She felt a grin creep into the corners of her mouth. I wonder what else drow warriors do as a sign of respect …
She shook her head to dispel the thought. “Are we ready to move on?” she asked.
Uldane stepped closer to her and looked up at her seriously. “Are you sure about this, Shara?”
“Of course I am. Vestapalk might be here. How could I live with myself if revenge was within my grasp and I let it slip away?”
“Do you think he’s here?”
“We’ve seen more demons here than anywhere else in the Vale. Remember what Quarhaun said earlier? It’s like a lava flow.”
Uldane nodded. “We’ll find the source where the lava is thickest.”
Quarhaun turned from the lizardfolk shaman and put a hand on Shara’s shoulder. “Kssansk says his people will continue to help us until we’ve rooted the demons out of here.”
“And they won’t eat us?” Shara asked, smiling.
“No promises, but I think we’re safe at least until the demons are gone.”
“No promises?” Uldane said, his eyes wide.
“If Kssansk had wanted to eat you, he had the perfect opportunity while you were passed out on the floor.”
The shaman cocked his head, presumably recognizing the sound of his name, and Quarhaun said a few words to him.
Kssansk responded with a short exclamation and two chomps of his enormous jaws.
“Two bites, he says,” Quarhaun translated.
Shara laughed as Uldane’s eyes widened further.
“Where did you learn their language?” she asked the drow.
“They speak a dialect of Draconic, same as troglodytes.”
“And dragons, I take it.”
“Yes. But my house had troglodyte slaves, not dragons. Some of my people think it’s beneath them to speak in the languages of their slaves, but it’s hard to argue that it’s very useful to be able to understand it.”
Something in his grin suggested that the most useful thing about understanding the language of slaves was the ability to quell any uprising before it took root and spread. Such a vivid reminder of the very different world he came from made her uncomfortable. She turned away from him to shoulder her pack.
“Which way?” she asked.
“We follow the ones that fled,” Quarhaun said. “They’ll lead us to the heart of their lair.”
“Maybe,” Uldane said, “by the most roundabout path imaginable. More likely, they’ll just lead us outside.”
Quarhaun arched an eyebrow. “You know so much about the behavior of these demons?”
“It’s common sense, and the way most animals would behave. They don’t want us to find their lair.”
“They do if that’s where they’re strongest. That’s what I’d do-pull all the survivors back to a defensible location.”
“They’re a pack, not an army,” Uldane insisted. “I don’t think that’s the way they think.”
“Shara, help me here,” Quarhaun said.
“I think Uldane is right,” Shara said. “I think they’d try to lure us away. They know they can outrun us and make their way back to their lair by a back route.”
Quarhaun scowled, and for a moment Shara thought he might lose his temper. The air thrummed with his gathering power, and dark energy coalesced around his hands before he took a deep breath and made a visible effort to calm himself.
“Fine,” he said at last. “We go the way they didn’t go. Lead on, sir halfling.” He gave an exaggerated bow.
Uldane frowned at him and started down the hall, in the direction he and Shara had been going before they ducked into the room. Shara took up a position just behind him and to the left, which allowed him a chance to notice any traps or other dangers before she blundered into them, while keeping her close enough to step in and protect him if anything leaped out to attack. It was their established procedure, and at that point Shara was happy to ignore Quarhaun and the lizardfolk.
Let them protect each other, she thought.
Uldane wasn’t trained as a tracker, but he noticed details that most other people would miss-a bloody print on the floor here, there a scratch in the wall gouged by one of the crystalline growths that sprouted from the demons’ backs. In each case, he chose the path the demons had not taken, and soon they were heading down a damp, moss-covered stairway.
“Looks like we’re reaching the water level,” Shara said.
“That’s really interesting,” Uldane said. “But this isn’t an Underdark tunnel like Quarhaun described.”
“I think this whole structure used to be above ground,” Quarhaun said. “The swamp has slowly swallowed it up.”
No hint of his earlier anger tainted the drow’s voice, and Shara felt her own fading. So he doesn’t like being contradicted, she thought. Or he just doesn’t like being wrong-who does?
As she walked, Shara’s foot slipped out from under her on the stair, and she hit the stone hard, with a clatter of armor. As she tried desperately to get hold of something solid, she slid down a dozen more stairs, each one raising a new racket as her sword and pack jangled against her armor and the stone beneath her. Her helmet slammed against the stairs several times as well, sending shocks through her skull. By the time she caught herself, her ears were ringing from the noise.
She looked up and saw Quarhaun bending over her, offering a hand to help her to her feet. She tried to grab his hand, but her hand didn’t find it where her eyes told her it was. She held up a finger and tried to make her head stop swimming.
“Don’t move!” Uldane whispered suddenly, a step or two above her.
Shara peered into the darkness below her, but her eyes still weren’t cooperating. “What is it?” she whispered.
“There’s something moving down there,” Uldane said. “Something big.”
CHAPTER NINE
Travic barely dodged the stone knight’s sword. As the animated statue pulled its weapon back, Travic slipped behind Roghar and shot a ray of divine light from his hand to erupt in the statue’s face.
“That’s one of the things that takes longer as I get older,” he said.
Roghar laughed as Tempest hurled a blast of eldritch fire over his shoulder. “Good thing you’re not that old yet,” he said. He raised his shield as the stone knight’s sword sliced down at him, blocking the blow. He staggered under the force of it, and his shield arm tingled furiously. “Oh, that would have hurt.”
His own sword clattered against the knight’s stone armor, to little effect. The statue’s perfectly sculpted eyes bored into him, unmoving and unblinking. It reminded him of the stone guardian he and Tempest had encountered in the Labyrinth beneath Thunderspire Mountain-except that Tempest hadn’t been herself at the time. During that fight, Erak had stabbed Tempest in the gut, letting the demonic possessor spill out with her blood. And their companion Falon, a cleric of noble ancestry, had discovered that he could command the stone guardian.
“Stop!” he ordered the knight, in his most authoritative voice.
In answer, the stone knight thrust its sword forward, right at his heart. Dodging to the left and parrying the blade to the right, he managed to avoid the stab, but it was too close.
“So, I take it you weren’t created to obey the orders of Bahamut’s paladins,” he said. “How about clerics of Erathis? Tiefling warlocks? Either of you two want to try giving a command?”
“Kill!” shouted a growling voice somewhere behind him. “Smash the intruders!”
“Not what I had in mind,” Roghar muttered. He landed a solid blow on the statue, hard enough to knock a few large chips of stone loose and drive it a few steps back. He used the opportunity to glance over his shoulder.
A group of bedraggled looking humans huddled in the hall, taking shelter behind what must have been their champion-a huge, mangy gnoll whose foul hide was marred by several burned, hairless patches. The gnoll held a heavy spear with a brutally serrated head, somewhere between a whaler’s harpoon and a butcher’s cleaver. The humans, though they were dressed like beggars, clutched an array of makeshift weapons and seemed determined to fight-at least for as long as they had the protection of the gnoll.