Depths of Madness

by Erik Scott De Bie

  Davoren nodded, smirking.

  Twilight drew the blade away and looked at Taslin. “And if anyone doubts I have the sand to do it, as we say in the Shining South, I’d be more than happy to demonstrate.” She traced tiny circles through the air with her blade.

  No one spoke. Oblivious to their camaraderie in it, Taslin and Davoren both stared at Twilight with shock and loathing. Slip looked horrified. Even Asson, who had struggled to his feet again with many coughs, fixed Twilight with an angry look.

  “We survive together, or we die apart,” said Twilight. “If those wights are any indication of what’s waiting, we need everyone. Understand?” She stared hard at Davoren. “Everyone.”

  Davoren sneered, but nodded curtly. He moved away, presumably to find a soft spot to rest. The other adventurers followed suit.

  Twilight stood for another long moment, then sheathed her rapier. When no one spoke, she whirled away and padded off.

  Before she had taken two steps, Taslin caught her by the arm. Twilight expected a rebuke, but instead the sun elf’s eyes revealed shame.

  “You were right,” the priestess said. “I apologize for my foolishness.”

  Twilight eyed Liet, watching her surreptitiously from a distance, as she answered.

  “I don’t want you to apologize,” she said evenly. “I want you to obey.”

  Taslin gaped.

  With that, Twilight shook herself free of the priestess’s grip and sat down on one of the overturned sarcophagi. She pulled a knee up to her chin and rested her head on it, watching the others. Silence reigned. The others ignored her, except Gargan, who stared. Once again, that odd sense of eternity manifested in his eyes. She had seen that gleam of wisdom before, and knew enough not to trust it.

  Twilight looked away for a time, then back. Gargan was still gazing at her. Was that esteem in his strange eyes, or disdain for her methods?

  Either way, at least someone understands, Twilight thought.

  Then she looked down at the cut on her arm. She tore a strip from her precious blouse and cleaned the wound. It would have to do. She wiped the blood from her cheeks and forehead as best she could.

  She was the captain of this band, and damned if she would show any sign of weakness. They would absolutely follow her lead—they had no alternative. Twilight hated the responsibility, but she knew they had no choice.

  Watching the disjointed band and ignoring her growling stomach, Twilight slowly drifted into reverie. At least, she hoped so. She did not think she could stand another night of the barbaric human sleep she had been finding so often lately.

  For some reason, she couldn’t keep a certain laugh out of the back of her mind.

  Gestal stood over the slumbering Twilight, watching the way her sweat-streaked face gleamed in the torchlight. Only one of them stood guard, running her fingers gently over the brow of a sleeping, withered man. She was completely oblivious.

  It mattered little to Gestal. His gaze stayed upon Twilight, who slept apart from the others, where no guard could see her easily—or admire her, for that matter.

  Twilight’s eyes flickered under her lids, the eyes of a girl caught in violent nightmares. After a single candle’s burn, she had dipped into true slumber. It surprised Gestal that the she-elf slept like a human, rather than lying in trance like most of her people.

  How innocent she became when asleep, how frightened. Perhaps this was why she stayed away from the party—to keep such fragile, vulnerable beauty to herself.

  Gestal, on the other hand, would have none of that. He bent down, fingers extended. Twilight shifted in her sleep, recoiling as though she sensed the hand coming.

  Lord Divergence ran his fingers through her raven locks. She shivered. They stretched out their thoughts with the softest chant of magical power, and …

  Nothing.

  Gestal had expected as much. Through that sapphire amulet, he could not see into her mind. Nor could he divine her location or watch her from afar. Only through the eyes of others—or his own—could Gestal see her.

  He could take it now, but why? He enjoyed her pretensions.

  Gestal smiled. This trifle added to the game.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Twilight awoke in a groggy murk. Sometime during the night, she had slipped once again into the sleep of humans. In that unnatural chaos, she had experienced dreams as humans do—uncontrolled, nonsensical visions that would have frightened her to wakefulness had she not been used to them. Most of the dreams had been nightmares—as usual. She had wanted desperately to awaken, but as always, she had not. And some dreams, even stranger, had been the kind she hadn’t wanted to wake from.

  Many of those visions had centered on the young Liet Sagrin, of all folk.

  She sniffed and rolled her eyes. Barbaric. Enjoyable, but simply barbaric.

  Twilight dismissed the dreams as more of the unpleasantness she encountered with greater frequency than others in her profession. Most elves, she well knew, never slept more than twice or thrice in as many centuries, but Twilight was not like most elves.

  Like most, though, she desired to eat at sunup—and, of course, to relieve herself.

  As she made her careful way into a chamber removed from the huddled band in order to do just that, Twilight met Slip coming from the other direction. The little thief, wearing her mace and a dagger that she had apparently found somewhere, smiled when she saw the elf.

  “Good morrow!” the halfling said brightly.

  “Yes,” Twilight managed. The halfling wandered alone? “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, just a morning walk.” Slip’s smile didn’t fade.

  Twilight’s suspicion did not fade either. “A morning walk,” she repeated.

  “Absolutely!” said Slip. “Nothing gets the vim and vigor flowing like a good jaunt around the meadow”—she looked around—“er, crypt. Anyway, we take them all the time back in Crimel. Gets the body ready for the day, and makes breakfast at the Tumbling Troll taste even better!”

  “Crimel,” said Twilight. “The village in Luiren?”

  Slip blinked. “You’ve been there?”

  Twilight’s suspicion deepened. “I’ve heard of it,” she said, truthfully. “I’ve passed through the Shining South.”

  Slip nodded. “Have you heard of Arvor Brightbrows?” she asked gleefully.

  “No,” said Twilight. “A relation?”

  “He’s me da—the march warden of Crimel,” said Slip brightly. “And Denrin Lightstep Brightbrows? Revered Nurturer Hubin Sharpears?”

  Twilight shrugged.

  “Me brother, silly!” she exclaimed. “An’ me second cousin, thrice removed! He’s a priest o’ the Matriarch.”

  Finally. Someone Twilight knew, of the divine variety. Yondalla, mother of the halflings. Slip’s mistress.

  “How about Nola Treestump?”

  “Your mother?” Twilight guessed.

  “The quirky druid who’s spent too long in the woods!” Her eyes rolled and Slip scoffed. “Obviously.”

  “Obviously,” Twilight said.

  Something flickered across Slip’s face. “Have you heard of Reeman Lightspinner?” she asked softly. “Though his full name would be Reethelmanath Ballufguts Bumper Lightspinner the twenty-sixth.”

  “Ah, no,” said Twilight. “I’ve not.” She raised a brow. “A halfling? With such a name?”

  “A gnome,” Slip said wistfully. “From Lantan. A magician—well, illusionist—brilliant. He and I were handfasted.” Her face turned up at the ceiling and softened.

  That caught Twilight by surprise—a halfling, bound to a gnome? She had heard of humans and elves mating—experienced it on more than one occasion, in fact—but the little folk? Curious.

  “I see,” said Twilight. “You ‘were’ handfasted?”

  A cloud passed over Slip’s eyes then. “It didn’t work out.”

  “Oh.” She ached suddenly for Lilten—his companionship, his wonderfully smothering embrace—and she shook her hea
d to clear it.

  Twilight realized Slip was still staring at her. She wondered if the little one could read her thoughts, so intently did she …

  “Well, good morrow!” Slip said brightly.

  With that, the halfling was off, scurrying toward the companions’ camp as though she had never stopped. There was a story there, and Twilight’s instincts told her it was important. She touched the Shroud about her neck, briefly.

  Twilight watched, then went on her way, finding a good shadowed place and thanking providence she carried thareea cloths wrapped in her boot tops. Small comforts. From her belt of thieving supplies, she pulled out her hand mirror and looked at her face. Her eyes strained to hold up dark sacks and her features seemed shrunken—shallow.

  She saw a smudge. A smear of blood across her cheek.

  She looked closer, and there were two curls, almost like two snakes wrapped around each other.

  Suppressing a shiver, Twilight wiped it away roughly.

  The others were ready to go by the time Twilight returned. They ate a simple meal of white cheese and acorn wafers, along with a wine-colored jelly of mixed berries. When a spell of Taslin’s filled up a set of waterskins, even Davoren grudgingly admitted the cleric’s usefulness. Quietly.

  The seven quickly found an exit. A set of stairs behind a half-collapsed wall led up to another level. Twilight wasn’t sure why she hadn’t noticed it earlier—perhaps she had just been distracted. As before, with caution, they crept up, Twilight and Slip in front, Gargan at the rear, the others in the middle. Asson hobbled, coughing. He made surprisingly little sound for one his age with such injuries, and Twilight respected that.

  She could not dismiss a feeling of trepidation, as though they were being stalked. Something wriggled in the back of her mind: a frightening suspicion.

  Halfling and elf passed through a half-open grate into a large, round chamber with corridors leading in six directions. Eerie light came from phosphorescent fungus that grew along the walls and ceiling. For a moment, she might have thought they were in the Underdark, but these tunnels were of human make.

  Mad human, more like it. The room’s architecture curved, dipped, and swayed. In its center and leading down the six corridors, the floor formed a trough that might once have held water but had long since gone dry. The channels’ walls and gutters were stained brown and green, and not from paint.

  “Sewers,” Twilight said.

  “Really old sewers,” Slip corrected. “Even the stink’s gone. Well”—she sniffed the air and coughed—“the stink of the living.”

  Indeed, a faint odor of old musk—more dust than rot—adulterated the stale air.

  “True enough.” Seeing no ambush or traps, Twilight waved up the others.

  If these passages were truly sewers, then no one had used them for scores, if not hundreds of years. Mottled brownish stains striped the walls, as though a great battle had splashed up a river of putrescence. The ceiling was caked with stains as well. All liquid was gone, leaving no traces but the stains. The dust showed disturbances, as if someone had walked the rooms not long ago.

  Twilight pursed her lips in thought, trying to derive clues as to the nature of their prison. Either they had found an abandoned sector of sewers, cut off from the main system for a long period, or they had found imprisonment in a long abandoned city. A ghost city? But what manner of necropolis included a magically altered, yet very much alive troll guardian?

  Taslin and the others examined the hexagonal layout. Six corridors branched from the room, one leading from each corner. Most of the tunnels were blocked by rubble, leaving only two remotely passable. The tunnels were more or less straight, compared to the curving architecture.

  Gargan pointed and spoke a word in his deep-throated language.

  “What is it?” Twilight asked.

  “He means, I believe,” said Taslin. “To point us north.”

  Twilight eyed her suspiciously. “How did you—?”

  Davoren misinterpreted her question. “What difference does it make which direction is which?” he asked. “Or do you know which way to go, leader?”

  “I never said I did,” Twilight replied. “We go east.” She gestured and headed in her chosen direction, moving quickly away from any possible protest.

  “Why east?” Liet asked as she strode toward that tunnel.

  “Ever onward,” Twilight murmured. “Ever away.”

  The others followed, keeping guard. No horrors like the wights lunged from the shadows, but Twilight kept the band on the lookout for ambushes and roving dangers. They reached a second chamber where more tunnels branched out, continuing the bizarre layout of the sewers. Twilight split the group, taking Davoren and Slip while she sent the others under Taslin. Though Twilight was reluctant to show favoritism toward the priestess over the warlock, Taslin was the only one she trusted—and then only halfway.

  Working together, stalking cautiously but quickly through the rooms in their immediate vicinity, the adventurers got more of a sense of their surroundings.

  It took the entire day.

  The sewer system seemed to stretch forever in all directions, and nowhere could they find a way up or out. Many times, a black disk of metal like a hatch was seen in the ceiling, but they saw no way through. Even Gargan, empowered with flight by Asson’s spell, could not push open the strange panels. The one in the dungeon was likely loose and weak, as though it had been used many times before. Twilight did not doubt that somewhere in these sewers was a ladder to a trapdoor above, or an entrance to stairs, but that seemed less than comforting considering the size of the complex.

  In a few places, they found claw and nail marks on the floor and walls, giving evidence that others had occupied this sewer before the seven companions. Twilight redoubled her wariness.

  Further complicating matters, Twilight discovered a network of unfinished tunnels that wove in and out of the sewer system. The rough-hewn burrows, over forty hands in diameter, looked like a maze carved by some manner of insects—giant insects.

  “Glory be! You could fit ten of me under this!” said Slip, looking up at the ceiling. Then she smiled at Gargan. “And four of him, even!”

  “Only half as many,” said Twilight. She winked at Slip. “Of both.”

  When the adventurers assembled again in the second main chamber, Twilight assigned Davoren to explain the situation while she lingered at the westernmost tunnel. The warlock enjoyed being in a position of superior knowledge so much that he didn’t seem to notice Twilight was instructing him.

  As she leaned against the wall, arms crossed, Liet came up behind her. She noticed that his boots gave a little squeak when he walked.

  “Trying to surprise me again,” she said without looking at him.

  “I didn’t try the first time—just looking for the pleasure of your company.”

  “My company.” Twilight looked at him with her eyes slit. “Is that all?”

  “Rule four,” said Liet.

  Twilight couldn’t help but roll her eyes at that.

  “So what’s the matter, ’Light?” asked Liet. “Worried about Davoren and Taslin? You handled them quite well, I think—I didn’t think either of them could avoid biting each other for more than five breaths.”

  “Maybe something’s watching us,” Twilight said.

  Liet’s brow furrowed. “Watching?” He wiggled his fingers. “By magic, aye?”

  Twilight shook her head. She twirled her amulet on its chain. “Not through this,” she said. The sapphire on its silver chain glittered in the torchlight. “With this trinket, I don’t exist. Not here, not in the Realms, not anywhere.”

  “Fascinating,” Liet whispered.

  Something in his tone made the hairs perk up along Twilight’s spine. There was more to this boy than met the eye. Once again, she wondered how he had frightened that wight. Did Liet have an untapped aptitude for the Weave, or something more?

  “Regardless, it seems possible we’re being watched,”
said Twilight. “Something or someone has set us up, as though we’re being tested.”

  “Set us up?” Liet scrunched his face in confusion.

  “Our weapons and equipment, kept in stockpile, behind a simple lock,” said Twilight. “A perfectly balanced group—Davoren and Asson to sling spells, Gargan and you to swing steel, Taslin and Slip to mend wounds, and Slip and myself to scout and open locks. None of us alike, all of us necessary. We overcame the troll without difficulty. Even our escape was too easy. We’re being set up.”

  “Aye,” said Liet. “And I suppose the wights were waiting for us as well?”

  Twilight nodded and traced her fingers through the dust on the wall. “I am no stranger to running a maze set by someone greater than myself.”

  Without realizing it, she had drawn a star on the wall. When she noticed it, she brushed it away.

  “And this feels the same. Except.” She touched the amulet again. “Except no wizard can be tracking us.”

  “So there must be—” Liet said.

  Twilight laid a finger across his lips, silencing him. Her pale eyes flicked back and forth, making sure none of the others were watching or listening.

  “Maybe,” said Twilight, “maybe.”

  The elf needn’t have worried about the others. The warlock’s muttering and the priestess’s conjured food kept them more than occupied.

  Rather, creatures not at all akin to the adventurers were listening, though they were not watching, exactly.

  Had the pair looked up, elf and man might have been lucky enough to spot a pair of gray-skinned creatures pressed against the stone. They hung upside down, ears turned to listen to the conversation. Though they couldn’t understand the words, they carefully memorized the sounds—a simple matter, since even their whispers sounded like obnoxious shouts. They recorded inflections of voice, scent, patterns of breathing, even the shape and texture of clothing from the movement of air, all from high above.

  The creatures didn’t note faces, not having eyes with which to do so.