Final Gate (12 page)

“Where in the Nine Hells—” she began, but then she remembered to move away from the door. She took several quick strides into the tunnel, making room for Nesterin, Donnor, and Jorin to follow her through. Araevin held his magical light aloft, and kept watch over the passageway while the rest of his companions joined him.

“We’re somewhere in the Underdark, aren’t we?” said Donnor, One thick hand rested on the hilt of the broadsword at his belt.

“I think so,” Araevin replied. He murmured the words of a seeking spell, and frowned as the magic seemed to fray awkwardly beneath his subtle shaping. Faerzress, he remembered. The weird magical energy permeating the deep Underdark sometimes interfered with spellcasting. At the last moment he rallied and managed to finish the spell despite the strange interference.

The silent call of the second shard echoed from the darkness, somewhere not far off. “The Gatekeeper was right. We’re close to the second shard,” he told his friends.

“Thank Tymora for that, at least,” Maresa muttered.

“Have any of you traveled in the Underdark before?” Araevin asked.

“I have, a little,” said Jorin. “There are extensive caverns and passages under the Yuirwood, at least in places.” He shivered. “I don’t remember it being this cold, though.”

“I traveled through the upper reaches of Deep Shanatar two years ago,” Donnor said. The Tethyrian grimaced. “I can’t say I liked it much.”

“Until today, I’d succeeded in avoiding the place,” Maresa answered. Her pale hair hung still around her shoulders, unstirred by even the faintest breeze. In the depths of the earth, the magic of elemental air in her veins guttered as low as a dying candle-flame. “My mother never had anything nice to say about it. She told me plenty of stories of the horrors the Company of the White Star encountered down here.”

“I remember well,” Araevin said. It had been more than twenty years since he had ventured into the vast warrens beneath the Chionthar Vale with Belmora, Theleda, Grayth, and the rest, but he had not forgotten a moment of it. “Let’s make sure that we all have light close at hand. If you get separated from everyone else, you’ll want illumination.”

They searched through their packs, and shared out the candles and tinder kits they carried. Donnor had a half-dozen sunrods, and divided those as well. Of course, Araevin and Donnor had minor light spells they could call on, too.

“We’ll use our spells first, and save the sunrods for an emergency,” Araevin suggested. “Now, as for the Underdark … above all else, we must stay together. This place is vast and featureless. Sound plays tricks on your ears, so that you may think a distant voice is close by, and someone only a stone’s throw away might not be able to hear you even if you shout. I can’t warn you enough about how easy it is to get lost, and how hard it is to be found once you’re out of sight and earshot.

“You’ll find that this place is more hostile than the worst desert you can imagine. We may get lucky and find fresh water, but food is almost nonexistent. We must conserve our rations and our water carefully, for as long as we are down here.

“Finally, this place is home to dreadful monsters such as aboleths, mind flayers, beholders, and worse. Many are drawn by light and sound, so we should try to stay quiet and use as little light as we can.”

“Anything else?” Maresa asked, rolling her eyes.

The sun elf frowned, taking her question literally. “Oh, one more thing-we can’t count on teleporting. There are magical emanations in the rock all around us that often ruin teleport spells. It should be our very last resort. Once we leave this portal, we have no easy way back to the surface unless we retrace our steps to this spot, or stumble across another portal somewhere else.”

“Fine,” the genasi said. “Let’s get going.”

Araevin glanced up and down the passageway, and turned toward his right. “This way, then. The shard is somewhere in this direction.”

3 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms

They marched for what seemed like an eternity through the cold gloom, following the passage through the miles-long crevice. From time to time the path broke out into open spaces where small cairns of stones marked the trail through vast, black caverns. Araevin guessed that their path followed some subterranean road or trade route. Fortunately, they encountered no other travelers along the way.

After several miles, Araevin called a halt, and they rested for a time in a small cave that led away from the main path. It was almost impossible to judge the passage of time. There was no sky to see, no wind to taste, no forest-sound to listen to. The Underdark was truly a timeless place, in the sense that time altered nothing in the utter darkness and silence. Every moment was the same as the one that preceded it, and countless moments before that.

“What a dreary place,” Nesterin said quietly to him while their companions slept. “I can’t believe that anyone, not even the drow, could endure it for long.”

“This seems to be a desolate stretch of the Underdark,” Araevin agreed. “Not all of it is so featureless. In other places there are titanic vaults where great forests of fungus grow, vast lightless seas, spectacular waterfalls miles high, even caverns lit by glimmering veils of wizard fire, like the midwinter lights of the far north.”

“You have seen these things?”

“Only a few. And to be honest, for every secret wonder one finds in the depths, there are ten deadly perils. We are not made for a life so far beneath the earth.”

Nesterin glanced up at the ceiling of their small cave, and shuddered. “I could go mad just thinking about the weight of the rock over my head right now.”

“It’s better not to dwell on it,” Araevin advised him. He stood and stretched, rubbing his arms vigorously. Strangely enough, he wasn’t as troubled by the pervasive chill of the place as he would have been before the telmiirkara neshyrr. He sensed the heavy cold of the stone sinking into him, but it seemed to have little power to sap his strength. His companions, on the other hand, clearly needed every blanket they carried in their packs. Next time we’ll have to risk a fire, Araevin decided. “Let’s rouse the others I think we’ve rested at least a quarter of a day, and I am as anxious as Maresa to finish our work down here and leave this place behind us.”

The small company broke camp and pressed on into the darkness, winding farther from the portal leading back to the surface. At one point they found that their road led through a tunnel hewn through a bed of solid rock. The entrance was marked with a squaredoff archway with a distinctly trapezoidal outline. Strange old runes marked the heavy stone slabs that made the arch, interspersed with sharply geometric designs.

“Is that Dwarvish?” Donnor asked after studying the ominous archway.

“No,” Araevin replied. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize the language.”

They continued through the hewn tunnel, and Araevin became conscious of a subtle change in the quality of the air. It was growing colder, bitterly so. And it seemed that the air felt more open, less constrained, even as the darkness grew almost impenetrable, muffling all sound and drinking in their feeble lights with endless and ancient hunger. He felt his companions tensing uncomfortably, shoulders tightening, hands straying closer to weapons.

“There’s something up ahead,” Jorin whispered. “The air’s changed somehow.”

“We know,” Maresa answered him “It’s sort of hard to miss.”

They emerged from the tunnel but saw nothing ahead. Then Jorin, who was in the lead, scuffed to a stop with a muttered oath and threw out his arm to stop the others.

“A sheer precipice,” the ranger said. “Our road turns to the right and hugs the wall. Be careful, or you’ll walk right off into nothing.”

Slowly, they negotiated the turn. Araevin paused for a moment, staring out into the gloom. The light shining from his enspelled coin illuminated a great wall that towered up out of sight overhead and fell away into blackness underfoot. Their tunnel simply emerged in the middle of this vast vertical obstacle, and met a narrow ledge winding along the side of the empty space. Staring into the darkness, Araevin could feel in his bones that it was vast indeed, cold, silent, and still as the crypt. No rail or wall marked the edge of the drop. The ledge was simply a path about eight or nine feet wide cut from the side of the immense cavern.

“By the Morninglord,” Donnor Kerth murmured. “It’s titanic.”

The illimitable darkness around them seemed to deaden sound, swallowing their voices as if to enforce its own silence on the intruders.

“I think you chose the wrong god to swear by,” said Jorin. “I promise you this place has never seen a dawn, not since the making of the world.”

“Donnor, do you have a light spell ready?” Araevin asked.

The human knight grimaced. “I prayed to Lathander for almost nothing else when I rose today.”

“Cast one now, please.”

The Lathanderite held out his holy symbol, a bronze sunburst, and spoke the words of his holy prayer. His symbol gleamed brightly and began to shine, but Araevin thought the light spell seemed noticeably weaker than he might have expected. It was not unusual for certain spots to suppress magic of different schools, and he could well believe that the abyss before them muted light spells. When Donnor’s light gained its full strength, such as it was, Araevin stepped close to the edge and tossed his own illuminated copper into the darkness.

The coin spun lazily down into the dark, falling past a featureless wall that seemed to plunge straight down. It dwindled into the deeps, receding farther and farther. And it kept on going, a bright point of light that fell, and fell, and fell, until Araevin felt sick at the sight of it.

“Seldarie,” he breathed.

“By all the golden heavens, how far down does that go?” Donnor muttered.

“I counted thirty-three heartbeats before I lost sight of it,” Jorin said. He shivered. “It must be miles.”

“At least you’d have plenty of time to make your peace with the gods before you hit bottom,” said Maresa. “You might even have time to eulogize yourself, too.”

Giving the widest berth possible to the yawning darkness waiting on the left, they followed the ledge to the right. Araevin expected that they might travel a few hundred yards alongside the silent abyss before their path turned back into some smaller cavern or crevice, but as they walked the road simply followed the wall of the abyss, going on for what must have been mile after mile. From time to time the road climbed up or down a few steps at a time, and on a couple of occasions they passed by deep alcoves or niches cut into the rock wall at their right—safe resting places created by or for travelers who went that way, Araevin guessed. But what truly disturbed him were the staircases they passed on their left. Every so often they would come to a squat trapezoidal column in a landing of sorts overlooking the edge, marking the place where a set of steep, narrow stairs climbed up out of the measureless blackness below. Someone—or something, he reminded himself-had delved ambitiously in the cold black emptiness of the abyss.

After an eternity of marching alongside the abyss, they stopped and rested in one of the alcoves. For the comfort of his friends, Araevin covered the opening of the place with an illusion of barren rock, so that they could build a small fire from a little store of firewood Donnor and Jorin carried in their packs. A warm meal cheered them somewhat, but all too soon they had to allow their little fire to gutter down to glowing embers, and the darkness outside seemed to press in on them with an almost insatiable hunger. Without even realizing they were doing it, they fell silent and sat still listening to the sound of the dark, straining to catch even the tiniest hint of something from the vast space beyond their small refuge.

Araevin found himself crouching forward on the edge of his seat, his arms wrapped close around his body, an awful suspense hanging over him. He shook himself a little, and managed to bring himself around to look at his friends, only to find everyone else sitting silently in the dark, faces sick with dread.

By all the gods, what is this place? he wondered. What is it we think we’re listening for? “Nesterin,” he rasped. He cleared his throat, and tried again. “Nisterin, I think we could use a little music. Something to alleviate the darkness.”

The star elf looked at him blankly for a moment, and nodded numbly. He drew a small flute from his vest pocket, and began to play-awkwardly at first, but then with a little more confidence and feeling. He did not try a merry air, but instead a small plaintive melody that nevertheless managed to break the unbearable tension. Soon enough they breathed easier and did not sit huddled anxiously against the blackness outside.

“The damnable thing about it,” Donnor managed, “is that it’s so weirdly still. It’s a vast space out there, miles long, miles high, and in all that space there’s not a breath of wind moving. We’re on the side of a mountain thousands of feet high, and it’s as quiet as the inside of a mausoleum.”

“It’s unnatural,” Araevin agreed. If nothing else, he would have expected to hear the distant sounds of water on stone, or a faint susurrus of air breathing through rock. He started to speak, but Jorin hushed them all with a single curt gesture of his hand.

“Something is coming,” the ranger whispered.

He sat near the opening of the ledge, listening intently. Araevin’s illusionary wall kept any of their faint light from leaking out of the alcove, but that didn’t mean they could not be heard. They all fell silent, and Araevin heard it too—a faint rustling, slow, deliberate, accompanied by thin wheezing.

Maresa glided over to crouch next to Jorin and peer through the wall. Unlike the elves, who could see well with little light but couldn’t manage with none at all, the genasi could see a little even in absolute darkness-a gift of her elemental bloodline. She frowned in puzzlement, staring at something the rest of them could not see.

After a moment she looked back to Araevin and whispered, “It’s a gnome of some kind, crawling along the ledge. He’s sick or injured, hardly moving at all. What do we do?”