"Now you have one more answer to give," she said between furious kisses. With each one, she thought the same word: damn, damn, damn. "And I want the truth."
Liet nodded frantically, his eyes terrified.
Leaning in close, Twilight ran her raven hair across his cheek, tickling his skin with its softness. "Silk?" she asked, "or…" she seized his ear and bit down just hard enough to secure a gasp. "Teeth?"
"Ah," said Liet. "Uh, I don't… this does not seem quite the way… ah, heh…"
"Very well, then," said Twilight. "I shall make that decision."
Distantly, Gestal watched the two bodies entwined, delighting in one another, with something between absorbed curiosity and clinical dispassion.
"Perfect," he said to no one in particular. No one could hear him, after all. "I couldn't have planned this better-well, actually… hmm."
His ears caught something to which the lovers were oblivious, though the sense was more than simply aural. The walls were shifting again. The enemy was not idle.
"You thirst for attention like a puppy, always barking your nonsense," he said. "You hate others but you cannot live without them."
Gestal's eyes looked over the elf's writhing body with desire and disappointment.
"You are lying again, child-to us and to yourself."
Her sweaty face, locked in passion, turned toward him briefly, but she did not respond. She had not heard him speak. Gestal visualized running his claws down that soft spine.
"You expect this to end as all the tales do-with the villain dead and the heroes in bed." Gestal shook his head. "But not this story. Not this one."
Then it was over, and Gestal grinned as he faded into silence once more.
Now it would be easy-so easy-to drive her to the master.
"Did you tell me about rule four in earnest, or so that I'd break it?" Liet asked as he traced the elf's-no, nymph's spine. The star on her lower back-asymmetrical, with many rays-gleamed, hot to the touch. He loved how she shivered when he touched it.
"Rules exist for a purpose," said Twilight. She lay on her belly at his side.
"Was that an aye, or a nay?"
"Neither," she said, "though if you were to fall in love with me, 'twould make you more pliable, and assure your loyalty."
"I've never known a woman," Liet said. "I mean, I had never-"
She laughed. "I had guessed."
Liet smiled. He found his mind drawn back to her other tattoo-the silver and black fox below her belly.
Then he saw a queer light in her eye. "What?" he asked.
"You must go now," said Twilight. She pulled her cloak from under him and wrapped it about her body.
Liet blinked. "What?" he asked. "B-but, we-"
"Enjoyable, I do confess. But now you have to go." Her face was utterly serious.
"Can I not… ah…" Liet reached toward her, to trace his fingers down one bare arm. "Can I not stay here with you?" Twilight twisted aside slightly and he touched only stone. "My love? My goddess?"
She put a finger to his lips. Then she shook her head, and he felt his heart stumble.
"Against my better instincts, I lead this traveling feast-er, party, and I can't be seen to favor one member over another."
Liet made to protest, and Twilight silenced him as she had before-with her lips.
"And that's why you have to go. Tell the others that we'll take the tunnel to the sanctum in the morning, as though I was merely discussing plans with you." She reclined against the corridor wall and stretched her arms. "And see if Taslin's conjured up some food-I'm famished."
Liet, adrift in confusion, could do nothing but stare at her. Then, when Twilight reached for his arm, he came back to his senses with a twinge. He pulled away, fighting his outrage down. He wouldn't get angry. He was better than that.
He wondered if she truly thought so little of him.
"But," he said, "but no one's seen us at-"
"No, but if you don't sleep in your own blankets, it'll have the same effect."
"B-but-" Liet started.
Twilight did nothing but stare into the dark corridor ahead. Liet studied her, long and hard. He perceived a minuscule wince at the edge of Twilight's left eye-the tiniest of flaws in her defenses. And underneath that cold exterior was an even darker chill. He wondered if she hadn't meant for him to see that.
Liet saw the truth of Twilight, then-one of many. One of her masks.
He became aware of how she had lied to him. He wondered about her outrageous stories, her flippant comments, her emotions and her coldness. He wondered about her name. He thought he'd known her love, but he hadn't touched her-not inside. He wondered if there was anything true about her.
"Good even," he said, though it made his heart hurt.
"Good-bye," Twilight said, still not looking at him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"This isn't how I remember it," Twilight said softly the next morning. The six ascended the dusty steps and entered the first room of the wizard's chambers. The curved and undulating walls of stone were as her memory told her. Yet something was missing.
"Eh?" Slip asked.
To Twilight's eyes, the room was empty, and that was precisely her concern.
"Cast a scrying and see for yourself. This room's changed since last night."
Taslin lifted her hand to draw upon Corellon's blessing, but Davoren shoved it back down. "Save your power. The might of the Nine is infinite," he said.
He intoned a string of dark words. The others, excepting Twilight, flinched at the vile syllables. When Davoren had completed the chant, he cast his gaze about the room.
The sun elf favored him with a glare of pure murder. The death of Asson had changed her, and the doll seemed to have removed her last cache of serenity. Indeed, Twilight reflected-after that day and night, Taslin had been edgy, sharp, and quick to temper. Yet she was forgivable-Twilight understood heartbreak.
And as Taslin weakened, Davoren grew stronger. "Asmodeus's might is with me. I see no wards active." Davoren laughed, and Twilight wondered if she needed to cow him again. "Yet you delay?"
"That's the very matter," she said. "There should be wards active on that door"-she pointed at the opposite exit-"and possibly beyond. Something's been here before us, and it tripped the wards." She bent and scanned the floor.
"The word of a thief," Davoren observed, "is worse than worthless."
"There's no sign?" asked Liet, hunkering down beside Twilight.
Twilight shook her head. "I don't see any new tracks, nor is the dust disturbed," she said. "But I know there were wards active on that door. I saw them."
"Saw them?" scoffed the warlock. "Magic is not so simple that a gutterkiss can 'see' it. Or is there some other power you hide, filliken?"
Twilight shot an angry look at him. She thought about threatening him again, but since she hadn't followed through the first time, her threats meant much less. She rose silently and stared down the dark hallway, standing close to Liet.
"We should go back," she whispered.
"Why?" the youth asked. "We explored this way yestereve."
"Was that all that transpired yestereve, I wonder?" Davoren asked.
She wouldn't let that nettle her. "Something's come this way and lies in wait."
"How can you know that?" Taslin asked.
"Truly," said Liet. That was a shock, but Twilight buried the twinge of hurt. Of course she couldn't look offended that he didn't take her side. She almost would have preferred his comment to be vindictive, but his eyes held nothing but cold logic.
"A feeling." Twilight paused. "But I know 'tis a true one."
Davoren chuckled at her "feeling," and broke into a full laugh. "Well, we don't know that. I say we press on."
"I see no reason to turn back," said Taslin. "We have only just begun the day."
"I don't know, she could be right!" Slip said. Davoren and Taslin both glared at her. "Or… not." She looked up at Gargan, but the goliath said nothing. Slip
looked back and forth between the two opposing camps and followed his suit.
"Liet?" asked Twilight, not wanting to. "What say you?"
The youth looked at her for a long breath, rubbing at his sheathed arms. Finally, he shrugged. "If something tripped the wards and survived," he said, "logically, 'twould have attacked us as we slept, watch or no. At least we'd find a trace. Since it didn't do so, and we didn't find any sign, I say you could well be wrong. Perhaps the wards merely expired on their own and needed no help. Regardless, there's no reason to go back."
Twilight bit her lip. She shouldn't have cared, but it still hurt.
"Here!" exclaimed Slip from just beyond the once-enspelled doorway. She stood inside a narrow alcove off the corridor. "Look at this! Some manner of markings!"
Fighting the discomfort that came from being contradicted by Liet, Twilight knelt down beside the halfling. Sure enough, something had been etched into the inside of the doorway-four roughly vertical lines with dashes, crosshatches, and markings that rose parallel to one another, almost like tally marks.
"What are they?" asked the halfling.
"Qualith," said Twilight. "Illithid. Crude. Scratched with a talon, mayhap."
"A mind flayer wizard?" Davoren said doubtfully.
"Sorcerer, more likely." The warlock just shrugged as if to dismiss the distinction. "I've seen stranger things."
"You say that often," said Liet.
"And 'tis true every time," Twilight said, eliciting weighing looks. Mystery was comforting-he'd come just a little too close to her that night.
"Believe it or not, these are the marks of the Illithid language. They record emotions and thoughts." She ran her fingers over the markings.
"What need has a race of mind mages for written words?" Davoren scoffed.
"Telepathy has a limit," said Twilight. She laid her hand flat against the writing. "And this message was left for someone."
"Can you read it?" asked Liet.
"Qualith is amazingly complex, meant to be read by illithids themselves. It would take extraordinary talent or decades of study to decipher these markings," said Twilight.
"So which do you have?" asked Liet.
Twilight smiled. It was hard to stay angry at the youth. Perhaps she could forgive him his lack of support. Later, perhaps, once he had well-and fully-atoned.
Eyes shut, she traced her fingers down the four lines.
"Anything?" asked Slip, shifting anxiously.
"Resentment," said Twilight, "at being imprisoned. Rage, at the writer's captor. A touch of fear, at the power of those above. And a name." She scrunched her brow in thought. "This illithid was a prisoner of a place called Negarath."
From the way the warlock reacted, Davoren knew the name somehow.
"You recognize this word?" asked Twilight.
Davoren bared his teeth. Their battle had certainly made him less guarded in his contempt for everyone and everything.
"Never you mind," he snapped. "This prisoner is long gone, as is anything else in this wizard's sanctum. There is no danger."
Twilight cast a supplicating look back toward Liet, longing for support, but the youth merely shrugged. Twilight bristled.
"Very well, then," said Twilight. "We move forward, against my judgment. I want that noted."
The others nodded, and only Gargan looked at Twilight with something approaching uncertainty. Not that he acted on it.
What good are you if you don't speak up? Twilight cursed.
The corridor beyond the back chamber of the wizard's sanctum turned out to contain many such alcoves for holding prisoners-in magical stasis, Twilight reasoned. The alcoves were empty and appeared to have been so for some time. Twilight felt no magic active anywhere in the corridor. The dark pathway terminated in another portal, this one complete with a stout stone door.
Twilight could hear no sounds through the door, so she examined it. She found no hidden needles or pressure plates, and while the device used a dozen sliding bars in a complex design-a dragon grinning as though bemused-the actual lock seemed simple enough. She slipped out her picks and fell to work, springing the device in a few breaths.
"Sand. Something feels wrong," Twilight said as she stood and stepped back for Gargan to push the door open. The door cracked and creaked, then swung open on its own into darkness, lit only by dim candle flames. "I think-"
"What's the worry?" Slip asked. She smiled at Gargan. "It's just-" she gasped.
Twilight looked into the darkness, as did the others. In the chamber beyond, four startled lizardmen blinked at the companions, roused from their game of bones.
Not hesitating a heartbeat, the goliath leaped forward and split one from fangs to tail. His engraved sword hissed as it burned the lizardman's flesh away like boiling water through sugar. The steel itself bled greenish acid. The hapless creature's companions gave startled squeals. They drew obsidian weapons.
The goliath's rush overturned the dry rotted table at which they had been playing, which promptly shattered on the stone floor. Gargan kicked the remains aside and carved another lizard in two, but the distraction gave the third time to hurl a cracked stool in his face. As Gargan reeled, the fourth hissed a war cry and lunged forward with a scimitar.
Then smoking blood spattered Gargan's face as Davoren's ruby blast blew a lizardman's head into a black and red abyss. The creature flopped headless to the floor with a disconsolate plop, and the flame arced from it to burn a hole through the stool-hurler. Both twitched, smoking.
As Gargan, Liet, and Slip fanned out to search for more of the creatures, the warlock stifled a yawn with one hand. "That was interesting," he said to Twilight. "And you say you are afraid of an ambush?"
Twilight glared at him but said nothing.
The room was ten paces on a side, filled with the crumbling remains of furniture and decorated with filth. Arcane sigils in much worn and faded paint adorned the walls, though they were all defaced and defiled. It had likely been a casting chamber. The room was just as old and as strange of architecture as the corridor and first chamber, but smelled much fouler.
Twilight was glad the lizards had not bypassed the wards to enter the previous chamber-the smell had been contained.
No other fiendish lizards were found in the chamber, nor could they see any of the creatures down the next corridor.
"Must have left the main group," said Davoren, "for some rest and diversion." He grinned. "The rest theirs, the diversion ours."
"Scouts, testing us," said Twilight. "We should still go back."
The warlock groaned.
The door, however, ended that debate for them. With a scrape of stone on stone, the heavy portal swung back into place, despite their best efforts to restrain it. In place, it looked no different from the rest of the wall, and it had the appropriate lack of door handles, clasps, hooks, pulleys, and opening catches.
"I suppose you're all pleased," said Twilight. "I don't even know how to begin opening it. Probably a command phrase." A mechanical thunk and rasp from the other side struck her ears. "And that would be the locks sliding into place." She folded her arms and looked away.
"All's well," said Liet. He put a reassuring hand on Twilight's shoulder-an act no one but the oblivious halfling missed-and smiled gently. "Be not afraid."
"Only of those things that warrant it," Twilight snapped. She shook Liet off roughly, hoping it would be an action none of the others would miss.
Slip, alert halfling that she was, remained completely oblivious. "I know what'll lighten this up," she said. "Let's figure out the mystery!"
"Mystery?" Liet asked, turning from Twilight, who signaled that they might as well explore these rooms in greater detail.
"Of where we are, silly," the halfling explained. "Where lies this dungeon?"
"Please," Davoren said with a dismissive wave. "It's hardly a dungeon. Deserted ruins, more like it." He gestured at the sloping, twisting, curving walls. "The deserted ruins of some mad child's doll house."
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The image of a blood-soaked doll flashed through Twilight's mind.
"Speak louder, and we shall see how deserted it is," promised Taslin.
"Can we not move on?" asked Twilight, tapping her foot nervously.
"Praise be to the Lord of the Hells," said Davoren. "The filliken offers a glorious suggestion." He grinned at Taslin. "We should listen, scarred one."
"I am curious as to Slip's thoughts," said Taslin. "Say on, noble small one."
It took Slip a moment to realize the priestess was addressing her. "Well," said Slip. "I'm trying to figure out…"
Ignored by the others, Twilight pressed ahead, examining the darkened corridor. An exceptionally stout portal had once closed off the casting chamber from the hallway, exactly opposite the hall of prisoners, but it had since fallen into rubble. Probably aided, Twilight thought as she glided carefully through the darkness, by the fiendish lizards.
She deemed traps unlikely, since the lizards had gotten through unscathed, but there was no such thing as being too careful. She sensed multiple auras of magic, so she crept onward slowly, searching. At the other end, having walked the hall untouched, she waved the others forward.
"We stepped through a portal near Longsaddle," Taslin was saying. "And it did not lead where we thought it would."
"Ah," said Slip. "Same with my band. Though not Longsaddle, but Dambrath."
"Band?" Taslin asked.
"Aye! Four, originally. Me, a blue-haired girl, a thick dwarf, and Liet, of course."
The youth squinted. "I'm sorry? What-?"
Even as he chuckled, Davoren narrowed his fiendish eyes in confusion.
Slip blinked. "Oh," she said finally. "I must be taking you for someone else."
Twilight did not flinch. "We should be silent," she said. "An ambush may await."
"Oh, Belial's pisspot," growled Davoren. "An ambush like that of the lizards, perhaps? Some leader you are, always overestimating the danger."
The shadowdancer narrowed her eyes but made no reply. She crossed into the next chamber, casting about for some foe, but she found nothing there to distract her.
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