Dromel swallowed and nodded. “I. . yes, of course. Of course, that’s Lord Dwerlen’s manor. We would find wealth enough for us all there. We should go back then, you know. We would be fools to come this far and not to get his money.”
Perhaps it was his stuttering or the trembling of his hands that told me he was holding back.
“Who was this Lord Dwerlen?” I asked, leaning close to him. “You haven’t told us about him. I want to know.”
“L–Lord Dwerlen was just a. . a tax collector or something for-
I had my right hand around his throat in a second. “Don’t lie to me, damn you!”
“Red!” Twig screamed. “Don’t hurt him!”
“Tell me the truth,” I whispered in Dromel’s face. “Who was Lord Dwerlen? Why have you been so determined to find his place?”
“H-H-H-He was. . a c-cartographer!” Dromel gasped, turning red. “I w-wanted m-m-maps!”
I released his throat. He fell back, inhaling hoarsely. “A mapmaker,” I repeated. “You talked us into coming here for a bunch of maps?”
Dromel hesitated, then nodded, watching me with wide eyes. “He was rich,” he wheezed. “He had every sort of map known. He retired to Enstar from the mainland decades ago, before the Chaos War.”
I leaned away from him, relaxing. This sounded like the truth, more or less-not that I still wasn’t thinking about killing him.
“So there’s no treasure there, no coins or jewels, only maps,” I said.
“No, that isn’t it!” Dromel fairly shouted. “No, 1 think there is treasure there, tons of it, but as for me, what I really want is the maps. I’ve got to have the maps!” He took a shuddering breath. “The rest of you can divide what iron pieces we bring out, but I want the maps. Please.”
“Well, I like maps, too,” said Twig. “How about if-”
“You can have the maps, Dromel,” I interrupted.
“Hey!” Twig fairly shouted.
“Shut up,” I said, still looking at Dromel. “But I want to know why you want those maps, and not just half the story.”
Dromel swallowed. “I like maps,” he said.
I knew there was more to it, but I decided to be patient. Soon enough I would see the maps for myself. I already had a fair idea of what he had in mind. “Fine. So they’re yours. The rest is ours to divide, but there had better be plenty of treasure there, as you’ve said all along.”
“We may have to go indoors,” said Hunter softly. “It may be dark in there. There may be more shadow wights around.”
Twig shuddered violently. She wrapped her arms around her as if for warmth. “We have the relics,” she said softly, “but we should not go indoors unless we can’t help it. I’m still here and breathing, so the things obviously work, just as you said they would, right? We can go where we want if we have to, just not for long.”
She was getting braver by the minute. She was a warrior after all.
“Is anyone good at locks?” said Dromel, rubbing his throat carefully, avoiding any looks at me. “I figure we’ll need to get through some doors to reach whatever his lordship had for a vault.”
Hunter wore an enigmatic smile. “I am.” He held up a dragonlance spearhead. “I can use the tip of this if necessary.”
We left the deepswimmer within the hour. I must finish this entry, as we have finished our rest break outside Dwerlen’s stone manor and are preparing to enter. The weather has held for us so far on our trip, and the sky is clear. No clouds, no shadow wights. It is close to noon. My next entry will either find us triumphant or doomed. I wish I knew the outcome, but I do not.
Day 14, evening
We have built a great fire. We are burning everything in the town we can find. There is no time to get back to the deepswimmer before the sun is gone. No time to-
Day 15, evening
My hand is not as steady as it once was. It feels like it has been a year since I last opened this diary. I barely remember what I wrote only a day ago. My memory is riddled with fog.
Twig and Dromel are sleeping, their lips stained green from chewing painkiller herb. The dark red hair across my right arm, between my wrist and elbow, has turned silver-white in a splash shape. I feel nothing there; all sensation has been lost, as if the nerves were sliced through. The fingers on my great right hand tremble, and my handwriting is like a dying elder’s.
I have only a bare recollection of what transpired when the three of us passed through the old entry arch into the stone manor. I remember the roof had caved in, partly, so there was some light. We cleared the doorway to make sure nothing would block our hasty retreat. Inside was a small greeting hall, with open doorways to a dining hall and several darker workrooms and storerooms beyond. We lit two torches each, one per hand, and went in. Weapons were worthless here, though we took them with us anyway. Only fire had a chance of driving a shadow wight back here-fire and our relics.
I am not sure what went on after that. I have a confused memory of roofless rooms and rubble-choked passages, and a narrow stone staircase leading up to a missing second floor. We wandered farther, aimlessly, until we found a broad stairway descending to a great set of old, locked doors. It was a vault. We had found our riches.
Otherwise we had seen nothing of value in the ruined manor. The doors at the bottom beckoned. Like moths to a furnace flame, we responded.
My memory is not what it once was. I do not remember who opened the doors, though I suspect it was Twig, as kender are all thieves, even those with warrior hearts. Once inside, we were exploring the room when Dromel cried out. It startled us all, but he was unharmed. He had found a seaman’s chest. He flung the lid open before we could utter a warning, and his hands carefully pulled forth long rolls of aged paper, preserved in the cellar over the decades. He did not explain to us what they were, but I knew he had probably found what he had actually come here for-the map collection of Lord Dwerlen. Dromel was no fool. A good map was worth more than steel. So many of the old maps had been lost in the Chaos War, so many cities and libraries burned, so many guilds gutted and ruined, that a single good map of our world was invaluable. Dromel swiftly put as many maps as possible into a sack that he tied to his back. One in particular made him cry out with delight when he found it, and this one he tucked into his shirt. He even allowed Twig to take a few after he had gathered his fill. The rest of us were wasting time, and the end of the day was approaching. At the far end of the great underground room was another locked door. Again, one of us worked on the lock, though it resisted easy opening. I still have a strangely clear memory of standing in the room near the stairs out, keeping guard with my torches, hearing nothing but the moaning wind above in the fallen stones and walls. Cobwebs covered the dark timber ceiling. I remember thinking, this is a bad place to be. We should move on.
The bright warm sunlight falling on the stairs going down to us suddenly disappeared, and a chill flowed down through the air.
A great cloud had covered the sun. We had not been paying attention to the weather.
I turned to shout at my comrades. I was too late. The shadow wights had waited for this to happen. They fell upon us like night.
I wrote the above lines and have done nothing else but stare at the page for a great while. My right arm tingles in a peculiar way around the area where the hair has turned white. I feel pain there, though not a normal pain. I wonder if the skin and bone are dead. I wonder if I will die soon.
A shadow wight came down the stairs at me. It spoke as it reached for me. I will never write down what it looked like or what it said to me. I struck at it clumsily with the torch, and my arm passed through its own outstretched arm by accident. I believe I screamed. I had never felt such pain as I did then. As I fell back, I saw one of the shadow wight’s arms pass through the wall at the bottom of the stairs, as if the wall was not real and the shadow wight was. Even in my agony I remember thinking, it moves so smoothly, like water flowing. It approached me again, and I hurled both torches into its face.