“That was close,” Seila whispered.
“Exactly as I intended,” Jack replied with a confident smile.
He straightened up as the dark elves and their trolls disappeared beneath the platform edge, sheathing his sword, then cautiously moved to the edge of the platform to see whether any of the drow pursued them. The dark elf soldiers peered up at the platform rising away from them. “There he is!” one shouted, raising a small crossbow. The drow loosed a bolt up at Jack, who pulled back his head just in time as the missile hissed through the air.
“Please extend my regrets to Lady Dresimil,” Jack called down to them. “I have just remembered pressing business elsewhere, and I am afraid I must cut short my visit.” He withdrew a couple more steps from the edge, hand on the hilt of the battered old sword he’d taken from Malmor’s quarters just in case any drow suddenly found a way to reach the ascending platform. He was only a middling swordsman, and he wouldn’t have cared to face a skilled drow warrior in a fair fight … but fortunately it seemed that none of the dark elves could catch them.
“Dear Selune, I thought they’d trapped us for a moment,” Seila said.
“I was not concerned,” Jack answered with confidence. He risked another peek over a different part of the platform’s edge and saw one of the soldiers running off toward the barracks and defenses by the lakeshore. No doubt the fellow intended to report the escape.
“That is unfortunate,” he muttered. If he remembered right, the stone disk took a good fifteen or twenty minutes to ascend and descend; that meant there would be a party of drow soldiers not much more than half an hour behind them when they reached the dungeons above. “We’d better assume that our captors will pursue with alacrity. I sincerely hope that Sarbreen is more or less the way I left it; we won’t want to dilly-dally with the drow at our heels.”
Seila allowed herself to sink to the disk’s surface, slumping in exhaustion and relief. After a moment she looked back up to him. “How far does this … elevator-disk … ascend? What will we find above?”
“It’s a thousand feet or more. If you are nervous about heights, you will want to stay right here in the center of the platform.” Jack moved back to the center of the disk, and seated himself beside the girl. “As far as what awaits above, we’ll find out soon enough.”
Darkness pressed in around them as the disk rose steadily into the upper airs of the tremendous cavern, leaving behind the dim witch-lights of the drow post below. A cold wind sank past the platform as they rose, moaning softly and catching at Jack’s battered cloak and threadbare clothes; the stone disk trembled slightly in the stronger gusts, leaving Jack with the very unpleasant image of the whole thing suddenly flipping over in some unseen eddy of swirling winds.
Seila shivered in the icy breeze, and Jack took the liberty of putting an arm over her shoulder and spreading his borrowed cloak to cover them both as they huddled in the center of the platform. “For warmth,” he explained.
She raised an eyebrow, but pressed herself close to his side-easily the most pleasant arrangement Jack had experienced since awaking on the stone plaza of the wild mythal. After a moment, she spoke. “How did you come to be imprisoned all these years?” she asked.
“That very question has vexed me for something like seven or eight tendays now,” Jack answered; he had lost track of how much time had passed since he awoke at the foot of the mythal. “I cannot recall how I came to be in the mythal stone. I remember leaving my house in Mortonbrace, dressed quite splendidly for the occasion of a debutante ball at Daradusk Hall”-a ball that he was not strictly invited to, but Seila didn’t need to know that, of course-“and climbing into a hired coach. That was a fine summer evening in the Year of the Bent Blade. Then my memory is simply blank for what does not seem a very long time, until I was rudely roused by Dresimil Chumavh and her lackeys. I was wearing nothing but a pair of plain breeches; I suppose I should thank my enemy for at least sparing my modesty.”
“So that is why you said you don’t know who imprisoned you. Do you think your mind was affected by some enchantment, or is your lack of memory simply the result of being entombed for so long?”
Jack gave a small shrug. “I intend to investigate that question at my earliest convenience … well, just as soon as I devour a meal fit for a king, soak in a warm tub for at least half a day, burn these foul rags and dress myself in good clean clothes, and sleep for a tenday. Of course, I am penniless at the moment, which may make it difficult to sample each of those pleasures.”
“Do not worry about that, Jack. If we reach the surface, I believe I can arrange all those things for you. The hospitality of Norwood Manor is yours.”
“As my social calendar is a century out of date, I gratefully accept.” Jack glanced up; there was a gleam of dim light above them, steadily growing brighter. They were drawing near to the lower levels of the dungeon of Sarbreen, which meant that Raven’s Bluff was only a few hundred rather perilous yards farther. “With a little luck, we’ll be back in the streets of the city in less than an hour. Strange to think that Chumavhraele and Raven’s Bluff could coexist in such proximity, isn’t it?”
Seila frowned in the gloom. “Coexist? Hardly! The drow are a blight on the city. They don’t come to the surface, of course, but they have spies and agents everywhere. Slavery, smuggling, trade in drugs like kammarth or ziran, they’re at the bottom of at all.”
“Indeed? Why doesn’t the Lord Mayor do something about them?”
“No one seems to know what to do. My father’s been urging the Lord Mayor to act, but other lords and merchants and guildmasters are afraid to provoke the drow, while some don’t seem to care at all.”
Jack found that interesting; he wondered how many of the city fathers who didn’t seem to care were actually profiting by allowing affairs to continue in their current state. If the dark elves didn’t come to the surface themselves, they had to be working through human intermediaries to catch their slaves and peddle their illicit wares. It seemed that civic corruption was every bit as widespread as it had been in his own time, if not more so. The thought was a little comforting in its own way; there would be opportunities for a clever, resourceful fellow such as himself in the world above, including plenty of wealthy people who deserved to be separated from their ill-gotten gains.
“I think we’re near the top,” Seila said, interrupting his thoughts.
Jack glanced up again, and saw that the dim beacon overhead was indeed drawing near. “So we are. The platform stops at a small landing in the ceiling of this great cavern. We’ll leave the elevator there, and make our way through Sarbreen.”
“I’ve heard that Sarbreen is full of monsters,” Seila said.
“It was in my day. I’m afraid this part of my plan relies on luck; I’m hoping we can creep past anything dangerous without attracting notice.” They climbed to their feet, crouching low to make themselves just a little harder to see as the ancient dwarven elevator ascended into its upper landing. “Ah, there we go. Quiet now, dear Seila. The disk may carry us into danger.”
Just as Jack remembered, the disk came to a stop hovering in mid-air in the upper end of a narrow crevasse. A wide ledge of even stone with a dark doorway marked the place where the dwarves of old Sarbreen had carved their way into the uppermost reaches of the titanic cavern below their buried city. A single lamp of yellow crystal was fixed to the wall like an odd little porchlight. Whatever magic it held still endured after all the years, casting a warm golden glow over the landing. Between the stone ledge and the floating disk a battered wooden pier or walkway leaned out over the dreadful drop; the walkway creaked softly and swayed in the strong draft flowing down to the depths below.