Joen shot me a mischievous glance and tore off into a shadowy alley.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” I said as we crouched in a narrow alley next to a pile of old wash buckets. We had spent most of the day crisscrossing the city, barely ahead of one group of city watchmen after another.
“That’s not all,” Joen replied, pulling a small object from her pocket. She flipped the magical lens into the air, caught it, and pocketed it again.
“You are a pirate after all,” I said. “They’re going to track us down for that, if not for the map.”
“We’ll be long gone before she even bothers to check on it,” Joen answered.
“Will we?”
“Anauroch isn’t that far from here, you know? A month, at the worst.”
“To Twinspire?” I asked. “That’s where the gods chose the Sentinels, right? Maybe we can find their names there.”
“Oi, to Twinspire!” Joen said happily.
“Not so fast,” said a man standing in the shadows nearby. “Twinspire is long buried, and the world is better off because of it.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Chrysaor emerged from the shadows, his blue skin shining in the sun, his hair a bit longer than I remembered.
“You’ve been following us all this time?” Joen asked.
Chrysaor shrugged. “I didn’t have to follow you. I simply waited for you to take the next logical step on your journey and to come here.”
“You wasted a year just waiting?” I asked.
“A year spent in Silverymoon is hardly wasted,” Chrysaor countered. “Trust me, my boy, I have my own ways of keeping busy.”
“Well, you should spend another here, then,” Joen said. “You ain’t coming with us.”
“You shouldn’t be going at all, young lady,” he replied. “It’s far too dangerous, especially for you.”
“I can handle myself.”
“I’ve no doubt you can fight. But it’s still unwise.”
“And for me? Is it too dangerous for me?” I asked.
Chrysaor laughed. “You forget my purpose, boy. If you go to Twinspire, perhaps you further your quest to destroy the stone, or perhaps you fall and the artifact is lost for a time. Either way, I gain.”
“If killing me would benefit you, why haven’t you tried it yet?”
Chrysaor shrugged and threw me a crooked smile.
“I’m with Joen on this one,” I said. “You stay here, we leave, we never see you again.”
“If you so wish,” he said. “But you’ll never find Twinspire without me.”
“Oi, that tune’s getting old.”
I patted the map on my hip. “We’ll find it.”
“How old is that map?” he asked. “And how detailed? The world is not static, you know. Things changed over the eons. Twinspire is long since gone. And besides, you know there are beings with a vested interest in the stones not being destroyed.”
“You mean the Sentinels,” I answered.
Chrysaor nodded. “Powerful beings, those Sentinels. Ages old. And you want to kill them.”
“No,” I said. “I just want to be rid of the stone.”
“Which will kill them, which they do not want. So you think they’d let you get any closer to your goal? Even now, they surely have eyes upon you.”
Of course I knew he was right, that cultists of Beshaba at least had already confronted us, were spying on us.
“Oi, don’t listen to him,” Joen said, turning to me. “And don’t trust him.”
“I don’t,” I replied. “And I don’t believe him, that we can’t find it. But I also don’t see the harm in taking him.”
“He just said he wants you dead, didn’t he?”
“But he’s had plenty of opportunities and never tried to kill me,” I answered.
“The boy speaks wisely,” Chrysaor cut in.
“Quiet,” Joen and I both answered at the same time.
“Oi, it’s your quest, it’s your decision,” Joen said.
I pondered a moment, then said to Chrysaor, “As before, you walk ahead, you don’t share our camp, and you don’t share our food.”
“Of course,” the blue pirate said with a bow.
“Then let’s fetch our horse and be off.”
“To Twinspire,” Chrysaor said, and I thought I caught a hint of excitement in his voice.
“To Twinspire,” Joen echoed, her tone remarkably similar to that of her most hated enemy.
“
“I wonder whose campsite this is,” Joen said, stirring some ash with one of her daggers.
Chrysaor started to say, “It probably belongs to—”
“Oi, I wasn’t talkin’ to you, eh?” Joen interrupted.
The pirate smiled. “Of course not,” he said. He bowed low, turned, and walked out of the campsite. But he took only a few steps—just a token gesture—before he stopped and turned to face us again. He still wore that smug, knowing grin. I rolled my eyes. The genasi fully expected we’d be asking his opinion, and soon.
This abandoned campsite was the first sign of life we’d seen since we entered the desert two days ago. And it was hardly a sign: blowing sand had covered most of it. Any bedroll that had been here was long since gone. The only evidence that anyone had ever been there was the simple fire pit lined with small stones and filled with ash.
“Oi, Maimun. I asked you a question, eh?”
“I have no idea,” I replied.
“The ash is still warm,” she said, touching the surface with her hand. “I’d say that’s a good sign, you know.”
“Or it’s just the sun,” I said.
Our journey had taken us only nine days, and another three after we’d reached the desert, but in those twelve days it seemed the season had shifted. It was still spring, technically, but summer was a mere month away. And here in the desert, the warm season seemed to start sooner.
I walked a quick perimeter. The campsite lay in a low trough between two towering dunes of sand, so I wanted to get a good view of the surrounding land from the crest of those dunes. There were wicked things in wild areas like Anauroch, and we’d be easy ambush targets here should anything be hunting.
“You shouldn’t worry,” Chrysaor said, seeing me walking my path. “Desert hunters rest in the day and hunt at night. You’ve another seven hours or so before you need to worry.”
“We, you mean,” I said.
“But I’m not part of this little troupe, am I?”
“No, but I doubt a desert hunter will know that—or care either.”
Chrysaor laughed. “How many times must I escape from you before you realize I’m in no danger?” he said.
“As I recall,” I answered, “I escaped from you first.”
Chrysaor’s smile did not diminish. “You did at that. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t a particular spellcaster come to your rescue, though? And tell me, where is your wizard friend now, and how will he rescue you out here?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I replied, “but didn’t you escape by jumping in the water and swimming away? I mean, you are a creature of elemental water, aren’t you? So tell me, where is your ocean now, and how will it help you escape out here?”
“Oi,” Joen called from the fire pit. “I think I found something!”
Chrysaor and I dropped our little argument and trotted over to join her. “What is it?” the genasi asked.
Joen scowled at him and didn’t answer.
I rolled my eyes, exaggerating the motion, making sure she’d see it clearly. “What is it?” I asked.
She held up her hand—and in it lay a piece of crumpled, charred parchment. “It looks like the same parchment as the ones in the library,” she said. “Maybe the missing scroll?”
“Well now,” the genasi said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “wouldn’t that be a marvelous coincidence, happening upon something like that way out here, just by virtue of luck?”
Ignoring the genasi, I took the
parchment from Joen and fumbled open my pack, withdrawing the map we’d taken from Silverymoon. I held up the two pieces together.
“Doesn’t look the same,” I said.
“Well, one’s all burned, the other ain’t,” Joen replied.
Chrysaor coughed loudly and cleared his throat. We ignored him and continued to examine the maps, but he continued to clear his throat and fidget.
“What?” Joen and I both said at the same time.
Chrysaor said nothing, just pointed to the ground at his feet. He made a brushing motion, then dropped his foot to the ground. Unexpectedly, it landed with a loud clomp.
“So you found a rock,” Joen said, her voice tinged with anger. She didn’t budge as I moved to investigate.
“It’s not a rock,” I said, reaching Chrysaor.
The stone beneath his feet was solid. I dropped to my knees and began to clear sand, soon finding the edges, about three feet apart in any direction. The stone was a rough square.
“It’s a paving stone,” Chrysaor said, “set by some ancient hand.”
“Oi, if it’s a road, where’re the other stones?” Joen asked.
I scraped my hand out a foot or so from the side of this first stone and hit something solid. “Right here,” I said.
I stood, clomping my boots against the ground as I walked. They were softer than Chrysaor’s, so the sound was far less satisfying, but I could definitely feel the solid surface beneath my feet.
“Looks like it heads this way,” I said, walking along the trough between the sand dunes. With each step, I stomped my foot down, and each time I felt it connect with stone.
The wind picked up, swirling the sand around. The sand obscured my vision, but somehow, with everything slightly hazy, the stones became clearer, the path more obvious. I broke into a light jog, following the path as it cut a wide turn around a great mound of sand.
Then, in the distance, I saw something strange—it was part of the landscape, but not natural. It was some sort of rock formation, I supposed, a column reaching up from the desert. Though it was largely obscured by the blowing sand, it looked even more out of focus, like it wouldn’t be seen clearly even on the clearest day.
I quickened my pace, covering the last hundred yards at a dead sprint. At that speed, I couldn’t feel the paving stones beneath my feet, but somehow I knew my path followed the ancient road. Joen and Chrysaor couldn’t keep up, and I could hear Joen calling out from behind me, though I couldn’t make out the words.
When at last I reached the object, I understood why I couldn’t clearly make out its shape. It was not, as I had thought, a pillar of stone. It was two pillars, side by side. From the angle I approached them from, they were lined up one after the other so they seemed to shift relative to each other. That, combined with the wind-driven sand …
“What happened to the sand?” I asked no one in particular.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the sandstorm vanished. Once again, the afternoon sun beat down on my head and shoulders, hot and oppressive. I tried to recall where in my run the wind had died. I was sure it had happened before I’d reached the pillars, but I couldn’t quite remember. I hadn’t been paying attention to anything except my goal during that sprint.
“Oi, you’re standing on it,” Joen said, finally catching up to me. She was a bit out of breath. Chrysaor soon followed, jogging lightly.
“You know what I meant,” I said. I walked around the first pillar, studying it closely. It was a simple column, perhaps eight feet tall and two feet across, carved, obviously ancient, but not eroded in the least. Runes and sigils traced over the perfectly smooth white surface, some carved, some written in a deep red ink that also had not faded despite the apparent age of the structure.
“Ah,” Chrysaor said from behind me, “here we are, drawn as if by the power of the Goddess of Luck herself—oh, ah, yes …” He ended with a smug chuckle and I could feel Joen staring daggers at him.
I looked at the second pillar. It appeared nearly identical to the first, though the runes were different. And unlike the first, the second column had a rope tied around it. The rope stretched away from the pillar at a steep angle, diving into the sand below, completely taut, as if it were attached to the ground—or attached to something buried beneath the ground.
“Oi, what are you doing?” Joen said, staring at me curiously.
I pointed to the rope. “I wonder where that goes,” I said.
Joen’s eyes widened in surprise. She ran over to the rope and reached out with trembling hands, not daring to touch it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, joining her at the second pillar.
“Have you seen anything like this?” she asked, breathless.
“What, like a rope? Yes, I have, on more than one occasion.”
She gave me a sour look. “You know what I meant,” she said.
“I really don’t,” I replied, but she ignored me.
She swept her hand in an arc, about even with the noose of the rope, where it was tied around the pillar. She struck the pillar and she withdrew her hand, nearly falling over backward.
“It’s tied to something!” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s tied to that big pillar.”
“What pillar?” she asked.
“You can see it?” Chrysaor asked me. “Interesting, though not unexpected.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t I be able to see it?”
“She what?” asked Joen.
“Obviously not for the reason she can’t see it,” he said.
“Please, be more vague.”
“There are usually only four beings on this plane of existence who can see the pillars at the gate to Twinspire,” he said.
“Usually?”
“Well, certain creatures who aren’t from this plane could see it, I’m sure—demons, devils, archons, beings of that nature—but only four who are native.”
“Oi, the bearers and the Sentinels, eh?” Joen asked.
Chrysaor nodded.
“So what do the carvings say?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Chrysaor answered. “I can’t see it.” His answer seemed disingenuous. I figured he was lying.
Joen pulled a small object from one of her many pockets. “I’m still not sure what you two are talking about, but I suppose you’ll just have to read it yourself, then,” she said. She held up the small glass lens she’d taken from the library at Silverymoon.
“Resourceful,” Chrysaor said as Joen handed me the lens.
“Thank you,” Joen said, beaming. Then she apparently realized who gave her the compliment, and her face dropped into a scowl.
I held the lens up to my eye, peering at the carving. “ ‘Tymora, guide my way, guide my feet, that I may find fortune even when I stumble,’ ” I read aloud. “It’s a prayer to Tymora, all of it.”
“All of it?” Chrysaor said. “All to Tymora, none to Beshaba? This place is sacred for both of them.”
“Oh, right,” I said, turning around. “There’s another pillar.”
“Nice of you to share that information,” Chrysaor said with a grimace.
“Oi, get off your high horse,” Joen said. “You knew about this place, eh? And you didn’t show it to us, did you?”
“I offered, and you told me to be quiet,” the genasi reminded her.
Joen scoffed, waving her hand dismissively at him.
“It’s a prayer to Beshaba, all right,” I cut in. “Really harsh too. ‘May the road of my enemies be forever full of pitfalls, and spikes, and fire, and pain, and blood, and—’ ”
“Oi, that’s enough,” Joen said. “We get the picture, you know.”
“There’s more,” I said.
“We don’t want to hear it,” she answered.
“No, I mean there’s something else entirely. The prayers are carved in, but there’s some kind of writing in ink as well. But the lens isn’t translating it.”
“What does it read?” Ch
rysaor said. “It could be magical text, unable to be magically translated. But I am quite versed in the various languages of the land.”
Something about the pirate made me nervous just then—more than normally around that unpredictable genasi. He always seemed so detached, as though he didn’t really ever take anything seriously, but now he seemed a bit too keen to know what was written on a pillar consecrated in the name of an evil goddess.
“It reads, ‘Sirlar, geri sekilekegini golgeler,’ ” I said, slowly and carefully enunciating each syllable, though I had a nagging feeling I shouldn’t have.
As soon as I finished, the ground began to violently shake. I fell, and Joen only managed to hold her balance by grabbing the rope. Chrysaor seemed somehow unaffected, swaying as a tree in a windstorm, but in complete control of his body and his balance. I was not surprised.
But I was a bit startled when the ground fell away beneath us.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A single shaft of light penetrated the darkness—diffuse, lost in the swirl of sand, dust, and pulverized stone. The shaft angled in—it was midafternoon above—and cast a dully glowing circle of light on a great wall of stone. Crystals lined the wall, sparkling in the light and reflecting it out into the massive cavern beyond.
It took my eyes many heartbeats to adjust to the dim light, and it took the dust at least as long to settle. I stood on a rough stone floor lightly coated in the dust of ages. As I gained my bearings, it became clear I was in some sort of natural cavern. Three sides made a semicircle more than a hundred feet across, and on the fourth side the floor sloped down into impenetrable blackness.
“We should …,” I started to say. But I realized that I stood alone.
That I stood at all was itself a minor miracle. The hole above, where the ground had fallen out beneath us, was at least fifty feet up. I ran my thumb across the one ring I wore, an enchanted ring I’d been given by my mentor long ago, one of three magical treasures I’d inherited from him. Its magic had slowed my descent and saved my life.
But Joen had no such ring.
“Joen!” I called out in the peculiar voice of terror that comes when sudden relief becomes even more sudden dread.