's proper name.
The normally silent novice chuckled condescendingly and the beardless one replied, 'Watch your step. We can't carry you all the way, you know.'
Tazi squeezed Steorf's hand and before he could say a word answered, 'I'll try to be less clumsy.'
'See that you do,' the beardless Child of Ibrandul replied and turned with his comrade to continue the march.
Steorf and Tazi fell in behind them, and Asraf brought up the rear.
'Why did you say that?' Steorf asked softly.
'I can tell those two,' she nodded ahead, 'already think we're foolish and incompetent, so it was a story they'd believe easily enough. Truth is, I didn't want Asraf to get into trouble for talking so much with us.'
Steorf raised a corner of his mouth and looked down at her with a gentle gaze.
'You're all right,' he said, 'sometimes.'
She intentionally bumped gently into his side with her body and replied, 'So are you… sometimes.'
She giggled quietly.
Asraf heard and watched everything that Tazi and Steorf did, and a troubled look crossed his face.
After a long and silent hike, the group turned a corner and the tunnel opened up into a huge chamber nearly as large as the main room of the Skulking God's Temple. Massive stalactites and stalagmites littered the space, and the darkness would have been absolute if the whole chamber hadn't been covered with phosphorescent lichen. It looked like a clear night sky just missing a moon.
'It's beautiful,' Tazi said in a hushed tone.
'It is,' Steorf agreed. 'Do you hear something, though?'
Tazi listened closely.
'I hear water dripping. How can that be?' she asked Asraf.
'I'm not sure I hear it,' he answered, and Tazi thought he sounded troubled.
'I'm not making it up,' she defended herself. 'I do hear water dripping in the distance.'
'There is no water down this deep,' Asraf explained. 'But-' he paused for some time before continuing- 'that sound is one of the ways Ibrandul can manifest himself here in the more arid regions, or so I've been told.'
The other two novices moved off to examine something that Tazi, as closely as she scrutinized, couldn't see in the dark cavern. She took the opportunity to ask Asraf another question.
'Is there anything you could tell us about the Skulking God that might be of importance to us? I realize,' she added to make certain he was not offended, 'that everything about him is very important to you.'
Asraf made sure the other Children of Ibrandul weren't close enough to hear then said, 'Ibrandul rose in the form of a great lizard to free humans who had been enslaved for centuries by evil drow. He prefers to walk alone through the tunnels, sometimes appearing to others as a great lizard, and sometimes as a man who looks like he's made from obsidian with burning eyes.'
'Does he do much besides roam the tunnels?' Steorf questioned.
'The Lord of the Dry Depths always aids humans who travel in the hostile underground, and protects those who worship him from ever being harmed by the drow again,' Asraf replied.
An albino moth, the size of a bird, fluttered by, and Tazi gasped slightly at the sight of the nocturnal insect. She chuckled at her foolish reaction, and Asraf laughed.
'It is different down here. Don't you have creatures like that in the Land Above?' he asked.
'Don't you ever venture up there?' Steorf inquired, before Tazi had a chance to answer.
'I have never seen the sun,' he answered seriously.
'Never?' Tazi exclaimed.
'When we are initiated into the Enveloping Darkness, as our worship is more properly known,' Asraf replied, 'we learn that there is absolute freedom in absolute darkness. We are not bound by some arbitrary rising and falling of a glowing orb to dictate our days. Things are not good or evil in the dark, they just are.'
'But to never see the Land Above…' Tazi started to say.
'You never knew of the Underdark before you came here, did you?' he asked simply.
'No, that's true.'
'Did you think your life was shallower or that you were somehow cheated because you were never in this perfect darkness?' Asraf challenged her without reproach.
'I don't think I was cheated,' she answered carefully, 'but I'm certainly glad I came here and saw this.'
'Just because I can't see all the colors of this stone,' the young novice explained, 'doesn't mean I don't realize its beauty.' He slowly rubbed his hand against the smooth rock. 'The coolness of the stone, the texture under my fingers, those are all part of its uniqueness that is not lost on me. My parents made the right choice when they left me as an infant in these tunnels.'
'They abandoned you here?' Steorf exclaimed.
'They placed me under Ibrandul's care,' Asraf corrected him. 'Here is where I live, and here is where I will someday die.'
The quiet pride and contentment in his voice was not lost on Tazi.
'And it will be a full life,' she added.
