In the end, it was Adrys who decided their course of action for them. While watching the exchange between Bredeth and the elf, Majandra saw the merchant’s son move swiftly toward one of the guards. Grabbing the long pole from the woman’s grasp, he lifted it easily and thrust one end into the center of the gaping devil mouth. He held it there for a few moments, before quickly withdrawing it.
A gasp of astonishment rippled through the company, for the section of the pole that had entered the black circular hole had simply disappeared. Moving to examine the pole herself, Majandra found that the break was completely clean. It was as if the missing section had never existed at all. Such was the twisted fate for anyone who had thought to explore the area beyond the hole. The bard breathed deeply, trying to control her rapidly beating heart in the face of the death they had so narrowly avoided. All of them. Had Adrys not used the pole to check the safety of the circular passage, they might all have been killed. Gone without a single trace. And Nyrond, the noble kingdom of her birth, might never be saved from the rot that was eating it from within.
She looked at the boy once again. Several of the guards were clapping him companionably on the shoulders, acknowledging the actions that had just saved their lives. Even Kaerion knelt before the lad and thanked him. Instead of showing the embarrassment that Majandra would expect from a boy his age, Adrys merely accepted the congratulations with a brief nod of his head and a wan smile. There was more to this merchant’s son than met the eye, she thought, and vowed to keep a closer eye on their newest member.
Decided clearly on their course of action, Majandra and her companions gathered before the mist-filled archway. Absently, she noted that both Gerwyth and Kaerion had their weapons drawn and had asked Landra to position guards at the party’s back. With everything that had happened to them since they entered the tomb, the bard realized she had forgotten about the potential danger from any creatures that had made the lost corridors of stone their home during the many years since Acererak’s minions had constructed his resting place. She was glad that her companions had the presence of mind to keep watch. Perhaps Phathas was right. Maybe their commitment and their strength would prevail over the ancient evil lurking within these halls.
Once again, the wizened mage stood in front of the group. This time, however, he raised both hands, fingers slightly curled, in front of his eyes and spoke the words of power. When he was finished, the base stones on the left and right of the arch pulsed with a yellow and orange light, while the keystone within the archway flickered with a blue incandescence.
Majandra watched as the mage stood before the archway in silence, studying the mystic construction with eyes that had always seen far and deeply. “There is strong magic woven into the very heart of this stone,” he said. “I believe that the arch itself functions as a teleportation device. The stones that are glowing are part of a key that will change the coordinates of the target area.”
“Knowing what we have experienced so far,” Vaxor said, “I would wager that the arch is currently set to send whoever walks through it to a particularly deadly location. The trick will be unlocking the right sequence for a safe journey.”
“Who should attempt the sequence?” Gerwyth asked. “There could be further traps built into the arch that Phathas hasn’t detected.”
It only took a few moments for Majandra to make her decision. “I will,” she said with all of the confidence she could muster. “I have had some instruction in the ways of magic.” The bard smiled as she looked at Phathas. “And, if there are any physical traps—well, I have some experience dealing with those as well.”
This last she said with a great deal of nonchalance, hoping to slip that bit of information by her companions, who would no doubt be surprised by such a revelation.
She failed.
Amid the whispered murmurs of surprise, it was Vaxor whose voice she heard frame the question she had most wanted to avoid. “And how, my dear,” the cleric asked in the most colored of paternal tones, “did you come to possess such an expertise?”
The half-elf blushed, hoping that the pulsating lights of the archway masked her discomfort. “Well,” she said in an even tone, “you don’t think I spent all my time in Rel Mord poring over ancient parchments and rehearsing fragments of old songs, did you? Let’s just say that I had some colorful friends and leave it at that, shall we?”
With that, Majandra withdrew a small pouch of tools from within a hidden fold of her cloak and set about examining the stonework around the archway. A few minutes later, after she had poked and prodded and searched the area on and about the arch, the half-elf turned to the rest of the waiting company. “Seems clear to me,” she said. “I’m heading up.” And with a single note, she tapped into the still-active levitation spell she had cast when examining the rune-inlayed mosaic. Gently, the bard floated up toward the top of the arch. Gingerly, she pressed her palm against the pulsing blue stone and was rewarded as the incandescence solidified. Slowly she returned to the floor and touched the orange and then the yellow pulsing stones. Each in turn burned with a solid light until Majandra was finished.
Nothing happened for a few moments—and then, with a bright burst of light, each of the glowing stones pulsed once again.
“I sense no change within the magical construct,” Phathas said.
Majandra acknowledged the wizard’s comment with a sigh of frustration and then quickly tried a new sequence. Again, nothing happened. Determined to uncover the correct order with the least amount of time wasted, she kept trying. It wasn’t until her last attempt, when Majandra touched the yellow, blue, and orange stones in that order that the arch emitted a single sharp sound. Within seconds, the swirling mist faded, until Majandra could see a passageway heading off into darkness.
There was a collective sigh, as if the entire company had been holding its breath, waiting to see the outcome of her attempts. She turned and was rewarded by the mage’s beaming smile. “Well done, my child,” Phathas said, and she could hear the pride evident in his thin voice.
With the path clear ahead of them, the company resumed its former marching order and continued their march. The half-elf’s inability to see anything ahead of her should have offered a warning. However, flushed with her recent success, Majandra wasn’t paying much attention. She could do no more than scream when, with a sudden, deep lurching motion, she felt first the floor, then the walls, and soon the entire tomb itself fall away from her, replaced by a blackness so impenetrable that she knew it had no end.
20
Kaerion felt a moment of disorientation as the darkness receded. The bard’s scream had offered him a few seconds of warning before the complete and total annihilation of light, and so he was not caught in total surprise. As the spinning in his head gradually receded, he blinked, trying to make sense of what his eyes were showing him. The long hall had disappeared, and now the members of the expedition were crammed into a small room, holding their heads as if each nursed one of the hangovers that he had woken up with every morning for more than ten years. Wherever they were, the teleporting arch had clearly worked as designed.
He cast another glance over his companions. Satisfied that no one had suffered any permanent harm, Kaerion gave his surroundings a more thorough search. The room itself was no more than ten feet wide and, judging by the way Vaxor’s pulsing light reached from end to end, it was less than twenty feet long. In the center of the room, glaring at him with an expression of hatred locked in solid stone, stood an imposing statue of a gargoyle. Though startled enough to draw his sword at first sight of the creature, Kaerion’s heart settled as his eyes registered that one of the monster’s four gruesomely muscled arms lay on the floor at its clawed feet.