Depths of Madness (24 page)

Gargan hissed a warning note, and Liet looked up.

They had ascended the stairs into open air, but there was no breeze in the darkness. Liet was suddenly aware that he stood upon something much like grass, though the sun was not to be seen. Great forms loomed out of the darkness, and Liet had to draw his sword and gasp before he realized they weren’t moving.

All around them, the torchlight revealed huge bulks that looked, oddly, like flowers and vines of reds, oranges, and purples. Luminescence came from fungi on the walls, such as they had seen in the sewers below, and some plants shed light in many subdued colors. They felt as though they had come into some sage’s arboretum.

Some plants were normal, most were strange and twisted, but all were gigantic. Something like a daisy was taller than Liet, and Slip had to brush away petals of violets the size of her face. Mountainous moonflowers and firedragons the size of their namesakes swelled around them. Liet had to stomp his way out of the clutches of a rose vine with thorns like daggers. Most of the plants he could hardly recognize—turgid buds and whorls coming out of green stalks, knobby trees like heaps of flatcakes that wove from side to side with budding pink flowers up every inch.

How they grew in perfect darkness was beyond Liet.

“What is this place?” Liet asked. He started away from his echoing voice.

“We have arrived,” Davoren said. He held the scepter up and intoned deep, powerful words. A bolt of lightning arced from his hand, high into the air. It struck something like a steel rod and sizzled along it. In half a heartbeat, the bolt exploded out, illuminating the vast cavern in which the four found themselves. The great rod flickered, hissing at intervals like an unhappy dragon.

And occupying that cavern with them was a ruined, overgrown city.

“Negarath,” Davoren said with a glint in his evil eyes. If they had thought the architecture of the sewers odd, nothing could have prepared them for what lay before them. Negarath was a city of madness.

Buildings spread wider as they reached upward, almost as though built upside down. All around them, sprouting from the sides of buildings, coming up from the streets, were the strange flowers, some growing large enough to dwarf Gargan. There was not a single perpendicular edge in the place; all was a mixture of curves, waves, and obtuse or acute angles. Windows hung upside down and horizontally, as though the interiors of the buildings did not match the exteriors.

Most of the doors to the varying buildings were of odd shapes—circular, triangular, hexagonal, octagonal—anything but rectangular. Only one building seemed even remotely normal—a central tower that narrowed toward the middle, like a pyramid, but widened again as it rose toward the cavern ceiling. There, the tower hooked and curled, spiraling under itself. It looked as though they could stand atop it.

“The designers of this place must have been madmen,” said Davoren.

“Or geniuses.” The others stared, and Liet laughed nervously. “Art—heh.”

Gargan shook his head.

Slip beamed. “Magnificent,” she said.

The others looked at her this time.

“Well, it Ť,”she asserted with her hands on her hips.

The section of city in which they stood was markedly clear and empty, but such was not the case a few streets away. They

saw something like a giant mound of clay, stretching from floor to ceiling—a calcified, golden-red web. “What’s that, I wonder?” Slip said.

The mass looked like red amber, with an eerie translucence. It glowed crimson from the inside, as though from a beating heart. Gold veins ran through it, like tunnels bored by a worm. The red substance ran over the buildings like glass, or perhaps ice that had frozen around them. It reached to the ceiling, holding fully half the city prisoner.

Then they became aware of a sound—a distinct humming, almost like buzzing, as though the air shuddered and crackled in expectation of a storm.

“Rain?” Slip asked.

“Magic?” Liet asked.

Gargan shook his head. He pointed.

Half a dozen black and yellow creatures swarmed out of holes in the mass of red amber and buzzed toward them. Flickering light twinkled off a hundred facets in their eyes, and gossamer wings zipped through the air. They might have been bees, if bees grew to the height of men and sported arms carrying spears, but these were abeil.

“Down!” Liet cried. A better command might have been “scatter,” “ware,” or even “run!” But he said the first thing that came to mind.

Liet did not know why he took one of the iron bars from his pack and placed it between himself and the diving creatures. Nor did he understand how he knew to press the end of the rod. Instinct, perhaps—or that odd power Twilight had spoken of. The rod gave a little hum but did nothing else.

A lightning bolt streaked into the sky and tore the wings from one of the bees, which plummeted to the street with a buzzing screech. Hefting his crackling scepter, Davoren scoffed. “Fear not. I shall defend you.” He waved his hand and fire spread through the air.

Liet cursed himself. What had he been hoping for? A blast of fire, a protective shield? A flare of self-loathing came then, and he fought it back. Fury at himself, at Davoren. But he couldn’t

get angry—not now. Seeing the bees fly around the fire, Liet pulled up the rod and prepared to retreat.

Rather, he tried to retrieve the rod, for it could not be moved. No matter how much he strained, the rod floated in place. The bees were coming, so he abandoned it.

A bee-thing crashed face first into the immobile rod and crumpled around it, there to hang, broken. The rod did not twitch, as though a mountain held it still.

A hissing sound reached Liet’s ears then. Now what?

A bouncing motion caught his eye—it was Slip, waving at him and whispering his name from an open, crescent-shaped doorway. Above it floated the flickering image of a hammer emblazoned with seven stars. The seven stars of Mystra?

Whatever the failing image betokened, Gargan was ducking in and Davoren was tearing through the underbrush toward the door, cursing the incoming bees. Then Gargan yanked Slip off her feet and slammed the door.

Bees swarmed past their crushed, hanging comrade, throwing themselves against the crescent-shaped door and oddly curved windows in a killing fury. In reply, Davoren invoked his powers, and a forest of black tendrils sprouted from the building, flailing. The bees swarmed away before he could conjure fire.

Liet and Davoren reached the door at the same moment. It popped open and the men tumbled in past Gargan. The goliath slammed it once again and they collapsed in the darkness.

The four huddled behind the door, Gargan holding it shut. Liet sat near the shivering Slip and looked around. The room in which they found themselves could have been a smithy of some sort. Hammers and chisels and many things he couldn’t recognize lay scattered and shattered about them. In the center was something that looked like an anvil, or perhaps an altar—a simple block of jet black stone. Other doors were visible, all shaped like crescents, stars, and inverted triangles. In the center of the room was a black disk, like the trapdoor they had come through.

“I wonder if she sent us here intentionally,” the warlock said.

He looked at Liet, panting heavily. “Come—what would your mistress say if she saw you cowering?”

Liet wanted to retort, “She would praise me for having the sense to stay alive under a surprise attack, but by all means, go play if you want. Try not to get yourself killed too messily,” like Twilight would have. As it was, he said, “My mistress?”

Then a hissing sound came from below, as of metal grinding against metal. The inert disk gave a shudder and sank. They backed away and hefted weapons. When the disk returned, standing upon it was a familiar, dark-haired elf.

“You called?” she asked, wearily.

” ‘Light!” said Liet, moving forward.

Twilight stopped him with a raised hand. Something had unnerved her, clearly.

“What is it?” demanded the warlock. “More foes, coming from below?” He spat.

“What did you find?” Liet asked.

Twilight shut her eyes. “A mythallar,” she said.

Davoren scoffed. “And so? This is a Netherese city, and such was the magic of the empire of magic—”

Twilight shook her head. “It isn’t that simple,” she said. She gestured to the lifting disk that had just carried her up. “The mythallar I found—it’s still active.”

Sitting in a corner of what Liet had taken to calling the Forge of the Seven Stars, Twilight blew out a long, troubled sigh. Liet had called this a smithy, though there was no pit for fire or water. Neither of these oversights surprised Twilight. If she had seen them—meaning the owner hadn’t used magic—that would have surprised her. Netheril.

That they were inside one of the fallen cities of that mighty age was something Twilight could accept. That the city’s mythallar still functioned, however—at least partly—unnerved her deeply.

The others hadn’t seen the significance until Twilight explained it. Aside from its own essence, she had sensed three types of magic emanating from the mythallar—conjuration, enchantment, and transmutation—which must reflect dweomers that it maintained. That was its purpose, after all, to maintain the function of magical devices—the question in this case was what sort of devices?

Somehow, the mythallar maintained life in this cave, but would that continue? Would Twilight and the others find the limit of the mythallar’s range, where the air would simply disappear and they would perish? Or, worse—would the mythallar finally expire, and whatever life-supporting spells it maintained

vanish in an instant, killing them no matter where they were in the city?

These considerations fueled Twilight’s desire to find a way out, and soon.

The bee-creatures Liet described had not reappeared, but Twilight had seen black forms moving in that strange amber substance. Was it a hive of some kind? That might explain the flowers. A veritable madman’s garden bloomed outside, and in here as well. Moss and vines crept through cracks and empty windows.

Nature has conquered this city, Twilight thought.

She looked around at her companions. Davoren lounged against the wall, seeming to sleep but really watching them all. In contrast, Liet snored against the opposite wall. Gargan sat sharpening the band’s blades—excepting Twilight’s rapier and the stiletto she’d taken from Davoren.

Twilight saw the halfling sitting still—gathering her focus for healing, likely—her face nothing but tranquility. The group was hungry—they had eaten little since Taslin’s death a day and a half before, rationing out the remaining food—but calm.

Curious. Even in such tense, dark circumstances, the little one could know peace.

“Slip,” said Twilight. The halfling’s ears perked up and her eyes opened. The shadowdancer slid to the floor beside her. The others weren’t watching. “Tell me of yourself.”

“I’m hungry,” she said. “And thirsty. It’s been near a tenday without food, aye?”

Twilight resisted the urge to chew on her lip. Water was worse—they had almost exhausted the last of the waterskins filled with Taslin’s conjured water.

“No,” Twilight said. “I mean of your life—where you come from.”

Slip grinned.” ‘Tisn’t a riveting tale,” she said. “Life in Crimel would bore woodpeckers to slumber faster than a Candlekeep sage’s lecture on the life of the meadow cricket—even if there were crickets provided.”

Twilight was not to be parried so easily. “Why did you leave?”

Slip shrugged. “The usual reasons—adventure, the open road, see the Realms, meet new faces, and…” She trailed off and her face went dark. “Reeman.”

“Your sometime mate.”

“A rascal if ever there was one!” Slip rolled her eyes. “He did say the nicest things, and he was ever so convincing.” Her eyes closed, and a look came over her Twilight recognized only too well.

There was much to this story the halfling would not tell, and Twilight found no fault in the omitting. We all have our secrets, she thought.

“He was a kind lad, my Reeman—all of us loved him. Could talk a dwarf out of his beard or a dragon out of its hoard, then the both of them into leg wrestling. Which the dragon would win, of course.” She smiled. “He had a trustworthy face, you understand.”

“Perfectly.” Twilight knew exactly what she meant, and it occurred to her that Slip possessed such a visage herself.

“And that’s where the troubles began.”

Slip sat silently for a moment, and Twilight did not press her.

“One night, Reeman convinced me to play at hiding with him, as a ptank on my da—to get all of Crimel stirred up. I’d hide in the woods, and he’d tell everyone a mouther got me.” She squinted. “You know what—”

“Yes,” said Twilight. She knew the distorted abominations, with their fout gangly limbs and tusks, by description if not by sight.

“Anyway,” Slip said. “When everyone was gone looking, Reeman helped himself to all the gold at the temples and the warden’s office, and set fire—accidentally, he said—to a few houses… while younglings wete inside.”

Twilight felt a chill creep through her body even as Slip hugged her arms tight about her own breast. This had stopped being an innocent tale.

“March wardens followed Reeman, and he came to me for help. I watched as h-he killed—murdered!—two of them with his magic, and tried to run. When he tried to take me too, I—I…” She looked down at her hand, as though a bloody knife had just appeared that only she could see.

Then she looked up at Twilight. “I had to do it, you see? ‘Twas the—the right thing, and they cast me out for it!”

After a long moment, Twilight put out her arms.

Slip hesitated a few breaths, her lip trembling. Then her eyes softened with sudden tears, and she snuggled into Twilight’s embrace. “Oh, ‘Light!” she cried, as that of a child to a mother. “What else could ldo?He killed two of my cousins afore my eyes and younglings besides!” Great sobs wracked her body.

Twilight closed her eyes in helpless sympathy and held Slip as she cried. She stroked the halfling’s filthy hair—they were all filthy. Filthy, cold, tired, and heartsick.