The only response I heard was my own voice echoing back at me, at once muffled by the sand and somehow amplified by the cavern.
I scrambled around, low to the ground, looking for any sign that she’d fallen in with me. But the cavern was too uneven, the light too dim, and I could make out only the many juts and gullies of the water-carved floor—and one unnatural object.
It was a rope, one end coiled neatly around a stone, the other reaching heavenward.
“She grabbed the rope,” I whispered to myself. “Right before we fell, she grabbed the rope.” I looked up to the ceiling, to the hole. Sure enough, there was a form there, humanoid, descending slowly. “Joen!” I called again.
“Not quite,” Chrysaor answered, coming into view. He beat his wings—his wings?—a few times, circling as he dropped, landing gracefully right beside me. “You are surprising,” he said. “I thought my journey ended, yet you live.”
“Where’s Joen?” I demanded.
“No, that’s not the question you want to ask,” he said. “There is a much more obvious and more important one.”
“What, about those ugly wings?” I was, of course lying. His arms had turned to beautifully feathered white wings, the wings of a great eagle, perhaps. But at that moment, nothing about him could have been beautiful to me. “I don’t care. Where is she?”
Chrysaor laughed at me. “Of course not the wings,” he said. “They’re trivial, if convenient.” He clapped his hands together—or, rather, his wing tips—and the magic faded, the feathered appendages again replaced by blue-skinned arms, sleeveless, with nondescript white leather cords around each wrist. His hands dropped to his hips, and he assumed a pose I was more familiar with in Joen: defiant, even petulant, ready to fight if he didn’t get his way.
I dropped my own hand to the hilt of my sword. “What have you done?” I said.
“The question you should have asked—,” he began.
“Where is she?” I said, interrupting him. I drew my sword slowly from its sheath.
“The question is,” the pirate went on, “did I know what the spell was going to do? Did I lead you into this trap? Is it my fault you’re down here?” He drew his own fine, thin blade from its sheath.
“Tell me where Joen is,” I demanded, advancing a step.
“The answer, of course, is yes, I knew.” He brought his blade up just as I lunged forward. Metal rang against metal, and the genasi skipped back a step, keeping distance between him and me. “Yes, of course it was a trap. And yes, of course it’s all my fault.”
I set myself in an aggressive posture. It was much like the fencer’s stance I’d learned long ago from Perrault, but informed by my training at the Tower of Twilight. This time, I set my right foot—usually my trailing foot—a half step ahead of my left, rather than a half step behind. Still I kept it horizontal to my body while my left foot I kept vertical, facing directly at my enemy. I gripped my blade in both hands, hilt held near my left shoulder, blade extending across my body. If Chrysaor attacked me while I was in this stance, I would be well able to defend, but my mobility would be side-to-side, rather than a retreat. So I would be more able to exploit any holes he left in his own defenses.
But he didn’t attack. He simply stood five or so feet from me, his own blade vertical in front of him, his posture relaxed. “I knew, you see, because I lied,” he said.
“You like hearing the sound of your own voice, don’t you?”
“Yes, I find it rather pleasant.” He chuckled.
I planted all my weight on my forward foot, dropped my right hand from the hilt of my saber, and lunged at him. My right arm swung down behind me and my left foot leaped out ahead, knee bent, with my right leg locked behind me. My sword darted forward, as fast as a lightning bolt, covering that five feet in the blink of an eye. The tip dived straight for Chrysaor’s heart.
His sword flashed across, but he was late on his parry, as I knew he’d be. For the first time, he seemed caught off guard, surprised by the suddenness and viciousness of my attack. He fell back, bending at the waist, back, back, until he was doubled over. My sword grazed along his chest, cutting a few straps on his tunic. His parry finally reached my blade, but with no strength behind it.
I finished my lunge, not trying to redirect my thrust at all. I simply let my graceful movement play itself out, coming to a rest at full extension, my sword pressed firmly against Chrysaor’s chest. He, to his credit, held his balance despite the extraordinarily awkward angle he was bent at. That is, he held his balance until I pressed downward with some force.
Chrysaor, the blue pirate, who had always seemed so in control, fell unceremoniously to the dirt, landing flat on his back.
I stepped up, bringing the tip of my sword down to the hollow of his chest. I stepped on his hand for good measure, and he released his sword, useless at that angle anyway.
“Where,” I repeated, “is Joen?”
“You don’t want—,” he began.
I kicked him in the ribs. Hard. He winced in pain.
“Where?” I asked again.
“She’s still up above,” he said.
“Alive?”
“Unharmed. But trust me—”
I kicked him again. “Never again,” I said.
“You don’t want her to come down here,” he finished anyway.
“She was right about you all along.” I retracted my sword, sheathed it, and collected Chrysaor’s fallen blade. It was not curved like my saber, but was of much finer make, light and balanced. It was far from ideal, surely, but it would do. I lamented briefly the loss of my old sword, the sword Perrault had left me, the magical saber that could burst into flame on command.
“Curious,” Chrysaor said.
“What is?”
“That.” He pointed into the darkness, to where a small point of light shone, a bluish glow. “It seems your way is marked. That, I did not expect.”
“My way may be marked,” I confirmed, “but as I said, I will never trust you again.”
I moved to take the rope, planning to climb to the surface and check on Joen. I slipped Chrysaor’s sword through a loop on my belt, took the rope in both hands, and started to climb.
I’d only gone a few yards, though, when something about the feel of the rope changed. It was suddenly less balanced, less than a perfect line to the surface, to where it was tied off. It swayed a bit, not dangerously, but completely out of my control.
I peered upward through the still-sandy air to the surface. I thought I could make out something moving up there. It was a person climbing down the rope with some speed. Her hair shone golden in the slanting rays of the sun.
“Joen!” I called.
“Oi!” she called back as I started shimmying back down the rope.
“What took you so long?” I asked.
“That blue son of a wharf rat did something to me, eh?” she called. “Tied me up or something.”
I hopped down the last few feet to the stone floor and glared at Chrysaor, who had risen to his feet. “She was bound, magically but gently,” he said in response to my angry look. “And for her own good.”
“Her own good is not for you to decide,” I said.
“Nor you,” he countered.
Joen slid down to join us. “Well, let’s ask me then, eh?” she said. As soon as her feet hit solid ground, her daggers left their sheaths.
“Don’t kill him,” I said.
“Oi, why not?”
I struggled for a good answer. A moment ago, I could have killed him myself, but that was because I thought he’d hurt Joen. She took my hesitation as an invitation, advancing on the genasi.
“Because,” I said at last, “he didn’t kill us.”
“He tied me up,” she reminded.
“He could have killed you.”
“Maybe next time he will, eh?” she asked.
“No,” Chrysaor said, “there won’t be a next time.”
“Because you’ll be dead already,” J
oen said, advancing another step.
“Because my task is complete.”
“Could you be more vague?” I asked. “If you’re working for Elbeth, maybe I could understand why you would bring us to Malchor Harpell, and why you would bring us here. But why would you send me down here and tie Joen up on the surface? Why separate us? Why not just tell us what you really want with me, with the stone, with this place … with whatever it is you really want?”
He laughed. “All that would take some effort. Now, my sword, if you please?”
“I do not please,” I answered. “Consider it the price of your life.”
“Very well,” he said. He bowed low, first to me, then to Joen, who looked as if she were about to charge the last few feet and stab him midbow. Then he clapped his hands together three times in rapid succession. With a dazzling white flash, his arms turned into wings.
“You should have stayed above,” he said to Joen. “I’m very sorry, my dear, for what is to come.”
He leaped skyward, beating his wings a few times, pulling himself up and out of the tunnel.
Joen looked after him with a mix of anger and disappointment. “Well, that was interesting, eh?” she said.
“Something like that.”
“Where do we go from—?”
The rope started coiling up at our feet, and we both stepped back, staring as it gathered in a mess on the stone floor.
“Oh,” Joen said, “no, he didn’t.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I thought I heard Chrysaor’s laugh echoing down from above, but maybe I just imagined it.
“Yeah,” Joen said, “he sure did.”
“I don’t …” I hesitated, feeling stupid. “I don’t kill people.”
Joen looked at me and didn’t have to say, “Yeah, all right, but maybe just that once.” Her eyes said it all.
“Our path is marked,” I said, changing the subject and turning toward the darkness.
In the distance, the blue light flickered then went out completely.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Do you know what an umber hulk is?” I asked, trying to break through Joen’s stony silence.
She carried a torch we’d found in the magical pack Malchor had given us. I wasn’t sure whether the magical pack had conjured it in the manner it created food when we needed it, or if the wise and forward-thinking wizard had simply stashed a torch in there for us, just in case.
“It’s a creature that lives in the deep, dark places of Faerûn,” I went on. “It stands eight or nine feet high, and it’s wider than you are tall. And its whole body is covered by thick plates of chitinous armor, like an ant’s shell but much thicker. And it has—”
“Oi, is there one about to bite your head off right this exact moment?” Joen interrupted.
“Yeah, no. Sorry. It’s just, this place made me think of them. ‘Umber’ means ‘shadow,’ you know, and there are a lot of shadows down here.”
“Please just stop talking.”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t wrong about the shadows, though. The torchlight seemed puny in the massive cavern, a tiny pinprick of light in a vast, empty, black nothing. But it was enough to illuminate the numerous stalagmites stretching up from the ground that cast long, deep shadows stretching to the distant walls. We could faintly see the walls, and as in the place we’d initially fallen into, they were flecked with some reflective crystals that caught what meager trace of our light reached them and threw it back at us, a faint twinkle in the distance.
A rustle, a hint of motion just beyond our light, made Joen jump.
“Don’t worry,” I said quietly. “It’s not an umber hulk. They’re very adept at stealth. You’d never hear it—”
“Shut up about umber hulks!” she said in a harsh whisper. She shifted her torch to her left hand and drew a dagger with her right. The rustle came again, and Joen, apparently honing in on its location, let fly.
Her dagger darted through the air, torchlight seeming to shimmer as it reflected off the perfect blade. It struck the ground just beyond the circle of our torchlight, throwing a brilliant spark. It ricocheted like a stone skipping off a pond, bouncing with a clang, clang … splash.
Joen’s eyes went wide at the sound of her treasured weapon hitting water. She rushed forward, sputtering, having apparently forgotten that some potential danger lurked directly in her path. And she brought the torch with her, leaving me standing, shocked, in near-total darkness.
I recovered my senses and ran after her, catching her about twenty paces ahead, at the edge of a still pool of black water. Joen’s arms were elbow deep in it as she sifted around. Tears around her eyes and on her cheeks glistened in the flickering torchlight.
“Oi,” she said. “Oi, I didn’t mean to … I didn’t … oi, please …” She withdrew one of her arms to wipe away her tears, but her arm was just as wet.
I dropped to my knees beside her. “It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll find it.”
I rolled up my sleeves, intending to help her search, though the water looked really deep and I didn’t expect to find anything.
But something caught my eye: a glint, a reflection, under the otherwise-unmarred surface of the pool. Tentatively, I reached in for it. The water was lukewarm and not unpleasant. As my hand approached the shining object, that object seemed to approach my hand as well. When my fist closed around a small, scaly something, I pulled my arm out, and with it a small creature. It was an ugly thing with a pale brow, chitinous body, four spindly legs, two long antennae, and a spiked tail it started twirling like a maple seed.
And in its mouth it held a sparkling dagger.
“Uh, Joen,” I whispered. When she didn’t respond, I gently nudged her. She turned to look and saw the fish and the dagger.
She gasped in horror. “What is that … thing?” she asked.
“It looks like a baby rust monster,” I said, remembering Master Sage Hix Loiren’s Corrosive Animals of the Heartlands from Malchor’s library.
“A … rust …,” she stammered.
“Yeah, a rust monster. They live in caves and eat metal: ore, crafted, doesn’t matter. They especially like magical metal.”
She gasped again and snatched the dagger from the rust monster’s mouth. In a single fluid motion, she grabbed the scaly little thing by the tail and flung it back into the water.
“Hey,” I said, “it was helping you!”
“It was trying to eat my dagger!” she answered. She peered intently at her blade, running her finger along its edge, searching for any imperfections.
“At least it brought your dagger back to you.”
“It’s not damaged,” she said, obviously relieved.
We both stood up and looked around. It took us a few moments to reorient ourselves, but we were soon on our way in the only direction we had left to go: deep into the cave. The pool of water emptied into a slow-running stream, which in turn emptied into a larger pool. A faint, nondescript echo soon grew into an almost deafening roar as we walked along the edge of an increasingly fast-moving river, the black water turning white around jagged stalagmites studded with crystals whose razor-sharp edges glinted in our torchlight.
We walked along the river, moving with the flow, for only twenty yards or so before our route became clear. Two bridges, narrow constructions of stone, arched over the water near the wall of the cavern. Below them, the river raged more violently than ever, narrowing and descending as it disappeared beneath an overhanging ledge.
Joen moved to the nearest bridge.
“Wait,” I said. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“What, another umber hulk gonna jump out and attack us?” she asked.
“Har har,” I said. I pulled a coin from my pocket and flipped it onto the bridge. The coin bounced along once, twice, skipping off the stone. My throw had been perfect, and the coin slid perfectly along the bridge’s arc.
But as soon as the coin touched the center of the bridge, the stone structure simp
ly disappeared. One moment there was a solid if narrow arch, the next, the coin dropped into the raging torrent below, swept out of sight. Then, as quickly as it had vanished, the bridge reappeared.
We tried the same trick again on the second bridge, with the same result.
“So,” Joen said, “we find another way across, yeah?”
“There is no other way,” I said. “Why would someone build a matching pair of magical bridges if we could just go around them? But there may be something more to it.” I looked around and soon confirmed my suspicions.
Seven white candles sat in a line on a small, flat stone beside the river, directly between the two bridges. I moved to take a closer look.
“I’ve seen this before,” I said. “In the Lady’s Hall in Baldur’s Gate. It’s part of a prayer to Tymora. See how the wicks are very long?” I motioned Joen closer, and she approached hesitantly. “We light the candle on Tymora’s end, and the wick will fall toward or away from the next.” I took Joen’s torch and moved to light the rightmost candle.
“How do you know which end it is, eh?” she asked. “I mean, what if you light Beshaba’s candle instead? Won’t that be bad luck?”
I shrugged and brought my hand to my chest, to the magical stone blessed by Tymora, to my curse. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said.
Joen rolled her eyes at me. Even in the flickering, dim light I saw the motion clearly. But she didn’t object as I brought the torch down to the candle.
But it wouldn’t light.
“See?” she said.
I frowned and moved the torch to the leftmost candle. It wouldn’t light either.
“Odd,” I said.
“You think?” Joen crouched down beside me. “Oi, there’s something written here.” She pointed to the stone beside the candles, where, indeed, the otherwise-smooth surface revealed a beautifully flowing, carved script.
I pulled the magical lens from my pocket. “It says, ‘Let Tymora’s luck guide your path.’ Great, that’s useful. I mean, isn’t that exactly what I’ve been trying to do? But the candles won’t light.”