Gindrol and Talzir followed him, each seamless in his magically altered form. Their disguises were perfect to the last detaiclass="underline" bare scalps, mottled gray skin, wiry muscles, and pebble-black eyes. They even wore a deep gnome's suspicious glower. They might have been born svirfneblin, for all anyone could tell.
The rowboat was narrow and black, with blunted ends. The three disguised Nightshadows settled onto its bare wooden seats, Karas in the front with the strongbox resting on his knees. Gindrol, just behind him, took the oars in hand. Each was a length of fused armbone, ending in a cupped hand.
The splashes of the oars were drowned out by the clattering of bone on bone. The lake-filled cavern was vast, but its entire ceiling was studded with skulls, giving it a bumpy, off-white appearance. The lake itself was utterly flat-the slight wake the rowboat produced immediately stilled. A chill emanated from the water, up through the wooden plank on which Karas sat. He found himself shivering and tried to force his muscles to relax. He didn't want the others to think he was afraid.
The lake was deep, but the Faerzress that permeated the stone there shone up from below, lending the water a faint bluish glow. Silhouettes flitted through its depths: water spiders, hunting their prey.
At the center of the lake lay an island, on which stood the ruined city of V'elddrinnsshar. The island itself was a slumped mass of off-white limestone whose top had been leveled. Streets wound between empty stalagmite buildings that rose like tapering fingers questing for the ceiling. At the center of the island stood a larger spire of stone, its top sheared off. Kiaransalee's temple capped it, a brooding block of black marble. Ghosts flitted above it like demented swallows, their anguished moans filling the air in an eerie chorus.
As the boat drew closer to the island, Karas could make out huddled shapes choking the streets of the abandoned city: the bodies of the dead. Several lay on the dock, arms or legs draped loosely over the edges where they had fallen. A dozen rose to their feet in silence as the boat scraped against the stone steps that led up to the dock. All were drow, their skin paled to dull gray. Each had flesh pocked with enormous, long-since ruptured blisters: the puffball-like hallmark of the ascomid plague. Had those blisters been fresh, the slightest touch would have ruptured them, releasing a cloud of deadly spores that would propagate the disease. But it had been a century since the plague had swept through there, killing everyone in the city.
Karas twisted around on his seat and saw that Talzir's eyes were wide, his lips tight. Gindrol, who was rowing, still had his back to the dock.
"Steady," Karas told them, his svirfneblin voice strange in his ears. "Remember, they need our voidstone. They're not going to kill us… yet."
The svirfneblin that was Talzir cracked a grim smile.
One of the undead drow-a female whose finery hung in tatters on her blistered body-staggered down the steps and reached down for the strongbox Karas held. Shaking his head, he drew it out of her reach.
"This isn't for you, Mistress," he told her. "It's for your Reaper."
A chuckle sounded from one of the doorways at the rear of the dock. From it stepped a drow female wearing the loose black robe and gray skullcap that marked her as a Crone.
Silver rings decorated each finger. An hourglass, filled with white sand, hung against her chest, and a dagger with a bone handle was sheathed at her hip. Her skin was smudged with gray: ashes, taken from a pyre and mixed with rancid fat. Karas steeled himself against the smell as she approached. Back in Maerimydra, it had always made him gag.
He clambered up the steps, gripping the strongbox. Talzir and Gindrol followed. All three bowed at the Crone's approach. Barely acknowledging them, she tossed the sack she was holding at their feet. It landed with a clatter: the sound of gemstones clicking together.
When she reached out for the strongbox, Karas feigned reluctance. He shifted the box in his hands, making sure to draw her attention to it. The wood appeared gouged, as if it had been chewed on
"Is there a problem?" she asked. Her voice was as cold as a corpse.
"We were attacked." Karas said. "A bulette mistook the strongbox for its lunch."
"Good thing it didn't swallow the contents," Talzir piped up from behind him, "or it would have gotten a terrible stomach ache." He gave a nervous-sounding laugh.
The Crone's eyes narrowed. "Give it to me."
Karas shifted his feet. "But-"
"Give it to me!"
Karas obliged, lifting the strongbox. Just as the Crone's hand was about to touch it, he moved the box upward. Her hand passed through the illusionary lid and touched the voidstone. For the briefest of instants, her eyes widened in alarm and her mouth parted in a scream.
Then she was gone.
With a thought, Karas altered his form. His body doubled in size, changed gender, assumed the face he'd just been staring up at. His vest became a robe, his mask a skullcap, and the dragon-skin ring on his finger multiplied itself by eight and turned silver.
He stared disdainfully down at the other two Nightshadows and shouted in a cold female voice, "Where did he go? Speak!"
The undead drow glanced back and forth between the transformed Karas and the spot where the real Crone had just been standing. One of them pawed at Karas's sleeve, and he warned it off with a glare.
Gindrol and Talzir, meanwhile, played their parts to perfection. Shuffling, nervous, they refused to meet the "Crone's" eyes. On cue, the boat rocked, as if an invisible person were stepping into it. Karas stared in that direction. "Ah. Lost his nerve, did he?"
Gindrol bent to scoop up the sack, but Karas stamped a foot down on it. He pretended to open the strongbox. The illusionary lid sprang open, and he looked inside. The voidstone was a dark, fist-sized hollow at the center of the box. With a satisfied nod, he pretended to close the missing lid.
He removed his foot from the sack. "Go," he ordered the other two.
Cringing, they retrieved the sack and scrambled back to the boat.
All part of the act.
It was lost on the undead, of course. The animated corpses that surrounded Karas hadn't the intelligence to understand the subtle scene the three Nightshadows had just played out. But the quth-maren that stepped out of a nearby doorway did. Tall and gaunt, made up of nothing more than oozing muscle stitched rudely over bone, it stared at Karas with eyes that wept blood. As Karas met its stare, panic welled inside him. He felt if he were drowning, thrashing about in panic, going under in a sea of blood.
Masked Lord, he pleaded fiercely, strengthen me.
The panic dissipated, leaving only a nervous bead of sweat that trickled down the small of Karas's back. He glared at the animated dead who clustered around him, fawning for his attention. "Clear a path for me," he ordered.
The quth-maren nodded. It waved a hand, and the plague-killed drow standing on the dock folded to the ground, lifeless once more. Then it gave a hacking cough, deep in its chest. A wad of blood-tinged mucous shot from its mouth and landed on the stomach of a corpse that had Iain down immediately in front of Karas. The acidic spit sizzled, burning clean through the body, down to the stone beneath.
The quth-maren gave a gurgling chuckle and padded up the dock, leaving bloody footprints in its wake.
Behind Karas, Gindrol and Talzir pulled away from the dock. The splashes of their oars were rapidly lost amid the clattering of the skulls overhead and the wails of the ghosts that flitted above.
Karas forced his shoulders erect and followed the quth-maren with a haughty, confident step. They walked through the ruined city. Everywhere Karas looked lay plague victims, preserved by fell magic. They rose at his approach, bowing in subservience to the Crone he appeared to be. Some plucked at his cloak with blistered fingers; he shrugged them away imperiously.