That only leaves four more possibilities, Xuxa replied. Do you think you can dodge them all?
A memory flooded into Baylee's mind as he touched the first two gems. Remember when we were attacked by the skeleton warriors? One of them got down on his knees and prayed. He gazed at the fletched arrow pictograph. And it was to Solonor Thelandira, not Rillifane.
You're assuming those skeleton warriors once knew Glitterwing, and that they shared religious beliefs.
They were also elves, someone who Glitterwing could have forced into servitude as skeleton warriors. If he was desperate, maybe he would have used his own people.
A slim case, at best.
I can't build one for any of the others, Baylee responded. His finger caressed the gem. When the grinding started again, he was already dropping, hoping to avoid the trident trap yet again.
But this time, the door in the side of the well opened into a yawning blackness.
25
"It's open," Baylee called out. He scrambled up the rope in the well, drawn by the mysteries waiting within the door. Hanging even with it, and no trident in sight, he held up the lantern.
A straight shaft, carefully mortised in to make smooth surfaces along the sides, led back. It was a crawl space only, not large enough for him even to squat and walk through.
Xuxa fluttered in front of him, a smaller target and fully able to see in the dark with her infravision.
Baylee pulled himself through after her. Behind him, Cordyan was ordering men down into the well. The ranger crawled perhaps thirty feet before the tunnel suddenly ended and opened up onto a large cavern. He walked forward, looking at the crush of houses and buildings that had been flattened beneath the surface of the ruins. The ground had grown soft over the years, drawing the remains of the structures deep into the tunnels below.
The tunnels looked dwarven in nature, and Baylee thought the elves might have built Rainydale over an old dwarven mining city to use the underground storage areas for their fruits and vegetables. And, as a military man, Glitterwing would have wanted it as a more defensible position.
He consulted the map as Xuxa clung to the wall nearby. The cavern was shown on the map, but it held a different shape than it did now. He had the lay of the land figured out by the time Cordyan had all of her men organized.
When looked at properly, the trail could be seen snaking through the fissures to the right. With the long sword naked in his fist, Baylee trotted forward.
The intense earthquake caught him off-balance. Out in the open area of the cavern, rocks crumbled and fell, and stalactites dropped from the curve of earth overhead.
"What was that?" Cthulad demanded.
Baylee got to his feet, watching the choking dust rise from the tunnel floor. The dust shortened his visibility. "I don't know. But it couldn't have been good." He continued along the trail, knowing the library lay somewhere up ahead.
Krystarn Fellhammer shoved herself back to her feet, yelling at the drow warriors around her to get back into position. Mild tremors followed the large quake.
She gazed around the caverns, wondering what had set the earthquake in motion. There were still a few echoing quivers every so often, reminders that the land had been cruelly torn in the battle with the Army of Darkness.
"He seeks now to destroy us all," a voice whispered behind the drow.
Krystarn turned, spotting Nevft Scoontiphp behind her.
The baelnorn didn't look at her, staring instead at the new fissures that had opened up in the walls of the cavern.
"You're saying Shallowsoul did that?" Krystarn asked in disbelief.
"He failed to stop them," the baelnorn said. "He never intended for the map Skyreach had among her things to reach humankind. He was supposed to hold the library here until a suitable heir could be found."
"An heir?"
The baelnorn nodded. "In his mortal life, he was the caretaker of the library, hand-picked by Glitterwing himself, and transformed into the lich by Glitterwing as well. Haven't you learned anything in these years you've been among us?"
"There is no heir." Krystarn ignored the creature and started her men moving down the trail again. "And the way through the well will be blocked once we kill all the humans who have invaded these caverns. I can't believe Shallowsoul hadn't already blocked the way."
"He was charged not to. And after awhile, I'm sure he forgot it was even there. His mind is not what it once was."
Krystarn fell into the group of drow warriors, her morning star naked in her fist. Shallowsoul had alerted her only moments ago of the breach made by the group of humans. She'd even watched Baylee Arnvold lead the way through the hidden door.
"The humans have near to fifty warriors," Scoontiphp stated.
"We are drow," Krystarn said. "For us, it is but more who will die by our hand."
The baelnorn smiled. "Thinking of that as your epitaph?"
Before Krystarn could reply, Scoontiphp disappeared, leaving only his mocking laughter twisting in the echoing emptiness behind the line of advancing drow warriors.
She pushed the baelnorn's words out of her mind. She had her own agenda to pursue, and the hobgoblin army under Chomack was awaiting her word, still totally unknown to Shallowsoul. It was a comforting thought, one totally drow in nature.
Baylee felt the pull of a trip cord before he saw it. "Get down!" he roared over the creak of a spring loosing. A huge stone block pulled free of the nearby wall and slammed against the wall on the other side of the trail. It burst into a shower of rock, leaving only the thick pole that it had been tied to.
Pushing himself to his feet, the ranger regained his lantern from the ground and took stock of the situation behind him. Cordyan was next in line, shaken but still grimly in control of the watch unit.
The trail continued to wind down deeper into the earth. At times it picked up even older tunnels than the ones they had traveled through from the well, telling Baylee that Glitterwing's library had been laid where much of the work had already been done.
From the tailings he'd found in several of the areas, he now knew the system of underground caverns had been a mining operation for metals. In a few places, he'd even found iron railings where mine carts had been. A few of the mine carts were even in the corners of some caverns.
Another quake hit the caverns, this one stronger even than the last.
"This is not a natural occurrence," Ciwa Cthulad said. "Someone is causing this."
"Or something," one of the Waterdhavian Watch members muttered further back in the line.
"How much farther?" Cordyan asked Baylee.
The ranger shrugged as he turned a corner ahead. "We're more than halfway according to the map, that's all I can say. Distances are not recorded." Sweat poured down him. The gnomish workman's leather armor was hot in the underground environment. He tightened the cinches on his gloves.
As he rounded the next corner on the narrow trail, a feeling of vertigo assailed him. Ahead, the land suddenly sheared away, racing down to a black emptiness so far below Baylee really doubted there might be a bottom at all. The trail continued against one wall, barely three feet wide.
“Tighten up your men," the ranger said to Cordyan, "and get me some rope."
"What are you going to do?" the watch officer asked. She reached into the backpack of the nearest man and took out a coil of rope.
"I'm going to run a line to the other side," Baylee answered, taking the rope she offered. "If another quake hits while we're scattered across the middle of that, I don't want to risk losing any of the men."
"You didn't even want them along," Cordyan said.