“Yes, he was!” Arista confirmed. “I remember Fanen pointing him out and saying what a great adventurer he was and how he worked mainly for the Church of Nyphron. He called him something… a-a-”
“Quester?” Mauvin asked.
“Yes, that’s it!”
“Now let’s think about that,” Hadrian said. “They would need a scholar, a historian. Dent was at Dahlgren. Wasn’t there someone else too? That funny guy with the catapult, what was his name?”
“Tobis Rentinual?” Mauvin asked. “He was a real nut.”
“Yeah, but do you remember him saying something about how he named the catapult after Novron’s wife, because of all the research he did into ancient imperial history?”
“Yes. He said something about having to learn a language or something, didn’t he? He was all boastful about it, remember?”
“That’s right.” Hadrian was nodding. “Look at that second set of initials, TR.”
“Tobis Rentinual,” Mauvin said. “It even looks like how he would draw his letters.”
“What about the others?” Alric asked.
Hadrian shrugged. “I’m really only guessing at the first two. I have no idea about the others.”
“I do,” Magnus said. “Well, one of them, at least. HM, that’s Herclor Math.”
“Who?” Hadrian asked, and looked around, but everyone shrugged.
“Of course none of you would know him. He’s a mason-a dwarf mason-and a good one. I would recognize his inscription anywhere. The Maths are an old family. A Math even worked on the design team of Drumindor. His clan goes back a long way.”
“Why did they initial the stone?” Wyatt asked.
“Maybe to let anyone who might follow know they got this far,” Magnus replied.
“Why didn’t they mark the bloody three-choice passage?” Mauvin asked.
“Maybe they planned to,” Arista said. “Maybe-like us-they didn’t know if they picked the right one, but planned to mark it on the way out, only-only they never came out.”
“Maybe we should carve our initials too,” Mauvin suggested. “So others will know we were here.”
“No,” Arista said. “If we don’t come back out, there will be no others to follow us.”
Each of them looked toward the hole with apprehension.
“At any rate,” Royce said, “this looks like the place. Who’s carrying the rope?”
They tied three lengths of rope together, and with Hadrian on the line, Royce climbed in. They fed out two- thirds of it before Hadrian felt the line stop and Royce’s weight come off.
He waited.
They all waited. Some sat down on whatever flat spots they could find. Elden remained standing. He had an unpleasant look on his face as he eyed the hole. Despite Arista’s comments, the dwarf busied himself carving each of their initials into the stone.
“You want to call down to him?” Alric asked. “He’s been in there a while.”
“It’s better to be patient,” he replied. “Royce will either call up or yank on the line when he wants us to come down.”
“What if he fell?” Mauvin asked.
“He didn’t. On the other hand, what is more likely is that there’s a patrol of Ghazel and he’s waiting for them to pass. If you get nervous and start yelling down, you’ll get him killed, or angry. Either way it’s not a good idea.”
Mauvin and Alric both nodded gravely. Hadrian had learned his lesson the hard way on that first trip the two made to Ervanon. Learning to trust Royce when it was dark, you were alone, and the world was so quiet you could hear your own breathing was not something you did overnight.
Hadrian remembered the wind whipping them as they climbed the Crown Tower. That was a big tower. He must have climbed a hundred of them with Royce since, but aside from Drumindor, that was the tallest-and the first. He had marveled at how the little thief could scale the sheer wall like a fly with nothing but those hand-claws. He gave Hadrian a pair and sat smirking as he tried to use them.
“Hopeless,” was all he said, taking the claws back. “Can you at least climb a rope?”
Hadrian had just returned from his days in the arenas of Calis, where he had been respected and cheered by roaring crowds as the Tiger of Mandalin. He was less than pleased with this little twig of a man treating him as if he were the village idiot. So infuriated had he been by Royce’s smug tone that Hadrian had wanted to beat him unconscious, only Arcadius had warned him to be patient. “He’s like the pup of a renowned hunting dog who’s been beaten badly by every master he’s had,” the old wizard had told him. “He’s a gem worthy of a little work, but he’ll test you-he’ll test you a lot. Royce doesn’t make friends easily and he doesn’t make it easy to be his friend. Don’t get angry. That’s what he’s looking for. That’s what he expects. He’ll try to drive you away, but you’ll fool him. Listen to him. Trust him. That’s what he won’t expect. It won’t be easy. You’ll have to be very patient. But if you do, you’ll make a friend for life, the kind that will walk unarmed into the jaws of a dragon if you ask him to.”
Hadrian felt a light tug on the rope.
“Everything okay, pal?” he called down softly.
“Found it,” Royce replied. “Come on down.”
It was like a mine shaft, tight and deep. Hadrian had descended only a short distance when his eyes detected a faint light below. The pale blue-green light appeared to leak into the base of the shaft, which, he could now estimate, was no more than a hundred feet deep. As he reached the bottom, he felt a strong breeze and heard a sound. A very out-of-place sound-the crash of waves.
He stood in an enormous cavern so vast he could not see the far wall. At his feet were shells and black sand, and before him lay a great body of water with waves that rolled in white and frothy. Along the beach, he spotted clumps of seaweed and algae that glowed bright green and the ocean gave off an emerald light, which the ceiling reflected in such a way as to make it seem like they were not underground at all. He felt like he was standing on the beach at night under a cloudy, albeit green, sky. His nose filled with the pungent scent of salt, fish, and seaweed. To the right lay nothing but endless water, but straight out, just visible at the horizon, were structures- the outlines of buildings, pillars, towers, and walls.
Across the sea lay the city of Percepliquis.
Royce stood on the shore, staring across the water, and glanced over his shoulder when Hadrian touched down. “Not something you see every day, is it?”
“Wow,” he replied.
It did not take long before all of them stood on the black sand, gazing out at the sea and the city beyond. Myron looked as if he were in shock. Hadrian realized the monk had never seen an ocean, much less one that glowed bright green.
“Edmund Hall mentioned an underground sea,” Myron said at length. “But Mr. Hall is not terribly good at descriptions. This- this is truly amazing. I’ve never thought of myself as big in any sense, but standing here, I feel as small as a pebble.”
“Anyone lose an ocean? ’Cause I think we just found it,” Mauvin announced.
“It’s beautiful,” Arista said.
“Whoa,” Wyatt muttered.
“How are we going to get across it?” Gaunt asked.
They all looked to Myron. “Oh, right-sorry. Edmund Hall made a raft from stuff he found washed up on the beach. He said there was a lot of it. He lashed planking with a rope he had with him and formed a rudder out of one side of an old crate. His sail was a patchwork of sewn bags, his mast a tall log of driftwood.”
“How long did it take him?” Gaunt asked.
“Three weeks.”
“By Mar!” he exclaimed.
Alric scowled at him. “There’s ten of us and we have an expert sailor and better gear. Let’s get looking for our raw material.”
They all spread out like a group of beachcombers looking for shells and starfish on a lovely summer’s day.
There was a good deal of debris on the shore. Old bottles and broken crates, poles and nets, all amazingly well preserved after having been down there for a thousand years. Hadrian picked up a jug with writing on one side.
