Bruce Cordell - Darkvision

The longer we fail to contain its growing influence, the sooner it will be successful in freeing its mind from the arcane constraints that yet tether it." Iahn asked, "My duty is to return you to Deep Imaskar so you can stem the incursion. Yet you say our best hope is to enter the Weapons Cache of the Purple Palace instead of returning first to our imperiled city. Will you stake the safety of Deep Imaskar on this course of action?" "I don't see any other option. If we go to Deep Imaskar to fight whatever else Pandorym has corrupted and freed from the Weapons Cache, we'll be attacking only the symptoms. We must get to the root of the problem and restopper Pandorym's mentality before it does find a way to free its mind and reunite with its physical shell." The vengeance taker considered Ususi's words. Her assessment was probably correct. He glanced at the irregular nodule.

Darkness flashed again through his thoughts and skittered away. He'd seen something that he'd not soon forget. "Very well, Ususi," agreed Iahn. "Let's go."

The dragonet's glimmer preceded Kiril and Prince Monolith through the narrow stone corridor. They circled up, up, and up in a gyre whose eventual termination seemed unlikely. The slope was shallow at first, but progressively steepened. Every hundred paces brought them past a sealed arch. Kiril supposed these opened to the tower's core, but each was bricked over with purplish stone. Like the corridor, the sealing stones were scarred and stained by some great drowning years ago. The monotony was eventually broken by a scattering of cracked bricks that spilled into the corridor. The stones sealed an arch that had partially collapsed-centuries ago, by the look of it. Xet fluttered past the gap in the corridor without slowing. Kiril paused a moment to peer through the broken masonry. "Hey, I see light!" Monolith, bringing up the rear, said, "This tower is too large for us to explore every room, or even every floor. Nor need we, because Thormud provided Xet with a route to our objective." "What if we stumble on something useful?" "Leave it be-we have a long way to go." Kiril sniffed and lingered in the breach to see what she could. The space past the arch was a great foyer, high-beamed and supported by massive columns.

Twelve or thirteen pits, each as wide as a human was tall, marred the otherwise smooth floor. Rusted, egglike metallic objects, partly crumpled, dented, or otherwise damaged, plugged all but one of the pits. The open pit was covered with a metallic oval, but it hovered just above the pit, slowly rotating. A pale lavender light shone up from the hole, bathing the rotating egg and glinting off silvery highlights. "Xet, come here a moment," Kiril instructed. Thormud's familiar chided her with a series of high-pitched bell tones, but flew to her and perched on her shoulder. Thormud must have also commanded the familiar to listen to her orders. Xet wasn't happy about it. Too bad. With the additional light provided by the dragonet, she could make out the ceiling of the chamber, some forty or fifty paces above the pitted floor. Cavities in the ceiling exactly mirrored those in the floor. A thin streamer of smoke or moisture rose from the top of the single rotating egg, swirling and spiraling toward the ceiling, where it was sucked into an opening. Was each ceiling cavity a chimney? "What do you suppose…?" began Kiril. "Come." Monolith put a huge hand on her back, but refrained from pulling her back. "All right, you damn rock," she consented. She knew he was right: Thormud depended on their swiftness. Onward. Walking up the spiraling slope in the darting, flickering light given off by Xet took its toll on Kiril before long. The wavering shadows, unexpected flashes of illumination, and stretches of unrelieved blackness were enough to give Kiril a splitting headache. With her head pounding, she called a rest. "Hold on," the swordswoman said. "My eyes are throbbing. I need a moment."

Xet bleated, circled in the air twice, and settled to the floor of the passage. Behind her, Monolith said, "Very well." Kiril sat, leaning her back against the cool wall of the corridor. She held her forehead, then rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her palms, stopping only after she had induced phantom stars. She rested for a while in soothing darkness. As a torch, the swerving, erratic Xet was a failure. The choice was either to stop for a rest from its frenzied illumination, or smash the little dragonet into so many pretty shards.

A few moments of darkness and a sip from the verdigris god took the edge off. She sensed Prince Monolith's disapproval even without opening her eyes. The big rock was too much of a purist. She barked, eyes still closed, "Leave off. Trust me, you'd like me far less without my flask." The elemental lord's silence felt like further condemnation. She swore, "Blood and fire!" She opened her eyes. Prince Monolith was gone. She'd constructed the entire exchange. Was it guilt? Disgusted, she threw the enchanted flask as hard as she could.

It clanged against the opposite wall and toppled to the floor. A thin stream of whisky poured into the corridor. She felt shame at how far she'd tumbled, at how much she depended on that flask. There had been too many drunken nights. And days. Had she held too tightly to the Cerulean Blade? Angul should have remained where he was forged. She shook away the phantoms and asked, "Where has that rock gotten to?"

Xet, thinking she commanded it, launched into the air and shot up the corridor in the direction they'd been traveling. Kiril snatched up the leaking verdigris god and screwed on the top before Xet's light was completely gone. The inexhaustible contents could easily be the genesis of another deluge in the ancient corridor, and she preferred to keep the spirits for herself. She dashed after the retreating light and carefully clipped the flask to her belt as she jogged. Ahead, Xet's light paled before a new source of illumination. A dim gray glow leaked down the corridor. Kiril pulled Sadrul from its sheath and chased Xet to the corridor's end. She entered a chamber whose dimensions measured at least a hundred paces in all directions.

Slender five-story windows punctured the wall to her right. The wan, gray light pushed into the tower through them. She supposed the windows pierced the tower's exterior, and therefore looked out over the Raurin, but a gauzy haze filled each narrow enclosure, smothering most of the light. Pillars scribed with glyphs, unfamiliar to Kiril, held up the beamed ceiling. Great slabs of stone made up the walls opposite the windows, each bearing line after line of unreadable script. A massive humanoid sculpture stood on the left side of the chamber, near the wall glyphs. Its arms were extended so that its hands rested against a convex glass wall perhaps as high as an ancient oak. Its posture suggested that it sought to push the circle of glass farther into the wall-or to hold back the wide circle from moving into the chamber. Whatever its intention, the threat of action was proved hollow by the centuries it had stood. Kiril could make out some sort of fluid languidly churning and turning behind the dusty glass. The sculpture was three times as tall as Prince Monolith, but the earth elemental ignored his stony kin. He gazed with some agitation at the glass wall. The tiny dragonet lit on Monolith's shoulder. "Thanks for leaving me in the dark," said Kiril as she reached the elemental lord.

"Xet was with you," replied Monolith, distracted. "I heard something… splashing… and moved to investigate while you rested.

Kiril, look at this barrier-can you sense what lies behind it?" "I can see that it-" "It is a terrible threat. It is water, elemental and potent! Something beyond even my power, perhaps, caught here in a vast glass globe. This stone sculpture holds it in place, else it would roll forth. Even outside the glass, I can feel its enmity, its will to drown, dissolve, and erode all that it encounters. I don't think I've ever experienced such raw hatred before. The animating spirit that suffuses it-it is asleep! Perhaps I should vanquish this aqueous insult…" The elemental lord ran its great hand across the glassy wall, as if feeling for a seam. "Monolith!" yelled Kiril. "You really irk me sometimes, you know? Who told me to leave off prying into things that don't concern us? Leave it alone, unless this sphere is the evil influence that Thormud tracked across half of Faerun." The crystal dragonet chimed. The earth elemental paused, then lowered its massive limb. "No, it has nothing to do with what we seek. Xet says we must ascend still higher." "Then step away." Prince Monolith complied, but said, "When we finish, I will return to determine the nature of the entity trapped in this chamber, and dispose of it permanently."