ascending a flight of broad steps.
“It might be beneficial to be a changeling, going from decent form to that of a hairless ape whenever the need arose,” the first lioness to climb free of the pit growled in droll, feline fashion as Gord sprang nimbly atop the well’s edge. He made no reply, but thought how nice it would be if he could become a great cat at will!
Soon enough the party of man and lions reached the terminus of the passage. A foul stench warned them of something ahead, and in the square chamber at the end of the passage was the source of the terrible odor-a dozen huge yeth hounds, lying almost dormant.
This place was certainly more than a Snuffdark lain it must be Imprimus’ main headquarters. Its pack of watchdogs, the yeth, were by no means active now, however. Snuffdark had brought all to a languid and torpid state. Under other circumstances, these creatures probably would have been roaming the tunnel, baying their fearsome cries whenever an intruder appeared. At the sight of the lions, though, the hounds were up and snarling. One threw its head back and began a mournful howling, a note that began in the low register and rose quickly beyond human hearing.
The sound made Cord’s hair stand on end, and he almost dropped his sword and dagger. At the first baying the lions responded with a chorus of coughing roars. The deep roars reverberated and echoed deafeningly in the enclosed, underground environment. In fact, the lions’ challenge to the monstrous yeth was so loud that the canines instantly left off their howling and attacked with bared fangs.
While the big cats were weakened by Snuffdark, they were not so reliant on shadowy light as were the mastifflike yeth. The dogs never had a chance because of this. While Gord fought for his life, fending off a pair of male yeth nearly as high at the shoulder as Gord was tall, the ten lions literally tore up the remainder of the evil pack of night-black monsters.
“I owe you for that,” Gord said, panting. Hotbreath had just taken care of the last yeth as the hound had been about to close its massive jaws on the young thief’s throat. The short sword and dagger were good blades, but definitely not the best things to use against these huge dogs.
“And you, lord, brought all of us safely from the pit,” the big male said, cleaning the dark blood from his paws and jowl. “Ferragh!” the lion growled in disgust. “There is no debt for my service in killing the yeth-you owe me a fat kill so I can get the vile taste of hounds’ blood from my mouth.”
“Consider it done! I will find some source of light for us, and then we must press on. The hidey-hole of Imprimus must be near.” Hotbreath went to the others to pass along the information, and Gord began a search of the large, square chamber. His light-vision was continuing to fade, and soon they would be in utter blackness again unless he could do something.
Three doors led from the kennel chamber. Each was set into the middle of one of the walls, and each of the heavy wooden panels was flanked by a pair of cressets. None were alight, but an examination revealed that there was a residue of oil in each. Using hunks of cloth and old weapon shafts that littered the hounds’ kennel, Gord soon had constructed three torches, their rag-topped heads soaked with the fuel taken from the cressets. By plying the tip of his dagger against the stone wall, he created a spark and thus ignited one of the rag-poles.
“Now, friend lions, I shall have to rely upon you entirely for my defense,” he said to the cats as he held the flame aloft. “With this torch now our only source of light, there will be little I can do but hold fast to it.” The thing cast only a dull illumination. In the realm of shadow, flames normally burned with a pearly, dove-gray radiance. During this season of absolute blackness, the oppression of Snuffdark caused even the hottest of fires to burn a drab and pallid gray. The sooty smoke of the torch rose from flame of dun, and a penumbral circle of light barely made visible objects that were but a dozen feet distant.
“We understand,” Smokemane answered for all. “Lead us to the way we’re to take, and leave the rest to us…” The huge male’s growled reply came loudly in the chamber, the last part trailing off into a snarl that indicated just how the lion contemplated handling his share of the expedition.
“There,” Gord responded, pointing to the left of the passage that led to the pit. His keen eyes had seen the dingy hair of the yeth hounds on and around the right-hand portal. That indicated a high probability that behind was nothing more than a storage room, the place the dead hounds’ food had been kept in all likelihood, and in any event a way seldom if ever used by the masters of the place. Otherwise, no accumulation of the beasts’ shed coats would be there. Similarly, the center door showed minute traces of corrosion on ring and hinges. These, and the fact that it was the only one of the three portals that opened outward, made Gord highly suspicious of it. He was willing to wager that it was a cleverly trapped device to catch and slay unwary intruders. “We go through that way. It is the only portal which sees regular use.” he added unnecessarily; lions care little for such reasoning, after all.
The door was pushed open easily enough. Behind it was a short landing and a long, worn flight of steps leading down. As the sputtering torch cast its scant, almost brown illumination, Gord went down the rough-hewn stone stairs, Hotbreath padding before him and the nine other great cats filing after. All were moving quickly, for soon the time of absolute dark would be over. Snuffdark would not recede gradually the way Twilight had waxed. The blackness came instantly at the final waning of the brightness, and it disappeared as quickly. When Snuffdark’s grim time was finished, Shadowrealm regained its usual pallor of shadowy silvers, manifold grays, deep blacks, until Mool waxed and the oppression followed again-a year’s span, as time was measured on the Plane of Shadow.
When they finally reached the bottom of the long stairway, Gord saw that they had arrived at what must be the very heart of the gloams’ stronghold. Above were the places for guards, hounds, and the rest. Down here were the workrooms, laboratories, and libraries of those who sought to usurp the rule of this plane for themselves.
Gord’s rapid exploration of the chambers that opened onto the gallery at the bottom of the steps revealed all this. It also provided him and his escort of lions with better light, for in one alchemical study he discovered an oddly fashioned lamp. It was enclosed in a crystal-sided box, making it almost a lantern. The fuel inside it was unidentifiable, but it had what was clearly a wick, and when the nearly exhausted torch was applied to it a healthy flame sprang forth. From this lamp came a misty light of luminous gray. The radiance spread into the hemisphere ahead of the lamp, casting its strange illumination a distance of almost twenty paces. Now the group was far better prepared to see and search.
Although this seemed the nerve center, there were certainly other places that had to be found. During Snuffdark, the gloams would be bolted closed in their personal chambers-unless they were of the same sort as Imprimus. Gord knew that fiend would be entombed in his casket or sarcophagus, awaiting the return of shadows upon the plane, at which time his powers would again be restored and waxing.
When he had attempted to get Shadowfire from Gord, the gloam-lich had been constrained by the power of the approach of Twilight. The brightest and darkest times of Shadowrealm were the only ones when Imprimus’ powers were diminished. The brightness of Twilight would certainly slay the vampiric lich if he were not safely hidden from it. The total gloom of Snuffdark made Imprimus very weak and without his full range of powers. It did not harm him physically, as the radiance of Twilight would; Snuffdark made the gloam subject to attack, however, through causing him great weakness. That, Gord hoped, would prove as fatal as the full face of Mool in its single period of glory.
“Gord! I smell bad smells. This way.” The rumbling communication came from Hotbreath. His body was in rigid point as he glared toward a dim recess of the subterranean library. With the guidance given by the big male lion, Gord quickly located a secret exit from the place, a door concealed by a shelf of ancient librams and scrolls. Again steps were discovered, and the young adventurer headed down them immediately, bringing a tail often lions after him.
There was a charnel reek arising from the narrow stairwell. Even Gord’s human hearing could also detect sounds coming from below. Then the light of the lamp shone on the gray pallor of shadow-bones. It was evident that the ghouls and corpse-eaters of the material plane had counterparts dwelling in Shadowrealm, for mingled with the stench of death were the unmistakable odors of those foul creatures who dined upon corpses and delighted in decay.
“What lurks below, friends,” Gord said softly, “is such which I can fight but poorly, bearing as I do our light.”
“Eaters of dead humans,” Smokemane nearly roared in reply. “We have encountered them once or twice, for such things will contest with us over our kills if they have not other flesh to feed on.” Gord noted that the cat made no distinction between human folk, such as found on Oerth, and the phantom folk of this plane. The phantoms were, in fact, the parallel of humans, their equivalent in Shadowrealm. But the gloams were something else, something unnatural, as inimical to the phantoms as to all other clean forms of life. The two big males squeezed past Gord and bounded downward. After them went the lionesses, and the battle was on.
