Only bitterness remained.
It was enough. She clutched the emotion like an icy seed, using it to draw herself back to the here and now. Dropping the willow wand, she clawed a second wand from her bracer. This one had a pea-sized sphere of hollow glass at its tip. The creature screamed at her, a soul-numbing wail that slammed against Mazeer's eardrums. She felt her right eardrum rupture. Intense pain flared through that side of her head. Even as the skull's wail drove her past the edge of madness, she shouted the wand's command word. Ripples of energy shot from it. They slammed into the skull and expanded outward from it, encasing it in a bubble of silence.
The apparition raged impotently, mouth open. It clawed at the bubble that surrounded its head, but without effect. The silence ate at it like acid. A portion of the skull dimpled, then crumbled away, leaving a black hole. Hollow eyesockets glared at Mazeer. Then, still raging in utter silence, the creature turned and fled.
Mazeer? Can you hear me? Are you still there?
Mazeer whirled. Her heart pounded even faster than the staccato clacking in the cavern beyond. Thousands of skulls! What was that voice? It was inside her head. A skull! Thousands of them, pressing in on her from every side. She slapped her palms against her ears, and one hand became sticky with blood. The skulls were consuming her from within!
"Get out!" she shrieked. "Get out of my head!"
Mazeer, it's Qilue. You called me.
"The skull is stuck!" Mazeer wailed, beating her forehead with her fists. "Stuck inside the chimney. Light a fire. Get it out!"
It's Qilue, Mazeer, High Priestess of Eilistraee. Listen to me. Let me help you.
"No!" The skulls surrounded her like invisible walls. Mazeer could feel them digging into her back, her arms, her chest. Bones and teeth. Laughing at her. "Stupid girl, getting stuck in a chimney."
Her eyes widened. Had she just said that? Or had it been the voice inside her head? What was that clacking noise?
Like spears, rattling. Spears stabbing her chest, the palm of her hand, the right side of her head. Throbbing. Pain. Her chest was tight. She couldn't breathe. She clawed out a wand, hurled it at the blue-green glow. The fire. It was all around her. Fire and smoke. Making her cough. Too tight, stuck in a chimney…
"Get out. Out of here. Must get…"
She fell backward. Splashing water choked off her scream. She was cold and wet. Sinking. The water hugged her close, extinguishing the fire. Something brushed against her: a sticky net. She remembered it had caught another drow. He was the one trapped. She laughed, and watched languidly as bubbles danced above her face. There was something she should be doing. Oh yes, the bottle. She raised it to her lips and inhaled deeply. Water slid into her lungs, smooth as a wand into a sheath. She didn't notice the coughing, or the hot flare of pain in her chest.
The skull was gone. At last.
She was free.
Cavatina waited impatiently as Khorl cast his spell. A mirror of polished silver hung on one wall, enlarged by magic from a brooch the wizard had unpinned from his piwafwi. Khorl peered into it intently, oblivious to the harsh glare of the reflected Faerzress. The blue glow was painfully bright. Cavatina squinted, yet it still hurt her eyes. Backlit by its glare, Khorl's head and shoulders were a dark silhouette.
"Can you see anything?" she asked. "Mazeer told Qilue she'd found the way to the Acropolis. She mentioned a fissure in the rock."
"And a skull," Eldrinn added. "You said she mentioned a skull." He stood next to Daffir, fiddling nervously with a vial he held. If the boy wasn't careful, he was going to drop his potion.
Karas pushed past him. "What about Telmyz? Is there any sign of him?"
"Patience, all of you," Khorl said. His fingers flicked in front of the mirror as if turning pages. "A scrying cannot be rushed."
Gilkriz stood to one side, arms folded and fingers drumming restlessly. One of his wizards had gone missing. Perhaps he'd already accepted the worst. According to Qilue, Mazeer had been incoherent when her message abruptly cut off. That-and the silence that followed-didn't bode well.
All the other search teams had returned safely, if unsuccessfully. Despite more than a day's worth of searching, none had found the way to the Acropolis.
Khorl's hand dropped. "The mirror reveals nothing." A wave of his hand shrank the polished oval of silver back down to brooch size.
"Conjure up the eyes again," Cavatina ordered. "We need to find Mazeer and Telmyz."
Khorl shook his head firmly. "A second application of that spell will only produce the same result."
Cavatina turned to the human wizard. "Daffir?"
He inclined his head. "I will try, Madam."
As Daffir cast his spell, Cavatina brooded. The message about Mazeer and Telmyz hadn't been the only sending from Qilue. There had been two other sendings from the high priestess a short time after that. The first had contained surprising news: Halisstra lived! She'd somehow escaped the Demonweb Pits, and had been spotted in the Shilmista Forest. Priestesses and Nightshadows had died there, at the hands of Lolth's minions. Halisstra, however had managed to escape through the shrine's portal.
She'd portaled to the Moondeep, where Q'arlynd had spotted her. Not surprisingly, he hadn't recognized his own sister. Halisstra wandered the mine tunnels, somewhere between the Moondeep and the spot where the party rested.
Cavatina would have ordered a search for Halisstra, but Qilue had forbidden it. Eilistraee herself had warned the high priestess that Halisstra had some part to play in the attack on the temple-a role that might be disrupted if too many knew she was there. Cavatina had to trust in the goddess, to let Halisstra find her own path in the dance.
It rankled Cavatina, but an order was an order. A Darksong Knight always did her duty.
One thing was certain. The longer Cavatina and the others lingered there, the better the chance Halisstra would blunder into them. Knowing that, Cavatina had ordered the two priestesses guarding the shaft that was this tunnel's only access point to contact her with a sending at once if they spotted anything resembling a demon, and not to engage it in combat themselves-to let her, the party's only Darksong Knight, deal with any demons.
Cavatina turned to the human mage. "Daffir. Anything yet?"
Daffir leaned on his staff, eyes closed. "Mazeer and Telmyz are in a cavern."
"The Acropolis?"
"No," Daffir opened his eyes. "That much, at least, I am certain of. Had they reached it, the name Thanatos would have rung through my mind like a tolling bell."
"Are they still underwater?" Karas asked.
Daffir shook his head. "That, I cannot tell."
Cavatina struggled to keep her frustration in check. "Keep trying," she told the wizards. She turned to walk back to the spot at the bottom of the shaft, where the others had set up a fortified position, but Karas caught her arm. "Telmyz is dead," he told her. "This was the wrong way to go."
Cavatina rounded on him. "We don't know that."
"Yes we do. The prayer that allowed him to breathe water would have elapsed long ago. If he's still submerged, he's dead."
"Then we'll recover his body. Return him to the Promenade, where he can be resurrected."
Karas made a dismissive gesture. "That's not worth the cost."
Cavatina was inclined to agree, for different reasons. Yet her duty was clear. "Our numbers are small. We can't afford the loss of even one of Eilistraee's faithful."