Don Bassingthwaite - The Eye of the Chained God

Then Shara, a few paces ahead, froze on the edge of a crevice. She took a long step back before turning her head just enough to mouth a word at them: here.

Albanon crept forward and peered over the edge. The crevice was one of the deepest ones yet. The sun hadn’t risen high enough yet to cast its rays more than a couple of paces into the shadows, but that was enough. Plague demons, the first they’d seen in days, were packed into the crevice like bees in a hive.

They appeared to be mostly the smaller, beastlike demons, but it was hard to tell. They pressed against each other, their spindly limbs so still and intertwined so closely that they resembled the veins of red crystal in the stone walls. They could almost have been continuations of the veins, and Albanon was struck by the frightening idea that Vestapalk might be growing his demons now, spawning them like maggots from the rock.

He took a slow breath and forced himself to remain calm. The demons hadn’t grown in the crevice-they were transformed beings just like all the others. He could distinguish other body shapes among them, including a couple of the four-armed brutes. They had more likely just taken shelter there against the daylight. Their angled, crystalline eyes were all closed. Their chests moved with slow breathing. Did plague demons sleep?

Shara touched his arm. She pointed into the crevice, then made a sharp slicing motion across her throat. Albanon understood.

Kill them now.

It was tempting. Dozens of plague demons removed from the world. Dozens of demons that wouldn’t trouble them again. Coordinated spells from him, Quarhaun, and Tempest… Albanon pressed his lips together and shook his head, then pointed at the volcano looming close above and touched his eyes.

Vestapalk will see.

It was a danger they had discussed over and over again. It was inevitable that a demon would see them, and through its eyes Vestapalk would discover their presence. Albanon was determined to delay that moment for as long as possible. Shara’s face tightened but she nodded and jerked her head at a way around the crevice. They moved past the sleeping demons in silence, the others also glancing into the crevice as they slipped by. Once they were away from it, however, Tempest leaned close to him. “They were sleeping for the day?”

“It looks like it.”

She frowned. “Albanon, I’m not sure plague demons sleep. We’ve fought them during the day before, like the pack that chased Immeral into Fallcrest. So what were they doing down there?”

The tips of Albanon’s ears tingled. He took Tempest’s hand in his and squeezed it, but didn’t say anything.

The last shadow passed the top of the crevice. In the darkness below, dozens of pairs of eyes flicked open in unison. Dozens of mouths grinned at exactly the same moment.

“Yes,” whispered Vestapalk. “Come.”

Somehow they reached the slope of the volcano without encountering a single active plague demon. They did spot more demons piled into other crevices and gullies, but none of them stirred. Shara’s arm and fingers ached from gripping her sword and she hadn’t even drawn it yet. She forced herself to release the hilt and shook out her hand.

“I don’t like this,” she said, looking up at the volcano’s peak. “What are the demons doing? Why aren’t we being attacked?”

“I don’t like it either,” said Quarhaun. “I don’t like any of this, but if you want a spider’s silk, you have to reach into her nest.” He caught her hand and gently rubbed the crooked fingers. “Where will we go after this? Back to Fallcrest? Nera? I’ve heard of a place called the Dragondown Coast that sounds interesting.”

Shara shuddered. “No more dragons.” She pulled her hand away. “How can you think about something like that right now?”

“When you’re somewhere bad, focus on where you’ll go next.”

“Another drow saying?”

“A halfling saying, or so I’m told.” Quarhaun nodded to Uldane then flashed her a smile, his white teeth dazzling against his jet black skin. “Drow wisdom would say when you’re somewhere bad, focus on how you’ll hurt the people who put you there.”

“Why do I love you?”

“Insidious drow charm.” He caught her hand again and kissed her sword-calloused palm.

“If you’re finished,” said Kri, coming up beside them, “we need to find our way inside.”

Quarhaun dropped her hand. Shara frowned at Kri. “I liked you better when you served Ioun. Occasionally you kept your mouth shut.”

“People who call Vecna the god of secrets have never truly known Ioun,” said the priest. “The Chained God shows his followers freedom of all kinds.”

“The kind where I can put a sword through your belly?” asked Shara.

“Perhaps after we’ve dealt with Vestapalk and the Voidharrow,” Kri said mildly before turning to Quarhaun. “How do we find a tunnel that leads inside?”

“In the Underdark, the easiest way is to find a tunnel that local beasts are using and hope that it doesn’t dead-end in a den or nest. I imagine that holds true for the surface as well.”

“So now we need to go looking for a plague demon?” said Shara.

Quarhaun shrugged. “I honestly didn’t think we’d have any trouble with that part.”

“I don’t think we will,” Belen said. “Look.” The Fallcrest guard stood behind them. They all turned.

Back down the way they had come, spindly figures moved at the edges of crevices and gullies. Roghar cursed. “Did they see us?”

“No,” said Cariss, “I’m certain they didn’t.”

“Then let’s try and find a passage to follow before they do,” Quarhaun said. “Any sign of heavy use around a cave mouth will do-a trail, disturbed dirt, broken plants. Look up the slope as well as down.”

“What if we find plague demons inside?” asked Uldane.

Quarhaun’s chuckle was cold. “I don’t think it’s a question of ‘if.’ ”

He led them around the slope to the left where a shelf of slumping, crystal-ridden stone would hide them from the demons below. Where the shelf ended, he turned along a trough-shaped ravine that went toward the peak. They were still following the ravine when the shrieks of demons fighting broke out ahead.

Shara guessed there were only a couple of the creatures, but the screams were so strange and angry that were she less skilled, she could have believed there to be half a dozen. She stopped. Quarhaun pressed her onward.

“Are we looking for demons or trying to avoid them?” she muttered to him. “Because if we want a place with a lot of demons, we could go back down to those crevices.”

“Too shallow,” said Quarhaun. “If they ran into the interior, the demons wouldn’t have clustered at the surface. We want signs of them, but not too many actual demons.” He motioned for her and the others to stay low, then crept up the side of the ravine and continued climbing the slope alongside it. When the sounds of fighting were closest, Quarhaun went back to the ravine and peered over the crumbing edge. Shara stayed to one side of him, Cariss to the other.

All of the shrieks came from only two bestial demons as they wrestled back and forth over the corpse of some now unidentifiable small animal. Just above them, a low dark opening pierced the side of the mountain, about as wide as Shara was tall and just high enough that she would be able to crawl into it. Dark soil was strewn before it, but Shara scowled.

“Nothing,” she said. “They’ve just dug out a burrow.” Cariss grunted agreement.

The drow shook his head. “Something might have been living there, but that’s more than just a burrow. You can tell by the shape of it, and the way it’s right at the top of the ravine. I think we’ll find it’s bigger on the inside than it looks.”