She snickered. “Yes, dear sister, I remember that it was your idea. They built these secret tunnels too. These that our new friends see—and more they can’t and never will.”
“Why?” Dhamon found himself asking.
“Why all the tunnels?” She cocked her head.
Dhamon meant why such an inordinate amount of space. He suspected this place was as large or larger than the Tower of Wayreth, in which Palin Majere sometimes resided. But he nodded yes to her question.
“We wanted the tunnels in the event our enemies came to our castle and took it over. Centuries past…”
Centuries! Dhamon thought. Perhaps she was as old as Maldred’s tales hinted.
“… long centuries past, perhaps still today, there are those who hate us Black Robes. Hate us because of our power. It’s envy, really. No sorcerers are as powerful as the Black Robes. My sister and I wanted the tunnels so we could move about undiscovered. Watching the trespassers, striking when we wanted. Escaping if we had to. One of the tunnels, I won’t tell you which one, extends well beyond this town. Miles.”
The sivak let out an exasperated sigh. “Your enemies have taken over your castle, old woman. There are spawn everywhere. Draconians, too. Sometimes the black dragon’s agents crawl through this city.”
She waggled a bony finger at him, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I know precisely what is in my castle, you insolent creature. I can scry every inch of it when I’ve a mind to, every inch of this rotting town for that matter. That is exactly my point. Our enemies do not know about all of these tunnels and cannot find us here. No one alive knows about all of these tunnels.”
Dhamon chuckled. “Dwarves live a long time, Maab. The ones who built this place might still remember where all the tunnels are. You forget about them.”
She gave him a malevolent smile. “Not the ones who built this castle. They didn’t live a long time. My dear sister killed every last one of those handy dwarves so they would not tell others the secrets of our home.”
“What about us then?” A shiver ran down Dhamon’s spine. He started to say something else, but the sivak was faster.
“I am losing my patience,” Ragh said. “I want the naga more than Dhamon wants his cure. If the cure you claim you can deliver is not fast in coming, I’ll leave the two of you and wait above for her arrival.”
“Three of us,” Maab huffed. “Testy beast.”
“Which way do I go?” Ragh repeated. “Which way to your books and powders and this nonsense of a cure Dhamon is driven to pursue?”
She waggled her finger again. “To the left. Our laboratory is at the very end of the tunnel. Now move, creature. It is damp down here, and that is bad on these old bones. Besides, my sister misses our cozy chamber far above. She is hungry for a plump rat.”
The sivak made a grumbling sound, taking the passage Maab had indicated, moving sideways at times when it narrowed. After several hundred yards—well beyond the boundaries of the building above—the tunnel widened, but the ceiling lowered and he had to crouch to keep moving. The air was fresh here, as it had been in Maab’s room, and the hint of spring wildflowers was present. Dhamon wondered if the old woman brought the air and the smell with her, not wanting to breathe the stale stuff that would otherwise fill this dank place.
He followed close behind Ragh, mirror tilted for Maab’s benefit. He noted that the tunnels were lit by the smokeless torches, which gave off no smell and no indication that the fire was consuming the wood. He moved faster, bumping into Ragh’s leathery spawn wings.
“Hurry,” he told the draconian. The scale on his leg was warming again, and he knew that soon the painful sensations would become insufferable.
Ragh growled and increased his pace, still keeping a grip on Dhamon’s sword. “Old woman,” he said as he neared the end of the tunnel and passed by a torch that was held in the top of a wolf’s snout. “If you and your sister are such powerful sorceresses—”
“We are among the most powerful of the few Black Robes still alive in Ansalon. My sister claims we are the most powerful. She says that not even Dalamar or—”
“Why didn’t you simply snap your fingers and banish all of these spawn and draconians from your castle? From this town? Then we wouldn’t have to squeeze ourselves through these damn tunnels.”
She giggled. “Creature, we are old, my dear sister and I. Wisely, we have no desire to leave our home. These… spawn… as you call them, give us something interesting to watch. The smallest of them catch juicy mice that our servants bring to us. My sister likes to listen to the screams of the prisoners they sometimes torture in the other chambers beneath our home. The screams are music to her. She especially likes it when the creatures make… more spawn…of some of the men. The sounds that come to us then are…” She paused until she’d decided on the words. “They are unsettling and most pleasant. Interesting.”
The sivak sadly shook his head.
“Besides, they have left us alone. I slew the handful who bothered me, and the rest keep their distance.”
“This tunnel is a dead end,” Ragh snapped. “We will have to turn around and try another way.”
“Creature, you are blind.”
Maab squeezed by Dhamon, who pivoted so she could still glance into the mirror if she wanted. His fingers clenched the beveled edges, steeling himself against the pain that he was certain would get worse. A stab of icy cold shot upward from the scale and into his chest. It had been a long time since the scale had pained him twice in a single day.
“Why now?” he hissed.
She touched something on the wall and shuffled toward the sivak. Ragh pressed his back against the wall and snarled as she squeezed by. She prodded the stones at the end of the tunnel until she found one that was softer and pressed on it. A thin section of the wall swung open, and she walked through, drawing her moth-eaten cloak tight around her, calling for her sister to come along. The room beyond was filled with shadows that fled to the far corners when Maab coaxed another ball of light into her palm. The place was cavernous, but so cluttered that it looked cramped. Shelves upon shelves lined every inch of wall. Resting on them were crumbling books, bone tubes that protected scrolls, and stacks of parchment that looked so fragile they would dissolve if they were touched. Skulls, some of them human, served as bookends. The skull of what must have been a large and impressive minotaur rested on a pedestal toward the center of the room. Preserved animals were posed on other pedestals and scattered on the top shelves. A raven with its decaying wings spread wide stood poised as if to take flight. Lizards, squirrels, and several large rats were caught in time as if they were forever running. A small lynx held a ragged rabbit in its frozen jaws.
Spider webs hung from everything.
The scent of fresh air and wildflowers that seemed to follow the old woman warred with the myriad of odors that lay thick in this room—the rotting animals, mixtures neither Dhamon nor the draconian could put a name too, dried blood, and rotting wood. Moss grew on some of the table legs and on a few of the bookcases. There were patches of slime on the floor, and along a section of the ceiling an ugly gray-green vine tenuously clung.