Richard Baker - Prince of Ravens

“Master-” the kitchen overseer began, but Jack turned his back on her and strode away with one curt motion to Seila to follow.

He led her out of the kitchens and down the path a good ways before turning to face her. Raising a finger to his lips to encourage silence, he allowed his magical disguise to fade away. She stared at him in surprise. “Jack?” she asked in a timid voice.

“Indeed,” he answered. “I apologize for frightening you in the kitchens, but it was the best way I could think of to get you away from there.”

“You have recovered your magic!”

“Enough to provide us with the means to escape from this place, I hope. Are you ready?”

“By all I hold holy, yes,” Seila answered. “Better to die trying to win to freedom than to live another day as a slave to the drow.”

“With luck we won’t have to put that to the test,” Jack replied. “Come, we’d better get away from the path and move quickly. If the dark elves piece things together, they will certainly organize pursuit-and after what I’ve done, I do not want to be caught.”

Taking Seila’s hand, he led her into the dark.

The distant tumult of fighting and confusion from the pastures faded away quickly as Jack and Seila made their way into the fungal forest ringing the dark elves’ tower. The shadows beneath the gigantic toadstools seemed to pool around the fugitives as they pressed on deeper into the gloom. Once or twice they heard small slithering movements or tiny clattering sounds, as unseen creatures moved about in the darkness around them. Jack tried hard not to dwell on what manner of creatures might be responsible for the sounds; he doubted that he would like the answer.

Seila’s grip on Jack’s hand tightened, and she pressed herself up close beside him. “Jack, I don’t like this place,” she whispered.

“I know. We won’t linger a moment longer than we must,” he replied softly. He glanced to her pale face and decided that it might be a good idea to distract her from the looming shadows and unsettling sounds around them. “Tell me, do the Norwoods still reside at Sarpentar House?”

She smiled nervously in the gloom. “Yes, it’s my home, but no one’s called it that since my grandmother’s day. Everyone knows the estate as Norwood Manor now. Have you been there?”

“Once,” Jack answered. “Who is the head of the family now?”

“My father, Marden.” Seila’s brow knitted. “He’s been the Lord Norwood for thirty years or more. How long ago did you visit, Jack?”

He paused and motioned her to silence, standing still beneath the great fungal boles, looking and listening for any signs of pursuit. After a moment he nodded. “It seems quiet enough,” he said softly, and drew her onward.

Seila followed close behind him. “You said before you hailed from the Vilhon Reach,” she said. “Is that really true? I thought no one lived there anymore. It’s a terrible plagueland, isn’t it?”

Jack snorted to himself. Seila had a very good memory for detail, it seemed; he would have to be careful about what he said around her. “It seems that I am a man out of my time, so to speak,” he replied. Seeing the girl’s puzzled expression, he continued. “I’m afraid I do not belong to this age. I was magically imprisoned by some unknown enemy during the Year of the Bent Blade-thirteen hundred and seventy-six, by Dalereckoning. Apparently I passed the last hundred years in magical stasis, until Lady Dresimil and her followers stumbled across my prison and released me. I must say, I am so far very disappointed by the future.”

“You are playing games with me.”

“I wish that were so. If I could think of some simple proof of my claims, I would offer it.”

Seila walked beside him in silence for a time, evidently weighing the outrageousness of his story. Jack winced to himself. It might have been better to keep his origins to himself. The tale was simply too much to believe, even if it was the truth. After all, the first ingredient of a sound lie was plausibility-something his story was sorely lacking. He was just about to tell Seila to ignore it all as an odd little jest when she drew a sudden breath and looked at him again.

“There was a rumor in the kitchens a few days ago,” she said. “The drow discovered a swordswoman frozen in stone in the ruins of the ancient city. She’d been that way for decades, maybe even centuries. The diggers and porters say she came to life and fought her way free of the Chumavh holdings. As I heard it, she cut down a dozen drow warriors before escaping into the tunnels.”

“The swordswoman was-is-the Warlord Myrkyssa Jelan.”

“Myrkyssa Jelan? You are joking.”

“I see that her notoriety has endured until the present day.” He snorted softly. “I couldn’t imagine a more pleasant surprise for our pointy-eared friends than setting Myrkyssa Jelan free by mistake.”

“You mean that you were entombed like she was?”

Jack nodded. “Exactly, except that I was unpetrified immediately upon my release from the stone where we’d been imprisoned.”

“Of course,” Seila continued, now speaking more to herself than Jack. “In fact, there were stories in the kitchens that the drow had found another entombed in the ruins-a fool or madman, they said. That must have been you.”

“Fool or madman, indeed. Clearly the tale of my release became confused in the retelling. I dispute both characterizations.”

“You really lived in the time before the Spellplague?” Seila asked. “That is incredible! Unless, of course, it isn’t true, in which case you are the most inventive liar or most lucid madman I’ve ever met. What was it like, then?”

“I’ll be happy to share every recollection I have of what things were like in my day, but it’s hard to know where to begin,” Jack answered. He noticed that the gloom beneath the gigantic mushrooms was lessening; the boles seemed fewer and farther apart. “I haven’t yet seen the world above since my release, so I really don’t know what’s changed. I might as well ask you what it’s like to live in the current day.”

Seila frowned thoughtfully. “I can see where that might be true,” she replied. “Well, Raven’s Bluff in the current day has its flaws, but believe me when I say that it’s better than this place.”

“Ah, here we are,” Jack murmured. They emerged from the wide belt of fungal forest, several hundred yards inland from the dark lake’s exposed shore.

He paused a long time in the shadows of the titanic mushrooms, peering into the gloom to see what he could of the cavern floor ahead. The once-drowned drow city in which the wild mythal stood seemed to be the main focus of activity; dozens of soft-glowing globes of greenish light illuminated the various worksites where the slaves and servants of House Chumavh toiled in their mysterious tasks. He nodded to himself, building up a picture of the place in his mind’s eye. The ancient ruins and the castle surroundings together made a sort of barbell-shaped footprint of habitation on the floor of the immense cavern, lying with one side pressed up against the sinister lakeshore. As long as they stayed well inland, they should be able to skirt the most heavily trafficked area … but of course they would also be on their own in the weird stone wilderness of the Underdark, where all sorts of terrible monsters might lurk. Best not to share that part with Seila, he decided.

“Which way, Jack?” Seila asked.

“Our route to freedom lies about half a mile in that direction,” Jack said, pointing. “We could follow the drow road and hope to bluff our way past any dark elves or overseers we meet along the way. Or we could strike out across the cavern floor. We’d be much less likely to meet passers-by, but I worry about running into a patrol on the lookout for escaping slaves.” He thought about it for a moment, then made his decision. “Let’s take our chances in the dark.”