Japheth already wished he'd come up with some other way to derail the moment. He didn't want to rescind his offer, though. He replied, "Safe enough, as long as you stay close to me."
"Now?" The girl rose from the edge of her travel case. He smelled her warm scent.
Exhilaration made him incautious. He knew it, but didn't give himself more time to think it through. "Why not?"
Japheth swirled his cloak off his shoulders. He turned toward the cabin's door and held the fabric with his arms outstretched before him and slightly raised, so that the hem just touched the floor. He took one quick pace to the door and pressed the narrow rectangle of darkness he held into the door frame. When he released his grip and stepped back, the cloak remained in place, obscuring the wooden door behind it.
"It looks like a door of darkness," Anusha breathed.
He nodded. "It is. It leads to my castle."
They stepped forward. Anusha flinched as if expecting to bump her head, but instead, shadows grabbed them. Cold hands pulled them along a tunnel whose floor, walls, and ceiling were composed of leathery, undulating wings. With a flurry of flapping and a whiff of ammonia, the darkness released them.
They stood in a subterranean vault whose dimensions were lost to cobwebbed corners. Behind them along a rocky wall wavered a door-shaped opening. Japheth's cabin was blurrily visible within the rectangle.
Piercing gold and silver light from their right made them both squint. The light poured inward from an irregular, natural-looking cave mouth. Through it Japheth saw a verdant mountain meadow whose vivid colors stole his breath, as always, and whose piercing scents brought tears to his eyes. He'd never ventured in that direction, for Darroch Castle was the other way.
The gold and silver light from the cave mouth slowly fell to purples, blues, and shadow black. Over the span of a few hundred feet, the dim illumination was transformed to a dreary radiance of hopelessness. The last glimmers of light were enough to reveal a vast castle, one whose mortar was black and whose bricks were immense blocks of void. A central spire rose above the walls, so high it brushed the vault's stalactite-toothed ceiling. Immense wings stretched out from each side of the spire, rapacious and dragon-like in their span, like hunger itself made manifest.
Anusha stifled an involuntary cry and shrank back.
The noise set the ceiling to churning and chittering. It was thick with roosting bats of every variety. Many had never flown the skies of Toril.
"Shh, it is all right, Anusha." He reached for her hand, and she clutched back tight.
"The bats on the ceiling will not harm you while I am near. The vast wings you see on the castle are immobile. They possess no life, not now, anyway. The Lord of Bats is safely bound and cannot enter his shape of old while he remains imprisoned. And I don't intend to release him."
In the wan light, he saw her slowly nod, though her eyes didn't leave the unmoving shape that crouched atop the structure.
"Perhaps we should return to the Green Siren," suggested Japheth.
Anusha gazed around with rapt eyes.
"No… no. It is just… amazing. To know where I now stand, someplace so far from the… world itself? I've never traveled by magic in such fashion. It is like the stories of the spells wizards commanded before the Spellplague."
"Those abilities are returning to many across Faerыn," said the warlock.
"Yes, and not too soon. But even the most powerful of the old wizards would have been hard pressed to travel so far in a single step. We are not even in the world any longer." Her wide eyes met his. Even in the dim light of the cave, it was a connection he couldn't long hold, if he didn't want to be drawn into a rash act.
He blinked to escape her gaze. He was glad she couldn't see him well in the darkness. Why had he brought her here? To impress her? His base instincts worked against his reason, perhaps.
No, a small cynical part of him remonstrated. You know exactly what you are doing.
He said, more to defend himself from his own accusing thoughts than in answer to Anusha, "I merely make use of what I've stolen from the Lord of Bats."
"I am sure it is all beyond me, whatever the source."
Japheth coughed and suggested, "We should enter soon, if we are to do it at all. I can only successfully travel here once out of every four or five times I try. Access depends on a lunar schedule I haven't quite worked out yet. And I am more vulnerable without my cloak. So time is of the essence." She nodded.
They walked forward, past a growth of dark purple mushroom caps, each the size of a dinner plate. Japheth pointed and said, "I should gather a couple more of those caps. When distilled, their taste can cause any creature to fall asleep. It is what I made your potion from, now that I think of it!"
Anusha didn't respond, and Japheth remembered she was still suspicious of his gift. A twinge of guilt touched him. In truth, when they'd returned to the boat after the attack of the sea hags, it had taken several hours before he was able to rouse Anusha from her somnolence.
He led the girl through the gates of Castle Darroch and down a long entry gauntlet. He ordered the creeping, wrinkled, guardian homunculi back to their holes in the side walls before Anusha could see their horrific features. The castle was defended by the Lord of Bats's many "children," who answered now to Japheth as if he were their creator.
They reached the foyer, which was lit by countless candelabra burning with green flames. A wide but shallow pool of dark water half flooded the space, and long, pale forms darted beneath its surface.
Japheth guided Anusha past the pool up four flights of stairs. They passed busts of enigmatic, slender humanoids on each landing. Lords of the Feywild, Japheth had always assumed. Anusha lingered, but he urged her onward, explaining again that they should not dally.
Finally, they entered the Grand Study. There, paintings of surreal landscapes, sculptures of fantastic beings, and objects too strange for mortal classification were displayed behind glass. The collection spanned centuries and worlds.
"This is all yours?" asked Anusha, finally relinquishing his hand. "It must be worth a king's ransom!"
"These belong to the Lord of Bats. The collection could well be priceless, but I've never removed even a single item."
Anusha moved to gaze upon a painting of a spray of orange and yellow: a desert-scape in the grip of a storm. The hint of some vast tower was visible behind the haze of blowing sand.
"Why not?" she asked.
He shrugged, said, "It is just a feeling I have. I fear too many changes could upset some balance I'm not consciously aware of. Like the game where children remove twigs, one at a time, from a pile, until one twig too many causes the pile to topple. I fear to disturb things too much lest I accidentally release the Lord of Bats from his confines."
The warlock's eyes unconsciously sought a balcony overlooking the Grand Study. The balcony was accessible via a narrow stair on the wall. The high space was bare but for an iron door.
Anusha's eyes followed his. "He's up there?" Japheth nodded.
She studied the door with wide eyes, and then said, "I hear talking."
Japheth cocked his head. Sure enough, the slight buzz of voices, at least two, sounded from the balcony.
Vertigo clawed his abdomen. With eyes tight, he sprang up the narrow stairs, two at a time. He felt off-balance without his cloak streaming behind.
The steel door to the balcony was open a crack, and yellow light flickered beyond. He shoved open the door and gasped.
A great oaken table dominated the chamber beyond the door. A feast of rare sumptuousness was laid out on silver platters, heaped in golden urns, and sloshed in crystal decanters. Chairs lined the sides of the table, each one unique in design and workmanship, as if every piece was imported from a completely different kingdom or culture. A few were so oddly shaped that a regular person would find it difficult to sit.