"Of course," huffed Nogah. "I spent far longer with the relic than this upstart creature."
Thoster laid a hand on Japheth's shoulder. "She's our only hope, mate. If she's right, we've got a shot. If she's wrong, we're all dead already. We just ain't figured it out yet."
The warlock frowned, but he was having a difficult time working up enough concern to argue. It could be, in truth, the dust was feeding him untrue visions, and he was drawing unwarranted conclusions. That was its downside, he philosophized. Well, one of its downsides.
Nogah advanced, following her thread. The more Japheth looked at the sensory impression, the more it appeared as a wriggling tentacle. He tried to blink the association away.
The hall quickly became a narrow staircase leading downward. Relief-carved kuo-toa heads emerged from each wall at intervals, their eyes gleaming yellow.
"We've just descended below the water level," Nogah commented. "If we were outside, we'd be swimming now." She said this last bit somewhat wistfully.
"And I'd have turned back," replied Seren.
The stairs continued their descent, mercifully clear of water.
Past a switchback, the stairs leveled into another straight passage. The passage was slightly narrower than the stairs, and the lights Were less frequent.
The sound of falling water slowly grew, as did Seren's frown.
The tunnel opened into a wide space lit by a trio of sculpted kuo-toa busts some thirty or forty feet above. The area was dominated by a central pool, around which several shrub-like plants grew. An aroma that mingled honey and blueberry hinted at flowers, though Japheth spied no blooms. A dry platform rose marginally above the water's surface at the pool's center. Bones lay scattered upon the platform, along with bits of cloth, spilled coins, and other objects. On the far side of the pool, Japheth discerned an archway leading into a completely lightless passage.
Ripples dappled the pool. Thoster advanced alone and gazed down. "Albino fish, everywhere," he reported, "and a spiral staircase, drowned beneath the pool. It descends a long way…"
"It is not a pool, it is our path," intoned the ex-whip.
"What!" exclaimed Seren. "I told you I cannot and will not swim!"
"Don't you have a spell to give yourself gills?" asked the first mate, Nyrotha, his voice hoarse from disuse.
The wizard replied, "Not since the Spellplague, damn it all! I'm heading back to the ship. I'm done with this foolish expedition!"
The ex-whip strode to stand next to Thoster, then looked back to regard the rest of them. She said, "Fear not. You may descend these stairs without drowning. The pale fish, see them? They are rune-charged creatures. In their presence, you could walk the depths of the sea floor as if strolling through a green meadow."
"Really?" Seren's interest in magical lore battled with her anger at the thought of drowning. Anger that cloaked healthy fear, Japheth figured.
Seren and the warlock both eased up to the pool's edge, Japheth saw eyeless slivers darting about, each pulsing with pale radiance. Seren extended a hand, her brow furrowed with concentration. Then she smiled. She reported, J "How extraordinary! I'll have to take a few of these with me after-"
A twinkle of greenish light wrenched Japheth's attention up. Concern struggled to pierce his dust daze. He should probably warn the others. When they approached the pool, he had I vaguely noticed several figures on the garden's periphery, hiding in the shadows. Perhaps the figures were not mere statuary as he'd first assumed. Perhaps…
Crossbows snapped. Twin bolts appeared in Nogah's body, one in her chest, the other protruding crazily from one eye. An acrid odor curled Japheth's nose even as the whip began to scream. Poison! „1
Nyrotha and Thoster dropped as quarrels buzzed the space formerly occupied by their heads. A third struck Thoster in the shoulder, but he made no sound. Seren stood unmoving, shock momentarily freezing her limbs, but no quarrels found her. Japheth felt a faint tug as two or three bolts struck his cloak, without conscious direction from the warlock, the black folds of his garment deflected the bolts onto a trajectory beyond the world, one that ended in the darkness of a bat-filled cavern.
His pulse quickened, and the lackadaisical demeanor lent him by the dust shattered. Japheth gasped, "Ambush!" Too late.
Someone grabbed him, pulled him clear. A line of coruscating acid just missed him. "Thank you," he mumbled, assuming his rescuer was Anusha's dream.
The ex-whip yelled, her voice shaking with pain, "Gethshemeth knew!"
A granite block boomed down from the ceiling, neatly filling the passage they'd used to enter the strange garden hollow. The light fell by half.
More figures scurried around the periphery of the chamber. All kuo-toa except for one-a giant quadruped with too many limbs and skin darker than coal. Were those wings unfurling, and a serpent's tail? It was hard to make out through the odd growths surrounding the pool. It loosed a primal hunting scream that tried to root them all in place with fear alone.
"The pool! Into the pool," gurgled Nogah.
As if on cue, the rippled water disgorged a blob of bluish green slime. The amorphous mass poured forward, extruding long pseudopods ending in starfish-like appendages of goo.
"Nogah," said Thoster, rising, "what…"
The ex-whip fell to her knees, staring dumbly down with one good eye at the blood-soaked bolt buried in her chest. "My species… will become as these? How could I have been so blind? The Dreamheart poisoned my mind! Sea Mother, forgive-"
She coughed a spray of vicious fluid, shivered as if devil-possessed, then collapsed. Nogah lay without breath on the beslimed flagstone.
Thoster tore the quarrel from his shoulder with hardly a flinch. The air around him seemed to burn, and he drew his clicking, whirring blade.
Nyrotha stumbled upright and began to hack at the tentacle-like streamers of slime. His eyes bulged, and spittle flecked his lips. A pseudopod lanced forward. The flayed grasping pad struck the man's face full on, sealing his voice behind a gag of putrescent ooze.
Flesh and blood began to boil under the grasp. In moments, there was only bone and cartilage where Nyrotha's face had been.
Disgust and stomach-churning terror dispersed the last of Japheth's dust haze. He grabbed for Seren's and Thoster's shoulders, one in each hand, and tried to propel them around the pool toward the arched passage he'd spied upon entering. "This way, or we all die!" he yelled. Seren was weakly accommodating in his grip, but Thoster shrugged away.
Savage, small-eyed kuo-toa converged from all sides. Japheth grabbed the captain again, mouthing a spell as he did so. They all fell into his cloak.
And immediately appeared on the opposite side of the pool, as if having made a single step. A warlock's transposition-the spell had only strength enough to move him, and him alone, hardly more than ten paces. But with the Lord of Bats's own skin wrapping his body, he was able to bring others along.
"Now follow me!"
Japheth ran into the darkness, Thoster and Seren at his heels. Behind, a great roar of fury drowned out the gurgling of slime-digesting flesh.
The tunnel punched downward into stone-lined darkness.
Behind him came the swish of the wizard's slippers, and Captain Thoster's iron boot tips ringing on the stone floor. Following them, monsters scrabbled and shrieked.
Japheth uttered three fell words, and his vision returned, though distant objects remained cloaked in black haze. He said, "I can find-"
The tunnel beneath their feet fractured. They plunged into ice-cold saltwater.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Plague-wrought Land, Vilhon Wilds
City-sized blocks of granite churned within the crater, forming a vortex that sucked air and anything unfortunate enough to fall within its grinding grasp. The clamor of stone on stone was a physical thing. The sound threatened to dislodge Raidon Kane from the wooden span that somehow, even without visible supports, bridged the ravenous gap.