“Some of the many stories about the city have grown in the telling in other lands,” Geran replied. “Myth Drannor isn’t impervious to foul weather and ill chance, which is something we should remember tonight. Besides, in Tantras the fog would reek of the harbor flats and smoke. Come on, let’s be on our way.”
He led Sarth and Hamil on a circuitous route that kept them in the city’s public districts, approaching the old Irithlium carefully-the Celestrian stood in a quarter of the city where visitors weren’t normally welcome without an escort. A few of Myth Drannor’s winerooms and taverns remained open, but most folk had retired to their homes early. It might have been better to wait for the small hours, but Geran decided that Daried had chosen the hour so that he and his companions could pretend to be making their way home from enjoying the city’s entertainments instead of skulking about on the streets when no honest person would fare abroad.
They came up on the wide wooded area where Daried was supposed to be waiting from its far side. He spied a path leading into the shadows, and took a careful look around. No one was in sight, although a faint lilting song spilled from a wineroom’s door a good half block away. “This way,” Geran said to his friends, and they followed him away from the deserted avenue and into the dark woods.
Myth Drannor was checkered with large copses and groves of living trees; there was nearly as much wild forest within the city’s ring of lakes as there were streets and buildings. Many of the areas that had been reduced to rubble in the city’s destruction long before had not been rebuilt when the elves reclaimed the city in Seiveril’s Crusade, and the large area of ruins near the Irithlium’s old location was an excellent example. Within the shadows of the trees, moss-covered stones of old walls and fallen buildings gleamed in the faint light. Geran felt his way forward, hardly able to see anything in the darkness.
“Ah, there you are.” Daried Selsherryn materialized out of the shadows, holding a silver lantern dimmed to only a sliver of light. “A good night for scofflaws; few folk will be abroad in the fog. Come, the door you seek is this way.”
Geran and his friends followed the sun elf into the shell of an old building, its foundations bare to the sky. Daried led them down a steep stone stair to what would have been the floor of its cellar; a dark archway loomed before them. “We are in the foundations of the Tower of Nythlum,” Daried said softly. “There is no direct access from the Celestrian to the passages that were under the Irithlium, since the upper portions were largely filled in when the building was rebuilt. This tower belonged to a wizard who left it to the college on his death, and the foundations were joined by a new passage-this one before us. It leads to the passages that were covered up when the Irithlium was rebuilt.”
Geran nodded to his old mentor. “I’m in your debt, Daried.”
The sun elf shook his head. “Nonsense, since I was never here,” he said. “Good luck, and if I do not see you again before you set out, sweet water and light laughter until we meet again.” He dimmed his lantern and retreated, leaving Geran and his companions alone in the old foundation.
Hamil looked dubiously at the doorway. “Do you have any idea what might be sealed in this vault other than the harmless old manuscript we’re looking for?”
Geran shook his head. “I couldn’t begin to guess.” He drew his sword and ventured into the dark doorway.
Sarth and Hamil joined him; carefully he picked his way down broken steps to a large chamber below the tower foundations, murmuring the words of a light spell to give him something to see by. The passageway continued to the north, back in the direction of the old Irithlium if Geran’s bearings were correct, dropping a few steps as it went. After fifty paces or so, another archway loomed ahead, with a large door of stone filling the passageway.
Sarth set a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “There is an old warding here,” the sorcerer said. “I will see if I can craft a brief opening so that we may pass through without destroying it.” The sorcerer murmured a spell that Geran did not recognize, gesturing carefully with his hand. Geran was conscious of a subtle change in the cold air of the ancient halls, as subtle threads of magic drew taut and quivered under Sarth’s careful weaving. A brooding menace seemed to gather form beyond the door; Sarth shot Geran a look of warning and continued with his spell.
Geran summoned a spell of his own. “Cuillen mhariel,” he murmured, shaping the arcane syllables into the form of a misty shield, thin and silvery. Hamil glanced up at him and frowned; he lacked the magical training of the sorcerer or the swordmage, but he could tell from their tenseness that trouble was not far off. The halfling drew a pair of daggers and moved to one side, making sure he was out of the way.
What could endure a century in this vault? Geran thought. Some sort of undead? Or perhaps a demon or devil? That was unfortunately quite possible; in the days before the crusade had reclaimed Myth Drannor, the ruined city was full of such things. “Be ready,” he whispered to Hamil. “I think there’s a powerful fiend in here.”
Perhaps we should stop what we’re doing and leave it in peace? Hamil suggested. After all, Aesperus might have been mistaken.
Geran shook his head. “Unlikely.” There was no doubt about it; something trapped within the old temple was straining at the portal that Sarth was carefully working open.
Sarth neared the end of his spell, but halted before he spoke the last words. He drew back a pace and looked at Geran and Hamil. “This is our last chance to reconsider,” the tiefling said. “There is an infernal presence sealed behind this door. Once we pass within, we will be in its power.”
“We didn’t come all the way to Myth Drannor to leave empty-handed,” Geran answered. “Aesperus is the key to defeating Rhovann’s gray warriors, and the key to Aesperus is the bargain for the missing pages from his tome. I have to make the attempt; I can’t see any other way to bring the pages out. But you two don’t have to follow me.”
“Not too likely now,” Hamil muttered. “Let’s get this over with.”
Sarth nodded, and readied his scepter in one hand. He faced the archway at the bottom of the stairs, and spoke the last words of his passage spelclass="underline" “Anak zyrsha saigesh!”
The stone portal blocking the passage ahead groaned open. In the space of an instant, the subtle menace waiting for them grew tenfold. Exchanging glances, they advanced into the chamber below the old school. It was a great vaulted cellar dominated by old sepulchers carved with the images of long-dead mages, most of them elves. Several other corridors led off into darkness. Geran paused, and murmured an elven finding charm he’d learned years before when he began his studies in magic, fixing in his mind the Infiernadex as he remembered it-he’d briefly handled the tome a few months back, and any pages that had once been a part of it likely retained a faint impression of the whole. The passage to the left immediately leaped to his attention, and he nodded toward it. “That way, I think,” he said to his companions.
They were only three paces from the archway when the malevolence lingering in the temple’s catacombs suddenly coalesced into a knot of living darkness behind them. They whirled to face the threat, watching as the inky blot took on a tall, manlike shape and became real and substantial. In the space of a few moments a gaunt, scaled, winged devil crouched in the center of the chamber, its wings flexing, its fangs bared in an evil grin. A chain of iron links glowing cherry red with heat dangled from its clawed hands.
“Foolish halfblood,” it hissed at Sarth. “You have delivered me the keys to my freedom by weakening the warding above. When I slay you, I will at last be able to leave this place!” The creature hurled itself at the tiefling with sudden ferocity.