Stardawn unlocked a wooden door with an ancient iron key, and the door slowly creaked open. Beyond, a staircase covered with dust led down into the darkness. "No one goes through here much," Stardawn admitted. "I was the last that I know of, almost a year ago."
The group entered the stairwell, and the elf closed the door. He took a light rod from a shelf. "First we go down. This leads to the lowest level, and that leads to a staircase up to the battlement. We won't need the lights outside. Besides, from what I saw, the Armory is lit by the Spelljammer's light panels. We'll have no trouble seeing once we get inside."
They filed down the narrow staircase and gathered at the bottom. Stardawn unlocked the door and led them into an old storage area.
"This way," Stardawn said, and he led them between piles of dusty crates and casks of murky liquids to an ancient hidden door. He unlocked this one with another iron key and ushered them through. The chamber beyond also was used for storage, but the boxes and urns stacked across one wall seemed forgotten and were layered with a thick patina of dust. In one corner, a spiral staircase twisted up into darkness. Stardawn held up the light rod. "Not very far," he smiled, "only twenty five floors to go."
Teldin paused. This level, this room, of the elven command seemed familiar to him, though he had never been here. The smell of ancient dust, the feel of the wooden door, the sound of the lock being opened-I know this, he thought. He cocked his head and turned his thoughts inward. How do I know this place?
Stardawn took the first step onto the staircase, then stopped as a subtle noise echoed from somewhere behind them. As one, the warriors turned.
"Just a rat," Stardawn said. "The ship is infested with them."
"CassaRoc said warily, "A rat? A living rat?"
"Not a rat," Teldin insisted, "alive or dead." He started toward the wall hidden by crates. The decapitated head's message! he thought suddenly. He gritted his teeth. The entrance to the warrens is here!
"Help me with these crates," he told them.
His friends shrugged and started forward. Stardawn came over, anger flaring on his pale elven face. "Why do you want to find a rat?"
"It is not a rat I seek," the Cloakmaster said. "There is something more here. And it was no rat we heard."
They piled the boxes against the opposite wall. Some were so old that the wood had rotted through, and they fell into dust and splinters when held too tightly. Finally, near the floor, Teldin spied what he had hoped would be here. "Yes," he said, "it is here."
With a flurry of energy, Teldin shoved the other crates and jars aside. He stood and stared for a moment as the others crowded around him.
The doors in the floor were wooden, sealing a circular entrance of some sort. Heavy boxes had been placed atop it some time in the dim past.
"In the elven warrens,' the thing told me." Teldin glanced over his shoulder. His friends had not seen Coh's zombie slave. "In Coh's quarters. He had a zombie head that told me Coh had come here."
"No one has been through this door for a long time," Star-dawn again admitted.
"No, but he is close, in a lair near here. Can you not feel his evil?" Teldin opened the doors.
The others said nothing. Chaladar grunted, for he could feel the coldness on his arms and smell it emanating from the entrance. "Aye, I feel it."
Na'Shee shivered. Estriss said, There is powerful magic down there.
The amulet glowed again, and Teldin felt its warmth ripple through his chest. The entrance to the warrens beckoned darkly, and he thought of Cwelanas, her soft laughter, the sadness behind her eyes.
No longer. She has been through too much.
"I'm going to get her."
Stardawn came up beside Chaladar and asked him what all this was about. Chaladar quickly, quietly explained about Cwelanas's kidnapping. Stardawn remained silent, but inside he felt joyous. If the Cloakmaster were to die in the warrens, then he could never make it to his precious adytum with his cloak.
"What are we going to do?" Stardawn asked, his tone level. "We shouldn't leave her with the Fool…"
"Cloakmaster," Na'Shee said, "I know you care for her, but if you find the adytum, there is no telling what might happen."
"True," Teldin said, "but the Fool still works his dark magic, and his undead still roam the ship. Maybe the Spelljammer can't do anything about the Fool's evil. Perhaps its up to me. Perhaps I have no choice."
"Perhaps we have no choice," Stardawn said. "If you go to find her, I'm coming with you."
"As will I," Na'Shee said.
Djan and CassaRoc agreed. Teldin pointed at the tunnel with his sword. "They're somewhere down there, down in the warrens. Are you sure you still want to go with me?"
CassaRoc answered. "We have lights. We have weapons. What more could we ask for?"
"Less powerful enemies," Teldin said.
"There is that," CassaRoc conceded.
Stardawn left the room, then came back shortly with a light rod for each of them. They all stood silently, staring into the hidden entrance to the warrens.
The amulet burned against Teldin's flesh, pulling part of him away, toward an unknown fate that had called to him from across the universe. But down there was the woman he loved. With an inner conflict that threatened to tear his psyche apart, Teldin squelched his yearning to explore the Spelljammer and concentrated on the hole leading into darkness.
He crouched and peered inside. His voice echoed softly through the tunnel. "Be ready for anything," he said.
He disappeared, down into the twilight darkness that was the warrens.
Chapter Twenty-Four
"… Virtually overnight, our problem with the vermin running wild throughout the citadel has disappeared. Even our mages are hard put to explain where all the rats have gone…"
Barlow, scribe of the Chalice tower; letter to the Council, following the reign of Romar.
Blehal, the beholder, approached the dais of Gray Eye, the leader of the eye tyrants. His eyestalks wavered nervously as the leader turned to face him with his clouded great eye. Gray Eye focused all his eyes on his second in command. His huge mouth curled in a grotesque grimace. "How goes the war?" Gray Eye asked.
Blehal floated forward, casting his gaze to the floor. With the approach of the vessels that now surrounded the Spelljammer, skirmishes had broken out all across the vessel and the beholders were hard pressed by all the races on the ship that hated the beholders.
Blehal's usually gruff voice seemed softer, almost in shame. "The war goes badly, lord. Even with our superior magic, the numbers are too great, and our allies are falling. The humans and the giff have joined the war, and I fear-" The beholder hesitated. "1 fear we will soon be defeated."
Gray Eye laughed, the sound of bones being gnashed between his ragged teeth. "Defeat. You are insignificant, Blehal. You underestimate our power. The beholders will never see defeat-not with the kasharin in our control."
"The k-kasharin?" Blehal stammered, barely able to believe the leader's words.
Gray Eye faced away from him and stared off in serene contemplation. "The kasharin. Who else could bring total victory to the beholders? Who else on the Spelljammer has such… unimaginable power?"
Blehal floated back a few feet, shocked. His eyestalks stare'd at Gray Eye with horror. "But, lord, can we trust them to be released? They will kill without thinking. They will probably even try to kill us."
"They can be controlled," Gray Eye said, spinning around furiously. "They must be controlled." He glared at Blehal, his opaque eye pulsing with rage. "The surviving beholders must be called back. Only together can we charm the kasharin into obeying us. Only with them can our victory be assured."
He raised his voice. "Recall the beholders, Blehal! Now we prepare to destroy our enemies without quarter! And the unholy kasharin shall be our secret weapon!"
On a circular platform near one of the walls of his lair, the Fool kept Cwelanas chained with heavy iron manacles, so that he could torment her at any moment he
pleased.
Blood ran in small trickles down her ankles, where the Fool had ordered his undead rats to snap at her flesh. Bruises ran up and down her arms, where the undead Coh had taunted her, in the ethereal voice of the Fool, with promises of his love, and how he could not wait to take her in his claws and show her the meaning of passion.
Occasionally the lair's carpet of black smoke curled up in wisps before her and figures took shape, almost like afterthoughts from the Fool's diseased mind. Several times the smoke took the shape of the cloak, billowing out and waving as though it were alive, calling the Fool into its embrace. Once it formed the shape of the Spelljammer, towered over by the Fool's silhouette, thrusting into the vessel with his black, serrated long sword. She wondered where the shapes came from, if they were unconscious manifestations projected by the Fool… and if the Fool even knew they were being formed.
The Fool sat in his ivory throne of bones, his burning eyes flickering as he stared into his orb of sight. Occasionally a finger or arm would twitch nervously, or a low moan would escape from the Fool's cavernous mouth.
Cwelanas watched him. One skeletal hand was wrapped protectively around his heavy amulet, and she strained her eyes to get a better look.
The amulet was ornate, made of delicate gold that curled in on itself to create patterns and shapes as the amulet was twirled in the Fool's fingers. The crimson stone in the center seemed to burn with an inner fire. She had seen the Fool toying with the amulet once before, while he was pacing his chamber, worrying aloud that the Spelljammer might never be his to command, and that his plans to destroy the ship might fail. Then the Fool laughed with the false bravado of the evil dead, refusing to acknowledge such a possibility.
She was startled by a scream of both laughter and rage from the Fool as he stirred on his throne. He held the amulet of bloodfire in one hand as he rose and approached her. His eyes shone with bright, unnatural light.
"Your lover is on his way, little elf," the Fool croaked in his dry, brittle voice. "None of your magic can save him. He is coming for you, and he will give me exactly what I want, or you-and he-will die."
The Fool rasped an evil laugh. "You will die anyway. No matter. No matter. Your precious Cloakmaster is on his way here. And the cloak will be all mine."
He laughed, returning to rest upon his throne. Cwelanas focused on the amulet and wondered why the Fool held the jewel so tightly when she could tell he was afraid. Perhaps, in his obsession with the Spelljammer's death, he no longer controlled his subconscious, hence the shapes from his mind formed in the chamber's dark air, he twitched nervously, and moaned unconsciously while peering into his orb.
He held the amulet and laughed and laughed.
"This is very good," he said, chuckling. "He's following my lures. He has discovered the entrance in the elven tower.
"Oh, he's on his way. The Spelljammer soon will die."
The Fool laughed. "Who is the fool now?" he cackled. "Who is the fool now?"
Chapter Twenty-Five
"… I have had the same dream now for seven nights. In each, I walk to the head of the Spelljammer and call out into the air. The birds are singing a pretty song, even though we have no birds. My husband appears from underneath the bow. His eyes are black. "In my last dream, he held out a ring for me to take. I woke and found the ring on my finger. "I am doomed. "My husband disappeared three years ago. "The ring will not come off…"
The Dream of the White Horse, a tale by Anonymous; reign of Jokarin.
The illumination from the warrior band's light rods cast a warm glow upon the pale, purplish walls of the warrens. The walls felt spongy, almost warm to the touch, and Teldin understood why the warrens were sometimes called the veins, for they spread throughout the Spelljammer's body in a series of seemingly endless tunnels, twisting as though they were meant for lifeblood to course through them.
The tunnels widened once the warriors had made their way deeper into the ship, and they walked side by side, their weapons at the ready. Splotches of phosphorescent moonwort on the walls absorbed the light from their rods and glowed steadily after they had passed. Teldin, in the lead, paused occasionally at intersections, trying to peer as far as he could down the joining tunnels.
"How do you know where you're going?" Djan asked.
"I don't. I'm just trying to follow whatever trail I can find," Teldin said. "He's been down here a long time. I'm just looking for, well, a trail of darkness, I suppose."
"So you're going on instinct," CassaRoc offered.
"That's what I said."
"Do you feel anything from your amulet?"
Teldin caught CassaRoc's gaze and looked down. The glow from the amulet had ceased once they had passed into the warrens, and Teldin could feel nothing from it, as though its powers were muted down here. "No, nothing," Teldin said, "nothing at all."
Stardawn concentrated. Magic ran through his elven veins, and he reached out with a minor spell of detection. He pointed with his sword down a tunnel. "Farther in that direction. The taint comes from there."
They proceeded farther down. At one intersection, Teldin caught a wisp of black smoke curling in the distance, and he led the warriors toward it. At another intersection, each connecting tunnel except one was thickly layered with phosphorescent lichen. He chose the dark tunnel.
The Fool had designed his trap very well. '
Teldin led them down the tunnel, his light rod held high. The lichen here glowed red and brown, as though diseased. The tunnel walls seemed to close in, tapering so that the warriors could walk only in single file. The light from the rods seemed to grow dimmer, as though the brightness were being absorbed by the lining of the walls, or countered with a lasting spell of darkness.
"I don't like this," Djan said behind Teldin. "I don't like this at all."
"You think I-" Then Teldin clutched his chest and staggered against the wall. His mind went cold. Pinpricks of ice tingled across his chest. "Cold," he said weakly. "It-it's calling me, and it can't.. sense me here in the warrens. It is searching for me, but it hurts! '
The group stopped and waited while Teldin relaxed and the pain of the Spelljammer's summons faded. Then they started forward again as Teldin regained his composure, and they trudged steadily deeper.
Teldin knew they were close when he saw a thin layer of black mist curling around his feet. He stopped the group and warned them. "Can you feel that?" he asked. The air was chill and reeked of rotting flesh. "We're near his lair, I'm sure. Be ready for anything."
He stepped into the mist. It curled coldly up his legs as he led the party in, then it rose higher with every step, until it was so thick that they could not see before them.
Teldin's senses told him that they had stepped out of a tunnel and into some kind of chamber. He tensed, his ears alert. In the darkness, the light from the rods was practically insignificant, swallowed by the black mist, and he heard rustling, almost like the soft, shuffling footsteps of others, from somewhere deep in the mist around them.
He felt the rustle of a breeze on his arms, then the mist swirled and eddied around them, borne on a cold wind that sprang from some unknown source. Their light rods spread warm, yellow light upon nests of crumbling blankets and broken bones, into the narrow entrances of other tunnels, and upon weapons and chests and leather pouches heaped against the far wall. Teldin picked up a pair of discarded short swords and looked them over.
"Well, we've found something," CassaRoc said, staring at the wooden chest. He stepped forward cautiously and kneeled. He opened a chest, and the light from his rod was reflected in a million sparkles upon his face.
"Gold," he said softly. "Gold."
The chest was packed with gold and silver coins, with necklaces and amulets, brooches and bracelets. He plucked out a gold ring boasting an opaque green stone that bore a diamond-shaped carving, with angles emanating from two points. He smiled and pocketed the ring, then lifted out a dazzling necklace encrusted with rubies and emeralds. In the center, a
silver disk had been engraved with symbols and jewels, and CassaRoc held it up to the light.
Teldin noticed the warrior's uncustomary frown. "What is it?" he queried.
"I know this necklace," CassaRoc said. "This used to belong to a fighter of mine."
"Damn!" Na'Shee shouted behind them. "That's Chel's! I know her!"
CassaRoc turned. "Knew her. She died when you arrived here, Teldin."
Teldin said nothing.
CassaRoc gave Na'Shee the necklace, while Stardawn and Djan looked through the chest. CassaRoc waved his sword around. "What is this place?" he asked.
"I don't know," Teldin said. "It looks like someone has been staying here." He picked up one of the bones on the floor. "I don't like their eating habits, though. This is a human bone."
They all heard them then, closing in from the intersecting tunnels. The gold and silver and jewels were forgotten in the rush to bring weapons to bear, to arrange themselves defensively in a circle as their assailants shambled in from the tunnels around them.
"The undead," CassaRoc announced.
The warriors were quickly surrounded by a score of the undead. Most were human; two were elves, and three were halflings. Some bore swords and daggers, ready to use them, albeit awkwardly, with a semblance of living memory. Most just stared hungrily at the intruders, ready to kill by tooth and jagged bone.
'
"This was a trap," Na'Shee said. "We were suckered in." Then one shape stepped from the farthest tunnel and stood in the entrance. Its teeth gleamed wickedly in the yellow light as it hissed with sadistic laughter. Its fur was mottled with blood, with the colors of the spectrum layered in dizzying patterns across its obscene body. An intricate series of circles was painted on its forehead.
"Trapped," the undead Coh said, snapping at them with his sharp yellow teeth. "Compliments of the Fool."
The zombie neogi turned then and plunged into the surrounding wall of mist.
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