Spinner of Lies

ankle-deep sewer water either, but …

“We could turn aside,” said Demascus. “But these leads are arranged, according to Raneger, by order of relative likelihood. He’s already got squads running down other clues. Finding this so-called ‘Gatekeeper’ is our best bet for tracking the oni and drow. So I’d rather not waste time on less-likely options. And anyway, Jaul …”

The kid looked away from Riltana and blinked. “What?”

“You’re Raneger’s proxy. Do you think he’d be all right with us choosing at our whim, or do you think he’d rather we go in the order he indicated?”

Demascus thrust the map into Jaul’s hands. Jaul dropped his gaze to the parchment, then to Riltana, then to Demascus. He rubbed at the tattoo of wave and dagger on his left wrist.

“Well … Um. I suppose we … should follow the order Master Raneger wanted …”

The thief frowned. “If I get crap on my favorite steel-toed boots, some leech-son is going to be sorry.”

Demascus swallowed a smart comeback. He sensed Riltana wasn’t merely being dramatic. The last time she’d been in the Catacombs, with his stolen scarf in hand, she’d almost died.

“I knew tunnels were under these cliffs,” Jaul said, “But I didn’t imagine so many.”

“They go on farther and deeper than anyone knows,” replied Chant. “Leftover from a series of previous excavations, before the genasi came. If we’d entered closer to the bay, we would’ve had to spend hours detouring around haunted cemetery tunnels and a detachment of peacemakers.”

“I wish we were far enough in not to have the deal with city runoff,” Riltana said. “What the Hells are people eating up there?”

“The sewage either ends up down here, or in the bay,” said Chant. “Most people prefer down here.”

“You sure seem to know a lot about waste runoff,” said the windsoul. Jaul chuckled.

Demascus said, “Stop fixating on the smell, Riltana. Besides, it’s working in our favor; the majority of tomb robbers turn around when they see something like this.”

“Except for those too stupid to take a hint.”

Demascus took a breath and held it before entering the corridor. He tried his best to skirt the liquid burbling down its center.

Chant followed. Despite the man’s bulk, he managed to sound light on his feet.

“You next,” he heard Riltana tell the kid. “I’ll take rear guard. I want to be farthest away from Demascus, in case he triggers some sort of crap slide.”

They followed the stream.

After a while the pawnbroker said, “They say these deep paths open on crystal caverns, sunless seas, and fungus forests hung with carnivorous vines. Or even-”

“Everyone knows those stories, Pa,” said Jaul.

“Ah, do they now?”

“They do,” said Riltana. “Sorry.”

Demascus laughed. “Even I’ve heard them. And my memory isn’t-”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it,” said Chant. The pawnbroker gave a long-suffering sigh.

The deva raised his hand for quiet. The sunrod showed the far end of the tunnel where the trickle of waste water fell away into a fissure. And beyond that, the rutted path gave way to cut gray stone. This was promising. At least something was here, unlike each of the previous leads on Raneger’s map.

Demascus moved soundlessly forward. The light spread into an open, square space, like a courtyard. Overlapping vertical slabs of smooth stone on the far side of the area narrowed down to a single arch filled with orange haze. Demascus could just make out a stand-alone structure beyond the mist that partly protruded from the cavern’s far wall. The stone roof of the structure was unbroken gray stone, curved like a gargantuan turtle’s shell.

“What kind of building is that?” said Jaul.

Demascus put a finger to his lips, and advanced. An odor reminiscent of rusted iron wafted through the room, ruffling his hair in a light breeze. He stopped. So did the breeze. He was almost halfway across the courtyard when he noticed that the sand scattered across it possessed two distinct shades-gray-black and brown-black-in a spiral arcing pattern that moved outward from a single point just a couple of feet in front of him.

He crouched down and traced a finger along a curve. The discontinuity between the lighter and darker colored streaks was sharp. The design must be recent-it would’ve been blurred if any appreciable amount of time had passed since its creation.

“Is anyone here?” he said, standing.

A sigh like wind through a desert was his answer.

“If you’re the Gatekeeper, show me the gate! We’re looking for drow!”

It turned out Raneger had heard of the Gatekeeper-someone or something left over from before the Spellplague crashed most of Faerun’s magical portals. It had been the guardian of a nexus used by Chondathan merchants, before Chondath’s scattering of city-states was destroyed by a chunk of genasi-infested Abeir.

Demascus wanted to complete Arathane’s commission. But if they found the Gatekeeper and a working portal system, he wasn’t about to give Master Raneger access to it.

The breeze returned, with the sound of air shuddering across empty dunes. This time, a whisper, too. It sounded like, “Drow?”

His neck prickled. Something unseen was in the room with them. “Yes,” he replied to the presence. “Have you allowed dark elves through your gate? Or a large blue creature?”

The wind stiffened. The spiral of dust lifted from the floor, becoming a haze of whirling arms composed of black sand. They were so long they spanned nearly the entire chamber. Demascus covered his eyes with one hand and staggered backward.

Then the gale roared like an awakened lion. He separated his fingers and looked through slitted eyes to see the dust devil draw its arms in, increasing its speed and density. It collapsed into a howling pillar of darkness, around which hunted hungry arcs of lightning. Silence smothered the room, except for the sound of Jaul’s too-rapid breaths.

The sand was gone, as was the dust-devil. What remained was a shape almost twice as tall as a man, made of glass-sharp obsidian splinters. Its face was a shivering, flexing nest of black stone shards.

“Son of a piss-pickled leech,” said Riltana.

“You can say that again,” Demascus agreed.

“It’s a golem, I think,” said Chant. “A magical construct.”

“All right, Lord Obvious,” Riltana said, “How do we make friends with it?”

The golem said something. Hundreds of stone splinters rubbed and clacked together. The effect made Demascus want to sick up on the cavern floor.

“What? I don’t understand.”

The golem spoke again. This time, Demascus heard, “I abide.”

Jaul pointed at the construct. “It’s gotta be the Gatekeeper.”

Demascus shot Jaul a look.

“I see,” he said. “Are you indeed the Gatekeeper?”

“I am. The gate is functional once more.”

“Once more? That’s good, I suppose. Did you allow through any drow? Or an oni? We’re looking for them.”

“The drow woman repaired the way. It is to her I now give fealty. Are you her servant, too?”

Gods of shadow, that was a complication! But … He shrugged and said, “Why, yes. Yes, we’re her servants. Please open the link for us, so that we may follow our lady.”

“Opening the gate is the function for which I was fashioned,” said the golem. Demascus couldn’t look it in the face when it spoke-the movement and sound together continued to make him queasy.

“I shall open the proper conduit, once you-”

“Conduit?” said Chant.

“The ways beyond the link were originally fixed and few,” said the obsidian golem. “But with the repair by Chenraya Xorlarrin, the possible routes have become … chaotic. It would be easy to get lost in the web of passages