Depths of Madness (30 page)

“Who?”Gargan asked, drawing his sword.

Twilight shrugged. “We’ve no shortage of enemies,” she said. “The sharn, or its golems. Gestal. The fiendish lizards.”

“Tlork,”Gargan added grimly.

“Darkness, don’t forget the grimlocks,” said Twilight. “We didn’t part on the most amiable of terms.”

Nothing moved for many long breaths. Twilight left Gargan watching the darkness and looked down into the new passage. It smelled foul and radiated humidity like a tropical swamp. Where the tunnels above had been dry and dead, this new level seemed the opposite.

A world built on opposites, Twilight thought.

Twilight wondered why they were going down. Had not the sharn spoken of Gestal dwelling “above?” Sink to rise, she reflected.

She put her leg down into the darkness and froze.

With a mighty heave that broke more than a few bones, Tlork finally wrenched himself out of the sewers. As he stood in the forested street, letting limbs pop back into place and torn flesh flow back together, he cast his stitched face about, searching, just in time for the swarm of abeil to descend with spears, halberds, and stingers.

Snarling, the troll whipped hammer and claw through the air in fury to drive off the swarm. Bee-creatures fell crushed, killed at the very touch of Tlork’s weapons, but thete were hundreds, and three replaced every one that fell.

Soon, the battle was like stirring mud, trying to swat them away while they rained pain and torment all over Tlork. Abeil speared his skin, stinging and stinging like mad, and soon he could hardly focus on anything but the stabbing and cutting. His body throbbed as though a thousand hearts beat just under his skin.

Slave, came a voice in the back of his head. Like all thoughts, his own or another’s, it caused Tlork pain. Come, slave.

As he batted another abeil out of the air to smash like a ripe plum against a distorted building, Tlork whined like a dog. “But I come so far!” he argued. “I close!”

Come, the thought came again, to the chapel.

Unfair. Tlork didn’t like the up-down room. It always made his stomach knot. The fiend-troll gave a great, strangling cry, turned, and ran. He dived through the hole into the sewer, ignoring the pain that came when his arm splintered against the edge.

That elf—she would pay for this. Not the pain, which Tlork had long since stopped minding, but the indecency of making him trek all the way back, even past the up-down room.

Twilight stared into the dark hole. Much of this world was inverted, she mused. It was a sham’s idea of order, curves where buildings should have corners, towers that sloped downward, even upside-down stairs on the underside of ledges. She had thought herself prepared for any shift of paradigm imaginable.

This, though, far exceeded any reasonable anticipation.

Gargan, seeing her hesitation, crawled over the edge, holding the lip, and let go. He didn’t fall. Instead, he stood on the underside of the floor, looking down at her past his feet. It was as though Twilight stood on a mirror that reflected a world not her own.

“Come,”Gargan said. “Sink to rise.”

The implications struck Twilight like a thunder blow. Damned Netherese.

Now she knew why she had felt unsettled going into the dungeon, almost like falling. The gravity was in flux here, so close to the limits of the mythallar’s field.

That was why the ceiling of the sewer had been as stained as the floor.

That was why half the architecture was upside down, why all the symbols of Mystra—or whatever the goddess of magic in ancient Netheril had been called—had been inverted.

Now she knew why the sand had not fallen in from the “ceiling” of the cavern, settling instead as though along the bottom of a bowl. Gravity was reversed in Negarath, all pulling down toward the dungeon, and below it…

All that time they thought they had been rising, they had been descending.

Gargan watched her uncertainly, but at last Twilight swung a leg down and pushed off, climbing to her feet on the ceiling of the chamber below. She passed through an invisible barrier that made her stomach go limp before she emerged in another world, one where gravity was opposite.

They stood in a crude tunnel sloping up from where they stood, down from the dungeon. Gone was the fine, if eccentric, carving and stonework of Negarath. The air was musty, and a faint, foul odor wafted through the tunnel. Rough steps led up.

“Gestal should be somewhere up there—or down…” Twilight could not help feeling a touch disoriented, but she did her best to dismiss it. “Up. Definitely up, if Negarath is upside down, below us.” Twilight’s head ached.

She noticed Gargan kneeling by the trapdoor, hand out, and narrowed her eyes. “What are you about?”

He drew his hand back and she saw that he had placed a stone in the air. It dipped back toward the dungeon, then up toward them, then merely floated, caught in that space where gravity pulled both ways. At the innocent fascination the goliath showed in the phenomenon, Twilight smiled despite herself. “Come.”

Gargan—ever a man of few words—nodded and went with her.

They had not gone ten paces up the tunnel when they heard a scuttling from behind, as of a rock falling to the floor. Something had disturbed Gargan’s floating stone.

The goliath was already charging back by the time Twilight had her weapon out and was pursuing him. Though her reflexes might have been the faster, he had keener ears. With the boots from the sharn, she ran as fast as he did. They fell upon their pursuer at almost the same instant.

There it was, five steps from the trapdoor. The shadow yelped and danced back, startled. Gargan’s black sword swept aside a hastily raised mace, even as his other hand shot out and shoved its wielder over. Even as the intruder fell, Twilight lunged the intervening four paces—she loved these boots already—and rode it to earth, Betrayal at its throat.

The shadowy figure froze and put its hands up. “Stop! Stop!” she screamed. ” ‘Tis me! ‘Tis me!” Twilight almost drove her blade in anyway, but Gargan caught her arm and saved Billfora Brightbrows’s life.

“Slip?” Twilight asked, brow furrowing. “What are you doing here? Didn’t they capture you? How did you escape?”

The halfling stared with terror-stricken eyes. “I-I-I…” she tried, but couldn’t speak with the elf pressing her lungs, and a blade lying a thumb’s breadth from her jugular.

Twilight straddled the little woman and bent low, keeping the blade still and putting her free hand on the halfling’s shoulder. It would take hardly any force to push it through Slip’s unarmored neck—in case it wasn’t really the halfling, but a trick.

“Speak,” she commanded, and Slip did.

“I-I got away,” she said. “When those bee-things came, one o’ them knocked me cold. When I woke up, I was under a toadstool. It must have broke my fall, and I was…”

“You weren’t a prisoner?” Twilight asked, her heart suddenly racing. That would mean only Davoren and Liet were Ruuk’s prisoners, and that meant…

“Uh,” said Slip. Twilight heard her only distantly. “No. No, I wasn’t.”

“Did you see anyone else?” Twilight asked. “Where’s Liet?” Slip shook het head. “I didn’t…”

“Why so quick?”Gargan asked, his voice dark. There was no pain in his words, only suspicion about the one who had been his friend.

It struck her that the earring was not translating his words to Elvish, as it must have for Taslin. Somehow, Twilight had become less than an elf—but she accepted that.

Slip blinked at the goliath and she smiled widely. “Eh?”

“Why are you here?” Twilight asked, clarifying. “How could you get here so fast? The sharn teleported us. What of you?”

The joy went out of Slip’s face. “Well, I… I…” Gargan was staring at her, and her lip shook. “I’ve been coming this way for a day. I didn’t… know where you were, so I came this way, because…” She blinked. “I’m afraid of bees.”

No matter how heavy the moment or how deathly serious the look that had passed between Slip and Gargan, Twilight could not help but grin at that.

“Very well,” she said, and got off the halfling. “My apologies. We reacted as we had to.” She sheathed Betrayal and started up the stairs.

The halfling got to her knees, rubbing her temples. “Ah, r-right,” Slip said, smiling blankly as though she had tried her best and largely failed. “Uh…”

“Come along,” Twilight said. “We’ve a demon priest to slay.”

“Aye, that,” Slip said. She hurried to catch up with the shadowdancer—no mean feat with her short legs, and hugged Twilight about the waist, stopping her.

By reflex, Twilight put an arm up to drape it around the halfling’s shoulders, as one might show affection to a child, but she stopped herself.

“Just…” Slip said, shifting awkwardly.

“Yes?”

The halfling’s voice wavered and her eyes were very round as they fell upon the pouch of food that hung from Twilight’s belt. Her stomach growled as though she hadn’t eaten for days—which, of course, was the case. “Can… can I have something to eat?”

Smiling, Twilight extended the sack to Slip, who fell to it like a ravenous beast.

Gargan watched, doubtless thinking himself hidden in the darkness, but if Twilight had learned one thing in half a century in service to a god of deception, it was to watch the shadows carefully. She had never seen Gargan’s face so dark and grim.

The air became even heavier and warmer as the tunnel led the three upward, and the smell from above grew in intensity. It was salty and sickly sweet, a combination of rotting vegetation and the acrid scent of blood. In this new, unknown place, Twilight forbade torches. She could lead the others with her darksight. From where she crept along, Slip made a face that was barely visible, reflecting her own feelings on the matter. Gargan hardly seemed to notice.

The tunnel was largely natural, but for a few spots along walls and floor that had been crudely carved as though by stone axes and picks. Their path rose to the edge of a rough, circular chamber from which led yet more passages. In the chamber, they found light—luminescence from green and blue fungi that grew from the walls, ceiling, and floor. Stalagmites jabbed out of the ground to loom above even the seven-foot Gargan’s head. They twisted and curled in a way that reminded Twilight of Negarath.

They saw none of the lizards, but they could smell them. Husky and gangrenous, their odor lurked over hollows in which foulness lay pooled.

“Two sewers.” Twilight wrinkled her nose. ” ‘Tis Westgate all over again.”

“Westgate?” Slip asked, and Twilight smiled ruefully.

“A long story,” she said. “One day, perhaps.”

“You have lots of stories,” Slip said excitedly. “I enjoy collecting stories—’tis like collecting lives, aye?”

A trifle unsettled by that comment, Twilight looked at Gargan, whose disapproving expression gave her all the excuse she needed. “We should be silent,” she said. “One never knows what may be awaiting.”

Slip, suitably chastened but undiminished, grinned innocently.

The next chamber they entered, following Twilight’s direction, was not as vacant as the first. Nearly a dozen of the man-lizards occupied the cavern, milling about as if waiting for something. Eight devoured something rather bloody, while the

other four stood apart, spears clenched in distorted claws, and scanned the shadows with bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, very well,” Slip whispered. “I told you we should’ve taken the other path.”

Twilight frowned. “We follow my lead,” she said. Until she figured out who to trust, she would trust no one but herself—and that only so far. Even with the goliath s superior tracking abilities, and Slip’s magic. Neither objected verbally to her words, so Twilight left it at that.

That still left the problem of the lizards blocking their way.

“You have spells that will assist us? Invisibility?”

The halfling shook her head. “I can hide us only to the walking dead,” she said. “The best I can do is darkness.” She grinned. “I fight better without my eyes, a’times!”

Twilight hardly wondered why Slip might know such a spell—likely, it had something to do with her larcenous tendencies. Slow tendays at the house of Yondalla, she imagined with a smile, when the tithes were not meeting expectations.

“Do we circle back, or sneak ‘round?” Slip asked. “Either would take time.”

The goliath slowly shook his head. “Attack,” he said. Then he added something in the goliath tongue that Twilight understood with the earring. “Ambush is not dishonorable.”

The shadowdancer was starting to like the gray-skinned warrior, with the intricate red designs that ran across his muscular chest. If only she could be sure he wasn’t a traitor…

Her mind raced. They did not want to spoil their surprise, but neither could they delay. Slip’s return brought limited healing magic, but without more food, they would weaken. Also, the longer they delayed, the longer Gestal had to learn of their coming. Their strength would wane, while his would remain high. They had to kill him as soon as they could.

“We’ll go around,” Twilight said. “That’s the only…”

Then there came—whether real or imagined—an anguished wail that froze her heart in her chest. A woman’s cry. She made out the color of the flesh the lizards were eating.

“No,” she said. “No…”

Gargan was shaking her shoulder, Slip tugging at her blouse. Twilight looked at them, sharp as a knife.

“We kill them,” Twilight said. “Surprise and speed. Now.” “You can’t be—”

“Now!” And Twilight ran toward the lizards.

“What? What are you doing?” Slip asked Gargan behind her back. “Put me d—” Then her voice fell to chanting.

Twilight didn’t notice. She just ran toward the lizards, Betrayal leading.

S’zgul perceived the darkness before it fell upon them, and that only startled her more.

The black swooped in as though hurled, rather than suddenly bathing them. She watched as the darkness swallowed her fellows, shrouding torches and stealing even her fiendish sight. Her allies recoiled instinctively from the wave of black, but it did not harm them.

The darkness did not, but what came within the darkness did.