"Your friends or mine?" the thief rasped. He spat blood in Laerin's face.
The half-elf wiped the dripping red trails. "This one's as lost as we are," he told Morgan. "Have you ever been down here before?" he asked the man.
"No," the thief said, for he couldn't shake his head under the weight of Morgan's boot. "We've never been in these tunnels."
"Think Meisha knows about this place?" Talal asked hopefully.
"Maybe, but I wouldn't wager on finding her soon," Morgan said, "if this place's as vast as it seems." He pointed to three tunnels splitting off the cavern, all stretching an indeterminate distance before branching again.
"We'd better start looking," Laerin said. "Let me scout ahead."
"What do we do with him?" Talal asked, indicating the thief.
"Trap trigger," Morgan said cheerfully. "We'll move faster that way, with him testing the path ahead of us."
"Clear," Laerin declared, trotting back up the passage. "Narrow, but more likely to be free of traps. These caves are buried too deep to be heavily protected."
"Cheerful thought for this one," said Morgan, dragging the Shadow Thief to his feet. He shone his last torch over the walls. "Not one of these tunnels looks to be sloping up. They're all going deeper underground. Anything look familiar?" he asked, nudging Talal.
Talal shook his head. "Where do you think the others are?" he asked, though he feared the answer. He'd seen Meisha fall down the chasm.
"Portals malfunction," said Laerin. "When that happens, they can deposit a person off the mark from where they intended to appear—a few feet, a mile . .."
"Into a wall," Morgan muttered, and Talal's heart wrenched.
Laerin squeezed his shoulder and sent Morgan a quelling glance. "The portal is old," he said, "but I believe it to be sound. We'll find them."
"I suppose more of them damn shadow mongrels got scattered about, too," said Morgan.
"That might be a blessing," said Laerin. "If they followed us and are separated, we may have a better chance of overcoming them. Speaking of which . . ." The half-elf drew his dagger and prodded the Shadow Thief in the back. "Hearty congratulations," he told the man, "you're taking point. Stray too far ahead and you'll find my blade between your shoulders."
The thief nodded curtly, and the group set off with him and Laerin leading.
The first tunnel bent to the right, then bent back on itself so sharply that the way was impassable for even Talal; they had to backtrack to the second tunnel.
Morgan made slash marks on the walls with a crusty piece of chalk to show where they'd been.
The center tunnel connected three larger chambers. A blackened firepit in the center of the first room suggested a kitchen; fragments of rotting wood might once have served as furniture.
"Living quarters," Laerin said. "If the Howlings did dwell all the way down here, they lived sparsely."
"The tunnel's are defensible," Morgan said. "Long bottlenecks, mazelike. And if the portal's the only way down, they can dig themselves in cozy if they have to."
"I have a hard time believing the dwarves would rely on magic alone to move them through the earth," said Laerin. "It's not their nature."
Talal gazed down the third tunnel. The passage spilled into a long, narrow chamber. Chipped and sheared stalagmites formed stone benches. A dozen men would have fit comfortably in the room, Talal thought, but the benches squatted close to the floor to accommodate shorter legs.
At the back of the room, situated in front of another tunnel, a wide altar rose up from the floor. Spiky writing was etched deep into the stone, but a crack cut a jagged line down the center of the monument.
Talal watched Morgan and Laerin examine the writing. The half-elf's lips moved as if he could read the words. His face creased in consternation.
"What does it say?" Talal asked.
The half-elf cocked his head. "The script is Dwarvish, of course. It's an altar to Abbathor, the dwarf god of greed."
Talal knew nothing of the dwarf gods, not enough to blaspheme them, anyway. He would have to ask Meisha about Abbathor.
The thought of the Harper sent an unexpected stab of pain through his chest. If she's alive, she's safer than you are, Talal told himself. He was the fool. He'd had the opportunity to escape and see daylight again, but he'd wasted it worrying over a fire-twisted Harper he barely knew.
His thoughts shattered when a sharp blow cuffed the side of his head.
"Watch him!" Laerin shouted, and the half-elf was suddenly in front of Talal, shielding him with his body.
Dizzy and in pain, Talal heard Morgan grunt and, a breath later, the sound of a body dropping on stone.
Laerin's arm caught his. "Are you all right?"
Talal wiped blood from his temple where the Shadow Thief had struck him. "Second time they've roughed up my head," he mumbled.
Laerin grinned. "Luckily you keep nothing important up there." His face sobered. "Forgive me, I should have been watching him more closely." He turned to Morgan, who was wiping blood from his sword. "Dead?"
Morgan nodded. "Hope you were done questioning him."
"I was," Laerin replied, taking one last look at the altar. "A pity Garavin isn't here. He would have wanted to see this."
They headed for the tunnel at the back of the temple, but Talal stopped abruptly. His head still felt fuzzy from the blow. He wondered if he were imagining things. "Did you hear that?" he asked.
Morgan and Laerin continued ahead of him. "Keep up," grunted Morgan.
"It sounded like . . . rain."
They moved past an intersection of four tunnels. Laerin choose to keep going straight, but the sound persisted just at the edges of Talal's hearing. He wondered why the half-elf couldn't hear the steady beat, water against stone.
Talal glanced behind and saw movement in the darkness of the intersection. "Look at that!"
Laerin turned, following the streak of Morgan's pointing torch.
A dwarf ran into the intersection. He was bald, dressed in plated armor that should have creaked loudly in the stillness. His short legs skidded on the loose dirt, but he caught himself with a hand on the ground. He half-turned toward them, and Talal gasped.
The entire left side of the dwarf's face was gone, exposing white skull and a length of jawbone. Torchlight flickered off the shadows and hollows created by the missing flesh. No one could be that injured and live. The dwarf was dead, Talal thought, just like the one he and Meisha had encountered in the upper tunnels. He was dead, and he was running. None of the other ghosts had run, and none had looked at Talal with such terror-filled eyes.
The dwarf regained his feet and plowed on down the tunnel. The sound of rain drew closer.
"Talal," said Laerin, drawing his sword, "Run. Down the passage—now!"
Talal felt the half-elf shove him hard. He stumbled and fell, unable to take his eyes off the intersection. Fear crawled along his body. A breeze passed over his skin, bringing heat and a scent that made his eyes water. The tunnel suddenly felt humid. Steam pools rose up from the floor, and the sound of rain became a sizzling.
Talal crushed his eyes shut, and time seemed to slow, as if he were experiencing everything from a great distance. He opened his eyes in time to see a shape pass through the intersection, filling it utterly with weight and light. The timeless silence shattered, sundered by a roar that filled the caverns, knocking Morgan and Laerin to their knees.