Garn paused and glanced back at them. “We’ll be in the Underdark soon. Keep a close watch around you. We might run into scouting parties.”
“Scouting parties?” Ruen said. “You mean your people or more monsters?”
“Monsters.…” Garn said. “Yes, that’s right.” He spit again and went on down the stairs.
“He’s afraid,” Icelin whispered. “I can see it in his eyes.” She glanced sidelong at Ruen. “You don’t look so well either.”
“I’m fine,” Ruen said tersely. “Just do what he said and keep your eyes on your surroundings. You can’t stay oblivious forever.”
As soon as they were out of his mouth, Ruen regretted the words. Their effect on Icelin was immediate. She stiffened, and her face paled. Ruen waited for her to lash out at him. She had the sharpest tongue of any woman he’d ever met, and he knew he deserved the rebuke. But she said nothing, only raised her hand to the light of her staff. She made a gesture and the red glow intensified, chasing back the shadows in the stairwell.
Ruen cursed himself. Why didn’t she shout at him or make a jest, tell him he was being a hurtful fool? Anything was better than silence. But her face by the light of her staff was unreadable.
Mith Barak sat on his throne and listened to the echoes of his boot tapping rhythmically against the stone, the sound traveling out to the ends of the hall. The cavernous chamber, built in the time of Shanatar, was large enough to house an army of warriors to challenge the greatest drow cities in the Underdark.
A bitter laugh escaped the king’s lips. He listened to the sound echo back at him in a mocking wave. The audience chamber of ancient kings, large enough to house an army of ghosts.
The door to the hall swung open, and one of the regents strode in. Mith Barak was embarrassed that he didn’t remember the dwarf’s name. He’d been appointed sometime during Mith Barak’s last sleep. Sometimes, the king felt as if he still slept, that his whole life was one endless dream.
The regent stopped before Mith Barak’s throne and bowed. “The regents are prepared to discuss battle strategies, my king,” he said.
“Tomorrow,” Mith Barak said. “Today I’ll be interrogating the drow again.” The regent nodded, but Mith Barak saw the dismayed expression the dwarf tried to hide. “What is it?” he demanded in irritation. “Speak!”
“My king,” the regent said, “drow patrols press closer to the city every day. If we’re to prepare our army against an assault, we must act quickly.”
Mith Barak gazed at the pillars lining the hall, the dust-filled carvings in the ancient stone. “You see the names on these pillars, Regent? The scholars, smiths, the warrior priests, greatest dwarves of an age-all of them gone. The dead outnumber the living ten to one. It will not take nearly so long as you believe to prepare our army. What’s left of it.”
Lost in his dark thoughts, he fell silent. He waited for the regent to leave, but the dwarf stayed, maybe waiting for him to change his mind. Maybe he sensed Mith Barak’s dangerous mood and didn’t want to leave him.
As if he could do anything about it. Mith Barak gripped the arms of his throne, felt the indentations where his fingers had dug into the stone in his statue form. Over a century, they’d worn their mark while he slept, oblivious to the passage of time.
No, not oblivious. To either time or pain.
How much had he missed while he was trapped in that Astral void? How many births, deaths among his people? Without guidance, the city had stagnated during his sleep, unable to grow or prosper because its leader was absent, yet the people had been unwilling to replace him. Now when he finally had a chance to change things, the damned drow decide to attack.
Mith Barak knew he should be out there now, among his soldiers, meeting with his council. Yet here he sat, on the same throne where he’d dwelled a century in stone, unable to make himself leave his hall unless it was to go down to the dungeons to interrogate Zollgarza. Worst of all was the knowledge that here on his throne, in his hall, was the only place he felt safe.
I’m a fool. There are no more safe places.
Mith Barak shook away those thoughts and stood. “Tomorrow, we’ll begin,” he said to the regent. “We don’t have time to indulge in past losses or regrets.”
The regent bowed and left the audience chamber. Mith Barak listened to his boots echo on the stone and tried to swallow his bitterness.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE UNDERDARK
21 UKTAR
The endless series of tunnels, dark spaces penetrated by flickering torchlight, and silence broken only by the hollow echoes of their footsteps were starting to give Icelin a terrible headache. How much farther before they wandered out the other side of Faerun?
Eventually, though, the tunnel before them emptied out into a barrel-shaped cavern, and Icelin heard the sound of rushing water. An underground river gushed over stones, and a forest of stalactites hung low over the water.
“We’re not far from the city’s outer checkpoints,” Garn said.
Icelin stared at the river, grateful for anything to look at besides dark tunnel walls. The water foamed around the stalagmites as if from the mouth of a crooked-toothed beast. Blue-green fungus grew among the rocks on the shoreline, and there were a few stepping stones out in the river itself, but these looked dangerously slick and barely large enough to hold one person.
How many humans had actually crossed this river in all the centuries since its creation? Icelin had never dreamed, when they set out, that the dwarves would lead them this far into the Underdark. She’d never thought of herself as being afraid of tight spaces, but the idea of being so far from sunlight unnerved her. Yet another part of her thrilled to the idea that she walked in a cavern unknown to most of the people in Faerun above. They had stepped into another world. If only Sull had been there to share the sights with her, Icelin would have been content.
Well, content might not have been the best word, not while Ruen continued to irritate her. What had gotten into the man anyway? When they’d stood near the bridge, for a second he’d looked at her as if she were a stranger. She wondered what was in his mind. Would he tell her if she asked?
A sharp hiss and twang cut the air, vibrating down the length of her staff. Icelin flinched. A black, spiny rod had embedded itself in her staff, just below the cage of light. Icelin brought the staff closer so she could see the object clearly.
Her breath caught. Embedded in the wood was a crossbow quarrel, the kind fired from a single-handed weapon.
Icelin opened her mouth to warn the others, when suddenly a second black quarrel buried itself in her arm. Staring at the missile in shock, Icelin at first didn’t feel any pain. Blood welled and flowed in a warm trickle down her arm. Icelin found her voice. “We’re under attack!” she cried.
More hisses echoed in the cavern. “Get down!” Garn shouted.
Ruen spun, flung his torch in the river and dragged Icelin to the ground behind some rocks. Obrin crouched beside them. Grunting, he drew his axe and gestured to the middle of the river.
Icelin clutched her wounded arm and looked through a crack between two rocks. In the middle of the river, three figures levitated near one of the larger stalactites. One wore wizard’s robes, and the other two wore armor that fit their slender bodies like a second skin. These two reloaded hand crossbows. Even in the dim red light of her staff, Icelin could appreciate their graceful forms, elegantly pointed ears, and obsidian skin.
Icelin shouldn’t have been surprised to see the drow in the Underdark, but knowing such beings existed in the world, and seeing them firsthand, was quite a different experience.
Red eyes-a wave of fascination and revulsion swept over Icelin. The tales don’t prepare you for seeing such burning eyes.