The Tyrian's intuition was correct; they traveled about fifty yards down the alley and found themselves at a narrow courtyard or portico. The back side of the column-bordered palace loomed over an open space littered with broken masonry. Rings looked around nervously, but there was no more sign of the undead.
"Look here," said Jacob. He pointed at a disordered line of shallow dimples in the sand, crossing and recrossing a small but steep drift. "Someone's footsteps."
"They must be fresh. The wind would've covered them if they'd been here long." Rings followed the steps to a gaping dark archway in the stone building ahead. By one side of the door a crude chalk mark caught his eye. "We're on the right track. That's Belgin's mark."
Jacob glanced around and then ducked his head to descend the narrow steps beyond. Rings followed carefully, axe at the ready. At the bottom, the steps opened out into a long, low chamber lined with stout columns. Moving slowly, the two fighters advanced into the chamber, examining their surroundings. "I think these are more portals," Jacob said after a long moment.
"Looks like it," Rings answered. "I guess the old Netherese had an aversion to using their legs. There must be dozens of these things."
About halfway across the chamber from the stairway, they found an archway marked with a chalk symbol and a set of dwarven runes beneath it. Rings studied the archway in silence for a long time, ignoring the fighter beside him.
"Well? What is it?" Jacob asked irritably.
"Belgin and Miltiades went this way, chasing Eidola."
"What's the rest of the writing?"
"The word to open the gate," Rings said. "Are you ready?"
Jacob's eyes were far away. Rings almost repeated his question before the Tyrian absently nodded. "Go ahead."
Rings turned back to the portal and spoke the word Belgin had marked for him. Before his eyes, the gray stone seemed to shimmer and vanish, replaced by a curtain of seamless black. "It's'open," he said, glancing back at Jacob.
He was just in time to see the fighter's blade punch into his chest.
Rings grunted with the impact, blinking in disbelief. Steel grated on bone as Jacob withdrew his sword, red for almost a foot of its length. Rings tried to raise the axe of his fathers to strike at his slayer, but the weapon seemed impossibly heavy, and it slipped from his grasp to fall ringing to the floor. "You bastard," he gasped once, and then the breath fled from him. With a groan he toppled to the cold stone floor, blood fountaining from his wound.
Jacob raised his sword again and met his eyes. The curly-haired fighter smiled coldly. "Thanks for reading the trigger. I don't know a word of Dwarvish. Why don't you stay here and take a breather, and I'll go on ahead and see how Miltiades and Belgin are faring."
"Why?" rasped Rings. Weakly he pushed himself up with one hand on the floor, the other clamped over the ghastly injury.
"Let's just say that Eidola's an old friend." Jacob eyed him clinically, then lowered his sword. With brutal efficiency he lashed out with one boot and kicked Rings's supporting arm out from under him, crumpling the dwarf to the floor again, then kicked him hard five times for good measure before he stopped. "Damn. You got blood all over my boot," he remarked.
Then he stepped over the small, still form and ducked into the portal.
Blackness and cold, an instant of silence that seared Belgin's senses, and he was through the portal again. Shivering, he swept his flank with his rapier, ready for any threat. They stood in a chamber that might have been a Netherese crypt ages ago, but it had been plundered and looted decades or centuries in the past. What was so important, so dangerous, that these dead princes were buried thousands of miles from their home? the sharper wondered. The colorful murals had flaked and peeled from exposure to the outside air, and what little statuary remained had been smashed and vandalized. The stone sepulchre in the center of the room lay broken and empty, and the doors at the far end of the chamber were torn from their hinges.
Miltiades stood beside him, scanning his side of the room. His hammer still retained his spell of illumination, and its soft silver glow cast gray shadows against the ruined walls and broken vaulting. "I'd guess that these places were built to house liches through the dark ages of undeath," he said quietly.
"Liches?" Belgin recoiled a step, even though he could plainly see that no such creature had inhabited this particular tomb for long years. "Why do you say that?"
"Netheril's archmages ruled that land. Knowing that the time of their natural deaths were upon them, maybe they arranged for the construction of tombs that would keep out looters and defilers and hide them from their living rivals but allow them to leave when they so chose."
"The Netherese were in the habit of deifying their rulers," Belgin said. "It would make sense. The desert temple was the center of a cult of death priests who watched over their lords' sleep and awaited the day of their undead resurrection. I wonder how many of these places still exist?"
"Does it matter?" Miltiades asked. "You're not thinking of using the portals to rummage through Netherese crypts, are you?"
Belgin thought of the cold emerald fire dancing in the eyes of the desert temple's dead warriors and the horrifying determination of the creature that guarded the place against intrusion. There are easier ways to make a living, he said to himself. Like hunting down doppelgangers.
"It might be handy to know where all those portals go, but I don't think I want to cross any more liches than I have to. I’ll leave their tombs in peace from now on."
He laughed at his own remark, but the thick dust and rot in the chamber got into his lungs, and he coughed until it felt like someone had stabbed him between the ribs. Gasping for air, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tried not to notice the dark bloody smear on his glove.
Miltiades waited, frowning. "Can you continue?"
"I’ll live-for now, anyway. Lead the way."
The paladin grimaced and clapped one mailed hand to the sharper's shoulder, then turned and picked his way from the wreckage of the crypt. The ancient doors had stood at the end of a long corridor much like the one under Aetheric's palace, and a faint set of tracks marred the dust on the stone flagstones.
"No hard decisions yet," Miltiades observed, advancing down the hall. "She must have gone this way."
The passageway led several hundred feet before opening high in a dank and lightless cavern whose sides stretched away into the darkness. A cold, foul wind sighed through the chamber, hinting at vast gulfs and trackless mazes in the endless night. What kind of place is this? It must go on forever, Belgin thought. I can feel eyes in the darkness. Beneath them, a narrow ledge circled the upper portion of the cavern, with a steep scramble through a forest of stalagmites to the cavern floor. They dropped lightly from the mouth of the finished passage to the shelf of natural stone, peering down at the yawning darkness below. "How big is this place?" Belgin muttered.
"No one knows of a larger or more dangerous maze," Miltiades said. "Undermountain stretches for miles beneath the city and Mount Waterdeep. You wouldn't believe some of the things that inhabit Haalvar's dungeons, Belgin; keep your eyes open and watch your back down here."
"I really wish you'd kept that to yourself." The sharper glanced left and right, then slid down the slope to the cavern floor. He could sense water nearby, a lot of it; the wind was cold and damp, and the sound of the air seemed to indicate an immense cavern. At the bottom, a shelf of gray stone held a couple of muddy footprints. Carefully, he knelt to examine them. A few grains of wet sand remained in the tracks. "Stay toward the right," he said quietly. "I think she's following that wall."