Crypt of the Moaning Diamond

by Rosemary Jones

  “Pull the wings open three times and then shut,” she sputtered, her gloved fingers clumsy against the buckle’s delicate mechanism. “One, two, three, shut! Oh!”

  She blinked in surprise as her body drifted upward.

  “How about that?” she yelled as she floated off the stairs. The section of staircase just below her rising feet now broke apart in another blast of powdered stone, leaving wide gaps. She looked up and saw the chamber’s ceiling. There were interesting reflections from the water on it. It was much too close and approaching fast.

  “Now, Zuzzara, now! Pull!”

  A tug on her other belt kept her from zooming up to the ceiling. Twisting around and peering through her dangling feet, Ivy could see Zuzzara braced in the upper doorway, hauling her down like a kite being retrieved on a windy day. Ivy continued to sing loudly, choosing a song about lovers and yellow-roof maids, because no one had yelled at her to shut up yet. Besides, it did seem to distract the destrachans enough to keep them away from Gunderal.

  Far below, the beasts were still circling in the center of the room, trying to find her and ignoring the water that was now halfway up their long necks.

  “I love a good audience,” said Ivy as her boots scraped against the stone stairway. She twisted the winged serpent so the spell shut off and nearly dropped straight back into the chamber as gravity gripped her. Zuzzara’s strong hand on her belt hauled her back to safety on the ledge. Ivy grinned at the half-orc.

  With the water now lapping around their ears, the destrachans fell silent. The work of their terrible cries, however, continued. The stairs crumbled away, treads disappearing in showers of powdered stone, and cracks appeared in the walls around them, sending showers of little pebbles splashing in the water below. The destrachans set up a new keening, one that seemed to vibrate into the very bones of the Siegebreakers.

  With hand signals, Ivy tried to indicate that they should fall back into the tunnel. Mumchance shook his head and pointed at Gunderal, waving his hands. Ivy could not tell what he was trying to communicate. Seeing her puzzled face, Zuzzara leaned close to her ear and screamed over the beasts wailing below, “She has to finish the spell or the water stops.”

  Dismayed, Ivy peered over the staircase to check on the location of the destrachans.

  The roar of one beast below was changing again, into some type of weird high-pitched cry that seemed to hum through the metal in her armor. Blind as it was, the biggest and most persistent destrachan seemed to have a better fix on them than the others. Now that she had seen it shatter stone with its cry, she preferred not to learn first hand what it could do to people. It started forward, wading through the water and clambering up on the back of one of the smaller beasts, pushing it completely under the water. The big creature clawed its way onto the broken staircase, its heavy talons actually sinking into the stone as it heaved itself out of the water.

  “You are supposed to stay down there and drown,” Ivy screamed at it. Her cries bounced around the chamber walls, and the destrachan paused. Then it lurched across a broken gap in the stairs and pulled itself higher.

  Cursing her luck and wondering why the thing could not stay confused a little longer, Ivy drew her sword and ran down the uneven stairs, hopping over gaps and hoping the remaining stones would hold for a few minutes longer. She continued down until she was only a step or two above the climber. The monster’s new howl was causing the blade to hum in her hand. She guessed the metal could only take so much stress before it shattered. Positioning herself on the center of a crumbling stair above the beast, she angled the blade down, gripping the hilt with two hands. Then, with a little promise to find a temple soon and make some type of offering, Ivy flung the sword into the round, upturned mouth of the beast trying to claw its way up the crumbling stairs.

  She knew, even as she flung it with both hands, that it would take unbelievable luck to do any damage to a creature who ignored the stones raining down on its hide as the room disintegrated around it. But light glinted on the little harper’s token sewn on her glove, and most incredibly, her luck held. The sword point slid straight into the monster’s mouth, and the surprised beast swallowed it with a choking sound. “Blast, I truly liked that sword,” Ivy complained.

  A talon whipped across the toe of her boot, slashing it open. Ivy glanced down, wondering if she could charge a new pair of boots to the Thultyrl. Then the pain hit her. Blood welled through the cut in the boot.

  “Choke, you misery, choke and die,” she shrieked at the beast.

  The sword-swallowing destrachan clawed at its own mouth, obviously trying to dislodge the sharp object in its throat. The attempt caused the creature to wobble on the stairs and then lose its balance. It scrabbled and tried to cling to the staircase, its big claws cutting through the stones, then breaking loose. Again and again the destrachan scratched, caught a claw, heaved itself upright.

  “Go on, fall already,” Ivy shouted, and her voice bounced around the walls of the circular chamber.

  The beast swung his head around, pointing his open mouth toward the ceiling. Some pale pink spit dribbled down from the edge of its toothless maw. It screeched—not its aimed sonic sound but rather a thin cry of pain—and it fell sideways, landing solidly on the heads of the other two below. The impact of the falling destrachan forced all the beasts under the water.

  A huge wave rose up, shooting out and showering water over the stairs and the Siegebreakers.

  “Let’s get out of here!” screamed Ivy. When she turned to race back up the stairs, she nearly knocked Mumchance off. He had come down to stand behind her, holding his fake eye ready to throw in one hand. When the destrachan plunged down into the water, the dwarf gave a grunt of satisfaction and popped his gem bomb back into his empty eye socket.

  The destrachans’ heads reappeared above the water, but the monsters’ weird cries sounded sluggish and hoarse. “Persistent critters!” screamed Ivy as she put her hands in front of her to shove Mumchance faster up the stairs toward a worried-looking Zuzzara. The half-orc was still standing guard over her chanting sister, but she leaned down and offered one arm to grab the dwarf and swing him up onto the landing.

  The stress of their flight proved too much for the remaining steps; the stone turned into glittering dust as the staircase below the ledge literally dissolved. “Good crystal content in these stones,” yelled Mumchance as Ivy leaped the last few steps to land winded beside Zuzzara.

  “Why won’t the lousy shriekers drown?” Ignoring her throbbing foot, Ivy leaned over the landing to check on the location of the destrachans.

  The dust and rock that had once been the winding staircase avalanched down into the chamber, becoming mud as it mixed with the water. The destrachans were trapped in the thick goop. It began to fill their ears and mouths. The waters rose over the creatures’ heads. They stretched their unseeing faces upward, their ears twitching, their mouths open. Their cries continued to loosen the stones above them, but less now—a mere rain of chips that drifted down into the churning mess of water and stone dust. The soupy gray waters rose above the open mouths, filling them, then covering them. The cries of the monsters ended in gurgles.

  The room was finally silent except for the last three notes of Gunderal’s sweet chant, echoing above the lapping sound of the river filling the chamber below them. The wizard removed her fingers from her ears and with a pretty smile peered down into the water now steadily rising up the walls.

  “I told you I could call the river,” Gunderal pronounced with immense satisfaction.

  “Yes, but I told you this chamber would be a good place to trap the beasts,” Zuzzara said.

  “But you could not have done it, sister mine, without my help,” said Gunderal, her smile quavering into a lovely but distinct lower lip pout that always signaled an argument. “I’m the only one who can raise rivers.”

  “Of course your magic was important, but so was using it in the right place,” replied Zuzzara, ready to stand still and debate wit
h her younger sister about strategy.

  “Ladies, ladies,” said Mumchance, peering into what was left of the chamber below and watching the water rise faster up the wall. “We might want to discuss this later.” The dwarf called for his dog, and Wiggles’s bark echoed out of the tunnel opening off the landing. “Sounds like Wiggles has found a way out.”

  “You sisters can argue about who is the cleverest later,” said Ivy, through the throbbing of her torn toes and the aching of the new bruises on her knees and shins where she had fallen heavily against the landing. “But we’d better leave before the water is over our heads.”

  They raced along the tunnel in the direction that Archlis had gone. They hit another branch of the tunnel where another stair led down into the tunnels below. Wiggles stood at the top of those stairs, giving out a worried whine. Grabbing the lantern from Mumchance, Ivy peered down those stairs. At the very edge of the light, she saw the glimmer of water. The floor of the tunnel below was already damp, which meant the river was beginning to fill the ruins. “I am truly sick of being wet,” she said.

  “That’s tunnels for you,” the dwarf said. “Great conduits for water!” Ivy didn’t thank him for the information.

  A pair of snakes, thankfully quite small, whipped up the stairs and raced away in front of them.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mumchance, “I had not thought of that.”

  “What?”

  “Anything else living in these tunnels is going to need to flee too. Or be drowned.”

  Ivy glanced around. Nothing else appeared to shadow them. “Maybe the destrachans ate everything else living in this part of the ruins?”

  “Hope so,” said the dwarf, but he whistled to Wiggles, commanding the small dog to heel close to him.

  Zuzzara let out a cry. Her sharp eyes had spotted a hoof-shaped footprint in the mud of the floor, overlaid by the mark of a Procampur officer’s boot.

  “Sanval is ahead of us. Looks like he is following the magelord and Kid.”

  Ivy spotted a light shining ahead of them, and sped up to the faintly illuminated doorway that opened off the ledge. She found another staircase leading down, but this one seemed dry at the bottom. At least no reflective gleam of water showed in the lantern light. On the top step, the stub of a tallow candle flickered. Ivy remembered looting the dead bugbear and pressing some of the candles into Sanval’s reluctant hands. She had told him then that he would need the light. Had he used the candle to leave them a marker? Or was it one of Archlis’s tricks?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The stone stairs spiraled away into the darkness. As Ivy stepped forward, her damp boots squelched even louder than before. She looked down. Water was starting to drip down the sides of the walls and cover the floor of the tunnel where they were standing. Some water began dripping down the stairs. It was just a thin film of water, but she knew that the river was pushing behind it, seeking them out just as the destrachans had hunted them through the black tunnels.

  “How can the river be above us now and not below?” worried Ivy.

  “It is filling up the old canals first,” answered Gunderal. “And following the old wells and sewers. But it will spill over into the other tunnels soon enough.”

  “Don’t suppose you could slow it down a little now?”

  Gunderal sighed. “I wish I could, Ivy, but I have only one spell left for today. And that will make more water, not less.”

  “Save it then. We may need it later.”

  “Ivy,” said Mumchance, “we don’t want to go down.”

  “Water flows downhill,” added Gunderal—an unnecessary remark in Ivy’s opinion.

  “This stair looks dry,” Ivy said.

  “There may be some solid rock between the river and that tunnel, but it won’t hold back the river forever.”

  Ivy stared down into the blackness of the stairwell. “We have no choice. Archlis must have gone this way. We’re not leaving Kid behind. We are not leaving Sanval behind either, and I know he’s down there too,” she said. “I’m not letting Archlis walk out of these ruins with whatever treasure is down there. I’ll swim with destrachans if I have to, but we’re going down.”

  Ivy started to draw her sword and then realized her scabbard was empty. With a shrug, she started down the staircase. For a moment, there was only silence behind her. Then she heard the tap of Gunderal’s heels as she entered the spiral behind her, followed by Zuzzara’s heavy footsteps and the clump of Mumchance’s boots.

  “Told you that she was sweet on him,” hissed Zuzzara in what she imagined was a whisper.

  “Hush,” said Gunderal to her sister.

  Ivy’s shoulders dropped an inch as she relaxed her rigid back—of course, she had never doubted that they would follow her; they always followed her. But every now and then, she did wonder if she’d just been too foolish to follow. As for Zuzzara and Gunderal’s whispering, which she could hear perfectly well, she decided to ignore the blush that was creeping past her cheeks and turning her ears red. She was going after Kid, because the little thief had followed her into this mess. She would rather be cursed by every god in the Realms before she let that cloven-hoofed piece of mischief be fried by some crazy magelord. Or more likely, considering where they were, drowned in a hole.

  And if her friends tromping behind her thought she was going after a certain captain from the silver-roof district of Procampur, well she certainly wasn’t making any comments. Let them snicker all they want. She knew her duty just as well as Sanval did. And if the gods wanted to snatch away any of her friends, they were going to have to put up with her hanging on with both hands, pulling in the opposite direction, and screaming the whole time. So, even if she had to drag him out by the scruff of his neck, she was set upon getting a certain man safe and sound back to the tents of Procampur. She had quite enough pain going for her, from knees to shins to toes, without adding the troublesome kind of ache that was not physical at all.

  Now she was twisting down into a place that would soon become a well to catch a magelord who liked to play with fire. If she were lucky, she would get Kid, Sanval, and the rest of them out of this mess before the tunnels collapsed, bringing the ruins of Tsurlagol on top of them. I am so sick of being underground, thought Ivy, but I know what I need to do.

  “We are going to rescue Kid and anyone else who needs rescuing,” she told the others over her shoulder.

  “Mind telling us how?” asked Mumchance.

  “We’ll do like we always do. We’ll make one plan as we go along,” Ivy replied. “And have a spare plan hidden in our back pockets, just in case something goes wrong.”

  Ahead of them, Kid pondered the best way to murder a magelord. He knew that humans regarded him as a child and was often amused by their assumption that anything small must be young and harmless. Actually he was quite capable of defending himself and, prior to meeting Ivy, usually found the most lethal response as the easiest and quickest way to get what he wanted. It was the same with thieving. If you desired something, take it, because no one would ever just hand it to you—that he had learned long ago from the red wizards and the magelords.

  But then he had met the Siegebreakers, who gave all the time—food to strays, protection to anyone who asked. They might moan and groan about how they would be bankrupt within days, or bluster about how they were heartless mercenaries only out for profit, but it never stopped them from defending a bunch of hardscrabble pig farmers against a wizard bent on stealing their land and hogs. And collecting no more payment than a few smoked hams.

  “They are all children, dear sir,” Kid had once told Mumchance, who was the only person on the farm even close to his own age and experience. “So open with their hearts, so naive.”

  “Of course, they have only lived a couple of decades, not centuries as you and I,” said the dwarf. “Their earliest dreams are still fresh in their heads. That is the most terrifying feature of all those with human blood in their veins. They are capable of so much, simply because th
ey believe that they can accomplish their dreams. Both good and bad. Of course, that is also their most attractive quality—one that can seduce even a centuries-wise dwarf and a cunning thief into believing the same dreams.” Kid bowed before the old dwarf that day, realizing that Mumchance was right.

  In his earliest decades spent in the dungeons of Thay, Kid had never known that the dreams of humans could be anything other than nightmares. Later, as the slave of Toram, Kid had survived by cringing before the grave-robbing magelord and pretending to be the child that he appeared. But the first flash of joy that he had ever known was the day that he sank his teeth into Archlis’s hand and escaped from slavery. Now, Archlis thought he could take Toram’s place as his master; but not for long, resolved Kid. He would never be a slave again. He had a home to go to, a barn roof to fix, and an odd assortment of a female fighter, a family of half-humans, and one ancient dwarf to protect. Without his cunning, who knew what trouble the Siegebreakers would encounter?

  Kid fingered the knives hidden under the collar of his tunic and surreptitiously checked the multitude of charms hanging from Archlis’s tabard—he recognized one or two that had formerly belonged to Toram. Such charms protected the magelord from most edged weapons. Still, if he could cut off the charm and then strike with the dagger, he stood a good chance. The bugbears he dismissed with contempt. He knew that he was faster and cleverer than they were.

  Kid’s ears swiveled back and forth as he considered the quickest way to kill Archlis. But what of Ivy and the others? Behind him, Kid could hear the river rising. Perhaps he should wait to kill the magelord—wait until he knew the way out and could lead the others. After all, they would need rescuing, and it was his duty (an odd word for him, and one that he had never used out loud) to save them.