She said, "Stay alert. I expect that those who have lain here so long have no more interest in the living, if they ever did."
Even as she spoke words of confidence, she debated internally. Stories and her own experience told her that it was always wise to expect to find undead prowling near tombs, even those considered safe.
Brek Gorunn motioned them ahead. The dwarf gripped his warhammer.
They passed into the chamber between tables and buildings carved from marble. The darkness was complete, sealing them inside the circle of Brek's light. They passed the ominous mouths of tombs carved with faces, bodies, skulls, and darker symbols. Maybe the old cult of Nerull once claimed the spaces beneath New Koratia, but Ember could see the tombs here were far older than a few hundred years, older than the founding of the city, stretching into the past even beyond the knowledge of the cultists who briefly claimed it.
The strains of a flute playing alone in the distance stopped Ember. The notes were placid and deep, as if a dirge.
"Do you hear that?" she asked.
Everyone stopped, straining their ears, but the ghost-music was silent.
"I think I heard it, for a second," said Hennet. "Pipes, maybe, or a fife?"
"It reminded me of a flute," said Ember.
Brek said, "I heard it, and did not like it, whatever its source. Best we press ahead swiftly, lest we meet the musician."
Passing deeper into the vast underground graveyard, they were stopped again. A mighty crevice lay across their path, splintered and jagged. Some ancient movement of the earth bisected the chamber. Many of the tombs that lay along the crack were half toppled into the chasm, broken and splintered. Though the crevice spoke of a violent convulsion, it was diluted across a gulf of time. The lantern's light could just reach the far portion of the chamber across the divide.
Brek Gorunn inched forward and held his lamp over the edge.
"No bottom in sight," he said.
Ember joined Brek on the lip. She saw bits of crumbled stone and broken statuary fetched up on rough ledges farther down. One sarcophagus lay cracked completely open on a narrow ledge. It was empty, its former contents swallowed by the chasm.
The dwarf said, "The crevice looks to be about twenty or twenty five feet across. Too far to jump, at least for anyone but Ember."
Ember gathered her legs for the leap, eager to put it behind her. She felt a touch on her shoulder.
"Ember, hold on," Brek said. He pointed to the left. She could see a slender shaft of white stone jutting out over the chasm. "See that column? It bridges the chasm. Let's look at that before you risk jumping across."
"Don't think I can make it?" she asked.
"I am certain that you will make it," explained Brek Gorunn. "Then, there you'll be on the other side, vulnerable to any creature hiding over there in the gloom. You could be attacked while the rest of us are still stuck over here."
"Perhaps," conceded Ember.
Of course the dwarf was right. It wasn't like her to be impetuous, but the unrelieved darkness preyed on her mind.
The group moved to the fallen column. It bridged the crevice at an angle, and was visibly cracked. Brek ran his fingers across the stone, considering. He unlimbered his pack and rummaged through it, then produced the rope he'd purchased earlier in the city.
He said, "I don't trust this span. In case it gives out, a little insurance is best."
"Nebin, you're the lightest, you should cross first," Ember said.
When Brek didn't disagree, Nebin stepped up to the edge of the chasm. The dwarf tied the rope around the gnome's waist and secured the other end to a jutting piece of masonry.
"Make sure it's tight!" warned Nebin. "And leave plenty of slack, I don't want to be thrown off-balance by a snag on the rope."
The gnome peered across the chasm, then briskly stepped across the column, not looking down, his arms held out for balance. Ember smiled when he reached the far side. The gnome waved and undid the rope from around his waist.
Next went Hennet, then Ember carrying the lantern. She watched Brek Gorunn closely as he prepared to cross. He was the heaviest, and she worried. The dwarf undid the knot anchoring the rope to his side of the chasm. Once loose, he tied the free end around his waist and waved to her. She nodded, wrapped the rope twice around another marble obelisk on her side of the chasm, then tied the end to the same, heavy column. Holding the rope with both hands, she prepared to take up slack as the dwarf crossed by pulling the rope around the column.
Balance wasn't a problem. The dwarf's center of gravity was low enough that he could stroll across the bridge if he chose to. He decided instead that moving quickly would be best, as quickly as Ember could take in the rope. It took him only a few moments to reach the point where the crack was worst.
Ember saw Brek's eyes widen a heartbeat before the column snapped and he tumbled into darkness. The rope jerked in her hands like a living thing. She would have lost her grip completely if it hadn't been wound around the obelisk.
The sound of the broken stone thundering into the chasm mingled with incoherent yells from everyone. The anchored rope was taut and vibrating, and Ember could feel that it was swaying below the lip of the floor. She tied her end quickly around the tightened length of rope, then sped to the edge where Hennet knelt with the lantern. Brek swung on the end of the rope, twenty or so feet below them. The dwarf groaned.
As the ringing echoes of the crashing column finally abated, they were replaced by the sinister fluting, seductively light for all its dread melody. It emanated up from the night-haunted chasm. A miasma of fear rose with the sound and gripped Ember.
She heard the dwarf mutter a brief prayer. Then he said, straining his eyes below him, "I see…a blot of darkness. It's moving upward."
The fluting, too, was growing close. Ember realized then that it wasn't an instrument at all but the unearthly, terrible voice of whatever lurked below in the darkness. It was a sound long ago bereft of life and hope. Ember's mind became suddenly frantic.
It's coming for all of us, she realized. And Brek is hanging down there like bait!
The dwarf struggled to pull himself up. Ember saw a black, snakelike tendril slither up from the depths to touch Brek's boot.
"There's something down here!" bellowed the dwarf. "Pull me up, by Moradin's shaggy beard! Get me up!"
Ember, Hennet, and Nebin hauled madly on the rope. Fear lent a wild strength to their limbs, and with all three of them pulling, the dwarf shot up the side of the crevice. Seconds later, Brek's groping fingers reached the crumbling edge of the floor. Ember grabbed one hand and pulled the dwarf bodily over the lip.
Something followed after him.
A sinuous arm writhed its way up from the darkness. It was dead black and coated with oily mucous. It seemed a tentacle of living night, waking from some age-long communion with the subterranean void. Three more tendrils, identical to the first, flopped up to writhe across the floor like eyeless snakes seeking prey.
Behind the tendrils came the creature, dragging itself up and out of the crevice with inhuman strength. It was a blot of oily darkness where movement never ceased, a gargantuan mass of living, constantly slithering tentacles. Half hidden by the sliding tendrils, a sac of fluid sloshed at the core, emitting a crescendo of triumphant notes.
Brek Gorunn's massive hands pushed Ember back from the crevice. He was running, and she was running, too. They fled blindly away from the hideous piping sound. The awful music drove them in a mad dash without regard for their surroundings. The rope was left behind, along with anything else they had set down. None of that mattered. There was only death and terror behind them. By running they might hope to live.