Up into the tower they climbed. At each landing they stopped and broke down the doors facing each other across the tattered woven rugs that were the only splash of color in the gray stone of the tower’s interior. The rooms had once, perhaps, been sentry posts or firing positions for archers, storage areas or maid’s quarters. They were small, furnished only with ruins, their slitted windows looking out into the dizzying inverted outside world. On the sixth landing, Biri-Daar held up a hand. “Kithri,” she said. “Up one floor and back, quickly.”
Kithri could move like smoke. She was back within a minute, but even that minute was long enough for the rest of them to grow edgy and over-watchful, certain that something had happened to her and that they were waiting for an onrushing doom.
Then Kithri reappeared. “Next floor opens onto a bridge,” she said. “It passes over the courtyard inside the central keep to a rooftop garden. If you go the other way on the bridge, it connects all of the towers-just like Lucan thought from down below.”
Biri-Daar nodded. “That garden is where the Road-builder, when he was human, was known to study and walk. Or so the stories would have it. If he has become a lich, he will be there or he will be inside the chambers that adjoin it. From here, we must act as if he will attack at any moment.”
They assumed their battle order, altered with the addition of Obek, and ascended that last floor, coming out onto the open stone bridge that arched from the tower to the Road-builder’s garden. “Don’t look up,” Biri-Daar said.
“Or down,” Lucan added. Obek humored him with a dry chuckle.
Remy heeded neither injunction. He had never been afraid of heights, or of hanging upside down, and the sheer displaced wonder of the Inverted Keep kept drawing his attention. He looked down, and there were stars beyond the walls of the keep; the broken stone bridge protruding from its main portcullis gate obscured a fingernail moon, ghostly in the afternoon sky. He looked up, and there was the thunder of the Whitefall, in fierce rapids above them, canyon walls descending red and gray to the highland where the Road-builder’s Tomb sat below the keyhole at the end of the Crow Road. Remy could see the ridge where they had camped, and where Obek had waited for them to go into the Tomb and then followed when they were far enough ahead that the Road-builder’s crew had had the time to do their repairs.
The tiefling walked at Remy’s right. He too seemed to be enjoying the view. “I wonder how far one would have to jump before down would be down again,” he said, and tapped Remy with an elbow. “Eh?”
“I was wondering the same thing downstairs,” Remy said. Up this high, he wasn’t quite as keen to discover the answer.
Ahead of them, the bridge peaked and then began its descent toward the garden. In another hundred yards they would have their answers about the Road-builder, one way or another. Keverel whispered a blessing of strength and fortitude over them. Remy felt the strength of the cleric’s belief wash through him, invigorating his limbs and focusing his mind. There would be battle and there would be victory. They started their descent to the garden.
As they approached, they began to see details. The garden was a riot of undead plant life and bizarre hybrids, fruits that looked like faces and flowers that dripped blood or gave off faint sparks when a breeze pushed them too close together. “I wouldn’t touch anything in there if you can avoid it,” Lucan said.
Kithri chuckled. “You don’t need to be a ranger to see that.”
The walls around the roof garden were as high as a man. Built along one of them was a long greenhouse with an enclosed stone structure set into a corner of the wall. Smoke began to curl from Biri-Daar’s nostrils. Lucan, bringing up the party’s rear with Paelias, nocked an arrow. “I hear something down there,” he said. “More than just the wind in the plants.”
As she set foot on the gravel garden path, Biri-Daar clashed her sword on her shield. “Road-builder!” she cried out. “I, Biri-Daar, paladin of Bahamut and dragonborn of Karga Kul, call on you to come out and render unto the Knights of Kul what is rightfully ours!”
Her voice echoed in the space between the walls and up into the earth-vaulted sky above. When the echoes had died away, there was a dragonborn standing before them. None of them had seen him approach. “Biri-Daar,” he said.
She nodded. “Moula. I am here for the quill.”
The dragonborn she had called Moula stood a head taller than Biri-Daar and wore armor of lacquered indigo with the totems of the Knights of Kul etched on his shield and helm. Noting this, Biri-Daar said, “And I am also here to tell you that you are no longer welcome in Karga Kul. Exile is one possibility. If I must kill you to recover the quill, however…” She clashed sword and shield again. “I confess to my god that I might take pleasure in such a killing.”
“Careful, paladin. If you take pleasure in killing, you won’t be a paladin for long.” Moula set his sword down and tightened the straps of his shield over his forearm. “To the winner the quill,” he said, picking up his sword again.
“Perhaps I might have an opinion on that topic,” came another voice, dry and sibilant. The Road-builder emerged through a glass door in the greenhouse, closing it carefully behind him. Once he had been a strong man, and handsome. But in his undeath, rich rags draped and swept around his skeletal frame, and an inhuman light shone from the empty sockets of his skull.
“It is rare to find a group of adventurers clever and hardy enough to brave my tomb and my keep,” he said. “Welcome. Although I fear that I must not let you pass on.” He gestured around the garden, and Remy, following the gesture, saw that the garden beds were nourished by the bones of previous would-be heroes.
“Remy of Avankil,” the Road-builder said. “Philomen did not tell me to expect you.”
The vizier’s name in the lich king’s mouth struck a chill in Remy’s spine. It was the confirmation of everything Biri-Daar and Keverel had been telling him from the beginning. Instinctively Remy’s hand dropped to the pouch containing the vizier’s box, as though the Road-builder might try to pickpocket him. The Road-builder laughed. “Fear not, boy,” he said. “I will not need to take it from you. Soon enough, you will offer it to me.”
“You will never touch it,” Remy said.
The Road-builder laughed again, the sound like two stones scraping against each other. “Delightful,” he said. “One forgets so easily the bravado of the living.”
Moula laughed at that, mimicking his master. “Dog,” Biri-Daar said. “Slave of Tiamat. You turn your back on the Order.”
“I realize the destiny the Order has approached since the Solstice War,” Moula said. “Tiamat would yet accept your service, I think; though she would prefer to accept your soul.”
“Ah, the Solstice War,” said the Road-builder. “I remember it with some fondness. O hardy adventurers, you do realize that you fight the latest battle in a war that has never really ended. It was the sorcerers of Arkhosia who first sealed the portal to the Abyss that opened beneath Karga Kul, halting the advance of the demons and devils who entered into a bargain with Bael Turath… and here, today, the fate of that city will be decided. Doubt it not. You are formidable, adventurers. But even if you might survive me, you cannot survive the weight of empires. The ghosts of Arkhosia and Bael Turath still contend for the mastery of this world… and through them, the Knights of Kul came to their crisis at Iban Ja’s bridge, no? Now here we have Moula and Biri-Daar, ready to fight on for the right to claim the soul of the Order.”
Returning his attention to Remy, the Road-builder held out a hand. “Don’t,” Keverel said before the lich could speak.
“Cleric, I will have it one way or another.” The Road-builder pointed out and up, toward his greatest work. “If I could make that, do you imagine you can oppose my will now?”