The Archmage Unbound (47 page)

“It will take forever to get past that,
assuming the rest of the ceiling doesn’t come down if we try to dig out,”
Walter added.

Harold spoke up, “I wouldn’t mind some
light. It’s pitch black in here.”

Once again I had forgotten that not
everyone could see in the dark. It was easier to do with Walter around, since
he shared my sensory abilities.
“Lyet,”
I said softly, and a bright
light began to emanate from the head of my staff. “Is that better?”

Sir Harold looked around, slowly taking
in the scenery, rock, stone and more rock. He whistled, “I do hope you have
another trick up your sleeve, your Excellency.”

As it so happened I did have options.
One would be to create a teleportation circle that could take us to one of my
circles in either Cameron or Lancaster and another would be to attempt simply
walking through the stone itself. I wasn’t sure if I could manage that with
two people, it had been difficult enough with Rose, but I could surely take
them one at a time. “I can get us out,” I said confidently, “but first I would
like to see what else there is down here.”

Walter groaned, “I had a feeling you
might say that.”

We spent several minutes getting a better
feel for the layout of the tunnels around us and making sure there were no more
of the shiggreth nearby. It appeared that although the caverns branched in
several places the offshoots rejoined the main tunnel deeper into the hills.
In essence, although it was confusing there weren’t too many places to explore
along the way.

After a few hundred yards we sensed more
of the shiggreth though. Naturally it was Walter that spotted them first,
“There are several hundred in the large cavern ahead,” he informed me.

By focusing more carefully I was able to
see them as well. The large cavern they occupied was fairly level and had a
smooth floor. Compared to the rest of the cave system it definitely gave the
impression of having been altered to better accommodate human forms. I looked
at my two companions, “I don’t really fancy trying to burn them all to ash.”

Their reactions were priceless.
Walter’s eyes bulged as though they might try to escape his head, “But you
considered it?” he asked incredulously.

Harold took an entirely different view.
Now that he had survived the ballistae he was feeling decidedly more
invulnerable. “Perhaps I could manage them…”

“Twenty or thirty perhaps, but more than
that I doubt, remember Dorian,” I reminded him.

“So you do want to burn them?” Harold
replied.

“Oh I’d like to certainly,” I answered,
“but I worry that using too much fire down here would exhaust the limited
supply of fresh air.” I had not forgotten using a flash fire to first burn and
then suffocate Devon Tremont almost two years ago.

A loud sigh escaped Walter’s lips.
“Look I hate to be the one to suggest anything to either of you suicidal
maniacs but I might have a better idea,” he said suddenly.

I looked at him with interest. “I am
open to any suggestions.”

“Why don’t we just walk through them?
Our conversation earlier has gotten me thinking I can probably hide all three
of us from their senses. We can just walk through them and scout the tunnels
beyond. If we don’t find anything significant, or any means of escape we could
simply leave them down here to rot,” he explained.

Walter was an easy man to overlook but
his idea was the most reasonable thing I’d heard all day. I wondered if I had
underestimated his intelligence. “I like the sound of that,” I replied.

Harold wasn’t so easily convinced. “You
aren’t serious are you?” he asked.

Walter nodded and I spoke up, “It sounds
worse than it is. There is another tunnel leading away on the far side of this
cavern and it appears to be empty. They aren’t very tightly packed in there,
so if Walter can do as he says we can just walk right past them and see what’s
down there.”

Walter’s plan turned out to be more
complicated than I had at first realized. We stood close together and joined
hands while the older wizard cast his spell. In order to keep us from being
visible to the shiggreth he made us invisible to both magic and visible sight,
which had the unfortunate side effect of rendering us completely blind. There
was no way we could navigate through a crowd like that.

“I don’t think I thought this through
completely,” Walter amended. “Perhaps if we are just invisible to magic and
you douse your light Mordecai.”

That turned out to be just as bad.
Without my light the cavern was pitch black and we were just as blind as
before. That’s when I had my epiphany. “I think I know why they don’t come
out during the daytime very often,” I said.

“What?” asked Walter.

“The shiggreth,” I explained, “in the
past they have almost always attacked or been encountered when it is dark. In
fact, the only time that I know of them ever appearing during daylight hours
was when they ambushed Dorian and Penny.”

Harold was more familiar with the
shiggreth but he still didn’t understand. “I don’t see how that tells you
anything specific.”

I held up my hand. “Let me finish,” I
told him. “We know they don’t have an issue with daylight because they have
come out during the day at least once. So why would they generally avoid
moving about during the daytime?”

“Because they’re creatures of darkness?”
said Harold, as if that were reason enough.

“No,” I admonished him, “because they
don’t use light to see, they use magic. In fact their dead eyes are probably
blind to light entirely. They don’t avoid daylight, they simply prefer the
nighttime because they have an inherent advantage then, because they can see
and most humans can’t.”

“You still haven’t made it clear how
that helps us,” he insisted.

Walter understood though and he began
nodding his head rapidly in agreement. “Of course! Keep your staff lit, I’ll
hide us from magical sight but leave us visible to normal light.”

“Will the magic in my staff be a
problem?” I asked.

“No,” Walter replied, “I can cloak the
magic there as easily as that which emanates from our bodies. I just have to let
the light pass unimpeded.”

Despite being fairly sure we were right
those first few moments as we stepped into the open were nerve wracking. I
walked in the front holding my staff up to light the way while Walter followed
with his hand on my shoulder; Harold followed him in a similar fashion. The
experience was surreal, especially since I had never walked invisibly through a
room full of people before, much less a room full of undead life draining
monsters. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe.

The floor was smooth and free of
obstacles but it still took us almost ten minutes to cross the large cavern and
reach the other side. Along the way I stared at the faces of the shiggreth,
wondering what they thought, or even if they thought. They stood quietly for
the most part, not walking or talking to each other, yet they whispered softly
to themselves, filling the vaulted spaces with an endless susurration, a sound
similar to wind through the leaves of a forest.

By the time we reached the tunnel on the
opposite side I was thoroughly disturbed. I wanted to burn them, just to stop
the noise.
Surely we don’t need air to breathe that badly, right?

The tunnel we were in now appeared to
have formed naturally, but much like the previous cavern it had been smoothed
and cleared to some extent, making it much easier to walk without stumbling.
That more than anything convinced me that there would be something worth
finding at the end of it.

After traveling a hundred yards or so
Walter spoke up, “I think it might be safe to remove the spell.”

“Wait,” I cautioned him. “I know it’s
annoying not being able to sense anything but there may be more of them further
ahead.”

“We’ve already demonstrated that we can
sense them long before they sense us, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to
get as close to the cavern as we did,” Walter reasoned with me.

That made perfect sense, but I still had
a feeling of trepidation. “Alright, take it down then. We’ll examine our
surroundings and if we sense any of them close by we’ll put it back up,” I said
in agreement. I was still worried though.

A moment later he had done so and it was
as if I had had a blindfold removed. I had been using my magesight for so long
now that not having it had left me feeling blind even though my normal eyes
worked fine. I expanded my awareness slowly, feeling the tunnels behind us and
making sure that nothing had followed us. I also explored ahead and quickly
discovered that the tunnel we were in dead-ended in a fair sized chamber not
far from where we were now, perhaps another seventy yards ahead.

As soon as my mind touched that room I
knew we had made a mistake. There was a darkness there that lay heavily upon
the air. It weighed upon me, and as I saw it I immediately felt it looking
back, staring into me in a way that left me feeling vulnerable, as if it could
see my innermost thoughts without effort or care.

Simultaneously I saw Walter’s face go
pale and his eyes widened in shock, he could obviously feel it too. As the
moment of recognition passed something drove inward, as whatever we had found
sought to enter our minds. Pain shot through my body as I struggled to expel
the invader and for a long minute I fought what felt like a losing battle.
Walter fell to his knees and Harold looked questioningly at both of us, he was
still unaware of the silent assault.

Gritting my teeth I focused and finally
managed to speak,
“Cherek Ingak!”
An invisible shield formed around the
three of us and suddenly the alien mind was gone. Walter gasped audibly and
drew a long breath and I found myself breathing heavily as well.

“What the hell was that?!” exclaimed the
older wizard. I could hear a note of panic in his voice but it didn’t surprise
me since I felt much the same.

“What’s wrong?” asked Harold.

“I don’t know. There’s something down
there, something bad,” I answered at last.

“That fills me with confidence,” Harold
commented. If I hadn’t known better I might have suspected him of developing a
sense of sarcasm, but I quickly dismissed the thought.

“There are three of them,” Walter added.

Again he had surprised me with the
acuity of his senses. Holding the shield firmly I reexamined the cavern that
held… whatever that horrible thing had been. Now that I could see it without
being immediately overwhelmed I saw what he was referring to… there were two
large four legged creatures near… whatever it was. The being that had almost
overwhelmed us was physically small though it felt quite the opposite to my
magesight. All three of the creatures absorbed magic and appeared ‘black’ to
my arcane vision.

Doing his best to remain calm Harold
addressed me, “What do you want to do?” I had to admire his reserve. Of
course he couldn’t sense what we could; if he had he might not have been able
to keep his nerve so easily.

Walter spoke first. “We have to go
back. We can’t stay near it. Once we’re safely away from it you can teleport
us out of here right?” he said, looking at me with a hint of desperation. “I
think it’s calling the other shiggreth…,” he added.

That made up my mind. Straightening up
I looked at both of them, “We have to take care of it quickly, before it can
call for assistance.”

Walter’s mouth fell open, “Excuse me?”

“Get up,” I told him. “We have to move
now while we still have some small advantage of surprise.”
And before I
lose my nerve,
I added mentally. I could easily imagine falling into
panic, a panic that would end with us screaming in the dark while they hunted
us down.

“What did you say?” asked the other
wizard incredulously.

“I said we’re going down that tunnel and
get rid of that thing while we still have the initiative,” I said with a calm I
didn’t really feel. “If you don’t think you can walk in there with me then
you’re welcome to remain here,” I added. Motioning to Harold we began walking
down the tunnel. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to turn around and
run the other direction but I had learned the lesson of conquering my fear several
times over now. It still didn’t make it any easier.

After traveling a short distance I heard
Walter running to catch up, though he was now invisible to my magesight. I was
slightly relieved to have his company. “I’m coming with you,” he said from the
dark behind us, “but I’m going to stay invisible. I don’t have any way to
fight those things without a staff.”

I nodded, “That’s fine.” I had to admit
he was right. He was walking into something terrible alongside us, and he had
no reasonable way to fight, in many ways that took more courage than what I was
doing, depending on how you looked at it. “Let’s pick up the pace.”

We began moving down the tunnel at a
light jog and Harold’s armor began an almost musical symphony of sounds as he
ran. We definitely wouldn’t be surprising anyone. I began casting spells as
we ran, leaving glowing balls of light hanging in the air behind us every
twenty feet or so.