The Staff of Naught (32 page)

Lousa grabbed her by the arm. “Be careful Hazle; don’t trust anyone down there except Shamki.”

Hazlebub looked at the woman for a moment, “Not even Ariana?”

Lousa shook her head, “She wants to keep the staff, I see that now. I never should have let her carry it and now that voice in her head has given her ideas. Make sure that thing is destroyed one way or the other.”

The witch nodded her head and darted down the passageway just behind Humbort who had dawdled at the entrance for some time before he convinced himself to follow after Shamki. This left Tanner, Almara, Unerus, Lousa, and Shalalee on the surface to wait.

“Now, Shalalee,” said Lousa and turned to the gangly girl. “We have to talk.”

The dark stairs led down eighty-six steps according to Shamki’s count and twisted around so that they faced south although the half-orc knew that this was merely an approximation and that a few more twists and turns and all sense of direction would be lost. They ended in a small square room with two stone doors on opposite sides and Oliver stood by one listening with his ear to it while Seymour and Sutekha watched from the middle of the room. A glance behind him assured the warrior that Ariana and Hazlebub were still there and he knew, from long adventures together, that Humbort lurked nearby.

“Which way?” demanded Seymour looking at Shamki.

The half-orc shrugged his shoulders. “Death smell all,” he said.

“That one then,” said Seymour and pointed to the door that Oliver examined carefully.

The big orc paladin pushed against it cautiously and it swung away to reveal a natural cavern perhaps twenty feet high and twice again as long. Inside sat dozens of stone sarcophagi laid out in a neat pattern on the floor.

Seymour strode forward his Icon of Ras suddenly brilliant and the room went from gloom to apparent daylight in an instant. A mad scramble of motion on the ceiling alerted them to hundreds of bats fleeing through small holes on either side of the chamber. There was a similar scrabble of motion on the floor as rats scurried for cover. Oliver drew his sword as he moved into the room.

Shamki moved in behind and they examined the stones for a few moments during which the noise slowly subsided into silence.

“Open them,” said Seymour apparently unbothered by the taboo of grave robbing. Oliver flicked a quick glance at Shamki although the half-orc could garner no meaning from it and then walked over to the nearest stone and shoved against the top. It creaked for a moment as the orc’s muscles bulged but then slowly slid aside revealing the skeletal remains of a dignitary who ranked such a final resting place.

In its skeletal grip was a leather scabbard rotted to a few pieces of string and an old iron sword badly rusted. The felt lining of the coffin had rotted away to nothing and the glint of coins or possibly gems glimmered for a moment as Seymour’s light hovered over the coffin.

The high priest quickly turned to the next stone coffin as Oliver began to work its lid off.

“They’ll be here for a while,” said Hazlebub as she moved next to Shamki and spoke in a low whisper.

The half-orc nodded his head and backed out of the room towards the original entrance and the other door. “Ariana,” he whispered to the witch and she turned around and spotted the girl in the corner of the big room eyes glued to Seymour and Oliver. Hazlebub made a little motion with her hand and caught Ariana’s attention and she worked her way back towards them without making a sound.

When Shamki returned to the first room he found Humbort and Sutekha still there. The two men examined the other door and apparently did not see the half-orc come into the chamber. When Shamki walked between them and put his weight to the door both men gasped and stumbled aside although Humbort quickly moved back to the first door and kept lookout while Sutekha settled for watching Shamki, the witch, and the young girl who both joined them.

The door slid open easily and Shamki reached back with a hand motion for a moment and the wizard tried to figure out for what the warrior meant to convey. He didn’t have to wait long as Humbort appeared and a put bright glow stone in the hand of the half-orc who immediately shined it into the chamber beyond the door.

In this small chamber half a dozen small coffins, each vaguely shaped like a man, leaned up against the walls. Two of them had tightly closed lids while the others hung open to reveal empty interiors. Shamki moved into the room and took a hold of the first of the closed coffins and swung it open to reveal a mummified creature. The violent movement pushed the coffin just enough to unbalance the thing and it fell to the floor with a clatter.

Shamki jumped back and Sutekha, at the doorway, reached into his robes looking for a small vial he knew would be useful in this situation.

“Mummifying is the Tarltonite way,” said Hazlebub as she looked into the room while Shamki prodded the thing on the floor with a short kick. It did not seem to object to this indignity and simply lay there in silence.

“The lettering on the tombs of unfamiliar to me,” said Sutekha. “Do hobgoblins bury their dead this way or perhaps it a relic of ancient times?”

“I don’t know,” said Hazlebub. “I don’t trade with the hobgobbies often enough to know.”

Meanwhile Shamki threw open the other closed lid and came face to face with a low passageway leading further into the darkness. He shined his light down the corridor, which stood only three feet tall and looked not even wide enough for him to pass through.

“I’ll go,” said Ariana suddenly and darted down the passage.

“No!” shouted Hazlebub but her grab at the girl missed badly. Shamki was quicker to move and managed to catch a hold of her shirt sleeve, ragged to begin with, but it ripped off and left him with only a torn and wretched piece of cloth. He tried to jam his bulky body into the passage but was unable make any progress.

“Let me try,” said Hazlebub and moved forward while she ducked down. She managed to get inside the passage but had to bend over so far that her knees immediately gave out underneath her and she shrieked loudly as a terrible pain prevented her from going on.

“Are you okay,” said Humbort and helped haul her out from the passage.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” said Hazlebub and let the simpleton help her limp slowly to the corner where she sat down with a thump. “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.”

Humbort patted her wrist and smiled with a kindly face, got a flask of water, and offered it to her. He then rummaged in his pack and found a small vial and held it up his face shining happily, “Rub, rub oil, good for sore,” he said and helped straighten her leg out on the floor.

“Really, Humbort, that won’t, ohh, that is quite nice,” she said as he began warm her leg with the oil. “What is that, it smells of almonds but perhaps not?”

Ariana wasn’t exactly sure why she darted down the tunnel. No matter how much she tried to summon up the voice it did not come and she now believed that the voice was unable to communicate with her if she did not have the staff in hand or nearby. The passageway was a tight squeeze even for her but she made her way through stooped slightly and turned sidewise. On a couple occasions she bumped the stone wall with her head and she learned to slow down after the second such incident. At one point she looked back hoping to see Shamki and his little magic light but realized that the passageway must have made several twists and turns and it was pitched black. She stopped as her heart raced wildly.

“Go on,” said the old man’s voice.

“You’re back!” she cried perhaps too loudly because the sound of it seemed to echo back and forth in the small chamber. She waited for further instruction but none came. Ariana found that if she closed her eyes it somehow didn’t seem as dark and so she did as she felt her way forward through the narrow passage. At one point she felt a strange tingle run throughout her body and stopped to look around but the darkness of the corridor was no different than if she kept eyes shut, so she continued to creep forward with the hope that the voice would guide her.

After what seemed like hours of slow progress but what she probably knew was no more than five minutes the walls seemed to fade away on either side and a dank breeze that bore the stench of death came to her nostrils.

A sickly sweet voice, not the one she hoped for, spoke, “You can open your eyes little darling.”

Ariana paused for a moment her eyes still squeezed tightly shut but then opened them by the narrowest crack and saw the large chamber around her. On a large throne made of bones sat a woman with dull green hair with the skimpiest of silken robes barely covering her lush body.

“And who,” she said smiling in the most unreassuringly way Ariana ever saw, “are you?”

“Ariana,” said Ariana as she looked around the room and spotted ghoulish forms moving about in the background. They had bodies like men but with no skin and their eyes bulged in a most disturbing way. Later those eyes haunted Ariana’s dreams more than anything else did.

“Well, Ariana,” said the voice. “Did you bring it to me?”

Ariana shook her head no. “I … who are you?”

The sweetly demeanor cracked noticeably, “I get to ask questions here,” she said but then tried her awful smile on for size one more time. “Where is the staff? I can see by your aura that you once held it. I opened the portal so that my minions might more easily bring it to me but I see they have failed again,” with this last comment she threw a look over her right shoulder at a tall creature whose skin was mostly intact except for a completely skeletal skull and eyeballs that moved uneasily inside its sockets. “Has anyone seen Tenebrous?”

Ariana paused for a moment and then spoke, “I have.”

“You have?” said the woman.

Ariana nodded. “He talked to us not long ago.”

“What did he say,” said the woman and stood up her dull green eyes flashing violently. Ariana noted that the woman’s hair, figure and coloring was not too dissimilar from Lousa and yet the total effect could not have been more different. Yes, they were both beautiful but Lousa shone like a star and this woman seemed to bring darkness with just a glance.

“What will you give me if I tell you?” said Ariana and stuck out her little chin.

The woman’s eyes suddenly seemed to grow twice as large and her face twisted into a snarl that revealed rows of fanged teeth. “You dare disobey me in my own demesne? I am the Goddess of Death and I can strike …” she started but Ariana interrupted her.

“There are no gods!”

If the woman was angry before this pronouncement seemed to send her over the edge into madness. Her hands came to her face and she actually clawed at herself and became so agitated she nearly slipped on the stone floor but managed to catch herself, took three quick strides, and grabbed the girl by the collar and lifted her off the ground.

“What do you say?” she shrieked her high pitched voice so loud as to hurt Ariana’s ears more than the claws that dug into her collarbone.

“She proclaims there are no gods,” said a deep voice and for a moment Ariana thought that her friend was back but the intonation was different.

The Goddess of the Abyss spun on her heels the centrifugal movement sent Ariana in a spin that proved more than the material of her collar could take and with a rip she flew free of the woman’s grasp, skittered across the floor, and came to a rest in a heap not far from where a strange purplish door shimmered.

Ariana realized this was the way she came into the chamber in the first place but couldn’t stop herself as she turned back to face the woman and the dark voice which she suddenly realized was Tenebrous the Shade.

“Tenebrous,” said the Goddess of the Abyss once again with the sickly sweet voice as she moved slowly with an exaggerated sway to her hips back to her throne. “So good of you to return after all this time. I would think that you were up to no good if I didn’t know better.”

“The girl is influenced by Shinamar the Loathsome,” said Tenebrous.

“And who, pray tell, is that?” said the woman and even Ariana could tell that the shade was taken aback by the lack of knowledge she evinced.

“A human,” said Tenebrous. “A powerful mage, the apprentice of Elucidor,” he suggested and looked for any sign of recognition in the face of the woman.

“That name sounds familiar,” she said with a smile and a thoughtful look. “I can’t remember exactly from where but it does ring a bell.”

“He was the King of Das’von,” said Tenebrous but the woman simply looked at him blankly.

“In the material world, where your worshippers reside,” he prompted.

“Ah yes, my worshippers, you see darling,” said the woman turning to cast a quick glance at Ariana. “Worshippers worship gods, it’s really rather simple to follow if you have a brain at all.”

“Without worshippers much, if not all, of your power dissipates,” said Tenebrous to the woman his shadowy form somehow knelt down to the floor.

“My power is derived from my divine essence,” said the woman. “How dare you suggest otherwise, Tenebrous? Shall I send you to back to the Deathlands?”

A small noise caught the attention of Ariana as the purple door behind suddenly seemed to change its hew by the slightest amount. A moment later a short little thing with long arms and a bulbous head popped out. A terrible burn covered one side of its body and it clutched in its hands the Staff of Naught. The creature took one step and collapsed to the floor its narrows eyes slit and unmoving.

Ariana did not pause, nor did the voice have to urge her to action. With a single motion she leaned down, grabbed he staff, and leapt through the gateway and into blinding brightness.

The woman by the throne stood in gap mouthed astonishment for a moment unable to react in anyway. It was up to Tenebrous to suggest a course of action, “Perhaps some of the ghouls should be sent in pursuit,” he said and pointed to the dozen or so things that lurked near the throne.

“This is your fault,” shrieked the woman suddenly finding her voice with a glare at Tenebrous. “If you hadn’t distracted me the staff would have been mine!”