Grabbing his lantern, I shuffled, bleeding, down the hallway. When I entered the vast cavern and beheld the vista of the massive city before me, its towers carved like snakes and obelisks and ziggurats dominating the stale air, I barely even noticed. Instead, I sat at the junction where my tunnel opened out onto the incongruous vault and stared without seeing as I withdrew one of the precious healing potions from my pack and swiftly drained it.
I could feel a tiny niggling doubt at the back of my mind as the healing magic did its work. Belzig was right.
I regretted losing that dagger.
City of Serpents
By Jay Thompson
06 Neth, 4707 ar
I've snuffed Belzig's lantern, and paused for a moment with my back to a cave wall to write by candlelight. Forgive the rough scrawl and drops of wax: my palm and shoulder still burn from that miserable sycophant's wounds. His lantern's fuel was nearly spent anyway. I only have my three sunrods left—eighteen hours' illumination. Who knows how long I've been under Urgir and in the Darklands by now, or how much longer I'll remain beneath the earth? A candle does the trick for now anyway: the stone all around me holds a faint fluctuating glow, and I'm not eager for a too-bright light to summon unanticipated company when my eyes are on the page.
"Learn quickly, or your school will be your tomb."
Venture-Captain Shevala told me that years ago, when I was new to the Pathfinders, and I'd like to think that it'd make her proud to see me now. On this journey, I've learned—quickly—that the enemy of my enemy isn't my friend.
Belzig, to have tracked me all this way, must have outwitted every sort of foe I've faced. But before I fed him to the snake-mouth trap, he was inches away from cutting me down. And as for other potential allies… Well, I'll bet the degenerate dwarves I slipped past welcome any orc in the Darklands with an axe in the belly. Fair enough. But if I hadn't called up that immense worm outside their city, they'd have done the same for me, or for any other Pathfinder that crossed their path. So much for dwarven hospitality.
And the enemy of those dwarves?
In the massive limestone-dusted bas-relief I'm sitting in front of, men with serpentine heads and tails sit atop ziggurat-shaped thrones, lines of men and dwarves kneeling and cowering before them. Atop ceremonial altars, men are flayed alive beneath twisting, slithering runes, or driven in like cattle past mountains of skulls by more snakemen bearing strangely shaped pikes which they use to punish the downtrodden figures drawing their chariots. Countless frescoes and mosaics, and all variations on the same themes: Dominance. Fear. Control.
One thing's for sure: whoever inhabited this immaculate ruin of a city was nobody's friend.
From the overlook where I first emerged, I saw that the city sprawled out without a readily apparent design. Conical buildings encircled snake-headed central chimneys, spiked ziggurats and arches twisted toward the ceiling, and every surface—street, wall, roof—was covered in swirling designs and serpentine pictograms. The streets wound forward in ramps, smooth with the polish of once-regular use. In the furtive illumination of my sunrod, the white dust and the gleaming stone beneath it glowed as if from some pale internal flame. In a ring in the city's center, barely visible in my light, I saw identical necropoli—or temples?—built in long, wicked spikes, like a compass rose or a mace.
Feeling tiny, I whistled once sharply and waited for movement.
Nothing. Even the air felt deserted, as it muffled my sound into silence.
In my first adventure-thirsty years, before I sought treasure and served the Will of the Ten, I'd made spare cash as a guide for Taldan big-game hunters. I hadn't been much of a tracker, but considering most of my employers were the type who hunted from sedan chairs, it didn't matter much. Still, I don't have to look too close now at these silent boulevards to see no foot—or tail—has ventured through here in hundreds of years. Or is it thousands?
My wayfinder points me dead ahead.
Here where I pause at the city's entrance, I feel how, after days underground, time begins to fold and melt in on itself. After waking from sleep into the pitch-blackness of a cold camp, after turning a corner and finding chambers you'd seemingly just left, even the stone-soberest Pathfinder might wonder—Is this the cavern I just crossed? Where does this corridor end? Haven't I been in here before?
My wayfinder has been an easy guide, from the dwarven gates of the Darklands down to the first gruesome bas-relief at the entrance to this city. It's my mind and instincts whose guidance I've begun to doubt. My skin is crawling, and I believe I can almost feel on my body the sheer weight of stone overhead, of time and menace around me. Every alien detail of this city is immaculate—there are no flaws on the bizarre statues of armor-clad snakemen in every plaza, only dust; the barred domes of oubliettes are unbent; even the glass of the houses' round windows is unbroken.
And perhaps some sort of treasure is hidden in chests in every building. But until I see where my wayfinder leads, I'm not about to poke around. Call it an uncharacteristic lack of curiosity if you must, but experience teaches Pathfinders that good and bad fortune are like two folded hands, and pressing your luck is the surest way to see it turn on you. I'll have plenty of time to explore on my way out. If the city of these snakemen is the end of the line for my wayfinder, I'm not about to let it be the end of the line for me as well.
08 Neth, 4707 ar
Looming before me, the gate of the necropolis yawned like an unhinged jaw. The whole structure throbbed with the same unsteady light that illuminated the city, but it seemed brighter to me somehow. The alkaline smell of the cavern's omnipresent white dust, too, seemed more potent and harsh. Did the magic that imbued the stones weave a stronger spell here? Or perhaps the necropolis seemed brighter only in my mind: this was the building my wayfinder drew me toward—my goal, perhaps the culmination of my quest.
In the mouth of the building, there was the same white dust, blown by who knows what wind into perfect miniature drifts and dunes. The air now was perfectly still. Along the building's floor were forking designs in dense red tile mosaic, engulfed just inside by deep black shadow. The gate I approached, set in the half-morning-star shape of the necropolis, was ringed with fangs.
I walked twenty paces into the bare entryway, my feet grating over the dust of the floor. Suddenly my wayfinder trembled, then began to spin wildly, swinging from one side to another. Something was confusing its orientation. Or, not confusing—redirecting.
Along each wall stood imposing oval portals, easily as wide as three men. I took a step toward the nearest and my wayfinder swung toward it. I took two steps to the left and the needle twirled, settling on the second portal I was now approaching. No single artifact, but something in each of these chambers, was attracting the wayfinder's ioun stone. This, I hadn't counted on.
I stepped through this second portal and tossed in my sunrod. The room flooded with light, and my heart skipped a beat.
The circular ceiling was plated with gold, with an embossed onyx inset spanning the forty feet of the room in a long tapering slit. Set in the ceiling's gold I could see smatterings of green and red, roughened patches of color and fainter iris-colored glows made by hundreds of painstakingly placed green and red tiles. I was standing, a single baffled human, beneath the image of an unblinking serpent's eye.
And ringing the room, what I'd been pursuing for thousands of miles, what my ioun stone must have been created for, what had cost me all my sacrifices and brought me all my adventures: dozens of identical stone cylinders, each carved to be scaly-smooth like a reptile's belly and set upright into the stone of the floor.
I was here. And something—I felt the intuition in me like a sliver—something wasn't quite right.
Other than the obelisks, the room was bare. So why was every muscle in my body going tense? I had lost my dagger, but I still had a long vicious-looking knife I'd bought f
rom the Steel Eaters in Urgir. My heart in my mouth, I clenched the knife hilt with one hand, and with the other, rapped the first sarcophagus lightly. Dum dum dum: a muffled sound.
So the casket wasn't empty. But I heard no response or answering noise—from within, or from anywhere.
If I was a little cautious, blame it on my mental image of the cylinder springing open and a crumbling mummified snakeman tumbling out onto the floor: a cosmic gotcha by the ioun stone.
I ran my hand over the cylinder's surface. My damp palms came away faintly dusty. The stone was cut into scales, but felt perfectly unyielding.
It was then that something caught my eye. The necropolis's zigzagging floor mosaic branched, in another radial design, to the foot (or tail?) of each sarcophagus, including this one. But, with my sunrod glowing on the floor, I could see that at each radial arm's tip was a familiar shape made of tiny green stones, with a curious fingernail-sized gap in its exact center.
Heavy with foreboding, I set down my pack and crouched, studying my wayfinder. As I suspected, the gap matched the device's ioun stone perfectly. I pulled the stone loose from its setting and pressed it into place in the floor.
For a long second, there was nothing.
Then, with a whisper, as if only curtains were parting, the cylinder's front surface split. I found myself face-to-face with a stone-dead but perfectly preserved snakeman clutching a staff, sitting on a bundle of scrolls and a heap of loose gems and gold three feet high. His features were those of a snake, his torso was a man's, and beneath his waist was a tail whose coils he rested upon. No weapons: only a staff, and a rich and unbelievably new-seeming red robe that hung to his feet. With the front of the cylinder gone, the gems he stood on sagged an inch and a few gold coins bounced out onto the tile floor.
I stepped back. Was this an ordinary soldier, or royalty—perhaps even a priest? Did every tomb in every spire like this have a snakeman in it? Was each as full of treasure? What was written on those scrolls? Was there a single gem, or a single scroll, my ioun stone was guiding me to? And how heavy would a snakeman corpse be to move anyway?
Then, in a moment, such questions became entirely academic.
The snakeman's tail began to curl.
It might have been the wind, except there wasn't a breath of wind. There was only my breath. And this tail curling.
Then before I was fully aware of what I was doing, I leapt back, knife at the ready. With one thrash the snakeman leapt to life, its two wiry man-arms heaving it bodily up from the sepulcher. I stumbled as it raised its staff toward me and I lifted one arm to block a blow, then realized that it wasn't my body the creature was reaching for. The staff struck my knife-arm and my vision flooded with cancerous green light as the snakeman reached into my mind.
!Man man shoeshod kneel man servant of the truepeople kneel you kneel before.
I swung my knife at him and even as I leapt I felt my arm losing its strength, my knife slipping in nerveless fingers, legs growing heavy. His staff pressed into my arm as if sealed in place.
He stepped toward me. My feet carried me back. His tail scraped over the floor; it coiled and he rose over me.
!Thousand thousand upon years waiting long years we dreamt we dreamt for you shoeshod man all men grow strong ready serve men serve you kneel you KNEEL you kneel.
His voice was a whisper in both of my ears. My knees buckled, then righted themselves. I pressed one palm to my forehead—his staff remained tight against me—and screamed, the loudest sound my lungs could make.
!Big breath shoeshod big breath. Our stone led you dullblade under the thousand-years-we-waited earth our stone led you our stone found YOU. Found you in the sunworld. Kind apart. One of many one of many one welcome we welcome we awaken. Our stone our stone.
My wayfinder. My mind fogged then cleared. I hung against the wall like a marionette. My ioun stone glowed in the floor. My weakness was infinite. The stone was theirs; its purpose had been to draw me here. I could feel the snakeman as surely as if he had pinned me down.
!Sleepers ready and strong here are many sleepers many of us sleepstrong and ready. We are a kind apart. So close we were, not long it would be in the old days been—sunworld OURS the truepeople's ours ours ours.
I listened. I couldn't have moved if I'd tried.
!The sunworld so nearly the sunworld so nearly ours. But came darkness then with the fall of the fall of the star then night and more than night an age. Withdrew ourselves withdrew drew ourselves apart and we waited.
!Strong are we strong were we and so remain we numerous.
I nodded, my head nodded. The stone—it was all I could think of.
!One enough deepdown one enough to awaken us all us all us all in the deepdown deepdown I am HE he who will awaken others.
!Long down many the downdeep you have followed your stone down dim and hollow.
I nodded. Of course. Somewhere, some part of me reached out a hand to strike at the creature. Somewhere else, another part of me—the stone—lay glowing in the tiles of the floor. The snakeman slid toward me.
!Shoeshod mildtongue dullblade dimlight man you lay you lay your weapons down your dear devices down.
The words wrapped around me. Where I needed breath, there were the snakeman's words. Some part of me struggled. My reply felt pushed out far away by tremendous pressure—like a grinding millwheel.
"Get. Out. Of my mind. You—are not—my master."
!Stonemaster the stone is your masterstone you are the stone. Many the stones of ours there are but the first the first to come was YOU. Shoeshod mildtongue man it led you it led it brought you. The stone your master we the stone's master we ARE we ARE.
My body stood weakly. Yes: I was led. The snakeman was absolutely right. Some part of me struggled to say a word. My feet stepped once, twice, to the next shut sepulcher. Somewhere, I glowed in the tiles of the floor. The snakeman watched my body. I watched my body.
!But but but you have come you are here the chambers open you are ours you HAVE come you have COME you are the stone. You shoeshod must the gap touch of the second tomb. Must touch! And the next. And tomb shall open. And the next. OPEN.
I watched some strange hand—my hand—reaching across the floor. I was the stone. All I had to do was touch where a second ioun stone would fit. The staff led the arm. The room was lit the color of the stone. The snakemen would be freed from their sleep. And some part of me, with a last bit of strength, sought a word.
"Desna!"
Startled, the snakeman stepped back.
There was a blue light in the tomb.
The snakeman's whisper broke its rhythm, the staff broke its contact, only for a moment. Like a man cut down, I felt my muscles give way and I crumpled to the floor.
Moths, luminescent and blue, were suddenly swarming around the snakeman, the babble and susurrus of their voices overpowering his. My hand swept over the floor, closed on the handle of my knife. More moths poured in through the doorway, the same creatures that had found me clinging for dear life days ago in the caverns above. The snakeman, his mind pulled away from mine with a yank, struck out again and again with his staff.
In another moment, I would have been completely in his sway. Now each moth he struck flared into a crimson cinder, but it didn't matter: he was surrounded, he was swarmed. Some new strength, airy and unforeseen, filled my limbs, and I stood. Could these be Desna's messengers? My mind full of the din of the creatures, I lurched forward. My eyes saw—I saw—the snakeman's silhouette thrashing in the moths' throng. I lifted the knife and watched its blade waver. For every moth the snakeman burnt, five more seemed to come. I moved my arm up and down once, staring at it. Then I drove the knife forward, straight into the snakeman's throat.
He died with a shriek and a gargle, his tumble wrenching the knife out of my hands as his body collapsed onto the t
omb floor. As if the sun were coming out, I felt the snakeman's spell fully cast out of my mind. The moths rose as he fell, withdrawing as they had come, flapping out the mouth of the tomb.
I sat against the wall, counted fifty breaths, and at each gave thanks to Desna. A year of burnt offerings every day. A thousand candles lit. Forty nights fasting under the north star. The moths were gone now, but I counted fifty breaths more, shut my eyes, opened them. My sunrod still lit the room weakly where it had fallen.
Why is it that everyone I meet down here wants to kill me?
Possession is mercifully rare: wizards strong enough to master a mind are not my usual line of work. Double possession—and how else but by a second intervention could I have broken the snakeman's spell?—is about as common as a goblin at a wine-tasting. Of all the Pathfinders whose exploits were ever chronicled, only Durvin Gest had the misfortune to find his mind such a battleground.
I sat back up, crawled carefully over the bloodstained robes and corpse of the snakeman, and looked into his strange sepulcher.
I hadn't been imagining. Good and bad fortune are like two folded hands: in the base of the open cylinder of the sepulcher were heaps of gems and gold. Uncut diamonds, gold rings, platinum, topaz, jade-carved snakes, and more complex scenes—grim reliefs like those cut into the city walls, but here etched in silver and rubies. Looking back at the corpse of my would-be assassin, I saw his long tail was ringed in silver circlets, his wiry fingers adorned with crystal rings.
I stirred the heap and collected a few choice gems, emeralds and rubies, stuffing them into my pockets and the hidden compartment of my poor beaten-up pack. Nothing's as strong as habit, I guess. After all, if I ever made it back to the surface (and here I said another quick prayer), I knew I'd have expenses to pay and bribes to hand out.
The Compass Stone: The Collected Journals of Eando Kline Page 21
