"Brant and the horses are still there," she said. "He looks bored."
"He should have fought the golem, then," Maresa grumbled.
They fell to searching the two rooms thoroughly, looking for any sign of persistent magic or treasure caches.
Araevin pored through the remains of the bookshelves, finding book after book decayed beyond any possible perusal. A few had borne the years better, and those he flipped through with greater care, hoping that a spellbook or enchanted tome of some kind might have been left behind. He found nothing of that sort, but he did find a faded mage rune printed carefully on the frontispiece of one of the more intact tomes. It was the mark of a wizard who called himself Gerardin. Araevin pulled out his journal and recorded the shape of the rune and the name, in case he ever got a chance to compare it later with some other scholar or research it himself.
"Aha! I think I found something," Maresa announced. The genasi knelt by one wall, peering closely at it. "There's a secret compartment here."
"Be careful," Araevin said. "We know this fellow placed at least one trap in his home. There may be more."
Maresa lightly ran her fingers over the stonework surrounding the suspicious spot, then rocked back on her heels and pulled her leather folio from her doublet. She rummaged through the small case, and produced another packet of paper, rolled and crimped at the ends. She unfolded the packet, revealing bright blue dust, and blew the dust over the area.
"What's that?" Ilsevele asked.
"Chalk dust, dyed blue. It sometimes helps to show details that you might otherwise miss. Such as this." Maresa pointed at the wall. "See, here is the catch for the compartment, or so it seems. You'll see that there is a faint scoring across it. That would be a spring-loaded needle scraping across the surface of the catch. If you pushed it in with your finger or thumb, you'd get jabbed, probably with some nasty sort of poison. But up here there's a small, more well hidden catch, too. To use the main catch safely, you depress and hold in that second one, which probably prevents the needle from striking. Let's see if I'm right."
She carefully pushed and held down the second catch with her left hand and used the pommel of her dagger to push the compartment catch. There was a small click, and a section of wall about a foot square popped open. Inside the hidden compartment were several small cloth sacks, some mildewed scrolls, a small wooden case, and a rusty wand of iron.
"Well, well," Maresa said softly.
Two of the sacks held coinage-gold in one, platinum in the other. Another held gemstones, not magical but valuable nonetheless. The scrolls and the wand had long since decayed into uselessness, but the wooden case was scribed with delicate arcane runes. Maresa examined it carefully, and offered it to Araevin.
"Any of those sigils look dangerous to you?" the genasi asked.
Araevin examined the box and said, "No, they're only for preservation."
He opened it, and inside lay a black-green glittering telkiira, identical to the one he carried in the pouch at his belt. Gingerly he picked it out of its case and held it up to his eye, studying it.
"All this trouble for a single small gemstone," Grayth muttered. "Is that it?"
"Yes. It seems to be guarded like the other one, but I don't recognize the rune it holds. I'll have to use a spell of identifying or opening to get at it. Give me an hour or two to pre-"
The terrified whinny of a horse from outside cut him off, and an instant later, Brant shouted out a warning, unintelligible through the distance and the stamping and whinnying of the animals he guarded. Grayth happened to be closest to the tower's slitlike window. He dashed over and looked out.
"Demons!" he snarled.
Without waiting, the Lathanderite dived through the open stairwell, racing down through the tower. Maresa and Ilsevele followed him. Araevin paused long enough to secure the telkiira and its carven box in his own belt pouch, then hurried over to look out the window for himself.
In the forest clearing surrounding the tower, Brant battled furiously against three hulking vrocks, demons in the shape of vulturelike gargoyles, with gray shabby wings and long, filthy claws and talons. The monsters wheeled and screeched above the young swordsman, mocking him as they fluttered just out of reach before dashing in to claw or snap at him. A dozen more fiends of the stinking hells flapped or leaped toward the tower, from hulking insec-tile mezzoloths to blind, houndlike canoloths with long, barbed tongues and huge snapping jaws. Araevin stared in shocked amazement.
"Aillesel Seldarie", he murmured. "Where did these come from?"
A gleam of gold caught his eye, and his breath hissed in his teeth. Several of the demon-elves, including the fellow with the eye patch whom he had seen before, drove the vile warband onward. Their swords were bared, and their golden armor gleamed in the morning light.
Araevin considered attacking the daemonfey at once, but Brant needed immediate help. His sword flashed bravely against the demons tormenting him, but each of the monsters was as tall and strong as an ogre, and they were far, far quicker. They toyed with the strapping swordsman like great cats batting at their prey.
I'll give them something else to think about, Araevin swore silently.
He found a lodestone and a pinch of dust in his bandolier, and rasped the words of a powerful spell. From his fingertip a brilliant green ray shot forth, catching one of the three vrocks between its shoulder blades. The demon arched in agony, its beak gaping as it shrieked terribly. The green glow washed over its foul body and erased the creature from existence, leaving nothing but dancing dust motes in the sunlight.
"Up here, hellspawn!" Araevin cried.
"Take that one alive!" cried the daemonfey lord, pointing up at Araevin's window. "Slay the rest!"
He hurled a spell back up at Araevin-apparently an enchantment designed to bind the mage in dolorous paralysis-but Araevin muttered the words of a countercharm and fought off the creeping lethargy that momentarily settled over his limbs.
Araevin started another spell, but two of the demon — elves below were waiting on him. As he chanted out the words, they struck with simple spell missiles that streaked unerringly up through the narrow window and blasted into him. Impacts like hammer blows staggered him and caused him to lose the spell he was casting, as he stumbled over invocations that had to be spoken with care. Then one of the vrocks broke away from Brant and flapped up toward him, scouring the whole tower-top with a burning magical foulness that almost gagged the mage.
Deciding he'd done well enough in attracting the demons' attention, Araevin stumbled back from the window and followed the others down the tower steps. The sounds of fighting drifted up from below, the sharp thrumming of Ilsevele's bowstring and the harsh clatter of steel meeting steel. Araevin descended one floor and quickly dashed over to the window in the wizard's bedchamber, risking another look.
Demons, yugoloths, and the demon-elves swarmed around the tower. Several jostled and shoved toward the door, evidently waiting for their chance to get inside. Others scrambled over the rotten rooftop, searching for a gap large enough to drop into. The vrock and two of the daemonfey circled above him, watching the upper window for any additional sign of his presence. Meanwhile, Brant still battled on against the remaining vrock and a pair of canoloths closing in on him.
Araevin leveled his lightning wand at the monsters surrounding the embattled swordsman and blasted them with a powerful thunderbolt, slapping the vrock out of the air and leaving one canoloth as a smoking corpse on the ground. Brant staggered back, looking for a place to make a stand-and the other canoloth had him. It shot its arm-thick tongue at Brant and wrapped the slimy member around the young knight's sword arm. Then it clenched its powerful claws in the thick loam of the clearing and pulled