He-or she-had been a dwarf. Whoever it was had died some time ago, for there wasn’t a scrap of flesh or beard clinging to the bone.
If we didn’t get moving, we’d wind up just like him.
I placed the skull on top of one of the piles of gourds while Gamlin and Farrik were busy tying their packs shut. They glanced at it, but didn’t say anything. They were too busy grunting under the load in their packs. I wondered how they’d be able to climb.
They managed it somehow, sweating under the strain. I had a harder time of it. Even without a pack, I spent my climb gritting my teeth at the pain of my wounded leg and trying not to faint.
At the top, we had to cut our way through. Having no pack to impede me, I clambered over the edge first, squeezing through what opening there was. Behind me, Gamlin and Farrik struggled, their bulging packs caught on the lattice of fungus. I looked down the corridor that led out-and saw that it was completely plugged. We were trapped!
I was starting to shout this to Gamlin and Farrik when something strange happened. The fungus that plugged the corridor quivered, then suddenly died back, leaving a gap.
Out of it stepped a drow. Black-skinned, gaunt-faced, she stared down at me with all the solemnity of a Deep Lord about to make a judgment.
I struggled to my feet, convinced for the second time that day that I was about to die. My mace was on my belt; I’d needed both hands for the climb. There was no way I’d undo the lashings in time.
Instead of attacking, however, she beckoned me forward. So startling was it, I took a step back, nearly going over the edge.
Behind me, I could hear Gamlin and Farrik sawing their way through the fungus. Getting out with their backpacks on was more important, it seemed, than hastening to my aid. Or maybe they hadn’t spotted the drow yet.
I noticed that she carried no weapons, wore no armor. And she’d still made no move to harm me. Nor did she look exactly as a drow should. Drow women are tall, but this one somehow seemed stretched thin, oddly jointed. Her white hair stood out from her head like old straw, but her hands disturbed me most. They were all wrong: only three fingers, the outer two more like hooks, the middle one straight, and all tipped with claws.
I suddenly realized what she must be. Not a drow at all. A soul, taken at the moment of death, kept warm for days or years or centuries in Bane’s chill embrace, and spawned in a new form that was wholly unlike whatever body it had inhabited before.
She nodded, as if she’d heard my thoughts. “Will you help me, Daffyd? Lay at least part of me to rest?”
I asked how she knew my name. It was one I’d left behind when I departed the Rift. Even Gamlin and Farrik didn’t know it.
She touched her chest with a claw. “Ironstar,” she whispered. Then she pointed at me. “Ironstar.”
I shivered as I realized we must have been fated to meet. Just like me, she’d been… reforged. But not by Moradin. Instead she’d been cast in the form of a race any dwarf would attack on sight.
Bane had played an even crueler joke on her than Vergadain had on me.
“Will you help me?” she repeated.
I wet my lips. Helping her would mean climbing back down that shaft. If it had been Gamlin’s or Farrik’s body lying at the bottom of it, I wouldn’t have given it a moment’s thought. But she was a stranger to me.
I stared at the revenant, wondering what kind of person she’d been as a dwarf. Had there been kin who’d mourned her, or had she been a clanless outlaw? An honest person or a rogue? Then I realized that I might as well ask the same questions of myself.
Whatever she’d been, it didn’t matter. Dwarves take care of their own.
“You deserve better,” I said. “I’ll see that you get it. By Moradin’s beard, I swear I’ll see your skull laid properly to rest.”
Her mouth stretched to a thin smile. She turned and pressed on a section of the wall. A hidden door swung open. Behind it was a staircase, leading up. The air that rushed from it smelled sweet. It was obviously a way back to the surface. One we’d missed on our way in.
I asked if she was going to lead us out.
She shook her head. “Not until the rest of my bones are recovered can I rest,” she told me. “The orcs scattered them far and wide when Delzoun fell-a final insult to my people. But one day I will find them.”
“Delzoun!” I repeated, incredulous. “But that was… How long have you been searching?”
“Too long,” she said wearily. “And yet, not long enough. The dwarf body has so many bones…” Her words trailed off in a sigh.
Behind me, I heard a shout of triumph. I turned and saw that Gamlin and Farrik had hacked their way through. If they saw me talking to a “drow,” Farrik’s suspicions would be rekindled. But I had to know one thing more. “Who-”
Rook was gone. Already, the hole she’d parted in the fungus was closing.
Gamlin and Farrik struggled up over the edge with their packs and shouted in dismay when they saw the corridor blocked. I showed them the staircase up, and told them it was our way out. They were so relieved they didn’t even ask how I knew. Then I told them what I needed to do: recover the skull, take it to a priest, and give it the last rites.
They thought I was joking. Gamlin actually guffawed. Then they realized I was serious.
Gamlin said there wasn’t time. Farrik said the dead dwarf was no clan of his. When I said the skull had belonged to an Ironstar and that it was our duty, he slid a look at Gamlin. Both rolled their eyes.
They turned toward the staircase, as if there was nothing more to say.
Fine, I told them. They could go on ahead, but I was going back for the skull. I’d catch up to them later, and collect my share then.
I see by your look you can guess what came next. I never did see either of them again. Not during that long, painful climb back up the stairs to the surface, nor back at the town we’d set out from. I waited there for tendays, but they never came.
Maybe someday, I’ll see them again, but if I don’t, it doesn’t really matter. That’s what Moradin’s trying to teach me in this life, you see-to choose my shield brothers more carefully. Or something like that.
Well now. Would you look at that? My glass is dry again. Could you
…?
No?
That’s all right. My tale is done.
I know what you’re thinking. You’ll be wondering, about now, why I would tell you all about a fortune in rock gourds that’s just lying there for the taking. Short answer: it doesn’t matter anymore. Gamlin and Farrik will likely try to go back to recover them-assuming they haven’t tried already, which might explain what happened to them. Without Rook’s help it will be impossible. With each step I took up those stairs toward the surface, Araumycos followed. By the time I reached the top, the staircase was plugged solid. Anyone who finds it now will set off puffballs every step of the way.
A revenant isn’t bothered by any of that, of course. And Rook, of course, has some way of making Araumycos die back. Wherever it has, that’s where you’ll find her. If you promise to bring whichever of her bones are there to a dwarf priest, and see that they’re given the last rites-or maybe it’s whichever of his bones; I never did get the chance to ask-Rook will likely guide you to wherever it is you need to go.
All I ask is that, if you do find Rook, you put in a good word for me. Tell her I laid her skull to rest, and had a priest say the proper words over the pyre. Ask her, on my behalf, if she’d mind fetching me a rock gourd or two from that cache, in return for me sending her way someone else who’ll help.
What’s that? The name Rook? Oh, it’s just a name I gave her. Those curved, black fingers of hers, with their claws, reminded me of a rook’s toes. I don’t know what her real name is-was. I’ll bet she doesn’t know, either. That’s the way revenants are, you see. A little vague on the details of their past lives. Kind of like me.
I see you getting to your feet. You’re going? So soon? No more questions?