Seila eyed the catwalk nervously. “The bridge doesn’t inspire confidence,” she said.
“That is our path,” Jack replied. “Remember, the dark elves use this elevator enough to keep a watch posted below; I’m sure it’s perfectly safe. Would you prefer that I go ahead to test it, or should I follow behind to steady you?”
“I’m not quite that frail, thank you. After you, Jack.”
Jack walked to the edge of the disk, trying not to dwell on the way it bobbed gently in the air currents. It’s just like stepping from a boat onto a dock, he told himself. Gingerly he tapped his toe on the other side of the foot-wide gap of darkness between the stone platform and its wooden dock, then leaned across to put more weight on the ramp. It seemed steady enough, so he stepped all the way across and trusted his whole weight to the ancient woodwork. It creaked, but held. “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” he said.
He turned and held out his hand for Seila, who started to step over the gap-just as the platform gave a small lurch and started to sink again. Caught in mid-stride over the unthinkable drop, Seila gave a small cry and flailed for balance, but Jack quickly seized her arm and pulled her up to the old wooden ramp. They retreated to the safety of the stone ledge, and stood trembling by the dark doorway as the elevator platform descended out of sight.
“It dropped out from under me,” Seila said, gulping for breath.
“The dark elves must have summoned it to its lower landing,” Jack replied. He belatedly realized that he’d just assumed that the disk had to complete its ascent before returning to the lower landing, and tried not to dwell on what would have happened if he’d been wrong about that. “I expect it will be back soon enough with angry dark elf warriors aboard.” He glanced at the old wooden ramp again, and briefly considered sabotaging it in some way to delay their pursuers. Even the fierce drow might be daunted by a ten-foot leap to reach the ledge, if the ramp could be removed in its entirety … but that would take quite a bit of work. He settled for wrenching one timber handrail out of place, and heaved it over the edge.
“What was that for?” asked Seila.
“Well, with luck, that board will fall a thousand feet or so and find a dark elf’s pointy head,” Jack answered. “Failing that, I hope it might make them pause and wonder if we will drop more debris on them as they ascend, or whether the ramp has been sabotaged. Now, let’s see what waits for us in Sarbreen.”
Seila reached up and took the ancient glowing crystal out of its place by the doorway. Its glow dimmed, but it still threw off enough light to see by. Jack took her hand again, and led the way into the doorway. They found themselves in a long, straight tunnel with a smooth floor of joined stone blocks, which was much as Jack remembered it. A walk of eighty or ninety yards brought them to a circular doorway at the end of the passage.
He motioned for Seila to shield her crystal lamp, hoping to avoid giving off any more light than they absolutely had to, and turned his attention to the round stone plug. There was no handle or mechanism in sight, but Jack remembered this door well. He whispered the words of an opening spell, and reached out to rest his palm on the cold stone. For a moment, nothing happened, and he wondered for one terrible instant if their drow pursuers would find them here in half an hour or so, stymied by the door. Then the stone seemed to grow misty and fade into nothingness, creating a doorway to a wide, dark space beyond. Jack hurried forward and peered out into the great hall beyond the vanished door; nothing was waiting to eat him, at least not right away.
“Come on,” he whispered to Seila, motioning for her to follow. Together they advanced through the doorway into a striking chamber. The room was the size of a king’s banquet hall, with shadowed galleries ringing its walls and an arched ceiling high overhead. He turned and looked behind them; the round doorway they’d come through was part of a colossal frieze on the chamber’s rear wall. A coiling dragon of stone, easily forty feet tall, was carved into the chamber wall, posed in such a way that its foreclaws appeared to grasp a mighty orb or pearl-the round aperture they’d just emerged from.
Jack turned Seila to see the great image behind them. She gasped in wonder. “My friend Ilyth called this the Stone Dragon of Sarbreen,” he said softly. A pang of loss touched him in the center of his chest; Ilyth must be in her grave fifty years or more by now. Seila reminded him of her, when he thought about it. “We are standing in the Hall of the Dragon, the meeting-place of Sarbreen’s nobles and guildmasters.”
“It’s magnificent,” the noblewoman said. “I never knew anything like this was just below my feet.”
“Most sane and well-balanced people are naturally ignorant of what lies in the dungeons below the city,” said Jack. “Adventurers, on the other hand, are familiar with a number of such landmarks, although I hasten to add that dungeon-delving was something I indulged in only under the most unusual circumstances. Remind me to tell you about my discovery of the Guilders’ Vault someday; it’s quite a story. Now, let’s be on our way. This is no good place to linger.”
He led her down the length of the Hall of the Dragon toward another shadowed archway at the foot of the hall. Near the middle of the room they passed two broken skeletons, still dressed in the torn remnants of mail and leather. A sword snapped cleanly in two gleamed on the floor just beyond the outstretched fingers of one of the old bodies. Jack hurried Seila past the two corpses, trying not to think too hard on the question of what ripped open armor of mail and plate and broke the bones of the men inside. Most likely the skeletons had been lying in that spot for years, but it was far from a certainty. Sarbreen’s dungeons had their share of small scavengers that could strip a corpse to bare bone in a matter of days.
The archway at the far end of the hall led into the bottom of a great shaft or well. Old stone steps climbed upward out of sight, spiraling up the wall of the shaft. “This part is quite a climb,” he said softly. “Keep your shoulder to the wall in case the steps prove dangerous. And be ready to cover that crystal light when I tell you to.”
Seila nodded in reply, and they began to climb the stairs. Jack lost count after fifty or so, but the steps continued to wind up and up long past that place, until his legs trembled and ached and he panted for breath in the cold, dank air. After all, rediscovering how to work magic did nothing to make up for tendays and tendays of meager rations and exhausting labor. Seila was breathing hard behind him, but she seemed to be standing up to the effort quite well; she was far from frail, and Jack guessed that slaves in the kitchens found ways to eat better than those condemned to work in the quarries and fields. Finally, when he felt as if he couldn’t make himself climb one more step, he glimpsed the end of the stairs. Slowly they clambered out onto level ground again, and found themselves standing in an alcove in the side of a long, broad passageway. Archways and chambers beckoned in several directions.
“Where are we now?” Seila whispered.
“A region of the old dwarven city known as the Armory,” Jack replied between breaths. He leaned forward, massaging his trembling legs with his hands as he rested for a moment and tried to remember his bearings. “Sarbreen’s weaponsmiths and armorers lived and worked in this area. We’re not very far from the surface.” Seila started to ask another question, but he motioned her to silence, and calmed his breathing to listen for any signs of pursuit.