to notice, but not so bad that it hindered movement. He wrinkled his nose as the air changed from bracing to acidic.
After a few hundred yards, the corridor opened into a large, vaulted chamber resembling a temple’s transept and nave, woven in webs. Gray columns lined the walls, and the distant ceiling arch was lit with a scattering of firefly gleams. Directly below the highest point on the ceiling stood a dais, easily ten feet high. A litter of bones was strewn over the top of the dais and spilled down the sides. Some of the bones were humanoid. And all were rough at the ends, as if the marrow had been gnawed and sucked from them.
“Stop,” said Demascus. As if he’d had to say anything, thought Chant. He really didn’t want to get any closer to the chewed leftovers of whatever butchery had occurred there …
“What’re those?” Jaul pointed to the walls, between the columns. The webbing was pocked with closed doors intricately carved with spiders and geometric designs.
“Exits,” said Demascus. “Each door leads to another place in the network, I suspect. Maybe places halfway across Faerun. Or farther.”
“Or deeper,” said Chant. “Like subterranean cities of dark elves …”
“On the other hand,” Demascus continued, “they could lead to an empty storeroom, or down another leg of webbed tunnel.”
“Which one did the arambarium thieves go through?” said Riltana.
Demascus shook his head. “We should be able to pick up their track-it’s fresh. And then choose someplace they
“There you go again!” said Riltana. “Always napping.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Plus, you know my rule about fighting too many vampires before bedtime. That always makes me cranky.” She laughed.
Chant said, “So, let me get this straight. The vampires have nothing to do with the drow?”
“No,” said Demascus. “Well, they didn’t before they tracked us into the Demonweb.” He frowned. “Speaking of dark elves, we should check to see if I’m right about us being able to track them. Care to take a look?”
“Sure,” said Chant. He bent and examined the ground. Demascus was correct-because the floor was slightly adhesive, any appreciable pressure applied to the floor shifted the threaded webs composing it. Once he got the hang of how a disturbed patch of web reacted, he figured it would be easy to track creatures through it. Although it seemed like the webs were naturally inclined to return to their original position over time.
Chant followed what might have been a trail to the dais and grabbed a femur bone. It was cool and smooth in his hands, but the rough part near the chewed end … Don’t think about that, he told himself. He experimentally prodded the floor with the jagged end of bone. Thousands of individual strands, maybe more, formed the ground. And each strand was probably made up of hundreds or thousands of even smaller threads. Could be why they weren’t as sticky as they should be. But still enough to hold an impression!
Although … He bent closer. Were the webs moving on their own? Was that a … face?
“No!”
He jumped back and pointed at the floor. His stomach was making a serious effort to crawl into his throat. “The-this entire chamber-is haunted! I saw a man’s face, screaming. Made out of webs.”
“This place was created by drow,” said Demascus, “It’s probably woven as much from webs as from souls sacrificed to the dark elf goddess.”
Chant swallowed.
“I didn’t need to know that,” Jaul said.
The pawnbroker empathized.
Just then, a howl tore into Chant’s brain. Were the faces in the webs coming to life? His fingers suddenly went numb and dropped the bone as he stared at the webs.
“Vampires!” said Jaul. “They’ve come through the portal!”
Oh, right, the vampires. Chant cleared his throat. “Where to?”
“No time to choose,” Demascus said. He jounced across the web floor, scattering human remains. He stopped before one of the side doors between the columns. Chant didn’t have time to note the symbol carved on the door’s face before Demascus shoved the door open.
“Everyone inside,” the deva whispered. No one argued.
Chant found himself in a room with a hard floor, not a web, thank Waukeen’s stingy mercies! The air was musty, like a damp basement that had suffered several floods. The sunrod’s light had noticeably dimmed, as if it was working twice as hard to shed even half the amount of light it was normally able to …
Demascus slammed the door on the webbed corridors. The moment it closed, the door melted into the wall and was gone. Or maybe disappeared into the inky shadows.
“Where are we?” said Jaul.
“Shh,” said Demascus. The deva laid his head against the wall to listen where the door had been. Why was it so dark? Chant stepped closer to one wall, and was barely able to tell that it was painted a dreary gray and decorated with chipped and peeling wainscoting. Two exits were visible.
“I feel like I’ve gone blind,” murmured Jaul. He rubbed at his eyes. Chant felt the same-it was almost as if a grainy film covered everything.
Demascus flashed the kid a look, then motioned to Chant. The pawnbroker brought the rod closer. He saw the door hadn’t exactly disappeared, though it had suffered some kind of transformation. A line drawing defaced the wall and wainscoting, penned by a quill dipped in charcoal ink, and traced a square only half as large as the opening they’d come through. The line wasn’t even particularly neat or straight-it looked like it had been scrawled by a determined though not particularly talented child.
“Can we get back through?” he whispered to Demascus.
“Hope so. Now’s not the time to test it. We wouldn’t want to step through into our pursuer’s laps. I can hear their screams on the other side, faintly. They sound angry.” Chant shuddered.
“I don’t think we’re in Faerun anymore; the light falls differently,” said Demascus. “So we shouldn’t stray too far from this entrance. Who knows what kind of place this is? On the other hand, if our pursuers look through from the other side, I’d rather they not immediately see us camped here.”
The deva approached one paneled door hanging ajar on the opposite wall. Chant followed, holding the sunrod at head height in one hand and his crossbow in the other.
The room beyond contained torn and rotting divans. Deep claw marks scored the hardwood furniture. Two walls were wainscoted and held a door apiece, but the longest wall was a mortared, slightly curved expanse of stone. Snuffed candles littered the floor near a fallen candelabra. Faint sparks glittered through a single narrow aperture in the curved wall.
“Arrow slit?” Chant said, pointing. When Demascus shrugged, he advanced and looked through the vertical opening. It was night. And-
“We’re in a tower!” he said. They were in one of several turreted fingers rising from a labyrinthine castle that sprawled across the slope of a mountain range. Only a handful of stars burned red in the night sky, barely bright enough to illuminate the tallest mountain peaks. His breath steamed as it escaped out the gap. Out on the battlements,
“We’re in some kind of old fortress,” he announced, his voice hoarse. “One larger than I’ve ever heard tell of. And it looks … haunted.” The others crowded around to see. Chant stepped away and closed his eyes. Seeing those unfamiliar stars … it viscerally shook him in a way that the deva’s declaration, that they had left behind the world he knew, had not.
He looked down at the golden yellow light of the sunrod and drank it in for solace. He needed it. Fear had taken root. Fear for his son and, indeed, for himself. A pack of vampires had chased them into a web of portals and from there into the first side-exit they’d found, which resembled a deformed echo of the real world-a practice model that’d been tossed aside but not completely destroyed by the lords of creation. A failed attempt that lingered in some forgotten corner of existence, attracting ghosts, vengeful vampires, and foolish creatures like Chant Morven, who should have stayed home selling pawned silver.
Chant wondered if he’d ever see sunlight again. Waukeen, you have much to answer for. Then he forced a smile for his son and put strength into his voice for Demascus and Riltana. “Let’s try one of these rooms away from the window, what say? I don’t like the cold air it’s letting in.”
