“Alliere … thank you.”
Alliere started to reply, but she heard something below and started. “I must go,” she whispered. She gave his hand a quick squeeze, then she hurried out of sight. Geran realized that he was standing by the bars with the jar and stylus in his hands, and quickly returned to his bunk. He hid the items under the pillow and climbed back into bed. A moment later two elves in mail entered the hall outside the cell door, one carrying a silver lantern with a soft blue glow. He closed his eyes and feigned sleep as best he could. The guards peered into the cell for a long time, until he was certain that somehow they’d realized he was hiding something from them … but just when he thought he couldn’t bear it for another moment, he heard the rustle of mail and light footfalls descending again. The faint blue light receded, leaving the cell still and dark again.
Mind telling me what that was all about? Hamil asked him silently.
Geran flinched, startled by his friend’s thoughts. He glanced over, and saw Hamil propped up on one elbow, looking across the cell at him. “I think we may have a way out,” he whispered.
It’s about time, Hamil replied. When do we make our excuses to the coronal?
“Two nights from now, if all goes well.”
It’s likely a plot to murder us while we’re trying to escape, the halfling answered with a snort. Oh, well, I hate waiting. He shook his head and burrowed under his covers again.
The next two days passed with agonizing slowness. Geran had Hamil explain to Sarth everything he could recall of Alliere’s instructions, keeping their speech silent to the greatest extent possible just in case they were being listened to in secret. The prospect of freedom dramatically improved the tiefling’s spirits, and for the first time he days he managed to look at Geran without glowering or scowling. As opportunity allowed, Geran did his best to describe Myth Drannor’s surroundings and the various roads and trails that crisscrossed Cormanthor to his friends, mulling over their options for flight once they got away from the city proper.
Finally the sun began to sink toward the horizon on the afternoon of the second day. As soon as their dinner plates were taken away, Hamil went to take up a post by the cell door, keeping an eye open for the guards who periodically came by to check on them. Geran and Sarth picked out the wall of an alcove leading to one of their window slits as the best place to draw their door. It was nearly perpendicular to the cell door, so even if their guards came to the bars they’d have a hard time seeing the painted diagram taking shape on the wall. Geran unrolled the parchment, and studied the design carefully. Then he passed it to Sarth, and let the sorcerer have a look as well.
I thought you two couldn’t work magic in here, Hamil observed.
“We can’t, but in this case, the magic is contained in the paint,” Geran answered. He looked over to Sarth and offered the stylus. “Do you want to render it?”
“No, I think you had better do it,” Sarth replied. “Your Elvish is much better than mine, and this is an elven spell. I wouldn’t want to misdraw one of these symbols and send us all into some monster-haunted crypt unarmed, or strand us in some forgotten forest.”
“At least we’d be out of our cell,” Geran observed. Sarth’s mouth twisted in a sardonic smile, but he smoothed the parchment out carefully and held it flat against the wall so that Geran could copy it more easily. Drawing a deep breath to steady his hand, Geran opened the jar, dipped the stylus into the thick silvery paint inside, and began to copy the diagram onto the wall, only much larger. It proved trickier than he would have thought-the magical pigment dried to a faint line of silver glitter within moments of its application, and he soon realized that some of the symbols he had to draw were very intricate indeed. He glanced at Sarth and said, “Watch me carefully to make sure I draw these glyphs correctly.”
The tiefling nodded, and Geran focused on his task. He drew a tall oval frame four feet high and two wide, and a second oval within the first. In the space between the parallel lines he painted the words of the spell, struggling to make out the faint lines as they faded from view.
He was three quarters done when Hamil’s voice lashed silently at him. Guards coming! the halfling said. Geran swore to himself and took a moment to mark his place as carefully as he could; then he tucked the stylus into his sleeve, capped the jar, and hid it in his pillow as he threw himself down on his bunk, making a show of folding his hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. Sarth joined Hamil at the table, where the halfling had already laid out two hands of playing cards. The tiefling looked across at his small opponent and said, “It’s your play.”
“So it is,” Hamil agreed. He ruffled through his hand and was still studying the cards as two Coronal Guards appeared. The elven warriors checked the door and peered into the cell; Geran’s heart raced as he waited for the outcry announcing that their half drawn escape had been noticed. But after a long pause, the guards continued on their way, and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. Their footsteps receded, and Hamil leaned out from his seat to watch them.
They’re gone, he finally reported.
Hurriedly, Geran retrieved his jar and returned to the drawing. His heart sank as he studied his working space; the work he’d already done had faded to near invisibility. “Sarth, I don’t know if I can see where I’ve been!” he hissed to the sorcerer.
Sarth grimaced. “Take your best guess,” he said. “It may still function even with some amount of imprecision.”
The swordmage daubed the stylus in the pigment again, and leaned close to begin again before pausing. He couldn’t even tell if he was about to draw the next sign inside the door’s frame, on the blank surface of the door, or somewhere outside the bounds of his work altogether. He made himself touch the brush to the wall in the spot he thought was right … and then, from the narrow window beside him, a faint silver radiance broke through the overcast. As the faint moonlight brightened the treetops and spires outside, the markings he’d already painted for the moon-door also began to grow brighter. Invisible lines and glyphs gleamed with a pale radiance as if they were made of molten silver, stark and beautiful.
“Hurry, Geran!” Sarth whispered. “Finish it while the break in the clouds lasts!”
The swordmage nodded and quickly began to draw and letter with confidence. In a few moments more he finished with it, and sat back on his heels to study the diagram on the parchment and the larger one he’d painted on the wall. “Do you see any mistakes?” he asked Sarth.
The tiefling studied the drawing as intently as he had. “No. I think it is done.”
“Then let’s see where it leads.” Geran waited for Hamil to join them in the alcove, and focused on the last set of words he’d drawn, the activating phrase of the portal. With one more glance at his comrades, he read them aloud: “Illieloch ser Selunarr adhiarran!”
The silvery runes glowed even brighter. Geran reached out to set his hand squarely in the center of the diagram, and willed himself forward; the light grew blindingly bright, a cool silver curtain that poured down over him as if he’d stepped under a waterfall of moonlight. Then, in the blink of an eye, he staggered forward into a dark clearing and stumbled to all fours, his eyes still filled with the brilliant radiance. I’m not in the cell anymore, he realized. But am I where I’m supposed to be? He tried to blink the bright afterimage from his eyes and started to stand, only to stumble again as Sarth and Hamil piled into him. When he finally regained his feet, he found that he and his friends were standing in a small open space before an old elven ruin. A complicated design of silver lines and Elvish lettering glowed brightly within an arch of white stone, one of several arches that made up the ruin’s wall. He looked around, searching for something familiar.