Брюс Корделл - Oath of Nerull

Hennet began, his voice a bit hoarse at first, “Well, it’s a silly story after all. An alchemist known to both Nebin and I asked us to visit him in his home. He wanted our help on a certain matter of enchantment. The details are unimportant. The moment he left us alone in his laboratory, Nebin began riffling through things. That’s when he found the lever. I knew right away what he was thinking, and warned him off. Of course he wouldn’t listen. The next thing we knew, we were being chiseled out of an alchemical preservative. Two weeks had passed in the blink of an eye as we stood frozen in place. Nebin dumped a full load of the stuff on top of us. We’re lucky neither of us suffocated.”

Ember laughed quietly. Hennet wondered at her sudden closeness. He stopped himself from jumping to conclusions. Just because they were finally alone, and Ember chose that moment to make small talk—well, what of it? Likely she just wanted to talk, as she had indicated. But where his head insisted on reading nothing into the lamp-side chat, his heart had an entirely different interpretation.

When Ember drew close, kissing him on the lips, he knew his heart was right all along.

The lantern’s light revealed her face a lighter shade against the dark stone walls behind her, but not so dark as her hair. Her eyes were as bright as stars.

“We have a little time,” she whispered.

Nebin felt enlivened after the rest, ready for anything.

He snapped his fingers, laughing, “I’m even ready for another flute-playing phantom.”

He chuckled, waiting for Hennet’s censuring look, disapproving of his over-exuberance. But Hennet and Ember were paying attention only to each other, not to him. He decided he could grandstand later, when his audience was ready to appreciate his wit.

When camp was struck, they again moved out on the narrow ledge. The vast cavern remained dark but for the emerald beacon. The black water was perfectly calm. They continued their interrupted journey on the ledge that seemed to circled the water. Nebin felt much better when they finally reached the green radiance.

The light gleamed from the mouth of a tunnel that opened on the lake. The gnome estimated the tunnel was roughly opposite from where they’d entered the cavern. Water from the lake encroached the corridor, but it was shallow enough for them to splash through.

The pale glow seeped from the very stone like condensation, beading the walls with motes of sick radiance. Black water lapped on the floor of the corridor, still and fetid. He could hardly bear the stagnant stink of it as they trooped forward. Thankfully, about thirty paces in they arrived at the tunnel’s terminus. An iron door blocked the passage. Disturbing scenes were welded onto the door’s face, which Nebin avoided looking at too closely. The skull and scythe symbol of Nerull was welded into the very center of the door in raised relief. A dark gemstone gleamed dully in one eye socket, but the other was hollow. No keyhole or pull ring was visible on the door. Nebin realized that this was probably the back entrance to the revived temple of Nerull, the Reaper of Flesh.

“No one has come this way in a long, long time,” said Brek Gorunn. “I doubt this water has stirred in years. I think we’ve achieved the surprise we sought.”

Nebin sloshed forward, sending small waves to ripple through the pool. He was glad to find the water shallower near the door. He pushed up his goggles and squinted at the relief-carved skull.

“Is the skull important?” wondered Ember.

Nebin wondered the same thing. “What kind of gem is that, do you think?”

He reached out, tapping it. Nothing happened.

Brek Gorunn said, “Nebin! Be careful, will you?”

Nebin nodded, half listening. “Sure…Say, maybe this is some sort of key.”

He touched the empty socket, and the dwarf’s intake of breath was audible. Again, nothing happened.

The gnome scratched his chin.

“Maybe pull the other one out?” ventured Hennet.

Brek Gorunn glared at Nebin, stroked the head of his warhammer, and said, “Or, if we’re just going to poke and prod our way into every trap and alarm along the path anyway, I could save some time and just hammer the door off its hinges.”

Ember shook her head and said, “Before we start getting on one another’s nerves again, lets try a few simple ideas. For instance, why is one eye socket hollow, but the other filled?

“Try this,” she continued. “Put something in the hollow socket. A small gem, like the other, perhaps.” So saying, she reached into an inner pocket in her vest and drew out a small gemstone. “Agate. Not too valuable, but maybe worth a shot.”

The monk tossed the stone to the gnome. Nebin caught the agate, examined it briefly, then pressed it into the hollow socket.

Nothing.

Brek Gorunn grumbled, “Is the beard-tangled door even locked?”

“That’s a good question,” admitted Nebin.

He pushed on the door.

A faint, emerald glitter woke in the skull’s stone eye. They heard a click, and the door began swinging silently open. Ember and Brek both looked at Nebin in surprise. He realized he may have been premature. Slightly embarrassed, he snatched the agate back from the skull and slipped it into his coat pocket as the door opened wide.

“Be ready!” whispered Ember.

She fell into bahng ah jah se, the right guarding stance, and watched the opening widen. The time for subtlety was reaching an end. Nebin scuttled back from the door, pulling his goggles down over his eyes.

“Is everyone ready?” she whispered.

She looked to Hennet first. The sorcerer flicked his wrist, and the Golden Wand fell easily into it, promising potent electrical displays. Brek produced the oil he’d purchased at the Wizard’s Hoard and poured it over the head of his warhammer. The weapon absorbed all the oil instantly, then glimmered with a dull, inner light.

Bright light spilled from the room beyond. Ember blinked as her eyes adjusted to the powerful illumination.

The chamber beyond the door was expansive. The ceiling rose smoothly into a dome high above the floor. Virulent emerald light pulsed through the mortared stone walls and played lewdly over the signs and figures carved on them. Lambent rivulets of radiance gathered and flowed down the walls, creating a shallow pool of brightness in the center of the floor. Within the pool of light, things moved—familiar, sluglike things. They lay in the light as if bathing, and perhaps they were. Their high, piping voices cried rhythmically to the cadence of the pulsing illumination. They were ghostly, however, insubstantial, as if they were not entirely real, or not entirely…there.

People stood silhouetted against the glowing pool, partly occluding the writhing forms. Two of the figures were covered in funerary wrappings—they were undead. Only one figure was female—a silvery-haired woman wearing a hooded, skull-encrusted cloak. Perhaps it was Sosfane, the mastermind behind all their recent woe. Several men stood nearby, dressed in loose robes and wearing red half-masks. Cultists, she realized, and probably all trained in the way of hand, foot, and fist.

One of the men wore no mask, and his face seemed familiar. The memory flooded back to Ember—it was Aganon, the man Hennet defeated in the final round of the Duel Arcane! She looked back and saw similar recognition come to Hennet and Nebin.

Brek Gorunn’s plan to come upon the temple from the rear worked better than she could have imagined. Unless she missed her guess, they’d stumbled into the heart of the revived temple. Better yet, their arrival hadn’t yet been noticed. She decided to wait. The worshipers would likely disperse after the ritual’s conclusion, and it would be better to attack them separately, rather than all at once.