Aliree shut her eyes and leaned her head against the wall. 'Do you know how long it's been since I've slept, Muragh? Truly, deeply slept?' She sighed. 'I would give anything for the pain to be gone, just for a minute, just so I could sleep.'
It's hard to say where it came from then, since I don't have a heart anymore, but a strange sensation welled up in me all the same, one of exhilaration and devotion. I let out a sharp whistle, and Aliree opened her eyes. I hopped from her arms and rolled along the floor.
'Come on, Aliree,' I piped cheerfully. 'Let's go find our dreams!'
She grinned, and though the expression was wan, it was beautiful as well. With careful, brittle movements she rose to her feet, set the magical light on her shoulder, and started after me.
The problem with Undermountain was that nothing was ever where it was supposed to be. Tunnels that were there one day had a nasty habit of vanishing the next. In the meantime, entirely new passageways had appeared out of solid rock. I had never managed to glimpse the mechanism by which the corridors were rearranged. Perhaps they did it of their own accord. Not much in Undermountain surprises me anymore, though almost all of it disturbs me. Regardless, this was a place where things could change overnight, and it had been centuries since Aliree's ancestor had drawn the map to the grotto.
'All right, Aliree,' I said. I was tucked in the crook of her arm and studied the folded map that poked out of her satchel. 'Get ready to make a left.'
Aliree frowned into the gloom. 'But there is no left. Only a right.'
I sighed. We had been on the move for no more than a quarter hour, and already this was the third discrepancy between the map and the tunnels.
'All right,' I said. 'Keep going straight. We can pass through the Hall of a Hundred Candles up ahead and circle back around.'
Aliree continued on with stiff, careful steps. A moment later, a hiss escaped my teeth.
'Aliree!' I whispered. 'Get back! Quick!'
There was one and only one constant in mad Halaster's labyrinth. No matter what the tunnels and corridors did, you could always count on monsters. Aliree had been lucky so far. I had found her in an oft-explored and relatively safe part of the dungeon, and she had come there directly from the well-traveled Well of Entry beneath the Yawning Portal.
Her luck was about to change. For the worse.
Aliree ducked into an alcove, and we hid behind veils of cobweb as a hulking form shambled by. The thing was accompanied by a pungent reek. At last it lumbered out of view. We waited a dozen more fluttery beats of Aliree's heart, and then she stepped back into the corridor.
'What was that?' the half-elf asked.
I looked at the steaming droppings on the tunnel floor. 'Owlbear. Good thing it didn't find us in the alcove.'
'Why?'
'Owlbears like elves.'
Aliree ran a hand through her thick auburn hair. 'Well, if owlbears like elves, they maybe it wouldn't have-'
'No, Aliree,' I said. 'They like elves. As in, for dinner. Or lunch. Or between-meal snacks. Elf-stew, elf-pie, elf-jerky. You name it, they like it all.'
She swallowed hard. 'Oh.'
After that we continued on, through rough-hewn passageways, down slimy staircases, and across drafty halls. Not long after encountering the owlbear, we scrambled down a side passage to avoid a lone troll. Luckily, judging by the dark fluid dribbling from its chin, it had just fed, and so was not intent on searching for prey. A short while later, we started into a cavern and dashed out just as quickly, barely avoiding the needly proboscises of a pair of flying stirges, which would have happily sucked Aliree's veins dry. Finally, in a junk-filled chamber, we hid beneath a pile of rotten rags when a band of kobolds ventured in. One of the filthy, bug-eyed creatures actually plucked at the rags for a moment, its pug nose snuffling, as if it smelled something interesting. Aliree was forced to hold my jaw shut to keep it from chattering. Then one of the thing's companions called to it in a guttural voice, and it hurried after the others.
Despite these unwelcome interruptions-and the countless times we were forced to backtrack and search out a new route because a wall was where it shouldn't be, or a staircase went up instead of down- we made steady progress. Judging by the map, we were over halfway to the grotto.
We turned down a damp corridor, and all at once Aliree stumbled. She gripped the wall, her face like a moon in the darkness. Her breath came in short gasps. I clenched my jaw at my own stupidity. I had been leading Aliree blithely on as if we were on a picnic stroll, when in truth every step for her must have been agony. And all this time she had made no complaint.
'I don't know about you,' I said, 'but I sure could use a rest. Do you mind if we stop for a minute?'
Aliree smiled gratefully. 'If you want, Muragh.' She sank onto the top of a broad mushroom and set me on a toadstool next to her. A brief shudder passed through her. The fire again. She let out a deep breath and, with a pretty, too-thin hand, brushed her hair away from damp cheeks.
'You're very brave, Aliree,' I said quietly. 'A lot of humans I once knew would have given up long ago.'
'I can't give up, Muragh.' She shook her head, a rueful smile on her lips. 'It's funny. Things like this don't happen to real elves. They don't get… diseases, even magical ones. But now I'm part elf, and it's that part of me that won't let me give up. Life is sacred to elves. I have to keep going. Until I get to the grotto.'
I let out a wistful whistle. The Grotto of Dreams. Did it even really exist? But I couldn't doubt, not now. Aliree was going to be healed, and I… A shiver danced along the bones of my cranium. No, I couldn't even think about that. The thought was almost too wonderful to bear.
'We'll get there, Aliree,' I said. 'We'll find our dreams, and then we'll be so happy.'
To my surprise, she shook her head at my words. 'But that's not it, Muragh. Nothing can make you happy if you're not happy with what you already have. That's the one thing all this has taught me. I thought being a half-elf would fix everything that was wrong with me. But after a few days I realized that, even though I looked different on the outside, inside I was the same person I always was. It wasn't being human that made me unhappy. It was being me. And no spell had the power to change that. Only I did.' She fixed me with a solemn look. 'Do you understand, Muragh?'
No, I didn't, but before I could ask her what she really meant, Aliree stood slowly, deliberately.
'Come on,' she said. 'Let's go.'
The task at hand distracted me. I studied the map a moment, then we were on our way again.
An hour later, the corridor widened, and we found ourselves at one end of a long, high-ceilinged chamber. A purple glow hung in the air, and on either side of the chamber was a row of thrones hewn of black stone. Atop each of the thrones slumped the dry husk of a corpse, each shrouded in moldering robes.
'Uh-oh,' I said. 'The tunnels must have rearranged themselves. I didn't think this passage led here.'
'Where's here?'
“The Hall of Sleeping Kings.'
Aliree peered at the mummified denizens of the thrones. 'Maybe we should hurry.'
I didn't disagree. The half-elf hastened through the chamber, past the two staring lines of long-dead kings. We were in the middle of the room when a booming voice spoke out of nowhere.
'Doom! Doom takes us all!'
There was a hideous creaking sound of ancient sinews popping as the mummified kings rose from their thrones.
Aliree's eyes went wide. 'I though you said this was the hall of sleeping kings, Muragh!'
I gulped as best I could without a gullet. 'It looks like they just woke up.'
'Well, maybe they don't mean us any harm,' Aliree said in a quavering voice. 'After all, you're not alive, either, Muragh.'
Evil crimson light flared to life in two dozen pairs of empty eye sockets.
'I'm afraid,' I said, 'that not all dead things are as congenial as I am.'
Two dozen skeletal hands gripped rusted swords. Two dozen skeletal feet scraped along the stone floor.
