The fighter paused, meeting Belgin's face with contemptuous anger. 'Then help him!" he roared, pointing at the fight. Miltiades slipped and went down to one knee. Eidola screeched in triumph and raised her stone blade to strike-but the paladin shattered one knee with a low swing of his silver hammer. Eidola toppled to the floor just as Rings appeared. The dwarf seized one brawny arm in his left hand and hacked viciously with his axe, breaching the doppelganger's stony hide in a spray of dark blood and flakes of rock-like flesh. Eidola shrieked and convulsed with startling power, hurling the dwarf aside and slamming Miltiades to the floor.
Now! Belgin saw his chance. Nimbly he leaped to the top of the sarcophagus, lashing out with his cutlass to gouge a deep cut across Eidola's forehead as she struggled to stand. The doppelganger fell back, then changed her shape, collapsing into a boneless cuttlefish with razor-sharp hooks serrating its flailing tentacles. Miltiades floundered under the serpentlike strikes of three of the creature's tentacles, then Rings had his axe wrenched from his hand by another. Light and shadow danced chaotically in the tomb as the paladin's glowing hammer whirled and fell. Atop the tomb, Belgin tried to find a place to strike-and then he felt a cold, strong pressure circle his ankle. He stooped to sever the tentacle that gripped his foot, but with inhuman strength Eidola jerked his limb from beneath him, tripping him heavily on top of the sepulchre. The sharper struck his head on the stone face. His eyes flooded with white, and the screaming, clattering, hissing cacophony of the fight faded into nothingness in his ear.
Vision swimming with pain, Belgin at first didn't believe his senses when he felt the stone slab under him begin to grow warm. He rolled to one elbow, trying to regain his bearings, although his movements seemed slow and heavy. Rings and Miltiades still fought Eidola, while Jacob had moved up behind the dwarf, sword raised as he awaited his opportunity to join the fray.
Something black and spidery flitted before Belgin's face. He glanced down in surprise, only to find that glowing magical runes now circled the sarcophagus lid. Above and behind him, the blank wall that stood opposite the chamber's only door seemed to grow a tracery of mystical runes, like ivy climbing a stone wall in the space of only heartbeats. Some kind of enchantment on the sarcophagus? Belgin wondered absently. A tomb-trap triggered by our fighting, or when I fell on the lid? His alertness returning, he rolled off the sepulchre and recovered his sword. "Something's happening!" he called out, warning his companions.
Above the sounds of the fighting, a powerful voice pronounced some horrible doom in a language older than mankind. The great stone door at the tomb's entrance slammed shut with a tremendous boom, bringing a soft rain of dust from the ceiling overhead. Jacob whirled and attacked the doors with all his strength, but they were sealed with sorcery. "We're trapped!" the fighter called.
"Finish the doppelganger!" Miltiades answered, crushing a tentacle to red pulp with one blow of his hammer. "Well worry about escape once she's dead! For Tyr and justice!" He resumed the attack, striking blow after blow with his hammer while Rings ripped great slashes in the thing with his ancestors' axe. Pieces of cuttlefish lay strewn about the chamber, but still the beast fought on, warping its shape from moment to moment to create new limbs and minimize the effect of its foes' weapons.
Belgin moved in to join the fight again as Jacob did the same, but at that moment the glyphs on the far wall- now an arcane, circular design-flashed with a crackle of energy and a peal of thunder. Where a blank stone wall had stood, a dark portal yawned. Wind howled forth, thick with the scent of dust and strange incense. What in the Five Kingdoms? he thought, raising an arm to shield his eyes. A magical doorway? Here? "Look out! We might have company coming!"
Eidola recognized the archway, too. Slithering away from the paladin, she seemed to suddenly contract and rise, standing on two legs as the human woman they'd seen before. Deftly she vaulted the stone tomb, parrying Belgin's attack, and leaped headlong into the portal. Belgin dove for the lasso trailing her waist, but the cord brushed his fingertips and disappeared into the darkness. "She's getting away!" he cried unnecessarily.
'Tyr damn it! We had her!" Miltiades shouted. "Quick, after her!"
"Wait!" Jacob shouted against the roaring wind. "We don't know where the portal leads!"
"Jacob's right," Belgin said. "What if it leads to the heart of a volcano? Or to a dragon's den? She might be dead already."
"Then I'm going to go make sure," Miltiades stated. Blood streamed from a vicious cut on the side of his head, but the paladin seemed tireless. He took three running steps and threw himself into the black portal, shield raised high.
"I'm with the paladin," Rings said. He was ripped and scored in a dozen places from Eidola's tentacles, but a fierce light blazed in his eyes. "Besides, why would the old builders of this place install a portal to nowhere?" He trotted forward and stepped through.
"Maybe they wanted to arrange something special for anyone who despoiled this tomb," Belgin answered, speaking to the blackness. "Maybe-oh, to hell with it." With a lamning start, the dandy leaped into the doorway, roaring an improvised battle cry.
Behind him, Jacob stood in the darkness of the wrecked crypt, glaring at the portal. "Damn, damn, damn," he muttered, pounding his fist against his palm. "It's not supposed to be like this." Jaw set, he picked up his great war blade and followed the others into the darkness.
Chapter 2
Cold beyond cold, darkness seared Belgin's flesh, and then he was through the gate. His bold battle cry faltered in the teeth of a bitter, stinging wind that scoured him with dust and sand. He raised a hand to shield his eyes and blundered forward. Crumbling old stone walls surrounded him, and overhead a brown sky billowed and seethed with the weight of wind-borne dust. No sun pierced the sandy veil, but something in the quality of the light hinted at late afternoon, maybe sunset. Where on Toril are we? he thought. Grimacing, he laughed bitterly. I've said that all my life and never really meant it before.
"Belgin! Over here!" A stout, dark shape materialized in the murk as Rings appeared. He looked past the sharper. "Where's the swordsman?"
"Right here," said Jacob, emerging from the portal behind them. A rune-carved arch marked the gate's location, twin to the one they'd left behind in the dungeons beneath Aetheric's palace. The fighter's golden mane whipped around his head in the relentless wind. "Not a volcano, not a dragon's den," he remarked. "I guess this could have been worse."
"That depends on how you look at it," Belgin said. "Eidola's out of our cage now." He turned his back on Jacob and Rings, moving forward to examine their surroundings. The ground was broken and rugged, heaps of uneven stone piled at random all around him. The walls seemed to form a large courtyard with rows of broken columns rising from drifts and skeletal fingers clawing up through the hissing, shifting sands. Beyond the old walls he gained glimpses of the dark bulk of neighboring structures, revealed and then hidden by the dust. No, not a courtyard, he decided. It's a great building, long since collapsed. I'm standing on the rubble of the roof. He scanned the wreckage again, still trying to absorb his surroundings. He'd seen blood and horror and death aplenty in the last few days, but as he gazed on the ruins, he felt as if he were a ghost moving in a sad and silent phantom world. He'd left his capacity for wonder too far behind.