D&D 03-Oath of Nerull Page 12

  Experimentally, Brek Gorunn closed the lantern's cover. A pale, green glow suffused the room, outlining each tile. Wordlessly he uncovered the lantern again.

  "But we must go forward. W-we have no other route," sputtered Nebin.

  Brek Gorunn paused on the threshold and squinted toward the far hallway.

  "You can just read the runes from here," he said. "It looks to me like an archaic variant of the common tongue."

  Nebin moved to stand next to Brek, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

  The gnome said, "They state, 'Pass and Prosper if Ye be Reverent. Pass and Perish if Ye Profane Nerull.'"

  Brek Gorunn spat. "How can you profane the blasphemous?"

  Nebin shrugged.

  Ember edged forward. She knew that of them all, she was the swiftest and most capable of escaping a purely mechanical trap, if indeed the tiles represented danger. The choice was hers to make. She entered the chamber, walking lightly, and passed unhindered across the tiled floor, right up to the rune-scribed archway. She looked back, allowing a smile to touch her lips.

  "Seems safe enough."

  Hennet let out a breath. He and the others entered without mishap, until they all stood by the archway. The corridor was visible beyond. Except for the ominous runes, nothing would have checked their passage into the innocuous walkway.

  "Brek Gorunn asked a good question," mused Hennet. "Its counterpoint would be how do you revere a god of death?"

  "I don't want to guess," said Ember.

  The dwarf said, "I'll guess. Even without holy indoctrination, I could tell you that the act of murder is a reverent deed to this unholy deity of death." The dwarf spat once more.

  "We're not going to kill someone just to get past the archway," exclaimed Ember.

  She was prepared to sacrifice a lot, but not an innocent life.

  Hennet nodded. "There has to be another way to the temple. How are all the cultists getting in and out?"

  Brek shook his head. "If we wanted to come in the front door, we wouldn't be here in the first place."

  "I have an idea," said Nebin, still studying the runes. He pulled a small dagger from his belt and looked at the others. "A violent death, of the sort we can assume this nasty death god prefers, produces blood. Maybe a drop would do as well as a bucket."

  Nebin winced as he pricked a finger with his dagger. Blood beaded on his fingertip. The gnome flicked the drop, painting a copper-size portion on the glowing tiles red. The blood trembled, then was sucked into the stone, leaving not a trace.

  The glimmer in the tiles faded. Something clicked, muffled by the walls. All was quiet once more.

  "Well, I've either deactivated, or activated something. Who wants to go first?" asked Nebin.

  Ember advanced, ready to jump back at the first sign of trouble. Again, she came to no harm. She motioned the others to follow, but not before giving the gnome a grateful look.

  "You are wise beyond your size, Nebin."

  The gnome nodded, accepting the compliment as his due. She shrugged and turned back to face front. Ember enjoyed giving the wizard compliments, if only to see him preen after each one.

  They passed down the corridor, and the trap, if any, failed to materialize. On they traveled, descending farther as they went. The subterranean dark weighed on Ember. She sensed a similar depression in Hennet and Nebin, but not Brek Gorunn. She supposed the dwarf preferred the bosom of the earth to the open skies.

  Soon Ember noticed that the stone walls of the passage were cracked. Seeping moisture widened some of the cracks over the years, forming gaping holes. They passed skull-carved balusters, looming in the swaying lantern's light. Their footsteps echoed as they walked, leaping ahead, then following behind. Again the corridor emptied into a chamber, much larger than the others. Shapes were revealed in the vast room; pale domes, biers, and carved sarcophagi with images of men long dead. Ember couldn't begin to estimate the size of the room, but the absolute stillness of the air and the hollow echoes from their small movements revealed that it was at least several hundred feet wide, if not more.

  "This doesn't seem a particularly safe route," quavered Nebin. "Those are sarcophagi. You know, with dead people in them."

  His words echoed with ominous portent. Quiet followed.

  Ember realized the gnome was right. This was a sort of mausoleum. And it was old, probably older than any structure she had ever been inside.

  She said, "Stay alert. I expect that those who have lain here so long have no more interest in the living, if they ever did."

  Even as she spoke words of confidence, she debated internally. Stories and her own experience told her that it was always wise to expect to find undead prowling near tombs, even those considered safe.

  Brek Gorunn motioned them ahead. The dwarf gripped his warhammer.

  They passed into the chamber between tables and buildings carved from marble. The darkness was complete, sealing them inside the circle of Brek's light. They passed the ominous mouths of tombs carved with faces, bodies, skulls, and darker symbols. Maybe the old cult of Nerull once claimed the spaces beneath New Koratia, but Ember could see the tombs here were far older than a few hundred years, older than the founding of the city, stretching into the past even beyond the knowledge of the cultists who briefly claimed it.

  The strains of a flute playing alone in the distance stopped Ember. The notes were placid and deep, as if a dirge.

  "Do you hear that?" she asked.

  Everyone stopped, straining their ears, but the ghost-music was silent.

  "I think I heard it, for a second," said Hennet. "Pipes, maybe, or a fife?"

  "It reminded me of a flute," said Ember.

  Brek said, "I heard it, and did not like it, whatever its source. Best we press ahead swiftly, lest we meet the musician."

  Passing deeper into the vast underground graveyard, they were stopped again. A mighty crevice lay across their path, splintered and jagged. Some ancient movement of the earth bisected the chamber. Many of the tombs that lay along the crack were half toppled into the chasm, broken and splintered. Though the crevice spoke of a violent convulsion, it was diluted across a gulf of time. The lantern's light could just reach the far portion of the chamber across the divide.

  Brek Gorunn inched forward and held his lamp over the edge.

  "No bottom in sight," he said.

  Ember joined Brek on the lip. She saw bits of crumbled stone and broken statuary fetched up on rough ledges farther down. One sarcophagus lay cracked completely open on a narrow ledge. It was empty, its former contents swallowed by the chasm.

  The dwarf said, "The crevice looks to be about twenty or twenty five feet across. Too far to jump, at least for anyone but Ember."

  Ember gathered her legs for the leap, eager to put it behind her. She felt a touch on her shoulder.

  "Ember, hold on," Brek said. He pointed to the left. She could see a slender shaft of white stone jutting out over the chasm. "See that column? It bridges the chasm. Let's look at that before you risk jumping across."

  "Don't think I can make it?" she asked.

  "I am certain that you will make it," explained Brek Gorunn. "Then, there you'll be on the other side, vulnerable to any creature hiding over there in the gloom. You could be attacked while the rest of us are still stuck over here."

  "Perhaps," conceded Ember.

  Of course the dwarf was right. It wasn't like her to be impetuous, but the unrelieved darkness preyed on her mind.

  The group moved to the fallen column. It bridged the crevice at an angle, and was visibly cracked. Brek ran his fingers across the stone, considering. He unlimbered his pack and rummaged through it, then produced the rope he'd purchased earlier in the city.

  He said, "I don't trust this span. In case it gives out, a little insurance is best."

  "Nebin, you're the lightest, you should cross first," Ember said.

  When Brek didn't disagree, Nebin stepped up to the edge of the chasm. The dwarf tied the rope aroun
d the gnome's waist and secured the other end to a jutting piece of masonry.

  "Make sure it's tight!" warned Nebin. "And leave plenty of slack, I don't want to be thrown off-balance by a snag on the rope."

  The gnome peered across the chasm, then briskly stepped across the column, not looking down, his arms held out for balance. Ember smiled when he reached the far side. The gnome waved and undid the rope from around his waist.

  Next went Hennet, then Ember carrying the lantern. She watched Brek Gorunn closely as he prepared to cross. He was the heaviest, and she worried. The dwarf undid the knot anchoring the rope to his side of the chasm. Once loose, he tied the free end around his waist and waved to her. She nodded, wrapped the rope twice around another marble obelisk on her side of the chasm, then tied the end to the same, heavy column. Holding the rope with both hands, she prepared to take up slack as the dwarf crossed by pulling the rope around the column.

  Balance wasn't a problem. The dwarf's center of gravity was low enough that he could stroll across the bridge if he chose to. He decided instead that moving quickly would be best, as quickly as Ember could take in the rope. It took him only a few moments to reach the point where the crack was worst.

  Ember saw Brek's eyes widen a heartbeat before the column snapped and he tumbled into darkness. The rope jerked in her hands like a living thing. She would have lost her grip completely if it hadn't been wound around the obelisk.

  The sound of the broken stone thundering into the chasm mingled with incoherent yells from everyone. The anchored rope was taut and vibrating, and Ember could feel that it was swaying below the lip of the floor. She tied her end quickly around the tightened length of rope, then sped to the edge where Hennet knelt with the lantern. Brek swung on the end of the rope, twenty or so feet below them. The dwarf groaned.

  As the ringing echoes of the crashing column finally abated, they were replaced by the sinister fluting, seductively light for all its dread melody. It emanated up from the night-haunted chasm. A miasma of fear rose with the sound and gripped Ember.

  She heard the dwarf mutter a brief prayer. Then he said, straining his eyes below him, "I see...a blot of darkness. It's moving upward."

  The fluting, too, was growing close. Ember realized then that it wasn't an instrument at all but the unearthly, terrible voice of whatever lurked below in the darkness. It was a sound long ago bereft of life and hope. Ember's mind became suddenly frantic.

  It's coming for all of us, she realized. And Brek is hanging down there like bait!

  The dwarf struggled to pull himself up. Ember saw a black, snakelike tendril slither up from the depths to touch Brek's boot.

  "There's something down here!" bellowed the dwarf. "Pull me up, by Moradin's shaggy beard! Get me up!"

  Ember, Hennet, and Nebin hauled madly on the rope. Fear lent a wild strength to their limbs, and with all three of them pulling, the dwarf shot up the side of the crevice. Seconds later, Brek's groping fingers reached the crumbling edge of the floor. Ember grabbed one hand and pulled the dwarf bodily over the lip.

  Something followed after him.

  A sinuous arm writhed its way up from the darkness. It was dead black and coated with oily mucous. It seemed a tentacle of living night, waking from some age-long communion with the subterranean void. Three more tendrils, identical to the first, flopped up to writhe across the floor like eyeless snakes seeking prey.

  Behind the tendrils came the creature, dragging itself up and out of the crevice with inhuman strength. It was a blot of oily darkness where movement never ceased, a gargantuan mass of living, constantly slithering tentacles. Half hidden by the sliding tendrils, a sac of fluid sloshed at the core, emitting a crescendo of triumphant notes.

  Brek Gorunn's massive hands pushed Ember back from the crevice. He was running, and she was running, too. They fled blindly away from the hideous piping sound. The awful music drove them in a mad dash without regard for their surroundings. The rope was left behind, along with anything else they had set down. None of that mattered. There was only death and terror behind them. By running they might hope to live.

  Ember felt those things with dread certainty. She ran to save her own life. But as she caught up to Hennet and Nebin, she regained the presence of mind to match their slower pace.

  Hennet still held the lantern. Shadows danced like imps across (heir path, making an ungainly pantomime with magnified arms and pumping legs. Sarcophagi and tombstones, crumbling with age, retreated on either side. Another hundred feet, and they plunged out of the vast mausoleum into a narrow tunnel.

  The dread fluting ceased. Without its mental pressure, they checked their headlong flight. Ember felt as if a black fist released its hold on her stomach.

  Nebin panted, "I hope we don't have to return this way."

  Brek Gorunn, his skin uncharacteristically pale, responded, "Even if it proves the only possible escape, we'd do better to languish here. Moradin grant me strength, we woke something better left sleeping. If we leave it be, perhaps it will return to its evil slumber."

  Hennet stated, "Forewarned is forearmed. We were startled, no more. Other than fear itself, it didn't do us any harm."

  He gripped his Golden Wand. Ember wondered if the sorcerer wasn't drawing too much confidence from his Duel Arcane trophy.

  "It didn't hurt us because we ran too fast, genius," said Nebin. "As my master often said, 'It's the tentacle you don't see that you should fear the most.'"

  Hennet frowned.

  "Regardless of the creature's true nature," broke in Ember, "we don't have to come back this way. We'll deal with Sosfane and her cult in the revived temple. After that we can leave through the temple's front door." Nor will we be coming back this way if we lose the fight, she concluded to herself.

  "Did you hear that?" interrupted Brek Gorunn.

  He looked back toward the tunnel mouth that opened into the subterranean mortuary. A second of silence was followed by a distant, fluting melody. Though faint, it sent a shiver up her spine.

  Brek continued, "Perhaps we should move farther along this tunnel. No need to lure that cursed thing after us with chatter."

  Ember nodded. She took the lantern back and handed it to the dwarf. Cautiously they advanced down the corridor.

  Unlike the previous urn-lined corridors, this one was plain and carved directly from the surrounding stones without additional decoration. The drip of ages painted small mineral-rich stalagmites on the ceiling and long, colorful smears down the walls. The smell of damp and rot grew, and pools of water lay at their feet.

  After many minutes of slow trudging through the unremarkable tunnel, Ember ventured, "What do you suppose all this was, before New Koratia was built, and before Nerull's priests claimed it?"

  "Could have been the under-portions of a ruined surface city, I suppose," Brek offered. "The 'Ancient City' Nebin is so enraptured with."

  "Or the upper-portions of a subterranean city?" questioned Hennet. "I've heard legends about evil elves who congregate far from the sun's reach."

  Nebin, not to be outdone, said, "A treatise I read in my master's library hinted that these and other ruins represent some translocation of time—somewhere in the future, some terrible event destroys all life, and the ruins of civilization are buried in the deepest past."

  "That's a thinker," replied Hennet.

  Brek gave the gnome a bemused look.

  Ember smiled and said, "That sounds a little far-fetched. What treatise was this, and what learned scholar was its author, Nebin?"

  The gnome harrumphed and said nothing. Hennet and Ember shared a smile.

  The advancing light of the lantern revealed a branch in the tunnel ahead, a Y leading to left and right.

  "Which way?" inquired Ember.

  The dwarf stood quiet, looking and sniffing into each dark opening, neither of which seemed particularly different from the other in Ember's estimation. The dwarf puzzled, pulling thoughtfully on his beard, and looked for some sign or telltale rune.


  Finally, Brek Gorunn said, "We should go right. If we have to retrace our route, it pays to be consistent—we should go right at every branch. Plus, I don't like the smell to the left. It somehow puts me in mind of that flute player."

  That was enough for Ember. They took the right-hand passage. By this time, the damp was so extreme that a thin layer of pooled, stagnant water formed a continuous slurry on the muddy floor, limber promised to buy herself boots to keep in her pack for just such occasions—her order preferred open-toed sandals. Sandals are not suited for catacomb trekking, she thought.

  "I hope the water doesn't keep rising," commented Nebin.

  Ember realized that because of his stature, he would be affected more than the others. Still, she'd rather be short than feel the muddy sludge squeezing between her toes with every step.

  Suddenly the lantern's light fell on a closed stone door blocking their passage ahead. Ember moved up, motioning the others to silence. She placed one ear to the door, listening, and heard nothing but her own heartbeat.

  Pulling away, she told the others, "Be ready," and she opened the door.

  A noise as of stone on stone echoed down the hall.

  "Oh, shards!" she gasped as the entire length of the passage where they stood swung down beneath them.

  For the second time that day, Brek Gorunn felt himself falling. What had been a slick, muddy, but level corridor was transformed into a slick, muddy chute. He and his companions helplessly slid, one after another, and dropped onto a slimy, muddy floor. Brek didn't know how far he'd fallen, but it was a hard landing even with the mud as a cushion. It hadn't been so bad for Hennet, Brek guessed, because the human had the advantage of landing on the dwarf.

  Lying on his back while the others groaned and struggled to regain their footing on the treacherous floor, Brek surveyed his surroundings. They were in a pit, about twenty feet on a side. The ceiling was just visible in the lantern's light, placing it about thirty feet up, Brek estimated. The chute above snapped back up into its former position high above the floor, trapping them all in a tight box of stone. He scanned the walls; no exit was visible on any surface. He checked himself for injuries, found none, then rose to help the others who weren't as durable as dwarves.