Erik de Bie - Depths of Madness

This area did not suffer from the same filth and defacement that the rest of the complex evidenced. These lizards had not been here long, though how they could get past a locked door, Twilight did not know. She shuddered to think of what she might be facing, if it could somehow teleport its minions into position. Perhaps there was something to this "Mad Sharn" business after all, in which case Twilight was in trouble deeper than her pointy ears.

A glyph ran the archway's length, and Twilight wished, not for the first time, that she had Asson beside her. The old man's tranquility and magic would have been useful, as would his understanding of Netherese.

She tapped the earring she wore. If the words were spoken, she would understand them. Slip's detection spell had set off the other warding, but Twilight did not…

Then an idea struck her.

She hated calling on her other powers, but sometimes blind curiosity got in the way of good grudges. Mouthing his name, she invoked a prayer he had taught her. It was not for detecting magic-thanks to Erevan's kiss, she saw mystic emanations as she wished-but rather a spell for locating a missing item. In this case, she chose the archway. Though she knew exactly where it was, casting any spell upon it should…

Sure enough, a sibilant voice, speaking in an odd tongue, came to her ears, and she understood every word.

"The taint of evil kept without, the power safe within," the ward said.

"Ah," said Twilight. "Helpful."

Just then, a horde burst into the chamber, screams of rage on their lips.

No choice, Twilight decided, and threw herself through the archway, hoping by Beshaba's bodice that her instincts told her true.

Sure enough, nothing happened to her, but such was not the case for a few unfortunate lizards.

Green and blue fire arced from the runes along the archway, tearing into fiendish lizards, searing flesh apart and blackening bones. The creatures put up pitiful wails, cut short by the furious wards that cut them to pieces with flame. The wards killed six before the remaining seven fiendish lizards panicked and trampled over one another in their haste to get away.

Twilight would have stood laughing but for the unpleasant odor of the destroyed lizards lying in a heap at her feet. Then she turned and strode though another archway, this one plain, and stopped dead, staring.

"Sand," she cursed.

As Twilight had promised, the four found no ambush awaiting them through the south door. This tunnel was of different design than the twisting, turning sewers. Rather, it was straight, two paces wide and thirty hands high, and rose gradually. Gargan led the way, with Liet and Davoren trailing at a few paces, and Slip taking the rear.

Liet wasn't sure he trusted the halfling entirely-certainly not enough to put her at his back-but keeping close to Davoren was sure, ironically, to keep him safe. No one watched his skin like the warlock.

Liet wondered when he had become so cold and calculating. When had he shed his youthful mentality, his naivete? When had he ceased to trust others, and started thinking in matters of practicality, questioning the motives of all who surrounded him?

When had he become just like Twilight?

The day you broke rule four, he told himself with an inward sigh.

The corridor rose for forty paces before terminating in a space for a lifting mechanism, like the one they had used to escape the prison level of this labyrinth. The platform was down on the floor, and it would rise if someone stepped upon it-if the magic of the place yet operated.

The platform did not even tremble as they stood upon it, and Gargan boosted each of the others, one by one, before pulling himself up. The four moved down a tunnel toward a set of steps, and Gargan's long strides took him swiftly to the front rank. Davoren watched approvingly, but Liet suspected it was more in quiet consideration of what the goliath could do to Davoren's foes-his former allies-suitably armed and charmed. In all ways, the two seemed to be opposites.

Opposites… the thought bounced about in Liet's mind, reflecting off walls of indecision and longing. He and Twilight were so opposite one another, yet so close.

He no longer tried to tell himself that Twilight meant nothing to him. The first night they spent together had changed that, but the feeling grew more intense as time passed. He dared not mention it, for Twilight would certainly…

Gargan hissed a warning note, and Liet looked up.

They had ascended the stairs into open air, but there was no breeze in the darkness. Liet was suddenly aware that he stood upon something much like grass, though the sun was not to be seen. Great forms loomed out of the darkness, and Liet had to draw his sword and gasp before he realized they weren't moving.

All around them, the torchlight revealed huge bulks that looked, oddly, like flowers and vines of reds, oranges, and purples. Luminescence came from fungi on the walls, such as they had seen in the sewers below, and some plants shed light in many subdued colors. They felt as though they had come into some sage's arboretum.

Some plants were normal, most were strange and twisted, but all were gigantic. Something like a daisy was taller than Liet, and Slip had to brush away petals of violets the size of her face. Mountainous moonflowers and firedragons the size of their namesakes swelled around them. Liet had to stomp his way out of the clutches of a rose vine with thorns like daggers. Most of the plants he could hardly recognize-turgid buds and whorls coming out of green stalks, knobby trees like heaps of flatcakes that wove from side to side with budding pink flowers up every inch.

How they grew in perfect darkness was beyond Liet.

"What is this place?" Liet asked. He started away from his echoing voice.

"We have arrived," Davoren said. He held the scepter up and intoned deep, powerful words. A bolt of lightning arced from his hand, high into the air. It struck something like a steel rod and sizzled along it. In half a heartbeat, the bolt exploded out, illuminating the vast cavern in which the four found themselves. The great rod flickered, hissing at intervals like an unhappy dragon.

And occupying that cavern with them was a ruined, overgrown city.

"Negarath," Davoren said with a glint in his evil eyes.

If they had thought the architecture of the sewers odd, nothing could have prepared them for what lay before them.

Negarath was a city of madness.

Buildings spread wider as they reached upward, almost as though built upside down. All around them, sprouting from the sides of buildings, coming up from the streets, were the strange flowers, some growing large enough to dwarf Gargan. There was not a single perpendicular edge in the place; all was a mixture of curves, waves, and obtuse or acute angles. Windows hung upside down and horizontally, as though the interiors of the buildings did not match the exteriors.

Most of the doors to the varying buildings were of odd shapes-circular, triangular, hexagonal, octagonal-anything but rectangular. Only one building seemed even remotely normal-a central tower that narrowed toward the middle, like a pyramid, but widened again as it rose toward the cavern ceiling. There, the tower hooked and curled, spiraling under itself. It looked as though they could stand atop it.

"The designers of this place must have been madmen," said Davoren.

"Or geniuses." The others stared, and Liet laughed nervously. "Art-heh."

Gargan shook his head.

Slip beamed. "Magnificent," she said.

The others looked at her this time.

"Well, it is," she asserted with her hands on her hips.

The section of city in which they stood was markedly clear and empty, but such was not the case a few streets away. They saw something like a giant mound of clay, stretching from floor to ceiling-a calcified, golden-red web.