Troy Denning - The Sentinel

“Why not?” Arietta asked. “It would prevent us from delivering the Eye to Grumbar’s Temple.”

“It would force us to try something desperate,” Kleef said. “They’d rather have us on the bridges, where they can anticipate our moves.”

“Nor would it be easy for them to undo Sadrach’s magic,” Malik said. “Those bridges have been there since the Spellplague. If they could be destroyed, I am sure someone would have done it by now.”

Arietta frowned. “Why would anyone want to destroy those bridges?” she asked, instantly suspicious. “There’s something you haven’t told us.”

“Nothing of concern,” Malik said. “Only that Sadrach and his servants were much changed by the Spellplague, and I doubt the nomads of the Shaar are fond of having them visit in the night.”

“Changed how?” Kleef asked.

Malik shrugged. “I know only what my god has shared with me, which is little enough,” he said. “But have no fear. He has promised to protect us.”

Kleef looked skeptical. “He’d better keep that promise,” he said. “Because if one of these servants so much as looks at us wrong, I’m throwing you to the orcs myself.”

Malik grew pale. “There is no need for threats,” he said. “We are all here to stop Shar.”

“Just remember that.” Arietta caught Kleef’s eye, then added, “But if Malik is right about those bridges being indestructible, we have a more urgent problem. We can’t allow ourselves to become trapped between the orcs and the Shadovar.”

“Good point.” Kleef glanced back toward the orc horde, then started toward the Underchasm. “We need to keep moving.”

It wasn’t quite what Arietta had meant, but she saw no harm in talking while they walked. She fell in beside the watchman and started through the tall grass.

“Actually, I was thinking of something a bit more unexpected,” Arietta said. “We need to find a way to pit the orcs and Shadovar against each other.”

“Perhaps you could ask Siamorphe to fly us across the chasm,” Malik suggested, squeezing in between Kleef and Arietta. “Surely, even she is more likely to grant such a miracle than are the Shadovar and the orcs.”

Kleef scowled at the little man’s rudeness, then turned to Arietta. “I hate to say it, but he has a point.”

Arietta shook her head. “It doesn’t take a miracle-not if we can make them see that their interests are no longer aligned. For instance, if Gruumsh were to recover his eye, what’s the first thing he would do?”

“Take horrible vengeance on Luthic, without a doubt,” Malik said. “But what good is that to us? Then Luthic would be dead, and Grumbar would have no reason to stay on Toril.”

“Wrong.” Kleef was starting to sound interested. “Grumbar wouldn’t let it go that far. He’d be honor-bound to protect his lover.”

“Which means he would have to stay on Toril,” Arietta said. “And that’s exactly what the Shadovar don’t want.”

“Wait-you want to give the Eye to the orcs?” Joelle’s voice was aghast. “Please tell me that’s not what you’re saying.”

“Not quite,” Arietta said. “I’m just saying that if we want to reach Grumbar’s Temple alive, we need to make the orcs see that the Shadovar are no more on their side than ours.”

The companions continued toward the Underchasm, refining Arietta’s plan as they walked. Malik favored trying to strike a deal with the orcs, then double-crossing them when the Shadovar arrived to interfere. Kleef thought it made more sense to challenge the orc chieftan to single combat and put the Eye up as the prize. In the end, they realized they needed to be subtler-that it wasn’t the orcs they needed to trick, it was the Shadovar.

They stopped long enough to make a few preparations, then resumed their march. Although they were now so close to their goal they could actually see it, the scale of the Underchasm made it difficult to estimate the remaining distance. For the next two hours, the swath of grassy plain in front of them never seemed to narrow, nor the stone crags out in the abyss to grow much larger or more distinct. Only the red rift in the sky appeared to draw nearer, becoming wider and brighter and driving the two banks of purple clouds down toward the horizon.

Every now and then, a blazing white vortex would form somewhere inside the rift and drop a swirling column of flame down into the Underchasm. The plain would shudder and the wind would boom and shriek, and sometimes there would come a blast of heat so ferocious that grass withered and dirt smoked. Other times, ranks of lightning would dance across the horizon, seeming to wall off some distant part of the world and cleave it away forever. Once, a sheet of blue ice dropped from the sky and sliced into the ground alongside them, opening up a mile-long fissure that immediately began to vent a curtain of frigid white fog.

Finally, the grassy plain began to narrow, and the rim of the Underchasm drew visibly closer. The nearest of the stone crags slowly swelled into a mountaintop, and the pale line that connected it to the lip of the abyss became an impossibly long bridge. A pair of stone pylons appeared on the brink of the chasm, serving as the entrance to the bridge and anchoring the thick, translucent cables that held it suspended in the air.

Kleef removed his sword and scabbard from his back and, keeping one eye on the agate on Watcher’s crossguard, cautiously led the way forward. As the companions drew nearer to the bridge, the plain grew barren and lifeless, exposing a powdery brown loam that had been compacted into a network of foot trails. The trails converged at the bridge entrance, where a dozen wood poles stood, planted in a rough semicircle. Some were no more that waist-height, and a couple were as tall as Kleef. But all had a chain dangling from the top and a carpet of bones scattered around the base.

Lying chained to one of the shorter posts was a black-and-brown billy goat. When he noticed the companions, he staggered to his feet and turned to watch them approach. His eyes were wary and pale, with elongated horizontal pupils that reminded Arietta of the agate on Kleef’s sword.

Kleef stopped a few paces away and asked no one in particular, “What’s this? An offering?”

“Or perhaps a gift,” Malik suggested. “If the nomads leave food here, Sadrach’s servants will have less reason to visit their camps at night.”

Kleef studied the goat for a moment, then went to his side and kneeled next to his head. The goat shied away, but Kleef reached out and gently drew him back, then began to fiddle with the iron collar around his neck.

“Are you mad?” Malik demanded. “You will turn Sadrach’s servants against us if you steal what is meant for them!”

Kleef continued to work on the collar. “Sadrach’s monsters have nothing to be angry about,” he said. “The only ones I’m stealing from are the orcs.”

He looked back the way they’d come, to where the orc horde had become a churning mass of flesh and iron, spreading across the plain behind them. Arietta could already see the advance guard out in front, distant knots of stooped shapes that left ribbons of trampled grass in their wake, and she knew it would not be long before the first scouts arrived at the bridge.

“Kleef’s right,” Arietta said. “The first orcs are going to be here within the hour-and there’s no need to appease them .”

She retrieved the top of a human skull from among the bones surrounding one of the tall poles, then filled it with water and kneeled down in front of the goat. The beast fixed his eerie eyes on hers, and for an instant she felt as though she were staring into the heavens themselves, a realm of iridescent clouds and mountains the color of molten gold, of endless silver waterfalls and alabaster palaces reflected in shimmering lakes.