The Seal of Karga Kul: A Dungeons & Dragons Novel

by Alex Irvine

  “Sure, that’s where we’re going anyway. From here, not much choice.” Vokoun spat overboard. Remy noted from the color that he was a bit of a kaat chewer himself. “But what do you want to go there for, if you’re headed for Karga Kul? We can get you there. For a halfling cousin—even a Blackfall cousin—it’s the least we could do.”

  “We are in your debt,” Keverel said formally.

  Vokoun laughed. “You sure are. But it’s a debt we’ll never collect, so why worry about it?” He spat again and looked over his shoulder at the sleeping Kithri. “She’s not doing well? She’s hurt?”

  “She was badly hurt by an ogre some time back,” Keverel said. “She is healing, but more slowly than I would like. It’s the air, the bad spirits … for all I know, it’s the crows. Whatever it is, she’s not doing as well as I would have hoped. But she is tougher than the rest of us; she’ll come through.”

  Vokoun clucked in his throat and said something in the river pidgin to the archers. Each of them made a similar cluck and a quick gesture over the sleeping Kithri. Biri-Daar and Keverel exchanged a glance. Remy watched, wondering if Keverel would add an Erathian blessing. When he did not, Remy then wondered whether it was because he didn’t want to offend their hosts or because he believed that, among halflings, the halflings’ beliefs carried more power. Remy knew little of gods. He had heard their names, and his oaths, when he swore them, were to Pelor, but that was because his mother had done the same. To devote one’s life to the service of a god … it was not the life Remy would choose.

  And yet he would choose—was choosing, had chosen—a life of adventure, and so had Biri-Daar and Keverel. So perhaps a life lived for a god was not such a bad life after all. Remy was thinking of that when he fell asleep to the whoosh of the poles and the slap of water against the front of the halflings’ flat-bottomed boat.

  In the morning, sun beat down on Iskar’s Landing and Vokoun’s band of river traders—or river raiders, if there was a difference—was gone. There the second terminus of the Crow Road—the Southern Fork—wound down through a cut in the highlands to a flat place at a sweeping bend in the Whitefall. The landing itself was a collection of docks and a rope-drawn ferry across to the Karga Trace, which rose through the Whitefall Highlands and led after fifty leagues to Karga Kul itself. River traffic from upstream stopped there during times of year when flooding out of the Lightless Marsh made the Whitefall too dangerous to sail; during those times, an impromptu town arose, loud with gambling, whoring, and the rest of the activities bored travelers get up to when their journeys are interrupted for weeks on end. There had been no rains in the past month, however, and the Whitefall ran easy there, deep and green in the shadowed overhang of the bluffs along its north bank.

  Remy had dim memories of arriving the night before, stumbling off the halflings’ boat where it beached on the bank of a Whitefall tributary stream that ran into the main river a hundred yards upstream of the landing. He had stripped off his wet clothes and wrapped himself in a slightly less wet blanket and fallen straight back to sleep near a campfire on the riverbank.

  “They got out of here early,” Remy said to Lucan. Someone had strung the wet clothes near the fire to dry.

  “That they did,” Lucan answered. “But you also slept in. You can thank our cleric for your dry clothes. What a mother hen he is sometimes.”

  Remy got dressed, looking around. Keverel was nowhere in sight.

  “Before they left,” Lucan went on, “the halflings offered us a ride the rest of the way down the river if we make it out of the Keep.”

  The Keep, Remy thought. He looked upriver, half expecting to see it. Lucan saw what he was doing. “We’re not that close,” he said. “We’ll have to head back up the Southern Fork to the main road and then to the Road-builder’s Tomb. According to Vokoun, the road isn’t underwater after the Crow’s Foot, and the local beasties are fairly tame because they’re scared of whatever’s in the tomb. Sounds good to me.”

  “Sure,” Remy said. “Except the tomb part.”

  “There’s where you’re wrong.” Lucan pulled a mug out of the ashes near the fire and tested the liquid in it with a fingertip. Satisfied, he took a sip. “Tombs mean plunder, young Remy. And even our paladin won’t object to us helping ourselves to whatever we find in this tomb. Not after the undead dragonborn the two of you saw back there.”

  “She told you about that?”

  “Why wouldn’t she? Biri-Daar’s proud, but she’s not one to hide things from us. You could live your whole life and not be part of a band whose leader cared more for your life than she does.” Lucan drank again, then sneezed. “She’s not much fun, but she’s a leader even I can trust. And I don’t trust leaders.”

  Keverel and Paelias came up from the riverbank, where they had been trading travelers’ tales with the others passing through the landing. “The word is out that something got away from Avankil that wasn’t supposed to,” Paelias said quietly. None of them looked at Remy. “There are bounties. Whatever it is we’re doing with Remy’s package, we should do it quick or we’re going to have demons like orcs have lice.”

  “And we need to get moving out of here now,” Keverel said. “It won’t be long before some of the more unsavory characters down there figure out that maybe we might be carrying what we’re asking about.”

  Paelias looked pale and shaky, as if he had just finished vomiting. “Believe I should have something to eat,” he said. “But I don’t much feel like it.”

  Keverel took his arm and pulled his sleeve back to reveal a bandage. Pulling the bandage back, he revealed a yuan-ti bite mark, four punctures that formed an almost perfect square on the eladrin’s forearm. “The poison’s not going to kill you. I made sure of that. But you are going to feel a bit under the weather for a day or so yet,” Keverel said.

  “Wonderful news,” Paelias said. Then he bent over, Keverel still holding one arm, and threw up at his own feet.

  Biri-Daar and Kithri approached from the other side. “We leave now,” Biri-Daar said. “Much of the morning is gone and we’re not going to want to spend a night anywhere near the tomb. That means we need to get to the Crow’s Foot in the Crow Road today and find a defensible place to make camp. Paelias, can you do it?”

  “The real question is, does he want to do it?” Kithri asked. “Thought you were just riding along with us for a while.”

  “A little poison isn’t going to stop me going into a tomb full of horrible monstrosities with my new companions,” Paelias said. Then he threw up again.

  Kithri’s skepticism notwithstanding, Remy realized that at some point Paelias had become one of the group. No one had said anything about it, and he couldn’t tell exactly when it might have happened, but he was one of them, with the same mission.

  They broke camp quickly. Remy wanted to ask Biri-Daar why the sigils on the box had glowed so brightly. Had someone put a charm on it, to call attention to it when certain kinds of creatures were near? Was it sensitive to the presence of the undead?

  Or was something within it calling out to the undead? Or to the yuan-ti?

  Remy had many more questions than answers. But he wasn’t going to be able to ask many of them that day, not with the pace they were going to have to set if they wanted to make the Crow’s Foot with enough light to set a fire and call the watches before dark.

  They made it, just. The sun was low, touching the mountaintops, when they came over a crest on the Southern Fork and saw the Crow’s Foot ahead of them. The Tomb Fork led straight away to the east, along high ground. The tomb itself was obscured by the undulations of low hills, but above and beyond it they saw their destination, and each of them regarded it in silence for a moment, awed by the powerful sorceries that had made it possible.

  High over the Whitefall, its towers burning in the sunset over the Draco Serrata, hung the Inverted Keep. “I fear what we will find within,” Biri-Daar breathed. Remy asked her why, but she would not answer. They camped in silence, and in th
e morning entered the tomb of the mad sorcerer and self-proclaimed king who had built the Crow Road.

  BOOK IV

  THE INVERTED KEEP

  The next day as they broke camp, Remy couldn’t keep the questions out of his mouth any longer. He walked up to Biri-Daar and asked, “Did those … you know … Did they rise because of me? Because of what I’m carrying?”

  She had been working a whetstone through the complicated curls on the back side of her blade. Without stopping, she said, “Perhaps.”

  He waited. When she didn’t go on, he prompted her. “Should we open it? Should we know what we’re getting into if we go into a tomb? If this is going to raise undead, we’ll likely find our share of them in a tomb, won’t we?”

  “We likely will,” Biri-Daar said. She paused in her sharpening and added, “But we have committed to a course. We are taking you to Karga Kul and the Mage Trust. They will know what to do. And if they do not, then I have no hope of figuring it out here. So it’s best not to think of it.”

  Remy would have pushed the conversation further, but Biri-Daar stood. “Time to get moving.”

  The Road-builder’s Tomb was ringed by the last paving stones of the Crow Road, at the terminus of the grand and terrible project begun somewhere near the Gorge of Noon a thousand years and more before Remy stepped onto those stones and said, “So. We have to go down to go up?”

  “Yes,” Paelias said. “And then apparently up will be down.”

  In the center of the keyhole created by the turnaround at the end of the Crow Road lay the open entrance to the Road-builder’s Tomb. “The story goes that he couldn’t stand the idea that the road could end,” Paelias said. “Once, I believe, there was a keyhole at the other end as well. Some say it was destroyed in the war between Arkhosia and Bael Turath. Others say it was never there at all.”

  “I heard that the dragonborn of Karga Kul pulled up those stones and carried them off for their clan lair in Toradan!”

  They turned as one. The speaker, standing on the far end of the ridge where they had made their camp, leaned on a tall shield, his face split in a broad grin. He was tall and broad, heavily built, his skin the color of old brick. His horns curled back from his forehead, carved with symbols of clan and god. “A tiefling,” Kithri said. “How about that?”

  Biri-Daar took a step forward. “You provoke me, tiefling?” she asked.

  “I jest, O mighty dragonborn, Biri-Daar, paladin of Bahamut.” The tiefling approached and dipped his head in formal greeting. “I am Obek of Saak-Opole. My ancestors and yours, dragonborn, did battle on the Bridge of Iban Ja. Now, though, events conspire to make us allies.”

  “Do they?” Biri-Daar looked back at the rest of them. “What say you?”

  “I am curious how a tiefling appears to bait our resident dragonborn just when we’re about to go into a tomb that is, according to legend, heaped to the ceiling with treasures beyond imagining,” Lucan said. “If this is a strategy, I cannot fathom its goal. Not to mention my curiosity as to how you know her name.”

  “The goal is simple,” said Obek of Saak-Opole. “Word has spread on the river of a certain something headed to a certain place. You can always use another sword. I can use a chance to get back to Karga Kul and settle an old score there.”

  “You don’t need us for that,” Keverel said.

  “No, I need her.” Obek pointed at Biri-Daar. “She is known in Karga Kul, and I sought her specifically. Without her, the Mage Trust will strike me down as soon as I am within sight of the gate. With her, I at least have a chance to enter the city. That is all I ask.”

  “And what do you offer?” Biri-Daar asked.

  Obek drew his sword. “This. You’re going to need it.”

  “You’re a fool,” Paelias said, and burst out laughing. “I thought I was the only one.”

  Moving closer, Obek said, “You and I have nothing in common, eladrin. You’re a freebooter. I would sacrifice my life to get back inside Karga Kul. If the only way to do it is by going through that tomb and that keep …” He spread his arms. “No one day is a better day to die than any other.”

  Biri-Daar walked up to the tiefling. “In one hour we are entering the Road-builder’s Tomb. You will not enter with us.”

  On schedule, in an hour, they began the entry of the tomb. From the rise, Obek watched but made no move to follow.

  The Road-builder’s Tomb began with a broad flagstone plaza, each stone carved with a different rune. “Once I read that these stones are a code, and that whoever solved it would bring the Road-builder back to life,” Keverel said.

  “I’ve heard that he brought himself back to life,” Lucan said.

  Kithri looked at each of them in turn. “Any other stories?”

  “I heard that he takes the guise of a tiefling and tries to come along with anyone stupid enough to want to enter his tomb,” Paelias said. They all looked at him. “Why not bring him along?”

  “Because, idiot,” Lucan said. “He could as easily be coming after Remy’s little box. How do we know otherwise? How is that he appeared at exactly this moment?”

  “Suspicion makes you die younger,” Paelias said.

  “Unless you get murdered in your sleep because you weren’t suspicious enough,” Remy pointed out.

  “Everyone be silent,” Biri-Daar said. “The tiefling does not come with us.”

  The unpaved earth that formed the hole in the keyhole was overgrown with highland brush and a few stunted, wind-sculpted trees. “It’s supposed to be in the center here, the exact center,” Keverel said. They hacked a path into the undergrowth, stopping periodically so Keverel could get his bearings. At what he determined to be the center, they tore the brush out by the roots, first chopping the larger trees out with camp hatchets. Then, using the trunks, they levered the roots up out of the earth, leaving a pit … that in the middle seemed a bit deeper than it should have been, exposing a stone that was a bit too regular in edge …

  Half an hour later they had exposed the entrance to the Road-builder’s Tomb.

  A simple stone stair, just wide enough to descend single file, led down into the cleared and trampled earth. Below the natural roof formed by generations of root systems, its first eight steps were exposed. Below that abbreviated space, they found a solid seven feet of earth and brush, packed by the ages into nearly stonelike hardness. “Ah, the glories of adventuring,” Kithri said.

  Two hours later they had cleared it out, chipping it into pieces and handing them up in a chain to toss them out onto the plaza. Kithri, by far the smallest of them, was stuck down in the hole, levering pieces loose and scooping helmets full of loose dirt and gravel. When the landing was clear, they brushed off the door and examined it.

  Unlike the paving stones, the door was unadorned. It was constructed of simple bricks and mortar. Neither Paelias nor Lucan nor Kithri could find any magical traps or bindings. “Well,” said Keverel when they had cleared the door, “Erathis forgive me.”

  The door was not designed to open. Neither was it designed to withstand repeated impacts from a steel mace. Its blocks, held together only with mortar, began to shift almost immediately. Half a dozen blows had knocked it loose enough that Biri-Daar and Remy could wedge the edges of their shields into the gap and pry it open far enough for them to enter.

  Biri-Daar went first, her armor aglow with a charm Keverel placed on all steel they carried. Lucan and Remy came next, then Kithri, with Paelias and Keverel acting as rear guard. When they were just inside the door, Biri-Daar stopped and said softly, “Kithri. Quick, back to the top of the stairs. Is the tiefling still there?”

  She vanished and returned a moment later, her coming and going nearly soundless. “No sign of him.”

  “Too bad,” Lucan said. “We could have used the company.”

  Paelias stopped. “Didn’t you just—”

  “One thing you can always count on from Lucan,” Kithri said, “is that he’ll be contrary.”

  “Quiet,” Bi
ri-Daar said. They moved forward into the tomb.

  The first passage was long and straight and angled slightly downward. The stone under their feet was dry, the air in their lungs musty with an odd hint of spices scattered centuries ago and never dispersed by wind or age. Light from their armor and ready blades suffused the passage with a glow bright enough to illuminate but not blind. On the smooth bedrock of the walls, the story of the building of the Crow Road unfolded in a painting that stretched from entry to a plastered-over doorway at the passage’s end.

  “Any sign?” Biri-Daar asked quietly.

  “None I can find,” Paelias said. Keverel shook his head. Kithri darted forward to look for the kind of mechanical ambush that even the most skilled magic never found. She, too, backed away without finding anything.

  Biri-Daar gave the plaster an experimental tap. All of them could hear how hollow a sound it made. She hit it again with a forearm, sending a cloud of dust rolling along the floor and leaving a visible dent in the door. Lucan punched a hole through where she had hit it and he peered into the darkness on the other side. “Antechamber,” he said. Then he sneezed.

  Remy and Biri-Daar broke out a hole big enough to step through, covering themselves with choking dust that picked up the magical glow. The effect was of walking into a faintly luminescent fog as they passed into the antechamber and saw what lay within. Like many prominent personages who built themselves extravagant tombs, the Road-builder had wanted his to reflect his station and achievements in life. So in the antechamber were arranged the tools and materials of exploration and roadbuilding. In wall sconces, bejeweled surveyor’s tools gleamed next to hanging picks and shovels of solid gold. On the ceiling, a sky map was picked out in diamonds.

  Along the walls below the sconces, rows of shining silver wheelbarrows were piled high with uncut gems and chunks of ore representing debris. “Amazing,” Lucan said.