"The wall will hold them for a quarter hour!" Yu Wei cried. "After that, the monsters will be free to pass!"
"Well done," the Warlord said. "That will do for now. Turn your attention to the platform and determine how it operates. We will keep watch."
They waited a few minutes, buffeted by the winds, the scorching heat of the wizard's shield defending them from the gargoyles in the tunnel. Yu Wei muttered and mumbled, inspecting the floating platform.
At length he stepped back and said, "I believe I understand the device, Warlord, but it may be prudent to test it first in order to make sure that I have mastered the enchantment."
"I trust you implicitly, and we do not have much time," Jelan replied. She brushed by the sorcerer and jumped across to the stone platform as if she had absolute confidence in the precarious engine. It bobbed a little under her weight but remained stable. "Come on, then, everybody aboard. Jack, you stay close by me," she said. "I want you where I can keep an eye on you."
"I am completely trustworthy," Jack protested.
He followed Jelan and tried not to think about just how much of a drop might wait under his feet. He gave his hand to Illyth and helped her onto the platform, then moved aside to make room for the rest of Jelan's picked warriors.
"Nevertheless," Jelan said. "Trouble follows you like gulls following a fisherman's dory." She turned to face the rest of the party. "Keep your eyes open, friends. I am very concerned about what might or might not come up behind us in the dark."
Yu Wei stepped aboard last and carefully touched the heel of his staff to the old dwarven stone, speaking a word that Jack did not recognize. After a moment, the platform began to sink, dropping quickly and smoothly down the crevasse as the walls seemed to climb away from them.
The wind screamed like something flayed alive as they dropped into the darkness.
"Dungeon delving," mused Jack, "is an occupation for those unfortunate souls who have demonstrated that they are too stupid, ill-tempered, or incompetently noble to hold down any honest job."
He gazed out into the great vast darkness around him and shivered. For several minutes the stone platform had descended through empty air, as the crevasse had widened drastically hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of feet below its upper entrance. The walls were now well out of sight, and still they dropped. At least the platform hadn't yet taken them into any life-threatening peril, but that, of course, was no guarantee that it wouldn't at any moment. A cold, damp stream of air raked the open platform, hinting of vast subterranean spaces stretching away around them. The platform was a bubble of golden light, sinking into darkness like a coin dropped into a bottomless well.
"Surely recovering treasures long forgotten is better than outright theft and burglary?'' Illyth replied. "It's dangerous, but it's honest."
Jack stood close by her, holding her closely to keep her warm. Jelan had not provided Illyth with garb particularly suited for marching around in the frigid depths, and the noblewoman shivered constantly.
Jack shrugged and threw his cloak over her shoulders. "I'll trade risk for guilt any time," he said with a laugh.
Illyth's disapproving look stung him, and he fell silent. They gazed into the limitless dark, wondering when the descent would come to an end.
"Hathmar, what do you know of the depths beneath Sarbreen?" Jelan asked the drow swordsman. The Warlord did not take her eyes away from the wall of darkness around them, watching vigilantly for any sign of trouble. "Are there any monsters common to this region we should watch for? Hazardous conditions that might cause injury or death?"
"I have never walked these ways, Warlord," the drow said. "In Sarbreen's day, the region beneath the city was vigorously patrolled by the dwarven city above. If drow had lived here when Sarbreen was great, there would have been war. My people lived in the deep Underdark near this region, but they must have been long gone by the time of Sarbreen's founding. Certainly the Sarbreenaar never had any truck with them."
"Silence," hissed Yu Wei. "We've reached the bottom."
Around them long spires of rock now appeared at the edge of their bubble of light, gleaming wetly in the darkness and growing thicker and wider as they descended toward the giant stalagmites' unseen bases. Jack had the curious fear that the platform would settle on one of the rocky points and upend itself, but the makers of the ancient mechanism were not so careless; the platform came to rest on a square of polished granite with a soft grating sound. Jack hopped to the floor of the chamber and helped Illyth down; the others dismounted carefully, searching for any signs of danger.
"The gargoyles did not pursue us," Jelan said, looking up into the darkness. The Warlord frowned in concern. "They have wings. Why didn't they chase us down here?"
"Perhaps they have not yet broken through Yu Wei's wall," Amarana, the Shar priestess, said.
"Or perhaps they have no wish to be where we are now," Jack muttered. "It could be that they feared to follow you into the chasm."
"A cheerful thought," said Jelan. She shook herself and looked around the stone forest surrounding them. Great needles of stone rose into the darkness, as tall as the turrets of a castle. "Which way now?"
"According to my divinations, we should seek a lake of darkness," Yu Wei said. "We will find the wild mythal there." He consulted a small, dark orb held in his left hand and studied it for a moment. Then he pointed off into the darkness. "That way."
"Hathmar, you lead," said Jelan. "Amarana, would you join him? Your dark lady favors you with sight in places such as this. Yu Wei, Kel Kelek, follow them. Jack, you and I will stay close to Illyth. Tenghar, you and the rest cover the rear. And make sure you keep your eyes open."
With the drow and the Shar priestess in the lead and half a dozen swordsmen guarding their backs, they set off between the huge stalagmites, winding across an uneven floor of natural rock that surrounded the dwarven platform at the foot of the long descent. Jack offered Illyth an arm to steady herself and picked his way carefully across the damp stone. He could feel something now, even without closing his eyes or concentrating on it, a subtle tide that seemed to tug on his soul. It almost felt as if he were caught in an undertow, the race of water receding away from the shore to gather for a tremendous wave still unseen. And the power of the magic streaming past him resonated, recharged him, so that he felt full of power and skill and confidence. With every step he could sense his magical strength replenishing itself, a sensation he never experienced on the surface.
"I think we're getting close," he told Illyth. "I can feel something ahead of us, a very strong magic indeed. I don't think I've ever held this much power."
"The lake," called Blademark from the front, softly.
A moment later they all reached the shore. The water was oily and blacker than night, a great dark expanse whose farther shores might have been a hundred yards away or a hundred miles. Here, at least, the shore seemed to indicate a sizable body of water. Small waves lapped at the gravel strand, and a band of damp stones above the waterline hinted at a small tidal range. Left and right the shore was bare, marked only by boulder falls and rare pinnaclelike stalagmites rising up into the darkness.
"Are we supposed to swim from this point forward?" Jack asked.
"If necessary, I can arrange it," Yu Wei retorted. "We will do what must be done."