'You know something, Druhallen. Tell me what you know,' Rozt'a demanded.
'I don't know anything.' And Dru didn't, not yet. The picture wasn't nearly complete and much of it remained contradictory. The commanding presence of a mind flayer colony-something called its Elder Brain-was supposed to reside in a brine-filled pool. Without an Elder Brain, there was no colony-according to Ansoain, who might have been wrong. She'd never encountered a mind flayer, merely learned about them as she learned about everything else.
'Is this what you're calling 'the egg'?' Dru asked Sheemzher.
Sheemzher shook his head. 'Egg not here, good sir. Egg there.' The goblin pointed to a tunnel in the shadows that Dru hadn't noticed before.
'Let's go then.'
The tunnel was short and led to a room square enough to have been hollowed out by dwarves but cluttered with rock debris and chunks of twisted metal, some of them larger than a full-grown man. Sheemzher's egg stood in the center of the room. It was no more an egg than the creatures they'd been killing for the last few days were demons, but it was an athanor of dangerous proportions. Dru judged the oval engine was twice as high as he was tall and perhaps a third as wide as it was high. It was made from hammered and riveted plates of bronze, or possibly brass. Double-doors, hinged at the athanor's widest point, had been left open and revealed a two-chamber interior. The bottom chamber was large enough to accommodate a goblin or three. The upper chamber, though much smaller, could have held a good-sized snake or a hundred of Lady Wyndyfarh's mantises.
Metal pipes and parchment hoses connected the two interior chambers and other parts of the athanor, too. The widest pipe of all disappeared into one of the walls above an incised rectangle that might have been the start of another rock-cut passage. Two more pipes were bolted to the floor. Dru figured he knew what the athanor did and was asking himself how it worked and what it had to do with a Nether scroll when he looked up and found the answers to both questions in the same place.
A golden cylinder as long as his forearm stuck out of the top of the athanor and up into at least a score of wires dangling from the ceiling. Some of the wires were shorter than the others. All of them were soot stained. He didn't know what leapt between the wires and the scroll-maybe fire, maybe lightning, maybe something he'd never studied-but he understood the principle of using explosive spells to power engines both arcane and ordinary.
The metal litter on the floor-the smaller sections of pipe and larger sheets of brass-could have formed the shells of earlier eggs. The Beast Lord-the mind flayers-hadn't perfected the transmutation process. Suddenly, the misshapen goblins connected to the growing pattern. They were the egg's failures and the swordswingers were its triumphs.
Sheemzher grabbed his sleeve in a panic. 'Not egg. Not egg! Smell right, but not egg! Too big. Very much too big.'
That, too, fit into the pattern. 'Six years, Sheemzher. Remember that it's been six years since you were here. They've rebuilt your egg.' Dru pointed out the piles of blasted metal. 'Step back and look up. It's your egg with the golden scroll sticking out the top.'
Sheemzher retreated, squinted, and began jumping for joy. 'Sheemzher see! Sheemzher see! Get it now, good sir? Sheemzher climb. Sheemzher climb good.'
It couldn't be this easy, Druhallen thought as he lifted the goblin. It couldn't be And it wasn't.
Sheemzher had one foot on the hinge of the open door and the other still resting on Druhallen's shoulder when they heard the sound of a heavy latch being thrown.
10
6 Eleint, the Year of the Banner (1368 DR) The Greypeak Mountains
Tiep liked having a sword in his hand. He didn't mind that the hilt was the wrong shape for his human hand or the weapon was point heavy once he'd found a comfortable way to hold it. In fact, he rather liked the weighty sensation. Knives were nice, but if he couldn't reel off fireballs the way Druhallen did, Tiep wanted a sword riding below his hip.
He'd won a sword off a Scornubel swell last winter and worn it with a swagger until it had become embarrassingly apparent that Rozt'a wouldn't teach him how to use it. Worse, she'd whispered in the ear of the city's armsmasters and none of them would take him on as a student. Bitterly disappointed, he'd sold the sword back to the swell come spring and hit the road with his familiar knives.
In his wildest dreams, Tiep had never imagined Druhallen telling him to pick up a sword, and to tell the truth, he'd been none-too-eager to unfasten the scabbard from around the hips of something that clearly wasn't civilized. If the weapon had been enchanted, he'd have gotten the worst of it; he usually did. Fortunately there wasn't any magic to the sword or its scabbard and Dru's words were still swirling in his ears You could get lucky The phrase formed a satisfying counterpoint to one of Rozt'a's favorite sayings: I worry more about incompetence than skill.
With visions of bravery, Tiep cut the air in the egg chamber with a flourish. He knew he was incompetent, but he'd always been lucky. At least, he'd always thought he was, but if he'd been truly lucky, he'd have been paying attention before Rozt'a slapped her hand between his shoulders and shoved him toward the doorway.
It was disrespectful, that's what it was. Hadn't one of the first things Galimer ever said to him been, Don't sneak up on Rozt'a when she's drawn steel? Granted, Tiep's first thoughts as he staggered toward the doorway hadn't been a deadly counterattack. He'd been so surprised he'd let the tip clunk and scrape across the stone. Still there was principle to defend Tiep caught his balance and spun around. 'Rozt'a-'
Something was wrong and the wrongness was unfolding so fast Tiep couldn't get his thoughts around it. Rozt'a's sword was out, her fist was cocked, and she wore her wolf-face. She didn't talk, she hissed.
'No noise… no noise,' and 'We're getting out of here.'
Tiep had to backpedal for all he was worth to avoid her charge. But why? There was Druhallen beside the metal egg. Dru's arms were raised; he was poised to catch Sheemzher who'd scrambled up the egg like a lizard and was hauling on the golden scroll with all his puny strength.
Had the damned dog-faced goblin pulled when he should have pushed and started something he couldn't stop? That would figure.
Rozt'a changed direction between strides and, discounting the fact that her beloved foster-son was showing naked steel, reached across her body to grab him at the opposite shoulder and spin him around before giving him another, mightier, shove toward the door. On his way around, Tiep snagged a glimpse of what might be the cause of the chaos. The wall to the left of the metallic egg that had been solid stone when they entered the egg chamber had become a shimmering mirage-like the road ahead on a too-hot summer day-with a dead-black slit in the middle of it.
Tiep needed another look to be sure of what he'd seen. When he tried to get it, Rozt'a's fist landed in the middle of his back and he was crossing the threshold into the tunnel between the pool chamber and the egg chamber before he caught his balance again. It was pitch dark in the tunnel. Druhallen had their light and Druhallen wasn't with them.
Rozt'a must have guessed that Dru's name was primed on the back of his tongue, because when she hit Tiep again, it was with her open hand. She seized his shirt and didn't let go.
'Not a sound!'
There was a dogleg in the tunnel. It hadn't been a problem when they'd had Druhallen's spell illuminating their path, but they missed it going out. Tiep, who was shoved in front of Rozt'a, slammed into the stone chin and nose first. He smelled his own blood and his thoughts were echo and pain when they got to the pool chamber.
'Hide!' Rozt'a hissed and pulled, rather than shoved, him along the chamber's right-side wall.
Tiep spun out of her grasp. 'Where's Dru?' He danced sideways. There was no light moving in the tunnel. 'Where's Druhallen? We can't leave Druhallen.'
His voice had risen; he expected a smack on the jaw, but Rozt'a's hands were shaking too much for her to deliver a punch, deserved or not.
'Hide! We've got to hide.'
She was terrified. Tiep's foster-mother who'd laid open more men than Tiep could count was terrified. For the
