tendril of white-orange flame in Gunggari’s direction.
Gunggari dodged aside. Though the flame failed to fall full upon him, the backwash of heat still brought blisters to his skin and choked a grunt of pain from his lips. Worse, he dropped his dizheri.
Eschar paused then, a slightly puzzled expression looking out of place on the demon’s horrendous visage. He said, “Wait. You numbered one more…”
Screaming in sudden fury, the horned demon whirled and raced toward the open mouth of the white dome.
Marrec ran along a narrowing corridor of egg-shell white. Like the inside of a conch shell, the corridor seemed to whirl ever closer to some still-hidden center. Marrec became certain that the dome’s interior was somewhat larger than the exterior promised. The sounds of his friends’ struggle against Eschar quickly faded behind him. Then the sounds of his muffled footfall on the hard surface competed only with the beat of surging blood in his ears as his heart hammered.
He nearly tripped when Justlance finally, tardily, materialized in his grip. Good, he needed the light that still radiated from its tip.
Marrec couldn’t decide how many full circuits he’d made, each one smaller than the last, but he guessed about nine, when he came to the inmost chamber.
Also dome shaped, rising to a height of at least twenty feet, the chamber was mostly empty.
Nine pedestals graced the periphery of the circular room. The pedestals, equidistantly spaced, stood at the edges of a nine-pointed star inscribed in red across the floor. Most of the pedestals were empty, though each contained a hollow concavity, apparently sized to accept strangely shaped amulets, tools, or other implements that Marrec didn’t want to spend time attempting to imagine.
Five of the pedestals contained items, though to the cleric’s unpracticed eye it seemed that only one of those items was actually the object meant to be housed; none of the other objects fit its particular hollow, shelf, or hangar so snugly. It was a night black cloak, so dark that it seemed a void, which was draped across a perfectly shaped hangar.
The other four items included a dagger made from a red talon, an orb of hazy green set in a golden ring, a sword seemingly forged of pale bone, and a chunk of white, translucent crystal in which something dark was caught.
What had the Queen Abiding said? “You’ll know it when you see it” or some such.
He sprinted across the floor to the pedestal holding the crystal chunk. Hefting it, his fingers were immediately chilled, and condensation formed, dripping off his hand He gazed into the object, studying that which was caught within. Marrec’s eyes couldn’t seem to focus on it First a smear, then some great winged thing it seemed, then a wriggling worm, then back to a dark imperfection.
The crystal had to be it. He clutched it close. Marrec’s eyes fell across the other items stored in the chamber, obviously precious bits gathered by Eschar. He suspected that all were tainted by association with the failed Nar race. Look what came of them for their congress with demons, he thought. With his single prize, he dashed from the room.
The cleric made to retrace his route, circling outward, but leaving the room immediately spit him into the great cavern. He stood before the open mouth of the dome at the center of the Sighing Vault a little off balance; Marrec’s body thought it should be racing around in wider circles, as it had on entering the dome.
His eyes were filled with the form of Eschar, who was upon him.
Fallon nearly stumbled, his foot catching across the lintel of the dark room into which he pulled himself and Ash. He had a sense that something was following behind him. Too far to see and hear directly, but the elf could sense something closing on him. He hadn’t heard or smelled anything specific or seen a betraying light, but a mixture of subtle clues colluded. The sum of those clues was inescapable, though he knew most people would never know they had become quarry until too late. His sense was accurate enough for him to discern that that which hunted him was not the group sent out by the Nentyarch that had trailed him earlier through that thoroughly inexplicable extradimensional space. Fallon’s pursuer was something far more implacable.
After all, despite his betrayal of the Nentyarch, he was a hunter trained by the Circle of
Leth. His skills were considerable in their own right, even though their use was no longer sanctioned. Oh well, time for yet more unsanctioned activity, he decided.
Fallon adjusted the shade on his hooded lantern to a wider aperture, allowing the finger-thin gleam of light to widen to a cone of amber radiance. His elven eyes, sensitive beyond those of men, studied that which was revealed.
The side chamber glittered in the increased light. Some sort of white dust, like particles of salt, coated the floor, walls, and even the ceiling. Lumps under a powdery coating were scattered across the floor of the chamber. Most of the lumps were fist-sized, but a few were larger, half a foot across bigger. The largest was an elongated lump almost six feet long and a little over a foot wide, though it was tapered at each end.
Another exit poked through the far wall of the small chamber. The dusty covering seemed thicker over there.
Stepping carefully, Fallon approached the largest lump. Brushing away some of the coating, which shifted and flowed as if in truth sea salt, Fallon’s suspicion was confirmed: a completely desiccated humanoid body, mummified and shrunken beneath an ancient cocoon of material. The elf doubted the whitish powder was salt in truth, but a remnant of something more insidious. He didn’t have the stomach to investigate the identity of the smaller lumps.
He whispered to the girl, who still stood just inside the doorway, “Want to bet something nasty lives through there?” Fallon gestured toward the small exit in the chamber where the white coating was thickest. Ash did not deign to respond.
Walking with practiced ease, Fallon sidled over to the exit. The beam of his lantern illuminated a short passage in which lay a snowy layer so thick that drifts completely covered the floor to a depth of at least six inches. Beyond the passage, the light revealed a wide expanse. His eyes narrowed, his breath coming in a short gasp when he registered movement in that far chambermany, many somethings.
He breathed easier when, after a moment, it seemed that he had not disturbed the activity he’d probed with the lantern beam. A good thinghe guessed that it would be a lethal journey had he blundered through the drifts into the chamber. He and Ash would have to go back to the tunnel they had been initially traversing.
The inklings of a plan tickled him. Perhaps some misdirection was in order. That which pursued him had too easy a time of it, stalking a quarry too afraid to turn aside. Perhaps he would “turn aside” here, he thought. Fallon estimated he only had about fifteen minutes of grace, assuming that which tailed him didn’t change its velocity.
The elf opened his pack, looking for the implements he would need to pull off his subterfuge.
The creature known as Ezekial swept ahead through the darkness, not hurrying, but like the tide when it changes, unstoppable. A predator by nature, a killer by predilection, and an assassin by trade, Ezekial tasted the essence of the fools that fled before him. One was an elf, that Ezekial could tell with only a sniff, though the elf had some skill in concealing its passage. However, with the elfs scent sighing through his nostrils, very little could put him off the trail.
The predator’s eyes narrowed, as it intermittently sensed the other member of the duo he tracked. There was something in that scent that seemed to threaten Ezekial, in a manner not unlike the eastern sky threatening to push back the night. He didn’t know what to make of that, and had not Damanda commanded the chase, he might have decided to pass up that particular quarry.
But Damanda’s command could not be denied. She was his mistress, his progenitor, his very existence. The blightlord’s cruel domination was the closest thing Ezekial would ever know to devotion.
A confusion of scents hazed the passage ahead.
A side chamber gave off the main passage he traversed, like many he had previously passed, though without a valve or door to conceal its contents. The trail of his quarry led both ahead and into the chamber.
A crux of indecision; which trail was the most recent? A few sniffs revealed that the odor of life he followed like a beacon was stronger to his left. It wafted from the chamber, enticing him closer. He licked his lips; yes, there it wasblood. Blood had been spilled, and it was fresh. Ezekial frowned. He hoped he would not be robbed of the reward he had promised himself. It wouldn’t be the first time quarry he chased through Under-Tharos fell victim to
