The following morningshe left immediately after meditation for the Wolf people’s villageas they were the closest to the Southern gateway. A briefdiscussion with the shaman revealed that Miranda had indeed beenthere a few days earlier but had not returned from the visit to thearea where there was a suspected gate. Buluk himself had becomeworried and was about to organize a group of villagers to go thereto find out what had happened.
Snowbelle was now evenmore worried. She shape changed into a giant eagle and flew off inthe direction Miranda had headed. An hour later she came upon thebody of the dead wyvern. It could hardly be missed. She could smellit from a hundreds of paces away.
At first glance itappeared to have been badly damaged by a wizard fire attack. WasAquitain involved? She examined the putrid body much closer andnoticed several holes that might have been caused by arrows. That’sstrange? Arrows would hardly have worried a wyvern as their skinwas too tough. So she probed in the holes until she found what shewas looking for, an arrow head. She carefully cut it out andexamined it closely. It was an Elendari poison arrow. She tastedthe poison. Yes it was a rare herb that would kill a wyvern.
Around each of itslegs was a steel ring. She had seen these before. They were used tohobble or chain up domesticated wyverns. She stripped off herclothes and cut into the rotting carcass to examine its stomachcontents. The putrid stench was nauseating. She opened up thestomach revealing the Elendari hunter’s body inside. The facewasn’t recognizable, as the Wyvern’s stomach acid had dissolved itaway. She was relieved that it wasn’t Miranda.
She washed herself inthe nearby stream using plenty of soapwood sap then some otheraromatic herbs to eliminate most of the smell from her body thencarefully examined the tracks around the scene of the fight. It wasconfusing as quite a number of Elendari had been here recently butthey all led to the same spot. The now closed gateway entrance.
She used a commandword and all the magic runes fixing the gateway to this worldbecame visible. The symbols were of ancient druidic origin, whichwere rarely used these days. The gateway was very old possibly evenpredating the southern gateway. She was amazed. She had been theHigh Druidess of Mudrun for a decade and never knew about thisgateway.
She used hergatekeeper ability to analyse the gateway and discovered that itwas a simple direct connection to Moonmist. This was quitesurprizing, as it was generally believed that it wasn’t possible toform a direct connection to Moonmist. It was closed now but hadbeen recently opened.
She examined thetracks again and tried to mentally reconstruct what might havehappened.
A group of Elendarihunters had come through the gate to do some hunting. They hadbrought the wyvern to protect the gate. It had closed before theywere all able to return. The wyvern had become troublesome andeaten one of the handlers. The ones trapped on this side had killedthe wyvern teleported to Llanlorian’s gateway and returned home.Somewhere along the way Miranda must have turned up and beencaptured. How could she be so stupid?
There was only oneuseful thing about the whole unfortunate incident. Snowbelle couldopen this gate and it should lead to Miranda’s captor. The problemwas that if she opened it then it would probably set off some typeof alarm at the other end. It could be a trap or it could be aneasy way to retrieve Miranda. She stood pondering the consequencesfor several minutes then decided to act.
First she prayed forironwood skin then chameleon skin. Taking a deep breath she wentthrough the opening ritual and without hesitation immediatelystepped through the gate.
She appeared inside atotally dark area that had a damp earthy smell. She changed shapeto a bat and flew around the area using the bat’s echolocation tosee. She was in a roughly circular rock cave about 10 paces acrosswith a short tunnel leading to the outside. The cave entrance wasclosed off with a large iron door that was barred from the outside.Snowbelle noticed that there were slots cut in the wall severalfeet from the floor for viewing and shooting arrows into the tunnelfrom the outside.
She landed on thefloor, changed shape to a gecko lizard and scurried up the wallducking into the slots and pressing against the outside shutter tosee if she could get out. The first two she tried were locked. Shewas about to try the third when it opened and a face peered throughit.
She froze, flattenedagainst the cold dusty rock and allowed the camouflage magic toblend her lizard form into the colour of the rock making herinvisible in the semidarkness. It worked, she was only a hand spanfrom the Elendari soldier’s face but he couldn’t see her, he wastoo busy trying to see into the tunnel.
Someone created lightin the tunnel that lit it up as if there were several magic globesinside. The soldier at her arrow slot thrust a short pole with amirror attached into the tunnel and swivelled it around in alldirections trying to see whatever was there. She heard shouts andswearing from outside as several soldiers arrived outside the irondoor. Someone arrived with dogs. They howled and barked excitedly.They waited for a wizard.
She heard himchanting, placing magical protections on himself. He then calledfor the view ports to be closed and the iron door to be openedwhereupon he cast a fireball into the tunnel. Fortunately forSnowbelle in her small gecko form flattened against the rock wellaway from the direct blast of the fireball all she felt was warmair blowing across her back.
The iron doors againcreaked open and the dogs charged in, followed more carefully bythe soldiers with weapons drawn and finally the wizard. Once theyhad all passed her position Snowbelle carefully moved up to theshutter and quietly slid through to the outside. The soldier hadleft to join the others but in his rush had forgotten to lock it.Once outside she changed to bat form and flew up into the sky. Sheknew immediately where she was, about a thousand paces fromDarkmantle manor.
As she flew towardsthe
