Don Bassingthwaite - The Grieving Tree

The same direction Dah’mir had pointed.

Hruucan faced both priest and captain. “It takes little imagination to guess that the movements of Singe and your ship are connected.”

“Storm at dawn,” Vennet cursed.

A thin smile curled Dah’mir’s lips. “Your bounty hunter failed, Vennet.”

Vennet growled. “You’ll find Dandra where you find Singe, Dah’mir. I think we both have an interest in Lightning on Water now.”

Dah’mir’s smile faltered. His face hardened. “Take me into the mound,” he said.

Vennet’s rage carried him past the burning bodies of his crew, across the battlefield, and up to the looming bulk of the Bonetree mound. It carried him through the tunnel mouth that opened in the mound’s side, a dark scar under the light of the rising moons. It carried him down the first twenty paces of the tunnel that pushed into the earth beneath.

Then-as the tunnel turned twice in quick succession and all hint of moonlight, night air, and the outside world was cut off-it faltered.

Perhaps Dah’mir felt the tension in him. The priest chuckled softly. “Are you frightened, Vennet?”

The half-elf stiffened. “No.”

Hruucan just laughed.

The rippling flames of the dolgaunt’s tentacles and the ember-glow of his burned body were their only illumination in the tunnels. By their shifting light, Vennet could see that the tunnel floor had been worn smooth from use. They passed the mouths of chambers and other tunnels, but Dah’mir kept them moving along the most well-worn route-although at one chamber entrance he stopped. “In here,” he said. “I need to see something.”

Vennet guided him into the chamber. Hruucan followed and the light of his body splashed across a towering device of brass tubes, wires, and crystals. Vennet recognized it from Dandra’s tale of her capture and torture at Dah’mir’s hands-it was the device that the priest had used to separate his kalashtar subject’s minds from their bodies, exchanging them with the spirits of their psicrystals. He recognized the tables to which Dandra said the kalashtar had been bound. One of them still held the remains, somehow preserved by the stale atmosphere within the mound, of a kalashtar man. His skull looked like it had been ripped apart.

On the floor before the device of brass and crystal was a blue-black Khyber shard, the biggest dragonshard Vennet had ever seen. For a moment, he forgot his fear in a rush of greed. The shard was the size of small child. Sold at market it would be worth a considerable fortune.

Dandra had described just such a shard as the heart of Dah’mir’s device. Vennet looked up at the device again: there was a hole torn through the tubes and wires that matched the size of the shard. The great blue-black crystal rested atop a network of cracks in the flagstone of the chamber floor. It had, Vennet guessed, been hurled to the ground hard enough to shatter the stones. He looked more closely at the shard itself.

A deep crack ran through the shard’s center. It had been ruined.

Dah’mir’s grasp was tight on his arm. Vennet looked down at him and felt his fear come rushing back. The priest’s face was pale with controlled rage. Vennet wouldn’t want to be whoever had broken the shard.

“I’ve seen enough,” said Dah’mir after a long while. “Go back to the tunnel. Our destination lies deeper.”

As they penetrated further, the frequency with which other tunnels and chambers appeared increased. The floor became not just worn, but slippery-smooth. The silence of the upper tunnels that Vennet had taken for granted was broken. There were harsh whispers in the depths and scrapes of furtive movement in the darkness. Some of the whispers sound threatening.

“Dolgrims,” murmured Dah’mir. “Act calm. They’ll attack if they sense fear.”

The tunnel opened into a chamber wider than the reach of Hruucan’s light, but both he and Dah’mir moved across it with confidence. Vennet might have been supporting Dah’mir but he would have been lost without the priest’s guidance. The darkness of the chamber seemed unending. At some point, the whispers of the dolgrims faded away as well. Vennet felt unease rising up his throat like vomit. Just when it seemed that he would be sick, though, Hruucan’s flickering light fell on a wall of rock pierced by a narrow passage.

“Here,” said Dah’mir. “Go carefully.”

Vennet didn’t need the warning. The floors and walls of the passage were rough, not worn smooth. The tunnel was seldom traveled. He edged forward, leading Dah’mir. Hruucan stayed back-the passage was so restricted that it trapped the heat given off by his body. Vennet could feel hot air circulating around him, like standing too close to a roaring fire.

The passage ended in a dark crack. Vennet stepped out of the glow of Hruucan’s tentacles and into a seeming void. His foot struck a loose rock-it clattered away into the darkness, raising a cacophony of distant echoes.

“I told you to be careful,” Dah’mir said. He raised his voice and called out an arcane word. Arcs of dim blue radiance streaked through the chamber, veins of crystal embedded in the walls woken to light by the magic. Vennet caught his breath.

A cavern soared around them, opening above and below. They stood on a broad ledge about halfway up from the cavern floor. More ledges stepped down like gigantic benches on the cavern’s other walls. The floor of the cavern was broken and uneven, but about twenty-five paces across. At floor level in the opposite wall was another broad tunnel. Stones ringed the tunnel mouth in a rough arch-stones etched with symbols and interspersed with the shining blue-black of Khyber shards.

“Storm at dawn,” breathed Vennet.

“So close,” wheezed Dah’mir. “So close.” He gestured sharply. “Help me down!”

Vennet glanced over the side of the ledge. The rock face looked as though it had been worked like clay to form a series of irregular steps down to the cavern floor. He went first, choosing his footing carefully and helping Dah’mir down each step. The priest moved with the care of a frail man. “The shifter will pay for this,” he murmured with each cautious movement. “He will pay.”

Hruucan leaped down with a careless grace to join them as they crossed the floor. Vennet stared up at the stone ring built around the tunnel. The stones clearly didn’t come from within the cavern-they were a mix of colors, sizes, and textures. Many had the smooth curves of river stones, others the broken sharpness of quarried rock. Up close, he could see that they were held in place with a dark but glittering mortar.

“What is it?” Vennet asked.

“A seal,” said the priest. “A seal devised by Gatekeepers to restrain forces they feared.” He pulled away from Vennet and eased himself to the ground, kneeling before the tunnel.

“A Gatekeeper seal?” Vennet’s tortured gut felt ready to rise once more. His heart was pounding in his chest. When he’d been tutored in the classrooms of House Lyrandar, the ancient myths of the Gatekeepers had been curiosities. When he’d been taught the lies of the Sovereign Host, the Gatekeepers hadn’t been mentioned at all. Only when he’d found faith in the Dragon Below had he learned more of them-enemies of the powers of Khyber, creators of the seals that had for millennia restrained the great lords of the dark, the alien daelkyr. He swallowed. “You’re going to break it?”

“No,” Dah’mir said. “But I don’t need to.”

He sat back on his heels, his leather robes pooling around him, the red Eberron shards set in his sleeves flashing in the dim light as he raised his arms above his head. A chant began to ripple from his lips. Vennet didn’t recognize the words. They were like nothing he had ever heard before, neither a true language nor the syllables of magic. They hurt his ears and sent horror stabbing through him. They soaked into his head like wine into a white cloth. When a second voice took up the chant, he cringed and looked to Hruucan.