room.”
They carefully tapped, poked, and prodded at the frieze, the warrior statues, even the walls and the floors as thoroughly as they could, but they found no secret compartments or hidden doors. Giving up for the moment, Geran returned to the antechamber and tried the other doorway. This led down several steps into another barrel-vaulted room, dominated by a great stone crypt. Its lid was carved in the image of a stern woman in plate armor lying in repose, her hands holding a great sunburst emblem over her heart. The walls and floor were finished with smooth, polished stone, but the chamber was otherwise bare.
“Terlannis, I presume,” Hamil said.
“So it would seem.” Geran could make out her name cut in runes at the foot of the sarcophagus. He looked at the big stone structure and frowned. Was the book actually entombed with her remains? Digging out the stairwell to gain access to the chamber in the mound was one thing, but he found that he didn’t want to be the one to actually damage the crypt. It was possible that they might be able to drive anchoring pitons into the ceiling over the crypt and rig some sort of block and tackle… but he would still have to disturb the ancient priestess’s bones, and somehow he felt that Amaunator-Lathander-would not look kindly on that. “I hate the idea of breaking into the sarcophagus.”
“Afraid of curses? Guardian spirits?”
“Among other things, yes.” Geran looked around and sighed. “Let’s check everything else before we try the tomb itself.”
They carefully examined every corner of the room, feeling along the walls and tapping the flagstones with the pommels of their daggers. After a long, careful search, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Not really expecting much, Geran finally took a few minutes to speak a simple elven finding charm. He’d learned a thing or two about finding well-hidden things in Myth Drannor; he’d seen more than one elf-made door that simply couldn’t be found by someone who didn’t already know it was there. Doubtless the tomb was warded against such minor magic, but he figured it was worth a try. He whispered the words in Elvish… and he felt a slight tug, a gleaming in the corner of his eye, from the antechamber outside the tomb. “I think I’ve got something, Hamil,” he said, and he hurried back out to the room outside Terlannis’s crypt. He turned in a small circle, trying to sharpen the glimmer of perception he’d felt, and then his eye fell on the small statue of the angel in its niche.
“There,” he breathed. He bent close to examine the small statue in its niche and thought he could make out a paper-thin seam in the joining of its arm to its shoulder. “Hamil, have a look at this.”
The halfling moved up close beside him and peered at the angel statue. Geran had learned to respect Hamil’s skill with subtle traps, hidden triggers, and concealed mechanisms during their time with the Dragon Shields; the halfling had made it his business to know as much as he could about such devices, prowling the curio shops and antique collections of every city in the Vast to collect clever puzzles, charms, locks, and even toys in order to study the workings of each. Hamil’s house in Tantras was littered with those devices he prized enough to display for visitors… and guarded by more subtle and dangerous ones to make sure that no uninvited visitors would find it safe to linger there.
Hamil studied the statue for a long time, then examined the niche all around it carefully. Finally, he drew out from a pouch at his belt a small paper tube full of silvery powder, which he blew out over the statue. It sparkled oddly in the shadows as it settled. “No hidden rune-traps or symbols,” he said. “I think it’s a simple lever. Likely it opens a hidden panel or doorway.”
Geran glanced around the antechamber. “It’s very well hidden, then. We both had a good look here.”
“Should I pull it?”
“I really don’t want to try the sarcophagus before we’ve exhausted all other options. Give it a try.”
“Stand back,” Hamil warned.
The halfling slid to one side of the niche, pressed himself up against the wall, and gently pulled the angel’s arm toward him. The seam between arm and body widened. Then Hamil rotated the arm back-it did not move that way far at all-reversed his motion, and twisted it forward. It moved a good quarter-turn and clicked, and the whole statue rose a quarter of an inch; the halfling rotated the angel on its base until he heard another faint click, and he raised the arm again until it locked back in place.
Metal and stone groaned somewhere under the feet, chains clanked slowly, and suddenly the floor of the antechamber began to sink. Geran quickly stepped back into the doorway leading to Terlannis’s crypt, while Hamil moved to the door opposite. A section of floor about ten feet across sank until it was a good eight feet lower than it had been, revealing a door of brightly polished bronze, untarnished despite the age of the mound. Hamil looked across the space to Geran. “I guess it was an elevator,” he said. “The sounds you heard were the counterweights. Clever. I didn’t expect the floor to move.”
Geran stooped down to grip the stone sill, swung himself over the edge, and dropped easily to the floor. He crossed over to give Hamil a hand down, since it was a long drop for the halfling, and the two companions turned their attention to the polished bronze door. It was inscribed with a great sunburst, ringed by a strange, flowing script.
“What does it say?” Hamil asked him.
“I don’t have the faintest idea. I think the script might be Celestial, but I can’t read a word of it.” The swordmage frowned and whispered another spell of perception-this one to reveal the presence of magic. The beautiful lettering shone with a fiery gold radiance in his eyes, and he felt the old, undiminished strength of ancient wards. “It’s divine magic of some kind. Some sort of spell of concealment? I can’t be sure.”
“Well, that would stand to reason. If the Lathanderians buried something here to keep it away from Aesperus, they would have used magic to deflect his efforts to scry its location.” The halfling blew a little more of his silver powder over the door, and again it sparkled as it drifted down to the flagstones. “No symbols or runes here, either, but it’s locked. Do we open it?”
“Yes. If we can find this place, so can Veruna’s soldiers.”
“All right, then.” Hamil worked for a moment on the lock and pushed the door open. Cold, dry air sighed out of the room beyond-a large, low-ceilinged hall, its roof supported by dozens of pillars. A great bronze statue of a leonine creature dominated the center of the chamber, lying with its paws outstretched on the floor and its head held high. Its face was human in shape, surrounded by a great mane. Behind the statue stood a stone chest, covered in fine carvings. Ancient sconces holding slender golden staves lined the chamber walls; as Geran and Hamil moved into the room, flickering flames guttered into life around the golden staves, giving the room a rich yellow glow.
“Well, the servants of Lathander hid a crypt below a crypt,” the halfling observed. “I admit, I didn’t expect work of such skill here.”
“The chest,” Geran said. He looked carefully at the room and did not see anything to alarm him, so he started to circle around the statue to the left.
He was only five paces from the door when the lion opened its eyes and looked at him.
The statue shuddered once, and old metal squealed against old metal as it slowly began to clamber to its feet. Geran stepped quickly back, moving away from the thing, but a bright golden fire sprang up in its eyes, and it opened its mouth to speak. In a voice that sounded like the clashing of cymbals, it roared in Old Tesharan, “Speak now the Three Secret Names and state thy purpose here, or I must destroy thee!”
A guardian construct! Hamil said in alarm. He retreated too, backing away in a different direction. Geran, what in the Nine Hells did it say?
Geran felt a pillar at his back and stopped retreating. The bronze lion was not alive, of course-it was an enchanted statue, long ago imbued with the power to animate and attack any strangers who made it into the vault chamber. It might lack the speed and ferocity of a real sphinx or lammasu or whatever it was supposed to be, but it would be a formidable war machine nonetheless, tireless and implacable. We’re supposed to know a password! he replied to Hamil.
“Answer now, interloper, or thy doom is assured!” the statue roared again.
The bronze monster was easily the size of a large horse, its clawed feet the size of dinner plates. We need time to think, Geran decided. We might be able to puzzle out the password, but not quickly. “Back out!” he said.
He turned to race for the doorway, only to spy something above the door’s lintel-a baleful golden rune inscribed on a heavy keystone, facing in toward the lion. They’d walked right under it when they entered the chamber, which was likely what had triggered the magic to animate the statue and give it a voice. But two other
