A good meal and a good night’s sleep proved to be just what the Hand needed. Departing Zurhan at the last turn of the Phoenix watch, they rode a steady, sustainable pace of walk-and-canter that brought them to the gates of Kar Gevdan at the middle of the Unicorn watch, just after noon. Leaving the castle’s groomsmen to see to the care and stabling of their horses, most of the friends made their way quickly up to the Baron’s study where, his seneschal informed them, a light lunch had been laid out for them.

Devrik, however, made a beeline for the rooms set aside for his family, and an intense, if briefer than either would have liked, reunion with Raven. Afterward (and following the few minutes he allowed himself to play with his son) Devrik made his own way to his uncle’s study. He arrived just as the others were finishing their meal and preparing to get to work.

Lord Tynal recounted what little he knew, all of which turned out to be secondhand, gathered from the reports of his Captain of the City Guard– strange goings-on in the town below the castle, with strange animals appearing in the streets, rumors of ghosts and the walking dead, and several people mysteriously vanished. The only new intelligence concerned a suspicions shipping concern that might possibly be involved in moving the victims of the Darikazi slavers. Their ships and warehouse were in the Eastport Docks district, to the east of the castle and High Town, while the mysterious events, and supposed Darikazi base of operations, were both in the western Low Town.

It was decided that Haplo and the Guard captain would investigate Sheltam & Sons Shipping, while the bulk of the Hand would look into the more uncanny events in Low Town. At the fourth turn of the Wolf watch they set out on their various tasks, with the Baron’s blessing and good wishes.

Wending their way down the steep, narrow Rockfoot Lane from the High Town, headed for the Farmer’s Market, the larger group decided to split into three and approach from different streets, so as not to appear too overwhelming or intimidating a group. Mariala, Erol and young Jeb took the northern approach, whilst Toran and Korwin assayed the central passage, and Vulk, Devrik and Therok claimed the southern route.

 

The Low Town of Gevdan lay between two arms of of blue-black basalt to the east and the west. The western arm was lower, no more than 20 meters high in most places, while the eastern arm was both larger and higher – atop it’s 60 meter headland sat the castle, one wall and tower of which extended into the district. The area was dominated, however, by the great pinnacle of stone that rose up more than 40 meters from its heart . Upon its peak stood a circular tower of grey-white granite topped by crenelations and a great beacon, lit day and night by an oil-fed bonfire and a reflecting mirror of polished bronze.

The Farmer’s Market occupied a large area at the NE foot of the Lighthouse Rock, and should have been a bustling place on a springtime morning, Mariala thought. But today several booths stood empty, and the crowd was thin and nervous. Taking the lead, she set about putting the booth merchants at ease before bringing up the strange events of recent days. Most of the vendors appeared sullen and fearful, unwilling to talk. But eventually a baker proved not only willing, but downright voluble – Virnok was not shy in his complaints of the recent uncanny occurrences in the district.

“It’s bad enough that wild beasts and such have come into the town – why, two of the City Guard killed a great silver-back bear just a few days ago, not two streets from here (and didn’t they have a time of it, the creature near killed them before they managed to bring it down) – but now dark specters are prowling the streets and upsetting decent folk!”

“Specters?” Mariala asked. “Do you mean–”

“Specters I said and specters I meant!” the man continued obstinately, as if she’d been about to contradict him. “Dark specters! My own dear wife saw one just last night, and it near frightened her straight into her own grave! When a gods-loving woman can’t even get up at night to use the chamber pot without being terrorized by haunts and whatnot, well, I don’t know what things are coming to!”

“Um, yes… now, your wife–” Mariala tried to interject.

“Esmalda, a gem of a woman and a great helpmeet to me, I can tell you. She’d be here now, of course, she always is, but she was that upset by the specter. She left not a turn of the glass past, daren’t stay out now the sun is getting low!” The baker plowed on, warming to a new theme. “At least she had the heart to open with me – not like some of these jelly-knees who won’t even open their booths the last couple days. Why, all the standards have just gone to shite these days, if you’ll pardon my Khundari, and don’t get me started on the young folks–”

Mariala managed to stem this flow after a minute, and drew him back to the matter of the specter. “Well, I didn’t see it myself, of course… it had vanished by the time I’d leapt out of bed at Esmalda’s shriek – gods, that woman can scream – but she described it clear enough, once her heart stopped pounding so.

“All glowing green and transparent, she said it was… a gaunt, bearded fellow with a great helm on his head and armor beneath tattered robes. No, no, not anyone she recognized – who would she know who went around in such ironmongery in life? Probably some knight or warrior-cantor whose ashes were laid to rest beneath the temple in the old days, I should think.”

Erol was at first inclined to dismiss the man’s story, or rather the wife’s, as no more than a bit of undigested beef, but further questioning of other vendors revealed similar stories of a similar spectral figure, seen in the last tenday or so. Some said that it was a Khundari knight, others a great human warrior, although no one actually claimed to recognize it.

Several people also claimed to have seen actual walking corpses, however, and those were sometimes recognized. “Why ’twere the very corpse of that Nedor Felkin, ‘im what was killed last month by that run-away cart down to the docks!” one old woman told them breathlessly. “I saw ‘im clear as I’m seeing you, milady, from my bedroom window, when I ‘eard that poor young girl screamin’. I yelt at ‘im to let ‘er be and go back to the undertaker’s for proper burning! But he paid me no heed, and dragged ‘er into the dark, right from in front of the temple doors! ‘Twasn’t right, even if the lass was no better ‘en she should be!”

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Meanwhile, at the small park on the south edge of the market square Toran and Korwin were questioning a pig butcher and a barber who plied their respective trades there. After some general remarks about the weather and the chances of the fishing fleet having a decent catch today, it soon came out that the victim the old woman mentioned was not the only person to go missing in recent days. At least seven others had been reported by friends or neighbors to have vanished in the night over the last half tenday or so.

“I think the first one I can recall ‘earing about,” the ruddy-faced butcher said, frowning in thought when pressed on the matter,” was that n’er-do-well Bektram the Khundari. Er, meanin’ no offense to your lordship, of course…”

“None taken,” Toran replied with a dry smile.

The butcher coughed in embarrassment before continuing, “Ee does odd jobs ’round the town… mainly ‘ere in Low Town… and mostly bad repairs on metal-work, If’m honest. A surly fellow, and none to popular, yet underfoot all too often – though I can’t recall a sight of ‘im in the last tenday.”

“Well I saw him the day before the earthquake,” the barber offered. He was a tall, slender man with a surprisingly refined manner, in sharp contrast to the bluff, stocky butcher. “It was in the temple side yard. He was talking to that scruffy young fellow… I can’t remember his name… the one who’s always hanging about with one or another of those stand-offish foreigners. Anyway, the two seemed quite intent about something, until Bektram noticed me watching and dragged the boy off.”

The barber thought that the troubles in town had begun not too long after the earthquake… definitely by Saridás, though. “I hadn’t really thought about it before,” the barber said thoughtfully, “but now I wonder if that earthquake itself wasn’t the first of the troubles?”

“No, no,” the butcher disagreed, in that dismissive way only old friends can pull off. “I’m certain I first ‘eard about a missing ‘lura a day or two before the ‘quake… that blond-haired boy, it was; and old Randorf said he saw that ghost of ‘is before that.”

“I think not, you country bumpkin,” the barber disagreed amiably. “I was there when Randorf told you about seeing the spectral warrior, and it was two days after the earthquake at least…”

Korwin and Toran slipped quietly away as the two men fell into what was obviously an old and comfortable pattern of bickering. They joined Mariala and Erol, who were just passing on the street to the west of the park, and headed south toward the smaller Fishermen’s Market near the docks where they could see Devrik, Vulk and Therok.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Those three worthies had found the Fishermen’s Market to be even more anemically attended than its larger neighbor to the north. Part of that may simply have been that the fishing fleet was still out on the bay plying their trade, but the few vendors and patrons present seemed just as nervous and skittish as everyone else in the district. The first person they struck up a conversation with was the local ratter, a lucky break as he quickly proved very informative. He seemed rather an upbeat fellow, considering his profession, and he set down his wheelbarrow full of rodent corpses amiably enough when Vulk hailed him.

“It’s just as well her Ladyship isn’t here,” Therok muttered to Devrik as they peered at the pile of dead rats. The fire-mage grunted an amused agreement, while keeping a watchful eye on Brann and the ratter’s little terrier. The two dogs were circling one another and sniffing butts, and after a moment fell to playing, despite the size difference.

“So, how is business my good man?” Vulk asked heartily, leaning on his staff in a way he hoped was friendly and conversational. The man eyed his cantor’s colors a bit bemusedly, but seemed willing enough to talk, once he saw his dog was in no danger from the gentlemen’s hound.

“Well, your worship, it’s been a right windfall, truth be told, this tenday past. Or so I’d’ve said before yesterday… now I’m ‘avin’ me doubts.”

“Really? That looks like a, um, good haul,” Vulk offered, waving a hand at the man’s wheelbarrow. “Why are you having doubts?”

“Well, ser, ’cause of this!” The man reached into the pile of corpses and pulled out the body of an enormous rat. As he held it up by its tail for a proper viewing, Devrik could see that it was easily three times the size of any rat he’d ever seen. Vulk was less impressed, having once encountered the giant rats of the deep sewers of Tekolo, in the Theocracy of the Faith… but he had to allow that it was a rodent of unusual size.

“I figure the ‘quake musta shook up the usual beasties,” the ratter went on. “For awhile afterward it was a boom business, let me tell ya! But then the big ‘uns started showing up… which was fine, I suppose… they was a bit ‘arder to kill, but worth the effort. But when some buggers showed up four times bigger than this–” he raised the giant rat corpse a little higher, shaking  it for emphasis… and gave a shout of surprise and dismay when Cherdon swooped down and snatched it from his hand. Over his angry shouts the raptor soared back up to the nearest rooftop to devour his meal.

“Did you blokes see that?!” the ratter demanded of his visitors, his outrage momentarily overcoming any class consciousness. “That bloody ‘awk just stole m’ rat!”

“Er, yes,” Vulk agreed, looking blankly innocent. “Well, birds… what are you going to do? Shameless scavengers, the lot of them!” Devrik disguised his snort of laughter with a sudden cough, while Therok didn’t even try to hide his grin. “So, you were saying about these even larger rats…?”

With a disgruntled sigh, the ratter resigned himself to the loss of his rat, and continued on with his tale of rodents the size of the gentlemen’s hound. “One of ’em almost took off me ‘and last night!” he said, showing the still red welts and punctures on said appendage. Between monstrous rats, silver-back bears, and all the missing ‘luras and other night folk, it was getting too dangerous to be out after sunset, he was beginning to think…

“Last night ’twas the last straw, I’m thinking. Once I turn in the bounties for this lot,” he kicked the wheelbarrow, “I think I’ll take a few nights off…”

“Probably a good idea,” Devrik agreed. “Before you do though, could you recommend an inn or tavern nearby where a man might quench his thirst?”

“Oh, aye, you’re not far from the best place for beer on the docks, though it might be, er, a bit rustic for your lordships…” his gazed flicked to Vulk in particular. “It’s the Brass Kraken, just along the High Street there. You can’t miss it, there’s a big kraken, made ‘o brass, o’er the door…”

The three men thanked the man and made their farewells to him and his dog, Brann only reluctantly being pulled away from his new friend. As they walked up the street they paused as the rest of the Hand emerged from a northern cross street and joined them. They, too, had been directed to the Brass Kraken as the best establishment they were likely to find in Low Town, and the party repaired thence to compare notes and quench the thirst that such intense sleuthing had given them all.

The tap room of the inn was not empty, but was not nearly as full as might be expected given the afternoon hour, Devrik thought. Despite this, the service was somewhat slow, as only the proprietor and one young woman, presumably his daughter, seemed to be working. After an hour and three rounds of drinks, the debate on their next actions had degenerated into a scientific discussion on the relative merits of troll farts vs. troll belches as the primary cause of earthquakes, and whether or not Nitaran Gates required sentience to function.

Devrik, while firmly in the ‘uncertain’ column on the issue of subterranean humanoid bodily gasses and their possible relationship to earth movements, was able to definitively state that the Gates did sometimes activate spontaneously, and that people and animals were well known to pass through them, sometimes quite unknowingly. Mariala and Vulk were able to confirm this, so Vulk’s idea that the earthquake, whatever it’s ultimate cause, could not be ruled out as having triggered random Gate openings and therefore the recent flood of strange visitors.

But even if that were true, it didn’t explain the rash of ghost sightings, the walking dead, or the disappearance of seven or more of the Baron’s subjects, however lowly. Given the profession of many of the missing persons, Toran asked their host about local brothels, which brought a diffident suggestion that the gentleman might enjoy the delights of the Sow’s Silk Purse, just two streets over. A moment of confusion ensued before the man was made to understand that they were interested in the missing alura, at which point he was suddenly more congenial.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Ser,” he said, laying down the fourth round of drinks, a pile of wooden bowls and spoons, and the large ceramic pot of beef-and-onion stew Mariala had order in a probably futile effort to soak up some of the alcohol.

“I completely misunderstood your interest… but it wouldn’t do you any good, then, you see. The lads and lasses who sell their, er… that is, work freelance, as it were, ply their trade up in the temple side yard, as tradition dictates. So none of the proper houses of good repute would be like to know anything about them, I’m afraid.

“And my apologies again, gentlemen, lady, for the slow service this afternoon. I’ve been short-handed this six months past, ever since my tap-boy ran off to take up with those foreigners. Now Kemis was no great shakes, and I had sometimes wondered if he was worth half the trouble he caused… but he did know how to keep the beer flowing, a virtue I didn’t perhaps appreciate until it was gone, as the saying goes. With the disruption of the war I could never replace him, and now half my servers are afraid to come in, thanks to all these uncanny goings-on, well…” He shrugged apologetically and began gathering up the empty tankards and mugs.

“What’s this about foreigners?” Korwin asked sharply, grabbing the man’s sleeve to stay him. The barber had said something about foreigners too, but he’d not been able to follow up on it once the debate with the butcher had started.

“Oh, meaning no disrespect, of course,” the innkeeper assured him hastily. By the intense young man’s accent he was clearly a foreigner himself, though it was hard to place him exactly. West of the Worldspines, certainly… “Being a port town, we get folks from all over, and we’re really quite cosmopolitan –”

“Yes, I’ve no doubt,” Korwin assured him, if a tad impatiently. “No offense was taken. But tell us more of these specific foreigners, the ones your tap-boy – Kemis, you said his name was? – took up with.”

“Oh, well,” the portly man sighed, setting his tray back down and frowning. “Not much to tell really. Several men, showed up maybe half a year past… not sure from where exactly, but they sound Aruhsali to my ear. They took lodgings up near the temple, and soon enough Kemis had taken off. I assume hired to do for them… but given his slovenly habits, I’ve no idea why. I’d’ve thought some local widow might’ve served better…”

“What business do these men follow, do you know?” Vulk asked, dishing himself a second bowl of the stew, which smelled like ambrosia and tasted of paradise.

“Well, not as such, your reverence… they’ve always kept very much to themselves; usually send the boy to do the shopping and such, come to think on it. But I believe they’re about some sort of scholarly work… what I’ve seen of any of them, they seem a bit bookish… I know at least one of them makes regular visits to the old book seller. I’ve little use for books and such things myself, of course, but to each his own, as I always say.”

The only thing he could add, before insisting he had to be about his work and bustling off, was that the foreigners lodged in a building north of the temple side yard. A location that kept coming up, Vulk thought – the missing alura, the killing of the silver-back bear nearby, the conversation between the surly hobo dwarf and the renegade tap-boy, and now these mysterious foreigners…

A suggestion was made that maybe they should lay a trap that night in the temple side yard – either Mariala all tarted up, or perhaps Vulk in drag, since he was prettier. The cantor pointed out there was no need for that, as both men and women worked the trade, and some of both had been taken… and besides, he wasn’t shaving his goatee! After a few more desultory sallies of wit the idea was tabled, at least until they’d had a chance to investigate the area… something they should probably do while the daylight lasted.

After polishing off the last of the amazing stew, the group had barely stepped into the street when the sound of distant shrieks and screams brought them instantly alert. The commotion seemed to be coming from the north, the direction of the Farmers Market. They set off at a run and soon encountered a score of panicked citizens fleeing south. The reason became obvious as they entered the plaza – an enormous black cat, sleek, beautiful and deadly looking, was padding silently through the stalls, ignoring the fleeing humans, mostly. Instead her brilliant green eyes were fixed on the little park – and the butcher’s milling pigs!

Erol was in the lead, and he rushed the panther with his net. He feinted left then, as the claws swiped out, released the net to the right, entangling the creature’s head and front claws in its mesh. As the big cat snarled and twisted about, trying to free herself, Mariala squeezed between Therok and Vulk to cast Fire Nerves on it. With a yowl the big cat collapsed to the pavement, writhing and mewling piteously for several seconds before slipping into merciful unconsciousness.

By the time Toran and Therok had the creature hog-tied and muzzled the City Guard arrived in the person of four sweaty, slightly worried looking men-at-arms. They seemed instantly relieved to find that someone had already dealt with the problem, but quickly reverted to worried when they were told to take the still very much alive beast up to the castle and find some secure place to keep it for the time being.

As three of the Guardsmen hefted the still groggy cat, Erol then began to track the panther back along its path, uphill to the north. Although he lost the certain trail around the still blood-stained cobbles where the silver-back had been killed, there was little doubt the big cat had come from, or at least through, the temple side yard. The bear, too, had been in the side yard as proven by the single footprint Toran discovered in a patch of thin grass and damp, clayey soil.

The group decided to split their efforts again. Toran, Vulk and Therok headed north, to the building where they hoped to find the mysterious foreigners lodging. It was, not incidentally, also the direction all these unusual animals seemed to be coming from. The rest of the party followed Korwin into the Temple of Tyvos, where he had already gone to pay his respects to his patron, the Immortal Lord of the Seas. Erol briefly checked out a glass shop on the east side of the yard, called the House of Pane, before joining the others in the temple.

As they approached it Toran could see that the two story stone and timber structure on the north side of the temple side yard was actually two buildings, sharing a common courtyard. A narrow passage between the buildings led, via an iron gate from the street, to the courtyard. The gate was hanging open as they approached, swinging slightly in the spring breeze off the bay. Toran pointed out the tufts of coarse brown bear fur caught on a rough patch of the iron bars to Vulk, and they proceeded cautiously into the narrow alley.

The door to the larger building, on their right, was also wide open, and Vulk called out a hail. There was no answer. Toran moved past him into the small courtyard, knocking on the two doors of the western building, then peering into windows when he got no response. All three residences seemed empty.

Therok bringing up the rear, the three men stepped cautiously through the open door of the eastern house and into a modest, if well-appointed, study/living room. It was a strange mixture of academic and slovenly, as if a brilliant but careless student lived there… or several scholars and a wastrel youth, perhaps?

There were books everywhere, on a range of subjects, from geography to Khundari history, metaphysics to navigation. Spread over a large desk were sheets of cheap paper covered in calculations of the most arcane sort. Scattered amongst and over almost everything were dirty clothes, plates of dried food, and at least two empty bottles of wine.

There was a small kitchen off the main room, and stairs up to the second floor, but between them stood a doorway into a storage area. It was this that immediately drew their attention, as a trap door could be seen within, open against the far wall. More arresting was the fact that the door to the room had been shattered into flinders. As if a great beast had forced its way through…

“Looking at these marks around the opening,” Toran said, crouching down to examine the trap door, “I’d say the bear actually came up these stone stairs from the cellar and then clawed its way out of the room. The panther came afterward, obviously…”

Vulk and Therok stared dubiously down into the darkness below and then at the dwarf. Toran shrugged. “It’s what the evidence suggests, odd as it seems.”

“It’s not that,” Vulk said with a short laugh. “I’ve no doubt you’re right. It’s just I’m not too sure about following this trail any further on our own. It’s one thing to split the party for a little light reconnaissance around town, but…”

“Oh, well, I suppose you’re right,” Toran sighed. “We should probably go fetch the others… although I’m sure we’d be fine, and I’m cursed curious about how these animals are getting here… it must be some sort of portal or gate, as you first suggested, Vulk, but…” With a shrug he his friend chivy him back out of the empty house and towards the temple.

When the others had entered the vast, shadowy silence of the temple they’d found Korwin at the main alter, making whatever silent communion with his patron Immortal as was his custom. Mariala, moved by the grandure of the place, and the beautiful patterns the westering sun sent through the stained glass, stepped into the niche set aside for her own Immortal patron, Shala, to offer up her own thoughts and devotion.

Devrik, after convincing Brann to sit outside the temple’s main doors and be a good boy, entered and found the somewhat larger alcove devoted to Cael and made his own obeisance. By the time Erol and Jeb had made their way into the sanctum the others were finishing their devotions and beginning to look around. They all found it odd that no one seemed to be attending to the temple… even with all the uncanny activity that seemed centered on it, surely its religious custodians wouldn’t;t abandon it…

Mariala was thinking about going upstairs, where no doubt the high cantor had his office and perhaps other functionaries might be found, when her attention was drawn by a sound coming from the stairway leading down into the crypts. Stepping to the head of the stairs she peered down into the dimness… torches must be lit in the crypts, because all was not pitch black. In fact she could see four small red lights…

Creeping up the stone stairs were the two largest rats she had ever seen — each one was almost as large as Brann, and their feral eyes gleamed red and malevolent in the dimness. It took a moment for her brain to process what it was seeing, and when it did, it froze up entirely – adrenaline flooded her body and every muscle locked up, while her mind simply went white as her life-long phobia seized her.

As the nearest dire rat leapt for her throat Mariala finally let out a piercing shriek of horror and her body unfroze just enough for her to throw up her arm in defense. The vicious rodent sank its teeth into the hardened kurbul of her vambrace, and its rear claws shredded her tunic but failed to find purchase against the acid-washed kurbul cuirass she wore beneath it.

She tried to fling the creature from her, but it clung, and its stench filled her nostrils as it clawed at her… it was simply too much for her over-loaded brain… she just shut down. As Mariala collapsed to the flagstones, however, the immense rodent lost its grip on her vambrace and rolled away. But it was back on its feet in an instant, preparing to leap again for her throat.

Erol, only a few feet behind Mariala when she screamed, lunged forward with his trident in hand as she collapsed. Standing over her prone form as the rat scrabbled for traction on the stone floor he skewered it, flinging its body away behind him and nearly hitting Jeb. While he didn’t share Mariala’s crippling fear of rodents, he had come to loath them during his time as an enslaved gladiator, and that hatred combined with his sudden fear for her well-being to drive his fury.

The second rat managed to evade his next thrust, but it failed to dodge Grover, who leapt from Erol’s shoulder onto the immense rodent, savaging it’s throat. The creature died, but not without exacting a price – in it’s death throes its rear claws raked the ferret’s side, drawing blood and causing him to limp back to Erol and curl up in his pack, licking his wounds.

Erol would’ve loved to take the time to tend to his friend’s wounds, but already another of the huge dire rats had appeared, and by the sound of it more were swarming up the stairs behind it. Korwin impaled that next beast on his Frost Blade, while Erol skewed the one behind, but more were coming…

Vulk, who had arrived via a side door with Toran and Therok just in time to see Mariala go down, rushed forward to lean over the carved wooden railing above the stairs. He aimed the Staff of Summer downward and the glowing, milky strands of the Weaver’s Web shot out, filling the stairwell with scores of binding ropes, ensnaring another five of the slavering creatures.

The rodents snapped and hissed, struggling to free themselves, but they had no leverage and the strands resisted their teeth. Vulk considered what to do next… they really needed to investigate the crypts he supposed, and they did make a nasty roadblock to that end…

“Say, Devrik,” the cantor called suddenly, tuning to his friend, who was just helping a pale, groggy Mariala back to her feet. “Think you could give us a little fire over here.”

Devrik, passing the still shaken Mariala off to Vulk for medical attention, stepped to the head of the stares and peered down at the writhing mass of trapped dire rats and grinned as he caught his friend’s meaning. The flickering flame in a nearby presence lamp was all the seed he needed for his pyrokinesis to feed off of, and a small sphere of fire appeared above his open palm. With a flick he sent it flying into the midst of the faintly glowing tangle of giant rats.

As they’d found in the hamlet of Hart’s Lodge, the strands burst into sudden flame, eventually burning away – but not before immolating all of the ensnared rodents. The stench of burning rat fur and flesh was unpleasant, but in a very short time Devrik was able to kick the smoking corpses off the stairs, clearing the path into the crypts. Any other dire rats that might have been lurking below seemed to have taken the warning and fled.

Mariala, however, having regained her composure and gotten a grip on her phobia, was reluctant to go down to the lower level until she was absolutely assured there was no more immediate evidence of even so much as a mouse visible. When she finally made her way down, with Erol and Jeb bringing up the rear, she saw that Devrik had missed one burned rat corpse. She viscously kicked the smoldering body off the steps, sending it flying into the dimness, before continuing down with some grim satisfaction.

The crypt of the Temple of Tyvos was one vast open cruciform space, upheld by a dozen pillars of stone carved in a stylized wave motif, and dimly lit by a half-dozen bronze braziers filled with slow-burning sea peat. Eleven elaborate stone sarcophagi were scattered about, and the walls were lined with scores of bronze plates marking burial niches.

At the north end was an area enclosed by three walls, tiled with beautiful mosaics, and housing a large stone statue on a marble plinth. According to the inscription carved on it, this was the final resting place of, and eternal memorial to, the great cleric who had founded the temple and oversaw its construction 140 years ago. It also appeared to have been used more recently as a lair for creature or creatures unknown – bones, both old and well-gnawed and quite fresh ones with bits of meat still on them, littered the floor.

Korwin, trying to determine where the bones had come from through the use of his psychometry talent, became quite convinced the older bones had belonged to a show girl named Lola who’d worked at a cabaret named… the Cobra? The Cobra’s Bandana?… anyway, the hottest spot north of Sydora… sometime around the turn of the last century…

The others exchanged meaningful glances (and the odd eye-roll) when he shared this intelligence, and went on about the business of searching the crypts for secret passages, mysterious glowing portals, or other such subtle clues.

It was a full turn of the glass before the Hand found the thing they were looking for – in the shadows of the northwest corner of the crypts, behind a particularly large and ornate sarcophagus, a section of the foundation had been cracked and partially collapsed. The breach looked new, no doubt a result of the recent earthquake, as Toran agreed (his eye-rolling was getting a workout today) when Erol suggested it. The resultant opening was just large enough for a grown man to squeeze through, after squeezing by the sarcophagus first.

“Well, the panther might have gotten through this,” Korwin said, eyeing the hole dubiously and rubbing his temples. The psychometry attempt had given him a headache. “But there’s no way a silver-back bear got through there. There must be another way to the surface…”

“Oh, there is,” Vulk and Toran said simultaneously. The Khundari gestured for the cantor to continue. “We didn’t get a chance to mention it, with all the excitement and Mariala fainting and all.” Mariala cast him dark look, but said nothing.

“We were coming to get you all,” Vulk went on, oblivious. “We found the house the foreigners were renting, we think… it was certainly where the bear and panther, at least, came from. Up from the cellar, actually. Maybe we should – Hey!”

That last was directed at Erol who, impatient with all the milling about jaw boning and anxious to see where the hole in the wall led, had squeezed past the sarcophagus and was just vanishing into the dark gap. With a shrug Toran followed, and one by one the others did as well, Vulk invoking Fortune’s Light on everyone.

The gap in the foundation opened into one of the main sewer lines of the town. The fading light of the setting sun cast the shadow of a street grating above them onto the surface of the murky waters of the drainage channel. The smell was not as bad as it might have been, the spring rains having kept things flowing relatively recently. The arched walls and ceiling of crumbling brick were damp and covered in patches of dark moss.

A raised walkway allowed the party to keep their feet dry and relatively clean as they followed Erol single-file while he tracked the spoor of some large rats. The party hadn’t gone far when they suddenly encountered a pack of living rats in the odoriferous flesh – not the terrifyingly large dire rats, true, but giant rats nonetheless, clearly close cousins of the one the ratter had shown them (and Cheron had dined on).

Their eyes gleaming a feral red in the dim light, the rats paused as they saw the group — and then began a mad, chittering rush forward. Erol managed to get off one arrow, skewering the lead rat, which slowed the others only momentarily. But that was all his companions needed.

Toran cast Stavin’s Arrow and killed two of the nearer rats with the translucent bolts of force. Mariala, again in iron control of her phobia, was nonetheless staying far enough back that her Fire Nerves only managed to fell three of the creatures – although she was gratified to see them collapse twitching into the filthy water, where they would no doubt drown.

Devrik finished off the pack with an Orb of Vorol hurled into their midst. Two of the rats closest to the fiery orb simply exploded in superheated balls of flaming body parts. The remaining giant rats either burned to death in a more conventional manner or died in the searing cloud of vaporized sewer water that engulfed them.

Unbeknownst to the Hand, a hunting pack of a dozen Taloxta, silently approaching from the darkness of a smaller nearby tunnel, had witnessed the demise of their rivals and, in a rare display of intelligence, decided that they weren’t really that hungry after all… so many tempting eyes notwithstanding. They slunk off into the dark, and so lived to torment other victims another day.

After a brief and fruitless foray to the north, whence came the giant rats, the group turned south again and soon came upon a short, narrow corridor that led to a half rotting wooden door, ajar. The small chamber beyond appeared once to have been home to a down-on-their-luck itinerant or two, although now nothing but two moldering beds and a half-rotted chest remained.

More interesting was the collapsed section of wall in the southwest corner of the room. This damage looked older than the damage to the temple’s foundation – at least a year, Toran estimated after crouching down to study the fall of stone and dirt. He also peered into the fairly large tunnel that sloped down into darkness… although it wasn’t quite dark, now was it?

While Toran studied the damaged wall and the tunnel beyond it, Erol, who had quickly decided that the room held nothing of interest, at least to him, had returned to the corridor and continued south. Most of the others, finding the room equally uninteresting, shrugged and followed him. Only Devrik and Korwin remained, the former to watch his Khundari friend’s back, the latter to make absolutely sure that old chest didn’t hold any secrets. Or valuables. Or valuable secrets…

When Toran finally turned back to his companions he was briefly surprised to see the others were gone… but in his excitement barely gave it a thought. “Devrik, come here, you have to see this!” he called, gesturing urgently at the tunnel. “There’s a pulsing light down here!” Warily, Devrik moved up beside his friend, discreetly checking to make sure he wasn’t somehow ensorcelled by this suspicious light. Korwin, finally giving up on his fruitless search of the rotting chest, joined them.

“Look, all this dirt has been well tamped down,” Toran pointed out. “A great many feet – booted feet – have trod this tunnel. And several animals, too, more recently… see, there’s the print of a big cat… and the tunnel is big enough for a bear, certainly. But look down the tunnel… see that pale white light that seems to flicker from around that first bend?”

Devrik glanced cautiously down the dark passage, and did indeed see a faint glow once his eyes adjusted. It didn’t seem particularly enchanting, so that was good. Korwin also saw the light, and was immediately on board with the ninja-dwarf’s suggestion that they investigate, scoffing at Devrik’s reluctance to split the party.

“Oh, the others will come back soon enough,” the water-mage urged. “It’s not like they’ll find another glowing mystery light, or anything else half so interesting, wherever they’ve gone. Once they get tired of roaming the sewers they’ll figure out where we’ve gone quick enough, and follow right on.”

Despite his misgivings, Toran’s intensity and Korwin’s enthusiasm combined with Devrik’s own strongly itching curiosity, and he gave in. Probably there was nothing too untoward down there any way, and they’d likely be back before the rest of the gang returned… what’s the worst that could happen?

♦ ♦ ♦ 

It was barely a score of meters down the southern branch of the sewer line that Erol, Mariala, Vulk and the minions did, in fact, come upon something rather more interesting than a mysteriously glowing light in a hole in the ground. A large section of the sewer wall had recently collapsed, and the gap thus created revealed a moderately large chamber beyond – a chamber that appeared to be a very old Khundari burial chamber.

Clambering up the large pile of fresh rubble that half choked the sewer, then down into the chamber, they found that they hardly needed the goddess-given sight of Vulk’s ritual – the room appeared to be suffused with a faint greenish glow, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. Four distinctive Khundari sarcophagi were set in small niches around the room, and four carved pillars upheld a central dome. But it was a larger sarcophagus in an alcove in the north wall – almost a small room of its own, really – that drew their attention. The stone coffin was made of matte black basalt and was covered in arcane symbols and runic text.

“This is an ancient version of the runic alphabet,” Mariala said, peering at the large words spelled out on the side, but not moving from the center of the main chamber. “But if I’m reading this right… let’s see… yes, this is the tomb of someone named Kordäth… the… Bleakheart? It also seems to be a warning… and those symbols are defiantly wards of some–”

Before she could finish her sentence the sound of grinding stone-on-stone filled the fetid air as the lid of the sarcophagus slowly slid aside. Jeb and Therok both stepped back, subtly shifting to place themselves behind their principals, as a ghoulish figure sat up and began to pull itself out of the sarcophagus. It appeared to be a gaunt, white bearded Kundari, dressed in ragged, once-rich robes, beneath which pitted and corroded armor could be seen. It glowed with a sickly green aura, and the stink of the grave was on it.

There was nothing spectral or translucent about the figure, however, and as soon as its feet were planted on the stone flags of the floor it drew a wicked looking black dagger from its belt. It began to stalk slowly toward the party, it’s glowing green eyes mesmerizing, a greedy gleam flickering in the depths…

Mariala felt a sudden lashing of malevolent force against her mental shields, and she recoiled in distaste. In the brief instant of contact, before she repelled the creature’s attempt at domination, she experienced something of its mind – thoughts of rage and betrayal… buried alive, but sustained by an indomitable will and… a connection to… some great force… long centuries of imprisonment… rage banked to embers, but never wholly dying… sudden freedom, at last! And a terrible thirst… a thirst for the life of others…

“I don’t know what this thing is,” she warned the others. “I don’t sense the Shadow within it, thank Shala… but nevertheless, I think it would be an extraordinarily bad idea to let it touch you!”

Vulk, even more familiar with the cold nothingness of the Shadow, was greatly relieved himself to get no sense of it radiating from the creature —but he was taking no chances. Once again he summoned up the Weaver’s Web, filling the mouth of the alcove with glowing strands from side-to-side and floor-to-ceiling, imprisoning the horrifying undead dwarf.

His feeling of satisfaction was fleeting as a shriek from Jeb, followed by a slightly more manly bellow of fear from Therok, caused him to whirl around. Two skeletal knights, chests and skulls glowing with a brilliant green light from within, lumbering toward the group from behind.

As Jeb fumbled to nock an arrow and Therok grabbed for his sword, Erol leaped past Vulk to thrust his trident at the nearest skeleton. It’s pitted sword knocked the shaft down enough to avoid a blow to the spine, but its legs became entangled in the weapon’s tines and it stumbled to the ground with a clatter of rusted armor.

Marila, meanwhile, had whipped up her cross-bow, kept (like her nerves) on a hair trigger since they’d entered the temple crypt, and fired off a bolt at the second skeleton that was reaching for a shaking, wide-eyed Jeb. The iron shaft pierced the base of the spine, shattering it to dust. This seemed to break whatever unholy magic was animating the thing, and the undead horror collapsed with a clatter into a pile of bones and corroded armor. The sickly green light at its core quickly faded into nothingness.

Vulk aimed his staff at the first skeleton as it staggered back to its feet and let loose a flight of Stavin’s Arrows. The translucent force bolts seemed to have little effect, however, and the creature swung a surprisingly swift blow at Erol, who countered with his trident. This time he plunged the weapon into the verdigris light of the undead thing’s chest. Ribs shattered and the spine snapped, and it joined its companion as just another pile of decaying bones and rusted armor, its own green glow fading away.

The heroes were allowed no breathing room, however, as they turned once more to find Therok engaged with the revenant Kordäth, who had made short work of Vulk’s webs, slashing through them with his black dagger as if they were spider webs in truth. The barbarian retainer had been the first to notice, and had dashed forward to place himself between the creature and Mariala’s back.

His sword parried the blow aimed at his heart, but as the slashing blade slid aside Kordäth twisted it, managing to drive it into B-Fiddy-five’s calf. The barbarian staggered back with a yell, his leg giving out and dropping him to the floor. The undead Khundari reached one leathery, desiccated hand out toward him…

Mariala’s Fire Nerves struck the undead warrior full in the head… to no effect, beyond drawing its malevolent gaze toward her. She felt the draining cold of its mental assault on her shields again, but had no trouble deflecting it once again.

The delay had been enough to give Jeb time to loose the arrow he’d finally nocked and drawn. It flew true, straight for the ghoul’s head – only to be snatched from the air by the creature’s leathery hand, just centimeters from its left eye. With a malevolent grin the thing snapped the shaft in two and turned its cold gaze toward the young archer.

Before it could launch a psychic attack on the boy, however, Erol was on it with his trident, slashing and jabbing, forcing the revenant to dodge and twist, with surprising agility, and parry with its glittering black dagger.

At that point the undead thing that had once been Kordäth made a tactical error. It turned its back on Mariala to focus on the tall Telnori warrior, representative of an ancient enemy which its black soul remembered well. It dodged another feint, and then went in for a counterstrike, the wicked sharp edge of the obsidian dagger, glinting in the unnatural light of the crypt, barely missing Erol’s face.

The crossbow bolt took the undead warrior in the back of the head, piercing the skull with a sound like a mirror cracking, the iron shaft exiting though Kordäth’s open mouth. With a psychic wail that only Mariala heard the green light faded from its eyes even as Erol watched, the nimbus surrounding the body and filling the room dimming to nothing. As quickly as that, the revenant spirit was gone.

“Where the Void are the others?” Vulk asked as he invoked the Besssing of Kasira over the remains of all three of the former undead, now hopefully really and truly dead. He really hated the undead, and generally preferred a lot more backup than this when facing them…

“Hmmm, I guess it’s not such a good idea to split the party,” Erol said diffidently, wiping the gristly gore from his trident and checking on Grover, who was doing well, nibbling on his Baylorium®-infused Ferret Treat™ in his nest in his master’s pack. “Although I think we did rather well on our own… mostly.”

Therok, who was being helped back to his feet by Mariala, gave the former gladiator a narrow-eyed look, but said nothing. Vulk bent to tend to his gashed calf while Mariala turned to look out the collapsed wall into the sewer. Still currently-rat-free she noted, and sighed.

“I suppose we should head back and find the others…”

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Toran, Devrik and Korwin made their way down the mysterious tunnel to find themselves in what looked like an even more mysterious ancient Khundari chamber (easily 2,000 years old, by Toran’s estimate). Most of the walls had collapsed long ago (only the rubble-strewn tunnel they’d entered through looked fresh), leaving only a three cubic meter open space. In that space a column of shifting white light rose from floor to ceiling.

They all assumed it was a portal, of course, and this was confirmed almost at once. Appearing as if through a glowing fog, another panther, this one male, had materialized from the column. It stalked out of the shimmering light, giving them no more than a wary glance, and quickly disappeared up the tunnel.

Once again, at Toran’s excited insistence and Korwin’s relentless badgering, Devrik let his common sense be overruled. But not so far as to fail all basic precautions – before they plunged into the mysterious portal he wrote a note for the others on one of Mariala’s entangled papers. For good measure he left the original near the mouth of the tunnel, using a bit of rubble for a paper weight.

Then they’d stepped through…

… and out of a hazy white light to find themselves on a circular stone platform about 10 meters across. At the center of the platform, now behind them, rose the column of milky white light from which they’d just stepped. It was centered in a circle of what looked like melted, twisted and fused metal, three meters in diameter. Within the column’s light faint whorls of shifting, pale colors could be seen slowly writhing and curling in on themselves, like smoke from a pipe.

But what grabbed the attention almost instantly, was the fact that the platform was floating in the air very far above the ground… and the ground was the bottom of an immense spherical cavern perhaps 200 meters in diameter. A diffuse gray light filled the immense space, revealing three other identical platforms floating in the air nearby, each one, like their own, connected to a much larger circular platform between and below them by short flights of stairs. The large central platform was more than 30 meters across, the stairs that connected it to its satellite platforms spaced even around its rim, and the whole assembly floating uncannily at the center of the immense space.

The stonework of all five platforms looked old and worn, Toran noted, with a hint of scorch marks over large patches of the surfaces. The edges of the platforms were jagged and crumbling, and the stairs were in particularly bad shape. The shattered remnants of what may have been a circular walkway that once connected the outer platforms floated in a slowly orbiting ring around the  large platform.  The whole construction had an air of very great age… and an indefinable aura of long abandonment.

Each of the satellite platforms had its own central column of shimmering light, while the larger platform did not. At its center was a slowly rotating disk of matte black stone (basalt, Toran absently noted to his friends) into which sigils of glowing white light were etched. Around the perimiter of this disk was a band of shiny non-rotating black stone (obsidian, Toran observed in passing) that was etched with silver-inlaid runes. Runes of the very most ancient Khundari form.

“I think I might know where we are,” the Shadow Warrior said, almost too low to hear. A thrill of excitement and awe ran up his spine, and he shivered. “I think this is… the Fane of Gheas!”

“The what of who, now?” Korwin asked after a moment of blank silence. Devrik winced and swatted him upside the head, giving Toran an apologetic eye roll.

“The Fane of Gheas,” Toran repeated in annoyance, as the wonder of the moment slipped away. “It is a legend of my people, almost a myth I would’ve said. But this is so much as it’s described in the tales of the ancient world, tales I learned as a child…

“Tells us about it,” Devrik encouraged, as Korwin rubbed his head.

“During the time of the Codominion, when Khundari, Umantari, Telnori and the Immortals all lived together in harmony and peace, before the coming of the Demon Plague and the tragedy of the Demon’s Fist, during the time of the building of the Eight Cities of the Dwarves –”

“Yes, yes, it was a long time ago,” Korwin interrupted nervously. He really didn’t like heights, and even thought they weren’t that close to the edge… “Can we move it along?”

Toran stared at his companion for a moment, resisting the urge to put a throwing star into his shoulder. But he sensed the other man’s discomfort with their position and his jangled nerves, and with a sigh he let it go.

“So, the Fane of Gheas was said to have been built in that age, a master work of the Khundari priests of our Great God Gheas, made with His blessing and guidance. It was said to be a spatial nexus connecting many different places on, above, and beneath the world, by a method unrelated to the naturally occurring Nitaran Gates. Some say it could even connect to other worlds and dimensions, but that always seemed to me to be too fantastical…”

“Well, this seems pretty fantastical already,” Devrik growled, a little awed himself by the immense structure… and its unnerving defiance of gravity. “So I’m not discounting anything. But where in the world was – is – this Fane of yours? Where are we?”

“No idea… and no one knows,” Toran said with a shrug. “Only the most outrageous of the tales ever claimed to know where the Fane was located, some even claiming it wasn’t in our world at all. But whatever the truth, the secret of its physical location was known only to the founding priests of the Dha’ghean Khor sect. Through the centuries that and their successor brothers acted as “ferrymen,” of sorts, for travelers they deemed worthy to use the Paths of Gheas, whether individuals or small armies. It was also known as the Eye of the World–”

“What the Void is that?” Korwin interrupted again, grasping Toran’s shoulder and pointing to the platform directly opposite theirs. In the pillar of light at the center of that platform a figure had begun flickering in and out of sight – it appeared to be a Khundari, his face twisted in a rictus of fear or pain. Even as they focused on him, however, he faded away altogether…

“Huh!” Toran said with a surprised grunt, and immediately headed for the shattered steps down to the central platform, pausing only to pull a stick of charcoal from his scrip and mark “their” platform. Leaping down the steps he barely seemed to notice the crumbling stone, the gaps, or the 100 meter drop they revealed, moving as nimbly over them as if on a grand staircase in a ballroom… the benefits of a ninja education.

Korwin, on the other hand, very much noticed the gaps and the extremely dubious condition of the stairs. Moving to follow the dwarf, he paused with a jerk at the first step. But under Devrik’s sardonic smirk, he flushed, gathered his resolve, and… staggered was really the only word for it, the fire-mage decided… down the stairs.

While Devrik held his position on the high ground, Toran went right around the central basalt disk on the main platform, while Korwin went left – neither was prepared to risk those arcane glyphs without knowing more. Just as they came abreast of the stairs to the two intermediary satellite platforms the pillars of light on those two, as well as on the one ahead, shifted from white to a pulsing pastel, each one a different color. Devrik glanced behind himself, but the pillar they’d enter via remained a soft white, with only swirling hints of pastel colors in its depth.

Toran, glancing up to his right, was arrested by the sight of something emerging from the violet glow of the pillar there. As it stepped into focus, he found his battle-axe in his hands reflexively. The thing was perhaps the most hideous abomination of life he’d ever witnessed – a mass of writhing tentacles and scores of eyes of varying sizes and colors forming its central mass, which was upheld by two tree trunk-like legs, themselves made up of entwined tentacles. The body, if it could be said to have one, was an electric blue, fading to a translucent, pustulant green at the tips of the upper tentacles; the legs were a dark brown.  

The creature immediately spied Toran, and with a weird, wet ululation began to lumber, with surprising speed and grace, down the crumbling stairs towards him. Holding his battle-axe in one hand the Shadow Warrior gestured with the other and sent an almost-invisible flight of Stavin’s Arrows into the writhing abomination. The magical bolts struck its center of mass, the thing shrieking and falling apart as if each tentacle was a separate entity.

The pieces struck directly by the attack withered and died quickly, but the rest began to writhe about blindly for a moment. But within seconds they began to wriggle and squirm their way towards one another; in another few seconds they began to reform, twisting together once more to form a hideous whole.

Just as the transformation was nearing completion, however, Devrik’s Orb of Vorol, hurled from his own platform, struck the writhing abomination dead center. The reassembling pieces instantly flew apart again, this time with much greater force and in flames. The burning pieces of twisted flesh mostly plunged over either side of the stairs, raining down on the cavern floor far below like some hideous meteor shower.

With an acknowledging wave to Devrik, Toran re-stowed his weapon and resumed his jog over to the far platform, mounting its shattered steps as easily as he’d come down the first set. He had only to wait a moment before the colors of the three columns, including the one he now stood by, shifted back to white. Seconds after they did the shadowy form of the Khundari appeared again… it grew as if rushing towards him from a great distance, then flickered in and out of sight, never quite gone but never quite there…

Just as Korwin made his queasy way up to join Toran, the trapped Dwarf seemed to notice them. His expression changed from fear and pain to one of desperate hope. His mouth moved, but at first they could hear nothing, and the hand he reached out, although appearing solid, moved through Toran’s grasp as if made of smoke.

A few words became audible, but as if from a great distance. “…blood of a… Kundari… must take the…” There were gaps, though, where they saw the lips move but heard no sound, and the figure seemed to pulse in and out of phase with reality. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, the mysterious figure was gone, receding away again… but not completely, Toran realized. He could still see the faintest, ghostly hint of the man. A moment later, another cycle of colors began pulsing through the three active columns, eventually settling into three new shades. Through it all he could just make out the trapped figure, so translucent as to be almost invisible, and seeming both very distant and immediately present.

“I think I know what we need to do,” Korwin cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted across to Devrik. Fortunately sound seemed to carry well in the strange, dead air of the immense cavern, and the fire-mage had no trouble understanding him. “We need Toran to cut himself – a good cut right across his palm is probably best – and drip his Khundari blood into that central sigil, in the middle there. I think…”

Toran paid no particular attention to his friend, focused as he was on watching the pillar of light, waiting for the cycle to begin again. While the Imperial went on about his theory of Dwarven blood being needed to operate the Fane of Gheas Toran readied himself…

When the imprisoned Khundari, who he was fairly certain was the probably clan-less derelict Bektam, made his next phase back towards reality, he was ready. When the man seemed as solid as himself, when his words were audible, if distant, he shot a hand out to grasp the other’s arm. For an instant he felt an almost solid touch… but even as the sensation registered it was gone and he held nothing but misty light.

He’d tried to read Bektam’s lips, but the phasing flicker seemed to blur him around the edges and he could make out nothing. A few different words came through, but were little more help… “pure blood… sigil of… four-fold path…” It was so frustratingly close to being clear, he felt the answer was hanging just out of his grasp, like the delicious peacock tail fungi of old Farmer Mhyklop, growing from the ceilings of the cultivation caves.

He was torn from his thoughts by a warning from Devrik – something was coming through the portal from Gevdan Town…

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Erol, Marila, Vulk and the rest returned to the sad little bedroom off the main sewer line to find it empty, their friends nowhere to be found. Erol, checking for tracks, seemed certain that a large cat, at least as large as the panther they’d encountered early, had come through the room. But as there was no blood, and it was unlikely that such an animal could have bested all three of the men in any case, it was dismissed as irrelevant.

“But the tracks come from this tunnel,” he concluded. “And it looks like our friends went down the tunnel… before the cat came up, in fact. I just can’t believe they’d go down there without us.”

“Perhaps they had a good reason,” Mariala said, frowning. “Still, I’d expect Devrik, at least to – oh!” A sudden inspiration struck, and she reached into her scrip for her entangled parchment. Sure enough, there was one of Devrik’s with his surprisingly beautiful handwriting visible. It explained what they’d found and what they were doing.

“No, no good reason at all,” she sighed, handing the note to Erol to read. He snorted and handed it to Vulk, but the cantor waved it away with a distracted motion.

“Wait, I’m getting something… Cherdon is trying to… oh! I see what he’s trying to tell me… ” he smiled as he came out of his semi-trance. “I think we need to wait a few minutes before we follow the others. Jeb, Therok, I think you should head back to the surface…”

♦ ♦ ♦

Haplo made his way down from Kar Gevdan at a brisk pace. His mission to the High Town and the Eastport docks had proved both long and fruitless. The shippers had turned out to be no more dishonest than any successful merchant, and after extensive questioning and a very thorough searching of their various holdings, almost certainly not in league with Darikazi slavers. Or spies.

The one irregularity he’d stumbled across, the smuggling of a certain illicit substance from Pangonia, was so minor, in his eyes, that it seemed unfair to call them on it under the circumstances. The rather uptight Guard captain might have felt differently, but he’s missed the clue and Haplo saw no need to direct his attention toward it.

The younger of the Sheltam sons had been present and had blanched when he’d realized what Haplo had found. And had then shot the young mage a deeply grateful look when he’d realized he was going to let it pass – a byplay that, once again, the captain failed to note. Nor did he see the small pouch that was slipped to his companion as they were leaving the shipper’s offices to return to the castle.

Having made their negative report to the lord Baron, the captain had returned to his wife and home for supper, while Haplo had declined Lord Tynal’s invitation to dine. He was hungry, certainly, but decided to try and find the others. Perhaps they’d discovered a decent inn during their afternoon’s investigation, and he could hear all about their findings over a meal and tankard or two. And now he had something to share for afters, as it turned out.

The sun was already near the horizon when he reached the Low Town, and he was grateful for the torch the Baron’s seneschal had insisted he take. He lit it now with his flint and steel, and set out to find his friends. A few questions of the locals, and some garbled tales of giant black cats and magical nets, led his to the side yard of the local temple devoted to the Sea God Tyvos.

He was just casting about, trying to decide where to check next, when Vulk’s familiar, the sleek and beautiful peregrine falcon Cherdon, had dropped down onto his shoulder. Momentarily startled, he’d relaxed once he’d recognized the bird – and then had the sudden realization that Vulk might be looking at him through those too-intelligent black eyes. When it motioned with its head toward the temple, he took the hint.

At the temple doors he found Brann, Devrik’s good natured hound, dozing with his head resting forlornly on his paws. The beast leaped up when he smelled Haplo, and seemed pleased at a familiar scent, if not that of one of his own people. Man and dog followed the raptor into the temple, where they ran into Jeb and Therok coming up the wide stone steps from the crypt…

♦ ♦ ♦

As Vulk, Mariala, Haplo, and Erol stepped through the light and out onto the floating platform, they suffered the same sense of awe and vertigo that their friends had experienced earlier. They explained that they had left Jeb and Therok behind, with orders to report all they’d done and learned to the Baron if none of them had returned by the end of the Cat watch. But Cherdon and Brann were with them, and Grover was still comfortably ensconced in Erol’s pack.

The raptor took immediately to the air, and seemed to enjoy the strange open-and-yet-enclosed space. Brann seemed uneasy and stayed close to Devrik, who thumped his side reassuringly. Grover peered over the mouth of his pack, glanced around, and went back to sleep.

Once the people had acclimated themselves to the wonder of the Fane, and been told of the dangers (they all peered over the edge to look at the small, smoking dots that were the remains of the writhing abomination), they began to brainstorm the puzzle of freeing the trapped Khundari. They all agreed he was probably the mystery-Dwarf Bektam, and they had a great many questions for him.

Korwin, who preferred not to traverse the fractured stairs any more than necessary, stayed on the far platform, ostensibly to watch for the returning phase-shifting Dwarf, and called out his continued insistence that they needed to bleed Toran to make everything work… to no avail.

After examining the slowly revolving central disk Toran eventually pronounced that the thing to try was a drop of his own blood in the central, and probably controlling, sigil of the interlocking wards.

Korwin threw up his hands and shook his head in disgust…

But as Toran was moving towards the central disk, and Devrik moved down from the other side to occupy one of the outer sigils, the portals shifted colors once again. And this time, out of the column of light opposite the one from which the writhing abomination had come, an immense shape appeared.

It was at least 8 meters long, resembling nothing so much as a bizarre eel, with a long tubular body that ended in a wide tail and two fins just in back of the head. It’s underbelly was pale violet, while its topside was a deep, mottled purplish color, fading to teal at the tips of the extremities. A little bit back from the head were four long, clawed tentacles, two sprouting from across each other on the top, and two more of the same on the underbelly. The head was roughly triangular-shaped, with a spherical, somewhat beak-like nose and a round mouth like a lampreys, lined with razor teeth. Above the nose were their three glowing blue eyes, each one set atop the other. Tendrils and a few shorter tentacles dangled from the bottom of the head.

As the Hand watched in horror the thing drifted out, undulating through the air as if it were in water, a wave of psychic malevolence and self-satisfaction rolling off of it, to those sensitive to it. And with that psychic emanation seemed to come a name… Lagor’enth. But whether a proper name or species name was unclear, even to Mariala.

It seemed to focus its immediate attention on Toran, who had the misfortune to be in its direct line of sight as it cleared the smaller platform. The Khundari loosened his battle-axe and dropped into a fighting crouch…

The Lagor’enth suddenly stooped and whipped out two clawed tentacles. Toran rolled under the first to drive his axe along the creature’s pale underbelly, but to no effect — its skin seemed as hard as stone. The second tentacle he dodged with a brilliant leap and roll, coming to one knee as he loosed a barrage of Stavin’s Arrows. These struck the creature full on but seemed to do no more damage than his axe.

Erol, having taken Devrik’s place on the original platform, drew a shaft to his longbow and let fly, hitting the flying behemoth at the base of one of its main tentacle-fins. It snapped around as if bitten by some annoying tick, briefly thrashing its long tail.

Mariala stood at the base of the stairs below Erol, and as his arrow struck she released a blasts of Fire Nerves. This, too, seemed merely to discomfit the beast but not really damage it… although… was it moving a little slower now, and maybe a bit less smoothly?

Toran aimed his second casting of Stavin’s Arrows at what looked like a softer, less well-armored patch of the creature’s thorax, just below the mouth. This time the near-invisible bolts got a reaction – it reared back and thrashed the air, sending out psychic waves of disbelief, anger, and pain. Enough pain, apparently, that it turned from this small tormentor to go for seemingly easier prey – Devrik.

The Lagor’enth’s tentacle-claws whipped out viciously, but Devrik was ready, having keenly watched the others’ attacks and the beast’s responses. He nimbly dodged the two-pronged attack, leaping to use one tentacle to push off and into his counterattack. He struck at the same soft spot Toran had found, and from which blue-black ichor was already flowing. He drove his battlesword deep into the beast’s thorax, then ripped it down as he dropped to the stone floor, rolling away as the dark ichor gushed forth in a flood.

The creature reared up, emitting an almost ultrasonic squeal and another psychic blast of shock, fear and pain. Even those with limited psionic talent felt that one, and no one escaped the headache that followed. The body crashed to the main platform at its very edge, spasmed once, and then slowly slid off. The sound when it hit the cavern floor, joining the still smoldering bits of the writhing abomination, was like the world’s largest pumpkin dropped from a tall tower.

Once everyone was recovered, they decided they’d best move fast if they had any hope of gaining control of this immense artifact before something even worse emerged from one of the shifting portals. Toran, after a fruitless attempt to stop or slow the central disk’s rotation by hand, took his place in the center circle, while Devrik, Mariala, Haplo and Vulk took up positions in each of the satellite circles. Korwin stood ready to pull Bektam from his prison, while Erol guarded the portal home, arrow nocked to bow in case anything else came through another gate.

Toran pricked his thumb with his dagger and let several drops of blood fall to the basalt upon which he stood, then began to recite the words inscribed on the encircling stone band… the pace of the disk’s rotation was perfect for the task. The others focused their thoughts on Gevdan and home. A thrum of power began to build, and as it reached a crescendo the disk slowed and then locked into place with its four outer circles aligned with the four outer platforms. The pillars of light all flared once, then settled into four new shades of pastel colors. The sound died away.

A cry from Korwin drew everyones attention to the platform where he stood, now attempting to hold up the half-collapsed figure of a dazed and gasping Khundari. Everyone looked to Toran before stepping off their circles, and after a moment’s consideration, he nodded, freeing them. They all rushed to join Korwin and the now freed Dwarf. The central disk remained motionless.

“Bektam of Gevdan, I presume,” Toran said, taking the weight from Korwin and letting the weakened man sink to his knees.

“Yes, cousin, I am,” the Dwarf replied in Khundari accented with the sounds of the western Greatsone Mountains. “My eternal gratitude for freeing me from that horrible, horrible trap, may your sons carry your memory forward ten thousand years!”

“You’re welcome,” Toran replied drily. “But we’ll circle back to that gratitude after you’ve answered some questions we have. And not all my friends speak our tongue, so stick to the Common… I know you speak Esparic perfectly well.”

Bektam was reluctant to answer the Hand’s questions at first, his gratitude not withstanding, trying for vague generalities and noncommittal answers. But they quickly impressed upon him the fact that he wasn’t leaving this place until he’d provided the answers they sought. With a surly sigh, he grudgingly told his story.

“I’ve been a, a wander for twenty years now,” he began. “A free spirt of the open road.” (A renegade or outcast, Toran thought grimly, but let the deception, maybe even self-deception, pass).

“I came to Gevdan Town about seven years ago, and I’ve made my living as a handyman, of sorts, providing the Umantari with the benefit of Khundari metal-smithing skills and stone working…

“But I’ve never liked sleeping aboveground, and for several years past I’ve made my home in a snug little room in the Underneath, near the temple of Tyvos. This was going on just fine, I guess you’d say, until about a year ago. An earthquake shook the city… from that eruption of Mt. Katai, way off west, they said afterward.”

His audience studiously avoided looking at Devrik, whose infant son had been more-or-less responsible for that eruption. Devrik merely tightened his jaw and glowered at no one in particular. Bektam missed the byplay entirely and went on with his tale.

“It didn’t do much damage, though I was busy for a tenday, checking people’s chimneys and foundations. But ’twas my own digs that took the real damage. One corner of my room collapsed, opening the way to… well, if you’re here, you know to what. Took me awhile to widen and shore up the tunnel, but eventually I found the glowing portal to… here.

” I knew at once what this place must be… I remembered it from the tales my grand da told me before I– back when I was a young ‘un. It took me a bit to… well, I had all that work, you see, after the quake… anyway, eventually I tried one of the other portals. It took me to a frozen mountain top, with air so cold and thin I could hardly breathe! I didn’t stay long, ha!

“The next portal took me to an island in an endless sea… hot and humid, and all that horrible water as far as the eye could see. I went inland, hoping for better, but it was a small island.. and the dark-skinned Umantari were none too friendly. Besides, who could understand that jibber-jabber?

“But third time’s the charm as they say, and by Gheas I thought my luck really had changed with the last portal. I found myself in a cave in the foothills of the mountains, near a forest meadow, spring flowers abloom. I even thought the mountains looked familiar, like those of home. As it turned out, they were a part of the range north of my old home. A few hundred kilometers and I could have –

“Well, but these mountains were in Darikaz, that pit of vipers. A dark land, for all its beauty, the very worst of the cursed humans blighting–” He seemed to remember his audience, and grew silent. Although certainly Vulk looked to be in perfect agreement with his assessment.

“To cut the tale short, I wasn’t there two days before I fell into the hands of fiends in the guise of men – a Korönian clerical sect I came to learn, the Order of the Burning Tower. Over time I learned more — that they were in decline, having ended up on the wrong side of some religious dispute (or more likely a power grab) within their cult some years past. These, the last score of surviving brothers, now moved from place to place, plotting their revenge on all who had betrayed them… but most of all on the primate of their own religion. 

“By sheer bad luck (really the only kind I know) I arrived and had been enslaved just as the chaos caused by the assassination of the Darikazi king reached the hinterland. Their country had collapsed into civil war, but as things fell apart this Order saw only opportunity, a chance to regain their lost power. And maybe more… for I had told them how I had come to their land… and the legends of the Fane.

“One of their number, a leader amongst them, was a powerful mage and telekinetic named Sevrok Baltan, and he had actually heard tales of the Path of Gheas. He compelled me to take him through the portal in the hidden cave, to the Fane itself. He was… besotted by the possibilities.

“It took him five months of intense study and constant experimentation, but he slowly learned, and eventually was able to make the Fane function, at least in a semi-random fashion. My own status rose during this time, for he realized early on that he needed one of pure Khundari blood to make it function at all. I was still a prisoner and slave, but now at least a well cared for one.” He frowned bitterly at some memory, but didn’t elaborate.

“He learned to keep the connections between the Fane and Darikaz and Tharkia active, while allowing the other two portals to be shifted. But his control of those other portals was erratic… really little better than sheer chance, as far as I could tell. But slowly Sevrok did seem to be making progress…

“About six months ago, as their hoarded coin began to run low, they hit upon a plan to make the Paths begin to pay them for all their work. They began by setting up a network of spies in Tharkia and took to stealing slaves to fill their coffers back home, while Sevrok worked to discover how to open the Path to exactly where they wanted to go – the Korönian primate’s palace!

“Everything seemed to be going Sevrok’s way… until the 11th of this month. Gheas, please tell me it’s still Sarnia! I can’t have been trapped more than a tenday, could I?” He looked briefly panicked, until reassured it was only the 22nd of the month. He let out a deep breath and continued.

“Most of the brothers in Tharkia were in Zurhan that day to gather the latest harvest of slaves (they’d begun taking special orders from “clients”) and collect the reports of their spies. How they slipped up, I don’t know, but the King’s men apparently laid an ambush for them in the tavern they used for these meetings, and the ring was exposed and broken up.

“The only reason I know this was that a single member of the Order in Tharkia not taken or killed was an idiotic young acolyte, named Kemis. They’d recruited him as a local face for their mundane business, and had eventually come to use him as a native decoy to lure victims into slavery in the capital. The boy fled back to Gevdan after the debacle at the Mermaid’s Song Inn, and found me.

“And once he’d told his breathless tale, I saw my chance. Oh don’t look at me like that, cousin. Yes, they’d left me free in Gevdan, had done so for months. But there are other restraints besides the physical, and Sevrok’s hooks were deep. There was no escaping from them, except through death. My own, I’d always thought, but now I realized their deaths would serve me just as well. As long as I could stay out of the hands of the few remaining brothers in Darikaz!

“I knew the boy, Kemis, would never betray the Order – he’d drunk the wine too deeply – but I knew I needed two, at least, to operate the Fane. That bastard Sevrok had made sure to keep me far from his work, and as ignorant as possible of how he was achieving even his limited control of the paths. But he still needed me to actually do it, and I learned more than he realized. I was sure I could operate the Fane, and I had no care where the portals took me, as long as it was far from Darikaz or Tharkia!

“But I was not as clever as I thought I was… or else the Korönian scum had been better at keeping vital parts of the procedure secret. I put Kemis in the Gevdan circle, since he knew enough to know we needed to anchor that point. And I did succeed in shifting the pattern! The boy might have begun to suspect then, but he was never the sharpest blade in the rack.

“But I’d missed something. I made my dash for a portal but as I stepped off the central disk an intense pulse of energy burst out from the central platform. It shook the entire cavern, as if a giant had kicked it. I felt myself thrown forward, and for a moment I lay half stunned.

” When I staggered up I could see that the boy had been hurled from the center disk as well, and was laying unconscious on the far side. But I had no thought for him, I just wanted out. I stepped into the former “Darikaz” portal, knowing it had shifted destinations – only to be gripped as if by ten thousand tiny hands, all trying to tear me apart. I turned, trying to retreat, but I was trapped.

“My body began shifting in and out of phase – one second I was in the Cavern, the next in an open field, then back to the Cavern, and then a mountain top. Or rather, I was almost in those locations. It was an agonizing sensation, and I could never pull myself free. The three portals began randomly shifting, and every time they did I was torn between here and some new, random place. 

“It was the boy’s presence on the “Gevdan” circle that kept it locked to that location, and when he finally came around he took one look me, silently screaming, begging for his help… and he fled. Into the wrong portal.

“As I said, he wasn’t very bright. I have no idea where he ended up, he never came back. Never had a chance to, really, given when in the cycle he went through – they changed again within seconds of his passage.

“For… I don’t know how long… I was trapped in my painful limbo, only occasionally phasing into reality enough to communicate, but never for more than a few seconds, as you saw. Nothing came through my portal, I think because I was blocking it… but the other two saw a strange stream of traffic… wild beasts, monsters, and some things I can’t even describe passed through the open portals. 

“The creatures tended to wander the platform, then leave again… sometimes through the same portal (although it would almost always have reset to some other location by then), more often through one of the other functioning portals. Including the one to Gevdan.”

With Bektam’s technical description of what he understood of the function of the Fane, the Hand suddenly realized that all four portals had almost certainly been reset when they’d freed him. Erol volunteered to go through what had been the portal to Gevdan.

He was only gone a minute before returning to confirm that yes, the other side of the gate was no longer under the town of Gevdan. It was instead in the middle of a steaming tropical rain forest, and daytime, rather than just after sunset, as it should be. No one looked happy.

Korwin tried another portal, finding a white-capped gray sea below high white cliffs and a scudding wrack of clouds. It was either early morning or late afternoon, but he had no reference to be sure of which. Devrik stepped through a third portal into a burning dessert of red sand, dunes stretching as far as he could see, a deep blue bowl of sky above and the sun almost directly overhead.

Mariala was about to step through the last portal when Bektram suddenly leapt to his feet and, with surprising speed given his debilitated condition, dashed past her into the column of light. While Mariala hesitated a moment on whether or not to follow and drag him back, he suddenly staggered back through on his own. His eyes were wide and fixed, and sticking from his chest and back were a score of thin wooden darts.

Without a sound he collapsed at her feet and expired.

“I don’t think we need to try that portal,” Mariala said faintly, kneeling to take the Khundari’s pulse, careful not to touch any of the almost certainly poisoned darts. “Toran, can we spin the wheel again? In case whoever did… this… decides to come through. Maybe we’ll get lucky…”

There was some discussion about whether the Paths all led to places on Novendo, or if they really did sometimes lead to other worlds or dimensions, as they took their places on the sigils. Or even other times, although Vulk maintained time travel was impossible. Still, how could they be sure?

The second attempt to shift the Paths of Gheas at first seemed no more promising than the previous, until Erol stepped through the fourth portal. He was gone longer than usual, and Devrik and Vulk were preparing to follow him, when he stepped back through.

“I think this one might be our best bet yet,” he said. “It’s early evening, so it should be on the same side of the world as us. The stars are familiar, but seem shifted – I’d say it’s significantly south of home, but not in the southern hemisphere. And it is grassland as far as the eye can see. There’s an encampment maybe two kilometers away, on a slight rise, I could see their campfires.”

“That sounds like if could be the great steppes called the Sun Plains that lie along the southern reaches of Ysgareth,” Mariala said, a hint of optimism in her tone. Erol nodded in agreement. “The Sea of Storms lies to the south, the Hellstorch Mountains to the west, Tur Kovan to the east… and the Garlini horsemen could be a problem… but depending on exactly where this portal is, civilization could be only 100 leagues away, maybe less!”

“Assuming this is really the Sun Plains,” Devrik frowned. “How can we be sure? And what risks are we willing to take to get home?”

And so the debate began…