Paul Kemp - Dawn of Night

The Skulls' dead eyes stared holes into Cale. Their power gathered, and Cale summoned power of his own.

With alarming suddenness, a wave of incredible magical force exploded outward from the Skulls.

Cale closed his eyes against the impact. He felt a flutter in his gut, and everything went black.

CHAPTER 19

SOWING

Cale materialized in a ready crouch, Weaveshear in hand. He took a quick scan of the tunnel. It extended in both directions to the limits of his darkvision. Clusters of stalagmites stood at intervals on the uneven floor, and stalactites hung from the ceiling like drips of stone. A still pool was along the wall to the right, its dark water smeared with a gray fungal growth that floated on top. Cale had no sense of how far they were from either Skullport of the battle they'd just fled. He found the feeling disorienting, isolating.

The tunnel was silent but for their breathing. The slaadi were nowhere in sight.

"Where are we?" Jak asked.

"Somewhere in the Underdark," Cale replied. "Light, little man. Mags, find them."

Beside Cale, Jak struck a sunrod on the rocky ground. The thin shaft of alchemically treated metal rang softly off the stone and began to glow more brightly than a torch. It would last an hour or so. Jak held it aloft, illuminating the tunnel for all of them. Though Cale had not needed the sunrod to see, he welcomed its dim luminescence for the shadows it cast.

Magadon's knucklebone eyes took in the surroundings, and scoured the floor.

"Blood," the guide said.

He moved to a splotch of dark matter on the floor. Cale followed the guide's gaze and saw a large smear of black blood, intermixed with chunks of flesh and a shard of bone. The stone floor near the remains looked malformed, as though it might have melted and been reformed.

Magadon put his fingers to the blood, studied it. He rubbed the flesh between two fingers.

"Slaadi," he said. "And still damp. One of them was wounded here."

He wiped his fingers clean on his trousers.

"Which way, Mags?" Cale asked, trying to keep his voice calm.

He knew they had only moments to stop the slaadi, and they could ill afford to get the direction wrong.

Magadon studied the floor near the blood while Cale silently implored him to hurry. The guide brushed his fingers along the stone as if communing with it. He moved across the stone, stopping here and there to examine the floor more carefully.

"What is it?" Jak asked.

Magadon replied, "Scratches from their hind claws. Very faint. They must have transformed back to their natural forms." He stood and nodded down the tunnel. "They went that way."

Cale exhaled and thumped him on the shoulder.

"Let's go," he said.

They sped down the tunnel. Magadon ran at Cale's side, while Jak and Riven brought up the rear. Weaveshear still vibrated in Cale's hand and continued leaking shadows.

Not more than two hundred paces later they found a wide corridor that opened off the tunnel. Unlike the rough, natural walls of the cave, the corridor had a finished floor lined with marble. It looked like a road, or some kind of processional. It curved after a short distance, and from around the curve emanated a soft orange glow.

Weapons and holy symbols ready, Cale led them forward.

The corridor went on for only a short time after the curve before it ended, as though cut off with a knife, and opened onto a breathtaking panorama.

"Trickster's hairy toes," Jak oathed.

Cale could only agree.

They stood at the edge of the corridor, in an opening halfway up a sheer cavern wall that was easily as tall as three bowshots. A great circular cavern stretched before and below them, nearly as large as the one that contained Skullport. Within the cavern lay ruins. Toppled buildings of gray granite, impossibly thin towers of stone carved from stalactites, and collapsed temples of white marble littered the cavern's floor in a chaotic jumble. Their stone skeletons obscured the otherwise mathematically precise web of wide roads and broad avenues that once had connected the districts of the city. The ruins reminded Cale of Elgrin Fau, but instead of a necropolis of intact tombs, only one structure remained whole.

In the center of the cavern, glowing orange with power, towered an immense spire of rough gray stone like the finger of a god. It appeared unworked but for a covered cupola of metal that capped its top. Open archways yawned in the cupola, one on each of the four sides of the spire, and all of them leaking orange light. It was impossible to see within.

Tumors of clear crystal bulged here and there from the stone of the spire. A thin strip of protruding crystal, like wire around a sword hilt, wound a path from the base of the tower to a platform before the near archway in the cupola. It took Cale a moment to realize that the crystalline spiral was either a stairway or a ramp.

A beam of orange light as thick around as an ogre emanated from the tower through a hole in the top of the cupola. The orange beam shot toward the ceiling and cast the entire cavern in soft orange luminescence. The light caused Cale to squint with minor discomfort but didn't burn like the sun, steal his powers like daylight, or take his hand as a tithe.

When the beam reached the ceiling, it spread out and dispersed into ten thinner beams that wove amongst the stalactites like veins. In turn, each of those separated into ten still thinner beams, and so on until the threads became so tiny as to be invisible. The entire chamber was roofed by a lattice of power, and Cale had no doubt that the lattice extended its invisible grasp into Skullport's chamber, buttressing the stone, preventing it from collapsing of its own weight. They must have been nearer to Skullport than he'd thought.

"That tower is the hidden chamber where the Skulls lair," Cale said, realizing the truth even as the words passed his lips. "It must be the source of their power. Azriim has lured the Skulls away from their secret chamber and the source lays exposed. He wants to use the Weave Tap to somehow drain the tower and the web of energy. .. perhaps even destroy it."

Jak let out a long, low whistle. Riven and Magadon remained silent.

Cale realized that if Azriim was successful, it would result in a catastrophe for Skullport-a catastrophe for Varra.

"We can't let it happen," he said.

"The rock must have shifted over the years," Magadon observed. "This tunnel must once have been at ground level."

Cale nodded and said, "Or it could be just as likely that this corridor was once attached to the upper levels of a soaring tower."

Roads spanning the sky had not been uncommon in that city. Cale could sense it. The magical skill evidenced by the spire suggested to him that the ruined metropolis, that even Skullport, had once been places of grandeur. He wondered at the true origin of the Skulls.

Putting the awe out of his mind, he eyed the ruins below, searching for any sign of the slaadi. He did not see them.

"We need to get to that spire," he said. "The slaadi must be heading there. That spire is the origin of the lattice, and that's where Azriim will use the Weave Tap."

As though affirming his words, the shadows leaking from Weaveshear floated into the air and across the cavern toward the spire. The height at which the companions stood was about two-thirds of the way up the tower.

"Teleport us there, Cale," Riven said.

Cale shook his head and replied, "I can call upon the shadows only infrequently. I can shadowstep often, but teleport only rarely. The slaadi, on the other hand have no such limitation with their teleportation rods. Likely, they're already inside the cupola. We need another way."

Cale ignored the look of satisfaction in Riven's eye, and realized then that the assassin cared more about being Mask's second than he did about stopping the slaadi. He didn't have time to give it further thought.