It was a tight squeeze at the very end. As Dhamon stepped out into a worked stone chamber, he felt the floor give way beneath him. Reflexes like lightning, he sprang forward, rolled, and stood up again just as Maldred forced himself through the entrance and lost his balance, throwing his arms out at the last minute to catch himself from falling through a widening gap. The ogre-mage looked down and saw jagged iron spikes a few feet below. He wormed his way past, as Ragh carefully stepped into the room, scraping his shoulders on the rocks.
The floor was tiled, alternating squares of slate and black-veined rose marble, with a thick layer of dust making them look fuzzy and out of focus. Dhamon prodded Maldred ahead of him with the butt of the glaive, finding two more places that gave way, with spikes at the bottom of each one’s long drop.
“Why would Nura come up here?” Maldred wondered aloud. A quick gesture and a few words and he changed his light globe, making it larger and brighter. Behind him, Ragh did the same. Their light revealed a hexagonal room littered with benches and bookcases and a half-dozen shadowed alcoves.
Dhamon edged forward, careful to test each tile in the floor with the glaive. He found another loose one, but rather than collapsing into a pit of spikes, this one upon his touch produced a gout of hot, blue flame.
“A sorcerer’s den,” Dhamon spat. “A damn evil sorcerer if you want my guess.”
Still, he turned and turned, eyeing the place.
Ragh shifted away from Maldred, keeping an eye on the ogre-mage. He was using the great sword to prod the stones, and he employed his extraordinary draconian senses to detect anything unusual.
“Dhamon. I smell magic that is still alive.”
“Alive?” Maldred gave the draconian a disbelieving look.
Ragh waved a claw toward a knickknack-littered table. “It’s old magic but it still carries some energy. Some type of ward, I think.”
Maldred raised an eyebrow and started to say something. Dhamon cut him off.
“Shut up. I don’t trust you, ogre.”
Maldred glowered.
“Let him cast his spell,” said Ragh. “It can’t hurt, and maybe it’ll help.”
Maldred resumed his mumbled spellcasting. There was a melody to his words, though a dissonant melody, and when the words quickened, glowing patterns appeared on a workbench, in the air in front of a high shelf, in a dozen places on the floor, and at various heights in the alcoves.
“Lots of wards,” Ragh said.
“So what?” Dhamon demanded an explanation.
“Magical traps,” Maldred explained. “Spells used to catch intruders—hurt them or kill them. Maybe they’re too old. They haven’t done anything so far, but I can’t tell what they are supposed to do.”
“Can you destroy their enchantment?” Ragh asked.
“I thought you had a little magic about you?” Maldred taunted. “Why don’t you do it?”
“This wasn’t in any spellbook I perused,” Ragh returned testily.
“I’ll bet you never looked at a single spellbook.” Maldred started humming, and Dhamon moved close, ready to use the glaive if the big man tried anything suspicious. This magical tune was more complex and drawn out. After several minutes passed, the glowing symbols started to disappear. When Maldred was finished, all but three were gone, and these were high over alcoves.
“Can’t break those for some reason,” he murmured. The sweat was thick on his brow, showing the spell had taken considerable effort. “Stay away from those alcoves. I said I don’t know what the wards do. Maybe they cause more of those blue flames. Maybe worse. Probably worse. I can’t identify the magic.”
“Because it’s old,” Ragh said.
“And thereby dangerous,” Dhamon added. He’d lost a friend, a scraggly kobold named Fetch, to old magic—an enchanted pool that had belonged to Black Robe sorcerers some decades or centuries past.
“I’ve wasted our time. Let’s get—”
“Maybe not.” Ragh forgot Maldred. The draconian had moved over and was engrossed in a collection of small objects on a shelf. He gathered them up in his free hand and set them on a table. He hunched over the table and blew, trying to clear away some of the dust, then he went back to the shelf, gathering more objects.
Dhamon pushed the ogre-mage forward, although the big thief was not eager to come close to the curious objects. “What did you find, Ragh?”
“This and that,” Ragh said. “I don’t know their names. Well, I’m sure a sorcerer would know what to call them. Things. I’ve found magical things.” He started spreading them out. They were carved wooden figurines the size of a child’s thumb, and all depicted a woman in flowing robes. “There’s a word on the bottom of each one. ‘Sabar’. It could be the carver’s name. Could be the name of the woman. My fingers tingle, so I’d say they certainly do… something magical.”
“Well, what?” Dhamon was losing patience. He was running out of time.
The draconian shrugged, looking around until he found a leather pouch. He put the figures in them.
“I’ll have to figure out what, later.” He poked through the rest of the objects, which included an ivory hair ornament, a thick jade ring, which he slipped on his smallest claw, and a collection of a dozen round glass and ceramic globes.
“Okay, take all of those,” Dhamon said. “Maybe they’ll prove useful.” He found another pouch and scooped a handful of dust into it for padding the objects in case they were fragile. “Put them in here, and be careful. I saw Palin with something like those glass beads once. If they’re the same things I remember, they burst into fire when they strike something.”
Ragh filled the pouch and passed it to Dhamon. “There might be some other things here, too, but I don’t know how much time we should spend looking around. And Maldred…”
“Ogre!” Dhamon’s hand shot out, but Maldred had slipped out of his reach. The ogre-mage stood at a narrow wardrobe, the door of which lay broken on the floor. Inside were musty clothes, but what was on top of the wardrobe intrigued him.
“Can you use a crystal?” Maldred asked. The draconian hurried over, too engrossed to pay attention to where he was walking. He nearly fell through the floor when a tile gave way Maldred growled and pulled him onto firmer ground.
“Maybe I can figure out how to use it,” Maldred said, stretching up to reach the crystal on top of the wardrobe. “I haven’t seen one of these in quite a while. An old friend of mine, a healer in Blöten named Grim Kedar, used to have one.” He pulled it down reverently and set it carefully on the table.
Dhamon had heard of crystal balls, in fact had seen Palin hunched over one once. This one was much smaller than Palin’s, about the size of an orange, and it sat on a base that looked like a miniature jeweled crown. It was the jewels that caught his eye. Even through the cobwebs and dust they shimmered—rubies and jacinths, all set in gold. There was a word in silver filigree, where the base touched the ball—Sabar.
“Again—Sabar,” Maldred said, reading it.
“Yes, O Sagacious One,” whispered a deep, lyrical voice.
The voice caught them all off guard, and Maldred nearly knocked the ball off its pedestal in his astonishment. “Sabar?” he repeated.
“Yes, O Sagacious One.”
He drew his face down to the crystal, seeing wisps of pale lavender weaving themselves into artful designs.
“What kind of a crystal ball is it?” Ragh pressed closer.
Maldred gave a shrug of his broad shoulders.
Dhamon leaned closer too, curious but also impatient to be on their way. He didn’t know that the best crystal ball in the world would be of much use to him if he was going to fight the shadow dragon. He thought it would be more worthwhile to continue following Nura’s tracks.