Alex Irvine - The seal of Karga Kul

The next day as they broke camp, Remy couldn’t keep the questions out of his mouth any longer. He walked up to Biri-Daar and asked, “Did those… you know… Did they rise because of me? Because of what I’m carrying?”

She had been working a whetstone through the complicated curls on the back side of her blade. Without stopping, she said, “Perhaps.”

He waited. When she didn’t go on, he prompted her. “Should we open it? Should we know what we’re getting into if we go into a tomb? If this is going to raise undead, we’ll likely find our share of them in a tomb, won’t we?”

“We likely will,” Biri-Daar said. She paused in her sharpening and added, “But we have committed to a course. We are taking you to Karga Kul and the Mage Trust. They will know what to do. And if they do not, then I have no hope of figuring it out here. So it’s best not to think of it.”

Remy would have pushed the conversation further, but Biri-Daar stood. “Time to get moving.”

The Road-builder’s Tomb was ringed by the last paving stones of the Crow Road, at the terminus of the grand and terrible project begun somewhere near the Gorge of Noon a thousand years and more before Remy stepped onto those stones and said, “So. We have to go down to go up?”

“Yes,” Paelias said. “And then apparently up will be down.”

In the center of the keyhole created by the turnaround at the end of the Crow Road lay the open entrance to the Road-builder’s Tomb. “The story goes that he couldn’t stand the idea that the road could end,” Paelias said. “Once, I believe, there was a keyhole at the other end as well. Some say it was destroyed in the war between Arkhosia and Bael Turath. Others say it was never there at all.”

“I heard that the dragonborn of Karga Kul pulled up those stones and carried them off for their clan lair in Toradan!”

They turned as one. The speaker, standing on the far end of the ridge where they had made their camp, leaned on a tall shield, his face split in a broad grin. He was tall and broad, heavily built, his skin the color of old brick. His horns curled back from his forehead, carved with symbols of clan and god. “A tiefling,” Kithri said. “How about that?”

Biri-Daar took a step forward. “You provoke me, tiefling?” she asked.

“I jest, O mighty dragonborn, Biri-Daar, paladin of Bahamut.” The tiefling approached and dipped his head in formal greeting. “I am Obek of Saak-Opole. My ancestors and yours, dragonborn, did battle on the Bridge of Iban Ja. Now, though, events conspire to make us allies.”

“Do they?” Biri-Daar looked back at the rest of them. “What say you?”

“I am curious how a tiefling appears to bait our resident dragonborn just when we’re about to go into a tomb that is, according to legend, heaped to the ceiling with treasures beyond imagining,” Lucan said. “If this is a strategy, I cannot fathom its goal. Not to mention my curiosity as to how you know her name.”

“The goal is simple,” said Obek of Saak-Opole. “Word has spread on the river of a certain something headed to a certain place. You can always use another sword. I can use a chance to get back to Karga Kul and settle an old score there.”

“You don’t need us for that,” Keverel said.

“No, I need her.” Obek pointed at Biri-Daar. “She is known in Karga Kul, and I sought her specifically. Without her, the Mage Trust will strike me down as soon as I am within sight of the gate. With her, I at least have a chance to enter the city. That is all I ask.”

“And what do you offer?” Biri-Daar asked.

Obek drew his sword. “This. You’re going to need it.”

“You’re a fool,” Paelias said, and burst out laughing. “I thought I was the only one.”

Moving closer, Obek said, “You and I have nothing in common, eladrin. You’re a freebooter. I would sacrifice my life to get back inside Karga Kul. If the only way to do it is by going through that tomb and that keep…” He spread his arms. “No one day is a better day to die than any other.”

Biri-Daar walked up to the tiefling. “In one hour we are entering the Road-builder’s Tomb. You will not enter with us.”

On schedule, in an hour, they began the entry of the tomb. From the rise, Obek watched but made no move to follow.

The Road-builder’s Tomb began with a broad flagstone plaza, each stone carved with a different rune. “Once I read that these stones are a code, and that whoever solved it would bring the Road-builder back to life,” Keverel said.

“I’ve heard that he brought himself back to life,” Lucan said.

Kithri looked at each of them in turn. “Any other stories?”

“I heard that he takes the guise of a tiefling and tries to come along with anyone stupid enough to want to enter his tomb,” Paelias said. They all looked at him. “Why not bring him along?”

“Because, idiot,” Lucan said. “He could as easily be coming after Remy’s little box. How do we know otherwise? How is that he appeared at exactly this moment?”

“Suspicion makes you die younger,” Paelias said.

“Unless you get murdered in your sleep because you weren’t suspicious enough,” Remy pointed out.

“Everyone be silent,” Biri-Daar said. “The tiefling does not come with us.”

The unpaved earth that formed the hole in the keyhole was overgrown with highland brush and a few stunted, wind-sculpted trees. “It’s supposed to be in the center here, the exact center,” Keverel said. They hacked a path into the undergrowth, stopping periodically so Keverel could get his bearings. At what he determined to be the center, they tore the brush out by the roots, first chopping the larger trees out with camp hatchets. Then, using the trunks, they levered the roots up out of the earth, leaving a pit… that in the middle seemed a bit deeper than it should have been, exposing a stone that was a bit too regular in edge…

Half an hour later they had exposed the entrance to the Road-builder’s Tomb.

A simple stone stair, just wide enough to descend single file, led down into the cleared and trampled earth. Below the natural roof formed by generations of root systems, its first eight steps were exposed. Below that abbreviated space, they found a solid seven feet of earth and brush, packed by the ages into nearly stonelike hardness. “Ah, the glories of adventuring,” Kithri said.

Two hours later they had cleared it out, chipping it into pieces and handing them up in a chain to toss them out onto the plaza. Kithri, by far the smallest of them, was stuck down in the hole, levering pieces loose and scooping helmets full of loose dirt and gravel. When the landing was clear, they brushed off the door and examined it.

Unlike the paving stones, the door was unadorned. It was constructed of simple bricks and mortar. Neither Paelias nor Lucan nor Kithri could find any magical traps or bindings. “Well,” said Keverel when they had cleared the door, “Erathis forgive me.”

The door was not designed to open. Neither was it designed to withstand repeated impacts from a steel mace. Its blocks, held together only with mortar, began to shift almost immediately. Half a dozen blows had knocked it loose enough that Biri-Daar and Remy could wedge the edges of their shields into the gap and pry it open far enough for them to enter.

Biri-Daar went first, her armor aglow with a charm Keverel placed on all steel they carried. Lucan and Remy came next, then Kithri, with Paelias and Keverel acting as rear guard. When they were just inside the door, Biri-Daar stopped and said softly, “Kithri. Quick, back to the top of the stairs. Is the tiefling still there?”

She vanished and returned a moment later, her coming and going nearly soundless. “No sign of him.”