The guard hefted his axe. "Nay, this is my weapon. I'd hardly know what to do with a long sword."
Corran shrugged and offered the blade to Kestrel. Though she could defend herself with a sword in a pinch-hell, she could defend herself with a frying pan if she had to-her swordsmanship wasn't nearly worthy of such a weapon. "Keep it, Corran," she said. "You wield it much better than I ever could."
He gazed at the blade a moment more. "I shall call this sword 'Pathfinder,' that it may help us find our own way to defeat Mordrayn and the Pool."
They did not tarry longer. The diviner's cryptic hints and warnings had created a sense of urgency in them all. As the parly headed back to the Rohnglyn, Kestrel fell into step beside Durwyn. "little bird," he said absently.
"What?"
"Caalenfaire called you a little bird. So did Preybelish. I just realized why-they were referring to your name." He stopped and regarded her quizzically. "Why did your parents name you after a falcon?"
Kestrel stared at him. They'd just learned from a spooky diviner that a dracolich and some mad cultists were trying to take over Faerun, and he was asking about her name? "They didn't."
"But a kestrel is a-"
"I know what a kestrel is," she snapped. "My parents didn't give me my name. I got it from the man who found me as a baby after they were killed." Her tone softened as she thought of Quinn. He'd been passing by the burned-out house and heard her hungry cries coming from the root cellar where her parents must have hidden her before brigands put arrows in their chests and set the cottage ablaze. "He said when he first saw me I reminded him of a falcon because he'd never seen such fierce eyes in so little a person."
She flushed, self-conscious at having revealed the personal story to a group of people she barely considered allies, let alone friends. Durwyn had caught her off-guard. No one had ever asked about her name before. As she looked away from Durwyn, she caught Corran regarding her pensively. Yes, she was a ragamuffin raised by a rogue stranger-she'd probably just confirmed every low opinion he held of her.
She noted Ghleanna's gaze on her also. The sorceress, however, regarded her not with condescension but with understanding. Her expression surprised Kestrel-the half-elf had seemed reserved until now, except on the subject of Athan. Perhaps her missing lover made her empathetic to the losses of others.
They reached the dancing lights of the Rohnglyn. Just before Jarial touched the golden sphere to take them back into the dwarven dungeons, Kestrel glanced up at the balcony once more.
Caalenfaire and Volun reappeared. For the first time, the diviner gazed at the party instead of into his scrying bowl, his face careworn but hopeful.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Outside the entrance to the House of Gems tower, the body of the cult sorcerer Kestrel and her companions had defeated lay undisturbed. Either the cultists had not passed through the door to the Room of Words since the party was last here or they had stepped over their comrade's body as if it were no more than a piece of litter.
To the group's surprise, they found the tower door unlocked. It opened into a single round room about thirty feet in diameter, a curved stone staircase spiraling up the far wall. The chamber was empty of furnishings or occupants.
"At last a lucky break," Durwyn said as he strode forward.
"Wait!" Kestrel grabbed his arm. The cultists were no fools-and neither were dwarven engineers. She studied the circular room, noting a line of what appeared to be pockmarks rimming the stone wall at a height of about five feet She knelt to retrieve one of the daggers from her boots but changed her mind and withdrew Loren's Blade instead. The magical dagger would better serve her purpose.
With a snap of her wrist, she sent the weapon hurling through the air at eye level. Dozens of darts came flying from the wall in rapid succession, shooting out of the holes on one side and into the holes opposite. The others gasped in surprise. Durwyn let out a low whistle.
Kestrel herself was so startled by the profusion of missiles that she almost forgot to catch Loren's Blade as it returned to her. "The darts flew too fast for me to see, but I'll wager they're spiked on both ends," she said. To prove her point, she threw the dagger again, with the same results.
"A perpetual trap," she explained. "There's no need to reset it once it's sprung. The darts can cross the room over and over until doomsday." Though Kestrel forced herself to adopt a nonchalant all-in-a-day's-work demeanor, inwardly she cursed every person under four feet tall who'd ever lived in this city. She admired the dwarves' engineering prowess-not one dart had missed its chamber-but damn, they made her life more difficult.
Durwyn rubbed the stubble on his chin. "So how do we get past the trap?"
On a hunch, Kestrel flung Loren's Blade across the room once more, this time four feet off the ground. Nothing happened, except that her weapon clanked against the wall and boomeranged back to her hand.
That was the secret, then. "The trap's designed to strike nondwarves-people taller than them." She addressed Durwyn primarily but extended her gaze to include the others. "As long as we stay close to the ground, we should be all right."
The party crawled single file through the booby-trapped chamber and made it to the other side safely. Corran started to speak, but Kestrel hushed him as she examined the steps for more unpleasant dwarven surprises. Though he bristled under the rebuke, the paladin held his tongue. She cast a discerning gaze at each tread and riser, running her fingers along the cold, smooth stone. Though she found no evidence of additional traps, her sensitive ears detected a faint shuffling sound above.
"Wait here," she advised the others. She silently crept up the stairs, stopping before she reached the top. From this vantage point, she could peer over the second-story floor and see most of the room while remaining hidden in the stairwell.
This level of the tower comprised a single room with shelves full of scrolls. Wooden cases similar to wine racks lined the wall, with each diamond-shaped opening holding its own roll of paper. The documents merited only a cursory glance, however-it was the dozen or so orogs in the chamber that arrested her attention. They occupied the center of the room, effectively blocking the stairs to the third story. The humanoids stood in perfect formation, their eyes blankly staring straight ahead. She studied the unit for a leader but didn't discern one.
A fly buzzed past Kestrel's ear, landing on her forearm. She brushed it off, but the pesky thing buzzed around her face again. "Shoo!" she whispered, batting it aside. The fly finally got the message and sped off to bother someone else.
She observed the orogs for a few minutes longer. The guards stood so still they didn't seem to breathe. They merely gripped their short swords, ready for combat. As she watched, the fly that had irritated her flew into the midst of the orogs and landed on one humanoid's snout, where it proceeded to dance around the creature's nostrils. Just watching the insect made Kestrel's own nose itch, but the orog didn't so much as flinch. He continued to stare straight ahead.
Kestrel returned to the group. In a hushed voice, she reported what she'd seen.
"Maybe we can parley with them as we did with those other orogs guarding the cult sorcerer." Jarial glanced up the stairs. "Do you think they would be willing to talk?"
"I'm not even sure they're alive," Kestrel responded. "I mean, the whole thing with the fly-"
"They might be under the influence of a charm," Ghleanna said. "Or in a state of suspended animation."