"What about the drow woman?" Baylee played his lantern over the dead scattered in the tunnel.
"We haven't seen her," Cordyan answered.
"She's part of this."
"Well, she's not here now."
"Her path may yet lie ahead of us," Cthulad said.
The ground shook again, more forcibly this time, knocking them all from their feet. The duration of the tremors lasted longer this time as well. Rocks and debris rained down from overhead, banging painfully into Baylee.
"The hook horrors have broken through the wall!" someone shouted from behind.
"Lead or get out of my way," Cordyan yelled. Lantern light played across her blood-stained face.
"A moment," Baylee responded. He played the lantern over the dead drow again. "They're not carrying packs, nor any extra rations."
"They're from somewhere near," Cthulad agreed. "The question is, though, are these all of them?"
Baylee shook his head. "The female wasn't with them. There's something else afoot in these twisted tunnels." He went forward, charging into the darkness. Behind him, he could hear the chittering and clacking of the hook horrors.
Krystarn felt a stab of fear as she rounded the final corner and came face to face with the hobgoblin horde. Despite the fear she had put into Chomack, she knew there was the possibility that the hobgoblin chieftain could have figured to put her powers to the test. In a way, it was humorous, her gifting Chomack with the same skill at duplicity as she was currently employing against Shallowsoul.
The hobgoblins showed her only fear and deference. They were a ragged, motley bunch, covered with dust from the swirling debris that ran through the caverns. Chomack strode out of the waiting shadows.
"Sorceress," the hobgoblin chieftain acknowledged.
Krystarn nodded at him. "Are your warriors ready, Chieftain Chomack?"
"Aye."
The drow elf took the lead, guiding the large party through the labyrinthine mazes of tunnels that led up to the partially collapsed structure where she kept her rooms. In minutes, they were at the wall where Shallowsoul had always opened the dimensional door.
No lights burned in the hallway. If it hadn't been for Krystarn's own infravision and that of the hobgoblins, she knew she wouldn't have been able to see a thing. Broken rock from the ceiling overhead covered the floor. She made her way through it carefully.
Halting at the dead end, she brought out the crystal ball. She chanted, summoning up her spell energy, and praying to Lloth as she focused the forces she used through the crystal ball. The crystal ball was already in tune with the magic the lich was using. She knew how to cast a dimension door, but casting one into the library was much harder. For one, she didn't know exactly where it was in the physical world even though she'd been through it a number of times. And for another, she felt the actual distance it was from the dead-end wall was much further than she could transfer herself using her own spell.
The hobgoblins fell into line behind her at Chomack's order. Their bared weapons clinked against their armor.
Perspiration covered Krystarn's face as she locked into the exchange of energies. A headache throbbed at her temples. She pushed herself past the pain, thinking of the library only, of all the power that would be within her grasp in the next few minutes.
Through her slitted eyelashes, she saw the wall start to glow. At first it was a patch no bigger than the end of her finger, but quickly spread until she couldn't cover it with both hands. And it kept growing as the dimensional door swung open wider.
26
The trail came to an end in a crypt.
Be careful, Xuxa warned as she fluttered to a wall and perched upside down from the rough, craggy surface.
Baylee played his lantern over the crypt, lighting tumbled stone caskets thrown across the interior of the smashed building. The roof was long gone, but the cavern above had sunk to within a few feet, giving it the appearance that a roof still existed. Pieces of half a dozen skeletons lay strewn across the floor, but none of them tried to reassemble themselves or grab for weapons, as Baylee more than half expected.
"Which way?" Ciwa Cthulad asked from behind him.
"The map shows that the trail runs west," Baylee responded. "But this crypt wasn't shown."
"It sank from above," Cordyan said.
"Yes," Baylee replied. The lantern light broke against the cracked back wall. Going through it would still have constituted something of an engineering miracle.
"The drow must not have come this way," Cthulad said.
Baylee aimed the lantern at the plain of smooth dust and dirt in front of the crypt. "If they did, any footprints they might have left have been erased or covered over."
"Perhaps there's a way around," Calebaan said.
Baylee pulled back out of the crypt and went around to the left of the building. A narrow space between the building and the one next to it loomed in a slice of darkness. He shoved the lantern forward, playing it over the jumble of rock waiting ahead of him. The incline went down, deeper into the series of underground caverns. Beneath the rubble, he spotted the set of stone-carved steps that had been depicted on the map. They sat in the narrow mouth of a tunnel that continued west.
"Here," he said.
"Get a man on that crypt door," Cordyan ordered one of her guardsmen. "If anything moves behind us, I want to know about it."
The hook horrors had given up the chase a few minutes before, after one of them had been doused in oil and set afire. And one of the tunnels the party had traveled through had been too narrow for the large creatures to get through. However, the hook horrors had managed to locate one of the drow warriors trying to follow the Waterdhavian unit.
Baylee let his long sword guide the way, holding the lantern up. He started down the stone steps, then the next series of quakes shook the ground. Blocks of stone tumbled from overhead.
"Shields up!" Cordyan screamed. She extended her shield over Baylee and herself as the debris poured down.
Baylee stayed under the proffered shelter as the stone battered against the shield. He held his left arm up and Xuxa fluttered down to hang from it. The quake this time lasted longer than the other times.
"They're getting worse," Cthulad said. Rock pounded against his upraised shield with deafening thuds.
Gradually, the deluge stopped. Baylee pushed himself out from under Cordyan's shield and went forward. Other buildings lay in a tumbled-down mess before him. He held the lantern high and went quickly. Being between the buildings when the next quake hit was going to be dangerous. Any of them looked capable of crumbling down and doing serious harm to anyone under them. Baylee found the end of the steps and paused on the last one. "What are you stopping for?" Cordyan asked. The ranger took a brush from the gnomish work armor. He worked at the bottom stone step. "There's supposed to be a trip switch here somewhere."
"A trip switch for what?" Cordyan knelt and helped him look along the step.
"A doorway of some kind." Baylee cleaned the front of the step with the brush, below the top surface.
"The trail goes on beyond," the civilar pointed out.
"But it doesn't go where we want to go." Baylee moved his lantern, directing the light over the stone step. He barely made out the crevice that ran along the front of the step, halfway down. "Please hold this."
Cordyan took the lantern and kept the light on the step.
Baylee released his long sword, keeping it beside him, and took a miniature pry bar from one of the pockets in the gnomish leathers. He slipped the end into the crevice and started adding pressure. The crevice was artificed so carefully, he didn't know if he would have seen it without all the damage the quakes had done. After a moment, a thin sheeting of stone that ran the length of the step came loose in his hand. More dust had filtered through, covering the surface beneath. He put the pry bar away and used the brush again to reveal eight symbols inscribed in the stone, covering squares of stone that Baylee believed to be attached to counterweights.